Chapter Twenty Six
Hidden Dreams and Blighted Hopes
Author's Note:
Hello! Anybody home?!
Remember when I used to write this story?!
Well, five or so months later, we finally have an update! I'm sorry it took so long, and I'm sorry that I have also been keeping time with other Annes and Gilberts (or their modern equivalents) instead. This story remains close to my heart and I do want to see it through. It is at exactly the halfway point now, narratively speaking, though I hope to close it out in about 40 chapters in all (meaning about 14 to go…) It will still follow the timeline and general outline of Anne of the Island.
Thank you to all who have read, reviewed, followed, favourited and otherwise shown love and support for this story. I haven't forgotten your faith and kindness.
With love,
MrsVonTrapp x
Anne and Diana lay side by side, hands clasped under the covers of the latter's bedroom at Orchard Slope, talking long into the night.
It had been a most extraordinary day, and every delicious moment dripped again from Diana's tongue as she recounted the events by a wrought-iron bench that sunny, sensuous afternoon. Anne listened, appropriately impressed and occasionally agog, by the tender devotion declared by a clearly adoring Fred Wright. Love and proposals and poetry, no less! Even her own romantic, fanciful musings could not find fault with such faithful endeavours, and Diana wore her enchantment over her newly-engaged state so beautifully.
Ever the considerate friend, Diana had not forgotten Anne and Gilbert in all this betrothal business, and before long had winkled out of a blushing Anne the entire (if edited) story, Anne glancing over the finer details of swooning exchanges beneath apple trees in deference to Diana's own news, and certainly not giving away any of that very afternoon's passionate parley hidden behind the side of her very own house.
"Courting Gilbert, now, Miss Anne! I'm so delighted for you, but I'm surprised he's been able to keep that news to himself so far!" Anne felt Diana's indulgent smile through the darkness.
"I think that Gil would shout the news of it, but I asked him to please… wait."
"Wait?"
"It's just that I first wanted to be able to tell – "
"Oh, Tom! Oh Anne, of course! Yes, you must tread carefully, there."
"You… you think there's reason to?" Anne felt her cheeks redden.
"Oh, Anne, surely you have felt Tom's affection for you?"
"Yes, of course…" she fumbled. "He… he and I… it's difficult to define, what's between us. But I didn't know to what extent… that is, I felt it wrong to presume after all this time that…"
"Well, darling, I would presume away. Because you've won Gilbert's heart, but you might be about to break Tom's."
"Oh, Diana! Don't say that!" Anne begged mournfully.
"Anne, I'm only telling you what I have seen for myself. And when I gave Tom your letter last New Year's I don't know if I have witnessed a person have quite that… reaction… to hearing from an old friend."
"Well, it's very… complicated." Anne remarked miserably.
"I know, darling."
Anne bit her lip in new worry, unsure what to do with this information, only remembering how the writing of that very letter had wrung her heart dry. In the very secret place she tucked her love for Tom away, she tried to imagine her reaction to news of him courting anyone if their situations were reversed, failing in that endeavour rather spectacularly.
"Well, Anne, don't fret over it," Diana placated. "Just be honest with him. I've known Tom almost as long as you have, and if there's one thing anyone can say about him, he's extraordinarily decent, and wouldn't want to stand in the way of your happiness."
Anne's throat tightened, knowing the truth of it, but bereft to think her happiness had to come in any way at the price of his.
Diana took her silence for assent, and leapt forward in her conjecture.
"And at any rate, perhaps his heart will recover faster than you think…"
"Whatever do you mean?"
"Only that you and Gilbert weren't the only ones off to parts unknown today whilst I was with Fred," came sly remark.
Anne blinked rapidly. "He was just with Pris, Diana. He met her in Carmody years ago, I gather, when she was teaching there."
"Mmm…" Diana murmured speculatively.
"And then he saw her again at your own afternoon tea in Kingsport, when he came to visit."
"Mmm…"
"Diana Barry! What are you trying to say?"
"I'm only telling you what I have seen for myself," she chortled.
"I hear this is typical behaviour of engaged ladies, Di," Anne huffed. "To want to matchmake the rest of us in your stead!"
Diana gave a delighted giggle, but neither confirmed nor denied the accusation.
Before long, Anne heard Diana's steady breathing beside her, but despite her best efforts, sleep eluded her for a good while thereafter.
The newest betrothed young lady of Avonlea found herself in much demand the following days, required to do the rounds of the vicinity, offering up herself and her little diamond ring alike to everyone in the local Ladies Aid and her mother's sewing circle, though rather luckily those two groups largely intersected. It had fortunately not taken Mrs Barry long to change her mind on the suit of Fred Wright, once her own husband had appraised her of the Wright's much-recovered finances, and she saw for herself the tantalising leap in status conferred to the Mother of the Bride. By midday of the Thursday, however, Diana was in danger of tearing out her lovely raven tresses; the very ones her new fiancé had so admired and poetically exalted over. She begged of Anne, who had stayed in the previous day to catch up on overdue correspondence to Katherine Brooke and Philippa Gordon, to rescue her with any urgent errand that would take them out of the house, fictional or otherwise.
"Do you think…" Anne suggested hopefully, "we might go on a picnic? Just we girls, we Kingsport girls that is. Nothing very formal, not like your lovely gathering here on Tuesday, just…"
"That's perfect!" Diana brightened. "Oh, you're a genius, Anne! I can send Father's groom over with a note to Jane's, and call on she and Priscilla to collect them within the hour. I know that Ruby was going into Carmody today with Josie, so though we'll miss her, it saves us the torture of having to invite the Pyes." She clapped her hands together as her excitement took hold. "And I have the perfect destination in mind for us, too! You'll love it, Anne! But are you sure you don't want to invite Gilbert?"
Anne still fought to compose herself whenever their names were linked in public, even if at this stage only by Diana. "He promised his father a day or so to help around the farm. At any rate, I'm invited over there again tomorrow," she offered blushingly.
Diana's smile was beatific. "As I am to Fred's. But I fancy you'll have a better time of it than I will! The Blythes are dears, you know."
"I know," Anne grinned in remembered delight.
"Gilbert could have been my brother, I must tell you," Diana mused, dark eyes sparkling.
"Beg your pardon?"
Diana waved her much admired, diamond-encrusted left hand airily, though her smile was mischievous. "It's a rather long story. I'll save it for the picnic!"
It proved an ideal day for a picnic. . .a day of breeze and blue, warm, sunny, with a little rollicking wind blowing across meadow and orchard. Over every sunlit upland and field was a delicate, flower-starred green. *
A man, harrowing at the back of his farm and feeling some of the spring witch-work even in his sober, middle-aged blood, saw four figures, basket laden, tripping across the end of his field where it joined a fringing woodland of birch and fir. Their blithe voices and laughter echoed down to him.
