'Hope' is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -

Emily Dickinson

Chapter 18

Atlanta buzzed with the news of the disastrous northern train wreck and the Butlers' subsequent disappearance. Rumors and theories proliferated as to why they had not resurfaced after so many weeks, the most outlandish being that Rhett Butler used the trip as a disguise to move his family to foreign lands, a ploy to avoid some unknown and no doubt nefarious legal persecution, and the most reasonable and long-lasting that they were all, well, dead.

A cacophony of responses ensued. Whispers of sorrow traveled one street, 'good riddance' on the next. Sadness for the children abounded, but as far as the parents ….

"The bank sent that fellow from Pinkerton's and he found next to nothing," Ashley's glum expression did not alter. "You know what the report contained. Most of the first-class cars were near the front of the train, and the front of the train ended up—" he paused for a beat. "— in the water."

"No one has been recovered other than the few they found the day of the wreck." This Melly started softly, with a hint of steel beneath. The investigation found that most of the survivors stayed in a barn while waiting for rescue, but none fit the missing family's description.

He turned around to face her. "Because they're under the ice, Melly, you know what the engineers said. Come spring the railroad expects to drag the lake and find dozens."

"Wade is my nephew, Ashley," she whispered. "All that is left of my brother. My heart cannot bear it, just the thought of that sweet, sweet boy …" she groped for her handkerchief. "Little Ella and the adorable baby—" Melly buried her face in her hands for a moment before composing herself. "There's a good chance they made it. Scarlett and Rhett Butler are the strongest and most resourceful people I know."

"It happened in seconds, Melly. No one is immortal. The description of the wreck—it was—" he stopped in deference to his delicate wife's sensibilities.

"I'm convinced if we had enough people who knew them and cared and were able to travel we could search ourselves and find some clues." The firmness of Melly's tone was not lost on her husband.

"We've discussed how extremely expensive a search party of that sort would be, and we can't touch their resources for it. You know what Henry and Rhett's attorney found, and the law." Ashley rubbed the back of his neck in defeat. "You're going to wear yourself out and make yourself sick over something that cannot be helped."

By sheer force of her position in society, Mrs. Wilkes had raised funds, but not enough. Quality people didn't have much money, and as a general rule didn't care for the Butlers. Rhett's bank ordered and financed the Pinkerton investigation and considered the matter closed.

Oh, how Melly despised speaking of money, it was not done, but desperate circumstances called for it. "I have collected a portion of what we will need. With their means—If we could find enough benefactors I know they would reimburse the rest—"

Ashley swallowed a sigh. They'd been through this before, but he repeated it all with infinite patience. "Their wills provided for sickness and death, but as far as the disappearance of both of them," he shook his head. "No one can touch the estates until they haven't been heard from in a full year. If they were known to be dead it would be different but as it stands …the house and servants can go on operating unheeded for some time, and If the children were here there would be provisions, but with everyone gone—" he lifted his hands in futile frustration. "With all of them gone there's nothing we can do."

"Aunt Pitty's newspaper advertisement did garner some information."

Indeed there had been an answer to Pitty's ad. Sometime after the fact a local shopkeeper responded that he recalled seeing a man haggling with a farmer over a wagon and horse, saying he didn't want to put his family in the barn with the other survivors; but the shopkeeper did not recognize the farmer and he hadn't come forth. It could have been anyone. Pitty relayed the information to Pinkerton and they followed that lead but it went nowhere. The local sheriff stated unequivocally that if the family left the valley and went up in the unforgiving Adirondacks they'd have been by no doubt lost to the ensuing and unrelenting blizzard.

"There were those reports of a large man with black hair gathering supplies from the wreck," Melly stated evenly.

"Only a man who fit Rhett's description somewhat, digging in the frozen mud for tins of sardines. Hardly seems like something he would do, especially in such a situation."

"Digging for what did you say?" Melly lifted her head.

"Sardines." Ashley gave a slight snort.

"I've never heard anything about sardines." Melly wrinkled her brow. "Scarlett adores sardines."

"As if he would care."

"Oh, but he does care," she returned, the warmth in her voice palpable. "He loves her very much, and she loves him as well. They're just both too stubborn to show it."

Ashley's expression softened as he regarded his wife, almost pityingly, before it set in its old lines again.

"Debatable, my dear. If it is as you say, it would bode well for their survival."

"I will double my efforts." Resolution hardened her sweet features.

