Another chapter too long in coming… and thank you to everyone who continues to read this and search for updates… Not to mention my wonderful, faithful reviewers! Not such a long epistle as usual (thank goodness!) but I do hope you all enjoy spending time with an adult Tom at last!

Currently the narrative is into the second term of the first year at Redmond; mid February 1884, but this chapter takes us back to December 31st, 1883; New Year's Eve. It is a mirror for the latter part of Chapter 10: 'Winds of Hope and Memory' which was told from Gilbert's perspective; this counterpoint, naturally, is Tom's.

Chapter Eighteen

Old Blossoming Hopes

The last day of the year eighteen hundred and eighty three began the same as any other for Tom Caruthers.

He rose well before dawn, long limbs and lingering dreams slowly unfolding themselves, the narrow bed over the braided rug too small now to properly contain either. He stood and stretched languorously and walked over to the wash basin. His shave was completed in careful, considered strokes; despite the cold and bitter late December morning he never rushed and never nicked himself. Large, strong hands were as steady here as they were in directing the plough, or driving the new, mighty thresher, or gliding his knife across a pristine lump of wood. Everything about Tom Caruthers was mindful and modulated; even his thoughts.

Mostly.

He paused today to stare into the glass, not quite with his usual indifference, noting the strong-jawed face, browned in the summer sun but now faded to fair; the aquiline nose and dark sandy brows above pale blue eyes; the hair the color of wheat as it ripened, cut into a shorter, serviceable style that seemed to highlight the corded strength of neck and shoulders. He was past twenty now; boy no longer, and yet this time of year always heralded childish fears and memories long suppressed; the death of his mother… the arrival at the asylum… the meeting of her.

Another year.

" 'I have finished another year', said God,

'In grey, green, white and brown;

I have strewn the leaf upon the sod,

Sealed up the worm within the clod,

And let the last sun down.' " *

His gaze flickered across to the new suit, pressed and expectant, hanging outside the wardrobe. Specially made and fitted across wide shoulders, strong torso and the extension of long muscular arms, the trousers accounting for even longer legs sinewy and shapely, the charcoal cloth both practical and hinting at something that was not. Unbeknownst to him, Marilla and Matthew had gifted him a second suit of navy for Christmas, leaving a note with the tailor in Carmody to reuse his measurements, and had added a new shirt, tie and pocket hankerchief into the bargain. He quirked a smile at their endeavours to have him trussed up like a blue-ribboned bull at the county fair.

He wiped at his face, dragged a comb through his hair and pulled on his overalls; his second skin.

Yes, that was more like it.

"Ah child, thou art but half thy darling mother's…" **

He wondered if either of them would recognise him now; his mother… or Anne.

The thought gave him a little pang; was he really so very changed? There was enough of the pale, stricken boy who had washed up at Green Gables, as if flotsam on the tide, still lingering in his low moments; his hard-won, quiet confidence occasionally dipping to pool at his feet. When despite the love and care and kindness; the safety and warmth of new family and surroundings; the purpose and pride of his life on the farm, there was the whisper on the wind, the echo in his ear, the pummel of his pulse…

Her.

"You did not come,

And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb…

Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its' sum,

You did not come." ***

Tom's sigh was of despair released; working itself up from the bottomless depths. He moved over to the window, leaning his long body against the frame, looking beyond the bare branches of the cherry tree to the sweep of fields and the dawn-streaked sky. Somewhere she must be waking soon to the same wan winter sun under the same canopy of clouds. She would be grown as well, of course, though he could hardly believe it; eighteen? Nineteen? The years for him flowed into one another but the image of her was frozen as if trapped beneath ice. What of the girl remained in the young woman? All he saw in his mind's eye was hair and eyes and arch smile and armfuls of books. Perhaps that was, still, as accurate for her as anything.

He had garnered a modest little library for himself, and wondered if that would make them both proud. The shelving he had built hardly housed a highfalutin' collection, and he wasn't much for novels, excepting those he had tried to read to his mother when she was sick, and revisited when his skill and his internal fortitude were equal to them. He liked her Dickens well enough, though Shakespeare remained largely incomprehensible, and his favourite – she had drummed into him that he must have one – was still The Three Musketeers, somewhat unsurprisingly.

All for one and one for all.

