With a thank you to all the new readers who have found this story and who have been kind to leave their lovely, encouraging comments.
Additionally, this week this chapter is dedicated to Excel Aunt, who was the very first reviewer for this story (and others!) many moons ago; who always looks below the 'deeps'; and whose aura is absolutely painted prairie yellow x
Chapter Twenty One
The Deeps Had Been Stirred
Summerside Home for Girls
Summerside, PEI
August 1883
"Miss Shirley, are you really set to leave us?" little Martha Mayerling anchored her eyes on Anne's, her imploring enquiry made all the more wistful by the sweetness of her pale, freckled countenance and the bell-like voice that tinkled, like a chime in the wind. She clasped her hands together as if to engage in prayer, and her soulful blue, green-flecked eyes were shadowed.
Anne looked down at her charge and fought a curious composite of emotions, made more difficult, as ever, by the feeling she was looking at herself, years ago, as if through a time-warped mirror. Certainly Martha, with her evocative name of another remembered Martha, had easily wound herself around her affections; if the bookish leanings hadn't done it, or the pale face interspersed with freckles or those eyes, then the definite auburn hue threaded through her brown hair would have sealed proceedings irrevocably.
"I'm afraid so, Martha," Anne's voice hadn't intended its huskiness. "I received my letter from Redmond College a month ago. It's all the way to Nova Scotia, so it means I'll have to spend the day travelling to get there, on the train and then a ferry and then another train, and I'll need to stay close by. It won't be like it has been, with me teaching here in Summerside and instructing you in the evenings or on weekends."
Anne paused to let this information germinate; Martha was younger than she herself had been, not quite ten, and had seen nothing of the world but the walls of the Girls' Home, barely remembering a time when she had been the youngest in a family of five, all succumbing to scarlet fever but she.
"Will you be teaching there, too?" came the considered reply.
"No, I shall be studying like you will. Stories and poetry and such as you are now, though I might get away with no more geometry," she added with a smile.
"But you know all that already!"
"Oh, Martha, there is always more to know and more to learn! Or else life would be very boring and repetitive, going over the same old things. And as you become older you want to learn other things, or learn about them in new ways…"
"And you can't do that here, with us?" the clear voice wavered.
Anne swallowed carefully. "I'm afraid not, darling."
Martha fingered the old copy of Tennyson, and Anne searched her mind for a verse or phrase or a line that she could leave with her. She was too young for 'The Lady of Shalott' and Anne hadn't ever gotten over her own old aversion to 'The May Queen'. She had already gone around, having made personalised bookmarks for all the girls, crafting them from the stiffest good quality paper she had been able to requisition, and using her very best pen to create a series of ornate swirls and designs, threading a specially chosen ribbon through the top of each, color coded, of course. Martha's had been the green of a new spring leaf, carrying the hope and promise of the season.
"Will you be happy there, at your college? Happier than here?"
The astute question caught Anne by surprise, and she was all too ready to deny the observation; that she had been perfectly happy here at Summerside, or at the very least content; that true happiness was a determined state of mind as much as a dependence on external circumstances; that little things could bring happiness even when bigger things didn't. That the line between happiness, or not, was delineated on constantly shifting sands.
"I think… that I might sometimes be sad there, too, though I hope overall to be as happy as I can," came the answer as honestly as she dared muster. "Because being happy or sad are often feelings side by side to one another, and sometimes we even feel them in the same moment; like I will, to leave you all here."
She couldn't bear to go further; to the idea that happiness wasn't an entitlement but a gift; even something that, to be true happiness, might even have to be deserved or earned or won to be fully appreciated. That happiness might not be recognised unless there was some experience of life without it. That the bitter and the sweet were so often tasted together.
Tennyson might not have the answer today, but Longfellow would. There, then, was a man who knew of happiness and of sadness, indeed. The sweetness followed by the bitter tang.
"I will miss you so very much, Miss Shirley," Martha's voice wobbled betrayingly.
