India Wilkes came back from Macon,where she and Honey had lived since 1864,and took up her residence with her brother,crowding the occupants of the little house.But Ashley and Melanie welcomed her.Times had changed,money was scarce,but nothing had altered the rule of Southern life that families always made room gladly for indigent or unmarried female relatives.
Honey had married and,so India said,married beneath her,a coarse Westerner from Mississippi who had settled in Macon.He had a red face and a loud voice and jolly ways.India had not approved of the match and,not approving,had not been happy in her brother-in-law's home.She welcomed the news that Ashley now had a home of his own,so she could remove herself from uncongenial surroundings and also from the distressing sight of her sister so fatuously happy with a man unworthy of her.
The rest of the family privately thought that the giggling and simple-minded Honey had done far better than could be expected and they marveled that she had caught any man.Her husband was a gentleman and a man of some means;but to India,born in Georgia and reared in Virginia traditions,anyone not from the eastern seaboard was a boor and a barbarian.Probably Honey's husband was as happy to be relieved of her company as she was to leave him,for India was not easy to live with these days.
The mantle of spinsterhood was definitely on her shoulders now.She was twenty-five and looked it,and so there was no longer any need for her to try to be attractive.Her pale lashless eyes looked directly and uncompromisingly upon the world and her thin lips were ever set in haughty tightness.There was an air of dignity and pride about her now that,oddly enough,became her better than the determined girlish sweetness of her days at Twelve Oaks.The position she held was almost that of a widow.Everyone knew that Stuart Tarleton would have married her had he not been killed at Gettysburg,and so she was accorded the respect due a widow who had been wanted if not wed.
The six rooms of the little house on Ivy Street were soon scantily furnished with the cheapest pine and oak furniture in Frank's store for,as Ashley was penniless and forced to buy on credit,he refused anything except the least expensive and bought only the barest necessities.This embarrassed Frank who was fond of Ashley and it distressed Scarlett.Both she and Frank would willingly have given,without any charge,the finest mahogany and carved rosewood in the store,but the Wilkeses obstinately refused.Their house was painfully ugly and bare and Scarlett hated to see Ashley living in the uncarpeted,uncurtained rooms.But he did not seem to notice his surroundings and Melanie,having her own home for the first time since her marriage,was so happy she was actually proud of the place.Scarlett would have suffered agonies of humiliation at having friends find her without draperies and carpets and cushions and the proper number of chairs and teacups and spoons.But Melanie did the honors of her house as though plush curtains and brocade sofas were hers.
For all her obvious happiness,Melanie was not well.Little Beau had cost her her health,and the hard work she had done at Tara since his birth had taken further toll of her strength.She was so thin that her small bones seemed ready to come through her white skin.Seen from a distance,romping about the back yard with her child,she looked like a little girl,for her waist was unbelievably tiny and she had practically no figure.She had no bust and her hips were as flat as little Beau's and as she had neither the pride nor the good sense (so Scarlett thought)to sew ruffles in the bosom of her basque or pads on the back of her corsets,her thinness was very obvious.Like her body,her face was too thin and too pale and her silky brows,arched and delicate as a butterfly's feelers,stood out too blackly against her colorless skin.In her small face,her eyes were too large for beauty,the dark smudges under them making them appear enormous,but the expression in them had not altered since the days of her unworried girlhood.War and constant pain and hard work had been powerless against their sweet tranquillity.They were the eyes of a happy woman,a woman around whom storms might blow without ever ruffling the serene core of her being.
How did she keep her eyes that way,thought Scarlett,looking at her enviously.She knew her own eyes sometimes had the look of a hungry cat.What was it Rhett had said once about Melanie's eyes—some foolishness about them being like candles?Oh,yes,like two good deeds in a naughty world.Yes,they were like candles,candles shielded from every wind,two soft lights glowing with happiness at being home again among her friends.
The little house was always full of company.Melanie had been a favorite even as a child and the town flocked to welcome her home again.Everyone brought presents for the house,bric-a-brac,pictures,a silver spoon or two,linen pillow cases,napkins,rag rugs,small articles which they had saved from Sherman and treasured but which they now swore were of no earthly use to them.
Old men who had campaigned in Mexico with her father came to see her,bringing visitors to meet “old Colonel Hamilton's sweet daughter.”Her mother's old friends clustered about her,for Melanie had a respectful deference to her elders that was very soothing to dowagers in these wild days when young people seemed to have forgotten all their manners.Her contemporaries,the young wives,mothers and widows,loved her because she had suffered what they had suffered,had not become embittered and always lent them a sympathetic ear.The young people came,as young people always come,simply because they had a good time at her house and met there the friends they wanted to meet.