Although it wasn't Dumas who directed his thoughts these days, but the poetry anthology he tried to steadfastly, doggedly work through, gifted him by Miss Stacey when he left school at sixteen to work the farm full time, as Fred Wright had previously done. He had plodded along miserably under Mr Phillips' instruction, slipping and sliding in his studies as one attempting to climb a muddy riverbank, but when the generous, patient, twinkle-eyed new schoolteacher had arrived, he felt instantly inspired, if not always more capable. At school thereafter he kept pace with Fred and in reach of Charlie and Moody; meanwhile Gilbert streaked past them all like a flaming arrow towards some far off, unseen mark. One could hardly begrudge the young Mr Blythe his academic success any more than his popularity with the young ladies or his dashing plays on any patch of grass remade as their rudimentary football field; he wore all his successes so lightly, with the easy charm of d'Artagnan himself.

And now, there was no one to keep pace with. Everyone was in Kingsport at the moment, even Fred. They had all been back over Christmas of course, and he had managed to see Fred once, in between his visits to Diana, and hopefully would encounter all of them tonight, but it wasn't the same. Tom had mechanised, modernised and diversified the farm till Green Gables had become one of the most profitable properties in Avonlea, and it had taken every ounce of him over the last four years; all the blood and sweat and toil harnessed towards safeguarding their security. And just as well, too; between Marilla's eyes and Matthew's heart; the arrival of the twins and the newly widowed Rachel Lynde he sometimes felt he was the last bastion; the only thing stopping any of them from tumbling over the cliff and into the abyss.

Could he stop himself from doing so?

Seven years.

It was perhaps time enough. 'World enough and time', **** Mr Marvell informed him. His waiting had become a self-styled purgatory; a near-Monastic existence that too closely echoed the memory of Matthew's slow slide to bachelorhood. He knew it worried Marilla, and he could never have that. If he had been a bastion, they had been balm; ballast; bolster… and blessing. If not for them he would have become the whey-faced whipping boy of some short tempered tradesman; or a beleaguered, brutalised factory worker; or one of the very street urchins Rachel had so decried his first full day at Green Gables.

That you took your chance… and used it well.

To be the man I know you can be.

Her words were with him every day. They were a talisman, but also a torture. He didn't know how much more his heart could stand them. Perhaps, like Matthew's heart, he had a weakness there; a fluttering; a murmur... she was his murmur, his stutter, his pause.

Anne wouldn't want this for him.

She couldn't want this for him.

It would be a new year. Shouldn't that mean something? Letting go of the old? Embracing the new? Should auld acquaintance be forgot?

He couldn't forget her, and that was the problem; the question and its answer. His very life here was tied to her, and moving forward meant taking her with him, even as a ghost. If he severed the link for his own sanity he only made her hold stronger, for like Siamese twins ***** in a sideshow exhibit, he couldn't set her adrift without subsequently drowning himself.

Marilla's firm voice called up that breakfast was on the table.

Tom closed the door to the little east gable room and on his betraying thoughts, and hastened downstairs.

"Will you kiss anyone at midnight, Tom?" Davy questioned that evening, with an enthusiasm more reliant on the intriguing illicitness of such an act than in the thought of the actual kiss itself.

"Davy!" Marilla warned, having to avert attention from her adjustments to Tom's tie in order to glare at the younger boy warningly. "Mind your manners!"

"It's just a question," came mumbled reply. "It is what people do."

"Is it indeed, Davy Keith?" Rachel chuckled from her perch in the rocking chair, interrupting her knitting to wade with enthusiasm into the swelling conversation. "And how would you know, young man?"

Davy gave a determined frown, now caught between defending his newfound knowledge, courtesy of a whispered conversation overheard yesterday between two older girls as they all shuffled, half frozen, out of church, and the clear desire to not incriminate himself for eavesdropping, falsifying information, or both.

Rachel raised imperious eyebrow in response to his silence, and Marilla rolled her eyes and turned her efforts back to Tom's tie.

"There, Tom," she smiled warmly, noting the faint flush to his cheeks, residue of Davy's impertinent conversational gambit not a minute after Tom had come down the stairs. "You'll look as fine as any man there tonight."

Tom gave the half pleased, half embarrassed smile he had given since he was twelve.

"Thank you, Marilla."

"Fine?" interjected Rachel cheerfully, content to continue in her efforts to mortify anyone in proximity. "I daresay he's nigh the catch of the county now, what with the farm doing so well and filling out that new suit so nicely. You can have your showy Gilbert Blythes and such, all flash and flair, but I'll take a decent, hardworking, modestly good looking sort any day."