"I shall miss you too, darling. But I'll be back for visits during holidays, and Miss Brooke will be able to inform me of your wonderful progress until I can check it again for myself."
Struck by the moment, Anne crossed over to the wide bookshelf, knowing the tome and its placement from memory.
"Here, my Martha," Anne began. "Mr Longfellow wrote a poem a long time ago. It's entitled 'A Rainy Day' and it certainly sums up all we've been talking about. There's a little verse that's part of the poem…" Anne flicked through, "… here. This is the part I want you to remember…
'Be still, sad heart! And cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all'
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.'" *
Those wide self-same eyes blinked up at her.
"I will copy this onto another bookmark for you, and then you may take it out whenever you might be sad, about anything, to remember that your sadness won't last, love. You may even choose the ribbon this time."
This was an offer that required serious contemplation.
"I will choose yellow, then," Martha announced. "For the sun, and for happiness."
"An excellent choice, darling."
"Whenever I think of you I will think of yellow, too."
Anne rounded the table to envelop the young girl in her arms. "That is lovely! I certainly like the idea of yellow, though I've never been able to wear it."
"I'm sure I won't be able to, either," Martha lamented, almost proudly.
Anne smiled in sisterly understanding, beginning to gather her things. She would need to pack soon for Kingsport; the quaking in her belly at the thought of it only outmatched by her deliberately calm exterior. She hoped that her words to Martha would carry some of their own wisdom for herself; that her own experiences there wouldn't need such a verse to help bolster her; that over the sea and back in a town she might find a friend… or at least a new one… to offset any of her own misgivings and 'repining'.
"I hope you are happy more times than you are sad at your college, Miss Shirley," Martha offered generously.
Anne hadn't dared wear yellow, even still, but she had worn her green blouse, for young Martha, and for herself. If anyone had cut her open they would have seen her insides colored rich ochre for sure; bursting as she was with her own happiness to look around this boisterous gathering and see every person here a friend, of both recent times and of long ago. And that they should all be friends together, with she and Tom already, like every upset and injustice and hurt and horror had led them to this longed for moment; this happiness so hard-won. She was a jack-in-the-box barely able to settle to her own tea, so busy was she in seeing to everyone else's; she could hardly manage to sit in the one spot for more than mere moments at a time, unable to properly gather her giddy thoughts.
And everyone was on fine form; Pris and Ruby, flanking Tom either side and so wonderfully attentive; Phil engaging Gilbert with her disarming chatter; Diana and Fred sitting wonderfully close together and lapsing periodically into sweet murmured asides meant for their ears alone; Jane merrily prattling to Anne about her wedding, and finding such lovely interest and reassurance in Anne's occasional questions and warm, if distracted, responses that she truly lamented her wedding party couldn't be extended to four bridemaids after all.
Occasionally Anne would catch Tom's eye, and his look and wry smile echoed hers; a clear, shared thought along the lines of how on earth did we get here? with a definite further dose of can you really believe it? Tom was looking very, very well; the dark blue so suited him, as did the new air of… confidence? Certainty? Contentment? It was a pleasure to be able to study him; to note all the subtle changes that time and experience had wrought; to see the strong color to him, the health and vigour and vitality… if she hadn't been so happy she would have fallen about in grateful tears, so wonderful it was to see him transformed from that pale, brave, broken boy.
And Gilbert… Gilbert, by contrast, looked worn and worrisome after their trying week; his handsomeness and affability protected him like a cloak he was relying on to keep him warm, but had forgotten how the draft would still come if caught suddenly. His usually laughing hazel eyes were thoughtful; his smile more measured; his demeanour one who was trying with all his might to put on a good show. And Anne couldn't fault him; she was not insensible to the difficulty of their current circumstances or the strangeness, to outsiders, of the nature of her relationship with Tom. She longed to ease his discomfort but knew not how; she had worried for Tom in this company, but had underestimated how well they thought of him, and perhaps should have realised that, regardless, he would take this in his long, careful stride like all else; what could life now throw at either of them, really, that they could not contend with, given all they had seen whilst still children?
