Chapter Four

A Model Young Man

Gilbert could hear snatches of conversation with perfect clarity from his perch at the top of the stairs. They needn't have conferenced, cloistered away in the kitchen; even if his excellent hearing had failed him, his observational skills were certainly sharp enough to realise that Great Uncle Dave, all the way over from Four Winds, Uncle and Aunt Fletcher, Doctor Brown and mother and father didn't usually congregate together before church on a Sunday morning.

"… certainly entitled to a second opinion… or a third for that matter… there is a decent fellow in Charlottetown who could see you…"

"… taken hold, but not irreversibly…"

"… clean air, that's what's needed. Regenerate the lungs …"

" … no question of not helping … family is family …"

"… someone will need to stay, and someone will need to go, I'm afraid. We can't get 'round that …"

He had expected the summons; had dressed and tidied his hair, ready to present himself. He stood, poised as a sapling in the breeze; swaying back and forth, able in a moment to break away down the stairs when called. But it was taking ages and ages. One by one they slowly filed out … Doc Brown, Auntie and Uncle, and again, after an even longer period of time, Great Uncle Dave. And still he waited. All grew silent, but for the creak of the house in the early summer wind, and the grandfather clock marking its time like a dripping tap, and the sound of his breaths reverberating in his strong body.

There were footsteps, finally, and his father's voice, a little raspy. "Son?"

He did not bound down the stairs, but took them steadily. His hands were thrust into his pockets. His father's kind eyes followed his approach, and when he reached the foot, he patted him on the shoulder, and kept his arm there as he was led into the kitchen.

His mother had been crying, he knew; her smile was too wide and his own hazel eyes stared back at him, regretful and red rimmed.

He took his seat, between his parents; the arm about his shoulder, still and sure, and the hand his mother now grasped, too tight. They presented their case to him, because he liked things that way; he liked to visualise the points laid out in front of him, neat and logical, like a spelling list for school. Cross one off and move on to the next.

He asked his own questions in his clear sighted, direct manner, assimilating the information quickly, looking, if not for solutions, at least for a path.

John Blythe thought he had never been prouder; such a bright, quick lad, accepting things so stoically, still only ten yet already being such a brave young man for his mother.

Adela Blythe thought he had never looked so heartbreakingly young; that his hair, the adorable curls of his father, would be caught by the prairie winds and she wouldn't be there to smooth them down; that he needed his first pair of proper long pants before he left; that she would ache for the hugs that by the time he returned he would believe himself too old for.

Gilbert thought, just for a guilty moment, amongst the cacophonous swirl of everything else in his head, that it was only the very start of summer, and that he was meant to go fishing with Fred and Charlie next Saturday.

"Well, Miss Anne Shirley, I've a bone to pick with you!" Philippa Gordon flashed, taking her now accustomed seat midway up the musty Art History lecture theatre.

Anne, having been working her way through her chapters on The High Renaissance with barely suppressed excitement, turned to Phil, smiling at her arch tone.

"I can't guarantee there's much flesh to pick over, Miss Gordon, but you are welcome to try."

"Yes, well, if I keep getting up at clearly insane hours, going over my study notes, and then needing to feed my overwrought brain with midnight feasting, maybe I'd have a little less flesh myself," Phil grimaced comically. "But that is not the point of my discussion."

"No?"

"No. A particular young male freshman is."

"Now Phil, you can't squeeze anyone else onto your dance card next week," Anne offered indulgently. I have warned you of this!"

Phil's smile was smug. "Will you be squeezing Gilbert Blythe onto yours?"

Phil was anticipating a reaction; even she was startled by the swiftness of the way the pale complexion was overtaken by the vivid rose that accosted it.

Anne gave a little, forced titter. "I am growing to love your fanciful notions, Miss Gordon. I am sure our erstwhile leader of Freshman Class, football hero, Defender of the Faith, and so forth, will have much more to do besides scan the crowds looking for innocuous nobodies to waltz with."

Phil had to turn to flip through the pages of her own textbook in order to help hide her smile.

"Well, yes, Anne Shirley, that may well be, but what if he has a sudden pressing question about his English term paper?"

Phil now gave Anne the full complement of her self satisfied grin. Anne's grey eyes widened, and she composed herself with difficulty.

