No'm,dem air ain'sto's,dey's blockade awfisses.Law,Miss Scarlett,doan you know whut blockade awfisses is?Dey's awfisses whar furriners stay dat buys us Confedruts'cotton an'ship it outer Cha'ston and Wilmin'ton an'ship us back gunpowder.No'm,Ah ain'sho whut kine of furriners dey is.Miss Pitty,she say dey is Inlish but kain nobody unnerstan'a wud dey says.Yas'm,'tis pow'ful smoky an'de soot jes'ruinin'Miss Pitty's silk cuttins.It'frum de foun'ry an'de rollin'mills.An'de noise dey meks at night!Kain nobody sleep.No'm,Ah kain stop fer you ter look around.Ah done promise Miss Pitty Ah bring you straight home....Miss Scarlett,mek yo'cu'tsy.Dar's Miss Merriwether an'Miss Elsing a-bowin'to you.”
Scarlett vaguely remembered two ladies of those names who came from Atlanta to Tara to attend her wedding and she remembered that they were Miss Pittypat's best friends.So she turned quickly where Uncle Peter pointed and bowed.The two were sitting in a carriage outside a drygoods store.The proprietor and two clerks stood on the sidewalk with armfuls of bolts of cotton cloth they had been displaying.Mrs.Merriwether was a tall,stout woman and so tightly corseted that her bust jutted forward like the prow of a ship.Her iron-gray hair was eked out by a curled false fringe that was proudly brown and disdained to match the rest of her hair.She had a round,highly colored face in which was combined good-natured shrewdness and the habit of command.Mrs.Elsing was younger,a thin frail woman,who had been a beauty,and about her there still clung a faded freshness,a dainty imperious air.
These two ladies with a third,Mrs.Whiting,were the pillars of Atlanta.They ran the three churches to which they belonged,the clergy,the choirs and the parishioners.They organized bazaars and presided over sewing circles,they chaperoned balls and picnics,they knew who made good matches and who did not,who drank secretly,who were to have babies and when.They were authorities on the genealogies of everyone who was anyone in Georgia,South Carolina and Virginia and did not bother their heads about the other states,because they believed that no one who was anybody ever came from states other than these three.
They knew what was decorous behavior and what was not and they never failed to make their opinions known—Mrs.Merriwether at the top of her voice,Mrs.Elsing in an elegant die-away drawl and Mrs.Whiting in a distressed whisper which showed how much she hated to speak of such things.These three ladies disliked and distrusted one another as heartily as the First Triumvirate of Rome,and their close alliance was probably for the same reason.
“I told Pitty I had to have you in my hospital,”called Mrs.
Merriwether,smiling.“Don't you go promising Mrs.Meade or Mrs.Whiting!”
“I won't,”said Scarlett,having no idea what Mrs.Merriwether was talking about but feeling a glow of warmth at being welcomed and wanted.“I hope to see you again soon.”
The carriage plowed its way farther and halted for a moment to permit two ladies with baskets of bandages on their arms to pick precarious passages across the sloppy street on stepping stones.
At the same moment,Scarlett's eye was caught by a figure on the sidewalk in a brightly colored dress—too bright for street wear—covered by a Paisley shawl with fringes to the heels.Turning she saw a tall handsome woman with a bold face and a mass of red hair,too red to be true.It was the first time she had ever seen any woman who she knew for certain had “done something to her hair”and she watched her,fascinated.
“Uncle Peter,who is that?”she whispered.
“Ah doan know.”
“You do,too.I can tell.Who is she?”
“Her name Belle Watling,”said Uncle Peter,his lower lip beginning to protrude.
Scarlett was quick to catch the fact that he had not preceded the name with “Miss”or “Mrs.”
“Who is she?”
“Miss Scarlett,”said Peter darkly,laying the whip on the startled horse,“Miss Pitty ain'gwine ter lak it you astin'questions dat ain'none of yo'bizness.Dey's a passel of no-count folks in dis town now dat it ain'no use talkin'about.”
“Good Heavens!”thought Scarlett,reproved into silence.“That must be a bad woman!”
She had never seen a bad woman before and she twisted her head and stared after her until she was lost in the crowd.
The stores and the new war buildings were farther apart now,with vacant lots between.Finally the business section fell behind and the residences came into view.Scarlett picked them out as old friends,the Leyden house,dignified and stately;the Bonnells',with little white columns and green blinds;the close-lipped red-brick Georgian home of the McLure family,behind its low box hedges.Their progress was slower now,for from porches and gardens and sidewalks ladies called to her.Some she knew slightly,others she vaguely remembered,but most of them she knew not at all.Pittypat had certainly broadcast her arrival.Little Wade had to be held up time and again,so that ladies who ventured as far through the ooze as their carriage blocks could exclaim over him.They all cried to her that she must join their knitting and sewing circles and their hospital committees,and no one else's,and she promised recklessly to right and left.
As they passed a rambling green clapboard house,a little black girl posted on the front steps cried,“Hyah she come,”and Dr.