Soli Deo gloria
DISCLAIMER: I do NOT own Anne of Green Gables.
I got into such a fall aesthetic mood that inspired me to write this. Also, Anne/Gilbert for the win! :)
Orchard Slope, today especially appropriately named, was overrun with every one of Avonlea's young folk.
It was brought about by Anne and Diana's scheming, of course. The second anniversary of the A.V.I.S. combined with the conversation topic Diana absentmindedly brought up of her father's orchard being full to bursting with apples brought the idea into Anne's mind. "Diana, what if we killed two birds with one stone? What if we celebrated the anniversary of our beloved A.V.I.S. with an apple-picking party at your father's orchard?" Anne's grey eyes shined as she stood, transfixed. A distant look grew in her eyes, as if she was no longer walking the White Way of Delight with Diana but seeing visions of a glorious event as if as prophecy.
Diana quickly agreed, putting a hand on Anne's arm anxiously, as if she felt the immediate need to bring her back to Earth. She feared sometimes that she'd lose Anne to reality, the way she so oft gave in to her daydreams.
The day was discussed in an open meeting with the other Improvers and readily agreed upon; most importantly, permission for the party was granted by Mr. and Mrs. Barry. "I don't think we all would've been much welcome if my parents didn't agree to host," Diana admitted.
It was an event repeated all over the Island that autumn. Corn-husking parties and quilting bees and mass butcherings and crop-gatherings brought together entire villages to farms. The air grew crisp as wheat waved in the wind, as if welcoming the gatherers, beckoning them further. Corn husks were cut down as crows flew toward the south. Children ambled down the country roads after Anne let school out and flew up into roadside trees like little birds and stuffed their cheeks with crabapples. The spirit of cold wind and warm cheeks could be felt at every bend of the road, at every moment of every short day.
This particular Saturday, released from the duties of a school ma'am (Anne had spent all last evening reading over papers and settling out grade plans for next week), Anne walked through a back corner of the Barry Orchard with a quiet, contemplative smile on her face. The rest of the orchard, excepting this little unassuming corner, was full of young people. The A.V.I.S. Society and those within a few years' age were invited to roam into the trees and fill the bushel baskets full of the red ruddy apples of such a variety found only on the Barrys' boughs.
Diana, despite her cries of protests, had been shuffled into the crowded kitchen to provide much-needed assistance to her mother, Minnie May, and French Mary Joe in cooking up enough food to satiate the heavy appetites of youth. "I can help out if Diana must as well," Anne said, rolling up her second-best dress sleeves.
Diana and Mrs. Barry assured Anne that her help wasn't necessary, but that she 'must go and enjoy the cool air and companionship'. "It's better than being stuck in a steaming kitchen getting covered with flour," Diana said. She sighed and looked down at her apron. "I'm a perfect dumpling."
"You are only as much a dumpling as you are just as sweet and soft and comforting," Anne informed her cheerfully before taking leave to fly into the beckoning orchard.
She'd greeted her fellow A.V.I.S. members and companions of old. Jane and Ruby clung to her arms and talked excitedly like little birds as they weaved about the lanes of dark brown trees. Josie and Gertie Pye tsk-tsked about Anne, calling her a 'queen with her nose in the air, flagged by blind, all-adoring maidens.' Though she loved the dear chatter of her friends, Anne sent them off to help Charlie Sloane and Moody Spurgeon McPherson with their bushels. She let them fly off her arms with a little happy sigh, like a mother bird watching her little birdies fly away from the nest.
She wandered away from the squabbling, gossiping, laughter-hued groups toward the end of the orchard, to the especial little corner. From this corner she could see the green shutters and long pathway characteristic of her beloved Green Gables.
She found her most favorite tree, a rather stout giant with long-spreading, heavily-endowed branches. She thought it like a kindly old tree monster, an old man with a long wispy mustache and deep, wise voice—his spirit was immortalized in this beloved tree, staying strong through the years as he watched the generations pass before him like dust in the wind. She hitched up her skirts with one hand and felt up for a suitable branch with the other. Finding secure footing, Anne, glad to be alone, indulged in her childish fantasy to watch the whole world from an advantage of height. She climbed up the mass of tree, its bark scratching her palms, the wind rustling about her, talking and waning and ignoring her sometimes, steering her upwards at other times. In the work of a couple of minutes, she found herself sitting securely on a branch extending away from the trunk of the tree. This particular tree had many such strong limbs, like one of those sea creatures called octopuses she found in old seafaring storybooks. Anne found her seat secure, and breathing in the lustrous scent of rich apples, looked out to find that her seat provided her with a beautiful view.