"He just happens to be in my Literature class, that's all," Anne made admirably smooth reply.

"He just happens to be in my Mathematics, and I've been raving about him since the first day. Why didn't you tell us you knew him?"

"There was hardly anything to tell, Phil, unless you want a precis of his clearly annoying and inflammatory views on most English novelists. And we haven't even gotten to any poets yet."

The lady doth protest too much, methinks 1 Phil smiled to herself. Anne was making a very careful effort now to arrange her papers in order, although her shuffling of them so haphazardly, Phil noted, was probably not the best way to do so.

"Well, my sweet, emphatic Anne, at any rate, if you are very good and promise to pass on your clearly superior notes on Michelangelo, I may inform you of a lovely invitation I've been deputised to give you."

Anne didn't have appropriate time to respond; a blonde head bobbed up beside them and shimmied in along the other side of Phil, just before their Professor entered and set himself up behind the lectern.

"Anne!" Priscilla leaned towards her, giving a very dramatic stage whisper. "What's all this about you and Gilbert Blythe?"

Gilbert had arranged to meet Maisie Monroe after his Mathematics lecture early the following week, in his attempt to pay any sort of court to the young lady he was accompanying to the first important Redmond dance of the year. He wished he could notify Charlie of his intentions so that he could come cast his overprominent eyes over the sight of he with the lovely blonde on his arm, not a care in the world, and report that back to the masses instead. Gilbert fully intended to parade them both about the whole of Redmond. But he drew an invisible line when it came to lounging under any oak trees.

Firstly, however, he would have to survive Mathematics itself. Seated in the general proximity of Phil Gordon.

"Hello, Mr Blythe!" she greeted buoyantly, giving him her most engaging smile.

"Hello, Phil. How is everything with you?"

"Well as usual, Gilbert. And yourself?"

"Oh, top of the world," he smiled broadly.

"Yes, I may well imagine," her look was bland but her tone teasing, and she gave herself away further by an ironic arch of her dark brow. She settled herself in, looking about the slowly filling lecture theatre.

"I hardly thought I would make it in time, today," she mentioned airily. "I was almost held up after Art History."

And there it was. He had been waiting for it. Phil was as smart as she was attractive, and he knew she wouldn't miss an opportunity after the connection between he and her fellow Art History student had been made.

"Oh, really? Well, it's a fascinating subject. All that Art. And, you know, the history of it." He decided he wouldn't give an inch.

Phil bit back a smile, her warm brown eyes dancing at their game.

"And the people involved in the discussing of the Art. So very clever! I can hardly keep up."

"I'm sure that's far from the case, Phil," he offered dryly.

There was a pause. "And how are you keeping up, Gilbert? It must be very difficult to keep abreast of all your many activities and responsibilities. All those different subjects. Mathematics. Biology. English… Do they all fade into one, after a time?"

Gilbert sighed to himself. Her allusion was obvious but effective.

"No, Phil. As I'm sure you're aware, it is possible to keep each subject quite distinct, and to give each area its due."

Phil raised both eyebrows now, and gave a small smile, turning, her rich dark brown curls swaying, to wave to various friends as they entered.

Gilbert watched her covertly. Maisie hadn't been the only girl who had caught his eye those first heady weeks of college. There was real personality informing Phil's prettiness, however, that had made Gilbert like her from the start, and not just admire her. He enjoyed her banter; her ability to laugh at the world and herself; her flirtatious frivolity, masking an intelligent, determined core. She seemed to notice him in turn, making it clear she enjoyed his company, although she was hardly short on that score herself. Something in him back then had hesitated, however. He felt, inexplicably, that they had recognised themselves in each other, and found the connection a little too close for comfort. When Gilbert looked at Phil Gordon he couldn't help but see himself, reflected back at him.

He frowned now, wanting to try to make something very clear, ironically coded though it was.

"Phil…" he began with difficulty, surprised at his struggle for the words, "I want you to know that … despite appearances … despite even what you may have heard … that I am attempting to treat each subject as carefully as I can." He fiddled absently with his pencil. "I have perhaps a little to learn from bad study habits in the past," at this he flushed faintly, "but I am mindful of not… well… of not flunking out."

