Chapter VII

Within two weeks Scarlett had become a wife, and within two months more she was a widow.

In after years when she thought of those last days of April, 1861, Scarlett could never quite remember details. Time and events were jumbled together like a nightmare. Especially vague were her memories of the time before the wedding. Two weeks! So short an engagement would have been impossible in times of peace. But the South was at war.

Learning that Ashley’s wedding had been moved up to the first of May, so he could leave with the Troop, Scarlett set the date of her wedding for the day before his. Ellen protested but Charles was impatient to be off to South Carolina to join the Legion, and Gerald sided with the two young people.

The South was intoxicated with enthusiasm and excitement. Everyone knew that one battle would end the war and every young man hastened to enlist before the war should end – hastened to marry his sweetheart before he went to Virginia to strike a blow at the Yankees. The ladies were making uniforms, knitting socks and rolling bandages, and the men were drilling and shooting. Train loads of troops passed through Jonesboro daily on their way north to Atlanta and Virginia. All were half-drilled, half-armed, wild with excitement and shouting as though on the way to a picnic.

Almost before she knew it, Scarlett was wearing Ellen’s wedding dress and veil, coming down the wide stairs of Tara on her father’s arm, to face a house packed full with guests. Afterward she remembered, as from a dream, the hundreds of candles flaring on the walls, her mother’s face, her lips moving in a silent prayer for her daughter’s happiness, Gerald flushed with brandy and pride that his daughter was marrying both money and a fine name – and Ashley, standing at the bottom of the steps with Melanie’s arm through his.

When she saw the look on his face, she thought: “This can’t be real. It can’t be. It’s a nightmare. I’ll wake up and find it’s all been a nightmare. I mustn’t think of it now, or I’ll begin screaming in front of all these people. I can’t think now. I’ll think later, when I can stand it – when I can’t see his eyes.”

It was all very dreamlike. Even the feel of Ashley’s kiss upon her cheek, even Melanie’s soft whisper, “Now, we’re really and truly sisters,” were unreal.

But when the dancing and toasting were finally ended and the dawn was coming, there came reality. The reality was the blushing Charles, emerging from her dressing room in his nightshirt, avoiding the look she gave him over the high-pulled sheet.

Of course, she knew that married people occupied the same bed but she had never given the matter a thought before. It seemed very natural in the case of her mother and father, but she had never applied it to herself. Now for the first time she realized just what she had brought on herself. The thought of this strange boy getting into bed with her, when her heart was breaking for losing Ashley forever, was too much for her. As he approached the bed she spoke in a hoarse whisper.

“I’ll scream out loud if you come near me. I will! I will – at the top of my voice! Get away from me! Don’t you dare touch me!”

So Charles Hamilton spent his wedding night in an armchair in the corner, not too unhappily, for he understood, or thought he understood, the modesty and delicacy of his bride.

Ashley’s wedding was even worse. She saw the plain little face of Melanie Hamilton glow into beauty as she became Melanie Wilkes. Now, Ashley was gone forever. Her Ashley. No, not her Ashley now. Had he ever been hers? Now he was gone and she was married to a man she did not love.

So she danced through the night of Ashley’s wedding in a daze and said things mechanically and smiled at the people who thought her a happy bride and could not see that her heart was broken. Well, thank God, they couldn’t see!

That night after Mammy had helped her undress and had departed and Charles had emerged shyly from the dressing room, wondering if he was to spend a second night in the chair, she burst into tears. She cried until Charles climbed into bed beside her and tried to comfort her till at last she lay sobbing quietly on his shoulder.

A week after the wedding Charles left to join the Legion, and two weeks later Ashley and the Troop departed.

In those two weeks, Scarlett never saw Ashley alone, never had a private word with him. Not even at the terrible moment of parting, when he stopped by Tara on his way to the train. Melanie, hanging on his arm, said: “You must kiss Scarlett, Ashley. She’s my sister now,” and Ashley bent and touched her cheek with cold lips, his face drawn. “You will come to Atlanta and visit me and Aunt Pittypat, won’t you? We want to know Charlie’s wife better.”

Five weeks passed during which letters came from Charles telling of his love, his plans for the future when the war was over, his desire to become a hero for her sake. In the seventh week, there came a telegram that Charles was dead. He had died of pneumonia, following measles, without getting any closer to the Yankees than the camp in South Carolina.

