"I had one chocolate caramel once two years ago and it was simply delicious. I've often dreamed since then that I had a lot of chocolate caramels, but I always wake up just when I'm going to eat them." - Anne Shirley, Anne of Green Gables Chapter 2: "Matthew Cuthbert is Surprised"
It was fourteen-year-old Gilbert Blythe's fortune to be in Blair's store on errands for his father one Spring Saturday, nearly a year after Anne's arrival at a Green Gables and some seven months after the slate incident, when Matthew Cuthbert appeared at the counter to collect his purchases from Mr. Blair and pay for them. Gilbert didn't know Mr. Cuthbert well, but his ears perked up on hearing their conversation mention the name of someone he was certainly very familiar with.
"Chocolates for Anne today, Matthew?" Mr. Blair was asking cheerfully as he completed Matthew's list, already reaching into the shelf of sweets to draw out a tray of wax paper wrapped candies.
Gilbert watched as Matthew hesitated, eyeing the tray before shaking his head.
"Well now, I reckon not today. Marilla will tell me I'm spoiling her if I come back with chocolates every time I'm to the store."
Gilbert loitered around the aisles, collecting his father's list and fingering the extra nickel in his pocket, until Matthew was securely on his way, then deposited his purchases on the counter and asked Mr. Blair for the final items on the list. As Mr. Blair totaled the purchases, Gilbert busied himself with packing them away to carry home until, just as Mr. Blair finished, he added, as nonchalantly as he could manage, "and, uh, one of those please," pointing to the tray of chocolates Mr. Cuthbert had foregone.
If Mr. Blair noticed the faint streak of crimson on the boy's sharp cheekbones or realized that the tray of candies was the same one he had offered to Matthew for Anne a few minutes earlier, he kindly did not comment.
-oOo-
The offering was secreted away from his parents' eyes, for though it was purchased with his own money, it was sure to invite questions when it became clear it was not for his own consumption.
The following Monday it was likewise secreted into his lunch pail. Not wanting the gift to go the way of the candy heart or the strawberry apple, he ventured to school half an hour earlier than usual, carefully deposited it on Anne Shirley's desk without note or explanation, and then betook himself to the stream in order to be out of sight when the treat was discovered.
It was found some twenty minutes later, when Anne and Diana arrived in the schoolroom amidst a flurry of chatter and showers of petals from the spring flowers they had gathered on their way.
"Anne, look!" gasped Diana, nudging Anne in the side.
Anne, seeing the candy on her desk, suspiciously swept her eyes around the room and the students still loitering in the schoolyard. Seeing that a certain person was not present, she came to exactly the conclusion that person had intended: that person must not have arrived at school yet and thus could not be the giver of the little treat. Willing to accept such a gift from any other admirer, so long as his name be not Blythe, she grinned at Diana and skipped to inspect it.
Gilbert entered the schoolroom a few minutes before the bell, just in time to see Anne biting the chocolate in half and offering the remaining piece to Diana. Heads huddled and grinning with delight, Gilbert could hear only a few words of their whispered conversation, but he was certain romantic and secret admirer were among the ones he caught.
Anne, of course, turned up her nose and continued on as if she had never seen him when she caught him looking, but he had the secret pleasure of knowing that she had unwittingly accepted his gift and that he had put that look of blushing delight on her face.
It was some six years later on another early Spring afternoon in late March when Gilbert found himself again staring down at a tray of chocolate caramels in the general store — this time in White Sands— the memory of that long ago day leaping to his mind. A few necessary purchases had caused him to make the stop on his way home to Avonlea. He rarely shopped in White Sands—always anxious to get back to Avonlea at reasonable visiting hours on Friday afternoons—but reason had dictated the stop today; if he could make his purchases while on his drive home, it would erase the need for a special trip to Carmody on Saturday, thus allowing for more time at Green Gables.
He had never told Anne just where that chocolate on her desk had come from all those years ago. Years had passed before he felt the information would have been met with anything but disgust, and even now he was hesitant to tell her. That sentimental schoolboy was still hidden deep inside him, but he was wise enough now to know that Anne was not ready to face that kind of sentiment from her good chum Gilbert.
For that reason, when he pulled the small handful of candies from his bag as they spread their books out on the Green Gables lawn the next morning, all he said was, "I brought us some study fuel."
The delight that lit her face was more than enough repayment for the expense.
"Chocolate caramels! Did you know these are my favorites?"
Gilbert shook his head. He couldn't say he had exactly known that they were her favorite. His information was rather less certain than that and was rather more assumption than knowledge.
A wistful light touched her face. "Matthew knew. I told him I liked them the very first day he brought me home to Green Gables and he used to bring them home for me sometimes, though Marilla told him he was spoiling me." She turned glowing grey-green eyes to Gilbert, "I loved them before that, but I love them all the more now for all the sweet memories they bring to me."
Gilbert, privately, thought that he would happily buy her chocolate caramels every day of their lives if only she would continue to look at him with that delighted, affectionate, starry gaze for his troubles. He was, however, wise enough to not express this thought.
Nearly four more years had passed again when a box was delivered to Miss Anne Shirley's desk at Summerside on St. Valentine's Day in 1888. On opening the box, Anne laughed to discover the gorgeously decorated box of chocolates overflowing with innumerable chocolate caramels. The sweet note attached to it, somehow carrying both the impish charm of a girlhood companion and the impassioned affection of a woman's lover, made her both laugh and blush as she read it and was clasped fondly to her chest as she gazed down at the gift, but the laughter was followed by tears that were born of present joys and of remembered sorrows and of future happinesses.