His sheepish smile met her bemused one, but then Phil's look became contemplative, and her mask dropped. She stared at him for a long, uncomfortable minute.

"I hope so, Gilbert," she offered, kindly but firm. "I hope so."

Maisie was waiting promptly outside the lecture theatre, looking smart and modish and collegiate, in Phil's way, and indeed the two women made polite greeting to one another, chatting of mutual acquaintances and the dance, before Phil flicked a final glance at him and was on her way.

Maisie turned up to him her stunning, symmetrical face, untouched by frown or blemish, her smile bright as her hair, and the open, easy way she regarded him quelled some of the foreboding that had been brewing in the wake of his conversation with Phil.

"Hello there, Gil."

"Hello there, Maisie." He held out an arm with a smile. "Shall we?"

She took it eagerly, leaning slightly into him, and they started to talk of the safe subjects they had grown comfortable with, as they moved away from the buildings and meandered through the grounds. They chatted easily, with a little humour back and forth; her views on everything from their end of term biology exam to how her family spent Christmas offered as calmly and mildly as if she was perusing her shopping list. It was quite refreshing to have a perfectly pleasant conversation that was not fraught with meaning, with sly, teasing innuendo or uneasy undercurrents. He was not on quicksand here; he was on firm ground, his footing sure. It was a delight and a relief. She made him remember why he had liked her.

And then, the little niggles. She must stop and chat to every person she knew along the route, and she knew a great many people, and those few he didn't know himself she took great and lengthy delight in introducing him to. She called him Gil and he didn't know quite why it grated; except that only his closest friends called him Gil, or, he imagined, perhaps a future sweetheart swept up in his tender, all- consuming embrace. She talked at great length in description of her gown for the dance, specially made, and her details were so exacting, with her own budding scientist's eye, that he could picture it perfectly already, ruining any element of surprise, and wondered why she would now bother to wear it at all.

She looked at the world as he did; thoughtfully, mindfully, pragmatically. But he had been introduced to a little wonder and whimsy, and he found that he missed it.

She looked around her with the mind of a scientist, but someone else was making him see things, slowly, with the soul of a poet.

She made him stop, despite his obvious reluctance and numerous protests, in the small quad, amongst the tall oaks, and she called them by their Latin, when someone else had stared up and greeted them with Longfellow;

"Thou ancient oak! Whose myriad leaves are loud

With sounds of unintelligible speech…" 2

"Sit with me, Gil," Maisie invited, gently collapsing her skirts around her on the grass like the petals of a flower unfolding. It made his gut wrench, because it was so different from the image he carried around in his head of this place now, and another person in it.

"Oh, Maisie… I don't think so …" he tried to hold back a grimace, running an agitated hand through his hair. "I've kept you too long as it is."

She gave him a leading smile, head to one side, that he imagined she had offered many times before, with perfect results.

"Really, Gil? Are you sure you don't want to relax for a while?"

Relax? He didn't even want to be here now. He had to stop himself from squirming like a child and then bolting at speed from the vicinity.

"I'm sure, Maisie. Regretfully I need to finish up now. If you're ready I'll escort you back."

If his tone was too blunt her response didn't indicate it, and she extended a languid hand for him to help her up.

He did so, thinking that Charlie had better have seen this, and turned around to observe a flash of red disappearing quickly around the corner, and knew, with a truly sinking heart, that, typically, if Charlie hadn't, someone else certainly had.

"Perfect," he muttered darkly to himself.

"Beg your pardon, Gil?"

"Oh, that it's just been perfect, today."

"Yes it has!" her smile was sunny and satisfied, and she linked her arm back through his.

On the wall of the otherwise spartan, nondescript waiting room of the sanitorium, there was mounted a large, handsomely framed map of The Dominion of Canada.

Gilbert had already memorised most of it, in the six weeks since their arrival in Alberta; tracing over the foreign sounding, far off names, some that had once been but provinces and cities to memorise for school, now become real places on the tongues of those who surrounded him; Manitoba; Yukon; Saskatchewan.