Anne was enraptured by the beauty surrounding her, feeling that she was coming to know this place and understanding the affection Gilbert had for it and the love Tom had developed for these idyllic, Eden-esque surrounds. She had grown up in circumstances and situations where natural beauty needed to be sought out and clasped to one tightly; the poor, spindly tree outside the orphanage; the small woods at the back of the Girls Home; the pleasant, sunny alcove where she would take her lunch at the school in Summerside; the oak trees in the quad at Redmond. But to have such lush beauty swamping her… wave after wave of it… it was more than she thought she could bear.
The others looked upon her fondly as she began gathering wildflowers during their passage – the flowers were everywhere; bursting profusions from every nook and cranny; a riotous kaleidoscope of color. They passed by a patch of violets, some of which Anne plucked, gathering them to her delightedly.
"These are our first gift, today!" she grinned. "When I'm eighty years old… if I ever am… I shall shut my eyes and see these violets."
"If a kiss could be seen I think it would look like a violet," said Priscilla, a little dreamily.
Anne glowed. "That's a lovely thought, Pris!"
"Do Mr Inglis's kisses make you see violets?" Diana asked Jane soberly, with a sly innocence.
"I don't know…" Jane's expression was very droll. "Do Fred's?"
Diana held out momentarily, before bursting into laughter, and the two old friends, now supposedly mature engaged ladies, collapsed into prolonged giggles, clutching one another, much to Anne and Pris's amusement, and not a little chagrin.
They took a winding narrow path, walking single file as fir bows brushed their faces, and came to a shallow woodland pool in the center of a little open glade. Later on in the season it would be dried up and its place filled with a rank growth of ferns; but now it was a glimmering placid sheet, round as a saucer and clear as crystal. A ring of slender young birches encircled it and little ferns fringed its margin.
"Oh, it's beautiful!" Anne cried, quite overcome and dropping her basket. "It makes you want to dance, to see it!"
"I think my wood-nymph days are behind me, Anne!" Diana grinned. "But you still have the look for it."
"The ground's a little boggy," Jane determined, eying the patch of grass dubiously.
"What's this place called, Diana?" Anne still wore rapturous expression, staring out to the little lake.
"Ah… I don't think it's named at all."
"What a shame! And it gives such scope for the imagination, too!"
"Now that is a real Anne-type expression," Priscilla grinned. "What would you call it, then?"
"You know…" Anne's auburn brows furrowed, "I don't think I've had naming rights to anything in my life."
Diana and Jane's expressions softened at this, and Pris, with a look to her Anne couldn't quite decipher, threaded her arm through hers, and squeezed reassuringly for good measure. "Well, you have, now."
Anne fumbled around for the perfect name. Once she might have conjured an epithet of druids and fairies, of mystic and magic, but those days were long gone, if they had ever properly existed for her at all.
"Glimmer-glass," Anne finally murmured.
"Oh, gosh!" Pris answered wide-eyed. "That's exactly what I had been thinking!"
Anne grinned at Pris and accepted the admiring praise of the others, before they continued on, the lake glimmering in farewell to them as of its new moniker as they passed it.
They pushed on, through the undergrowth beyond to a lane through the woods, skirting what she was told was a Mr Silas Sloane's back pasture – Anne smiled and wondered at the connection to Charlie – and came to an archway of wild cherry trees all in bloom. They swung their hats on their arms and wreathed their hair with the creamy, fluffy blossoms, giggling like girls all the while. Then the lane turned at right angles and plunged into a spruce wood so thick and dark that they walked in a gloom as of twilight, with not a glimpse of sky or sunlight to be seen.
Past the spruces the lane dipped down into a sunny little open where a log bridge spanned a brook; and then came the glory of a sunlit beechwood where the air was like transparent golden wine… and then more wild cherries, and a little valley of lissome firs, and then a hill so steep they lost their breath climbing it; but when they reached the top and came out into the open the prettiest surprise of all awaited them.
Beyond, apparently, were the back fields of the farms that ran out to the upper Carmody road. Just before them, hemmed in by beeches and firs but open to the south, was a little corner and in it a garden . . .or what had once been a garden. A tumbledown stone dyke, overgrown with mosses and grass, surrounded it. Along the eastern side ran a row of garden cherry trees, white as a snowdrift. There were traces of old paths still and a double line of rosebushes through the middle; but all the rest of the space was a sheet of yellow and white narcissi, in their airiest, most lavish, wind-swayed bloom above the lush green grasses.
"Oh, how perfectly lovely!" three of the girls cried. Anne only gazed in eloquent silence.
"How in the world does it happen that there ever was a garden back here?" said Priscilla in amazement.
"It has to be Hester Gray's garden," said Diana. "Thank goodness we've found it – Mother was rather vague with directions,though we've had a good walk out of it. I've heard her speak of it but I never saw it before, and I wouldn't have really supposed that it could be in existence still." She turned to Anne, still dumbstruck beside her, "we are distantly related to them, you see."
"Who was she?" Anne breathed, to Pris and Jane's encouragement.
"Oh, you've seen it in the graveyard, Jane," Diana indicated to their friend. "She is buried down there in the poplar corner. You know the little brown stone with the opening gates carved on it and `Sacred to the memory of Hester Gray, aged twenty-two.' Jordan Gray is buried right beside her but there's no stone to him… To be sure, it happened thirty years ago and everybody has forgotten." Diana shrugged sadly at Anne.
"Well, we mustn't forget!" Anne determined, her heart thumping queerly. She was uneasy to think that Hester had lived and died only a generation ago, as her own mother, bequeathing this beautiful place, and no one marked her now. "Do you know the full story, Diana?"
Diana did indeed, and they set out their picnic provisions, carried the length and breadth of Avonlea, and settled in for the sad tale amongst the wildflowers.
Anne was quietly captivated, wondering if her own fate had been different would she too, like Hester, now be working in a shop or worse, hating it and wishing for escape, rescue by a handsome stranger optional. To be taken away to some quiet spot where she'd see nothing but fields and trees. Anne loved the idea of a soul sister who wasn't much of a housekeeper but (who) had a knack with flowers. She looked around and could imagine herself here, living humbly and quietly, writing by the window of the house in the good light, rich in love with an adoring husband. She could understand how the garden called little Hester Gray, and in the end her soul was given back to it, closing her eyes for a final time surrounded by all this loveliness and covered in roses.
"Oh, what a dear story," sighed Anne, wiping away her tears.
"What became of Jordan?" asked Priscilla.
"He sold the farm after Hester died and went back to Boston. Mr. Jabez Sloane bought the farm and hauled the little house out to the road. Jordan died about ten years after and he was brought home and buried beside Hester."
"I can't understand how she could have wanted to live back here, away from everything," said Jane, who had spent some time during their walk regaling them with the delights of up-and-coming Winnipeg, and how she was planning to newly outfit Harry's grand house in town.
"I can," Anne admitted in tremulous, thoughtful voice. "She was tired to death of the noise of the big city and the crowds of people always coming and going and caring nothing for her. She just wanted to escape from it all to some still, green, friendly place where she could rest."
There was a purposeful pause, and all three girls looked to Anne, who was lost to memories of such a time spent amongst the grime and the crime and the cacophony; of the boy who had been saved from the streets of Hopetown to come to this place of idyll where one might live like a king. She had never been so glad of the mistake made regarding the Cuthberts in her life; and even if she herself had gone from one city to another instead, from Summerside to Kingsport, she had still journeyed far from Hopetown and the lack of hope that lived there.