Her letter, written later that night with just the right sort of pen to the man that still carried much of that sentimental schoolboy in his heart, gave voice to all the emotions carried in those tears:
-oOo-
Gil, Dearest,
Have you any idea how many dreams you've gone about making come true?
Did I ever tell you of a little orphan girl's dream of having a chocolate caramel to eat any time she wanted one? I had only ever had one in my life before that and could hardly think of anything more decadent than being able to have one any time I pleased. Well, now, thanks to your bountiful gift, I imagine I shall be in supply of chocolate caramels any time I want one for a long time to come, even if I share them. (Perhaps I shall be rounder and plumper as a result by the next time you see me, but I fear that is too much to ask at this point in my life.) That dream seems like such a little thing now, but at the time it seemed like a hopelessly impossible one. Its coming true is just a small taste now of all the others that have been given life.
In addition to the chocolate caramels, I used to dream of a bosom friend, a truly kindred spirit with whom to share my soul. There was, of course, Diana before you— I don't think even I could have dreamed back then that two such friends could exist. And yet, here you are, the very kindred-est of spirits. I think I saw the kindred in you even when I was trying so desperately to ignore it. It's true that I have found them —kindred spirits — to be far more plentiful in the world than I once imagined, but none like yours. 'Whatever souls are made of,' Gil, yours and mine are truly the same stuff. I think I love you more, know your worth more, for all those years I kept us apart— both before and after— but still I can't help but wonder what could have been different had I had you at my side all that time, what other dreams we could have explored by now. And yet, I cannot help but shrink away from the thought that the wait for our wedding day, these long three years, could have been even longer had we got here sooner. I would wait for you an eternity if need be, Gilbert Blythe, but I have to admit that I should very much like the day to arrive sooner rather than later.
I've been dreaming for us, Gil, and they are lovely dreams.
Speaking of those dreams for us— did I ever tell you how very hard I tried to evict you from the house o' dreams I built in my fancy so many years ago now? No matter how hard I tried to imagine you away, you would not leave. It was terribly vexing to not be able to control my own imaginings. I suppose my imagination knew something even back then that my mind refused to acknowledge. I'm dreaming a house o' dream again, but this time you are the very most important part of it and I know better now than to try to turn you out of it.
There are other dreams, big and little, that you have brought to life for me and with me, but not so my dreams of romance. I always knew you would not fit in with those wild, romantic ideals of my youth. You know that that is why I was so blind for so long. I hope that it will not injure you when I tell you that you didn't exactly make those dreams come true. The truth is something far deeper and more beautiful than that, far bigger than I knew how to dream back then. You showed me that reality could be something better than that childish fantasy. To think I once considered you to be devoid of romance! You, who took a lonely, love-starved little orphan girl's silly fantasies of love and romance, born of a child's fear and a woman's hopes, and showed her just how small and how shallow they were compared with the reality of being loved by Gilbert Blythe. You did something far better than making those dreams come true: you brought me new, brighter, truer, dreams in their place — dreams that we will make come true together.
The dreams of love itself, Gil? You've brought those to life— to so much life that some days I feel that I should burst with it.
At the heart of all those dreams, though, I think there was one enormous dream that I hardly dared to dream— the dream of someday belonging to someone. I belong to you now, Gil, in my heart as surely as I will in two long, long, short years when I finally am your wife, but I admit that I long for that belonging— the one that comes with your name and the home and the life we'll share.
I've never shared a name with anyone, Gil. We joke about all the little foibles of the families at home, the Sloanish-nesses and the because-she's-a-Pyes and the pretensions of the Andrews, but I've never been a part of anything like that, never belonged to a name that meant anything— for good or for bad.
I love my parents dearly, and I'm ever so grateful to feel that I know Walter and Bertha Shirley better now after visiting Bolingbroke, but I never truly got to belong to them. I carry their name, but we did not share it long enough for me to really know what being a Shirley means, or for it to mean anything to the people around me. As dearly as I love Matthew and Marilla, I am not a Cuthbert either, else I would surely be more sensible and less talkative. You have always belonged to a name that meant something, so perhaps you will not understand what it means to me to share a name with someone.
You see, Gil, yours will be the first name I ever truly belong to. Someday, someone will meet me as Anne Blythe and they will know that 'she must belong to Dr. Blythe.' It's a delicious thought, Gil, to know that a stranger hearing my name will just know that we belong to each other. I have never belonged to anyone like that.
I'll be thoroughly delighted to share a name with your parents — to become a part of what they have built for the Blythes and own the history of it. But it's the thought of what you and I will build with the Blythe name that truly thrills me, dearest. We'll build a whole little tribe of Blythes that will belong to us and us to them and who will never have to wonder if anyone will love them.
I wonder what they will say about our horde? —a horde I have no doubt they will be. (Do you ever wonder how many children we will have, Gil? Some days I've a hankering for ever so many.) You will be a doctor and I know you'll be a brilliant one and no doubt a beloved and upstanding member of any community, so perhaps we will be the family of which they say "well, the Blythes let their children do it, so it must be alright." With all the penchant of their parents for mischief and mishaps, however, I'm afraid it will be more like "what a wild, unruly, bunch those Blythes are." I confess, I don't much care which it is, for we will love them all the same. They will always have a name to belong to.
So there, Gil, is another dream you are making come true. A bigger dream, perhaps, than the others, that carries with it a million other dreams that I've barely even begun to dream yet.
All this born of a box of chocolates! But that is what you do, Gilbert Blythe; you make something small into something far, far bigger.
Yours, yours, yours, and always yours,
Anne