Ashley couldn't fight her when she looked like that, fierce and full of vigor and rare, raw intention. An answering fire, a mere match's glow, sparked within his soul. If his wife rallied perhaps there was hope and a part of him, forgotten and believed to be gone forever, came struggling back to life. Whilst a bare few minutes before he'd regarded the matter as no more than yet another lost cause, doubtlessly rife with defeat and outright failure, and hadn't believed he could muster the effort to even consider the undertaking his wife insisted they shoulder; now he felt something else, something that brought back glory on the battlefields, and courage in the face of adversity.

The fact of the matter is that he struggled to imagine a world without Scarlett in it. He'd thought he would be relieved at the concept. Instead, it was as if the last light in existence—a ruthless, stubborn, seemingly unending and certainly unrelenting light—had been snuffed out far too soon.

The weight of conceiving such a happening tempered the rally of his heart and mind.

"Considering how they treat one another in public—if they have managed to survive the train wreck and are holed up somewhere with the children until the weather breaks," he turned back to the window and stared out, unseeing.

"I can only hope they haven't killed one another yet."

OOOOooooOOOOoooo

The kitchen door shut behind Melly as she scurried down the sidewalk in the wee hours before sunrise, her home silent, Beau and Ashley deep ensconced in sleep. Twilight barely illuminated the somewhat garishly appointed carriage two streets over as she approached, the door opening just as she reached it.

"Get in here quick Miz Wilkes," Belle Watling spoke, anxiety in her tone. "And have a seat." The gas lights illuminating her features did her no favors, highlighting every wrinkle and sag in her face and decolletage as rather worse for the years.

Why it won't be long before all her looks are gone, Melly thought, and then admonished herself for such unkind musings as she did as she was told, arranging her skirts around herself.

"I'm mighty sorry for askin' you to come out at such an hour," Belle began as she closed the door.

She had the same countrified voice from years before and Melly wondered briefly where the woman had come from to end up where she had. She hadn't aged well, yet something about her eyes, some single tiny glimmer of warmth and intelligence, muted by time and hard living, shone there as if from a far distance.

Melly thought suddenly of a novel she'd read once, about a poverty-stricken girl, not ten years old, who worked in a factory on the coast shelling shrimp, a filthy job that shredded her hands and ruined her clothes, before she married an awful man who mistreated her and eventually threw her on the streets. Girls of her station had to marry young to survive and if the marriage didn't work out … she looked again at the women across from her. Poor thing had more than likely been working at one terrible occupation or another since she was very young. She's nothing more than a hurt and damaged little girl inside, she thought. But everyone was a child to Melly.

"I said to you once before I hoped we'd meet again and I told your messenger that I'm usually up not much later than this at any rate," Melly said with a smile. "My son is an early riser."

A shadow passed over Belle's face. "Is that so? I haven't been to sleep yet," she returned wryly. Melly flushed.

"Not like we've never done this before," Belle added in a charitable manner, and the two women smiled at each other before Melly raised her eyebrows in the unspoken question, and Belle inclined her head.

"I heard how you been tryin' to raise money for the Butlers but it ain't never gonna be enough what with the folks you goin' after for it, no offense." Belle hefted a large brown leather bag from beside herself on the seat and handed it to Melly with both hands, so heavy the slighter woman nearly dropped it, unprepared for its weight. "I took it upon myself to raise some on my own, hope you don't mind."

"Oh my," Melly breathed. The telltale clink of large coins sounded from inside the bag.

"It's gold,' Belle allowed. "Spends easier."

Melly nodded, not quite knowing how to respond.

"Fellas he played poker and did business with threw in together Miz Wilkes, not fine upstandin' people like yourself, but not trash neither. Some Yankees and Carpetbaggers gave too, not gonna lie." Belle shifted in her seat uncomfortably. "A couple Scalawags, to be completely honest.

"And then I put in my profits from my bizness, and Rhett's—Mr. Butler's share too." Melly's face turned a dark shade of mortification.

"Just from the liquor sales and the sportin' tables, Miz Wilkes, that wouldn't be fittin' to give you the—other—" Melly's color deepened and Belle hurriedly went on. "Not now that there's a family involved, and those children," her face softened. "I hear Miz Butler's older kids is real well-behaved and special in spite of their mother, and that Bonnie—"

"They are each one darling and very precious to me," Melly all but gushed, ignoring the slight at Scarlett for the time being. "Wade Hampton is my dear brother made over, and Ella looks more and more like a Robillard every day, and possesses that sweetness of spirit of poor Mr. Kennedy. Bonnie is the apple of her father's eye and the spitting image of Scarlett, and has Mr. O'Hara's temperament. A fine, generous man, and a gentleman in his heart. Scarlett does miss him so." Her eyes took on a determined expression. "She would raise the money if needed and go look for me, I just know it. I am entirely obligated to do the same for her."

