"Mother, look!"
A young woman's voice, high and gay, rang through the air.
"Yes, very lovely dear," Scarlett remarked without looking up, chewing the end of her pencil in concentration as she tallied up a particularly long column of figures.
"Mother, you aren't looking!" the voice scolded.
Scarlett sighed, pinching the area between her eyes, but at the sight of the young lady in front of her, she broke into one of her few genuine smiles.
The garish magenta of the rather low-cut velvet dress clashed brilliantly with Ella's red hair and would have made any other girl look like a melting iced cake, but it was somehow becoming on her. It had been hard for Scarlett to believe that the spirited young filly twirling before her had been that ugly duckling, that skinny ungainly thing with the perpetually skinned knees and straggly hair. Ella's breasts had begun to bud and her hips had filled out, showing off a waist so tiny that a man could put his hands around it. Her hair had darkened to auburn, and today she had pulled it back into a loose chignon, strategically leaving several ringlets to frame her face, exposing her delicate ears, and the smooth slope of her neck. Her freckles were a sprinkle of cinnamon on her upturned nose and round, dimpled cheeks and she had a dash of them on her large white forehead and chest. As a child, she had been shy with her smiles but her rapidly approaching womanhood had made that a thing of the past: there was an elven quality to her vivacious ways, her laughing, tip tilted eyes, and fox-like grin.
Ella had come home on holiday declaring that she was a lady and was eager to show off her newly acquired manners and breeding to anyone who would care, and it seemed that everyone in Clayton County certainly did, the females at least. Scarlett had taken Wade and Ella to visit Tara and neighboring Fairhill, where the Tarleton girls had fussed about her, chattering, giggling, and begging her to teach them French. Ella may not have a head for figures but she sure does have an uncanny knack for languages, Scarlett thought as she surveyed the flock. Ella would pick up snatches of phrases first and would slowly but surely piece them all together until the words flowed off her tongue; whenever they visited Aunt Pitty's, she would converse in Latin with Ashley while Beau ogled at them and she parroted accents so perfectly that she sounded indistinguishable from natives of the Continent.
Ella had eagerly complied with their requests and had generously distributed dress lengths to each of the girls and a set of jeweled riding reins and saddle for Mrs. Tarleton. And Beatrice, displaying her usual level of tact, had rubbed one of Ella's ringlets in between her fingers and sighed wistfully, remarking that her hair was almost as pretty as her Nelly's was. Ella had frowned at that, Wade had tittered, Scarlett had cleared her throat, and the girls had giggled behind their hands while Jim Tarleton had sighed, shaking his head. And Mammy had watched the entire thing unfold from the doorway with a nostalgic twinkle in her eyes.
A man's voice smooth drawl interrupted Scarlett from her thoughts and Ella from her performance.
"Why, Scarlett! Who is this young lady?"
"Oh! Uncle Ashley! I was just showing Mother my new dress!" Ella chimed, her grin as wide as the Cheshire cat's. She pirouetted so that the dress flared out, the fabric draping appreciatively over the curves of her hips. With the excessive lace trimmings on the sleeves and hem and that huge bustle, she looked like a cross between an overgrown orchid and some strange exotic bird.
"It certainly catches the eye," Ashley laughed as he ran his eyes over the dress.
"There's a matching bonnet as well! I already showed Mother. Do you want to see it?"
Scarlett had seen the thing and wasn't sure if it could be called a hat, let alone a bonnet. It was a pink monstrosity piled high with bedazzled false fruit and silk flowers and a clump of unnecessary peacock feathers that the hat maker must have glued on with his eyes shut. It had teetered uncertainly on Ella's head, and threatened to topple over with every movement she made, but she thought it looked glorious and Scarlett had decided that it would be wise to just let bygones be bygones.
"Why don't you go show your Aunt India? I need to speak with your mother for a minute."
"Alriiiight," Ella sang as she fastened the bonnet on her head, tying the satin ribbons into a prominent bow under her small, pointed chin. She tossed the wrapping paper carelessly over her shoulder and twirled from the room as gracefully as any ballerina. She would certainly have put Suellen and even little Susie to shame. Scarlett sighed almost wistfully, wishing that she still had Ellen's garnet necklace to bequeath to her namesake.
