Chapter 3 - The Storm
"Quick inside, everybody!" Ruby Gillis called to her guests as dark ominous clouds rolled overhead, obscuring the sunshine that had graced her garden party only moments before. "It's going to rain!" Ruby called out, trying to usher her guests inside before the calamitous event.
Anne Shirley looked up at the sudden pronouncement, croquet mallet poised in hand. She'd been concentrating hard on her next stroke, not wanting Gilbert to beat her even at something as innocent as a game of croquet, and had not noticed the darkening sky, now accompanied by a low rumble of distant thunder.
"Well Anne, it looks like we'll have to end this game with me in the lead," Gilbert gloated with a smirk as he stood leaning on his croquet mallet propped beneath him, one foot crossed over the other and his opposite hand resting nonchalantly on his hip. Their game was interrupted but he was pleased nonetheless at this modest victory over his old school days rival. If he were truthful he supposed he would have to admit that he enjoyed the challenges Anne Shirley seemed always to present him with. First it was their competitiveness to best each other in school with grades and marks...now that their school days were past the rivalry had toned down considerably and had developed into a more friendly, yet still fierce, rivalry in things like croquet and chess. Oh Anne Shirley wasn't one who liked to lose, Gilbert mused with a smile. She wasn't like the other girls who, he had discovered, pretended to lose to the boys on purpose so they could ohh-and-ahh over their manly achievement while batting innocent eyelashes at them, perhaps hoping to snag a greater prize than simply a game of croquet. But Anne Shirley was different. She wanted to win and made no bones about it, too honest and forthright in her manner to adopt the feminine wiles of her contemporaries.
But even without feminine wiles, Anne Shirley was certainly not lacking in feminine appeal, Gilbert thought suddenly, his expression darkening at the direction of his own thoughts. Take now for example. All fresh and cool in her frilly garden party gown, like an dew-filled dawn, the croquet mallet stilled between lacy-gloved hands as she stood interrupted, poised to make the next shot. Her trim figure was graceful and elegant, the delicate curves of her arms and neck exposed at the perifery of frills and lace.
"I guess we'd better go in, Anne," Gilbert prompted a tad gruffly, angry at himself as he tried to still his suddenly distracting line of thought. Thinking about Anne Shirley's womanly appeal was certainly NOT something he needed, or wanted, to think about. In fact he'd been trying his utmost over the past several weeks to think of anything BUT that appeal. Working on his father's farm for the summer had helped. The hard physical labour of his days had helped to keep his mind off the slip of a girl with fiery red hair who seemed completely oblivious to just how stunningly beautiful she was. "Are you coming?" he asked when Anne made no response, either verbal or physical, to his suggestion.
For her part, Anne Shirley had been caught unprepared for the sudden climatic change. She'd been so engrossed in her game with Gilbert that it had actually been one of the few times she'd paid no heed to the weather, not a usual occurence with her. The sudden pronouncement had startled her, had momentarily frozen her to the spot, even as watery pellets began to rain down on them amid the squeals of the other garden party guests bolting towards the house in a mad scramble for shelter.
"Anne?" Gilbert prompted questionly, puzzled now by Anne's immobility. It had begun to rain in earnest now but he didn't immediately follow the others into the house for the simple reason that Anne herself hadn't. "Anne, is something wrong?" he asked and took a step towards her, just as a loud clap of thunder sounded.
Visibly jolting at the noise, Anne suddenly broke from her mesmeric reverie, lifting her face as Gilbert gasped at the expression he read there and took another step in her direction. Suddenly Anne dropped her mallet and turned, bunching her skirts in her fisted hands as she sped her way towards the house. Gilbert followed close behind. Inside the cosy Gillis home the party-goers were laughing and joking amicably, rueing the sudden inclement weather that had partially ruined their outdoor merriment.
"Anne! Gilbert! Look at you two!" Ruby cheerfully teased, handing them both small towels as they stood just inside the parlour doors, Gilbert just slightly behind Anne, the room overflowing with people and most of the room's available seats already occupied. "It looks like you weren't quite fast enough to beat the rain. Dry yourselves off while I get the tea," she instructed, leaving the pair as she hurried towards the kitchen, an obliging and thoughtful hostess.
"Anne, are you alright?" Gilbert whispered, leaning close over Anne's shoulder. He hadn't liked the expression he'd seen on her face outside. For some reason it had raised a streak of alarm inside him.
"Of course I'm alright," Anne replied in forced calmness, feeling Gilbert's slight almost imperceptible breath on her ear as he whispered his question. Gilbert's warm breath, his low intimate whisper. She took a small step away from the whisper, the breath, and the man, and began to dab her face with the small towel. At Anne's obvious dismal, Gilbert retreated a step or two in the opposite direction, but kept his gaze on her. He watched her glance across the room to seek out and meet Diana Barry's eyes, while Diana returned her look with a sympathetic one.