But Gilbert…
"How did you and Tom first know each other, Anne?" Jane enquired from beside her, her voice carrying across the room due to an unfortunately timed lull in conversation, though Anne imagined that there were several others curious for the answer. Anne was dragged from all thoughts of Gilbert; she had naturally anticipated the question, and was determinedly sticking to her edited, loose version of the facts.
"As you may remember, Jane, I was at the orphanage at Hopetown for a time," she began carefully, "and Tom had lived locally. He chopped wood up and down the street for households and the orphanage too; it was one of the ways I began to know him. And then… ah…"
"… I came to the orphanage after my mother died and before I was adopted by the Cuthberts," Tom's deep bass voice continued the narrative. "It wasn't… the longest time, but it made quite an impression," he smiled at her with a sweet knowingness, "and so did Anne."
"What a pity you lost touch," Ruby shook her fair head.
"It was," Tom admitted solemnly.
"But…" Jane, ever bound by facts, was trying to puzzle out obvious discrepancies, "you knew that Tom had gone to Avonlea, Anne. You didn't contact him till you met all of us?"
Anne reddened, caught by her half truths.
"The asylum didn't encourage… contact, once you had left it, so that both parties had a chance to move on," Tom rescued, but then added firmly, "I knew that Anne was always my friend, regardless of how long our separation was."
The quiet fervour of this declaration danced on some invisible line between friendship and more; Anne gave this pronouncement a smile of blushing delight; both Gilbert and Priscilla met it with expressions of some consternation; and the rest of the room fell into an impressed silence.
"Well, here's to friends in all their forms," Phil exclaimed brightly. "Particularly those who bake as well as you, Diana. I never cooked anything in my life except a gingerbread and it was a failure. ** It is not where my talents lie, I'm afraid."
"Thank you, Phil. It's always a pleasure to have friends to bake for. Though everyone here is a wonderful help, and the lovely scones of course are Anne's," Diana smiled in acknowledgement.
"And the plum jam is from Green Gables," added Anne, bestowing a beaming glance at Tom.
Gilbert, who had demolished three scones with gusto, knowing most definitely they were Anne's, and polishing them off with generous dollops of plum jam and cream, the origins of the spreads to which he had been cavalierly unknowing, emitted something that might have been a suppressed groan, shuffling uncomfortably in his seat.
Jane, pleased enough with that account of events, pressed Tom on another subject.
"Have you been convinced to come to Kingsport to study yourself, Tom?" she asked.
Tom flushed. "The college is very impressive – Anne showed me around today. But I am afraid I am… well… not a natural student. I enjoy reading and, er, studying of sorts in my own time, though the farm takes up a fair amount of it."
"I should suspect a lot of your spare time is spent on your gifts for the local children, Tom," Pris reminded with a smile.
"Gifts?" Anne enquired.
"You didn't know, Anne? Oh, they are delightful! Tom has been whittling wooden toys for years. They are so very good. I saw an example when I was teaching in Carmody."
"Figurines for the children?" Anne swallowed, looking to Pris briefly and then across to Tom in question.
"They are beautiful, Anne," Diana interjected. "Tom whittles enough for the children from poor families living locally and Reverend and Mrs Allan distribute them at Christmas."
"You didn't tell me that," Anne chided quietly to Tom, her voice wavering.
He shrugged. "Miss Grant and Diana are being too kind," he flushed beet red.
"Tom is being modest, Anne. They're lovely," Ruby chimed loyally. "You must have him show you."
"I know myself how lovely they are," Anne's eyes were shining now, her voice low with emotion, and her look to Tom clear across the room was of unadulterated pride and admiration.
"May I clear these for you?" Phil suddenly asked without ceremony, taking assorted empty plates and handing another hastily to Gilbert. "Here, Gilbert, would you help me?"
She did not wait for his reply, but appropriately laden, led the way out into the kitchen, Anne's eyes following them with concern.
