Women Must Weep
by Mary Orr

THE STORY: After years of hardship and suffering the War Between the States is nearing its end and while the Southern women, like their men at the front, are reluctant to admit it, the fate of the Confederacy grows progressively blacker.

Waiting hopefully for the good news of victories which will never be, a group of ladies meets at the Maryland home of Mrs. Agatha Lindsey to roll bandages for the Southern wounded.

With Mrs. Lindsey, whose son Dick is serving under General Longstreet, are her daughter-in-law, Jane, and Mrs. Carter, a northern-born lady whose sympathies are held in question by the others.

Mrs. Carter is also an outspoken individualist, a divorcee and, according to local gossip, the lover of the absent Dick Lindsey.

As the women proceed with their work the tension between Jane Lindsey and her supposed rival mounts.

Then news arrives from the front—a list of casualties from the crucial battle at Gettysburg.

Dick Lindsey's name is among those who will not return.

Numbed by the shock of this disclosure Mrs. Carter admits that while she did indeed love Dick her feelings were never reciprocated, and Jane is given the consolation of knowing that the husband she lost was true to her.

As the two women comfort each other we sense not only a personal reconciliation but also a hint of the greater reunification that time and the national spirit will eventually effect.

NOTE: We now offer a sequel to this play entitled Women Still Weep .