Ashley made his way to the desk and leaned against it, crossing his long legs with an easy grace.
"Is Wade coming home this year?"
"From the letters he's written, I suppose he's decided to stay at school to read law. Again." Scarlett replied, sighing. "I don't understand why he feels the need to do so there when there are judges in Atlanta. He reads enough as it is…even when he was a boy, I could never get his head out of those books."
Wade had decided, once he had entered university, to forego coming home for the holidays. He was the youngest in his class and therefore had a reputation to uphold. He seemed to prefer the company of books over that of his peers, devouring them as voraciously as Scarlett had once done with food. He would spend hours in the library poring over yellowing tomes and dusty old volumes. Scarlett had attempted to show interest in Wade's passion with little success, and she would only smile wryly when he would wax heavy about a particular case or piece of political commentary. The Hamiltons and Wilkes sure runs strong in this one. He and Pa wouldn't have had much to talk about.
But there was an attractive quality to his shy bookishness and there had been several interested female callers, but he was as oblivious to flirtations as anybody can be. On outings with said callers, he would discuss, at great length, the implications of recent Supreme Court rulings, the nuances of tort law, and the inadequacies of Reconstruction amendments with regards to Georgia and the South as a whole. They would attempt to listen with increasingly frequent glances at their watches, but would eventually sigh and then finally give him up as a lost cause.
Beau's silver Persian stalked into the room just then and jumped onto the desk as silently as a shadow. He had a large dead spider in his mouth and gazed at the duo with pale green eyes as he slowly chewed it up. Scarlett reached over to scratch him between the ears, and the feline purred appreciatively, the spider temporarily forgotten.
"He looks so much like Charlie, although he's probably taller than he ever was."
Ashley paused, smiling. "Charlie?"
Scarlett rolled her eyes. "Charles, I mean. I can't make head or tails of the stuff Wade reads. I sometimes don't know where he gets it from. It must be all from him," she looked up at the ceiling thoughtfully, "and Melly as well."
Ashley's smile widened as he gazed at her nostalgically. "You know Scarlett, it's happened more than once that Henry has come up to me asking why Charles married you."
"The war and the champagne they were serving that day made fools of us all. I was a fool as well that day, a pretty fool, but a fool all the same," Scarlett replied, shrugging as she crossed out some of Ashley's errors.
"It wasn't just Charles and I. There were proposals being thrown left and right. Half the County was getting married that day…getting married to people they hardly even knew," she muttered, scribbling on the page with vehemence.
"I suppose we all were fools, Scarlett. And not just on that day, but long after that. But I could not help loving you. We all couldn't, and it wasn't just because you were beautiful."
Scarlett paused, her eyes raking his face.
Ashley was smiling that slow smile, and in this lighting and from where she was sitting, he looked almost golden again. She remembered how his hair had shone like molten silver in the sunlight, and that there was a time when she would have wanted nothing more than to run her fingers through it while feeling his lips on her own….he truly is the last one I have left from those days, isn't he? for while Mammy was ever so kind and dutiful, the rooms at Tara no longer rang with her scolding and reprimands.
"I loved Melanie, but I loved you as well. I didn't want to hurt you and I didn't want to hurt her, but I was a coward and could not choose and so ended up hurting you both. You know, Scarlett, the day the war was lost, no, even before that, I thought it was all over…not only for the South, but for myself as well…but then, I thought that perhaps not all was lost because I still had Melanie…and I still had Beau."
Scarlett fidgeted, feeling the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. She had heard these words before, or an echo of them….they had been spoken to her through another voice, from somewhere, from someone….
"…but when Melanie died, I thought then that I had truly lost everything, and so it took me the longest time to see that you had lost as much, if not more, than I have, than we all have. Realizing this, I saw that, even at my lowest, that I still had you. I had wronged you and yet you continued to stand behind me as Melanie always had."
Oh Ashley, she thought, her eyes wide with pity and despair, even if you do change, you'll never change. I only did that because I had promised her.
