bad as not knowing what was happening. Families with sons at the front prayed fervently that their boys were not in Pennsylvania, but those who knew their relatives were in the same
regiment with Darcy Meade clamped their teeth and said it was an honor for them to be in the big fight that would lick the Yankees for good and all.
In Aunt Pitty's house, the three women looked into one another's eyes with fear they could not conceal. Ashley was in Darcy's regiment.
On the fifth came evil tidings, not from the North but from the West. Vicksburg had
fallen, fallen after a long and bitter siege, and practically all the Mississippi River, from St. Louis to New Orleans was in the hands of the Yankees. The Confederacy had been cut in two. At any other time, the news of this disaster would have brought fear and lamentation to Atlanta. But now they could give little thought to Vicksburg. They were thinking of Lee in Pennsylvania, forcing battle. Vicksburg's loss would be no catastrophe if Lee won in the East. There lay Philadelphia, New York, Washington. Their capture would paralyze the North and more than cancel off the defeat on the Mississippi.
The hours dragged by and the black shadow of calamity brooded over the town, obscuring
the hot sun until people looked up startled into the sky as if incredulous that it was clear and blue instead of murky and heavy with scudding clouds. Everywhere, women gathered in knots,
huddled in groups on front porches, on sidewalks, even in the middle of the streets, telling each other that no news is good news, trying to comfort each other, trying to present a brave
appearance. But hideous rumors that Lee was killed, the battle lost, and enormous casualty lists coming in, fled up and down the quiet streets like darting bats. Though they tried not to believe, whole neighborhoods, swayed by panic, rushed to town, to the newspapers, to headquarters, pleading for news, any news, even bad news.
Crowds formed at the depot, hoping for news from incoming trains, at the telegraph
office, in front of the harried headquarters, before the locked doors of the newspapers. They were oddly still crowds, crowds that quietly grew larger and larger. There was no talking. Occasionally an old man's treble voice begged for news, and instead of inciting the crowd to babbling it only intensified the hush as they heard the oft-repeated: "Nothing on the wires yet from the North except that there's been fighting." The fringe of women on foot and in carriages grew greater and greater, and the heat of the close-packed bodies and dust rising from restless feet were
suffocating. The women did not speak, but their pale set faces pleaded with a mute eloquence that was louder than wailing.
There was hardly a house in town that had not sent away a son, a brother, a father, a lover, a husband, to this battle. They all waited to hear the news that death had come to their homes.
They expected death. They did not expect defeat. That thought they dismissed. Their men might be dying, even now, on the sun-parched grass of the Pennsylvania hills. Even now the Southern ranks might be falling like grain before a hailstorm, but the Cause for which they fought could never fall. They might be dying in thousands but, like the fruit of the dragon's teeth, thousands of fresh men in gray and butternut with the Rebel yell on their lips would spring up from the earth to take their places. Where these men would come from, no one knew. They only knew, as surely as
they knew there was a just and jealous God in Heaven, that Lee was miraculous and the Army of Virginia invincible.
Scarlett, Melanie and Miss Pittypat sat in front of the Daily Examiner office in the
carriage with the top back, sheltered beneath their parasols. Scarlett's hands shook so that her parasol wobbled above her head, Pitty was so excited her nose quivered in her round face like a rabbit's, but Melanie sat as though carved of stone, her dark eyes growing larger and larger as time went by. She made only one remark in two hours, as she took a vial of smelling salts from her reticule and handed it to her aunt, the only time she had ever spoken to her, in her whole life, with anything but tenderest affection.
"Take this, Auntie, and use it if you feel faint. I warn you if you do faint you'll just have to faint and let Uncle Peter take you home, for I'm not going to leave this place till I hear about--
till I hear. And I'm not going to let Scarlett leave me, either."
Scarlett had no intention of leaving, no intention of placing herself where she could not have the first news of Ashley. No, even if Miss Pitty died, she wouldn't leave this spot.
Somewhere, Ashley was fighting, perhaps dying, and the newspaper office was the only place where she could learn the truth.
She looked about the crowd, picking out friends and neighbors, Mrs. Meade with her