The usual disclaimer applies, I own nothing. Sorry it took so long for this to finally get uploaded. Many thanks to Blogmistress Bugsie!
Marie-Ange stood with her back pressed against the door to Evangeline's room. She made a moue of consternation, and tapped the index and middle fingers of her right hand lightly against her lips for a moment. How to proceed?
Initially, she considered the tearoom encounter with Rhett Butler to be something that must be borne as gracefully as possible, and then forgotten. Apparently this was not possible for Scarlett. Her tempestuous emotions since that meeting revealed something raw and vulnerable within. All the unresolved emotions, and frustrated desires she refused to discuss seemed to be bubbling up. Marie-Ange decided she must find a way to make Scarlett examine herself, to release these feelings, and choose an acceptable course of action. This day would become one long string of tumultuous encounters if something were not done to stop it, now.
Her memory stirred, and she was reminded of a promise made long ago.
"Take good care of Ellen, my little angel," Philippe said, smiling. "I'm counting on you!" He patted her head affectionately, then turned to leave, picking up his valise and heading for the front door.
"Philippe, please don't go!" Marie-Ange cried out in anguish, tugging at his coat sleeve.
He stopped at the door, poised to open it. "Don't cry. Be brave little one." He smiled at the girl, and again gently patted her curls. "A man needs to have an adventure! I won't be gone for too long. Now, dry your eyes. That's a good girl."
Marie-Ange sniffed and smiled bravely for her brother. Run to Ellen, she thought, I must run to Ellen.
It seemed to Marie-Ange that love and loss went hand-in-hand, at least in her experience. Both Philippe and Ellen had left her life forever at nearly the same moment in time, and she grieved those losses for many years. Neither respect for the dead, nor consideration of Eulalie and Pauline's thinly veiled threats restrained her from talking. She had not divulged the secrets of her heart, at least not until now, when events forced her hand, because she was circumspect by nature. She vowed to take care of Ellen in the parting pact made with her brother. Her beloved brother was gone forever, but Ellen, by extension, was still here in her daughter and granddaughter. Scarlett was headstrong and could be outspoken, yet, Marie-Ange saw so much of Ellen in her as well: her eyes, her smile, her charm, her gaiety, but most of all, her sadness over love lost. All three of Ellen's daughters had suffered disappointment in love, and the resulting heartache. "So much like their mother," Marie-Ange thought, shaking her head.
She descended the servants' stairs on swift feet. When she reached the kitchen, she directed the cook's assistant to prepare coffee service for two and to follow her upstairs with the tray.
ooOOoo
Scarlett, sitting at the vanity, peered at her reflection. How she'd aged since her own and Ashley's first weddings! Oh, her looks hadn't changed so much, but the tenderness of youth, and the sense of hopeful optimism, of knowing she could bend life to her will, most of the time, were gone. She had survived the worst life could hand a woman, in style even. Long ago, in a past dimly remembered, she had been the belle of five counties, and now she was probably reviled in those same five counties because Rhett had seen fit to cut her loose in order to purge his own devils. She felt a heaviness in the pit of her being, mingled love and hate. Why in the name of God did Rhett have to come here? His presence was the embodiment of her marital failure, sure to cause gossip among the sanctimonious Wilkes clan, led by the fanatic India. But then, wasn't that always the way of it? He'd show up at the most unexpected times, and everything would go wrong!
She pulled herself back from this interior monologue and snatched up her brush from the vanity. She tapped it a few times against her palm, then, began to vigorously brush her hair.
"No one is going to get the best of me! No ma'am! I'm going to enter that church with my head held high, and Rhett, and India and all those other aggravating Wilkes cousins could just go to Halifax!"
Scarlett smiled approvingly at the silken sheen of her long straight hair. She'd need to call for Prissy to come dress it for her. Maybe Prissy could take care of Ella's hair while she was at it.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a soft knock at the door. She hoped it wasn't Aunt Pitty seeking her out so early in the day. Her vision was dimming, and out of a need for security, she clung fiercely to Scarlett when they were together. This, of course, also infuriated India, who felt she was far more worthy of Aunt Pitty's trust. When Wade and Beau were around, Scarlett would pass off care of the old lady to them, but they were with Ashley this morning. This day was definitely not starting well!
"Scarlett?"
It was Marie-Ange. Scarlett was flooded with relief, as she opened the door.
