Thanks for your thoughts, reviews, pms, alerts for this story. I really appreciate every one. FirthsDarcy and Coco B, y'all need to register so one can send you pms, because you always raise such interesing points. Anna, more about the Butler's travels, soon. But now, since several people have wanted to know more about how Wade and Phoebe met, here's a flashback chapter. Hope you enjoy.
"The stone which the builders rejected has become the head stone of the corner." - Psalm 118:22
Summer, 1883
Twenty-one year old Wade Hamilton was lounging in one of the comfortable chairs in front of the large desk in Thad's Houston office. The desk itself was finely carved cherry-wood; there were barrister bookcases, leather upholstery, and a small bar against one wall. It was, in fact, like most spaces Thad had had occasion to decorate – elegant, comfortable, and somewhat impersonal.
"Have they given you a contract yet?"
"Yes. I …. signed on yesterday morning."
Thad shook his head. "I told you to have one of my lawyers look it over first."
"Dad …..he …"
A pause. "I see," Thad said, evenly. "I'm glad he's taking at least some of his responsibilities seriously."
A brief knock, and a young clerk walked in – a most welcome interruption to Wade. "Mr. Watling, Mr. Walker is here to see you."
Thad stood up, and greeted the stout, dark-haired man in business clothes who entered the room. He was accompanied by a young woman, elegantly attired in a pea-green walking dress and a grey overcoat, richly trimmed with ermine.
"Mr. Walker. So pleased you could make it." Thad shook the other man's hand, and turned to Wade. "My cousin, Wade Hamilton. He's joining a law practice here in Houston as a junior partner. Bennett and Litcomb, Esq. Wade, this is Mr. Hugh Walker, a business associate of mine. And this is…." he turned towards the young woman.
"My niece, Phoebe," the other man said, smiling benevolently, his porcine eyes twinkling. "Staying with me for a bit, for her father believes in travelling about the country, and I dare say he's got the right idea. Virginia couldn't hold me, neither, when there's so much to see out West."
Thad, whose gaze had briefly passed over the girl without finding any reason to linger, greeted her cordially nonetheless, before turning back to her uncle. Words like "merger" and "stock recovery" and "cattle boom" passed over Wade's suddenly unheeding ears.
While they spoke, the girl had lifted her eyes to Wade's face and studied him, not at all bashfully as he would have expected, but curiously and with an (he thought) endearing frankness.
"Are you new here, too?"
In addition to her eyes, he was now taken by her voice as well. There was something vaguely soothing and familiar about it.
"Not …. really," he replied. "I've lived in Galveston with my family for many years before I went to Harvard." Feeling the need to distinguish - perhaps advertise - himself, he added swiftly, "I've just signed papers at a law firm in town to become a junior partner." In his eagerness, he forgot that Thad had already supplied this information.
"Well done," she said, her eyes laughing, but not in an unfriendly manner. "Perhaps we shall see ….more of each other, before I go."
Wade nodded enthusiastically, again feeling like a struck school-boy, but supported by the thrilling presumption that she did not take it amiss. "I very much hope so, Miss Walker."
"Phoebe."
The two older men had finished their conversation all too quickly, and uncle and niece took their leave.
"You may close your mouth, now," Thad said, after their footsteps had receded in the hallway.
"Do you mean you didn't see that girl?" Wade replied, in a slightly reproachful tone. "Her eyes are the most extraordinary shade of blue mixed with green I've ever seen. Like …..sea-water."
"She's tolerable," Thad agreed benignly, shuffling some papers on his desk between his large hands. "Nothing you won't find elsewhere."
"Tolerable?" Wade said, with growing indignation. "She's far and away the most … beautiful girl I've ever seen in my entire life."
"You haven't seen much," Thad shrugged. "I did say she's tolerable, but nothing above the ordinary. Even your little sister will be prettier in a few years."
"Rose? Rose is …. seven."
"Seven year olds turn seventeen at some point."
"Good luck waiting," Wade said carelessly. "This divine creature, however ….. I must see her again."
