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 Scallawag.

After a miserable while, Scarlett's pretended indifference gave way

to the real thing. She had never been one to worry long over the

vagaries of human conduct or to be cast down for long if one line

of action failed. Soon she did not care what the Merriwethers, the

Elsings, the Whitings, the Bonnells, the Meades and others thought

of her. At least, Melanie called, bringing Ashley, and Ashley was

the one who mattered the most. And there were other people in

Atlanta who would come to her parties, other people far more

congenial than those hide-bound old hens. Any time she wanted to

fill her house with guests, she could do so and these guests would

be far more entertaining, far more handsomely dressed than those

prissy, strait-laced old fools who disapproved of her.

These people were newcomers to Atlanta. Some of them were

acquaintances of Rhett, some associated with him in those

mysterious affairs which he referred to as "mere business, my pet."

Some were couples Scarlett had met when she was living at the

National Hotel and some were Governor Bullock's appointees.

The set with which she was now moving was a motley crew. Among

them were the Gelerts who had lived in a dozen different states and

who apparently had left each one hastily upon detection of their

swindling schemes; the Conningtons whose connection with the

Freedmen's Bureau in a distant state had been highly lucrative at

the expense of the ignorant blacks they were supposed to protect;

the Deals who had sold "cardboard" shoes to the Confederate

government until it became necessary for them to spend the last

year of the war in Europe; the Hundons who had police records in

many cities but nevertheless were often successful bidders on state

contracts; the Carahans who had gotten their start in a gambling

house and now were gambling for bigger stakes in the building of

nonexistent railroads with the state's money; the Flahertys who had

bought salt at one cent a pound in 1861 and made a fortune when

salt went to fifty cents in 1863, and the Barts who had owned the

largest brothel in a Northern metropolis during the war and now

were moving in the best circles of Carpetbagger society.

Such people were Scarlett's intimates now, but those who attended

her larger receptions included others of some culture and

refinement, many of excellent families. In addition to the

Carpetbag gentry, substantial people from the North were moving

into Atlanta, attracted by the never ceasing business activity of

the town in this period of rebuilding and expansion. Yankee

families of wealth sent young sons to the South to pioneer on the

new frontier, and Yankee officers after their discharge took up

permanent residence in the town they had fought so hard to capture.

At first, strangers in a strange town, they were glad to accept

invitations to the lavish entertainments of the wealthy and

hospitable Mrs. Butler, but they soon drifted out of her set. They

were good people and they needed only a short acquaintance with

Carpetbaggers and Carpetbag rule to become as resentful of them as

the native Georgians were. Many became Democrats and more Southern

than the Southerners.

Other misfits in Scarlett's circle remained there only because they

were not welcome elsewhere. They would have much preferred the

quiet parlors of the Old Guard, but the Old Guard would have none

of them. Among these were the Yankee schoolmarms who had come

South imbued with the desire to uplift the Negro and the Scallawags

who had been born good Democrats but had turned Republican after

the surrender.