Scarlett’s boredom was acute. There had been no entertainment or social life in the County ever since the Troop had gone away to war. All of the interesting young men were gone. Only the older men, the cripples and the women were left, and they spent their time knitting and sewing, growing more cotton and corn, raising more hogs and sheep and cows for the army. There was never a sight of a real man except when the commissary troop under Frank Kennedy rode by every month to collect supplies. But it didn’t help her situation. She was a widow and her heart was in the grave. At least, everyone thought it was in the grave and expected her to act accordingly. This irritated her for she could recall nothing about Charles except the look on his face when she told him she would marry him. And even that picture was fading. But she was a widow and she had to watch her behavior. Not for her the pleasures of unmarried girls.

A widow had to wear black dresses, no flower or ribbon or lace or even jewelry. And the black veil on her bonnet had to reach to her knees, and only after three years of widowhood could it be shortened to shoulder length. Widows could never chatter vivaciously or laugh aloud. Even when they smiled, it must be a sad, tragic smile. And, most dreadful of all, they could in no way indicate an interest in the company of gentlemen. Oh, yes, thought Scarlett, some widows do remarry eventually, when they are old. And then it’s to some old widower with a large plantation and a dozen children.

Marriage was bad enough, but to be widowed – oh, then life was over forever!

Every morning she woke up and for a moment she was Scarlett O’Hara again and the sun was bright in the magnolia outside her window and the birds were singing and the sweet smell of frying bacon was coming to her nostrils. She was carefree and young again. But that moment passed very fast.

And Ashley! Oh, most of all Ashley! For the first time in her life, she hated Tara. Every foot of ground, every tree, every path reminded her of him. He belonged to another woman and he had gone to the war, but his ghost still haunted the roads, still smiled at her in the shadows of the porch. And every time she heard the sound of hooves coming up the river road from Twelve Oaks she did think – Ashley!

She hated Twelve Oaks now and once she had loved it. She hated it but she was drawn there, so she could hear John Wilkes and the girls talk about him – hear them read his letters from Virginia. They hurt her but she had to hear them. She disliked his sisters, but she could not stay away from them. And every time she came home from Twelve Oaks, she lay down on her bed and refused to get up for supper.

It was this refusal of food that worried Ellen, but Scarlett had no appetite. When Dr. Fontaine told Ellen that heartbreak frequently led to a decline and death, Ellen went white.

“Isn’t there anything to be done, Doctor?”

“A change of scene will be the best thing in the world for her,” said the doctor.

So Scarlett, unenthusiastic, went off first to visit her O’Hara and Robillard relatives in Savannah and then to Ellen’s sisters, Pauline and Eulalie, in Charleston. But she was back at Tara a month before Ellen expected her, with no explanation of her return.

Ellen, busy night and day, was terrified when her eldest daughter came home from Charleston thin, white and sharp tongued. She had known heartbreak herself, and night after night she lay beside the snoring Gerald, trying to think of some way to lessen Scarlett’s distress. Charles’ aunt, Miss Pittypat Hamilton, had written her several times, asking her to permit Scarlett to come to Atlanta for a long visit, and now for the first time Ellen considered it seriously.

She and Melanie were alone in a big house “and without male protection,” wrote Miss Pittypat, “now that dear Charlie has gone. Of course, there is my brother Henry but he does not make his home with us. Melly and I would feel much easier and safer if Scarlett were with us. Three lonely women are better than two. And perhaps dear Scarlett could find some outlet for her sorrow, as Melly is doing, by nursing our brave boys in the hospitals here.”

So Scarlett’s trunk was packed again with her mourning clothes and off she went to Atlanta. She did not especially want to go to Atlanta. She thought Aunt Pitty the silliest of old ladies and the very idea of living under the same roof with Ashley’s wife was awful. But the County with its memories was impossible now, and any change was welcome.

Part two

Chapter VIII

As the train carried Scarlett northward that May morning in 1862, she remembered what Gerald had told her when she was a child. The fact was that she and Atlanta were christened in the same year. It had had different names before, and not until the year of Scarlett’s birth had it become Atlanta.

When Gerald first moved to north Georgia, there had been no Atlanta at all, not even a village. But the next year, in 1836, the State had authorized the building of a railroad through the territory which the Cherokees^[26] had recently left.

The people who settled the town were a pushy people. Restless, energetic people from Georgia and more distant states were drawn to this town by the railroads. They came with enthusiasm. They built their stores around the muddy red roads. They built their fine homes where Indian feet had beaten a path^[27]called the Peachtree Trail. They were proud of the place, proud of its growth, proud of themselves for making it grow.