After a jarring, displaced few weeks, life was beginning to settle into some sort of pattern. Not the pattern of what would have been, had he been home; out from sun up to sun down, meandering the lush fields and the fragrant meadows; sitting by still ponds; up the trees of their orchard, consuming the sweetness of too many apples until they became a biting ache in his belly. This was a different existence entirely; walking, not galloping; moderating the yabber of his youthful enthusiasm for something hushed and newly thoughtful; allowed to break away during his father's morning and afternoon naps to explore the great vastness of the endless prairies. He would stand there, on the edge of it all, imagining he was actually seeing the sweep of the earth as it curved around the horizon; the great winds blasting him, making his curls stand on end.

It would be better once they moved out properly to the homestead, but for now there were only the dull corridors and room after room of patients; the coughing like an echo following him; attaching itself to him like a shadow.

Gilbert watched the doctors and staff with an awed fascination; they were not personable types to chuckle over your scrapes and sprains, but tall and officious, striding with confidence, their white coats flapping in their wake. He envied them their knowledge and their certainty in their opinions, and their secret language which he tried to decode; the small smile, the tight nod, the raised eyebrows, the disappointed frown.

After a few days of recovering from their long, interminable journey, he had stood with their new housekeeper and de facto guardian, watching them wheel his father down one of those long halls, to have the surgery to collapse one of his lungs, to 'rest' it. Gilbert had been stricken into speechlessness, not quite understanding the process, thinking that he might not see his father ever again, that he would die, here, away from everyone, and he hadn't said anything, hadn't said enough, hadn't said I love you, hadn't said goodbye. When his father was well enough to see him, days again later, Gilbert had launched himself heedlessly at the pale, thin form, his frightened tears falling, his pent up, half swallowed words gushing from him.

Now, things were calmer; he could be steady and settled; he could charm his housekeeper, the widowed Mrs Milligan, for an extra biscuit; he could write to his mother and Uncle Dave; he could explore outside and return and know that his father would be there, sitting up more comfortably, book in hand.

"Hello, son," his father now greeted him, the gruff affection he had previously displayed having gentled; the touches, the hair tousles, more frequent. Gilbert had never spent so much time with his father in his life; there had always been the farm, there had always been something for him to do, pulling him away. But now there were long conversations and companionable silences, sitting by his bed, an easy back and forth. They were falling into a rhythm with one another, too.

"Shall we do 'Treasure Island' again today, Dad?" Gilbert offered. They were rotating through their collection of books, Gilbert reading aloud, his father offering the occasional correction or interjection.

"No, son," his father gave a smile, tapping the already worn tome that waited beside him. "I thought we'd begin on something meatier today."

Gilbert angled his head, but he already knew the title; 'The Complete Works of William Shakespeare'. He grimaced a little, disappointed. "Really, Dad?"

"What, the Bard himself not good enough for Gilbert Blythe?" his father chuckled, wheezing.

"No… it's just that, well, it's all the same thing. Short fights and long speeches."

This had his father in a near coughing fit of laughter. It took him several minutes and half a glass of water to have him composed again. A nurse looked around the door, her look disapproving but unsurprised.

"We mustn't disturb the patient!" she warned.

"Yes, ma'am," Gilbert apologised automatically, and turned back to his father.

"Son, let me tell you, all the magic and mystery of the world is found in these plays. All the answers you'll ever need to anything. I'm no reader like your mother but even I know that."

Gilbert's look remained dubious. He watched as his father flicked through the pages to perhaps the worst one of all.

"Why not start with your mother's favourite, then?"

Gilbert's face must have registered his mild horror. He'd glanced through 'Romeo and Juliet' a few times already. Romeo was a complete sap. Tybalt was a hot headed prig. Mercutio's fight scene and death were good, but before then he had a whole page of some demented, incomprehensible speech about some Queen called Mab.

"Girls like this one, you know," his father gave a wink. "It might pay in the future to be familiar with some of it. They are impressed no end when you can quote it back to them."

Gilbert very much doubted this. At any rate, the girls back home were hardly to be borne. They giggled the entire time and whispered to one another as he passed. They hid little gifts inside his desk. They dared one another to try to touch his hair when he bent over his work.

However, one of their first letters from his mother had contained a little note from Diana Barry, which, he acknowledged, had been rather good of her.

Something occurred then, to him.

"Have you ever quoted this to anyone, Dad?"