"Why it's just like Noah's Ark!" Josie Pye was saying in theatrical merriment to the assembled room, her voice and face lit up in delight at her own cleverness. "All this rain....and all of us coming in two-by-two," she surmised suggestively, eliciting the desired result as titters circulated the room at her bold analogy. Words that weren't without a bit of truth, since most of the party guests HAD conveniently paired up male-to-female.
"Not quite Noah's Ark," Anne countered. "After all, that was 40 days and nights of rain, hardly something to compare to a light afternoon's downpour," she reasoned in practicality, disputing the farfetched analogy.
But Josie Pye was not pleased to have her limelight stolen, especially not by one Anne Shirley. "Oh please do spare us the lesson, Miss Shirley of Avonlea School. It's the summer you know and lessons are over," she rolled her eyes in mock forebearance.
Anne blushed at the public put-down. She hadn't meant to give a lesson, but Josie's reminder that she WAS a teacher only intensifed her embarrassment that maybe she had inadvertantly done so. She'd only spoken up because....well because....the chatter helped to distract her thoughts from those other things that were troubling her....the one that raged outside and the one who stood not far from her.
"Yes Anne Shirley, we can do without....," Josie Pye stopped her tirade suddenly midsentence, having met Gilbert's Blythe's gaze across the room. Visibly withering under its dark intensity, she realized her mistake too late. For such a look of anger, of repulsion, she had rarely encountered and its very intensity shook her to her core. Wisely deciding on an alternate topic of conversion, she turned to a nearby acquaintence. "Jane, did I tell you about the absolutely divine material I picked out for my dress for the White Sands ball?" as the room quickly returned to normalcy, the volume of social chatter rising to replace the awkward confrontation.
"Tea time!" Ruby Gillis happily announced, entering the room with a laden tea tray, pleasurably dispensing her duties as hostess as she affected quite a fine presentation of tea-pouring and offered the steaming cups to her roomful of guests. "Anne, will you take a cup?" she offered congenially as she made her way around the room to stand before Anne, cup in hand.
"Why yes, Ruby, thank you," Anne politely partook of her friend's hospitality, settling the cup and saucer in her hand, just as a loud boom of thunder overhead shook the house.
"Oh my, that was a big one," Ruby observed in nonchalant socialability. "Why Anne, are you cold?" she asked, suddenly noticing that the hands cupped about Anne's tea were shaking and the little tea cup trembled in its saucer. "You did get a mite wet out there, didn't you?" Ruby reasoned an explanation for her friend's sudden chill.
"Yes, I believe I am a little cold," Anne replied, happy for the excuse of coldness to hide the visible trembles that had nothing to do with her bodily temperature.
Turning to the assembled guests, Ruby called out in jovial comraderie, "Stack some wood on that fire boys! Let's get this room warmed up!" Turning back, she smiled at Anne and patted her arm. "Don't worry, we'll have you warm and toasty as quick as your eye," she said, adding a reassuring wink along with it.
Anne smiled her gratitude and watched as Ruby returned to the room's epicenter to continue her tea-dispensing duties. The small china cup continuing to tremble noisily in her hands, Anne turned and placed it on a nearby low table, looking up in time to meet Gilbert Blythe's eyes. He raised a brow at her, a silent question behind his gaze but Anne looked quickly away.
It was about half an hour when the storm was long over that the guests began to disperse, some of the men drying off the damp carriage seats of their buggies in anticipation of escorting their female companions home. Diana, Fred, Gilbert and Anne made their way on foot, their voices light with laughter as the women playfully traversed around puddle edges, raising the hem of their skirts slightly, carefully trying not to succumb to a potential watery stain. A puzzled expression remained on Gilbert's face as he watched Anne, who had now returned to her old mischievous self, all traces of her pecular demeanour of the past afternoon now lifted from her frame. Putting a hand to Diana's elbow, he held her back a moment as Fred and Anne gained a slight distance on them.
"Diana, what was the matter with Anne?" he asked when Fred and Anne were out of earshot. Meeting Diana's stare he elaborated, "Back at the house....during the storm. She wasn't herself. What was the matter?"
Diana looked blankly at Gilbert, surprised by his question, even more surprised by his astuteness. Not one to betray a confidence, she shrugged slightly.
Not satisfied, Gilbert persisted. "She seemed....she seemed almost....frightened," Gilbert said, almost suprising himself with the word. Why Anne Shirley was one of the most confident, outgoing people he knew, without a timid bone in her body. That he'd actually seen fear in her eyes was a strange revelation to him.
Diana eyed Gilbert silently a moment as she wrestled with herself. It wasn't really a broken confidence if he already mostly guessed it, was it? "Anne doesn't like thunderstorms," Diana told him.
"Anne doesn't like thunderstorms?" Gilbert repeated.
"No," Diana shook her head, then decided she'd said enough and turned to run catch up with the others, leaving Gilbert behind to stare thoughtfully ahead.
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Author's Note: Please leave me story reviews! I desperately crave your comments as my motivation to keep going.....you have no idea how an empty inbox thrusts me into the depths of despair! ;)