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 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 over-dressed women, over-furnished 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 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 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 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 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.

CHAPTER L

Rhett never deviated from his smooth, imperturbable manners, even

in their most intimate moments. But Scarlett never lost the old

feeling that he was watching her covertly, knew that if she turned

her head suddenly she would surprise in his eyes that speculative,

waiting look, that look of almost terrible patience that she did

not understand.

Sometimes, he was a very comfortable person to live with, for all

his unfortunate habit of not permitting anyone in his presence to

act a lie, palm off a pretense or indulge in bombast. He listened

to her talk of the store and the mills and the saloon, the convicts

and the cost of feeding them, and gave shrewd hard-headed advice.

He had untiring energy for the dancing and parties she loved and an

unending supply of coarse stories with which he regaled her on

their infrequent evenings alone when the table was cleared and

brandy and coffee before them. She found that he would give her

anything she desired, answer any question she asked as long as she

was forthright, and refuse her anything she attempted to gain by