"Hester set out those cherry trees over there," said Diana, eager to fill the new silence. "She told mother she'd never live to eat their fruit, but she wanted to think that something she had planted would go on living and helping to make the world beautiful after she was dead." Looking back to Anne, Diana suddenly quailed. "Oh, Anne, I'm sorry to prattle on about death so. It's terribly insensitive of me. I hope you don't think it was too sad to come."
"Not at all, Diana. I'm so glad you brought us," Anne reassured, shining-eyed. "I'll never forget coming here."
They left their baskets in Hester's garden and spent the rest of the afternoon rambling in the woods and fields surrounding it, discovering many pretty nooks and lanes. They stopped for last refreshments in the prettiest spot of all ... on the steep bank of a gurgling brook where white birches shot up out of long feathery grasses.
"Doesn't it all look like a poem?" Anne offered with heavy, satisfied sigh.
"I should rather call it a picture," said Jane with a bemused laugh. "A poem is lines and verses."
"Don't you think the lines and verses are only the outward garments of the poem? The real poem is the soul within them . . .and this beautiful vista is the soul of an unwritten poem. It is not every day one sees a soul… even of a poem." Anne smiled to herself, thinking of Gilbert and his poetical equation during his teaching days here.
"I wonder what a soul. . .a person's soul. . .would look like," said Priscilla dreamily.
Anne turned to her, grey eyes starry. "I used to fancy souls as being made of light. A delicate light colored differently for each person… some are all shot through with rosy stains and quivers. . .and some have a soft glitter like moonlight on the sea. . .and some are pale and transparent like mist at dawn."
"I read somewhere once that souls were like flowers," said Priscilla, smiling generously, "though my own mother would claim that makes most people weeds!"
"Then your soul is a golden narcissus," said Anne, in a moment of inspiration. "And Diana's is like a red, red rose. Jane's is an apple blossom…"
"And your own is a white violet, with purple streaks in its heart," finished Priscilla.
Anne grinned, rather liking that. "And Phil's is a mayflower, pretty and dainty and proudly Nova Scotian…"
"…and not certain if it wants to be pink or white," Pris added drolly.
Inevitably, regretfully, home and responsibilities called them, and they packed away their provisions, setting off by the light of a calm golden sunset, their baskets filled with narcissus blossoms from Hester's garden. Anne wondered quietly to herself whether she could carry some to the cemetery, if she could find it, -perhaps on the way to Gilbert's tomorrow - and to lay them at the little brown marker Diana had mentioned.
"Well, we have had a lovely time after all," claimed Diana, as if she was secretly relieved at this happy outcome.
"It has been a truly golden day," said Priscilla.
"I'm really awfully fond of the woods myself," said Jane, belatedly.
Anne said nothing except to nod eagerly, her throat suddenly thick. She was looking afar into the western sky and thinking of little Hester Gray.
Adela Blythe watched with a fondness that informed her smile as Gilbert trod an impatient path from the kitchen window all the way out to the verandah, to scan the road before returning through the hallway to contemplate the back fields. There was much of the boy in the man today, particularly the incarnation that had returned to her from Alberta; all jangling nerves and excitable energy. Gilbert had arrived back from his day with Anne and seeing her back to Orchard Slope so thrilled with himself and the universe he had been in danger of breaking out into song, but fortunately settled for an enveloping hug for his mother and a very Blythe grin directed at his father. The happy news of his courting Miss Anne Shirley gushed from him as from a geyser; only matched in his pleasure in sharing the engagement of Fred and Diana only days later.
"Gilbert, really, love! You'll wear a hole right through the floor! Why don't you sit with your father and have some tea?"
Adela indicated the very nonplussed example of Blythe senior, relaxing in a rare moment of leisure and perusing the paper whilst they awaited their visitor.
"Sorry, Ma, but I can't sit. I haven't seen her for two days!" Gilbert defended, thankfully turning to resume his pacing before marking the eyeroll he received from his father.
"Try three years," John gave muttered aside, shaking his head and noting his wife's gentle hand on his arm. "The girl's only decided to walk to us from the Barry's, son," he resumed slightly louder, for Gilbert's benefit, "not circle the globe. She'll get here when she gets here."
"I offered to pick her up in the buggy. But she wanted to explore the way on foot," Gilbert sighed.
"As I recall Lizzy Bennet was fond of walking," Adela smiled serenely at her son.
"I wouldn't know, Ma. I've been too busy with Jane Eyre," Gilbert gave a secretive smirk, his eyes unable to resist lighting at some memory or other his parents were probably best not to know about.
Adela caught her husband's eye, but they were all saved any revealing anecdotes by Gilbert's insistence he lay in wait for Anne outside, and his parents heartily endorsed this plan, if only to get a moment's peace.
Anne paused at the approach to Blythe Farm, taking a moment to gather her composure - and adjust her skirts – before taking a breath and pressing forward. She didn't know why she was struck with sudden nerves, and the appearance of the son and heir, rounding the corner with an expectant look that morphed into delight at the sight of her, did little to quell her fluttering stomach. Gilbert had no such hesitation, it seemed, taking quick steps towards her and engulfing her in his embrace.
"Anne! It feels like forever since I've seen you!" he clasped her tightly, swinging her around in a half circle that owed more to enthusiasm than to expertise in that moment. "I was going demented!"
"Over a two-day separation?" she gave a smile, laughing breathlessly. "We've spent whole holidays apart before!"
"Well, you weren't mine then," he explained in a low, smoky voice, looking down to her with darkening eyes.
He swept a look beside and behind them, checking for an unsuspected audience, before lowering his lips to hers.
Two days was little enough time to be away from him, but altogether too much time without the security of his arms around her, or the steadiness of his steadfast smile as he lifted her face to his to stare into her eyes.
"That almost makes those two days worth it!" he laughed quietly.
"Gil…" she murmured, with a blush that was equal parts delight and embarrassment, "suppose somebody sees?"
"It's Gil again, is it? Don't tempt me with that sort of talk, Anne-girl."
She gave bemused look, but as he took her hand to lead them both up to the house she tugged at him to pause, leading him over instead to the shade of a friendly birch by the path.
"Anne?"
"I'm sorry, Gil, I know your parents are expecting us… but… could we sit, for a moment?"
"Of course, m'lady." He doffed his jacket so that she might rest on it and then took a seat carefully beside her.
"Are you alright, Anne? Was it too much sun on the way over? Can I fetch you some water?"
"No, Gil, I'm well, really…" she mumbled. "I'm just… just… a little nervous, today."
"Anne Shirley, nervous?" he gave a crooked, teasing smile. "Recipient of the Thorburn? Fearless debater? Passionate defender of Dickens?"
She gave a flustered, gabbling response, directing the air with her hand. "And nothing makes you nervous I suppose, Mr Freshman President!"
