In case anyone asks, I haven't seen the musical (I want to SO MUCH) but my soundtrack features Marla McLean and Peter Deiwick as the title characters.
-M.R.
Carried Away By Love
Anne Shirley and Gilbert Blythe had many things in common, but just now one new thing was that their cups of happiness were both full: The promise of four years at Redmond, and therefore of a big and bright future, was enough to fill anyone's cup, heart, and mind with light and music.
Mere months before they were to leave, though, their cups overflowed. Diana Barry, Anne's bosom friend, and Fred Wright, one of Gilbert's best friends, announced their engagement to one another.
Caught up in dreams of authorship, Anne was first shocked, then angry, nostalgic, and finally sincerely happy at her best friend's sudden elevation to adulthood. But Gilbert, who had, after all, aided and abetted the (admittedly quiet) courtship, bypassed the first three emotions, and provided more aid to Diana and Fred's future happiness by talking Anne down from pushing Fred into the Lake of Shining Waters. Twice.
When Gilbert had offered to squire Anne to Diana and Fred's engagement party, they had naïvely assumed that as best friends to the respective betrotheds, they'd be granted diplomatic immunity.
They couldn't have been more wrong.
"Anne, darling!" Ruby Gillis darted off the dance floor to embrace her seated friend, giving Gilbert a warm (too warm) smile in the process. "And Gilbert, too! How simply lovely to see you here! Of course you would be, though, since I know you two are best chums with Diana and Fred, and everyone knows that you're going to—But silly me! How rude I'm being! This is Sam Proctor, from Charlottetown, and—"
" 'Everyone knows that we're going to' what, Ruby?" Gilbert cut in apprehensively. He returned her smile, hoping it would soften whatever scruples had caused her to change tack. Granted, she should have introduced her latest beau first of all, but still—Ruby was the least subtle girl in Avonlea.
"Oh, ah," stuttered Ruby, her smile going slack—then suddenly lighting up again, like a gas lamp turned up too quickly. "Well, Gertie Pye said Tillie Boulter said that now that your best friends were getting married, it was sure as gun's iron that you two were engaged, too."
Anne choked on her lemonade.
"I mean, you've always been so chummy with one another, and all," Ruby added, beginning to gabble. "So no one'd really be surprised, you know? Why Mrs. Lynde says you two were—were—" Ruby looked from Anne, who was coughing into her handkerchief, to Gilbert, whose face was as read as if he were choking, too, and sensed that she had created A Situation. Normally, Situations were fun to create, but this one made her unusually uncomfortable. She grabbed Sam's arm again, as the music started up again. "Ooh, this is one of my favorite new waltzes! Well, talk to you later!"
Gilbert glanced nervously at the tall girl in blue, seated beside him. Anne had stopped coughing, but her face was still buried in the handkerchief, and the bit of forehead Gilbert could see was bright red.
He sighed. It wasn't the first time tonight anyone had cast a knowing look or word in their direction, but Ruby was the first to say anything directly to either of them. Hopefully she was the last, too. Gilbert was pretty sure that if anyone else addressed them directly about being engaged, Anne would actually die of embarrassment. He wouldn't put it past her.
"Look at the lovers," he said, for lack of anything else to say, and for a need to be the first to verbalize the difference between himself and Anne, and "the lovers" (albeit with a pang). Gilbert didn't think he could stand it if Anne had set that distinction. "Aren't they picturesque, dancing in the moonlight?"
At the words "picturesque" and "moonlight" (the sun had only set less than an hour ago), Anne's ears practically pricked up. She emerged from her handkerchief, smiling weakly at Gilbert, and looked in the direction he nodded. "They are a picture, aren't they?" she said. "They look like they're under a spell, cast by the waltz music—carried away by love."
"Well, they look like they know it. See? They're not resisting their 'enchantment,' " Gilbert teased, playing along. He took a deep, steadying breath, but was careful to keep his tone light and casual as he continued, "I dare you to dance with me, Anne Shirley! I mean—we two are far too sensible to get carried away by love, aren't we?"
"Sensible!" Anne exploded with laughter. "What a word to apply to a pair of kindred spirits like us! But I see what you mean. We may ramble over all of nature, you looking for fascinating plants and I for dryads, but you're no silly romantic, and now that I'm not a 'tragical' little girl any more, I only have a brief spell now and then—after I've been writing all day." Anne wrinkled her pretty nose, the secret envy of many an Avonlea girl, and the secret admiration of the male half of the population. "Although that happens more and more often recently. And I can't say I'm not enjoying it. Romance is a comforting thing, Gil."
"Writing all day…Like when you finished Averil's Ideal?"
Anne surveyed Gilbert with an appraising eye, sipping her lemonade. "Take care, Gil. I can't imagine you want to walk home alone covered in lemonade, do you?"
Gilbert scooted his chair back, hands raised in mock horror. "Then I suppose you don't want to dance with me, either?"
Anne laughed. "It's a tempting offer, you know. Look at the stars in the sky! They're reflected in those lovers' eyes," she explained, gesticulating at the whirling couples. "Their faces look like…like…like they remember their dreams at night. I never can remember my dreams in the morning. Or maybe I just spend so much time daydreaming that I don't have night-dreams. I don't know. But, Gil, those lovers are carried away by stars and dreams, and I don't—" Anne paused, as if aware that her voice had grown softer until she was almost soliloquizing. "Anyways, it's all a moot point, isn't it? We're not the kind inclined to get carried away!"
"Maybe we oughtn't to dance, anyways," Gilbert said ruefully. "You've—you've heard all the same things I heard, tonight. There's enough talk around us sitting here talking, without us getting up and dancing." He stretched in the tiny wicker lawn chair. "That's one reason I'll be glad to leave Avonlea, at least for four years: Privacy's not allowed here."
"Mmm," said Anne, agreeably. "No, I accept your offer, Gil. Let's dance." She rose, brushing crumbs and leaves from the tree above them off of her voluminous skirts. "I mean, it isn't as though we'll fall under the same spell as everyone else."
Gilbert took the proffered hand, but the sharp contrast of Anne's words—whether innocuous or perspicacious—caused him a pang, not for the first time.
I wonder if I can ever make her care for me…
