-nine
MRS. ELSING COCKED HER EAR toward the hall. Hearing Melanie’s steps die
away into the kitchen where rattling dishes and clinking silverware gave
promise of refreshments, she turned and spoke softly to the ladies who sat
in a circle in the parlor, their sewing baskets in their laps.
“Personally, I do not intend to call on Scarlett now or ever,” she said,
the chill elegance of her face colder than usual.
The other members of the Ladies’ Sewing Circle for the Widows and
Orphans of the Confederacy eagerly laid down their needles and edged
their rocking chairs closer. All the ladies had been bursting to discuss
Scarlett and Rhett but Melanie’s presence prevented it. Just the day before,
the couple had returned from New Orleans and they were occupying the
bridal suite at the National Hotel.
“Hugh says that I must call out of courtesy for the way Captain Butler
saved his life,” Mrs. Elsing continued. “And poor Fanny sides with him and
says she will call too. I said to her ‘Fanny,’ I said, ‘if it wasn’t for Scarlett,
Tommy would be alive this minute. It is an insult to his memory to call.’
And Fanny had no better sense than to say ‘Mother, I’m not calling on
Scarlett. I’m calling on Captain Butler. He tried his best to save Tommy
and it wasn’t his fault if he failed.’”
“How silly young people are!” said Mrs. Merriwether. “Call, indeed!”
Her stout bosom swelled indignantly as she remembered Scarlett’s rude
reception of her advice on marrying Rhett. “My Maybelle is just as silly as
your Fanny. She says she and René will call, because Captain Butler kept
René from getting hanged. And I said if it hadn’t been for Scarlett exposing
herself, René would never have been in any danger. And Father
Merriwether intends to call and he talks like he was in his dotage and says
he’s grateful to that scoundrel, even if I’m not. I vow, since Father
Merriwether was in that Watling creature’s house he has acted in a
disgraceful way. Call, indeed! I certainly shan’t call. Scarlett has outlawed
herself by marrying such a man. He was bad enough when he was a
speculator during the war and making money out of our hunger but now
that he is hand in glove with the Carpetbaggers and Scallawags and a
friend—actually a friend of that odious wretch, Governor Bullock— Call,
indeed!”
Mrs. Bonnell sighed. She was a plump brown wren of a woman with a
cheerful face.
“They’ll only call once, for courtesy, Dolly. I don’t know that I blame
them. I’ve heard that all the men who were out that night intend to call,
and I think they should. Somehow, it’s hard for me to think that Scarlett is
her mother’s child. I went to school with Ellen Robillard in Savannah and
there was never a lovelier girl than she was and she was very dear to me. If
only her father had not opposed her match with her cousin, Philippe
Robillard! There was nothing really wrong with the boy—boys must sow
their wild oats. But Ellen must run off and marry old man O’Hara and have
a daughter like Scarlett. But really, I feel that I must call once out of
memory to Ellen.”
“Sentimental nonsense!” snorted Mrs. Merriwether with vigor. “Kitty
Bonnell, are you going to call on a woman who married a bare year after
her husband’s death? A woman—”
“And she really killed Mr. Kennedy,” interrupted India. Her voice was
cool but acid. Whenever she thought of Scarlett it was hard for her even to
be polite, remembering, always remembering Stuart Tarleton. “And I have
always thought there was more between her and that Butler man before Mr.
Kennedy was killed than most people suspected.”
Before the ladies could recover from their shocked astonishment at her
statement and at a spinster mentioning such a matter, Melanie was
standing in the doorway. So engrossed had they been in their gossip that
they had not heard her light tread and now, confronted by their hostess,
they looked like whispering schoolgirls caught by a teacher. Alarm was
added to consternation at the change in Melanie’s face. She was pink with
righteous anger, her gentle eyes snapping fire, her nostrils quivering. No
one had ever seen Melanie angry before. Not a lady present thought her
capable of wrath. They all loved her but they thought her the sweetest,
most pliable of young women, deferential to her elders and without any
opinions of her own.
“How dare you, India?” she questioned in a low voice that shook.
“Where will your jealousy lead you? For shame!”
India’s face went white but her head was high.
“I retract nothing,” she said briefly. But her mind was seething.
“Jealous, am I?” she thought. With the memory of Stuart Tarleton and of
Honey and Charles, didn’t she have good reason to be jealous of Scarlett?
Didn’t she have good reason to hate her, especially now that she had a
suspicion that Scarlett had somehow entangled Ashley in her web? She
thought: “There’s plenty I could tell you about Ashley and your precious
Scarlett.” India was torn between the desire to shield Ashley by her silence
and to extricate him by telling all her suspicions to Melanie and the whole
world. That would force Scarlett to release whatever hold she had on
Ashley. But this was not the time. She had nothing definite, only
suspicions.
“I retract nothing,” she repeated.
“Then it is fortunate that you are no longer living under my roof,” said
Melanie and her words were cold.
India leaped to her feet, red flooding her sallow face.
