“But how nice it would be to know that some good Yankee woman— And there must be some good Yankee women. I don’t care what people say, they can’t all be bad! How nice it would be to know that they pulled weeds off our men’s graves and brought flowers to them, even if they were enemies. If Charlie were dead in the North it would comfort me to know that someone— And I don’t care what you ladies think of me,” her voice broke again, “I will withdraw from both clubs and I’ll—I’ll pull up every weed off every Yankee’s grave I can find and I’ll plant flowers, too—and—I just dare anyone to stop me!”
With this final defiance Melanie burst into tears and tried to make her stumbling way to the door.
Grandpa Merriwether, safe in the masculine confines of the Girl of the Period Saloon an hour later, reported to Uncle Henry Hamilton that after these words, everybody cried and embraced Melanie and it all ended up in a love feast and Melanie was made secretary of both organizations.
“And they are going to pull up the weeds. The hell of it is Dolly said I’d be only too pleased to help do it, ‘cause I didn’t have anything much else to do. I got nothing against the Yankees and I think Miss Melly was right and the rest of those lady wild cats wrong. But the idea of me pulling weeds at my time of life and with my lumbago!”
Melanie was on the board of lady managers of the Orphans’ Home and assisted in the collection of books for the newly formed Young Men’s Library Association. Even the Thespians who gave ******* plays once a month clamored for her. She was too timid to appear behind the kerosene-lamp footlights, but she could make costumes out of croker sacks if they were the only material available. It was she who cast the deciding vote at the Shakespeare Reading Circle that the bard’s works should be varied with those of Mr. Dickens and Mr. Bulwer-Lytton and not the poems of Lord Byron, as had been suggested by a young and, Melanie privately feared, very fast bachelor member of the Circle.
In the nights of the late summer her small, feebly lighted house was always full of guests. There were never enough chairs to go around and frequently ladies sat on the steps of the front porch with men grouped about them on the banisters, on packing boxes or on the lawn below. Sometimes when Scarlett saw guests sitting on the grass, sipping tea, the only refreshment the Wilkeses could afford, she wondered how Melanie could bring herself to expose her poverty so shamelessly. Until Scarlett was able to furnish Aunt Pitty’s house as it had been before the war and serve her guests good wine and juleps and baked ham and cold haunches of venison, she had no intention of having guests in her house—especially prominent guests, such as Melanie had.
General John B. Gordon, Georgia’s great hero, was frequently there with his family. Father Ryan, the poet-priest of the Confederacy, never failed to call when passing through Atlanta. He charmed gatherings there with his wit and seldom needed much urging to recite his “Sword of Lee” or his deathless “Conquered Banner,” which never failed to make the ladies cry. Alex Stephens, late Vice-President of the Confederacy, visited whenever in town and, when the word went about that he was at Melanie’s, the house was filled and people sat for hours under the spell of the frail invalid with the ringing voice. Usually there were a dozen children present, nodding sleepily in their parents’ arms, up hours after their normal bedtime. No family wanted its children to miss being able to say in after years that they had been kissed by the great Vice-President or had shaken the hand that helped to guide the Cause. Every person of importance who came to town found his way to the Wilkes home and often they spent the night there. It crowded the little flat-topped house, forced India to sleep on a pallet in the cubbyhole that was Beau’s nursery and sent Dilcey speeding through the back hedge to borrow breakfast eggs from Aunt Pitty’s Cookie, but Melanie entertained them as graciously as if hers was a mansion.
No, it did not occur to Melanie that people rallied round her as round a worn and loved standard. And so she was both astounded and embarrassed when Dr. Meade, after a pleasant evening at her house where he acquitted himself nobly in reading the part of Macbeth, kissed her hand and made observations in the voice he once used in speaking of Our Glorious Cause.
“My dear Miss Melly, it is always a privilege and a pleasure to be in your home, for you—and ladies like you—are the hearts of all of us, all that we have left. They have taken the flower of our manhood and the laughter of our young women. They have broken our health, uprooted our lives and unsettled our habits. They have ruined our prosperity, set us back fifty years and placed too heavy a burden on the shoulders of our boys who should be in school and our old men who should be sleeping in the sun. But we will build back, because we have hearts like yours to build upon. And as long as we have them, the Yankees can have the rest!”
Until Scarlett’s figure reached such proportions that even Aunt Pitty’s big black shawl did not conceal her condition, she and Frank frequently slipped through the back hedge to join the summer-night gatherings on Melanie’s porch. Scarlett always sat well out of the light, hidden in the protecting shadows where she was not only inconspicuous but could, unobserved, watch Ashley’s face to her heart’s content.