Chapter Sixteen
The Sorrows God Sent Us
Dearest Katherine
I am writing this letter to you in my head. I compose most things in my head and in times past you did like to say how I lived too much inside my head – or that my head was in the clouds – but I believe that you will forgive me it now. I cannot talk with you at the moment. You are not to be reached; you are on a fierce tide of fever and I try to swim towards you but the waves push me back. I cannot even read to you because it agitates you and I get in the way of kind Dr McCubbin and his own efforts to swim out to you from the distant shore. So I sit here, Katherine, as wonderfully still as you always instructed me to, and I hold your hot hand seasoned with my tears, and instead of my silent scream you have my silent words.
Please, Katherine. I beg you. Please don't leave me.
You will hate the begging, I know. It is undignified and melodramatic. Well I am afraid you will just have to put up with it. I beg you not to leave. I beg you to remember it is not your time… that it is so very far from your time… that this entire illness is ridiculous and you will acknowledge the ridiculousness of it and open up your amber eyes and look at me imperiously. I still recall the first time you did thus – do you remember? I crept towards your majestic presence and the poor shadow serf I was refused to bow, though she had been browbeaten and cowed enough to ensure submission for a lifetime. And you recognised something in her… or perhaps you just liked to be challenged? Later I would suspect that you saw a little of yourself in me. I have always held onto that.
I'm sorry… my tangents… and so, we debated Tennyson. I hated 'The May Queen' and could hardly tell you why, except that it was so unrelentingly cruel and bleak and accepting of Death as some sort of benevolent punishment for unmitigated pride… I have come to love that old Poet Laureate but I don't think I will ever make peace with that girl skipping to her end. It was certainly not 'The Lady of Shalott'. But then again so few things are. You decried my romanticism even as you overlooked my own pride to see something in me… a tiny flicker of a flame; a spark not quite yet extinguished. And you fanned and stocked the flame till it smoked and then burned again… How can I thank you for something we have hardly dared put into words? How can I thank you for knowing me when I still scarcely knew myself?
'…thanks for… each silent token,
That teaches me, when seeming most alone,
Friends are around us, though no word be spoken.' *
Well, I should recite to you… even in my head. Something rhythmic yet unsentimental. Will more Longfellow do? I can hardly think… the lines blur and merge into one another… Not Keats for you, certainly… do you know he might have been a doctor? Forgive me… I am 'interrupting with intrusive talk.' ** I thought that was your own phrase for years, you know. It so suited you, and it was so very true of me.
I should have written more once I arrived at Redmond. I'm so sorry, Katherine.
It was so surprisingly difficult to leave here, but once I did, I was so caught up; ensnared; enraptured. It is what you knew would come to pass, is it not? That the world would rush to greet me. And it is an amazing, thrilling new world, Katherine, and so too the people in it. Enthusiastic and generous and clever and kind. I toiled here in the coal mines with you, and now I am the canary singing. But how can I be properly free knowing that you are still caged? How can I in all conscience dream bigger for myself as you urged, when your own dreams have been forced so small?
It's not fair, Katherine! It's not fair!
Gilbert Blythe is still here with us. With me. I will not leave you until you are well again and he will not leave me. So, there it is. If either of us are to graduate our first year then you must fully recover. There is our challenge to you right there. Be it on your conscience, Katherine; if you do not wish us both cluttering up the halls of Summerside High School because we have been unceremoniously relieved of our positions at Redmond you had best rally yourself immediately.
I wonder what you think of Mr Blythe. That he is handsome and charming I knew would not sway you, and I warned him as much. I confess that we have had our challenges, he and I, as I alluded to over new year, and I rather looked forward to you bringing him down a peg or two. Despite my best efforts I am afraid I have not been too capable of doing so. And yet I… I confess… I am losing the will to try. He is… I find him to be… oh, Katherine, I hardly know! I can hardly tell you what has come to pass between us, and I fear you will be disappointed in me anyway. That you should think I was so completely swayed and so easily won. That the very first flattering word… the very first mildly admiring glance… and I should forget myself and my goals completely. But it is not like that between us. He is not like that. I perhaps believed him to be, once, but that was before I knew him, and before he began to know me. And now you know him too – though you have all along, haven't you? The boy who topped the entrance exam to Queen's. We first out of all those others. Was that not Providence at work? I am not sorry, now, that I did not meet him then. I would not have fared well, I suspect… I would not have been ready to encounter him. Some days I scarcely believe I am readier now. All I can tell you, and you have seen some of it yourself, is that in all sincerity he has been a little marvellous whilst he has been here. We both need to thank him unreservedly.
