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 everdo 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 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