John Blythe's look was a little smug; there was a definite twinkle in his eye.

"Maybe. Maybe I have, at that."

Later, when his father needed to rest again, Gilbert drifted out and down the corridor, to the waiting room and the map. His fingers reached to trace all the way from the Province of Alberta to the Province of Prince Edward Island, virtually from one side of the country to the other. The Island was a tiny blob in the ocean. Charlottetown was barely distinguishable. And he couldn't see Avonlea at all.

Gilbert could hardly contain himself. They were finally starting the Bard in English. They would be at it for five weeks, either side of the Christmas break, segueing into the sonnets in the new year.

Of course, he and Anne had covered much of this ground already, in their own private discussions, and they had been in somewhat anticlimactic agreement; that Shakespeare was an unrivalled genius, that the tragedies would always have the edge over the comedies; that the histories contained altogether too many Henrys.

He waited for her now, impatiently, his restless fingers drumming the worn spine of the heavy Complete Works that he had carted with him, not just from his rooms today, but all those years ago, to and from Alberta. He had needed to work like the devil to keep up with her on everything else, but on this, he was quietly confident.

Anne entered in the nick of time, flustered and red cheeked, not observing (purposefully ignoring?) the spot he had saved for her, diving in refuge actually behind several fellow students, and as he waited patiently till she met his eyes, she gave him a glare as of Medusa turning men to stone.

So it was going to be like that, then.

She was mad about Maisie. Obviously he understood this. He wasn't a complete idiot. Further, he thought he was coming to understand her. And so it wasn't about Maisie so much as it was about the betrayal inherent in Maisie having sat in their sacred spot.

He felt, with a real, knawing sense of disappointment, that he didn't quite have the heart now to tackle Romeo and Juliet today; evidently neither did she. They both gave practised, perfunctory responses in discussion; Ed Sanderson had the floor for once and was clearly delighted.

They walked out quietly together, he subdued and she sullen, and down the stairs. Usually they would be laughing, amiably chatting already, trading quips, gathering under the trees.

They walked towards the smaller quad, but then she stopped, at the edge of it.

"Anne?" he questioned at her hesitation.

"You know, Gilbert, it's a busy time of year. I don't think so, today." Her response was crisp to say the least.

He let out a breath, turning to her.

"Anne, I'm sorry about Maisie. I won't pretend you didn't perhaps see me with her, or hear about it afterwards."

"Who you are seen with makes very little difference to me, Gilbert Blythe. And at any rate, it's hardly an unusual occurrence, considering you're taking her to the dance." Her tone had dropped temperature by several degrees, and now hovered in the direction of icy. It made him long for crisp.

He passed a hand through his hair. "Anne, Maisie is just a friend. She is no more important to me than any of my other friends."

Her grey eyes were doleful on his, before her gaze fell back onto the copse of oaks.

There was a long pause. "She is rich in beauty…" 3 Anne mused quietly, almost on a sigh.

Gilbert blinked, surprised. He knew that line. Heck, when it came to this play, he knew almost every line.

He juggled his trusty Shakespeare tome in his hands, contemplating.

"Be ruled by me, forget to think of her," 4 he urged, softly.

Anne was truly startled at that, and turned to him with wide eyes. She stared up at him a long moment.

"O, teach me how I should forget to think," 5 she questioned, her voice a little husky, eyebrows raised, that quality he knew so well now sparking in her.

Gilbert smiled widely, then, and paced slowly, determinedly, away from her onto the grass, turning his dark head back to her, his own eyebrow quirking, issuing his silent challenge.

Anne followed reluctantly, refusing to smile. She sat with a huff on the grass, collapsing, he grinned to himself, with all the affronted delicacy of a bull in a china shop. She turned to him, hands folded demurely in her lap, one ironic eyebrow reaching skywards till it almost met her forehead, waiting.

Gilbert tried to muzzle his satisfaction. He was going a bit demented regarding girls talking in code to him this week, but there it was. If she wanted Shakespeare, then by all means, let her have Shakespeare.

"It is my will, the which if thou respect

Show a fair presence and put off these frowns," 6 he warned.

Anne pursed her lips together, absolutely determined not to reward him with the smile he had demanded of her. Absolutely determined… and unable to stop.

