Gone with the Wind (138 page)

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.”