Chapter XXXVII

April 22nd, 1887

Redmond Halls of Residence ~ a single man shares his final thoughts

After a serendipitous meeting with Monty Coniston, I find myself reconsidering my plans to summer on the Isle of Prince Edward this year. Naturally, Anne and I shall make a brief visit after our engagement, though I wonder if Anne's various connection could be persuaded to meet us in Charlottetown? It will be tiresome trying to come by suitable lodgings in Avonside when we don't intend to stay for long. The steamer to Italy leaves in May.

If I am not mistaken, and I cannot conceive I am ~ for Anne and I are of one mind and one heart ~ my sweet, selfless Angel will prefer a modest wedding if it means we may join the Coniston-Braithwaites on their tour. Their villa of Lake Como is bellisimo. Ah, to see my Beatrice in the land of Dante!

My hands tremble as I think of us married. What passions will be ours, when we may finally indulge in the arousing works of Rochester and Byron! When I think of her dewy lipped mouth reciting their luminous phrases I can scarcely hold my pen! Yet for all the wonder of the English language there can be nothing more divine to me than to hear Anne's simple yes.

Yes!

My sweet darling, yes!

I can see her sitting in our little pavilion, her voice inflamed with feeling as she utters the one word which will make her cherished dream come true. Oh, that I should be the man to bestow such joy upon her.

When was the day, the hour, the moment I knew my beloved Angel was meant for me alone? Was it when she stood at the lectern like Juliet that cold November eve? I believe that was when I learned that a sparkling intellect could furnish a woman with more radiance than a thousand-carat diamond.

Was it when I came to her rescue after she had been duped by her second-rate umbrella? I believe that was when I realised that men and women, though so different in substance, may be united by common sensibility.

Here was a maid who scorned the wildness of the weather and bravely ventured out with the spirit of Brontë in her breast. She was my windswept damsel, and in those stormy grey eyes did I see such candour shining back at me. Not for Anne the coy glances meant to obfuscate the mysteries of a woman's heart. From the very first moment of our acquaintance her beguiling manner all but declared ~

When I love I do not play with the idea, Mr. Gardner, I avow it fearlessly, I do not hold back!

I imagine once she is reassured of my intentions, this candour will duly soften. But it is my secret wish it should not entirely abate. That with the coming years, as we travel and dream and write ~ she her dear little books and I my penetrating monographs ~ her devotion should have a thread of that passion forever running through it. As wonderfully alive as her brilliant hair soaring like a banner of true love on the bitter November winds…

Later...

I have since amended my proposal and exchanged the phrase about "our love as a blossoming crown upon April's glories" to the phrase "our love like a scarlet banner flying bright through all adversity." For has not the world itself been against our union from the start? Darling Anne, to have so little faith that we might overcome our differences in upbringing, that she actually applied (and was accepted, clever Angel) for a position as headmistress at an Island school. Consoling herself with a life devoted to the dreams of children less fortunate, should we ourselves be barred from a life together.

How she intoxicates me with her modesty, her industry, her fervency. I love her! Love my dearest lady with all my heart, and yearn for the day I may keep her by me all the days of my life.

April 23rd, 1887

Be this day forever carved upon my heart as one of agonised woe, unbearable grief, and unimaginable anguish

She rejected me. Miss Shirley rejected me.

I cannot breathe. Cannot see the page before me. Nor bring one word to mind that might convey the torment, the torture, the humiliation, and the loss.

The agonising loss.

My heart is not merely broken. Oh no, she was not content to plunge her hand into my chest and shatter it into a million pieces. She gathered up each jagged remnant and threw them into the sea. Condemning that trusting organ to be drowned in the murky depths of love unrequited, and myself ~ a man who committed no crime except to love her ~ to live without his heart for all eternity.

I am ruined.

A mere shell.

The very winds of November sing through my carcass. Yet how I ache with exquisite, undeserved agony.

How can I return to Alderley without her? Aline will laugh, no, she will mock me! And Mother! What will she say? It is almost as though Anne intended to hurt me by as vile a means as possible.

But no...

No!

I love her.

Love that tempestuous soul; she who cannot be ensnared by any man.

I should not be surprised if she was incapable of love. Was there not always something unnatural about her? How else to explain the way she seemed to invite caresses; how her hands would linger too long on my person? Poor, oblivious Anne. To have come so close to your harbour, only to toss your salvation aside and leave me to drown in an ocean of woe.

Oh, that I could. What shall I tell Madame Lillian of my order for one hundred scarlet roses? Or the jeweller on Murchison Street, who promised a private viewing so that Anne might select the ring that spoke most to her soul?

Does she even have one? Did some villain do to her what has now been done me? Am I then compelled to smite the dreams of some innocent? It shall never come to pass. No matter how it might soothe my pride, it can never soothe my soul. Not even Byron, not even the Bard himself can assuage the pain I feel.

Oh Anne, Anne! So different in looks, in style, in expression to any woman I have known. I thought, no I believed that it was because she was different, that we could be different. We could have had such a love. We could have shown them all!

