My Dear Sophia:—
I am here and George is better—thank God for all His mercies! The wound in the leg was a bad one and gangrene set in, necessitating amputation, and then came this pneumonia. He will live, though, and I shall bring my son home and keep him while I live! The city is so crowded, it is frightful. We in Georgia do not yet know the horrors of this war. I could hardly find a place to lay my head, but now a billiard-room in a hotel has been divided off into little rooms, each no bigger than a stall in my stable, and I have one of these. I go for my meals to a house two streets away, and I pay for shelter and food twenty-five dollars a day. Flour here is two hundred and fifty dollars a barrel. Butter is twelve dollars a pound. We live on cornbread, with now and then a little bacon or rice. Yesterday I bought two oranges for George. They were eight dollars apiece. Oh, Sophia, it’s like having George a little boy again! Two days ago there was a dreadful excitement. I heard the cannon and the alarm bell. George was a little light-headed and he would have it that there was a great battle, and that the boys were calling, and he must get up! At last I got him quiet, and when he was asleep and I went to supper I was told that it was a Yankee raid, led by an officer named Dahlgren, who was killed. The reserves had been called out and there was great excitement. We have since heard fearful reports of the object of the raid. The President and his Cabinet were to be killed, the prisoners freed and set to sacking the city which was then to have been burned. Oh, my dear Sophia, what a world we live in! I was in Richmond on my wedding journey. I feel dazed when I think of now and then. Then it was all bright-hued and gay; now it is all dark-hued, with the strangest restlessness! I never saw so many women in black. You always hear military sounds, and the people, for one reason or another, are out of doors in great numbers. The church bells have been taken down to be melted into cannon. The poverty, the suffering, the crowding are frightful. But I do not believe there is another such people for bearing things! George is a great favourite in the ward. They say he has been so patient and funny. My dear Sophia, I always think of you with your plum-colour silk bag and your spools of embroidery thread! I wish I had those spools of thread. Yesterday I had to do some mending, and I went out and bought one spool for five dollars.—George is waking up! I will write again. If he only gets well, Sophia,—he and the country!
Your affectionate cousin,
—— ——
Miss Sophia folded the letter. “Dear George! I am glad enough that he will get better. He was a sad tease! He used to say the strangest things. I remember one day he said that behind Amanda embroidering he always saw a million shut-in women sticking cambric needles into the eyes of the future. And he said that I had done the whole world in wax, and he wondered how it would be if we ever got before a good hot fire.—He wasn’t lacking in sense either, only it never had a chance to come out, Maria spoiling him so, and darkeys and dogs always at his heels.—No, dear Mrs. Cary, you’re a young woman, and—you’ll pardon me, I know!—a beautiful one, and I don’t think Captain Cary ought to allow it!”
March went, April went, May came. On the first of May, Désirée, walking on the road, thought she observed something unusual in the air. Presently there passed cavalry, a great deal of cavalry. She leaned against a wayside tree and watched. Presently there rode an officer whom she knew.
He lifted his hat, then pushed his horse upon the dusty turf beneath the tree. “We’re ordered out toward the Oostenaula! Sherman’s in motion. The volcano is about to become active.”
“Is it going to overflow Dalton?”
“Well, it would seem so! Though sometimes there’s a new crater. We’ll see what we’ll see. Anyhow, Cary’ll be sending you to the rear.”
“I’ll fall back when the army falls back.”