"Oh, if only you knew, Anne Shirley. I'm frequently terrified. Chemistry quizzes. English tutorials with yours truly. Matrons at Girls Homes. Encountering anyone with the surname of Pye, Sloane or Andrews in the street." He grinned at her theatrical eye-roll, drawing his arm around her waist to squeeze it reassuringly. "The question is what has brought you to such a feeling, love?"
Anne's smile faltered. "Do you think… your parents will approve of this?"
"This?"
"This. Our courting. Being together at Redmond."
"Oh, Anne!" he laughed in relief. "They already do! I can't tell you how thrilled they are!"
"Really?"
"Really. I'm sorry, I had to tell them. I couldn't keep it to myself."
"Well…" she took a steadying breath, "I can hardly be cross at you. I might have told Diana."
Gilbert's smile glowed, polished by a hint of smugness at the corners. "Well, then."
"But your parents… they aren't… disappointed? They might have wished for someone different for you. Someone with family, and some connections, and – "
"Anne! I can't… I can't even begin to tell you that they believe I'm the fortunate one in all this! They probably like you more than they do me already."
Anne smiled despite herself, though her expression soon clouded. "And everyone at Redmond?"
"At Redmond?" he frowned. "Why should you worry about anyone there?"
She bit her lip, hesitating. "You know that there are certain people… even certain lecturers… who still think women don't really need a higher education. That we are only there to… to… find ourselves a husband. To mark time until we can set our cap at any unsuspecting male. Particularly someone like me… an orphan with no other ties."
"Then I challenge any of those naysayers to come up against you in a discussion, Anne," he scowled. "They'll soon see how serious you are about your education and your time there."
"I am serious, Gilbert!" she nodded quickly, clutching his free hand. "It's always been my dream to study, and to make something of myself. You saw where I came from, in Summerside, and before that, Tom and I – " she cut off the thought, and her stream of words; always hesitant to dig up old, painful ground.
"I know… you didn't come from much… either of you," Gilbert acknowledged tightly, his expression sorrowful. "Is that part of it? You're worried about Katherine Brooke? About Tom?"
Anne shrugged her shoulders helplessly. "Probably about me most of all…" she gave a certain look to him, only succeeding in making herself blush.
This elicited a pleased chuckle. "Well, thank goodness for that, Anne! And here I was thinking I was the only one to forget everything – to forget what day it is – when I'm with you. You think I'm not affected by this… this… thing between us?"
"Really?" she risked a look to him with large, soulful grey eyes.
"Most of the time you make me want to abandon everything and go live in a cabin in the woods with you, Anne Shirley," he fairly growled.
She flushed fiercely at his passionate tone. "Not much doctoring needed out there in the woods…" she drew shaking fingers to touch his brow.
"No…" he blew out a breath, watching her as she watched his reaction to those fingers drift to stroke his face, hazel eyes flaring at her touch. "That's why… we're at our best together, Anne. Because we want to help the other achieve all their dreams, not take them away."
She nodded, her throat tight.
"Though this is one of those dreams, you know…" he touched his lips, again, to hers. "I've dreamt about this for a good while, now…" he deepened the kiss, causing her to clutch at his collar a little desperately.
"A good while?" she questioned throatily.
"Anne-girl, you're talking about the fellow who wanted to court you since… well… since maybe that first time at Diana's."
"The afternoon tea? With the scones? No, surely not, Gilbert!" she risked a small smile of amazement.
"Surely yes!" he chuckled. "You answered the door, as if I had beckoned you and you alone and you had heard me…" he gulped, "and you had a smudge of flour, here," he reached out a long finger to trace a line down her own cheek, his eyes softening. "And then you shared with me a little of your yourself, on the walk home… and I was never so proud to escort you back, and have you take my arm, and think that… that… if I could just have you take my arm, always…" he shrugged, words failing him.
"Oh, Gil…" Anne breathed.
"Of course, it wasn't until later I realised I was in love with you."
She looked down as he took her hand carefully with his free one, stroking the soft skin with his thumb.
"Later?" she clarified unsteadily.
He was quiet for a moment, and the look he gave her was surprisingly bashful.
"At the fundraising dance," he asserted throatily. "Outside. Our waltz."
"Yes…" she clasped his hand tightly, "I remember."
"For you, too?"
She felt the returned blush flare out from cheeks and torch her from crown to toes. "It came on so slowly and steadily, for me… definitely that was a moment when… when… I allowed myself to think it might be possible, between us, but then…" her brow furrowed.
"But then I had to pretend I didn't care for you," he sighed.
This seemed to surprise her, and she swallowed carefully. "I never knew whether you… you had just defended me as a friend, and were trying to… extricate yourself…"
"Anne!" he was aghast.
"It's alright, Gilbert. Diana tried to set me straight, and later Phil too, but it just was… hard to believe you would see anything more than a friend in me."
He was working his jaw furiously. "I certainly hope you are long since disabused of that incredibly false notion, Miss Shirley. I treasure you as a friend, but I love you as… as… my other half. Or, what did your Rochester call it? My – "
"My second self," ** she finished reverently, her eyes glimmering brightly.
"My second self," he affirmed, turning to stare at her long and tenderly, enough to make the breath catch in her chest. "Well, then, Anne, my love, my treasure, my… mine…" he gave exaggerated grimace, "that didn't turn out so well."
"No, Gil, it's perfect."
She smiled softly up to him, a different kind of nervous adrenaline beginning to course through her.
"And you mustn't be concerned about courting back at Redmond, Anne. Please. We can take it as slowly as you'd like. I won't start dragging you to every function, don't worry, I – "
"I'll be proud to take your arm, Gil, as much as I was that first day."
His smile matched the new fire in his eyes, kindling something so elemental that she felt the heat of it as of a slow-burning furnace inside her. She reached up and touched tentative fingers now to his lips, and before long replaced them with her mouth, meeting his which was enthusiastically responsive.
"We'd better get up to the house," Gilbert ventured raggedly, long, lustful moments later, "or I really will be placing your arm in mine and running for the hills - or the woods - with you, Anne-girl, searching out that cabin."
She nodded her assent, not trusting herself to words, and as he pulled her up and she rearranged herself again properly, she smiled at she thought of the strong possibility of many more times of mussed hair and rumpled clothing in their future.
"Do I dare ask you about that intriguing smile, Miss Shirley?" Gilbert passed a hand through his hair, shaking out his jacket and shrugging it back over impossibly wide shoulders.
She had better not venture down that path, but she could offer him something else.
"You never asked me what my moment of revelation was, Gilbert. When I finally knew I loved you."
His chuckle was warm and knowing. "Well, obviously prompted by one of my dashing feats of bravery on the football field, or my excellent knowledge of Shakespeare, or my clear willingness to fetch the tea on the train to Summerside."
"All good points, but no."
"No?" He waited patiently for her reply, his lips quirking at her open appraisal, and the glint to her greening eyes.
"It does have something to do with Summerside, though."
"I'm all ears."
"When… I found you in the broom closet."
