Chapter Text
He had sat across from her and implored her, with his very soul, to answer the song of his own … and she had appeared utterly confounded, had poured out confounding words, and had allowed herself to be dragged away from their momentous conversation by the other schoolgirls. Confound it!
“… I’ll be off, then,” he’d said, for lack of anything else to say. Even as Gilbert could feel his heart breaking in his chest, his courtesy didn’t fail him. He would not treat Anne ill just because she didn’t share his feelings. “Goodnight.”
He tried not to look back at her. He tried. But evidently he couldn’t be trusted with his own dignity, because he stole one last glance, hoping … but she had moved on.
With a deep intake of breath, he schooled his face into a mask of stoicism, and walked back toward the tree line. He passed through the rowdy gaggle of his classmates as quickly as he could, shrugging off their calls to join the revelry (“Gilbert, you made it! Have some moonshine!” “Sing us a sea shanty, Gilbert!” “Hey, where’s your beautiful fiancée, Gilbert?”). Normally one to lead the laughter and rouse the spirits of his fellows, Gilbert felt at that moment that he couldn’t stand another minute in proximity of his friends’ free-wheeling whoops and hollers.
He met the forest and welcomed the darkness. The yawps and giggles and the crackling bonfire faded away, now overtaken by the sound of leaves rustling, owls hooting, and the ambient ebb and flow of the waves upon the now-distant shore. Trees gained in number and strength around him and he stalked on, his brow furrowed again, the sweat under his collar cooling in the night’s shade.
But in the quietude his thoughts were clamouring. Surely Anne knew—and had known for years—that Gilbert had been carrying a torch for her. (Literally, tonight.) Surely she had always seen, as he presumed everyone had always seen, that he was as a moth to her flame. (Again: literally, tonight.) So then, surely, Anne had understood what he’d meant when he’d said … whatever it was he had said to her as they’d sat together in that long moment with bated breath. What had he said, exactly? He had said everything he needed to say, surely? It was all a bit foggy now. But the unpleasant and most salient bit had sunk in: she had been appalled by his forwardness and had danced around his implications. She had been speechless in the face of the suggestion that they change the nature of their friendship.
As he reached the halfway point between the ruins and his house, in the midst of the woods, he noticed his breathing had become less laboured. His pace had slowed. The breeze had given way to a delicious and cool tranquility, and the ferns were unfurling themselves to the night sky in wondrous, trusting patterns. The trees stood by him still, and the earthy forest floor accepted his footfalls with sympathy. With nary a faraway farmhouse light to mar his solitude, he felt bolstered by the island itself, and his thoughts became a touch more merciful: I will not dwell on the unpleasant things of life. There is nothing to be done but accept Anne’s friendship, however much I’m able, and move forward.
He could do that. He’d be good at that. He’d had to put so many people behind him already in his young life. He’d just have to do it again. Lock up the old loving feelings and stow them in a box in the closet. The world was wide, after all; there would always be something else to look forward to.
Finally, the woods reached their crest and rolling farmland came into view through the thinning trunks. Ahead and to his left, up the hill and beyond the back acre of the orchard, the lights of the Blythe-LaCroix farmhoise came into view. Here, beyond a stump that had never been cleared and instead served to buttress the orchard fence, was the beginning of his little civilization.
At the sight of his cozy home, Gilbert nearly lost all his steam. Recalling that he couldn’t afford to sully his finest trousers, he didn’t allow himself to sit down on the nearby stump. Instead he hung back and leaned to rest against a forgiving poplar.
How was it that, only a few nights ago, as he sat with Anne on Miss Stacy’s porch, the moonlight had seemed so gleaming and magical, like a deep pool into which he had plunged? Now it seemed silvery and cool and untouchable, like the surface of a glass whose images couldn’t be reached or made real.
He tore his cap from his head and ran his frustrated hands through his chestnut curls, rubbed his eyes as if to excise the absolute vision that was Anne as he had seen her less than an hour ago—free and happy, beautiful in her own confidence, beautiful in all the ways he could think to apply the word. And he allowed the tears to come. Just this once, Gilbert Blythe would allow himself to shed tears for Anne Shirley-Cuthbert—for everything he had dared to imagine about his future home and life—for everything they would never discover about one another—for all the joy that could have flown from his heart and surrounded her, if she’d only wanted to open it for herself. Only the silver moon bore witness to Gilbert’s heartbreak that night. Only the stars shone brighter than his hazel eyes, his damp cheeks.
(He’d tried, on a few occasions, to imagine domestic life with Winifred, but he found he couldn’t picture her in anything beyond the moments when he had already been with her. Whenever he pictured her in his future home, she insisted on wearing exactly the starched-and-pressed clothes and hat she’d been wearing when he’d last seen her. Furthermore, upon exploring that imagined future home—which easily accommodated a warm fireplace, ample bookshelves, a dog, a cat, a handful of laughing children calling him father—Gilbert was never able to come upon Winifred naturally. She was always knocking at the front door as a welcome visitor or being heard to laugh with a fellow guest while admiring the vegetable garden; never could she be found in the middle of a household task or even comfortably at leisure. Instead, Gilbert would turn the corner while going upstairs and suddenly run into Anne, who was on her way down, in a hurry to get to a village improvement society meeting or some such. Or he’d find Anne in the upper hall by the widow’s walk, pacing back and forth, reading dramatically from a well-worn volume as her hair gleamed in the dwindling sunlight of the day. There Anne would be again, in the kitchen, with flour on her lovely nose and a couple of cherubic toddlers hanging off her apron, baking the week’s bread while he ate a hurried breakfast before leaving to make a house call on a patient. And no matter where he went, she’d be talking to him, constantly talking to him, and she’d just keep talking to him forever …)
After the tears came anger: mostly anger at himself for not being able to forget Anne, ever, since the first day they met—despite all the evidence she had consistently provided that he was a thorn in her side, that she didn’t and wouldn’t think of him as a romantic prospect. And there was some anger at her, too: for not thinking of him that way when he knew—he just knew—they could have been so good together; for not seeming to want him at all, when he wanted only her to flavour his days; for simply existing in her own right and not craving anything in relation to him (“Women matter on their own, and not in relation to a man,” she had written) … but of course that wasn’t fair at all, and he knew that, and that briefly made him angry, too; why couldn’t he put his own righteousness aside, just for a minute, for the sake of wallowing?
And if—after having forgotten about his fine jacket and wiping his tears on his sleeve—Gilbert picked up a few early-fallen apples and whipped them as far as he could down the length of the fence, watching with grotesque satisfaction as they hit the fenceposts further down, shattered out of their skins, and flew off in pieces—well, no one but the cold, quiet moon bore witness to that either.
So he had left the ruins of his foolish, young heart at the ruins. How fitting. Boyhood, begone! Manhood, if you must come to me this way, I am here to meet you.
He could walk on. He could pick up his hat, replace it snugly on his level head, and walk on.
He could get through this night. He could meet morning. He could carry his life forward. He would simply do it.