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 indirection, hints and feminine angling.
He had a disconcerting habit of seeing through her and laughing rudely.