Such handsome men, thought Scarlett, with a swell of pride in her heart, as the men called greetings, waved to friends, bent low over the hands of elderly ladies.
All of them were so young looking, even with their sweeping yellow mustaches and full black and brown beards, so handsome, so reckless, with their arms in slings, with head bandages startlingly white across sun-browned faces.
Some of them were on crutches and how proud were the girls who solicitously slowed their steps to their escorts’ hopping pace!
There was one gaudy splash of color among the uniforms that put the girls’ bright finery to shame and stood out in the crowd like a tropical bird—a Louisiana Zouave, with baggy blue and white striped pants, cream gaiters and tight little red jacket, a dark, grinning little monkey of a man, with his arm in a black silk sling.
He was Maybelle Merriwether’s especial beau, Rene Picard.
The whole hospital must have turned out, at least everybody who could walk, and all the men on furlough and sick leave and all the railroad and mail service and hospital and commissary departments between here and Macon.
How pleased the ladies would be!
The hospital should make a mint of money tonight.
There was a ruffle of drums from the street below, the tramp of feet, the admiring cries of coachmen.
A bugle blared and a bass voice shouted the command to break ranks.
In a moment, the Home Guard and the militia unit in their bright uniforms shook the narrow stairs and crowded into the room, bowing, saluting, shaking hands.
There were boys in the Home Guard, proud to be playing at war, promising themselves they would be in Virginia this time next year, if the war would just last that long; old men with white beards, wishing they were younger, proud to march in uniform in the reflected glory of sons at the front.
In the militia, there were many middle-aged men and some older men but there was a fair sprinkling of men of military age who did not carry themselves quite so jauntily as their elders or their juniors. Already people were beginning to whisper, asking why they were not with Lee.
How would they all get into the hall!
It had seemed such a large place a few minutes before, and now it was packed, warm with summer-night odors of sachet and cologne water and hair pomade and burning bayberry candles, fragrant with flowers, faintly dusty as many feet trod the old drill floors.
The din and hubbub of voices made it almost impossible to hear anything and, as if feeling the joy and excitement of the occasion, old Levi choked off
“Lorena” in mid-bar, rapped sharply with his bow and, sawing away for dear life, the orchestra burst into
“Bonnie Blue Flag.”
A hundred voices took it up, sang it, shouted it like a cheer.
The Home Guard bugler, climbing onto the platform, caught up with the music just as the chorus began, and the high silver notes soared out thrillingly above the massed singing, causing goose bumps to break out on bare arms and cold chills of deeply felt emotion to fly down spines:
“Hurrah!
Hurrah!
For the Southern Rights, hurrah!
Hurrah for the Bonnie Blue Flag That bears a single star!”
They crashed into the second verse and Scarlett, singing with the rest, heard the high sweet soprano of Melanie mounting behind her, clear and true and thrilling as the bugle notes.
Turning, she saw that Melly was standing with her hands clasped to her breast, her eyes closed, and tiny tears oozing from the corners.
She smiled at Scarlett, whimsically, as the music ended, making a little moue of apology as she dabbed with her handkerchief.
“I’m so happy,” she whispered, “and so proud of the soldiers that I just can’t help crying about it.”
There was a deep, almost fanatic glow in her eyes that for a moment lit up her plain little face and made it beautiful.
The same look was on the faces of all the women as the song ended, tears of pride on cheeks, pink or wrinkled, smiles on lips, a deep hot glow in eyes, as they turned to their men, sweetheart to lover, mother to son, wife to husband.
They were all beautiful with the blinding beauty that transfigures even the plainest woman when she is utterly protected and utterly loved and is giving back that love a thousandfold. They loved their men, they believed in them, they trusted them to the last breaths of their bodies.
How could disaster ever come to women such as they when their stalwart gray line stood between them and the Yankees?
Had there ever been such men as these since the first dawn of the world, so heroic, so reckless, so gallant, so tender?
How could anything but overwhelming victory come to a Cause as just and right as theirs?
A Cause they loved as much as they loved their men, a Cause they served with their hands and their hearts, a Cause they talked about, thought about, dreamed about—a Cause to which they would sacrifice these men if need be, and bear their loss as proudly as the men bore their battle flags.
It was high tide of devotion and pride in their hearts, high tide of the Confederacy, for final victory was at hand.
Stonewall Jackson’s triumphs in the Valley and the defeat of the Yankees in the Seven Days’ Battle around Richmond showed that clearly.
How could it be otherwise with such leaders as Lee and Jackson?
One more victory and the Yankees would be on their knees yelling for peace and the men would be riding home and there would be kissing and laughter.
One more victory and the war was over!
Of course, there were empty chairs and babies who would never see their fathers’ faces and unmarked graves by lonely Virginia creeks and in the still mountains of Tennessee, but was that too great a price to pay for such a Cause?
Silks for the ladies and tea and sugar were hard to get, but that was something to joke about.
Besides, the dashing blockade runners were bringing in these very things under the Yankees’ disgruntled noses, and that made the possession of them many times more thrilling.
Soon Raphael Semmes and the Confederate Navy would tend to those Yankee gunboats and the ports would be wide open.
And England was coming in to help the Confederacy win the war, because the English mills were standing idle for want of Southern cotton.
And naturally the British aristocracy sympathized with the Confederacy, as one aristocrat with another, against a race of dollar lovers like the Yankees.
So the women swished their silks and laughed and, looking on their men with hearts bursting with pride, they knew that love snatched in the face of danger and death was doubly sweet for the strange excitement that went with it.
When first she looked at the crowd, Scarlett’s heart had thumpthumped with the unaccustomed excitement of being at a party, but as she half-comprehendingly saw the high-hearted look on the faces about her, her joy began to evaporate.
Every woman present was blazing with an emotion she did not feel.
It bewildered and depressed her.