"Excuse me, I should help them," she explained to the party, and absently took through a serving platter and her own cup and saucer in their wake.
She came upon Gilbert leaned hunched over the bench, staring out the window, clutching it with his large hands as if for dear life, and Phil speaking in low tones beside him, her look one of concern. Her brown eyes flashed to Anne as she saw her enter.
"Phil? Gilbert?" Anne questioned.
Gilbert straightened at the sound of her voice, and Phil gave her a quizzical smile.
"Honey, one of your guests is just feeling a wee bit out of sorts. Perhaps you could take them through out the back for a little fresh air?"
She gave a warning look to Gilbert before passing back before Anne, raising an eyebrow and leaving them as she headed again to the sitting room.
"Gilbert?" Anne asked more tentatively.
He half turned to her, shoving hands deep into his pockets.
"I'm sorry, Anne. I could say I have a headache but that wouldn't be the truth."
"Oh, Gilbert…" she murmured at his bleak expression.
"I don't mean to be a dampener on your afternoon. Or on… your reunion." The last word was heaved on a sigh.
"I'm sorry, Gilbert. I don't mean to be so caught up…"
"No, that's it. I know you don't," Gilbert rubbed at his face dejectedly. "And neither does he to be fair. But it's happening all the same, Anne. I can see it already."
"Are you… disappointed in me?"
"No, Anne! Of course not! I'm disappointed in myself. Maybe it's an offshoot of being an only child… I've never had to learn to share…" he gave a self-mocking smile. "I'm finding it hard to share you."
"Now that makes me sound like a rag doll," she teased gently, taking slow steps towards him.
He chuckled darkly. "I'm sorry Anne. I didn't mean any offence there."
"None taken. Although if we are talking about sharing, I have a name for you; Maisie Monroe."
"Anne that was ages ago!" he blustered. "And I never had any feelings for her! I realised I didn't even like her!"
"It was a long time till that realisation came… and in the meantime we were friends and I still had to contend with the two of you together." Her look was soft as she arched a brow.
"You mean…" a hint of his old smile fluttered about his lips, "that you were jealous?" he was recovering his humour at the prospect.
"Gilbert, if we are talking about jealousy I could rightly be jealous of every co-ed who has ever crossed your path! Not to mention all the girls back in Avonlea or at Queen's."
"Anne…" he hesitated, his dear face darkening. "I know it makes me appear extremely shallow, but none of those girls mattered before you. Not in that way."
She was close enough to put a hand on his arm. "I know," she whispered, cheeks aflame, risking a look up at him.
"Whoops!" there was a chuckle, and Jane stood awkwardly at the doorway, another serving platter in hand. With a knowing smile she deposited it on the nearest benchtop and scurried away again.
Gilbert rolled his eyes, though his demeanour was lighter. "Would you risk that fresh air with me for a few minutes, Anne?"
She nodded and they escaped through the back door from the kitchen to a little enclosed courtyard with a bench and some mostly-manicured bushes in freeflowing flowerbeds. They both blew on their hands at the sudden affront of the cool afternoon air, and then Gilbert took her hands in his, enclosing them firmly.
"I guess I am trying to talk about trust," Anne gulped, disconcerted by his warmth flooding her hands and all the way through her.
"Trust." Gilbert echoed.
"Do you… do you trust that I can be friends with you and Tom?"
"Aren't we a little more than friends, Anne?" his baritone was low and very suggestive, as was the new gleam in those hazel eyes. Her own eyes widened at his tone, and he pushed his advantage by grazing one of his thumbs over the pulse at her wrist.
"Gil…" she murmured distractedly, and was rewarded by a delighted, wolfish smile.
"Say that again!" he demanded gleefully.
She flushed and stepped away from him, withdrawing herself and clasping her hands safely together.
"Behave yourself, Mr Blythe! I'm trying to have an important discussion with you!" her words were mock-stern, though her sheepish smile and the flash of green in her eyes betrayed her entirely.