Rachel Lynde's clear preference for quiet, fair young men named Thomas was both high praise and running joke in their household; Tom, cheeks now fully darkening, had long wondered how easy her acceptance of him, and indeed her loyal and strident support, would have been had his mother decided on Harry after his so-called father instead.

Tom nodded sheepishly at the ladies and backed away to the refuge of the kitchen table, playfully shoving Davy and rolling his own eyes at Dora.

"You do look very handsome, Tom," Dora admitted after careful perusal, hazel eyes lighting with new interest; years from ready, at eight, for the lingering looks of admiration her own blonde beauty would eventually inspire in the little Avonlea schoolhouse, but ready enough to find it for her de facto big brother; whose quiet, steady demeanour called to her own, and whose gentle, unflappable presence was a much-needed contrast to her blood brother's oft- annoying alacrity.

Tom now mumbled himself in reply, making Davy before him look like a soapbox orator.

Marilla expelled an impatient breath, wishing everyone would clearly leave well enough alone; she had a mighty job getting Tom to any social event as it was, and hardly needed the remaining residents of the house undermining her careful preparations and sending him, newly flustered, fleeing back up the stairs.

Her faltering eyes were arrested by the sight of her three charges together; fair good looks so startlingly interchangeable it was no wonder half the village thought they had sprung from the same shared genetic inheritance; Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert were positively overrun, it seemed, with Nordic-looking near relatives shuffling off this mortal coil and leaving them their offspring to raise.

And a good thing, too…Marilla mused, not for the first time. The boy turned man, resplendent in his new suit in a way that made her own heart stagger, let alone Matthew's, was her pride and her joy in a way that not even the demure docility of Dora or the bounding boisterousness of Davy could yet touch. It pained her sometimes; this ' throb of maternity'; ***** she thought, at one stage, she would only ever ache for all the dark, curly haired progeny her own youthful, fool stubbornness had long consigned to fantasy. But she had found, to her surprise and delight, that this boy - her boy - sure and steady and gentle and good, had been a tonic in tough times, a tenacious testament to hard work and foresight in others, and a tender reminder, for she and Matthew alike, of the blessings of second chances, and the true gift of family.

Just when it appeared Tom had recovered himself, Rachel took her oar, and stuck it in resolutely.

"To be sure there'll be a few less ladies to go round tonight, Tom, from what I hear. Jane Andrews off to White Sands with her fancy rich beau – we all know what that means –" her delighted smile of conjecture flit over Tom and came to rest on Marilla, and she rocked feverishly in time to the fierce clack of her needles, "and word is about that Diana Barry is to be courting young Fred, if he can get past Mrs Barry, of course."

At times like these Marilla could cheerfully strangle the smugness out of Rachel with one of her own skeins, and her concerned gaze drew back to Tom, now taking a long drink of water, his face admirably impassive. Marilla had heard the news regarding Jane Andrews – impossible to avoid, with the entire Andrews clan strutting around like peacocks over the Christmas period, showcasing plain, balding, genial and rich Harry Inglis about the village and beyond as if promenading with the Prince of Walesdown the streets of fashionable London. She hadn't put much faith in any interest in the smart, kindly - if homely – Andrews' girl - for who on earth would invite the prospect of Mrs Harmon Andrews as a mother-in-law? – but if the news about Diana was true then that was a proper blow. And Fred Wright? A nice, kind and good-hearted young man, to be sure, and a decent friend to Tom over the years, but in all honesty, if the Barrys were content to let one of the true beauties of Avonlea - and a lovely, endearing girl besides - go off with the first swain to ask after her then they didn't deserve someone like… well, like Tom here, for all Fred's new Kingsport business course.

Her darkened look of indignation struck Tom, who tried to hide his smile behind his water glass. If Rachel Lynde had heard about the hopes Fred had divulged to him two days ago, then he was awfully close to making them happen, or at least seeking the opportunity to do so. Tom liked Fred and Diana both and wished them every happiness, if indeed the extraordinary event - and Fred's newfound resolution – came to pass. Marilla wasn't wrong in his admiration for Diana on all levels, but when even Gilbert had stayed mindfully clear of her over the years, then Fred's genuine devotion would surely have to be rewarded eventually.