"May I join you? I brought you coffee." Marie-Ange smiled brightly as she waved the young girl carrying the tray into the room. She pointed to a low table between two wing chairs, and told her to leave the tray there.
"Thank you. Please, do come in."
As the serving girl scurried out, Marie-Ange closed the door behind her and joined Scarlett in the sitting area next to the window.
Scarlett glanced out the window. A steady rain was falling, dripping from the eaves. "What terrible weather! It's bad luck for the wedding." She turned from the window and began to stir sugar and cream into the cup of coffee that Marie-Ange had poured for her. "That, and it's Lent," Scarlett muttered.
Marie-Ange gave Scarlett's hand a reassuring pat. "I prefer to see the good here! The rain will replenish the cistern that will surely be depleted by all these guests taking baths! I'm sure the weather will clear by this evening. As I've told you before, ours is a low church; we do not forbid weddings during Lent. Evangeline always said she wanted to be married when the azaleas were in bloom. Besides, you know that she and Ashley plan to spend Easter in Paris."
Marie-Ange sipped her coffee, and looked over the rim of the cup at Scarlett. Her speculative look made Scarlett a little uncomfortable.
"Have you ever noticed how certain traits or characteristics run in families?"
Scarlett looked at her cousin and wondered what on earth she was on about.
"No. Whatever do you mean?"
"My two oldest children have been drawn to medicine, have a passion for healing, much like their father and his brother. I think that runs in their line, and while it pains me to be separated from Jean-Louis, and now, soon, Evangeline, I understand what draws them, both to the practice of medicine, and to seek to work with their Uncle Antonin in Paris."
"Um," Scarlett murmured in reply. Her eyes wandered to the window. What earthly reason did Marie-Ange have for bringing this up, especially today? Didn't she have better things to worry about? Besides, the thought of caring for the sick repelled Scarlett. How could a person find that sort of work fulfilling?
"You seem to have the talent for mercantile success, much like some of your O'Hara kin here in Savannah."
Scarlett's eyes narrowed as she shifted her focus from the window to her cousin. It did not sit well with her when anyone openly criticized her business activities. Moreover, Marie-Ange of all people should be down on bended knee thanking God that Scarlett was as successful as she was. Louis had left a small estate, and Marie-Ange barely scraped by on that, plus the money she earned teaching piano lessons. Scarlett paid her handsomely for Ella's room and board. She did not know what to expect from this turn in the conversation, but listened more acutely as Marie-Ange continued.
"If I may be so bold, I believe we have a streak of notoriety in the Robillard line. At least that has been my experience of it, to defy convention. Mine and Evangeline's." Marie-Ange looked directly at Scarlett with a kindly expression, and spoke softly. "Yours and your mother's as well."
"My mother?" Scarlett exclaimed in bewilderment. "She was a great lady, like my grandmother."
"Oh, indeed! But surely you've heard that duels were fought over Aunt Solange, and that she was married three times, just as you have been?"
"Yes! Mammy told me about Grandmother Solange, but my mother was different. She had only one husband!"
"One husband, and one great love."
This comment puzzled Scarlett. Her mother and father were not demonstrative in front of their daughters. In fact, now that Scarlett thought about it, her mother was downright cool to her father. There was no doubting Gerald's deep love for his wife, especially given his reaction to her death. But Ellen… her feelings were enigmatic, hardly a relationship Scarlett would characterize as a great love.
"I mean no slander on her good name, but you don't know about our youth, and the secrets we shared." Marie-Ange smiled, a look of bittersweet remembrance passing over her features.
"Secrets?"
"Yes," she sighed. "Secrets." With that, she began to reminisce.
I was born on Christmas Eve, the night the angels sang to announce the birth of the Savior, Mary's son. For that reason my parents named me Marie-Ange. I was the youngest of six children. My oldest brother, Philippe, immediately fell in love with me, and we developed a very close relationship. We were the bookends, so to speak, the oldest and youngest children in the family. He called me mon cadeau, my gift. He loved to carry me around on his shoulders. I swear my feet never touched the ground for the first three years of my life.
When I was four and a half years old, your grandmother, my Aunt Solange, died of a fever. Ellen was devastated by the loss. She was seven years old at the time. After the funeral, she came back to our house, and my mother held her as she wept. Mother told her that she was welcome to spend as much time in our home as she liked. Uncle Pierre was in seclusion with Eulalie and Pauline hovering over him. As the months went by, Ellen and I spent many happy hours together.
