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Behind the barn of Green Gables, there is a tree. It is a meek and gentle tree—a trembling aspen, to be precise; populus tremuloides, to be even more precise, oh, isn’t that a splendid way of distinguishing trees, so many glorious syllables—with fine branches and lively fluttering leaves and plenty of snug places for perching, and reclining, and ruminating on the world.
It is not Anne’s favorite tree, precisely; it is perhaps fourth on her list, for she considers all of Avonlea in her rankings, and there is truly no usurping the sugar maple in the wide open field, or the balsam fir adjacent to the schoolhouse, nor indeed the marvelous butternut in the Barrys’ garden—but she holds a certain fondness in her heart for it, and is sure to tell it so whenever she is able. It has sheltered her from many a troubling mood in her seventeen years of life, and for that she will always be replete with gratitude.
She is thinking of the populus tremuloides now, treating it as a lighthouse in a storm. The storm, abandoning metaphor, is the sentence that Diana has just spoken to her as though it is the most natural thing in the world and not the catalyst for the most annihilating devastation with which she has ever grappled: I tried to convince them, Anne, but Mother stood firm: if you’re going to come to our Christmas ball, you’ll have to bring a beau.
“Well,” she says as primly as she can manage, “I suppose there’s no helping it, then.”
“Of course there’s helping it,” Diana exclaims. They are sitting beside each other on the floor of Anne’s room, cocooned in the same gray woolen blanket. The morning’s dusting of snow had given way around noontime to a storm, and Diana is waiting it out at Green Gables at Marilla’s insistence. “In the worst case, you’ll only have to find someone who’ll pretend. Any boy from here to Bright River would be honored to—”
“Don’t jest with me, Diana,” Anne says glumly, burrowing her face between her drawn knees. “Might as well speak the truth and be done with it. It will save us both some time.”
“Oh, Anne,” Diana says with a huff. “We’ll find a way. You simply must come. I’d be broken-hearted if you didn’t. If you’re really all that worried about it, why, I’m sure Gilbert would—”
“Gilbert!” Anne shrieks. It takes a bit more trouble than usual to assure herself that it’s a reaction of horror rather than—well, anyway. “I would rather die. That’s the truth. I would simply rather die.”
“For heaven’s sake,” Diana says. Her disapproval is palpable; were it in Anne’s power to bat it away with a stick, she would. “It’s only a party. Would it really be so bad to let Gil escort you?”
“Diana,” Anne says, clasping her dear, misguided friend’s hands between hers and staring firmly into her eyes, “without exaggeration, it would be cataclysmic.”
Diana furrows her brow, mouthing the syllables. Anne lets out a great huff and clambers to her feet, striding petulantly to the window.
Her truce with Gilbert Blythe may be entering its fifth prosperous year, and may have yielded favorable results for the most part, but that is a far cry indeed from being a sufficient enough comradeship to warrant escorting one another to balls, let alone escorting one another home from the schoolhouse and talking (a routine that has, despite Anne’s most noble efforts, become commonplace). Were she not in the throes of anguish, she would laugh in Diana’s face for even suggesting it.
“You can’t fool me, you know,” Diana says from behind her. Anne bristles but does not turn around. “Nor half the island, at this point. The two of you are companions, despite everything, and I think it’s high time you forgave—”
“It’s not a question of forgiveness,” Anne exclaims, whirling on her so quickly that it nearly sends her braid across her shoulder. “It’s a question of pride, Diana, of decency!”
Diana could not possibly look less convinced. “Well, it’s your decision.” And Anne is heartened that she at least seems cognizant of that. “But… it’s Christmas. Maybe the last Christmas we will all have together, before we leave for Queen’s Academy in the fall.” She inhales, preparing the final blow. “And I would simply be beside myself if you weren’t to attend.”
Anne crosses her arms sulkily, frowning at a burl in one of the floorboards. Diana’s plea had struck at her, certainly, but what had struck at her more had been the rueful way she’d said before we leave for Queen’s Academy. There was no explaining how often it took her by surprise, after all of the studying, all of the begging of Miss Stacy for just five more minutes' extra help. Strange as it was, occasionally she found herself yearning of late for that miraculous summer that she’d cut off her hair and they’d all believed in gold and Gilbert had been at sea, in lands even she could scarcely dream of, and still found the time to write Miss so tidily beside her name on a battered envelope.
“What—” She tugs her lip beneath her teeth, if only because Marilla isn’t there to scold her for such a graceless gesture. “What… do you think I should say?”
Diana blinks at her for a moment, gobsmacked, before her face splits into a resplendent grin. She rises immediately from the floor, pulling the blanket around her shoulders like a cloak, and beams at Anne so dazzlingly that Anne ought to perhaps be suspicious; what is it about the prospect of her taking Gilbert to the party, anyway, that delights her so?
“Just be yourself!” she says cheerily.