I should perhaps leave off the poetry and turn to prose… the only novel I have with me is 'Jane Eyre', of course. Our talisman, Katherine. I confess I find myself going over those lines in my head – they demand to be remembered, and felt, and applied. You might think you are Charlotte Bronte but you have a little Emily in you… You are 'no coward soul', *** Katherine Brooke. I know you can fight this. I know you must fight this. I cannot do without you. I can not and will not. We two are 'inextricably knotted to a similar string'. **** Please, Katherine, don't make me bleed internally… or I shall bleed and bleed till there is nothing of me left.
Katherine! You who has fought all her life, for every speck of an opportunity, don't give up now! Fight for yourself! Please, Katherine, please!
'I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand –
How few! And yet they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep – while I weep!
O God! Can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! Can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?' ***
Don't drown, Katherine! Please fight! Please swim!
I am on the shore, waiting. Waving to you. Praying that you see me.
Love always
Anne
Dear Gilbert
I hesitate so… I almost say 'Dearest'. Dearest GiIbert. Dearest…Gil. It seems a lifetime ago when I breathed your name under the tree, and so much is changed that I… I sometimes feel that I can barely look at you without betraying myself utterly. I feel that I may never know what it is to be normal around you again.
How good it was for you to come here with me. How wholly and wonderfully good. I fear that is something not many people recognise in you, couched as it is in other things that so readily distract… your joking manner, your easy smile, your blinding intelligence, your affable nature, your physical presence. I admit I was distracted by these other qualities at first. I may also add your damnable smugness, your annoying ego, your coterie of unending friends, your overload of responsibilities and commitments, your… well… your impossibly wide shoulders and your laughing hazel eyes and your elegant hands and really, must you add your wayward curls to the equation as well? When I said you were too much, Gilbert, I meant that in every possible respect… that how could I, 'poor, obscure, plain and little' ****** ever think you would look at me without some sly ulterior motive made at my expense?
And now… and now… every time I close my eyes I am back in your arms. So much so that I never want to open them again.
You say that you cannot control who you are with me anymore. Well, I am laid bare by you, Gilbert. And I will tell you a part of that frightens the wits out of me.
This was not the course I had chartered for myself. I was away to Redmond to make something of myself, to stand independent and apart, not to fall in with the crowd. I will own that I had grown a little like Katherine… in emulating her achievements and in craving her approval I had perhaps adopted some of her prickly reserve for my own. I was afraid for you to see me as myself. I don't… I don't know if you quite still do, even now. I am afraid you have some sort of pedestal ready for me, and your long fingered hand is extended to help me up to it; the audacious girl who dared challenge you and play with you at your own game. This terrifies me, Gilbert, because then I cannot fail to disappoint you, for I… I am not… I am not a perfect creature. And I know you would not have yourself thought that way, either. I admit that your vulnerability and your softness hidden beneath your resolute shell of wry teasing and unflappable confidence… well, I am undone by this. You possibly think me perfect in my imperfections, Gilbert, but if you really, truly knew those imperfections… the chapters I still keep to myself… I don't know if you would look upon me with that same wondering hazel gaze. And now that I have felt your eyes on me how can I go back to a time when no one saw me at all?
Well, one person saw me. Even before Katherine. He saw me in all my imperfect grace, Gilbert, and he accepted me, and he risked everything for me, though he was just a boy and I was just a girl and we were just children, clutching one another, terrified and traumatised, shivering together in the darkness. I cannot forget him. If you allude to me as a puzzle then he is my missing piece, and perhaps I am, even after all this time, still his. If he were a stranger it would be easier – you could consign him to my past. But he is part of your past too, Gilbert, and of your present, and I am so sorry but I can't move forward… I can't move at all… till I resolve the part of myself that is bound to him. I wanted so much to quote some other Shakespeare to you – perhaps one of our sonnets – and not call you my 'companion', but perhaps 'Lord of my love'. ******* How I blush to even think it, to even say it to myself. You have my heart, Gilbert, but he still holds a piece of it too.