“Melanie, you—my sister-in-law—you aren’t going to quarrel with me
over that fast piece—”
“Scarlett is my sister-in-law, too,” said Melanie, meeting India’s eyes
squarely as though they were strangers. “And dearer to me than any blood
sister could ever be. If you are so forgetful of my favors at her hands, I am
not. She stayed with me through the whole siege when she could have
gone home, when even Aunt Pitty had run away to Macon. She brought
my baby for me when the Yankees were almost in Atlanta and she
burdened herself with me and Beau all that dreadful trip to Tara when she
could have left me here in a hospital for the Yankees to get me. And she
nursed and fed me, even if she was tired and even if she went hungry.
Because I was sick and weak, I had the best mattress at Tara. When I could
walk, I had the only whole pair of shoes. You can forget those things she
did for me, India, but I cannot. And when Ashley came home, sick,
discouraged, without a home, without a cent in his pockets, she took him
in like a sister. And when we thought we would have to go North and it
was breaking our hearts to leave Georgia, Scarlett stepped in and gave him
the mill to run. And Captain Butler saved Ashley’s life out of the kindness
of his heart. Certainly Ashley had no claim on him! And I am grateful,
grateful to Scarlett and to Captain Butler. But you, India! How can you
forget the favors Scarlett has done me and Ashley? How can you hold your
brother’s life so cheap as to cast slurs on the man who saved him? If you
went down on your knees to Captain Butler and Scarlett, it would not be
enough.”
“Now, Melly,” began Mrs. Merriwether briskly, for she had recovered her
composure, “that’s no way to talk to India.”
“I heard what you said about Scarlett too,” cried Melanie, swinging on
the stout old lady with the air of a duelist who, having withdrawn a blade
from one prostrate opponent, turns hungrily toward another. “And you too,
Mrs. Elsing. What you think of her in your own petty minds, I do not care,
for that is your business. But what you say about her in my own house or in
my own hearing, ever, is my business. But how can you even think such
dreadful things, much less say them? Are your men so cheap to you that
you would rather see them dead than alive? Have you no gratitude to the
man who saved them and saved them at risk of his own life? The Yankees
might easily have thought him a member of the Klan if the whole truth
had come out! They might have hanged him. But he risked himself for your
men. For your father-in-law, Mrs. Merriwether, and your son-in-law and
your two nephews, too. And your brother, Mrs. Bonnell, and your son and
son-in-law, Mrs. Elsing. Ingrates, that’s what you are! I ask an apology from
all of you.”
Mrs. Elsing was on her feet, cramming her sewing into her box, her
mouth set.
“If anyone had ever told me that you could be so ill bred, Melly— No, I
will not apologize. India is right. Scarlett is a flighty, fast bit of baggage. I
can’t forget how she acted during the war. And I can’t forget how poor
white trashy she’s acted since she got a little money—”
“What you can’t forget,” cut in Melanie, clenching her small fists
against her sides, “is that she demoted Hugh because he wasn’t smart
enough to run her mill.”
“Melly!” moaned a chorus of voices.
Mrs. Elsing’s head jerked up and she started toward the door. With her
hand on the knob of the front door, she stopped and turned.
“Melly,” she said and her voice softened, “honey, this breaks my heart. I
was your mother’s best friend and I helped Dr. Meade bring you into this
world and I’ve loved you like you were mine. If it were something that
mattered it wouldn’t be so hard to hear you talk like this. But about a
woman like Scarlett O’Hara who’d just as soon do you a dirty turn as the
next of us—”
Tears had started in Melanie’s eyes at the first words Mrs. Elsing spoke,
but her face hardened when the old lady had finished.
“I want it understood,” she said, “that any of you who do not call on
Scarlett need never, never call on me.”
There was a loud murmur of voices, confusion as the ladies got to their
feet. Mrs. Elsing dropped her sewing box on the floor and came back into
the room, her false fringe jerking awry.
“I won’t have it!” she cried. “I won’t have it! You are beside yourself,
Melly, and I don’t hold you responsible. You shall be my friend and I shall
be yours. I refuse to let this come between us.”
She was crying and somehow, Melanie was in her arms, crying, too, but
declaring between sobs that she meant every word she said. Several of the
other ladies burst into tears and Mrs. Merriwether, trumpeting loudly into
her handkerchief, embraced both Mrs. Elsing and Melanie. Aunt Pitty, who
had been a petrified witness to the whole scene, suddenly slid to the floor in
what was one of the few real fainting spells she had ever had. Amid the
tears and confusion and kissing and scurrying for smelling salts and brandy,
there was only one calm face, one dry pair of eyes. India Wilkes took her
departure unnoticed by anyone.
Grandpa Merriwether, meeting Uncle Henry Hamilton in the Girl of
the Period Saloon several hours later, related the happenings of the
morning which he had heard from Mrs. Merriwether. He told it with relish
for he was delighted that someone had the courage to face down his
redoubtable daughter-in-law. Certainly, he had never had such courage.
“Well, what did the pack of silly fools finally decide to do?” asked Uncle
Henry irritably.
“I dunno for sure,” said Grandpa, “but it looks to me like Melly won
hands down on this go-round. I’ll bet they’ll all call, at least once. Folks set
a store by that niece of yours, Henry.”
