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.
"A stranger without being told a word about us would know this house was built with ill-gotten gains," he said.
"You know, Scarlett, money ill come by never comes to good and this house is proof of the axiom.
It's just the kind of house a profiteer would build."
But Scarlett, abrim with pride and happiness and full of plans for the entertainments she would give when they were thoroughly settled in the house, only pinched his ear playfully and said:
"Fiddle- dee-dee!
How you do run on!"
She knew, by now, that Rhett loved to take her down a peg, and would spoil her fun whenever he could, if she lent an attentive ear to his jibes.
Should she take him seriously, she would be forced to quarrel with him and she did not care to match swords, for she always came off second best.
So she hardly ever listened to anything he said, and what she was forced to hear she tried to turn off as a joke.
At least, she tried for a while.
During their honeymoon and for the greater part of their stay at the National Hotel, they had lived together with amiability.
But scarcely had they moved into the new house and Scarlett gathered her new friends about her, when sudden sharp quarrels sprang up between them.
They were brief quarrels, short lived because it was impossible to keep a quarrel going with Rhett, who remained coolly indifferent to her hot words and waited his chance to pink her in an unguarded spot.
She quarreled; Rhett did not.
He only stated his unequivocal opinion of herself, her actions, her house and her new friends.
And some of his opinions were of such a nature that she could no longer ignore them and treat them as jokes.
For instance when she decided to change the name of
"Kennedy's General Store" to something more edifying, she asked him to think of a title that would include the word "emporium."
Rhett suggested
"Caveat Emptorium," assuring her that it would be a title most in keeping with the type of goods sold in the store.
She thought it had an imposing sound and even went so far as to have the sign painted, when Ashley Wilkes, embarrassed, translated the real meaning.
And Rhett had roared at her rage.
And there was the way he treated Mammy.
Mammy had never yielded an inch from her stand that Rhett was a mule in horse harness.
She was polite but cold to Rhett.
She always called him "Cap'n Butler," never "Mist' Rhett."
She never even dropped a curtsy when Rhett presented her with the red petticoat and she never wore it either.
She kept Ella and Wade out of Rhett's way whenever she could, despite the fact that Wade adored Uncle Rhett and Rhett was obviously fond of the boy.
But instead of discharging Mammy or being short and stern with her, Rhett treated her with the utmost deference, with far more courtesy than he treated any of the ladies of Scarlett's recent acquaintance.
In fact, with more courtesy than he treated Scarlett herself.
He always asked Mammy's permission to take Wade riding and consulted with her before he bought Ella dolls.
And Mammy was hardly polite to him.
Scarlett felt that Rhett should be firm with Mammy, as became the head of the house, but Rhett only laughed and said that Mammy was the real head of the house.
He infuriated Scarlett by saying coolly that he was preparing to be very sorry for her some years hence, when the Republican rule was gone from Georgia and the Democrats back in power.
"When the Democrats get a governor and a legislature of their own, all your new vulgar Republican friends will be wiped off the chess board and sent back to minding bars and emptying slops where they belong.
And you'll be left out on the end of a limb, with never a Democratic friend or a Republican either.
Well, take no thought of the morrow."
Scarlett laughed, and with some justice, for at that time, Bullock was safe in the governor's chair, twenty-seven negroes were in the legislature and thousands of the Democratic voters of Georgia were disfranchised.
"The Democrats will never get back.
All they do is make Yankees madder and put off the day when they could get back.
All they do is talk big and run around at night Ku Kluxing."
"They will get back.
I know Southerners.
I know Georgians.
They are a tough and bullheaded lot.
If they've got to fight another war to get back, they'll fight another war.