From this quiet corner, desolate in people but rich in apples and ripe for imagination's picking, Anne looked about and sighed with contentment. She could see hills for miles around; Avonlea farms, the Barry farmhouse just the size of an egg. She could see wind rustling the pines and oaks accenting the roadsides; could see the trees she knew to stand as sentry guards in front of her schoolhouse. She could look down the road to where it bent, lost in a turn—another mile or so down it and you'd reach Mrs. Rachel Lynde's.
The wind, a friend, rustled the turning green leaves of the neighboring apple trees. Leaves rushed along with the breezes, as if the wind was hustling them on down from their treetop homes, to hurry on the autumn fast approaching Avonlea.
Anne didn't feel like a school ma'am who spent several hours a day teaching figures and writing to small, restless, eager children. She didn't feel like the duteous student poring over her own homework at night, or the responsible, cool-headed adult and aid she'd become to poor Marilla in managing the household and the Keith twins. She didn't feel like an enterprising, practical member of a now widespreadly accepted society to improve the looks and good opinion of her beloved village. She felt like a young girl—no, not a girl—a sprite, a wood nymph, a spirit of nature—she had no such human responsibilities—she communed with the trees and talked to the wind and ate only apples and lived in hopes and dreams and welcomed autumn in with a resounding celebration and parade—
"I think you've gone into the fairy realm and are quite lost to our own world," came a deep voice, wholly unexpected, from down below. Anne gasped in surprise and teetered on her branch. Her hands scratched at the branch but slid away as she felt herself dropping, dropping—no! Her hands scratched once more, and gripped the width of her branch. She clung to the wide berth of the branch; her hands and head were on opposite sides of the branch, with her arms stretched in C-shaped arches around the top.
"Anne! Anne! Are you all right?"
Anne glowered and felt embarrassment make her cheeks pink as she said, "Gilbert Blythe, I must get out of this unseemly predicament." She felt embarrassed on three counts: she'd given in to her old habit of being so lost in her daydream as to come back to reality rudely as punishment—an old childish habit she wished she'd broken but now knew it as much a part of her as her red hair; secondly, that she should be found in such a scrape (holding desperately tight to an object to keep her from some horrible bodily harm to her person) by Gilbert Blythe; now it was not so bad, seeing as what good chums they two were, but she hated the recollection and thought it maddening that she could allow such a thing to happen twice; and, lastly, she sincerely hoped that Gilbert had the sense in this instant moment of urgency not to be standing under her as he looked up in panic. She'd never be able to look him in the eye again if he ever saw her bloomers. . .
"I entirely agree with that. Are you able to get on back up the branch?" Gilbert worried. His voice didn't sound directly below her, to Anne's relief.
"Unfortunately I am not so strong as able to pull my entire self back onto the branch. Augh! Also, my hold is slipping," Anne said. Her fingers slid along the uneven branch; she felt grimly confident in the splinters now skewering her hands. She took it like a martyr and said, "You may need to fetch more help, Gil, or a ladder, or some aid." She remembered when she fell through the Copp girls' 'little house' and groaned. Again, again! Why must she let such things happen twice? Usually she was so good at once-and-done sort of scrapes. To fall into the routine of a second round at it was ridiculous!
"Can you keep there without falling? Is your grip that bad?" Doubt clouded Gilbert's voice, pulling him to stay in that spot lest he run for help and let Anne fall to a grisly demise in solitude.
Anne closed her eyes, squeezing them shut. She wasn't afraid of heights but somehow falling off the Pye ridgepole was preferable to this drawn-out suspense. "Gilbert, how long is the fall?"
"About eleven or twelve feet. Anne, we must get you down." Gilbert was a no-nonsense, solution-finder if there was one. Which was good, as Anne was having a terrible time keeping herself lofty and martyr-like when she really leaned toward the camp of panicking and bemoaning this horrible scrape.
"Oh, Gilbert, find a ladder or scream for help or do something! This suspense is utterly maddening and I can't stand it a minute longer!"
"Anne, you must jump. Let go of that branch and I will catch you."