He spluttered a laugh. "Now that wasn't what I was expecting!" He shoved hands in pockets, shaking his head in disbelief. "So the moment I am at my most tired and overwrought, wrenched from friends and family, stripped of ego and dignity, and shoved in with the dust pans, is the moment you fell for me?"
"That's about the size of it."
He gave an aggrieved sigh. "It's not exactly an anecdote for the ages, Anne."
She stepped up to him, slowly and deliberately. "It is to me. It's when I saw true goodness, Gilbert. Selflessness and strength and support… that you would endure all that you mentioned just now, for me, and do it with not only humour and humility but whilst being so ridiculously handsome…" her arms came to his neck, sure and steady, not flinging themselves briefly, as that time she talked of, but with a new sensuality that quickened his pulse.
"Well… when you put it that way…" he whispered, eager hands finding her waist.
They were further delayed, so much so that John Blythe was almost forced to go in search of them, almost barrelling into the delighted-for-themselves couple at the door, flushed and grinning, and resolutely arm in arm.
The lane that might have been known for lovers - and definitely cows - was a long, dreamy, dappled expense; a leafy arch of maples… that opened out below the orchard at Green Gables and stretched far up into the woods to the end of the Cuthbert farm. *** Gilbert reluctantly agreed to walk her the way in order to meet Tom, after her lively lunch at the Blythes, during which John gifted her a signature hug and even a kiss on the cheek, and Adela not only measured her up for a new dress, insisting she just had to use up some leftover material, but sent her off with a little package of lace, buttons and other embellishments, so that she might make over her others. This way she would be all the better prepared for when Gilbert squired her around at Redmond. Anne was overwhelmed by their kindness, having to blink away tears at Adela's wish to "spoil her as Gilbert's girl, and by default theirs."
So now, hand in hand with the man himself, she was quiet and thoughtful as she reflected upon her extraordinary fortnight in Avonlea. The only thing that marred it, now, was the conversation that must come, and she hoped, an understanding of the direction her heart had taken.
"Anne…" Gilbert ventured, his new frown accentuated by the shadows cast by the foliage above as they walked the lane; a long-ago promise made real. "Do you really think you should do this? Tom's not expecting you until tomorrow… you may catch him off guard."
"Gilbert, your parents know now. So does Diana, which means so will Fred. I can't risk him hearing about us from someone other than me."
Gilbert's sigh was audible. "Anne, I've known Tom just about as long as you have. I think he would like to feel… prepared for your visit. He's a methodical guy. If you caught him unawares it may… make a likely tense situation worse."
"You think this is a mistake?" her auburn brows drew together in query. "I was hoping… I could tell him now, and visit with him properly tomorrow, when he's been able to… process things."
"Anne, I don't think his reaction to this news will change in a day," Gilbert muttered.
Anne looked up to the man beside her, worrying her lip at his grim expression.
"You think… this could go badly?"
Gilbert blew a frustrated breath. "I wanted to have my own conversation with him, actually. Just to… clear the air. He's been good and fair and decent, and deserves to know how I feel about you… and deserves to be able to detail his own feelings. But after today he'll probably order me off the property with a shotgun." He paused, face darkening. "Or Marilla Cuthbert will."
"Gilbert! I think you might be exaggerating! The Cuthberts are lovely! And Tom… he is my oldest friend. At one time he was my only friend. Neither of us would ever jeopardise that…"
"All I'm saying is that if it was me, I'd be crushed, Anne-girl."
"Crushed?" Anne quailed, remembering Diana's words of mere days ago… you've won Gilbert's heart, but you might be about to break Tom's. "But Gilbert! We… that is, I…"
Gilbert turned to place large hands on small shoulders, his smile and his words fighting now to reassure.
"Anne, darling, I'm sorry. I don't want to worry you. And I might be wrong – I certainly hope that I am. I just would wish for you to be prepared for his reaction. Whatever it might be."
Anne considered this sorrowfully for several minutes, as they continued walking, glimpsing the end of the lane, the orchard in the distance, and Anne could picture the handsome house beyond.
"Would you… like me to come with you?" he asked, fairly confident of a refusal.
"No… thank you… I need to do this on my own. I owe him that much."
Gilbert nodded, kissing her lightly on the lips. "If no one at the Cuthbert's can drop you back at Diana's, Anne, take this laneway all the way back, and I'll keep a watch for you at the other end of it."
"Thank you, Gilbert. And please thank your parents again – they are simply wonderful!"
"Well, shared genes and all," he winked.
"We are friends, Tom and I…" she determined resolutely, bidding him farewell. "I know we can remain so – we've been through too much, together." And apart.
"My love, I appreciate that… It's just that… Tom doesn't look at you like a friend does, sweetheart. Perhaps he never did. And the reason I know… is because I look at you the same way."
Anne heard Tom before she saw him; the dull thwack of axe on wood, struck with power and precision, which catapulted her back through the years to the tall and tow-haired, gangly and good-natured boy he had been, using what skill and limited strength he had to keep them as warm as the draughty walls of the orphanage permitted, which was to say not very much. He had chopped wood up and down the neighbouring streets, trading favours, mostly for her; she owed her first proper shiny-new pencil to him, still smelling of woodchips and lead; and also a faded green ribbon, which felt as new as the day another young miss had first worn it. There had been other treats for other children, even for little Lily, for Tom had always possessed a generous, egalitarian spirit, which had found solid shape and definition in his whittling. It had been another skill born of the land and of nature and honed by need and necessity; but he had turned it into something worthy and wonderful.
He had always done that; most noticeably at Green Gables; taking a modest farm and working it into profit; finding himself between two reclusive siblings and transforming them into a family. To take disparate parts and make them whole; to take something and reshape it. It was his gift and, perhaps unknowingly, his quest, ever since the time he had toddled over to the door to watch his father leave through it for the last time, and sought ever after in his steady, quiet way to put the fractured pieces he saw around him back together.
Would their pieces remain so?
Tom had never minded woodchopping; the reassuring weight of the axe; the firm, steady motion, like a rhythmic, hypnotic dance; the way he could clear his mind and concentrate on nothing but the repetitive, steady strokes. He chopped often, for Green Gables and surrounds; sometimes Mr Harrison's back troubled him; the good reverend was always better with a sermon than a blade; the schoolhouse was always running short, whether with a female schoolmistress or no; the curious, solitary spinster and her talkative charge all the way up to Echo Lodge couldn't always be warmed by dreams and fancy.
He paused to wipe the sweat on his brow, transferring glistening sheen to bronzed bicep; clad in old trousers and an undershirt, he planned to finish the chopping and then deliver it on his way into town, once Matthew returned with the buggy. He wanted to browse the general store for something for Anne before her departure the day after next; for what, he had no idea, but he had to trust that inspiration would strike once he was confronted by some choices.
And then… a blaze of red on his periphery.
"A… Anne?"
"Oh, Tom! Hello! I hope I didn't startle you!"
"No… 'course not…" he grinned his surprise. "We just weren't expecting you until tomorrow. Unless I've got the day wrong?"
"No, you haven't. I'm sorry. I just… needed to see you. I came up the lane, and here I am."
And here she was.
She just needed to see him.