Please keep faith with me, that there will be a time when things will be made right again. When we may take our book down off the shelf and read it together, and laugh – and cry – over it, and rejoice in it too.
With all my… fondness… and gratitude… and…
…and love
Anne
Dear Tom,
Here it is, me again, writing yet another imaginary epistle to you. I wonder how many over the years? How is it that the imaginary letters are so much easier than the actual ones?
The hardest letter I have ever written was to you before Christmas, Tom. The real you, live and grown and safe in Avonlea, and knowing Diana and Fred and Ruby and Jane and Charlie and… and Gilbert. I still find it slightly incomprehensible. Not that you should know them, naturally, but that I should meet them, and become friendly with them myself, and that they should lead me back to you.
I promised I would find you again, Tom. I know it took longer than it should have, and was not in the way that I imagined. It must have been such a shock to you, Diana coming up to you like that. She was very sorry for it, but could see no other way. Was it too much of a shock? Was it unwelcome news after all this time? Did I take too long?
I never meant to take so long. In the early days I was so demented with the thought of seeing you again that I made myself quite sick with it. I was desperate to hear anything of you. I have that letter, Tom, still… the first, and the only. I dare say there were others, but Mrs Cadbury kept them from me. Did you ever receive the one I left with Martha? Did you ever even know I had left the Asylum? I was sent to Summerside, Tom… I went to your Island. Is that not the most hideously 'tragical' thing you ever heard?
And now I am back here again… I can hardly tell you how it tears me to pieces, to be on the same general patch of earth as you, to have us both on this island fringed by sea. I am back only for the second time since I left, but this is the first time where… where… we know that the other is in the world again. I hear such amazing reports of you from Diana, Tom… that you are tall and strong and gentle and shy and… and handsome. I don't doubt any of them. Perhaps one day I will be able to see for myself. As for me… I hazard I am not much changed, unfortunately. I don't know what you would make of me now. I tried to hold on to the part of me that you found special… I don't know if I succeeded… because I also brought along the other parts of me, the other memories… they are fixed, immovable. I cannot budge them. But to try to forget them is to try to erase you, and I could never countenance that.
So I am here, in Summerside, and my dear friend and teacher and guide is sick. She is so sick, Tom. We fear so greatly for her. When I am not holding her hand as she burns with fever, as the doctor tries to bleed the infection out of her, I am wandering the halls, half crazed with worry and lack of sleep, and all I can think is that the smell here is the same. The smell here of the Home is the same as at the asylum… of antiseptic and longing and fear… and it is like I am back there with you, or that you are here with me… that I am cast back to you, again and again, on the tide. Will that always be the way of us, do you think?
I cannot lose her, Tom. I lost you. I lost my parents. I lose everyone. That great unseen hand comes and plucks them from my grasp. And you have lost so much as well. Why is it that the ones who have lost already are still plundered for what precious little remains? I know we neither of us are wholly committed to the idea of a generous, benevolent God… not when we have seen what we have seen… I know I should not have such shocking, blasphemous thoughts; not when I am praying and pleading to this same Holy Father in the same breath.
We must wait for this endless day to end. I don't know what lies on the other side of it. I am trying to make things right with you… with others. Please write to me Tom, and let me know that I am forgiven for waiting, for being too scared, for being so slow to give you the assurance I am seeking myself from you now. I fear after being so faithful to the memory of you for so long that I have now betrayed it; that I have betrayed you. And if that is the case I might just as well crawl into bed with Katherine right now, and embrace her as Jane Eyre did Helen, and let the fever take both of us away.
Sorry, Tom. I do not mean that.
I am not making sense now. I am too anxious and afraid.
I will wait, on the other side of this desperate day, for my friend Katherine. For my other friend… and for you.
Yours ever,
Anne
Chapter Notes
"Do you remember what Dr Davis said last Sunday evening - that the sorrows God sent us brought comfort and strength with them, while the sorrows we brought on ourselves, through folly or wickedness, were by far the hardest to bear?" Anne of the Island (Ch. 6)
*from 'The Seaside and the Fireside: Dedication' by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
** 'The Seaside and the Fireside: Dedication'
***from 'No Coward Soul is Mine' by Emily Bronte
****Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (Ch.23)
*****from 'A Dream Within a Dream' by Edgar Allen Poe
******Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (Ch. 23)
*******Sonnet 26 by William Shakespeare