I would have showered her with all she desired. Never realising ~ fool that I am ~ that such a woman wants for nothing; that under her fiery exterior she is ice, ice cold.

A singular woman destined always to be single. Who cursed me to walk this earth alone.

(Must replace nib, this one write terribly.)

...

L.Y.H.R. Kingsport, April 23rd, 1887

And that, Mrs. Drury is that!

The year is over, the day is done. Mr. Blythe has packed his little trunk with his little belongings and returned to his little Island. I did my best, and as you know my best is far superior to the usual humdrum efforts. I managed to secure an interview with the illustrious Professor Keaton himself! What a bore it was having to wheedle an introduction from Andrew. The lies I told! But he would keep asking me questions! Why did I want to meet the head of Medicine at Halifax? Why my sudden and frankly uncharacteristic interest in the career of some earnest bookish sort? So I may not have painted Mr. Blythe in the most flattering light. But you saw his photograph, Phoebe – if Andrew had seen that he would have clambered back to Kingsport in an instant! As it is, he is anticipating a September arrival. Wyoming has been reached and so has my fiancé's capacity for patience.

"Got to decide one way or the other, my girl. I'm coming for you now. Either I find you at Belvedere awaiting yours truly, or you find a way to support yourself with that cello of yours. Because your Papa certainly won't."

After such a romantic declaration I don't have to tell you how I began to waver. But don't judge me too harshly, Phoebs, as I recall you had several wobbles before you relinquished yourself to Mr. Drury. You really should look into a more substantial lock for your bedroom door – or for your drawers! You've only just been delivered of little Fanshawe, surely you can't be expecting already. If you mean to give up the violin then I entreat you, tell me plainly. You needn't get with child yet again in order to make your point.

You won't believe this, but I entertained the notion of knocking out one or two myself. Call it panic, call it sentimental, certainly call it unaccountable, but I began to build what Mr. Blythe rather prettily describes as 'castles in the air'. Conjuring a fool's paradise whereupon he gave up Redmond to study under the esteemed eye of Professor Keaton, before stepping into a prestigious position at St Leonard's in Halifax. Truly, I was one mawkish step away from taking samples of drape fabric from Knott and Co and dreaming up names for our offspring!

It all came to nothing once Ma and Pa Blythe arrived for Convocation. Don't be fooled, Phoebs, these two weren't your usual hayseed yokels. They could hardly have produced such a son otherwise. My every suggestion: an invitation to summer at Belvedere, the faultless reputation of St Leonard's Hospital, the esteemed work of Keaton and his colleagues, was met with the same response from them – like a leitmotif that worms its way into your ear and torments you hourly:

"Our boy needs to go home, Miss Stuart."

"But the Professor will only be in residence until June!" I protested.

"Our boy needs to go home."

There was simply no persuading them. You'd think I'd been offering a bottle of absinthe and a night at a bordello! All my scheming was about to be undone, but I know enough about the male of the species to remember that what 'mother dear' wants is often at odds with what men want themselves. It was only fair that Mr. Blythe was made very sure of what he was giving up.

He called on me for the last time before he caught his train, so I just happened to say~

"When shall we announce it?"

"Announce what?" he said

"Our engagement, Mr. Blythe! You must have noticed the entire Reception was ablaze with the news."

I had hoped to make him blush or give the least indication that he warmed to the idea. Instead he went quite still.

"A better man would have put a stop to the rumour. I can only say I'm sorry. Not only for this, but for all the days I was stuck in a book, or stuck in a fog. Sorry too, if my folks offended you. They could not know the stature of a man like Keaton. That you persuaded him to meet with me – Christine, I don't deserve you."

Then he kissed me briefly, held me close, and was gone. My first feeling was utter relief. It's one thing to entertain the idea of an ignominious life on the arm of some doctor. It is another to actually live it. As overbearing as Andrew Dawson is, there's a certain thrill in knowing how determined he is to make me his. Whereas if I kept Mr. Blythe from his precious Island I should always be feeling I had married half a man (why don't you guess which half I'd prefer, Phoebs?) The man pines for that place the way he pines for that aggravating red head – which reminds me, have I mentioned her publisher is putting out a volume of her fairy stories? I wish I could scoff, you know that I do, but her work does have a certain charm. Your brats would probably adore it. Anne Shirley is as clever and whimsical as Mr. Blythe always averred she was. Not that I saw much evidence of it. Then again, she never saw my true side either.

I know all Mr. Blythe's secrets, however. I know he has been cursed with a freakish capacity for devotion – truly it goes to Wagnerian depths. And while I can certainly make a fair melody, even my talents could not drown out that dratted motif harking on about hearth and home. I really don't know whose tragedy is the greater, his or my own.

If I am not careful you might conclude that I already miss him dreadfully. Or that, heaven forbid, I would have given up my future role as mistress of Chessa Downes to be a simple doctor's wife. Worst of all, that I loved him! That I had fallen in fatuous, hopeless love with Mr. Gilbert Blythe!

But we all know that to be impossible, Phoebs, because I simply don't do love.

...