"Yes, Miss Shirley," he batted back blandly, an infuriatingly smug expression breaking through.
"So, can you please stop scowling at the world and making yourself sick, and Phil worried for you, and just accept Tom is an important person in my life, as you are?"
He crossed his arms in front of his chest, not in belligerence so much as seeking his own warmth.
"I will absolutely try," he assented. "Though it would help me greatly if he could find a new, more selfish hobby."
Anne tried not to reward this cheek with a smile, failing dismally.
"And it would help if I didn't think he was such a stand up fellow," Gilbert continued, more thoughtfully. "He makes the rest of us rather suffer in comparison, you know."
"Well, you could always rise to the challenge, Mr President of Freshman Year. Use your power for good, too."
Gilbert raised his eyebrows, considering this, and nodded, chastened.
"I haven't forgotten what happened these last two weeks, Gilbert… or… what has happened the last few months," Anne ventured after a moment, her imploring grey-green gaze seeking his.
He swallowed audibly. "I feel a but somewhere…"
"But we have been both advised to be more circumspect about… our relationship. And let's face it, Gilbert, any more distractions and we might as well both pack our bags. It's been quite a challenge trying to catch up this week."
He frowned. "I know."
"We both have commitments and… well… we need to think of the future, too. And not just the present. There are those minor scholarships that were announced, too…"
"The Thorburn is already yours, Anne," he announced loyally.
"No it isn't," she smiled, shaking her head. "And neither is the science one for you. We need to refocus, Gilbert."
"I rather like what I'm focussed on now," the heat flooded his gaze.
Her cheeks burned anew.
"All right!" he shook his head, offering something approaching his old Blythe grin. "Yes, I know what you're saying, Anne. And there is a sad, depressing wisdom to it. But are you really saying what I think you're saying? Do you want to put us on hold?"
The hurt had crept into his voice, much as he tried to muzzle it.
"For now…" she faltered. "I'm sorry, but I think… yes."
He swallowed, and his look to her was tortured. "Your feelings about…me. About us. Have they changed?"
"No," she gave husky reply.
He nodded, his eyes burning her.
"That would be a resolute no from me too, Anne."
She smiled and bit her lip. "I am very… pleased about that."
"It's just…" he struggled for the words. "That book on the shelf. I'd hate for it to get neglected or … dusty."
Her heart was in her eyes at this. "No, Gilbert… nor would I."
"You know…" he deliberately continued, his lips quirking. "For the spine to get all ragged and for the pages to be half falling out…"
She shook her head at him, smiling at his endeavours. "It is my favourite book, Gilbert. I would never let such a fate befall it."
Gilbert gave her a look of such unbridled longing she thought she might have to sit down. Instead his gaze softened, and he shoved his hands into his pockets, blowing out a long breath. "So we are circling back again, Anne…" he regarded her carefully. "What happens, then, at Easter?"
"Easter?" she echoed, puzzled.
"When you come to Avonlea," he broached gently.
'Avonlea?" she gulped.
"And pay several calls to Green Gables, I'm presuming?" his eyebrow was raised wryly, though his voice had turned to the consistency of gravel.
Anne searched his face again, flustered. "Gilbert…. I…."
"Fred mentioned it," he sighed heavily. "That Diana had invited you. While you were talking in there with Jane."
Anne bit her lip, the confusion welling inside of her.
"Yes…." She breathed. "That's right."
"It's just that… I had hoped… not that you could stay with me, of course, but that…"
"Gilbert?"
"Well, that I would have been the one to ask you to Avonlea," he muttered, reddening. "Though evidently I'm a little late to the party on that score."
"You did," Anne remembered, smiling at the memory. "There is an apple tree you wish to show me, I believe."
"You're right," he answered, brightening. "There is."
Their shared look was long and full of meaning.
"I guess…" he sighed dramatically. "I could be just friends with you until Easter, Anne Shirley. Though I give no guarantees whatsoever after that."
Her grin was sudden and wonderfully startling.