Marilla busied herself with putting a light supper on the table so that Tom could eat something before the dance. Mostly she was completely preoccupied with whether she and Matthew had provided enough opportunities for him that didn't involve livestock or planting schedules. He had been schooled of course, with mixed results initially and a much better time of it when that charming Miss Stacey had come on the scene for his last year or two. Still, it was a bittersweet moment when he packed away the books and drew on his overalls, not for before-class chores but to face an entire day, and then every day, with the cows and Matthew for company, knowing he was as unlikely to get a decent conversation out of either.

He'd grown tall and strong in the way of a farmer's son and handsome in the way of his mother, with a winning smile and gentle air that were his alone. Thoughtful by nature, careful and considered in his manner and determined to adopt any latest advancement regarding the farm; pouring over advertisements and articles in the newspaper, or going over to see Fred Wright to talk over his ideas for hours whilst the rest of them were studying at Queen's. But he had grown so very like Matthew… not so shy and retiring but less and less likely to put himself forward, and with no other close friend around at the moment to encourage him to do so. Everyone knew the farm would go to him – he had been written into both their wills long ago, with newer provisions made for the twins. Goodness knows they would have no farm and no Matthew into the bargain without Tom; the doctor attending to Matthew recently had been quite clear on that score. Tom was well into courting age now… if Marilla could just see a hint of happiness for him, just a speck of speculation regarding he and a young lady… a young lady calling to his future and not back to his past… well, she could breathe easier.

At least the two new suits had to help.

"Should we take a tray in to Matthew?" Dora asked with her typical consideration.

"No need…" Matthew called softly, emerging from the hall leading off to his bedroom.

There was a flurry of females ready to fuss and fidget over him, but he waved them off politely, sitting himself down and drawing his dressing gown around him.

"Just came out to wish everyone a Happy New Year. In case I don't make it."

"Matthew Cuthbert!" Rachel was indignant.

"I mean … if I get tired before midnight," he chuckled softly.

"Can we stay up till midnight, Marilla?" Davy saw his opening.

"I should think that would put a dampener on your chores in the morning," Marilla offered gruffly, easing into a wry smile.

They ate quietly, mindful not to direct too many questions – or too much food – towards the still-weak Matthew, who had encountered his second turn regarding his heart in as many months, though most of his work these days was limited to milking and feeding the livestock. Even Davy was capable of pitching the hay now.

Marilla, after a while, glanced at the grandfather clock.

"Tom?" she questioned gently, giving him an encouraging smile.

It was time. He took another sip of water, excused himself, kissed the ladies present, gave Matthew a careful hug, saluted Davy and was out the door before he could change his mind.

Tom slipped in to the church hall just ahead of a pair he recognised as a very well scrubbed Fred handing down Diana from his buggy. He grinned in delight. Well, so it had come to pass.

The cacophony of lights and noise and bodies and music inside was overwhelming, and he blinked, adjusting to the unaccustomed milieu, tracing a path round and behind the security of the seated older couples and parents, nodding or smiling occasionally, desperate to find a quiet corner of safety where he could survey the scene, 'far from the madding crowd'. ******* He thought errantly that he needed a window somewhere to lean against, with at least the idea of air and escape it could offer. His throat worked painfully. She had always found him hiding near a window.

His little corner would do well enough, between the band and the refreshments table, and he manoeuvred himself there, awkwardly crossing long arms before his chest, careful to not rub his suit against the wall.

He watched Diana and Fred greeted by friends and town matriarchs alike; Diana sweetly radiant; Fred grown a foot in pride and happiness already, grinning broadly. After exchanging news and thanks the next song started; a waltz. Fred was as good a dancer as he was- which was to say, not very – but it hardly mattered; when one was not looking at blushing Diana one was looking at Fred looking at Diana, and their audience ceased to care about anyone's dancing.

Something deep-rooted within him took hold at the sight of them, twisting in his stomach… a feeling too generous to be jealousy and not quite sharp enough for envy…

Longing.

Tom turned away and shuffled through the throng to the refreshments, whereby he was waylaid by the new schoolteacher, younger than himself, and thereafter by Reverend and Mrs Allen, who were still in raptures over this year's batch of wooden figures he had made for Christmas, as every year, for them to distribute to the children of the poorer local families on their round of visits. He had started to paint them several years ago, which was often more of a challenge than creating them in the first place, and only felt now was he finally getting to grips with that aspect of the process.

The punch was rather pungent, and he wondered if one of the Pyes had succeeded in their interminable quest to fortify it with something other than sugar.

