Merriwether was busy writing a letter for a gangling, illiterate mountaineer. Scarlett felt that she could stand it no longer. It was an imposition on her and she knew that when the wounded came in on the noon train there would be enough work to keep her busy until nightfall--and probably without anything to eat
She went hastily up the two short blocks to Peachtree Street breathing the unfouled air in as deep gulps as her tightly laced corset would permit. She was standing on the corner, uncertain as to what she would do next, ashamed to go home to Aunt Pitty's but determined not to go back to the hospital, when Rhett Butler drove by.
"You look like the ragpicker's child," he observed, his eyes taking in the mended lavender calico, streaked with perspiration and splotched here and there with water which had slopped from the basin. Scarlett was furious with embarrassment and indignation. Why did he always notice women's clothing and why was he so rude as to remark upon her present untidiness?
"I don't want to hear a word out of you. You get out and help me in and drive me somewhere where nobody will see me. I won't go back to the hospital if they hang me! My
goodness, I didn't start this war and I don't see any reason why I should be worked to death and--"
"A traitor to Our Glorious Cause!"
The pot's calling the kettle black. You help me in. I don't care where you were going.
You're going to take me riding now."
He swung himself out of the carriage to the ground and she suddenly thought how nice it
was to see a man who was whole, who was not minus eyes or limbs, or white with pain or yellow with malaria, and who looked well fed and healthy. He was so well dressed too. His coat and trousers were actually of the same material and they fitted him, instead of hanging in folds or being almost too tight for movement. And they were new, not ragged, with dirty bare flesh and hairy legs showing through. He looked as if he had not a care in the world and that in itself was startling these days, when other men wore such worried, preoccupied, grim looks. His brown face was Bland and hismouth, red lipped, clear cut as a woman's, frankly sensual, smiled carelessly as he lifted her into the carriage.
The muscles of his big body rippled against his well-tailored clothes, as he got in beside her, and, as always, the sense of his great physical power struck her like a blow. She watched the swell of his powerful shoulders against the cloth with a fascination that was disturbing, a little frightening. His body seemed so tough and hard, as tough and hard as his keen mind. His was such an easy, graceful strength, lazy as a panther stretching in the sun, alert as a panther to spring and strike.
"You little fraud," he said, clucking to the horse. "You dance all night with the soldiers and give them roses and ribbons and tell them how you'd die for the Cause, and when it comes to bandaging a few wounds and picking off a few lice, you decamp hastily."
"Can't you talk about something else and drive faster? It would be just my luck for
Grandpa Merriwether to come out of his store and see me and tell old lady--I mean, Mrs.
Merriwether."
He touched up the mare with the whip and she trotted briskly across Five Points and
across the railroad tracks that cut the town in two. The train bearing the wounded had already come in and the litter bearers were working swiftly in the hot sun, transferring wounded into ambulances and covered ordnance wagons. Scarlett had no qualm of conscience as she watched them but only a feeling of vast relief that she had made her escape.
"I'm just sick and tired of that old hospital," she said, settling her billowing skirts and tying her bonnet bow more firmly under her chin. "And every day more and more wounded come in. It's all General Johnston's fault. If he'd just stood up to the Yankees at Dalton, they'd have--"
"But he did stand up to the Yankees, you ignorant child. And if he'd kept on standing there, Sherman would have flanked him and crushed him between the two wings of his army.
And he'd have lost the railroad and the railroad is what Johnston is fighting for."
"Oh, well," said Scarlett, on whom military strategy was utterly lost. "It's his fault anyway. He ought to have done something about it and I think he ought to be removed. Why
doesn't he stand and fight instead of retreating?"
"You are like everyone else, screaming 'Off with his head' because he can't do the
impossible. He was Jesus the Savior at Dalton, and now he's Judas the Betrayer at Kennesaw Mountain, all in six weeks. Yet, just let him drive the Yankees back twenty miles and he'll be Jesus again. My child, Sherman has twice as many men as Johnston, and he can afford to lose two men for every one of our gallant laddies. And Johnston can't afford to lose a single man. He needs reinforcements badly and what is he getting? 'Joe Brown's Pets.' What a help they'll be!"