Anne's fluttery heart did all kinds of ridiculous flip-flops, but her indignant voice betrayed no such internal happenings. "Now, Gilbert, really—what if someone should see? It's unbecoming—and I'm not so much a damsel in distress but a thoughtless girl who let surprise unnerve her—"
"Anne Shirley," said Gilbert Blythe firmly, "since when did you care about what is becoming and what isn't? If someone saw us, they'd see me helping you out of a predicament. That's all. And if they didn't come running over to help but back out to gossip that's telling of them. Now Anne, let go of the branch. I'll catch you in my arms and I shall catch you and I shan't drop you. I swear on—on Matthew's grave."
"Oh, what a thing to swear, Gilbert Blythe. . ." Anne scoffed weakly. Her arms were feeling weak, rather like butter. . . weighed down by her heavy skirts and blunt body weight all pulling and dragging her down toward the far-away ground. . . She thought bluntly to herself, just to have the stupid brewing thought out of her mind, Gilbert shan't see this as romantic, catching me, a damsel in distress, in his arms. He's only doing what is right and what anyone would do: helping a friend out of a mess. That's all he's doing and that's all he'll see of the matter and that's that. She comforted herself with that half-hearted thought.
Her eyes flew open and saw her straining hands laxing from weariness. She gulped. "Gilbert, are you quite ready to catch me?"
"Yes. Just let yourself fall."
She knew he'd positioned himself correctly but still felt the tinge of panic that he'd miss her as she intentionally loosened her arms and then finally let go of her hold on the branch. For less than a second she fell through the point between sky and earth and then landed solidly in Gilbert's strong arms. He bent his knees to spread the sudden pressuring weight and they both gasped as he carefully kept his balance and straightened.
Anne's hair had fallen from its responsible school ma'am's bun into waves down her shoulders. It was almost blindingly red in the demure sunlight pouring down on them.
She couldn't move for a moment, too breathless from the wind knocked out of her. She felt Gilbert's strong arms at her back and under her knees, two strongholds unbuckling against the weight straining against them. She saw his face, how he looked at her with those strong, determined, twinkling brown eyes, unfazed by what danger they'd just skated around. He had a nice nose, she realized, she particular upon the point of noses as she had a good one; a couple of almost unperceivable freckles reflected in the sun under his eyes. His lips moved as if he wanted to say something, something encouraging or funny to relieve them both, but as it was if he struggled to find anything to say . . . or, as if he struggled just to say anything. . . he was silent.
Anne decided levity must defuse the situation before Gilbert Blythe made the ill-timed decision of going the romantic way, completely ruining his selfless gesture and her mood. "Gilbert Blythe, you have a most decided knack for arriving just in time to get me out of scrapes," Anne said pleasantly.
"I'm glad of it," Gilbert managed to say.
"I thank you. You're a good friend," Anne said. She cleared her throat and looked at the yellowing grass expectantly. Gilbert, without a word, gently set her onto the ground in a standing position. He struggled, again, for words that got lodged in his throat. Anne brushed off her skirt and gasped, her eyes screwing shut as she brought her hands up to her chest.
"Anne, what is it? What's causing you pain?" She didn't fight Gilbert as he grasped her hands and examined them. A clinical seriousness overtook his face as he carefully passed his fingers over them. "Your hands have some splinters from the tree branch. We must get you to the Barry kitchen to have them cleaned up."
"I'll go there straight away. Diana's got a needle and a flame and can rid me of them quick as you please."
"Wash them thoroughly with soap and warm water, then drops of alcohol after she's gotten the splinters out. Dressed your hands with bandages if they continue to bleed. Take care she doesn't dig up your flesh searching 'round for them. If you'd like me to do it, I've a skilled hand—"
"I appreciate the offer, Gilbert," Anne said quickly, "but Diana's a girl. She definitely knows her way around a needle. My hand can suffer no more than her beautiful embroidery does." She knew she was being terribly cool and unfeeling toward him, but she knew she must be firmly against his advances or he'd continue in them until there'd be no escape from them. She gave Gilbert a reassuring smile, though, to show no hard feelings. She even went so far as squeezing her hands around his—as a reassurance that she'd be all right, not an encouragement, nothing more!
Gratefully, he took this as her latter point and said, "Of course. Let me walk you to the kitchen, at least, Anne."
Anne hesitated, but only for a second. They'd often gone on walks through Avonlea's long roads together, and they'd been friends for them all. There was no difference walking through the Barry's orchard to their kitchen. None at all.
Except for the fact that she'd been in his arms not a minute ago.