“Melly’s a fool and the ladies are right. Scarlett is a slick piece of
baggage and I don’t see why Charlie ever married her,” said Uncle Henry
gloomily. “But Melly was right too, in a way. It’s only decent that the
families of the men Captain Butler saved should call. When you come right
down to it, I haven’t got so much against Butler. He showed himself a fine
man that night he saved our hides. It’s Scarlett who sticks under my tail
like a cocklebur. She’s a sight too smart for her own good. Well, I’ve got to
call. Scallawag or not, Scarlett is my niece by marriage, after all. I was
aiming to call this afternoon.”
“I’ll go with you, Henry. Dolly will be fit to be tied when she hears I’ve
gone. Wait till I get one more drink.”
“No, we’ll get a drink off Captain Butler. I’ll say this for him, he always
has good licker.”
* * *
Rhett had said that the Old Guard would never surrender and he was right.
He knew how little significance there was to the few calls made upon them,
and he knew why the calls were made. The families of the men who had
been in the ill-starred Klan foray did call at first, but called with obvious
infrequency thereafter. And they did not invite the Rhett Butlers to their
homes.
Rhett said they would not have come at all, except for fear of violence
at the hands of Melanie. Where he got this idea, Scarlett did not know but
she dismissed it with the contempt it deserved. For what possible influence
could Melanie have on people like Mrs. Elsing and Mrs. Merriwether? That
they did not call again worried her very little; in fact, their absence was
hardly noticed, for her suite was crowded with guests of another type. “New
people,” established Atlantians called them, when they were not calling
them something less polite.
There were many “new people” staying at the National Hotel who, like
Rhett and Scarlett, were waiting for their houses to be completed. They
were gay, wealthy people, very much like Rhett’s New Orleans friends,
elegant of dress, free with their money, vague as to their antecedents. All
the men were Republicans and were “in Atlanta on business connected
with the state government.” Just what the business was, Scarlett did not
know and did not trouble to learn.
Rhett could have told her exactly what it was—the same business that
buzzards have with dying animals. They smelled death from afar and were
drawn unerringly to it, to gorge themselves. Government of Georgia by its
own citizens was dead, the state was helpless and the adventurers were
swarming in.
The wives of Rhett’s Scallawag and Carpetbagger friends called in
droves and so did the “new people” she had met when she sold lumber for
their homes. Rhett said that, having done business with them, she should
receive them and, having received them, she found them pleasant
company. They wore lovely clothes and never talked about the war or hard
times, but confined their conversation to fashions, scandals and whist.
Scarlett had never played cards before and she took to whist with joy,
becoming a good player in a short time.
Whenever she was at the hotel there was a crowd of whist players in her
suite. But she was not often in her suite these days, for she was too busy
with the building of her new house to be bothered with callers. These days
she did not much care whether she had callers or not. She wanted to delay
her social activities until the day when the house was finished and she
could emerge as the mistress of Atlanta’s largest mansion, the hostess of the
town’s most elaborate entertainments.
Through the long warm days she watched her red stone and gray shingle
house rise grandly, to tower above any other house on Peachtree Street.
Forgetful of the store and the mills, she spent her time on the lot, arguing
with carpenters, bickering with masons, harrying the contractor. As the
walls went swiftly up she thought with satisfaction that, when finished, it
would be larger and finer looking than any other house in town. It would
be even more imposing than the near-by James residence which had just
been purchased for the official mansion of Governor Bullock.
The governor’s mansion was brave with jigsaw work on banisters and
eaves, but the intricate scrollwork on Scarlett’s house put the mansion to
shame. The mansion had a ballroom, but it looked like a billiard table
compared with the enormous room that covered the entire third floor of
Scarlett’s house. In fact, her house had more of everything than the
mansion, or any other house in town for that matter, more cupolas and
turrets and towers and balconies and lightning rods and far more windows
with colored panes.
A veranda encircled the entire house, and four flights of steps on the
four sides of the building led up to it. The yard was wide and green and
scattered about it were rustic iron benches, an iron summerhouse,
fashionably called a “gazebo” which, Scarlett had been assured, was of pure
Gothic design, and two large iron statues, one a stag and the other a mastiff
as large as a Shetland pony. To Wade and Ella, a little dazzled by the size,
splendor and fashionably dark gloom of their new home, these two metal
animals were the only cheerful notes.
Within, the house was furnished as Scarlett had desired, with thick red
carpeting which ran from wall to wall, red velvet portieres and the newest
of highly varnished black-walnut furniture, carved wherever there was an
inch for carving and upholstered in such slick horsehair that ladies had to
deposit themselves thereon with great care for fear of sliding off.
Everywhere on the walls were gilt-framed mirrors and long pier glasses—as
many, Rhett said idly, as there were in Belle Watling’s establishment.
Interspersed were steel engravings in heavy frames, some of them eight feet
long, which Scarlett had ordered especially from New York. The walls were
covered with rich dark paper, the ceilings were high and the house was
always dim, for the windows were overdraped with plum-colored plush
hangings that shut out most of the sunlight.