His cousin abandoned his futile attempt to refine Wade's taste in females. "That should be easy. If Hugh Walker is her Uncle …..you see, the Walkers are appallingly social, and open-minded, and I'm frankly run out of excuses to refuse their invitations. In fact, I've got one sitting on the dresser at home right now that'd I'd been planning to discard. For a dinner party on Friday. I'd intended to be back at the Ranch, but for you, dear cuz …no sacrifice is too great. I will remain in town, and we shall go together."
"Thanks a lot," Wade said, without the irony that would normally have accompanied such a statement.
Thad smirked. "Allow me to make some enquires first, before you go off the deep end completely, and I endure another insipid evening in polite company to no purpose. For all you know, the girl is engaged."
"Couldn't be! I mean, I saw no ring." Wade blushed slightly at his cousin's broadening grin. "Easy for you to laugh," he mumbled. "Never seen you hung up on a girl, and I know you don't go in for …." He stopped, again. He wasn't normally this reticent around members of his own sex, but Thad's background remained a potentially sensitive subject.
Thad smiled wryly. "No, I haven't been hung up on a girl for a long time, Wade. Which doesn't mean I've lived like a monk – though perhaps I live my life a little more …...discreetly than some." With those somewhat enigmatic words, he turned back to Wade, and regarded him thoughtfully, as if taking in his youth for the first time. "But it was wrong of me to tease you. Contrary to what you may believe, I do remember what it feels like to be in love."
The sunlight illuminated his form from behind, and Wade took a moment to study him objectively. At twenty-six, Thad had lost most of his boyish lankiness, and acquired the full musculature and heavy-set shoulders of the Butlers. Like Rose, he was more conventionally beautiful than his older counterpart. As nature had smoothed Scarlett's jaw and pointed chin into a perfect oval to form her youngest daughter's face, it had straightened out Rhett's sharp, hooked nose and lightened the swarthy skin by several shades to make Thad, while preserving the full lips, sooty lashes and the wavy, wild curls. Paradoxically, this added symmetry made their faces less arresting in repose, requiring animation, or motion, to be striking.
Had Thad been a girl, such charms might have lessened the stain of illegitimacy and ignominy, and lifted its owner into the lower circles of respectability on its merits alone. As it was, it had merely marked him out that much more obviously as prey.
"You haven't talked about her for a long time, now. When we were in Colorado, you used to tell me about her daily."
Thad stepped back to the window and looked down on the bustle of the street below. He made no reply.
Wade tried again. "Because of Dad? Because you didn't shoot Thomas when you had the chance?" When Thad still said nothing, he added, because he couldn't imagine carrying such a burden, "You may need to forgive yourself. And …..him. And move on with your life."
A twist of the lips that were so much like Rhett's. "Believe me, I've tried."
"What is it like," Wade asked, suddenly, as another thought struck him. "To be with …"
"A black girl?" Suddenly, there was condescension in his tone, and Wade, proud survivor of a war and a murder plot, felt his hackles rise slightly, not recognizing it for the distraction it was. "Girls are girls, Wade. Under our skin we're all ….people. Tasha wasn't even all that black. A quadroon, they called them in New Orleans. I've had Asians – real blacks-whites- and even an Indian Girl or two in my day. They all laugh the same. Cry the same. And sometimes ….they die the same. "
"Well," said Wade, slightly scandalized in spite of himself. "Not everyone feels that way."
"Almost no one feels that way. At least not in the South. Doesn't make it any less true." He whipped his head around with startling alacrity, caught Wade's eye, and held it. "But I'm sure you're not asking me this out of idle curiosity. Who is it?"
Wade blushed.
"Out with it," Thad said. "Since you don't frequent the kind of places where you'd be more likely to find a colored girl, you leave me with the fear it's one of my house-staff." When Wade didn't answer immediately, he shook his head. "I knew those girls mother had brought with her would cause problems."
"Well…"
"Stay away from the house staff, Wade. You know my thoughts – and my rules – regarding them. I'd hate to have to kick you out."
"I" don't have a problem staying away," Wade said, defensively. "It's ….."