Making his way back to his favoured corner, he saw Diana dancing with Gilbert, their dark heads inclined to one another in earnest conversation, though Gilbert turned in time to spot Tom, giving his characteristic grin, which he returned with a wave. He took his opportunity to venture over to Fred to offer hearty and heartfelt congratulations, and to ask to have these passed on to Diana if he didn't get the opportunity himself. They talked of Fred's course in Kingsport for several moments before they both spotted Mrs Wright bearing down upon them.

"Ah, I might have to wish you a Happy New Year now," Tom offered with his quiet wryness, though there were a ways off the hour approaching, "and take my leave, Mr Wright."

"Be a friend. Take me with you!"

"Not a chance!" Tom gave a rare, full throttle grin.

Tom dodged Mrs Wright and aimed for the only other possible direction; the doors.

He could at least gain some air and some momentary peace if he stood in the little overhang near the entrance; it was a more protected vantage point than his corner, to be certain, and less of a crush. He turned his attention to the dancers again, noting that Diana had left the floor, leaving Ruby engaged with the hapless schoolmaster (who was, it had to be said, far less proficient on the dancefloor than the previous curly-haired incumbent) and he noted Fred still in the throes of some longwinded spiel from his mother. Gilbert was now talking to a young lady – as if that was a surprise – and her back was to Tom but she was tall, slender, and her hair looked copper golden in the light…

His heart hammered queerly. He blinked furiously, his eyes trying to distinguish hues over a distance. It wasn't… it couldn't be… it couldn't possibly be…

His heart constricted; the vital organ squeezed till he felt it had drained itself of every drop of blood, and then, like a fist unclenched, it let go.

No.

Not golden copper hair, or red darkened to auburn, but a glossy blonde, and as she turned to survey him, blue eyes gazing intently under a delicate frown of contemplation, he realised she couldn't quite place him. But he remembered her.

Carmody.

The schoolmistress over at Carmody; Gilbert's friend. Obviously not there now, for he had driven past twice to be measured for and then collect the very suit he was wearing, and the firm hand ushering the children inside the now strong-shingled building belonged to a no-nonsense brunette, and not the merry maiden he had contemplated from the rooftop for the better part of a weekend two years ago.

He still didn't know how Gilbert had persuaded him; but then again, he always was rather silver-tongued.

Miss Grant.

Miss Grant, a chum from Queen's College, had gotten wind of he, Gilbert and Fred struggling with the neglected shingles of the Avonlea schoolhouse the weekend after the first autumn downpour, and had begged them all to perform a similar service over in Carmody. Everyone knew it would take three months before either School Board would come out to examine such rooftops, let alone the wrangling required to provide the funds and the manpower to see to repairs. But three strapping young men in their prime were sure to manage in a day… which became two strapping young men over to Carmody when Fred begged off for something urgent regarding the farm… and then, when Gilbert went for more nails at the local store… just him.

Miss Priscilla Grant.

He remembered her, for her bell laugh; her smiling blue eyes; her tone, just this side of teasing; her insistence that if he required lemonade he must come off the actual roof to collect it. And for her kind note of thanks afterwards, and the arch invitation to feel free to come and inspect his handiwork at any time, should he find himself in the general vicinity.

He remembered her, for her looks like his mother's. And her manner like Anne's.

Pris.

She was looking across to him with the speculative, wondering curiosity women usually saved for Gilbert. But surely that, like her hair, was likewise a trick of the light. And regardless, he had Diana suddenly making her way towards him; black eyes bright; smile determined; and stepping with a feverish urgency.

"Tom! At last we see you!" she extended both soft, plump hands to clasp his large ones.

"Diana! It's… it's lovely. It's been too long. You look very well this evening. I am so very happy for you, this news of you and Fred."

She paused in saying something else.

"Thank you, Tom. That's so kind of you. Thank you."

Diana released his hands, but only so that she could better clutch her purse and stare at him in tormented fashion.

"You're enjoying Kingsport?" he ventured, seeing over her shoulder how Gilbert and Miss Grant were staring at them curiously, and closer, Fred hovering warily just out of earshot.

He noted her little pained breath at this, and the flush to her cheeks. Diana Barry was not quite acting herself. Had she been felled by the fruit punch?

He may have lifted startled eyes to meet Fred's; a mute communication for assistance, but Diana had her hand on his arm and was directing him further back into the alcove, virtually at the open doors.

"Diana…?"