All in all it was an establishment to take one’s breath away and Scarlett,
stepping on the soft carpets and sinking into the embrace of the deep
feather beds, remembered the cold floors and the straw-stuffed bedticks of
Tara and was satisfied. She thought it the most beautiful and most elegantly
furnished house she had ever seen, but Rhett said it was a nightmare.
However, if it made her happy, she was welcome to it.
“A stranger without being told a word about us would know this house
was built with ill-gotten gains,” he said. “You know, Scarlett, money ill
come by never comes to good and this house is proof of the axiom. It’s just
the kind of house a profiteer would build.”
But Scarlett, abrim with pride and happiness and full of plans for the
entertainments she would give when they were thoroughly settled in the
house, only pinched his ear playfully and said: “Fiddle-dee-dee! How you
do run on!”
She knew, by now, that Rhett loved to take her down a peg, and would
spoil her fun whenever he could, if she lent an attentive ear to his jibes.
Should she take him seriously, she would be forced to quarrel with him and
she did not care to match swords, for she always came off second best. So
she hardly ever listened to anything he said, and what she was forced to
hear she tried to turn off as a joke. At least, she tried for a while.
During their honeymoon and for the greater part of their stay at the
National Hotel, they had lived together with amiability. But scarcely had
they moved into the new house and Scarlett gathered her new friends
about her, when sudden sharp quarrels sprang up between them. They were
brief quarrels, short lived because it was impossible to keep a quarrel going
with Rhett, who remained coolly indifferent to her hot words and waited
his chance to pink her in an unguarded spot. She quarreled; Rhett did not.
He only stated his unequivocal opinion of herself, her actions, her house
and her new friends. And some of his opinions were of such a nature that
she could no longer ignore them and treat them as jokes.
For instance when she decided to change the name of “Kennedy’s
General Store” to something more edifying, she asked him to think of a
title that would include the word “emporium.” Rhett suggested “Caveat
Emptorium,” assuring her that it would be a title most in keeping with the
type of goods sold in the store. She thought it had an imposing sound and
even went so far as to have the sign painted, when Ashley Wilkes,
embarrassed, translated the real meaning. And Rhett had roared at her
rage.
And there was the way he treated Mammy. Mammy had never yielded
an inch from her stand that Rhett was a mule in horse harness. She was
polite but cold to Rhett. She always called him “Cap’n Butler,” never
“Mist’ Rhett.” She never even dropped a curtsy when Rhett presented her
with the red petticoat and she never wore it either. She kept Ella and Wade
out of Rhett’s way whenever she could, despite the fact that Wade adored
Uncle Rhett and Rhett was obviously fond of the boy. But instead of
discharging Mammy or being short and stern with her, Rhett treated her
with the utmost deference, with far more courtesy than he treated any of
the ladies of Scarlett’s recent acquaintance. In fact, with more courtesy
than he treated Scarlett herself. He always asked Mammy’s permission to
take Wade riding and consulted with her before he bought Ella dolls. And
Mammy was hardly polite to him.
Scarlett felt that Rhett should be firm with Mammy, as became the head
of the house, but Rhett only laughed and said that Mammy was the real
head of the house.
He infuriated Scarlett by saying coolly that he was preparing to be very
sorry for her some years hence, when the Republican rule was gone from
Georgia and the Democrats back in power.
“When the Democrats get a governor and a legislature of their own, all
your new vulgar Republican friends will be wiped off the chess board and
sent back to minding bars and emptying slops where they belong. And
you’ll be left out on the end of a limb, with never a Democratic friend or a
Republican either. Well, take no thought of the morrow.”
Scarlett laughed, and with some justice, for at that time, Bullock was
safe in the governor’s chair, twenty-seven negroes were in the legislature
and thousands of the Democratic voters of Georgia were disfranchised.
“The Democrats will never get back. All they do is make the Yankees
madder and put off the day when they could get back. All they do is talk
big and run around at night Ku Kluxing.”
“They will get back. I know Southerners. I know Georgians. They are a
tough and a bull-headed lot. If they’ve got to fight another war to get back,
they’ll fight another war. If they’ve got to buy black votes like the Yankees
have done, then they will buy black votes. If they’ve got to vote ten
thousand dead men like the Yankees did, every corpse in every cemetery in
Georgia will be at the polls. Things are going to get so bad under the
benign rule of our good friend Rufus Bullock that Georgia is going to vomit
him up.”
“Rhett, don’t use such vulgar words!” cried Scarlett. “You talk like I
wouldn’t be glad to see the Democrats come back! And you know that isn’t
so! I’d be very glad to see them back. Do you think I like to see these
soldiers hanging around, reminding me of—do you think I like—why, I’m a
Georgian, too! I’d like to see the Democrats get back. But they won’t. Not
ever. And even if they did, how would that affect my friends? They’d still
have their money, wouldn’t they?”
“If they kept their money. But I doubt the ability of any of them to keep
money more than five years at the rate they’re spending. Easy come, easy
go. Their money won’t do them any good. Any more than my money has
done you any good. It certainly hasn’t made a horse out of you yet, has it,
my pretty mule?”
The quarrel which sprang from this last remark lasted for days. After the
fourth day of Scarlett’s sulks and obvious silent demands for an apology,
Rhett went to New Orleans, taking Wade with him, over Mammy’s
protests, and he stayed away until Scarlett’s tantrum had passed. But the
sting of not humbling him remained with her.