"Yes. You do. People – especially people who worked in that profession – are very good at knowing which 'no' is really a 'no', and when 'no' might be turned into a 'yes'.' At Wade's flush, he added somewhat more kindly, ' and it's not to be wondered at, Wade, young as you are. I did offer to …..show you around. There are plenty of girls who would be ….happy to spend time with you, who are not my staff. Nor of that profession."
"I know," Wade said. "And to be honest with you I came to see you today partially with that in mind. But now ….." he saw the sea-green eyes in his mind. "I'm somehow no longer interested." He laughed at himself. "Just her voice made me feel like home."
"Do you miss Atlanta?" Thad asked, thoughtfully.
"No," Wade said, swiftly. "But I miss…"
"I didn't think you would. That house ….."
Wade laughed. "Yes. Mother's taste in architecture wasn't at its height when they had it built."
"Or in décor," Thad said. His tone was not without affection.
"Awful, wasn't it? I remember when we lived there. Dad and Mother were so cold with each other. And Bonnie…." He threw a hesitant look at Thad. "You ….. met Bonnie."
"Briefly." The high, girlish laughter. The flying, black curls. Her father's pride. A brief vision before both of their eyes, distorted by time, and by her sibling's face.
"I wonder sometimes, if she'd look like Rose, had she lived. I suppose she would have. They were mirror images when they were four. And she looks just like that picture Mother has in her dresser." Wade's mind watched the two images struggle, superimposing upon the other, neither emerging the victor.
"She wasn't much like Rose except in looks, I think."
"No," Wade said, thoughtfully. "Although it's hard to say how Bonnie would have turned out, if Dad hadn't spoiled her like he did." He paused. "Ella and I couldn't stand her at times."
By the looks of him, it had been a difficult confession. De mortuis nil nisi bonum.
"No, I don't suppose you could," Thad replied, without condemnation.
"You were in the ballroom sometimes," Wade said, suddenly. "At the Peachtree house. When Ella and I looked for you we'd find you there. Why did you go there? It was empty." The smells and sounds of the mansion had come back to him. The musty curtains. The loud silences.
"Be alone. Think about Tasha." Thad breathed in, and then out. "We were in the middle of a police investigation. I didn't know where I would go from there. I was entirely dependent on your father's goodwill – or rather your mother's. I was the son of …..someone who had caused her pain. It was hard to ….find a space to grieve." He shook off the unwelcome memory, and like a fish in a stream, moved into another current. "How is your mother?"
"She's well," Wade replied, as willing as Thad to change the subject. "Busy with the twins. They might come up to the Ranch in a month or two. Between the two of us…." He grinned, suddenly. "I think she's pregnant again."
"Oh no," Thad laughed. "I hope only one, this time."
"So does she, I'm sure. Those boys are hellions," Wade said, fondly, the ghosts of Atlanta receding into the corner, where they would stand, until they were called for again.
~~oo~~
Stepping into Hugh Walker's comfortable town house on Friday evening of the same week, Wade felt an immediate sense of homecoming. A cheerful fire crackled in the drawing-room, decorated for comfort and filled with books and interesting artifacts from their travels about the country. Here was the best of the Old South, its graciousness and erudition and love of history, that Melanie Wilkes had poured liberally into his blood-stream. Being here felt like falling back in time into those carefree afternoons in Ivy Street, where he was amongst those who understood him completely, and whom he understood on instinct.
Something inside of him uncoiled, and started breathing again.
Hugh Walker and his wife greeted them warmly. Their easy acceptance of Thad marked them as the denizens of a novel era that they were, preserving the treasures of the past, while still reaching out for something beyond, that belonged not to this century or the next, but to some, as of yet indeterminate future.
The guests were handed drinks and hors d'oeuvres, and asked to make themselves at home. Thad, with his usual genius for attaching himself to the most unlikely person in the room, had bypassed a group of very handsome ladies to introduce himself to a wizened old man with a startling white beard, who sat in an arm-chair by the window. His musician's ear listened to the man's sing-song mountain dialect only for moments before being able to respond to it credibly, and they were soon engaged at what seemed to Wade as a dialogue of incomprehensible mumblings. Wade attempted to join in, but soon gave up, and turned away.