He gulped a proper greeting, noting her grey gaze warming in the sun, before she averted her eyes with a flustered smile and he remembered his state of undress, hastily hauling on his shirt before giving her a careful hug, apologising as he did so for the mess- in every respect – that she found him in.
"I should be the one apologising, Tom, really – I came unannounced, when you're all in the middle of chores and whatnot, and – "
"Anne – you are the very best distraction. Come into the house and see everyone again, while I get cleaned up, and – "
"Oh, Tom, no, I will just wait out here – I've trampled on everyone's afternoon. I was told this was one of my lesser ideas – I'm so scatterbrained to think I can just show up and wreak havoc on everyone's plans!"
Tom looked at her long moments, his lips fighting his smile, even as he shook his head in fond dispute.
"What is it?"
"Oh, Anne, you sound about - eleven – when you say that. And unless you plan to have me enact some horror ghost story, pretending I've lost my head, I don't think you're going to – what was it? – wreak havoc anywhere. And in matters of havoc, we normally leave those to Davy, at any rate." He allowed his grin to shine through, finally, warm as the color of his sun-ripened hair. "He'll be sorry to miss you today, that one. He's talked about you and the cow-milking for a week!"
Anne relaxed into her own smile, breathing through her worry as Tom honoured her desire to remain unannounced, instead stowing away the axe and walking quickly up to the great gabled house, whilst she waited in the security of the shadows at the edge of the orchard. The air was sweet and full of promise this afternoon, and the surrounds calmed her unsteady heart – as did Tom's greeting.
It would all be all right.
Tom returned with admirable speed, having washed and donned good trousers and a fetching blue shirt, pulling suspenders back up as he came, and hiding something behind his back that turned out to be a bottle of raspberry cordial – and one glass.
"It was all I could find as I swept past the kitchen," he explained. "I didn't dare risk searching for anything to eat, Anne. Are you sure you won't come up to the house?"
"No, I'm fine, Tom! I'm just happy to enjoy your company at the moment. And I've eaten at – ah, before I came - so please don't worry."
He nodded easily, always content to accept her wishes, and walked with her in companionable quiet, skirting the orchard and the lane and coming out to a pretty little spring, seating themselves on big, conveniently situated red stones, close enough to the water that they might almost stretch out and dip their toes.
"Oh, this is beautiful, Tom! Avonlea seems to be full of these hidden gems – these little bubbles of delight."
His look was thoughtful, though his eyes smiled at her enthusiasm. "I come here often, just to sit. It's one of my favourite places."
"I can just imagine you here. It will be lovely, to be able to place you, when I'm back in Kingsport."
It perhaps wasn't the most brilliant thing to say, causing his posture to stiffen as if guarding his body against the inevitability of her return to college, but he busied himself instead pouring the cordial, offering her the glass.
"I've just gotten used to being with you, again," he admitted, a mournful note shading the determined cheer of his demeanour. "It will be a wrench to have you go, Anne."
"And for me," she admitted quietly, with a truth that was its own axe to her heart. They seemed always destined to be parted from the other, left wistful and wondering. "But we'll have our letters, Tom. And you can write to me about anything here and I'll understand, now. I've seen it here and I've met the people here and I've seen you here. It makes a wonderful sort of sense to me. You belong here, Tom."
"And you don't?" his sandy brows worried over those clear, pale blue eyes.
It had been similar to what Gilbert had asked her back at the schoolhouse, and she had no better answer now than she had then.
"Maybe I'm not meant to belong anywhere," she shrugged helplessly, misjudging her next sip and nearly spilling a vivid red vein down her dress. "Except maybe in a dusty library somewhere."
There were several beats of silence, and then the throaty declaration. "You belong in my heart, Anne. That's where you've always been."
Anne patted her chin for stray drops and placed the glass down with a suddenly shaking hand.
"Tom, that's so lovely of you. And you are in mine! But I… I…"
"I wish we had more than letters, Anne! I wish we had more time together than every other day, me sharing you with Gilbert and Diana. That it was just we two, as it used to be!"
Her mouth dropped open.
"Tom! You don't mean that you…?"
"Of course I don't wish us back at the orphanage!" he pleaded, usually serene eyes growing stormy as he turned to her. "But there's something I wish to say to you, Anne. **** We could be together still… I could come up to Kingsport of a weekend, and you could come here, and we could… well… we could…"
"Oh, don't say it," cried Anne, pleadingly. "Don't - PLEASE, Tom!"
He viewed her in clear confusion. "But… I must. Things can't go on like this any longer. Anne. We could be properly together, you and I."
"Tom…"
"Because…" his face contorted with the effort of his admission, "because… I love you. You know I do. I – I can't tell you how much. Would you court with me, Anne?"
The sips of cordial might as well have been that of currant wine, for the liquid seemed to pool like poison at the pit of her belly, replacing her fluttering at the start of the day with the sink-weight of a thousand rocks, pinning her to the one she sat on, unable to even move her mouth in answer. She turned helpless eyes to Tom, whose own steady gaze, usually so buoyant, began to submerge under the realisation of her uncertainty.
"Anne?" he questioned, reaching for her hand.
"Tom…" she spluttered wretchedly. "Oh, Tom!"
In her hesitation he found his answer, inhaling a breath that might have been a drowning man's dying gasp. He turned away, mouth pulled into a pained grimace.
"Don't you care for me at all?"
"Tom, please!" she now asked, trying to grab back the hand he had just withdrawn. "I need to explain!"
"How you're in love with Gilbert?" he muttered bleakly. "I already know that much, Anne."
"Has… has… somebody talked to you? Did somebody say something?"
He gave a bitter little laugh.
"They didn't need to," he turned back to her, eyes taking the risk in meeting hers, though the shooting pain in them made her wince. "It's nothing I haven't seen for myself. Nothing good ever comes of you disappearing with Gilbert at large gatherings." He gave the ghost of a grieved smile, made warped in his misery.
Anne blushed guiltily at his reference to the picnic at Orchard Slope, and maybe even to the time of that other afternoon tea at Diana's, when Tom and Gilbert had arrived together, Phil in tow; an arrestingly attractive trio standing expectantly before her. She had been proud – so very proud – to see him with their joint friends that day, and to know that everyone else saw, as she did, what a fine man he had turned into. But all she saw now was the boy… that bereft, tortured boy, heartbroken, and it was her fault.
"Tom… I do love you! You must know that!"
His handsome fair face fell to see the truth of it in her wild, ready tears.
"But not the same way…" he shook his head, looking out to the stream as if searching for answers. "I knew I'd have no chance with you, that way, once Gil showed up. I see how you… spark… one another. And I can't compete with his charm or his… confidence…"
"You don't have to! It's not like that, Tom!"
"But it is, Anne! Blythes always get what they want – or leave behind what they don't want," he scowled. "I can't stand by and see that happen to you, too."
"What on earth are you talking about?" she couldn't fathom his cryptic response, and the uncharacteristic bitterness with which it was delivered.
"Never mind…" he touched the heels of both hands against his face, briefly covering his eyes, agitated enough to seem to want to try to gouge them out.
