第336章

“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.