"I wouldn't want any, Gilbert Blythe," she parried a mite flirtatiously, and his appreciative warm chuckle followed her as they made their way back inside.
Anne and Tom sat side by side in the little pavilion in the park, late Tuesday afternoon, ahead of his leaving for Avonlea early the following morning. To their left lay Kingsport, its roofs and spires dim in their shroud of violet smoke, anticipating a sunset less pallid than usual; to their right lay the harbour, where the water shimmered satin-smooth and silver grey. *** All was quiet and restful and still; a sad and clamorous contradiction to Anne's heart, which pulsed painfully at the thought of the as-yet unspoken goodbye hovering about both their lips.
"It's very pretty here…" Tom ventured carefully, hoping he was capable of bland thoughts on the town, at the very least. "It… it will be nice for me to imagine you, walking the streets we've walked and… ah… going about your classes at the college."
"Yes…" Anne replied, voice catching. "And you've described Green Gables so well I feel I know it already, right down to the shutters and the cherry tree outside your window."
"It will suit me better when I can imagine you there, too," Tom declared in a low voice, and the tone of it reached out to coil around Anne's heart, squeezing it further.
"The term break is not so very long off, now…"
"No…"
They paused in awkward unison; a shared silent sigh.
"Anne…" Tom broached after a moment, his tongue trapped beneath the words. "We've always been honest with each other, haven't we?"
"Of course, Tom!"
"Well…" he swallowed. "Excuse me, Anne, I know it's not any of my business but… may I ask… is there something between… you and Gilbert?"
The fierce colour found her, staining her cheeks immediately.
"Gilbert?" she breathed, properly wretched now.
"I'm sorry Anne, I… it's just that, well, I've known Gilbert since… well, I was nearly thirteen, and he not much older…" Tom stared fixedly ahead. "And I guess I've seen him talk with, er, young ladies in my time and I… well, it seems that he… he is different, here. Or more that he's different around… you."
Anne licked suddenly dry lips. "Tom, I…"
"It wouldn't be so surprising, of course," he continued in contemplation, almost to himself. "You are both lit by the same sort of fire… for knowledge and learning and… well, he is popular and engaging and smart. Very smart. He is possibly the only person I've seen who could keep up with you…" Tom appeared to wince on the words, an aggravated muscle playing hide-and-seek in his cheek. "He's driven and determined and… I can see how he would be a very… ah… good sort of match, for you."
"Match?" Anne repeated, the word - the very thought – strangled in her throat.
"Anne, you don't disappear together for twenty minutes on Sunday and Gilbert arrive back looking like the cat that got the cream for nothing," Tom turned to her, his brave smile turning down at the corners.
Anne wished that moment for a great rupture to rent the earth; a quake that might rip a vast hole in the ground that she could fall through, to escape, rather than stay and face this conversation.
"Tom, I… it's certainly true that… Gilbert and I have become close…" she faltered. "He… when I learned that my great friend Katherine in Summerside was sick… he offered to… that is he…"
"He went with you," Tom answered, flicking her a glance.
"How did you…?"
"Fred, talking over lunch yesterday at his business college," Tom explained plainly. "He didn't tell me to be unkind. He just wanted to make sure I knew what I was walking into, I suppose."
Anne, cheeks still blazing, felt her brows draw together.
"I wish he hadn't. That wasn't fair of him, Tom – to you or to me…" She felt a flare of anger, a fuse that she usually tried to snuff out before it took hold; she and Tom would ever be reminded of the catastrophic cost of her temper. "He might know a little about me and Gilbert but he doesn't know the circumstances of us."
The memory of those circumstances was a wave that continued to slap against them as they tried to navigate this new sea of friendship; a shark forever circling their little boat of refuge.
"Us." Tom announced the word with all the pent-up pain of an old wound he was tentative to touch. "And what of the circumstances of us?" Tom searched her face, and then looked away again, towards the harbour. "I can't lay claim to you because of a few things that happened seven years ago when we were twelve, Anne…" He stood in his agitation, an agitation she had rarely witnessed, and began to pace, his eyes still on the sea.