"Gil… Gil has always acted honourably towards me, Tom. He's asked to… court me."
Tom lifted his face back to hers, his expression becoming shuttered at the news.
"To court you…" he repeated dully. "There's an end to it, then."
"Tom, I'm sorry…" she murmured. "The last thing on earth I want to do is to hurt you."
"I never lost the hope of finding you, Anne…" he gave a deathly whisper. "I never lost the hope of us. Through seven years… And he's known you, what? Seven months?"
"I always had the hope of you too, Tom! But I never wanted you to wait for me in that way! It wouldn't have been fair! That's not… that's not… how we were together. That's not what we meant to each other!"
"We'll never know what we could have meant to each other, Anne, because you still see me as that scared kid you had to coax out of his shell! The sad, shy one missing his mother!"
Her face burned in protest. "That's not true!"
He shook his head violently. "You were ready and waiting for someone like Gilbert Blythe to come riding down on his white horse. I'm the stupid one stuck behind the plough!"
He leapt up in his torment, accidentally upending the bottle of cordial, its rich ruby contents spilling out onto the ground as if the last pulsing of a heart bled dry.
"Does he really even know you at all?" he continued, agonised, his face white to the lips. "Does he know anything real about you, or just the nice bits you've told him? I bet if you'd grown up with Gil sitting across from you in school, you wouldn't be so interested in him now!"
Anne wouldn't be outdone, springing up herself, turning self-righteous in her desperation.
"If I'd sat across from Gilbert in school, I'd also be the one going back to supper with my family! I'd get to sit and listen to Davy tell some silly story or Mrs Lynde some piece of local gossip! I wouldn't still be spending my time being passed around my friends like some prize at the fair! And let me tell you something, Tom Caruthers, Gilbert knows everything! I told him."
"You told him?" he quailed. "What exactly did you tell him?"
"What there was to tell, I told him."
"Well, congratulations! I'll think over that tonight when I'm not still feeling the guilt over having to leave you and … and… being sent against my will to Green Gables, shall I?" Tom fisted large hands into his pockets, hunching over in his pain.
His surprising sarcasm was like a blow, and she clutched her middle as if to absorb its impact. Anne blew out a trembling breath, her flare of frustration rapidly losing heat.
"I didn't mean that, about Green Gables, Tom," Anne offered, low-voiced.
"I know."
"Or… those stupid remarks about my friends."
"I know that, too," he gave a defeated shrug.
"And Gilbert is tremendously grateful to you, for … for everything. He says you were incredibly brave, and that he owes you a debt."
"What does that even mean ?" he threw a look of exasperation over his broad shoulder. "I might have read The Three Musketeers but Gilbert acts as if he is one!"
The funniest observations usually live inside a little grain of truth, and it was this that quirked Anne's lips, building to a bubble of laughter that escaped her; undoubtedly unwise and definitely disloyal, but unable to be stoppered.
Tom turned in clear surprise, trying to hold onto the last traces of his affront. He surveyed her wide-eyed for long moments before succumbing to a reluctant, dry chuckle. He looked out to the water, shaking his head.
"Anne, for goodness' sake, sit down again," he sighed. "Please… I'm sorry."
"You have nothing to be sorry for, Tom. I'm sorry."
"Just let me be sorry, and just… don't talk for a minute."
Anne huffed, reseating herself with queenly grace. "You might need to give me a more achievable objective."
His short stab of laughter escaped more easily this time. He took his own direction, again plonking himself next to her, wondering how long he should try to test her resolve.
"Well… I might tell you something that will stun you into silence for a time, Anne," he offered in a rumbling bass.
She gave an arch of her auburn brow.
"Priscilla Grant knows about us, too."
Anne's face, always mobile and expressive, looked to be suffering a sudden paroxysm.
"Pris? What? I don't understand…"
Tom might have once feared the discovery of their secret, but now there was almost a comfort in the shared confidence, and he wanted Anne to know that, too.
"At the picnic at Diana's… we took a walk. And she told me a bit about her family… and about neighbours she used to know in her village. About her mother's best friend, a Mrs Spencer, of the Spencervale Spencers, who had long ago moved to White Sands. You might remember this Mrs Spencer – she had quite the story to tell Pris's mother one time, apparently, which Pris wasn't meant to overhear. About the day she came to collect her new daughter, Lily, from the orphanage in Hopetown. And… someone else."
Anne's grey eyes were as wide as her agog mouth, and Tom took a moment to smile wryly at the spectacle.
"Oh. My. Goodness."
"That was… a fair account of my reaction."
Anne's grey eyes darted about, as her thoughts. "That's… extraordinary."
Tom nodded.
"But… how did Pris know that… it was about us?"
At this Tom's face, tanned and smooth as honey, flushed ever so slightly under the warm afternoon sun.
"She remembered that the blonde boy of the story had gone to live in Avonlea, at Green Gables," he ventured. "She liked and remembered the name. And then, years later, when she was teaching in Carmody, and Gilbert had the school here, I helped out fixing the roof. Pris begged us to come and fix the shingles on her own schoolhouse. Gilbert introduced me as his friend from Avonlea… and once she knew I lived at Green Gables, well, it didn't take her long to figure it."
"She's never said a word…" Anne said wonderingly, though she was trying to process a hundred heartfelt looks from Miss Grant, made more meaningful now in the light of this knowledge. And… Diana's words, about how Tom's heart may not be broken forever. But this explained Pris's interest then, surely…?
"To be fair," Tom continued, breaking into her musings, "she wouldn't have known you were the girl meant for Green Gables till much later, I should think. And she kept quiet anyway, out of kindness."
"Yes … it was months before I even told anyone that… I was an orphan. But… why should Pris tell you now? Doesn't it seem… well, odd?"
"Oh, I see, so Gilbert gets to know about us and can be all gallant about it, but Priscilla Grant has some secret hidden agenda?" he muttered derisively.
Anne colored. "No, forgive me, you're right," she murmured shamefacedly.
Tom paused to sigh, rubbing a hand at his forehead tiredly.
"So… the I'm an orphan business. Did they treat you like you had a fatal disease they could catch?" he quirked a sandy brow, some of his quiet humour re-emerging.
"No!" she smirked. "Well, maybe Charlie Sloane. They were lovely. If… decidedly uncomfortable. At least initially."
"Exactly. That's why Marilla and Matthew introduced me as their kin. It kept me away from gossip. And it… kept me safe." He seemed to take a painful gulp. "As you did."
She nodded sadly, but then something caused a fleeting smile.
"Anne? What was that look?"
"Oh, I'm just imagining you and Gil, on the schoolhouse roof…"
He allowed a grin. "Well, let's be clear. There was one of us on the roof, and one of us chatting to Miss Grant. And I think you can figure who was who."
Anne risked an indulgent look, informed by her love for both men. "You two were good friends, once? That's always heartened me, Tom."
"Yeah…" he acknowledged, not as reluctantly as he might. "Gilbert has always… well…. gathered people around him, I guess."