Belle's mouth tightened at the mention of her nemesis but Melly pretended not to notice and went on.

"Sometimes you never know exactly how much someone means to you until you realize they might be lost to you forever." She didn't catch the sudden stricken look on Belle's face and continued. "I can't bear the thought of losing one of them and for all to be gone," she dabbed at her eyes. "I am sorry, the worry is just too much."

Belle reached over and patted her hand. "This right here will go far to helpin' if there's any hope at all." Her expression softened at Melly's apparent consternation. "But the odds is against them, you know that Miz Wilkes. I've known Rh—Mr. Butler for many years. I'd put money on him comin' out of it, if there's any way about it. But it's been so long."

"I can't imagine why we haven't heard from them, although the train did derail in a wilderness, and there's a chance they could be waiting out the weather somewhere therein. I've known Scarlett for a long time too and she'll overcome impossible odds better than most. I'd put money on her as well if I was—why, if I was a betting woman." Melly said with a quick nod.

"Thank you, Mrs. Watling, from the bottom of my heart." She rose to leave, struggling a bit with the weight of the bag.

"Let me get my coachman to carry that, Miz Wilkes," Belle fussed as she reached for the latch.

"I will be just fine." Melly grasped the sides of the coach door frame and made to disembark, then looked over her shoulder.

"I'll never forget what you did for my husband, Mrs. Watling," Melly said then, her tone sincere. "I'll owe you for the rest of my life just for that. And I want you to know if I had to be stuck in a pickle up north, even in a frozen, impassable terrain, I can't think of two people I'd choose for survival over Mr. and Mrs. Rhett Butler."

Belle wasn't certain, but it seemed as if Melly emphasized 'Mr. and Mrs. Rhett Butler' just a tad, and her eyes narrowed minutely at the possible dig before she recovered herself. Surely not, not from a lady as kind and refined as Melanie Wilkes, who had always treated her so very well.

"It may be that they somehow are alive," Belle allowed slowly. "If they are, I just hope they don't kill each other before they get found." She bestowed the other woman with an inscrutable look.

The expression on Melanie's face froze for a fleeting second, nearly too quick to discern, before Altanta's most genteel citizen—the one who crawled out of her sickbed and dragged her late brother's sword down a flight of stairs, all to protect his widow from a marauding Yankee deserter— gave a beautific, yet knowing smile.

"I will personally make certain you and your generous acquaintances are updated on any and all progress in the most timely of manners. Good day and God bless you, Mrs. Watling," she said, and with head held high, Melanie Wilkes stepped down from the carriage, hauling the leather bag of gold coins with her.

OOOOooooOOOOoooo

Fun Facts:

Pinkerton National Detective Agency, American independent police force that was founded in 1850 by Allan Pinkerton (1819–84), former deputy sheriff of Cook county, Illinois. It originally specialized in railway theft cases, protecting trains and apprehending train robbers. It solved the $700,000 Adams Express Co. theft in 1866, and in 1861 it thwarted an assassination plot against President-elect Abraham Lincoln. It later participated in antilabour union activities (see Homestead Strike). It was instrumental in breaking up the Molly Maguires, a secret organization of coal miners. - Brittanica dot com

A/N I posted twice in one month! Nobody faint, please, but I did bust it to get it done, trying to do better here. For anyone who might wonder about my interpretation of Melly in this piece, I was inspired by the Yankee-shooting scene in canon, where Melly glows with pride after Scarlett kills him and Scarlett thinks with surprise that Melly is just like her in that moment, and understands exactly how she feels. I'll never forget how Melly helped her dispose of a body and was the first to think of checking his pockets, much to Scarlett's chagrin. Strife brings out the fight in some of us …

This is a shortish chapter y'all! It was much longer and getting unwieldy so I split it in order to concentrate on *upcoming events* more thoroughly. R&S will be back in form in Chapter 19, which is well underway but it's a real doozy. Drop me a note and tell me what you think and how you feel, and hope to see you soon :) Peace and love, misscyn