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 was 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. Scalawag 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 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 smelted 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 Scalawag 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 the 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 fashionable 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. Interspread 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.
