February arrives, brisk and frigid, bringing with it assignments and homework galore.
Christine finds herself spending most of her evenings at the kitchen table with Doris, each of them poring over their respective textbooks. Neither of them work quietly — Christine spends many hours by the piano, and Doris mutters and paces while she plans her essays.
Neither of them mind, though; it's comforting, in a way. The company.
On Fridays, they entertain callers. Gilbert is a frequent visitor, occasionally bringing along Charlie Sloane — a wide-eyed, mildly awkward, but amiable boy — and with Christine's laughter, Gilbert's good-naturedness and Doris's obliging conversation, Mrs. Murphy's parlor is a very lively place to be on Friday evenings.
More often than not, Christine spends her Saturdays with Gilbert, too. Despite the cold, they often go for walks, exploring the town's many streets and parks. She quickly discovers that Gilbert loves the outdoors; he is most himself among the birch trees, watching their slender trunks sway in the wind. They remind him of home, he says, his fingers brushing across their pale trunks.
(Christine isn't sure what reminds her of home. Frankly, she's not sure she wants to be reminded at all.)
On warmer days, they venture up to the Kingsport cliffs, where there isn't much to do except look — out at the vast expanse of the ocean, down at the deep red sand of the exposed cliffside, or at each other, faces slightly clouded by the puffs of their cold breath.
"It's so peaceful up here," Christine had remarked, the first time they'd climbed up together.
Gilbert had given her a wan smile. "I used to come up here by myself all the time last year. My friends had all gone home for the summer, and I needed some place where I could hear myself think," he'd said, twisting his fingers around each other, "so I just… came here to watch the tide come in."
That's how it came to be: she and him on Saturday mornings, staring out into the bay, watching the ebb and flow of the tide.
Gilbert is the one that talks, mostly. He stares down into the swirl of the gray-green ocean and tells her about his classes, about poetry he's read and loves, about medical breakthroughs he's read about in the paper that week.
"It's incredible," he says, palms spread in front of him as if he doesn't know how to hold this new information. "These scientists have basically found a cure, a vaccine, against rabies. People fight these diseases all the time, and it's like… it's like we keep inventing new kinds of weapons to fight them with. We're finding ways to win the battle."
He means to become a doctor, he tells her.
"That's what you were meant to be," Christine replies, immediately, and it's true: Gilbert was so passionate about fighting — disease, pain, ignorance — that she couldn't imagine him being anything else. There were occupations, and then there were vocations. Medicine was Gilbert's vocation, and that was the way God had intended it to be.
"What about you? Do you have any great ambitions, Christine?" he asks.
She kicks a pile of snow towards the cliff edge. "No," she says, slowly, "not really. When I was a child I used to dream about being a great architect, or a designer, but," she laughs, "those dreams are long gone. Andrew says I needn't work after we're married, anyway."
She'd told him about her engagement a few Saturdays ago, atop the same cliff. Actually, Gilbert had brought it up — Ronald apparently mentioned it to him in one of his letters. As it turned out, it was much easier to talk about being engaged when someone asked her about it directly.
"Are you engaged, Gilbert?" she asks, presently, suddenly realising she has no idea whether or not he is.
He makes a noise that sounds suspiciously like a scoff. She looks up at him, surprised, but he is still staring resolutely down at the cliffs. The tide has come in all the way now, gray waves lapping at brick-red sand.
"No," he says, shortly, still not looking up. He doesn't say any more, and Christine understands that it would be wise not to bring the subject up again.
"Do you know if someone broke Gilbert's heart?" Christine asks Doris, who is helping her do her hair. The Juniors are putting on a reception tonight, and Christine is going with Gilbert. Doris isn't going, because the Sophomores' reception isn't until next week, but she insisted on helping Christine get ready.
Doris catches her eye in the mirror. "Maybe," she says, slowly. "There've been plenty of girls that fancied him, obviously, he's one of the most good-looking fellows at Redmond, but he's never really, gone after any of them?" Doris's voice is unsure, and she lets her words hang in the air like a question. She pins a lock of Christine's black hair behind her ear. "Some people did say," she continues, "he had eyes only for this one girl, from his hometown, but I don't know what became of it."
"What was her name?"
"Anne, I think. Anne Shirley."
When Gilbert comes to pick her up for the dance, Christine is "glittering like an evening star," according to Doris, who is brimming over with admiration. "She looks beautiful," she says to him, as they watch Christine do a twirl in her gown — a deep blue velvet affair almost exactly the colour of her eyes.
"She does," Gilbert agrees, from his perch on the edge of the sofa. Jasper is curled up at his feet, and even he seems to nod in approval.
Christine smiles with warmth in her cheeks; as vain as it might sound, she was used to compliments about her appearance. As her mother had said once, it was her "one redeeming quality." Even so, compliments sounded different — better — coming from people that she knew and loved.
"Thank you," she says, hoping she sounded as sincere as she felt.
She enters the room on Gilbert's arm. It's the first time they've gone anywhere within Redmond together. These are his classmates, not hers, and the room is full of unfamiliar faces.
"I've just realised you're probably the only person I know in this room," she laughs, quietly. She's shy, especially around new people. Gilbert knows this.
"Why, that can't be true. There's Philippa Gordon, over there," he nods vaguely in the direction of a group of girls in brightly coloured dresses. Christine surveys them, and sure enough, Philippa Gordon is indeed amongst them, looking especially pretty in a yellow silk dress.
"I know of Philippa. I don't think we've actually had a conversation."
Gilbert is unfazed. "Well, how about Charlie? Look, there he is." He waves. "You can't say you don't know him, surely. I've seen you two have conversations. I'll testify to it in court," he says, jokingly.
Christine laughs. "Alright, alright. That's one. Who else?" She scans the room, her gaze landing on a tall man with dark hair. "Oh, actually, is that Roy Gardner? I didn't know he was at Redmond this year. The last I'd heard of him, he was in Europe."
She looks up at Gilbert, who meets her eyes questioningly. "How are you acquainted with him?"
"He and Ronald were classmates. I know his sister Aline a little, too."
Gilbert hums. Christine glances back at Roy, who is smiling down at his companion: a slender girl with starry eyes. She's strikingly pretty, Christine thinks, with the rich tints of her red hair standing out in the crowd.
"Do you know who she is? The girl with him, I mean," she asks.
Gilbert blinks, his face expressionless. "Anne Shirley," he says, quietly. "We... grew up together."
Oh.
The announcer calls the first dance of the evening, a quadrille, and Gilbert is all smiles as he leads Christine to the line. He takes her hand as the opening note plays, but she is very conscious of the fact that he keeps glancing at the laughing couple across the room.
Particularly, at the girl with hair as red as the Kingsport cliffs and eyes as gray as the swirling winter ocean.