Women in stiff bright-colored silks strolled about long verandas, squired by men in evening clothes.
Champagne corks popped, and on lace tablecloths seven-course dinners were laid.
Hams in wine, pressed duck, pate de foie gras, rare fruits in and out of season, were spread in profusion.
Behind the shabby doors of the old houses, poverty and hunger lived--all the more bitter for the brave gentility with which they were borne, all the more pinching for the outward show of proud indifference to material wants.
Dr. Meade could tell unlovely stories of those families who had been driven from mansions to boarding houses and from boarding houses to dingy rooms on back streets.
He had too many lady patients who were suffering from "weak hearts" and "declines."
He knew, and they knew he knew, that slow starvation was the trouble.
He could tell of consumption making inroads on entire families and of pellagra, once found only among poor whites, which was now appearing in Atlanta's best families.
And there were babies with thin rickety legs and mothers who could not nurse them.
Once the old doctor had been wont to thank God reverently for each child he brought into the world.
Now he did not think life was such a boon.
It was a hard world for little babies and so many died in their first few months of life.
Bright lights and wine, fiddles and dancing, brocade and broadcloth in the showy big houses and, just around the corners, slow starvation and cold.
Arrogance and callousness for the conquerors, bitter endurance and hatred for the conquered.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
Scarlett saw it all, lived with it by day, took it to bed with her at night, dreading always what might happen next.
She knew that she and Frank were already in the Yankees' black books, because of Tony, and disaster might descend on them at any hour.
But, now of all times, she could not afford to be pushed back to her beginnings--not now with a baby coming, the mill just commencing to pay and Tara depending on her for money until the cotton came in in the fall.
Oh, suppose she should lose everything!
Suppose she should have to start all over again with only her puny weapons against this mad world!
To have to pit her red lips and green eyes and her shrewd shallow brain against the Yankees and everything the Yankees stood for.
Weary with dread, she felt that she would rather kill herself than try to make a new beginning.
In the ruin and chaos of that spring of 1866, she single mindedly turned her energies to making the mill pay.
There was money in Atlanta.
The wave of rebuilding was giving her the opportunity she wanted and she knew she could make money if only she could stay out of jail.
But, she told herself time and again, she would have to walk easily, gingerly, be meek under insults, yielding to injustices, never giving offense to anyone, black or white, who might do her harm.
She hated the impudent free negroes as much as anyone and her flesh crawled with fury every time she heard their insulting remarks and high-pitched laughter as she went by.
But she never even gave them a glance of contempt.
She hated the Carpetbaggers and Scallawags who were getting rich with ease while she struggled, but she said nothing in condemnation of them.
No one in Atlanta could have loathed the Yankees more than she, for the very sight of a blue uniform made her sick with rage, but even in the privacy of her family she kept silent about them.
I won't be a big-mouthed fool, she thought grimly.
Let others break their hearts over the old days and the men who'll never come back.
Let others burn with fury over the Yankee rule and losing the ballot.
Let others go to jail for speaking their minds and get themselves hanged for being in the Ku Klux Klan. (Oh, what a dreaded name that was, almost as terrifying to Scarlett as to the negroes.) Let other women be proud that their husbands belonged.
Thank God, Frank had never been mixed up in it!
Let others stew and fume and plot and plan about things they could not help.
What did the past matter compared with the tense present and the dubious future?
What did the ballot matter when bread, a roof and staying out of jail were the real problems?
And, please God, just let me stay out of trouble until June!
Only till June!
By that month Scarlett knew she would be forced to retire into Aunt Pitty's house and remain secluded there until after her child was born.
Already people were criticizing her for appearing in public when she was in such a condition.
No lady ever showed herself when she was pregnant.
Already Frank and Pitty were begging her not to expose herself--and them--to embarrassment and she had promised them to stop work in June.
Only till June!
By June she must have the mill well enough established for her to leave it.
By June she must have money enough to give her at least some little protection against misfortune.
So much to do and so little time to do it!
She wished for more hours of the day and counted the minutes, as she strained forward feverishly in her pursuit of money and still more money.
Because she nagged the timid Frank, the store was doing better now and he was even collecting some of the old bills.