When he came back from New Orleans, cool and bland, she swallowed
her anger as best she could, pushing it into the back of her mind to be
thought of at some later date. She did not want to bother with anything
unpleasant now. She wanted to be happy for her mind was full of the first
party she would give in the new house. It would be an enormous night
reception with palms and an orchestra and all the porches shrouded in
canvas, and a collation that made her mouth water in anticipation. To it
she intended to invite everyone she had ever known in Atlanta, all the old
friends and all the new and charming ones she had met since returning
from her honeymoon. The excitement of the party banished, for the most
part, the memory of Rhett’s barbs and she was happy, happier than she had
been in years as she planned her reception.
Oh, what fun it was to be rich! To give parties and never count the cost!
To buy the most expensive furniture and dresses and food and never think
about the bills! How marvelous to be able to send tidy checks to Aunt
Pauline and Aunt Eulalie in Charleston, and to Will at Tara! Oh, the
jealous fools who said money wasn’t everything! How perverse of Rhett to
say that it had done nothing for her!
* * *
Scarlett issued cards of invitation to all her friends and acquaintances, old
and new, even those she did not like. She did not except even Mrs.
Merriwether who had been almost rude when she called on her at the
National Hotel or Mrs. Elsing who had been cool to frigidness. She invited
Mrs. Meade and Mrs. Whiting who she knew disliked her and who she
knew would be embarrassed because they did not have the proper clothes
to wear to so elegant a function. For Scarlett’s housewarming, or “crush,” as
it was fashionable to call such evening parties, half-reception, half-ball, was
by far the most elaborate affair Atlanta had ever seen.
That night the house and canvas-covered veranda were filled with
guests who drank her champagne punch and ate her patties and creamed
oysters and danced to the music of the orchestra that was carefully screened
by a wall of palms and rubber plants. But none of those whom Rhett had
termed the “Old Guard” were present except Melanie and Ashley, Aunt
Pitty and Uncle Henry, Dr. and Mrs. Meade and Grandpa Merriwether.
Many of the Old Guard had reluctantly decided to attend the “crush.”
Some had accepted because of Melanie’s attitude, others because they felt
they owed Rhett a debt for saving their lives and those of their relatives.
But, two days before the function, a rumor went about Atlanta that
Governor Bullock had been invited. The Old Guard signified their
disapproval by a sheaf of cards, regretting their inability to accept Scarlett’s
kind invitation. And the small group of old friends who did attend took
their departure, embarrassed but firm, as soon as the governor entered
Scarlett’s house.
Scarlett was so bewildered and infuriated at these slights that the party
was utterly ruined for her. Her elegant “crush”! She had planned it so
lovingly and so few old friends and no old enemies had been there to see
how wonderful it was! After the last guest had gone home at dawn, she
would have cried and stormed had she not been afraid that Rhett would
roar with laughter, afraid that she would read “I told you so” in his dancing
black eyes, even if he did not speak the words. So she swallowed her wrath
with poor grace and pretended indifference.
Only to Melanie, the next morning, did she permit herself the luxury of
exploding.
“You insulted me, Melly Wilkes, and you made Ashley and the others
insult me! You know they’d have never gone home so soon if you hadn’t
dragged them. Oh, I saw you! Just when I started to bring Governor
Bullock over to present him to you, you ran like a rabbit!”
“I did not believe—I could not believe that he would really be present,”
answered Melanie unhappily. “Even though everybody said—”
“Everybody? So everybody’s been clacking and blabbing about me, have
they?” cried Scarlett furiously. “Do you mean to tell me that if you’d known
the governor was going to be present, you wouldn’t have come either?”
“No,” said Melanie in a low voice, her eyes on the floor. “Darling, I just
couldn’t have come.”
“Great balls of fire! So you’d have insulted me like everybody else did!”
“Oh, mercy!” cried Melly, in real distress. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.
You’re my own sister, darling, my own Charlie’s widow and I—”
She put a timid hand on Scarlett’s arm. But Scarlett flung it off, wishing
fervently that she could roar as loudly as Gerald used to roar when in a
temper. But Melanie faced her wrath. And as she looked into Scarlett’s
stormy green eyes, her slight shoulders straightened and a mantle of dignity,
strangely at variance with her childish face and figure, fell upon her.
“I’m sorry you’re hurt, my dear, but I cannot meet Governor Bullock or
any Republican or any Scallawag. I will not meet them, in your house or
any other house. No, not even if I have to—if I have to—” Melanie cast
about her for the worst thing she could think of— “Not even if I have to be
rude.”
“Are you criticizing my friends?”
“No, dear. But they are your friends and not mine.”
“Are you criticizing me for having the governor at my house?”
Cornered, Melanie still met Scarlett’s eyes unwaveringly.
“Darling, what you do, you always do for a good reason and I love you
and trust you and it is not for me to criticize. And I will not permit anyone
to criticize you in my hearing. But, oh, Scarlett!” Suddenly words began to
bubble out, swift hot words and there was inflexible hate in the low voice.