Anne gives her a withering look. “Oh, yes, because myself has won me so many favors!”
“It has,” Diana tells her, quite genuinely. Anne isn’t certain what to do with that, and so she ducks her head. Diana steps closer, takes Anne’s fidgeting hands, gives them a gentle jostle. “Now, listen carefully…”
Anne listens as carefully as she can. She writes out her proposal—no, not like that—and practices it diligently in front of Marilla's mirror. Two days after the conversation with Diana, she has scarcely gotten through the first paragraph before infuriating, impossible Gilbert Blythe has choked out, “What?”
The nerve. The nerve. It’s not as though she’s springing this on him; she had been patient enough to at least wait until he had finished giving Marilla the sack of apples and the slab of Mary’s gingerbread he’d brought. He ought to be thanking her. Instead he's gawking at her from the kitchen doorway, ears completely scarlet.
“The Barrys,” Anne repeats, a bit more curtly this time, ruffled at having been interrupted, “have invited me to a Christmas celebration, but entry is barred for young ladies unless they have an escort, so wretchedly antediluvian are they still, and as you are the only remaining boy in Avonlea of the slightest integrity, if it is pleasing to you, I would request that you accompany me so that I may attend. For Diana’s sake. And for mine. Please. And thank you.”
Gilbert’s scarf hangs half-wrapped around his neck. His face has a healthy flush to it, most likely from the tea Marilla had insisted he drink. His mouth is open and floundering.
“You—” He seems to regain some of his sense, then, leaning slightly forward as if to hear her more clearly. “The Barrys. Celebration. Escort. Me.”
“If you have the slightest compassionate bone in your body, don’t make me say it again!” Anne yelps. “Just tell me outright, will you, and be done with it, so that I can relinquish all hope of attending, so that I can make my peace with the grief; just tell me yes or no before—”
“Yes,” Gilbert says.
Anne’s next words, which often come in such ample supply, evaporate in her mouth and her mind. She stares at him, slack-jawed, gawky and incredulous.
“Yes?” she manages.
Gilbert nods, once. “Yes.”
It catches up to Anne, then: there must be some sort of catch. He’s leveraging her helplessness. It’s sabotage; it’s got to be. What other possible explanation could there be for someone like Gilbert Blythe to answer her with—?
“What do you want, then?” she wails. “A bribe? Money? Livestock? A share of Green Gables’ crops? I’ll have you know that I will draw the line at financial destitution!”
“Anne, I wouldn’t dream of—”
“Swear to me that you won’t tell anyone at school; swear to me that you won’t tell Ruby Gillis; it would devastate her—”
“Ruby? What on earth for?”
“As if they haven’t enough with which to make fun of me!” Anne drops her face into her hands. “Imagine how they’d laugh if they knew how I stood before you now! Desperate and foolish! Imagine!”
“Anne, I won’t tell anyone if you don’t want me to,” Gilbert says, “and I won’t ask for anything in return. Not a thing. It sounds like fun.”
Anne lowers her hands and blinks.
She searches Gilbert’s face in the muted slate-gray light edging in through the windows—the subtle angles, the dimple at the edge of his mouth—for some trace of mischief or mockery and finds absolutely none. He’s giving her that lingering look again, the one she cannot read for the life of her even after all this time—dark, affectionate eyes; a vestige of a smile, so faint that it might be unconscious. She is both frightened of and enchanted by it. Her chest is tight, tight like a pair of hands has closed around her heart, compelling it to be still.
“Fun?” she repeats, not even bothering to conceal her doubt.
He nods, tucking his hands behind his back and swaying once on the balls of his feet. The satisfaction on his face is intolerable. “Very.”
“E-Even though you’d have to spend it in my company?” Anne mumbles, hating how childish it sounds.
Gilbert’s voice is quiet and sincere when he says, “Especially for that.”
Anne feels a heat crawl up her cheeks the likes of which might keep her warm through March.
“Gilbert Blythe,” Marilla says, drawing out the syllables and giving nothing away. “You don’t say.”
“I do say.” Anne huffs, hands working at the raspberries until they're dyed a faint and persistent magenta. Each year she helps Marilla with making preserves for Christmas gifts, and come Christmas morning she'll be walking jars to Mrs. Rachel Lynde’s and Mrs. Barry’s and, mercy, Gilbert’s. “Much as it agonizes me to do so.”
“You hear that, Matthew?” Marilla asks airily, tying off the parchment paper cover on her jar with twine. “Gilbert Blythe, going with Anne to the Barrys’ on Christmas Eve.”
Matthew glances up from his fireside whittling, the rocking of his chair slowing to a standstill. He blinks at Marilla as though she’s just spoken a foreign language.
“Oh,” he says in that Matthew way. “Right.”
“Well,” Marilla says crisply, carefully cleaning her hands on her apron, “that’s well and fine, Anne, though I’ll say this: we’re trusting you to be on your best behavior.”