He felt a hand touch his arm, and turning, looked into those same sea-green eyes.
"So you came."
"Yes," he said, feeling himself flush deeply. Years spent amongst strangers in Boston had hammered away at his natural introversion, and it had been long that he'd felt this tongue-tied in the presence of a lady.
"I'm glad." There was no irony, or mockery, or hint of sarcasm in her eyes, and Wade was perhaps more surprised than he should have been. He had no sense that he was as a goldfish raised in a tank of tiger barbs, who were prone to nipping at fins and carrying off a piece of skin through sheer exuberance; at home in the swift rapids of the more narrow and dangerous parts of the river. He had vaguely envied it in Thad, that sinuous fluidity required of creatures always at risk of being swept over the water-falls of life, and would perhaps have pitied him instead, had he known that awareness of, and proximity to, the abyss invariably fits into the structure of an existence as the head stone of the corner.
He belonged here – into this quiet room full of warmth and culture and learning, and into the circle of this girl's eyes.
"I've spent the last three days making all sorts of inquiries about you," she said, laughing. "Luckily, I've learned that you've excellent connections, and are related to some of the best families in Georgia. Which is good, because some of my people in Virginia are rather …. stuffy. Dad is very open-minded, though, as is Uncle Hugh, so I wouldn't have cared much either way."
He laughed, too. "I seem to have made my…..admiration rather obvious. I'm sorry."
She shook her head. "Don't be. After all, I haven't been shy about mine, have I?" At his look of surprise, she added, "Mother says my forthright tongue is beyond the point of being pleasing, but Dad says a man likes to know where he stands just as much as a woman, and it stands to reason he'd know best, doesn't it, since he is a man?" Wade could only smile his agreement.
So they talked, as young people talk who like each other very much, without yet knowing more about each other than just that. About Texas, and Harvard. About Virginia and Atlanta. About Galveston and Houston and books they had read, and things they intended to see, all the while talking much more eloquently with their eyes. They didn't notice the fond glances bestowed upon them by their elders, or what a handsome couple they made - and wouldn't have cared.
To his joy, although not, it must be said at this point, to his surprise, he was seated next to Phoebe at dinner. He glanced briefly at Thad, at the far end of the other side of the table, by their hostess and the man in the white beard. Thad seemed in a mood to be charming, but there was a tenseness in his frame that was slightly unsettling. Wade tried to recall the revelations of a few days ago, and retrieve the compassion it had aroused, but felt nothing but a fierce wish that Thad wouldn't spoil things for him.
"Your cousin," Phoebe said, following his gaze. She was young, and of noble stock, and it is not to be wondered at that there was a faint echo of derision in her voice.
"Step-cousin," Wade said, quickly. "We're not ….really related."
Somewhere, in the unconscious recesses of his mind, a rooster crowed.
The rest of dinner passed very pleasantly, and it was not Phoebe's fault that a shadow had moved over the Meaning of Things.
Thad, who had stuck to the man in the white beard for most of the evening, rejoined him only when it was time to take their leave. Wade became aware of a sudden discomfort at standing next to him, at having all these nice people tie them together in their minds. Never had the gulf between himself and Thad seemed wider – never had he been more aware of his name, his background, and his family, and the other man's lack thereof. He wanted this, to be a part of them. He dared not look at Thad, afraid he would read his defection in his eyes.
"Who was that?" Wade asked, to cover his unease, with what he hoped sounded like idle curiosity.
"Fascinating gentleman," Thad said, thoughtfully. "Owns several silver mines in Nevada. We're to do business." When he did catch Wade's eye, there was no condemnation in his gaze. He looked merely tired. The scales of Wade's heart shifted, tipping from Thad's shame to his own.
They said their good-bys to the Walkers, who were hearty in their urgings that they must come again soon.
The drumming and the discomfort in Wade's head had become louder. And in a moment that he didn't know would become the place to which, and from which, all of the strands of time would flow, the frame upon which he would build a life - he turned to Phoebe, saying softly, for her ears only: "He is my cousin. In every way that matters."
And she looked up, catching, not, perhaps, what this said about Thad - but what it said about Wade. And smiled even more fully.