“Can you forget what these people did to us? Can you forget darling
Charlie dead and Ashley’s health ruined and Twelve Oaks burned? Oh,
Scarlett, you can’t forget that terrible man you shot with your mother’s
sewing box in his hands! You can’t forget Sherman’s men at Tara and how
they even stole our underwear! And tried to burn the place down and
actually handled my father’s sword! Oh, Scarlett, it was these same people
who robbed us and tortured us and left us to starve that you invited to your
party! The same people who have set the darkies up to lord it over us, who
are robbing us and keeping our men from voting! I can’t forget. I won’t
forget. I won’t let my Beau forget and I’ll teach my grandchildren to hate
these people—and my grandchildren’s grandchildren if God lets me live
that long! Scarlett, how can you forget?”
Melanie paused for breath and Scarlett stared at her, startled out of her
own anger by the quivering note of violence in Melanie’s voice.
“Do you think I’m a fool?” she questioned impatiently. “Of course, I
remember! But all that’s past, Melly. It’s up to us to make the best of things
and I’m trying to do it. Governor Bullock and some of the nicer
Republicans can help us a lot if we handle them right.”
“There are no nice Republicans,” said Melanie flatly. “And I don’t want
their help. And I don’t intend to make the best of things—if they are
Yankee things.”
“Good Heavens, Melly, why get in such a pet?”
“Oh!” cried Melanie, looking conscience stricken. “How I have run on!
Scarlett, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings or to criticize. Now, dear, I love
you and you know I love you and nothing you could ever do would make
me change. And you still love me, don’t you? I haven’t made you hate me,
have I? Scarlett, I couldn’t stand it if anything ever came between us—after
all we’ve been through together! Say it’s all right.”
“Fiddle-dee-dee, Melly, what a tempest you make in a teapot,” said
Scarlett grudgingly, but she did not throw off the hand that stole around
her waist.
“Now, we’re all right again,” said Melanie pleasedly but she added softly,
“I want us to visit each other just like we always did, darling. Just you let
me know what days Republicans and Scallawags are coming to see you and
I’ll stay at home on those days.”
“It’s a matter of supreme indifference to me whether you come or not,”
said Scarlett, putting on her bonnet and going home in a huff. There was
some satisfaction to her wounded vanity in the hurt look on Melanie’s face.
* * *
In the weeks that followed her first party, Scarlett was hard put to keep up
her pretense of supreme indifference to public opinion. When she did not
receive calls from old friends, except Melanie and Pitty and Uncle Henry
and Ashley, and did not get cards to their modest entertainments, she was
genuinely puzzled and hurt. Had she not gone out of her way to bury old
hatchets and show these people that she bore them no ill will for their
gossiping and backbiting? Surely they must know that she didn’t like
Governor Bullock any more than they did but that it was expedient to be
nice to him. The idiots! If everybody would be nice to the Republicans,
Georgia would get out of the fix she was in very quickly.
She did not realize then that with one stroke she had cut forever any
fragile tie that still bound her to the old days, to old friends. Not even
Melanie’s influence could repair the break of that gossamer thread. And
Melanie, bewildered, broken hearted but still loyal, did not try to repair it.
Even had Scarlett wanted to turn back to old ways, old friends, there was
no turning back possible now. The face of the town was set against her as
stonily as granite. The hate that enveloped the Bullock regime enveloped
her too, a hate that had little fire and fury in it but much cold
implacability. Scarlett had cast her lot with the enemy and, whatever her
birth and family connections, she was now in the category of a turncoat, a
nigger lover, a traitor, a Republican—and a Scallawag.
After a miserable while, Scarlett’s pretended indifference gave way to
the real thing. She had never been one to worry long over the vagaries of
human conduct or to be cast down for long if one line of action failed.
Soon she did not care what the Merriwethers, the Elsings, the Whitings,
the Bonnells, the Meades and the others thought of her. At least, Melanie
called, bringing Ashley, and Ashley was the one who mattered the most.
And there were other people far more congenial than those hidebound old
hens. Any time she wanted to fill her house with guests, she could do so
and these guests would be far more entertaining, far more handsomely
dressed than those prissy, strait-laced old fools who disapproved of her.
These people were newcomers to Atlanta. Some of them were
acquaintances of Rhett, some associated with him in those mysterious
affairs which he referred to as “mere business, my pet.” Some were couples
Scarlett had met when she was living at the National Hotel and some were
Governor Bullock’s appointees.
The set with which she was now moving was a motley crew. Among
them were the Gelerts who had lived in a dozen different states and who
apparently had left each one hastily upon detection of their swindling
schemes; the Conningtons whose connection with the Freedmen’s Bureau
in a distant state had been highly lucrative at the expense of the ignorant
blacks they were supposed to protect; the Deals who had sold “cardboard”
shoes to the Confederate government until it became necessary for them to
spend the last year of the war in Europe; the Hundons who had police
records in many cities but nevertheless were often successful bidders on
state contracts; the Carahans who had gotten their start in a gambling
house and now were gambling for bigger stakes in the building of
nonexistent railroads with the state’s money; the Flahertys, who had
bought salt at one cent a pound in 1861 and made a fortune when salt went
to fifty cents in 1863, and the Barts who had owned the largest brothel in a
Northern metropolis during the war and now were moving in the best
circles of Carpetbagger society.