"I wonder now, what would have become of us if we had moved to New York all those years ago…I suppose I will never know, but I could say for certain that I would not be sitting here in the home I had built with my wife, that I would have this measure of peace and security, that I would be able to watch my son grow up, that I would be able to live in my homeland and talk about a shared past and memories with a childhood friend…Scarlett, I owe it all to you."
Scarlett's eyes were wary now, her heart beating in a queer, excited way. There was a fervor in his voice, a sheen in his now stormy grey eyes, that she did not want to hear or see from him again. She would have to put an end to this before it got out of hand again.
"Ashley, the past is past. What's done is done. It doesn't do us or anybody else any good to talk about such things. We have to let them go."
He smiled again, but his eyes were sad.
"But my dear, you have never quite let go either."
Scarlett ceased writing then, a crease appearing between her slanting black brows.
"Ashley Wilkes, what on earth do you mean by that?"
"Scarlett," he began slowly, "why haven't you gotten a divorce?"
Scarlett's face went numb.
"We've had this discussion before…more than once, although God knows why I even allowed it to become a discussion."
"I know it's not my place to be discussing this with you…"
"You're right. It isn't. It is no one's business but my own and…his."
"My darling, why must you do this to yourself? It's been more than enough time. If it's Wade and Ella's reputations that you are worried about, I can say that-"
Scarlett gave a short laugh and stood abruptly, slamming the heavy ledger shut.
"Ashley, you know as well as I that I stopped caring about such things years ago...if I have ever really cared about such things at all."
He silently watched as she shuffled large stacks of paper into neat piles, sorted letters into their proper pigeonholes, crumpled up scrap paper, and tossed it into the wastebasket. She threw her cloak on, fumbling with the fastenings in silence, determinedly avoiding his gaze. When she finally managed to button up her collar, he tried to put a hand on her shoulder.
"Scarlett, I didn't mean to-"
But she shied away from his touch and looked directly into his eyes, her jaw set and eyes hard.
"We are done here, Ashley."
Ella floated into the room minutes later: "Mother, is everything alright? I just saw Uncle Ashley and-"
Scarlett was still seated at the desk, staring pensively at the wall and Ella watched with her brow furrowed. Her mother had always been a down to earth, practical woman, but she was afflicted by her own particular brand of madness. In the weeks following Rhett's unexplained disappearance, she and Wade would hear her sometimes, always in the dead of night. Wade had noticed first. He had shaken Ella awake one night with a grimace on his face and had silently ushered her out. The pair tiptoed down the hallway until they reached Scarlett's room and as they peered through the keyhole, they could see her slippered feet whispering on the plush carpets. She would pace back and forth, back and forth, up and down, up and down, like a caged animal. With her black tresses cascading down the length of her back and the moonlight turning her porcelain skin silver, she looked like the Lady in White. Ella, who sometimes wore shoes to bed because of her occasional nightly wanderings, had reckoned that she was sleepwalking, but when Wade had knocked on the door and called out for her, Scarlett had frozen in her tracks and then quietly slipped back into her bed without reply.
On the morning after such nights, she would emerge from her room without a hair out of place, the picture of placidity if it weren't for her bloodshot eyes. Wade and Ella would watch as their mother sullenly poked at her food while they ate silently, with furtive glances at each other. But on one such morning, after fidgeting for several minutes, Ella found that she couldn't bear the uncomfortable silence any longer and had, with an air of false cheer, begun reminiscing about Mr. Butler and that had sent Scarlett into a bout of rage that had reduced Ella to tears and sent her scurrying to her room with only Wade left to bear the brunt of her verbal lashing. He had silently listened to Scarlett's incoherent ranting about the bar being set too high, lack of proper instruction, and Pa even, until the anger had dissolved into hoarse, gasping sobs and he had pulled up a chair and sat right next to her, rubbing her back as she wept into her hands.
Ella jumped at the feel of her mother's hand on her cheek; she had not heard her mother move, let alone stand up and walk towards her. Ella swiveled her eyes to Scarlett's face and could see that she was drained of color, the eyes were glassy, and when she spoke, her voice was flat:
"Ella, it's time to go home."
Please tell me what you think! Wade, Ella, and Scarlett are the easiest characters for me to write…Ashley is medium, and I think you all know who the hardest one is…