She smiled in chagrin and rolled her eyes, shaking a frustrated head at herself as much as him.

That's more like it... Gilbert's heart gladdened considerably, and he thought over his next move.

"What lady is that…" he peered at her as if from a distance. "O' she doth teach the torches to burn bright!" 7

Anne gave an embarrassed laugh. "You are a saucy boy!" 8

He chuckled, a little delighted, and thought that perhaps truer words had never been spoken. But then he put a hand to his chest, and claimed with mock sincerity,

"…to say truth, Verona brags of him

To be a virtuous and well govern'd youth." 9

This heralded a paroxysm of fake coughing from Anne of the you must be joking variety. He waited out her theatrics with a smirk.

"O' speak again, bright angel!" 10 he urged, when she was then overtaken by an actual coughing fit.

She laughed genuinely, when her breath returned; a merry peal that seemed to ring and echo in the trees and reflected in the green within the grey of her eyes.

Anne surveyed him as he relaxed before her, stretched out, one hand propping up his long, lean body on the grass.

"What man," she questioned, "art thou that thus bescreen'd in night

So stumblest on my counsel?" 11

"My name, dear saint," Gilbert answered, "is hateful to myself,

Because it is an enemy to thee;

Had I written it, I would tear the word." 12

Anne colored at that, taking it more seriously than the gentle jest he meant it as. She looked down at her hands. Gilbert feared their game had taken on a new meaning, and his pulse skittered. Had he just ruined everything?

Anne's voice was lower now as she replied, and the blush still stained her cheeks as she recited the words with care;

"In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond,

And therefore thou mayst think –" 13

"Gil!" called a female voice from behind them, too close.

Anne and he had been facing each other and the trees, their backs to the path leading off the quad; their back to the world in every sense. But the world had come crashing in on them as it always seemed to; they both turned as one, startled from their iambic reverie, to see the polished, perfect blonde girl stepping smartly towards them.

"Gil!" Maisie smiled, her chirpy tone a little breathless. "Do you camp out at night here? It must be one of your favourite places!"

Gilbert leapt to his feet as if scalded.

"Maisie!"

"You'll ace the botany section of your biology paper at this rate, you spend so much time amongst the trees," she smiled knowingly at him, and if her pleasant tone had a certain arch to it he wasn't game to say.

Gilbert stared at her for a minute of gormless inaction, his mind riddled with the possibilities that would lead Maisie, with absolutely nothing drawing her to this section of the college, finding herself here, now, walking casually by, and didn't like any of them.

"Maisie… Ah, Maisie Monroe, may I introduce you to my friend and English classmate, Anne Shirley," he indicated to Anne behind him, and turned to see her standing, having hurriedly brushed herself down, and now exhibiting a small, welcoming smile, seemingly unruffled by the interruption. He envied her composure.

"Hello, Miss Shirley," Maisie nodded.

"Hello, Miss Monroe. It's very nice to meet you."

"And you, Anne."

"You must be looking forward to the dance next week. I'm sure you have been very busy with all your preparations."

"Yes, indeed!" Maisie gave a merry laugh. "I should have known heading the dance committee would eat up so much of my time! But all for a good cause. The football team is, after all, the pride of Redmond."

"Yes, we all believe so."

"And it's freshman captain, too, obviously."

"Obviously." Anne smiled tightly. Maisie's clear blue eyes turned to catch Gilbert's color heighten.

"And thank you, Anne," she continued, "for your generous support. You and Priscilla Grant, as you know, we have stationed on the refreshments table. It was very good of you both. I don't know how we would get by without our casual volunteers."

"Not at all, Maisie."

Gilbert looked from one girl to another as if he had gone slightly mad. What was happening? Was this conversation taking place, or would he now awaken to find he had fallen asleep on the grass, mumbling Shakespeare, after dreaming up this entire scenario as if in a fever?

"Well, I shall leave you both to your studies," Maisie smiled again, as if allowing them to continue after she had interrupted them was the bestowing of a generous reward. "I shall see you next week at any rate, Anne, and you soon, Gil."

He had not dreamed Maisie's hand on his upper arm just now, giving it a gentle squeeze.