Such people were Scarlett’s intimates now, but those who attended her
larger receptions included others of some culture and refinement, many of
excellent families. In addition to the Carpetbag gentry, substantial people
from the North were moving into Atlanta, attracted by the never ceasing
business activity of the town in this period of rebuilding and expansion.
Yankee families of wealth sent young sons to the South to pioneer on the
new frontier, and Yankee officers after their discharge took up permanent
residence in the town they had fought so hard to capture. At first, strangers
in a strange town, they were glad to accept invitations to the lavish
entertainments of the wealthy and hospitable Mrs. Butler, but they soon
drifted out of her set. They were good people and they needed only a short
acquaintance with Carpetbaggers and Carpetbag rule to become as
resentful of them as the native Georgians were. Many became Democrats
and more Southern than the Southerners.
Other misfits in Scarlett’s circle remained there only because they were
not welcome elsewhere. They would have much preferred the quiet parlors
of the Old Guard, but the Old Guard would have none of them. Among
these were the Yankee schoolmarms who had come South imbued with the
desire to uplift the Negro and the Scallawags who had been born good
Democrats but had turned Republican after the surrender.
It was hard to say which class was more cordially hated by the settled
citizenry, the impractical Yankee schoolmarms or the Scallawags, but the
balance probably fell with the latter. The schoolmarms could be dismissed
with, “Well, what can you expect of nigger-loving Yankees? Of course they
think the nigger is just as good as they are!” But for those Georgians who
had turned Republican for personal gain, there was no excuse.
“Starving is good enough for us. It ought to be good enough for you,”
was the way the Old Guard felt. Many ex-Confederate soldiers, knowing
the frantic fear of men who saw their families in want, were more tolerant
of former comrades who had changed political colors in order that their
families might eat. But not the women of the Old Guard, and the women
were the implacable and inflexible power behind the social throne. The
Lost Cause was stronger, dearer now in their hearts than it had ever been at
the height of its glory. It was a fetish now. Everything about it was sacred,
the graves of the men who had died for it, the battle fields, the torn flags,
the crossed sabers in their halls, the fading letters from the front, the
veterans. These women gave no aid, comfort or quarter to the late enemy,
and now Scarlett was numbered among the enemy.
In this mongrel society thrown together by the exigencies of the
political situation, there was but one thing in common. That was money.
As most of them had never had twenty-five dollars at one time in their
whole lives, previous to the war, they were now embarked on an orgy of
spending such as Atlanta had never seen before.
With the Republicans in the political saddle the town entered into an
era of waste and ostentations, with the trappings of refinement thinly
veneering the vice and vulgarity beneath. Never before had the cleavage of
the very rich and the very poor been so marked. Those on top took no
thought for those less fortunate. Except for the negroes, of course. They
must have the very best. The best of schools and lodgings and clothes and
amusements, for they were the power in politics and every negro vote
counted. But as for the recently impoverished Atlanta people, they could
starve and drop in the streets for all the newly rich Republicans cared.
On the crest of this wave of vulgarity, Scarlett rode triumphantly, newly
a bride, dashingly pretty in her fine clothes, with Rhett’s money solidly
behind her. It was an era that suited her, crude, garish, showy, full of
overdressed women, overfurnished houses, too many jewels, too many
horses, too much food, too much whisky. When Scarlett infrequently
stopped to think about the matter she knew that none of her new
associates could be called ladies by Ellen’s strict standards. But she had
broken with Ellen’s standards too many times since that far-away day when
she stood in the parlor at Tara and decided to be Rhett’s mistress, and she
did not often feel the bite of conscience now.
Perhaps these new friends were not, strictly speaking, ladies and
gentlemen but like Rhett’s New Orleans friends, they were so much fun! So
very much more fun than the subdued, churchgoing, Shakespeare-reading
friends of her earlier Atlanta days. And, except for her brief honeymoon
interlude, she had not had fun in so long. Nor had she had any sense of
security. Now secure, she wanted to dance, to play, to riot, to gorge on
foods and fine wine, to deck herself in silks and satins, to wallow on soft
feather beds and fine upholstery. And she did all these things. Encouraged
by Rhett’s amused tolerance, freed now from the restraints of her
childhood, freed even from that last fear of poverty, she was permitting
herself the luxury she had often dreamed—of doing exactly what she
pleased and telling people who didn’t like it to go to hell.
To her had come that pleasant intoxication peculiar to those whose
lives are a deliberate slap in the face of organized society—the gambler, the
confidence man, the polite adventuress, all those who succeed by their
wits. She said and did exactly what she pleased and, in practically no time,
her insolence knew no bounds.
She did not hesitate to display arrogance to her new Republican and
Scallawag friends but to no other class was she ruder or more insolent than
the Yankee officers of the garrison and their families. Of all the
heterogeneous mass of people who had poured into Atlanta, the army
people alone she refused to receive or tolerate. She even went out of her
way to be bad mannered to them. Melanie was not alone in being unable to
forget what a blue uniform meant. To Scarlett, that uniform and those gold
buttons would always mean the fears of the siege, the terror of flight, the
looting and burning, the desperate poverty and the grinding work at Tara.