Anne nodded, eyes burning. "In Kingsport, too. He was my friend as well… just a friend… for a long time, Tom." She sniffed loudly, earning a fond look of her own in return. "But you were my best friend, Tom. My first friend. It seemed like you would ever be my only friend. And we must… we must go on being friends… I couldn't bear to lose you, but… I don't want to bring you more pain…"
"Friends! Your talk of friendship can't satisfy me, Anne. I expect a blood vow, at the very least."
Anne looked to him, shocked, till she relaxed at the quirk to his lips, giving her own stuttering sob-laugh in reply.
"Listen, Anne…" he offered throatily, serious again now, his eyes suspiciously bright themselves. "We had seven years without the other. That is a pain I don't want to have over again." He ached to put his arms around her, but it wasn't his place, now. "Will you come, still, for your visit tomorrow?"
"Do you still want me to?" she brushed impatiently at the tears at her cheeks.
"Of course. Though I can't pretend there won't be muttered opinions expressed about you and Gilbert."
"It's only your opinion I most care about."
He sought to lighten her grave look. "Well, Gilbert had better watch his step, is all I will now say about that subject."
She chuckled, low. "Point taken."
"And I'll be here, waiting patiently, if he trips."
She gave a tremulous, hopeful smile. "I'll tell him."
His own smile was knowing. "Or maybe I will."
Anne nodded now, daring to hope herself.
"Then… will you… be alright, Tom? Will this be… alright?" Anne couldn't disguise the tremor in her voice.
There was a stoicism in Tom Caruthers that was perhaps of his mother, but a quiet faith that was entirely Cuthbert. Both had enabled him to endure many things, but it was his connection to the creature beside him that had sustained him. If he lost Anne forever – through pride, through envy, though hurt, through even spite – what would the rest of it, all he had worked for and achieved, even matter?
He put aside the dull ache of disappointment, and took hold of her hand, and she promptly threaded her other arm through his, leaning her head on his shoulder, making his parched throat throb with longing. This… this link between them, he knew, was special of itself, and all the suitors in the world couldn't change that. And if… and if Anne had said he was her first friend, then, well, the claim worked both ways.
Would HE be alright?
Would THIS be alright?
"Not yet… " he finally answered. "But it will be." *****
"Gil!" Fred urged, half hanging out of the door to the boat train bound for Kingsport. "If they don't come in a minute you'll have to get the porter to take your luggage off!"
"I know!" Gilbert frowned, scanning the relatives scattered at a polite distance along the platform at Bright River; a more subdued crowd than had greeted them upon their arrival a fortnight ago.
Already there were ripples of change; the Barrys and the Wrights stood together now in strained solidarity, feeling compelled to farewell the daughter and son of both houses with a polite public peck or a too-hearty handshake. The Sloanes and Gillises chatted with Mr and Mrs Harmon Andrews, Jane's mother loudly lamenting that this would be the last time she farewelled her second daughter before doing so to the wilds of Winnipeg on her millionaire's arm. Pris's merry father was accompanied this time by his once-handsome, now rather whey-faced wife, even as Pris herself peered down the platform, following Gilbert's own gaze with a look that was too anxious for mere curiosity. With Cuthberts noticeably absent at the moment, the Blythes stood awkwardly, already having enveloped Gilbert in a warm, and in his mother's case, tearful embrace, and now were looking to one another in silent question.
"It would have made more sense for Anne to come with the rest of us in convoy!" Fred offered.
"Of course it would!" Gilbert tried not to scowl in being thus reminded of this obvious logic. "But Tom wanted to collect her this morning and then drop her himself, and to take a particular route from Avonlea to here. I could hardly begrudge him that, could I?"
"You'll begrudge him plenty if Anne misses the train," Fred replied, in an observation that was accurate, if not entirely helpful.
As the porter announced the last call for passengers, a commotion in the direction of the cherry tree heralded their eleventh-hour arrivals; a flustered but glowing Anne, carrying a sprig of white blossom she barely remembered not to crush under her coat; Tom, hauling her trunk with admirable strength and speed if not complete dexterity; and most surprising of all, the flaxen-haired young Keiths, caught up in the excitement of the dash with none of the actual concern for the timing.
"Anne!" Gilbert shouted, waving at her and then striding forward to take one of the handles from Tom, and together they thrust it at the porter as Anne brandished her ticket.
"Sorry!" she gasped breathlessly, and her red-cheeked visage made her eyes shine so wonderfully he couldn't be annoyed now, even if he wanted to. "We doubled back via Barry's pond, and then along something called The Avenue – it always takes longer when the way is so lovely!"
There was no time for a conversation about it; only time for her to throw a wave at his parents and the Barrys, offer a lightning-fast hug to Davy and Dora, and then, an infinitesimal hesitation before the embrace continued for Tom. He took Anne's arm and helped her up onto the train where Gilbert safeguarded her until Diana ushered her to their saved seats inside the carriage.
Gilbert turned back to a suddenly stony-faced Tom, who nodded curtly and tipped his hat.
"Thank you, Tom," Gilbert managed, as the whistle blew.
It was thank you for too many things, and perhaps inadequate for every one of them, but he offered it in hope anyway, to this man who was the boy who had sat across from him in school.
And the man who had known that redhaired girl first, and perhaps still best, naturally didn't ask for Gilbert to take care of her in his absence, for the girl had already spent a lifetime doing that for herself. Instead, something more potent and personal; a warning and a promise in one.
"Do right by her, Gilbert."
"I will."
The train jolted and puffed away. Tom stepped back to ensure the twins were free of the tracks. He saw a cavalcade of faces pressed to the glass, hands waving frantically in silent pantomime, but the images were indistinct in the contrast of the darkened carriage and the light of the young morning. He saw a flash of red as a blur; the last thing he saw was a blonde head sitting higher than most others, blue-eyed gaze like a streak of azure sky catching his own as she passed.
Chapter Notes
A new chapter title! Thank goodness for that!
"Marilla was thinking of her whole past life, her cramped but not unhappy childhood, the jealously hidden dreams and the blighted hopes of her girlhood, the long, grey, narrow, monotonous years of dull middle life that followed." Anne of the Island (Ch 22).
I am here imagining oz diva frowning at my hijacking of such a fabulous Marilla section. Sorry!
*Liberal quoting throughout this section from Ch 13 'A Golden Picnic' in Anne of Avonlea, with updates and alterations hopefully befitting the changes in situation and circumstance here!
**Charlotte Bronte Jane Eyre (Ch 23)
***Anne of Green Gables (Ch 15)
****Anne of the Island (Ch 20) interspersed throughout this section. It may be viewed as sacrilegious to give canon Gilbert's (and Anne's) words away here, but they do fit too well… and surely you don't want me to have Gilbert relive that agony again? (It's bad enough for Tom).
****This is taken from Frasier's words to Niles, slightly altered, at the end of the classic Frasier episode, Room Service… in which Niles and Lilith may have taken familial ties a little too far… I have always loved it, for its meaning as much as for its deceptive simplicity; it's acknowledgment of hurt, but that hurt doesn't negate the love underneath… and hope it works the same way here.