"Yes, of course…" he found his voice. "Goodbye, Maisie."

"Goodbye, Maisie," Anne echoed.

"Bye for now!" another flash of a smile and then she was gone; a bright bowerbird, flitting away as quickly as she had come.

Gilbert turned back slowly to Anne. He had been slightly trepidatious about the two women meeting, and was relieved it had all gone so well. At least, he thought it had. He wasn't entirely sure of anything anymore.

Anne had bent over to collect her books, still loose, and her satchel. Gilbert tried desperately to collect his wits.

"Anne…?" he knew she had been on the cusp of quoting (saying?) something important. It would come to him in a minute. But…

"Anne! You're not leaving?"

The admirable composure he had noted, the smile as she shared surprising pleasantries with Maisie, seemed to have fled her. She was red and flustered, and quietly muttering to herself. He wasn't sure, but it sounded very much like O' serpent heart, hid with a flowering face. 14

No, this was actually not going so well.

"Wilt thou be gone?" 15 he tried to inject a little humour. It was not to be the correct approach.

Anne's head shot up at that, her red hair a firestorm about her now furiously red face. She seemed to be incapable of speaking at that moment. But then, something extraordinary; she stood taller, her expression became composed, and then she gave a wide, starry smile.

"I must be off too, Gil," she tinkled, and the brief imitation was uncomfortably uncanny.

Gilbert gave a scowl. Her use of his name in such a way unsettled him. "Anne, you're being ridiculous!"

"And you, Mr Blythe, are being naïve!"

"And how is that, pray tell?" his hands went to his hips.

Anne looked about them, suddenly more mindful than he of their very public forum for this best-in-private discussion. She lowered her tone and her own defensive stance.

"Gilbert, I did see you with Maisie here the other afternoon. I was coming back from the library."

Gilbert dropped his hands and thrust them into his pockets.

"As I said Anne, I was only walking with Maisie. I invited her to the dance, as you know, long before we became friends. I – "

"Yes, Gilbert, I appreciate that fact. You escorting Maisie doesn't have any bearing on our friendship. At least, that is, not for me…" she suddenly wavered.

"Anne, it does not for me, either," he replied with some force. "Please believe that!"

The look in her eyes nearly undid him. She nodded and cleared her throat.

"Well, then, I… that is, the difficulty is you insist that Maisie is a friend only, but have you asked yourself is she truly feels the same way?"

Anne saw his hazel eyes narrow.

"Anne…" he protested.

"Why did she want to stop here, in this particular spot, out of all of Redmond?" Anne sighed, exasperated. "Why did she just happen to pass by today? There's nothing for her here this end of campus. Except for you."

Gilbert's dark brows knotted together, remembering his own such thoughts.

"You're the one studying biology, Gilbert. Even I understand the basics of what they say about animal behaviour. And about marking territory."

Gilbert's spine stiffened. "I don't care what Maisie may or may not try to achieve with her little diversions, Anne. We won't let it affect us."

"Gilbert," Anne shook her head, her voice unsteady. "It already has."

He took an intake of breath at that, his face thin lipped. Anne glanced around at the grass, the trees, and finally to him.

"Enough; no more:" she claimed, and her grey eyes smoked with emotion. "Tis not so sweet as it was before." 16

Gilbert watched her stalk past him and join the throng of students heading along the path and away.

He considered bashing his head against on oak in sheer frustration; he was rather spoilt for choice of them.

"Oh, I am fortune's fool!" 17 he muttered to himself through gritted teeth; but he already knew, deep down, that fortune had very little to do with it.

Chapter Notes

"Fred Wright has a fine farm and he is a model young man." (Anne of the Island Ch. 28)

1 Hamlet by William Shakespeare (Act 3 Sc 2)

2 from 'Eliot's Oak' by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

3, 4, 5 Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare (Act 1 Sc 2)

6, 7, 8, 9 Romeo and Juliet (Act 1 Sc 5)

10, 11, 12, 13 Romeo and Juliet (Act 2 Sc 2)

14 Romeo and Juliet (Act 3 Sc 2)

15 Romeo and Juliet (Act 3 Sc 5)

16 Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare (Act 1 Sc 1)

17 Romeo and Juliet (Act 3 Sc 2)