No, no difference.
Anne held her hands to her, grateful she hadn't smeared blood all over her skirt when she went to brush them off, and discussed pleasant things with Gilbert. He was after all not an ignorant man, and could take a hint from her as she meant it. As a precaution, he stuck his hands unmercifully in his pockets, not trusting himself not to absentmindedly reach out for one of her hurt hands to gently hold. They walked side by side, her with her waves of hair out, gold tints glowing in the sunshine, and him with his cap on, even as the sun passed over the slight freckles on his face. Their conversation, as usual, was pleasing and amusing, thoughtful and wondering, if a tad bit particularly trying and cool, as if they were both putting too much effort in being aloft and normal.
Gilbert Blythe made one small error that cast a little cloud of awkward gloom and tension over their little friendship. He became too transfixed with the glints of gold in her hair, and her sparkling, sharp grey eyes, and her perfect nose, and endearing freckles, and steady gaze. She'd been talking about the beauty of October, how she wished that the world may always have a ready supply of perfect Octobers, with its paintings of perfect trees and straining boughs full of apples. He ran with the poetic strain they ambled along and said like a man bewitched, "You remind me of an apple, Anne. Red and ruddy and crisp, sweet and tart and perfect." It lay in that last little word his blunder. Anne's face became even more ruddy and repealed of its humor as he hastily tried to save the conversation. "Also, everyone looks forward to your arrival, and you apparently fall off tree branches." Here Anne scoffed and fiercely glared at him, but her twinkling eyes and barely-hidden smile betrayed her. Gilbert felt like he'd narrowly escaped from falling into a fathomless pit.
He jumped off the precipice, though, when Anne hastily started up her conversation again, "Aren't Octobers glorious? They've unreservedly beautiful, as if playing out the end of the year as best they can, madly and with abandon, like an orchestra giving its final breath to the final chord of a masterpiece." It was indeed a fine October, full of close congregating trees with their crispy leaves of varying hues of dull brown, rich red, and blotched yellow, all intermingled and sharing secrets together. Leaf piles collected where farmhands raked them into reasonable piles—as if free-falling, wild leaves could be tidied up into little piles. The sky shone with a promise of winter; the air bit in a friendly way, its smells and drive and insistence whispering into your ear of a delightful promise, of wonderful things yet to come. "Then of course November comes and ruins the spells, crashing the world down into the final, bitter end of a once glorious year, in which we are settled until spring brings happiness again."
Here Gilbert said, staring at her gazing upon her beautiful nature with eyes of wonder, "Anne, I believe you are an October in a world full of Novembers."
He knew the moment he said it she'd react. Only she reacted in a way so unlike Anne that it worked better as a punishment for him and his words than a tongue lashing would've been. She bit her tongue and sealed her lips and walked quicker, driving them both into an uncomfortable silence of both of their own doing.
He eased open the Barry farmhouse back door for her once they arrived. His eyes never left her freckles and quick grateful smile until Fred Wright emerged from the kitchen and staring at his friend, let out a laugh. "You look like a gentleman and a sad puppy all at once, Gil."
Gilbert grimly let the door shut and pocketed his hands. He knew he looked that way, and wished he wouldn't.
Diana immediately fell upon Anne's injured hands with the manner of a worried, tutting mother-hen. Anne, having quite regained her queenly composure, sat with an amused smile as Diana settled her down in a windowsill far away from the delectable concoctions of the steaming kitchen and fell to her nursing task with gusto. Anne told her plain the facts of the matter while Diana sterilized her sewing needle and carefully flicked out the pervading picks of wood. She tactfully left out the October and Novembers comment.
Diana looked up with huge blue eyes. "Gilbert Blythe caught you in his arms?!"
"It was a matter of emergency. There was no time for any other plan; I couldn't heave myself up and feared falling to the ground anyway before he could get help."
"Why didn't you scream for more help?"
"I was too much struck dumb with horror and embarrassment. It was almost like I'd thought myself clear of my childhood's mistakes, like it was a bad habit I left far behind. I fear I am not as grown-up as I like to think myself, Diana. School ma'am I may be, but I am also still Anne Shirley, from whom all follies and strange problems ebb and flow like the tide."
"It was awfully fortunate that Gil was there, though. Positively Providential, as Mrs. Rachel would say. Why do you think he was over there in that little lonely corner of Father's orchard, anyway?"
