Gone With the Wind (134 page)

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 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 wouldn’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 Scalawag. 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 out 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 Heaven, 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. Everybody thinks differently and everybody’s got a right to their own opinion. 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 Scalawags 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 Scalawag.

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 others thought of her. At least, Melanie called, bringing Ashley, and Ashley was the one who mattered the most. And there were other people in Atlanta who would come to her parties, other people far more congenial than those hide-bound 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 be-cause 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 Scalawags 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 Scalawags, 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 sabres 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 ostentation, 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.