"I can't tell you how I have longed to see you again, Anne…" he continued, how much it means to be in touch with you again. I would be your friend and only your friend till the end of the world, and be grateful, but I… if you and Gilbert are courting I don't want to – "
"We're not courting, Tom!" the denial escaped her without thought, propelled by more force than she had reckoned on. She found she had stood up at this interjection and sat down again just as quickly, fighting for composure. "That is… there was some discussion around it and… Gilbert w-wished for it but I… if the situation had been different then perhaps…"
His fair brows furrowed as he turned back to her. "You mean the…the gossip at Redmond?"
Oh, the mortification! "Yes! And no. Oh, Tom, I have asked Gilbert to wait and just see and for us to concentrate on our coursework and… I thought that was the only reason but… " she looked at him helplessly, grown inarticulate and faltering. "I'm here with you now and I… I can't bear to have you leave again!"
The confession tore itself from her, and his face paled.
"I will never leave you again, Anne. Not ever," he shook on the words.
She stared up at him and believed him without question.
"You never really did," she determined, dashing at a tear and then reaching beside her for her package, wrapped in brown paper and tied with a green ribbon.
"Anne?"
"My gift to you, Tom." She held it out to him. "My words and my thoughts and my imaginings… it's all I have to give you, really. It's all I have of us and those seven years."
His blue eyes were haunted, and he approached slowly, grasping the package tentatively.
He sat down beside her again.
"Shall I…?"
"Yes! Please open it, Tom! I had so long not having the chance – I don't want to miss your reaction now."
He looked to her again, uncertainly, and then untied the ribbon slowly, his large hands tucking it into his pocket for safekeeping, and then reverently unfolding the paper. There were half a dozen exercise books, such as used by schoolchildren – such as he had used himself – of uniform color and thickness, though some were newer than others. The top one was dated from the previous year, and the others progressively further back in time to that dread September seven years ago, when he had sat at his desk in the Avonlea schoolhouse, bewildered and bereft, trying to imagine her.
He turned to that oldest one now, opening it up, baring her looping, younger scrawl to the cool air – he knew it from his lone letter, still folded now, as ever, into his pocketbook. There were descriptions of the Girl's Home, amusing in their archness; some snatches of half-worked poems and ditties, and then, a sequence of stories, each more fantastical than the last… the adventures of a blonde boy and a red haired girl, brave and bounding, fearless and fabulous, squaring off against a succession of foes… the first being an evil, hunchbacked creature, poker discarded beside him, who was no match for the threat of the boy's fists as he stood over him, their nemesis cowering and snivelling before them.
Tom's gaze lingered on the pages describing their old shared nightmare come again to life.
"Us…" he stated raggedly. "And him."
"Yes…" Anne answered, looking up into his face. "The stories become better written, I assure you… but there were none I liked so much as that one." Her mouth set determinedly.
"No…" he breathed, risking a small, troubled smile. "I don't think I will, either."
She heard him swallow, and watched him turn other pages with a touching reverence. He understood how she had given herself in her writing; how her imagination had been her only means of both support and defence.
"Thank you, Anne. I don't know what to say. You… you should have these back when I have read them, though. They belong to you."
She shook her head determinedly. "They belong to you, now…" His look at that was unfathomable, and her cheeks heated again.
"There are lots of letters too…" she explained, beginning to prattle. "Especially in the more recent copies... Letters I could never send you, and then letters, much later, that I could have and was afraid to."
They had both leaned together as they perused the pages, and when he turned to her again their faces were startingly close. "Why would you have been afraid to?"
"I thought…" she lowered her gaze, "it might have been better for you – easier for you – if you had just forgotten it all. Forgotten… me."
His fingers tightened on the book he held.
"I thought I had explained that was not possible," he reminded. He turned to offer the little hessian bag that had sat next to him so patiently. "Never."