Now that she was rich and secure in the friendship of the governor and
many prominent Republicans, she could be insulting to every blue uniform
she saw. And she was insulting.
Rhett once lazily pointed out to her that most of the male guests who
assembled under their roof had worn that same blue uniform not so long
ago, but she retorted that a Yankee didn’t seem like a Yankee unless he had
on a blue uniform. To which Rhett replied: “Consistency, thou art a jewel,”
and shrugged.
Scarlett, hating the bright hard blue they wore, enjoyed snubbing them
all the more because it so bewildered them. The garrison families had a
right to be bewildered for most of them were quiet, well-bred folk, lonely in
a hostile land, anxious to go home to the North, a little ashamed of the
riffraff whose rule they were forced to uphold—an infinitely better class
than that of Scarlett’s associates. Naturally, the officers’ wives were puzzled
that the dashing Mrs. Butler took to her bosom such women as the
common red-haired Bridget Flaherty and went out of her way to slight
them.
But even the ladies whom Scarlett took to her bosom had to endure
much from her. However, they did it gladly. To them, she not only
represented wealth and elegance but the old regime, with its old names, old
families, old traditions with which they wished ardently to identify
themselves. The old families they yearned after might have cast Scarlett
out but the ladies of the new aristocracy did not know it. They only knew
that Scarlett’s father had been a great slave owner, her mother a Robillard
of Savannah and her husband was Rhett Butler of Charleston. And this
was enough for them. She was their opening wedge into the old society
they wished to enter, the society which scorned them, would not return
calls and bowed frigidly in churches. In fact, she was more than their wedge
into society. To them, fresh from obscure beginnings, she was society.
Pinchbeck ladies themselves, they no more saw through Scarlett’s
pinchbeck pretensions than she herself did. They took her at her own
valuation and endured much at her hands, her airs, her graces, her tempers,
her arrogance, her downright rudeness and her frankness about their
shortcomings.
They were so lately come from nothing and so uncertain of themselves
they were doubly anxious to appear refined and feared to show their temper
or make retorts in kind, lest they be considered unladylike. At all costs they
must be ladies. They pretended to great delicacy, modesty and innocence.
To hear them talk one would have thought they had no legs, natural
functions or knowledge of the wicked world. No one would have thought
that red-haired Bridget Flaherty, who had a sun-defying white skin and a
brogue that could be cut with a butter knife, had stolen her father’s hidden
hoard to come to America to be chambermaid in a New York hotel. And to
observe the delicate vapors of Sylvia (formerly Sadie Belle) Connington
and Mamie Bart, no one would have suspected that the first grew up above
her father’s saloon in the Bowery and waited on the bar at rush times, and
that the latter, so it was said, had come out of one of her husband’s own
brothels. No, they were delicate sheltered creatures now.
The men, though they had made money, learned new ways less easily or
were, perhaps, less patient with the demands of the new gentility. They
drank heavily at Scarlett’s parties, far too heavily, and usually after a
reception there were one or more unexpected guests who stayed the night.
They did not drink like the men of Scarlett’s girlhood. They became
sodden, stupid, ugly or obscene. Moreover, no matter how many spittoons
she might put out in plain view, the rugs always showed signs of tobacco
juice on the mornings after.
She had a contempt for these people but she enjoyed them. Because she
enjoyed them, she filled the house with them. And because of her
contempt, she told them to go to hell as often as they annoyed her. But
they stood it.
They even stood for Rhett, a more difficult matter, for Rhett saw
through them and they knew it. He had no hesitation about stripping them
verbally, even under his own roof, always in a manner that left them no
reply. Unashamed of how he came by his fortune, he pretended that they,
too, were unashamed of their beginnings and he seldom missed an
opportunity to remark upon matters which, by common consent, everyone
felt were better left in polite obscurity.
There was never any knowing when he would remark affably, over a
punch cup: “Ralph, if I’d had any sense I’d have made my money selling
gold-mine stocks to widows and orphans, like you, instead of blockading.
It’s so much safer.” “Well, Bill, I see you have a new span of horses. Been
selling a few thousand more bonds for nonexistent railroads? Good work,
boy!” “Congratulations, Amos, on landing that state contract. Too bad you
had to grease so many palms to get it.”
The ladies felt that he was odiously, unendurably vulgar. The men said,
behind his back, that he was a swine and a bastard. New Atlanta liked
Rhett no better than old Atlanta had done and he made as little attempt to
conciliate the one as he had the other. He went his way, amused,
contemptuous, impervious to the opinions of those about him, so courteous
that his courtesy was an affront in itself. To Scarlett, he was still an enigma
but an enigma about which she no longer bothered her head. She was
convinced that nothing ever pleased him or ever would please him; that he
either wanted something very badly and didn’t have it, or never had
wanted anything and so didn’t care about anything. He laughed at
everything she did, encouraged her extravagances and insolences, jeered at
her pretenses—and paid the bills.