Philippe was ten years older than I, handsome and charming. I loved to be with him, but as he got older, he sought the pleasures a young man desires, and had little time for childish games. Ellen and I would spy on him, watching for him to come in at night. When my parents had parties, she and I would hide at the top of the stairs and watch the ladies and gentlemen below. There was an alcove, hidden beneath the staircase, we could see from our vantage point, and often we saw Philippe pull a young woman aside there and steal kisses. Once, he saw us and winked at us, as if to say he knew we were watching him. Our silliness made him laugh.
The summer Ellen turned fourteen, she put up her hair and let down her skirts. I was not yet twelve, still a child, and no longer her boon companion. She continued to spend a great deal of time in our home, but now her attention was focused elsewhere—on Philippe. She had blossomed into a young beauty, and he was well aware of her charms.
By now, he had developed a reputation as a rake, a man about town. This grieved my parents greatly. They hoped to see him make a suitable match and settle down. I heard the adults say he enjoyed gambling as well, and that he was rapidly depleting his allowance in order to pay his debts. Father threatened to cut him off if he did not amend his habits.
During a Christmas party, just before my thirteenth birthday, after I was sent to bed, I sat alone at the top of the stairs, watching the guests below. I could hear whispered entreaties, and soft giggles coming from the hidden alcove and moved to get a better look. It was Philippe and Ellen! He held a sprig of mistletoe above her head and was doing his best to steal kisses from her. She resisted, then, capitulated. He called her 'mon cadeau,' formerly his pet name for me. The two people I loved best now had eyes only for each other. I was crushed.
"Mother?" Scarlett thought, "behaving like… like I did when I was a belle? Could this be true?"
I watched silently as their surreptitious courtship continued through the winter into early spring. I said nothing to anyone of what I saw: stolen kisses, whispered promises. I would watch Philippe slip out the garden gate, cross the lane and pass into Uncle Pierre's garden where he would meet Ellen.
The game was up in late February. Eulalie and Pauline had long suspected what was going on. Their suspicions were confirmed when they found a note Philippe wrote to Ellen suggesting they elope if Uncle Pierre would not give his consent to their marriage. One evening a few days later, they happened to catch sight of Philippe as he entered the garden. He met Ellen under the rose arbor in the far corner. There they observed him making love to her, kissing her palms, her lips, holding her close. Scandalized, they told Uncle Pierre everything. By the time he reached the garden, they were gone.
Uncle Pierre marched his daughters, military style, like the old general he was, up the front steps of our home, rather than through the familiar garden gate. He was angry and loudly demanded to see my father. The maid ushered him and the girls into the parlor, and then sought Papa. Mother met them, and tried to calm him. Uncle Pierre was shouting, waving the love note. Ellen was crying, begging him to stop. I was sitting in the library, reading, when the commotion started, and peeped around the doorframe, timidly trying to see what was going on. Papa brought Philippe to the parlor for the confrontation. Once the door closed, I left the library and looked through the keyhole at the scene within. Eulalie and Pauline were cowering in the corner. Ellen sat weeping on the settee next to my mother who had put her arm around her. Uncle Pierre, full of wrath, was shaking his fist at Philippe, while my father restrained Philippe bodily from flying at Uncle Pierre. I opened the parlor door a crack. At the sound of the latch clicking open, the shouting ceased. All eyes were on me. My mother rose and gently led Ellen and me to the library.
"Men can be stupid! This is how wars start!" my mother exclaimed. She gave Ellen a handkerchief, and told her to dry her eyes, that all would be well. "After all, we are not the Montagues and Capulets, we are Robillards."
Shortly, Uncle Pierre broke into the room and commanded Ellen to stand. As he dragged her away, down the hall toward the front door, Philippe strained against my father's grasp to go to her.
"Philippe! Philippe!" she cried, holding her arms out to him.
Marie-Ange's words and that name caught Scarlett's notice. A memory long suppressed sprang up from her subconscious, Mammy and Dilcey telling her about her mother's dying hours, her last words:
"She think she a lil gal back in Savannah. … [W]'en the light shine in the winder, it look lak it wake Miss Ellen up and she set right up in bed and cry out loud, time and agin: 'Feeleep! Feeleep!'"