"Tom, we have made many new, lovely friends in Kingsport," she continued in a galloping gush. "All manner of delightful people! And one whom I have found to be the most delightful of all. I… I… I believe that you… Oh, I'm so sorry to do this to you, Tom! She wanted me to give it to you in person. She wanted to make sure it got to you. But there has been no time and I…" she shook her head, despairingly, and clawed around in her purse, withdrawing a thick envelope. She stretched it out to him.

"Anne Shirley," Diana continued, and her words began to echo as if shouted on a hillside, whipping round and thrown back to him, reverberating in his ears. "Anne Shirley has been one of our new friends, studying at Redmond College. She didn't know any of us were from Avonlea. Not for the longest time. And then, once she did… she begged me give this to you, Tom, before we all left for Christmas."

"Anne?" Tom rasped, as a dying man, in a way that may have been frightening but for the memory of Anne's anguished howl, which still caused a shiver up Diana's spine when she allowed herself to dwell on it.

"Yes, Tom. She wanted me to say that… she never forgot you."

Diana offered the letter as he clutched it, but neither of them had relinquished their half. Tom's pale blue eyes, stricken to a colorless void, stared into hers, uncomprehendingly.

"Anne?" he repeated, as if unable to articulate anything else.

"Please take it, Tom! It has all her particulars in Kingsport, and mine too, if needed. No one else knows about your… connection… except for me. Take it, with my very best wishes. And hers."

Finally… finally… he took the letter for his own, as if something he could hold and touch, a phantom made finally real.

"Thank you, Diana," his voice was low, and his eyes stared down at the neat, looping script, proclaiming his own name, by her own hand. "I think that I… I'm sorry. I need to go."

Diana nodded dumbly, and watched him turn without ceremony, disappearing through the doors into the darkness.

Happy New Year… the phrase, made mocking now, died on her lips.

By the light of the streetlamp illuminating the rows of buggies made haphazard sentinels by the roadside, as well as the fading last quarter moon, he stood in the frigid night, quaking with the cold, trembling to her words. He read the dense pages over and over and over again, mouthing sentences and phrases as if a charm, till his fingers threatened to freeze to the paper, ink adhering to skin as the past bleeding into the present, and the unsteady rhythm of his thawing heart righted itself.

The shaky laugh of relief…and disbelief… slid from him, and he threw back his head to the sky, with no one to witness his tears but the dark heavens.

Inside the hall, Avonlea counted away the old year, and the joyous roar rose up to carry him home.

Chapter Notes

The chapter title is from Anne of the Island (Ch. 37)

"Only her old friend's flowers seemed to belong to this fruition of old-blossoming hopes which he had once shared."

*Thomas Hardy 'New Year's Eve'

**Hardy 'To an Orphan Child: A Whimsey'

***Hardy 'A Broken Appointment'

****Andrew Marvell 'To His Coy Mistress'

*****Obviously our correct modern term is 'conjoined twins'; I use the older term here not willingly, but for the sake of historical accuracy

******Anne of Green Gables (Ch. 10)

*******referencing Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd; my tease here, as it will not be published until November 1884, but of course the title itself Hardy drew from the poem 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard' by Thomas Gray. Oh herald all the Thomas's this week!

A further note on Thomas Hardy:

When I was looking for a poetical 'voice' for Tom, I couldn't go past Hardy's poems, many of which (out of around 1,000!) have a plain-speaking sensibility and love of the land that I thought would call to Tom. It is a pity, therefore, that his first volume of poetry, Wessex Poems, was not published until 1898, when his novels had made him very well known and his themes and the fates of his female characters slightly infamous. However, many of the works in Wessex Poems were written in the 1860's, 70's and 80's, and since Tom doesn't read or quote them directly I felt poetic license in every respect to use them here.

In one of my earliest chapters I made a passing reference to my Anne's far-from-complimentary views on Hardy, who had only written the three novels by this point, two very badly received, and only the one under his own name, A Pair of Blue Eyes, but whose poems had been and continued to pop up in different magazines and journals. A guest reviewer made many pertinent and impassioned remarks about my not-so-throwaway line at the time; I hope through many subsequent explorations of literary works that it has become established that my Anne, given her harsher non-canon experiences, is very personally tied to the literature that she most likes, and therefore unusually strident about that she doesn't, and it still learning to gain some critical distance. It is something that both Gilbert and Katherine Brooke have called her on. It will be interesting as to whether Anne will read Hardy's new novel later in this narrative. Or Tom.