But her presence in the house made Aunt Pitty a storm center, for both Scarlett and Melanie took that to mean that she sided with India.
Scarlett curtly refused to contribute more money to Pitty's establishment as long as India was under the same roof.
Ashley sent India money every week and every week India proudly and silently returned it, much to the old lady's alarm and regret.
Finances at the red-brick house would have been in a deplorable state, but for Uncle Henry's intervention, and it humiliated Pitty to take money from him.
Pitty loved Melanie better than anyone in the world, except herself, and now Melly acted like a cool, polite stranger.
Though she practically lived in Pitty's back yard, she never once came through the hedge and she used to run in and out a dozen times a day.
Pitty called on her and wept and protested her love and devotion, but Melanie always refused to discuss matters and never returned the calls.
Pitty knew very well what she owed Scarlett--almost her very existence.
Certainly in those black days after the war when Pitty was faced with the alternative of Brother Henry or starvation, Scarlett had kept her home for her, fed her, clothed her and enabled her to hold up her head in Atlanta society.
And since Scarlett had married and moved into her own home, she had been generosity itself.
And that frightening fascinating Captain Butler--frequently after he called with Scarlett, Pitty found brand-new purses stuffed with bills on her console table or lace handkerchiefs knotted about gold pieces which had been slyly slipped into her sewing box.
Rhett always vowed he knew nothing about them and accused her, in a very unrefined way, of having a secret admirer, usually the be-whiskered Grandpa Merriwether.
Yes, Pitty owed love to Melanie, security to Scarlett, and what did she owe India?
Nothing, except that India's presence kept her from having to break up her pleasant life and make decisions for herself.
It was all most distressing and too, too vulgar and Pitty, who had never made a decision for herself in her whole life, simply let matters go on as they were and as a result spent much time in uncomforted tears.
In the end, some people believed whole-heartedly in Scarlett's innocence, not because of her own personal virtue but because Melanie believed in it.
Some had mental reservations but they were courteous to Scarlett and called on her because they loved Melanie and wished to keep her love.
India's adherents bowed coldly and some few cut her openly.
These last were embarrassing, infuriating, but Scarlett realized that, except for Melanie's championship and her quick action, the face of the whole town would have been set against her and she would have been an outcast.
CHAPTER LVI
Rhett was gone for three months and during that time Scarlett had no word from him.
She did not know where he was or how long he would be gone.
Indeed, she had no idea if he would ever return.
During this time, she went about her business with her head high and her heart sick.
She did not feel well physically but, forced by Melanie, she went to the store every day and tried to keep up a superficial interest in the mills.
But the store palled on her for the first time and, although the business was treble what it had been the year before and the money rolling in, she could take no interest in it and was sharp and cross with the clerks.
Johnnie Gallegher's mill was thriving and the lumber yard selling all his supply easily, but nothing Johnnie did or said pleased her.
Johnnie, as Irish as she, finally erupted into rage at her naggings and threatened to quit, after a long tirade which ended with "and the back of both me hands to you, Ma'm, and the curse of Cromwell on you."
She had to appease him with the most abject of apologies.
She never went to Ashley's mill.
Nor did she go to the lumber-yard office when she thought he would be there.
She knew he was avoiding her, knew that her constant presence in his house, at Melanie's inescapable invitations, was a torment to him.
They never spoke alone and she was desperate to question him.
She wanted to know whether he now hated her and exactly what he had told Melanie, but he held her at arm's length and silently pleaded with her not to speak.
The sight of his face, old, haggard with remorse, added to her load, and the fact that his mill lost money every week was an extra irritant which she could not voice.
His helplessness in the face of the present situation irked her.
She did not know what he could do to better matters but she felt that he should do something.
Rhett would have done something.
Rhett always did something, even if it was the wrong thing, and she unwillingly respected him for it.
Now that her first rage at Rhett and his insults had passed, she began to miss him and she missed him more and more as days went by without news of him.
Out of the welter of rapture and anger and heartbreak and hurt pride that he had left, depression emerged to sit upon her shoulder like a carrion crow.
She missed him, missed his light flippant touch in anecdotes that made her shout with laughter, his sardonic grin that reduced troubles to their proper proportions, missed even his jeers that stung her to angry retort.
Most of all she missed having him to tell things to.
Rhett was so satisfactory in that respect.
She could recount shamelessly and with pride how she had skinned people out of their eyeteeth and he would applaud.
And if she even mentioned such things to other people they were shocked.
She was lonely without him and Bonnie.
She missed the child more than she had thought possible.
Remembering the last harsh words Rhett had hurled at her about Wade and Ella, she tried to fill in some of her empty hours with them.
But it was no use.