"He was probably looking for solitude and silence, away from the rest of the pickers," Anne mused.
Diana inelegantly snorted. "He was looking for you, Anne; there ain't any qualms about that."
Anne looked at Diana disapprovingly. "You should use better grammar, Diana."
Diana hid a smile, finding it rather nice that Anne took offense to her little slip of bad grammar than the implications of her words about Gilbert. "Well, it was perfect that he was there to help you. But, Anne," Diana was ever the lover of romance, and even a firmer believer in it than Anne would let herself be sometimes, "he caught you in his arms! He rescued you!"
"Anyone would've helped me down from that apple tree; it was the right thing to do and you know that, Diana Barry," Anne said hotly.
Ah, there it was: Anne's bitter defense against any romantic leanings involving her and good-natured Gilbert Blythe.
Diana sighed and said, "Well, you can barely overlook the way he helped you down."
Anne didn't dignify that sentence with a reply.
Diana continued, sitting up straight and setting aside her needle. "I've gotten them all that I can see. How do you feel?"
Anne moved her hands and said, "I feel much better. You're an excellent nurse, Diana."
"Well, I may play the nurse, but you know what Gilbert plans to do?" Anne wished that Diana wouldn't keep the conversation centered on their friend. "I hear he plans to study to be a doctor." Anne kept surprisingly silent as Diana followed Gilbert's careful instructions to dress her hands. "He knew what to do for your hands," Diana hinted gently.
"Marilla would know what to do for my hands. She's handled enough of my pains for so many years that she's as well instructed in medicine as Gilbert is at the moment," Anne expounded mercilessly. She didn't reveal to Diana the knowledge that Gilbert had already confessed that secret yearning to her in their hours' long talks. She wished he kept it a secret just between the two of them. To have Diana know meant still others knew, breaking the little special shell of intimate secrecy she shared with him. Anne didn't like it.
Diana mused to herself, cocking her head as she pumped water into the kitchen sink and washed her needle and hands carefully. "Imagine him as a doctor, though, Anne. He's just the right amount of brains and human compassion to do it well. You know how hard he works in school."
"There are no medical schools here on the Island, and he'd have to go to college first, so it's so off in the future as not to entertain our thoughts now." Anne wouldn't let Diana know that she pushed away the thought of Gilbert being a doctor because she didn't want to think of him as leaving Avonlea and going far away for school. She wouldn't. "Let us live in the here and now of today, Diana Barry." Anne smiled as she squeezed her best friend's hands, making Diana believe that she was quite free from such heavy thoughts of the future. "Thank you for tidying up my hands, but let us go out and enjoy the day."
"I'll ask my mother if she needs any more help." Diana's excited tone was justified as Mrs. Barry gave her leave and the two girls bounded out the door.
Diana stopped Anne just shy of a copse of trees. Moody Spurgeon McPherson and Charlie Sloane were hanging from tree branches by their legs, their torsos flying quite wildly below their knees. Josie Pye and Ruby Gillis laughed and cheered them on from the ground, Priscilla watching with an amused smile. Gilbert leaned against the trunk of the tree, his arms folded and his eyes amused as he watched them. Fred stood beside him, clapping his hands and whooping at their friends' antics. Anne meant to join them but Diana whispered in her ear, "He'd make a handsome doctor, Anne."
Anne's arm was linked with Diana's; she drew her closer and said, "An apple a day keeps the doctor away, Diana, and according to our fine future doctor, I am an apple." Diana knew this reference as Anne had told her every significant word that'd passed between her and Gilbert, except the October and Novembers comment, of course.
Diana sighed and said, "Anne Shirley, you find so much color and romance in everything else, far more than I do. Why can't you see it here?"
"Because it isn't here, Diana," Anne said firmly. "I don't wish to see any romance in it and that's because I have a firm belief that there is no romance to it."
"Is that what Gilbert believes as well? That there's no romance in it at all?" Diana asked candidly. "I think you can't see the romance in it because you don't want to see the romance in it."
Gilbert now noticed the two girls and straightened, looking at Anne with unabashed, clear eyes. Anne sighed and ignored this last correct observation of Diana's and said, "If he knows what is good for him and me, he'll believe it." As they walked toward the group of Improvers, Anne herself tried to believe her words herself. She knew that it would be the best if they kept up a beautiful friendship untouched by such a condemning thing as romance that was sure to ruin it. She just couldn't quite believe that Gilbert believed that was true too.
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