The bag was surprisingly weighty, and the objects inside it clanked gently against one another. Tom, flushing, busied himself with repackaging his stories, looking at Anne from beneath light lashes.
She carefully withdrew each item in turn; wooden figures carved with increasing detail and skill, the last two handpainted as delicately as the very best china, with her initials and the year marked on each of their undersides. A girl holding a flower; a girl holding her heart literally in her hands; a girl resting against an apple tree; a girl beneath an umbrella; an older girl with quilled pen poised at a desk; and then, in glorious colour, a grown girl, more woman than not, red hair streaming, grey eyes wide, with an armful of books stacked precariously; and finally, completed during the Christmas just past, as an unknown letter waited for him, not so much a figure as a scene, of the woman and another tree and a tall, tow-headed boy-man, half hidden from her on the other side of it, his shy smile attempting to catch her own.
Anne lined the figures up on the bench, eyes blurring, unable to look at him.
"You did these," Anne rasped. "Every year. Though you didn't know if you would ever see me again."
He took a moment to answer.
"Well, I'm rather glad we've met again now," he joked gently. "I was beginning to run out of room."
She choked on the attempted laugh. "Tom…" she barely managed. "Tom…"
There could be no more words possibly said and no words that would have mattered anyway. Everything that needed to be said had already found expression in those rough-hewn vows rendered real with pen and paper and blade and wood. Her tears came quicker than the ability of his calloused hands to catch them, till he could do nothing but press her against the wool of his coat and let them soak through to his own skin, mingling with his mired memories. If he murmured her name – if he said anything at all – he wouldn't have remembered it. Only later would he try to piece together the events that led to each new action… her tear stained face looking into his; the trembling pale fingers that reached to touch the old scar at his brow that only she knew the true story of; the moment of hesitation before the realisation; the silence before the succumb.
He had not ever imagined kissing her… or, more accurately, he had never allowed himself to imagine it. To imagine kissing her would have been an adult violation of a child's experiences. Whatever he had seen and suffered and felt was filtered through those younger eyes, and he had held fast to his own disappearing innocence as some sort of way to try to safeguard hers.
But there on a seat in a pavilion in a park, as the sun set on his time with her, when his lips drifted down and hers reached up, he felt an awed inevitability; a comfort in the completeness. She may have had her first kiss stolen from her years ago; regrettably, he had given his away, in a momentary mix of curiosity and weakness at sixteen to the forthright, calculating charms of the sisters Pye.
But this kiss, the one between them here, now, gave and never took; healed rather than hurt; looked forward and not behind… and was so more than he could have ever imagined anyway. The warmth and the softness and the seeking… the trade of breath back and forth… the tantalising graze of tongue-tip… the slow build within him, like a low rumbling, as if an engine gathering speed… a yearning in him answered, like a call he had made long ago sounding in echo back to him.
They drew apart, and he had to overcome the urge to start again… he already wanted the time back between them as he never had before… He missed her mouth under his the moment he had broken away.
Her eyes were grey-green and a little startled, as if she had received an answer to a question she hadn't thought to ask.
He had his own question, and paused in awful indecision before asking it; he didn't know if he could bear her response either way.
Before him was the vision of two bloodied, terrified children, and the words he had crooned – desperately, defiantly - in comfort to her.
"Did this kiss matter, Anne? Does this one count?" he choked out now, his blue eyes ablaze.
Her own eyes went wider still at the memory invoked, and she looked like she might cry anew. He couldn't stand to see that look from her and began to turn away.
"Yes, Tom!" she gasped, reaching for his hand to draw him back, laying it on her cheek. "Yes, it matters… Yes, it counts!"
He carried the heartbreak and hope of her admission all the way home to Avonlea.
Chapter Notes
The chapter title is from Anne of the Island (Ch 14)
'On the surface it would go on just the same; but the deeps had been stirred.'
*Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 'A Rainy Day'
**Anne of the Island (Ch 27)
***Anne of the Island (Ch 6)