"Quiet, young woman!" Uncle Pierre commanded.
Philippe pressed his index and middle fingers to his lips and turned them toward Ellen's tear-stained face in a final parting salute. "Fear not, we shall be together!"
Uncle Pierre then spun on Philippe. "If you touch my daughter again, I will kill you!"
My father shook his head in sorrow. "This is my problem now. Go home, Pierre."
The next day they sent Philippe away. We never saw him again; he died in a barroom brawl about a month later. Not too long after that we were informed that Ellen was to be married to an Irishman named O'Hara. We were not invited to the wedding, nor would Ellen receive me prior to the nuptials.
The last time I saw Ellen, my mother and I were standing under the portico, looking out on Oglethorpe Square as the carriage bearing the newlyweds pulled away. She looked right at us, and though she smiled, hers were the saddest eyes I'd ever seen as she silently waved good-bye.
"So this is the mystery of the unnamed sadness that my mother overcame," Scarlett thought. "But she was a great lady, not like me… Yet, she was like me, she married to forget her lover." It was all too confusing to contemplate. "I'll think about this tomorrow, after the wedding."
Marie-Ange finished her story, and sat in quiet contemplation, then added a post-script. "I saw those same sad eyes again yesterday afternoon in the tearoom."
Scarlett's mouth fell open and she let out a small gasp of surprise.
"You see, I think perhaps heartache is also in your line," Marie-Ange added quietly. "I will help you in any way possible. I was never able to assist your mother, and I feel I owe you this debt. Do you understand?"
Scarlett shook her head yes, then no. "I don't know," she finally said. She sat numbly fiddling with the fringe on the tie of her dressing gown. "I was a fool. I thought I loved someone, while real love passed me by. Now I live with the mark of that infamy."
"Would you go to him if he acknowledged the error?"
What a stupid question, Scarlett thought. As if Rhett would admit error and try to repair the past! "I would buy ice from the devil first!"
"Love has no pride, my dear."
"Hmph! That may be, but I do!" However, Scarlett had to acknowledge Marie-Ange had a point. Pride had dealt her marriage to Rhett a grievous blow.
"Don't let the past rob you of happiness, that's all I'm trying to tell you." She then smoothly steered the conversation in a different direction. "Ella tells me she likes it when I tell her stories about my girlhood. It makes her feel at home here in Savannah, and closer to her grandmother though she never knew her."
"Surely you haven't told her that particular story!"
Marie-Ange laughed. "Good heavens, no!" She became solemn and thoughtful again for a moment. "I never saw your mother again. I wrote to her the following year, in the summer, hoping to heal the breach. She wrote back telling me that she had what every woman dreams of: an adoring husband; a beautiful, healthy baby girl; a fine home; and good neighbors. Her duties kept her busy from morning 'til night, and so she discouraged me from writing to her again." Marie-Ange stretched toward the window, pulling aside the lace curtain to get a good look. "The rain is slowing down." She smiled ruefully. "I always wondered if Ellen ever thought of us again. I suppose I'll never know."
As Marie-Ange rose from her chair, Scarlett reached for her arm to slow her progress. "She did."
"Did what?"
"She did remember. The night I came home from Atlanta, after Beau was born, after Sherman… The most terrible night of my life, I came home seeking refuge and peace, only to find out my mother was dead. The two servants who took care of her told me she had been delirious, she thought she was a girl in Savannah again, and just before she died…" Scarlett's words caught in her throat. "Just before she died, she called out 'Philippe! Philippe!' I didn't know who that was or what he meant to her. Until now."
Marie-Ange clasped Scarlett to her breast. "Dear God!" she gasped.
Just then, there was a frantic knocking at the door. The aura of emotion brought on by their conversation shattered, and the delicate filament drawing both women toward the past was abruptly broken.
"Scarlett? Scarlett? Are you in there?" It was Aunt Pittypat.
Scarlett rose slowly and opened the door.
Pittypat bustled into the room. "Is it true, Scarlett?"
"Is what true?"
"India says that awful Captain Butler is going to be at the wedding this evening! Oh, tell me it's not true! If it is, I shall faint!"
Scarlett and Marie-Ange exchanged a glance. Marie-Ange's look communicated her love and steadfast loyalty.
Scarlett patted the elderly woman's plump arm. "He is, but we'll be fine Auntie! I promise."