“And what is that supposed to mean?” Anne cries in offense. “I am always on the most pristine of behaviors, am I not?” She almost swears she hears Marilla snort, but no, it can’t be. “I’m not a child, Marilla!”
“A bold claim to make,” Marilla says, fixing her with a discerning stare. “Do repay Gilbert’s chivalry with pleasant company, Anne. That boy has been nothing but noble and kind to we Cuthberts and I shudder to think what you’ve done over the years to thank him for it.”
“I’ve done plenty,” snaps Anne. “And anyway, it wasn’t my idea; it was Diana’s, for it was either beg Gilbert for his time or forfeit attending altogether—”
Marilla whirls on her, setting a hand over her diaphragm. “You don’t mean to tell me you asked him yourself,” she exclaims, aghast.
“And I’ll say plenty of prayers that you’ll forgive me for it,” Anne says. She tries to tuck some hair behind her ear, but some of the jam smears in the strands and on her cheek before she can think the better of the motion. She groans. “In any case, I’m sure nobility and kindness are all Gilbert needed to accept me; he’s just that way, isn’t he, so thoughtful—I threw myself on his mercy, Marilla, and I’m only lucky it held no skewers.”
Even though she’s the one saying it, the meaning of the words sets her chest uncomfortably ablaze; the notion of Gilbert agreeing out of charity, or out of courtesy, is more unpalatable than she’d have thought.
“Well, I suppose we can thank the Lord for that,” Marilla says dryly. “All right, that’s enough titter. I’d like to have these jams jarred by supper.”
Literature has given Anne a very distinctive picture of “balls,” as a concept—baubled trees, sumptuous garlands, glittering waltzes, clandestine kisses under the mistletoe, perhaps a masked prince for dramatic effect. She has romantical notions.
The Barrys’ ball does not match many of these notions. It isn’t disappointing, per se—Anne is older now, and wiser, or so she likes to believe, so inklings of realism no longer crush her entirely as they used to—in fact, it’s a bit of a relief, to know that all she really has to do is stand about and drink hot cider and chat politely with all of the Barrys’ elegant friends, and that no one will scold her for stealing away to the library during gaps in interaction—but it does make her feel a bit silly, for fretting about Gilbert so.
He does look quite handsome, she finds herself thinking throughout the evening, stealing glances at him while she talks to Diana by the fireplace. Tall and astute and, hm, companionable. Wearing his best suit, the one that she knows had belonged to his father. He had offered her his arm at the front door, smiling obliquely at the rug when she had stiffly looped hers through it.
There is no waltzing, alas, but Mrs. Barry does play carols at the piano, and Anne cannot help but join in on the chorus of “The Holly and the Ivy.” She has always liked it the best. The holly and the ivy, now both are well full grown; of all the trees that are in the wood the holly bears the crown—so linguistically pleasing, so evocative. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Gilbert, not singing, but watching her.
It’s over sooner than Anne would have thought. All in all the evening is almost completely devoid of unnecessary suspense, save for when she bumps into Gilbert in the library doorway, and by chance glances up and sees a sprig of mistletoe hanging by a red ribbon above their heads.
“I’ll pretend not to see it,” he tells her, a stifled smile bunching at the edge of his mouth, “if you like.”
“Please,” she squeaks back, scurrying past him.
It is the journey back to Green Gables, Anne will reflect upon later, that truly changes everything. Gilbert had come in a wagon drawn by his farm’s most trusted workhorse, and he had brought along a generous stock of blankets. On the ride back, several of those blankets lie across their laps.
“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” he asks her, a little mirthfully. The sky is clear as a bell, and the light of the full moon makes the snowfall look iridescent. It makes Gilbert look iridescent, too.
Anne considers him. Shakes her head gently.
“No, I suppose it wasn’t.”
“You sounded lovely,” Gilbert says. She catches a glance from him, so fleeting as to nearly be imperceptible—but she had already been looking. “Singing.”
“Oh, please,” Anne scoffs. “Surely you can find a more believable compliment than that.”
Gilbert lets out an incredulous laugh. “What is it that’s convinced you so thoroughly that any kind word I say about you must be a lie?”
“Common sense,” Anne replies tartly. “The motivations behind the dishonesty, I cannot say. But you know as well as I do that I do not sound lovely singing. I could have had a tender voice like a nightingale and instead I grow all shrill and overexcited like a scrub jay.”
“You know I think very highly of you, Anne,” Gilbert says.
They’ve arrived at Green Gables. Gilbert tugs the reins, and the horse slows to a halt, tail flicking.
Anne’s ears burn. “Gilbert—”
“I do,” Gilbert insists, twisting in his seat to face her. The blanket shifts between them, and a bit of the leftover warmth from his body settles on her knee. “Just because you can’t conceive of it doesn’t mean it’s untrue.” The edges of his voice grow softer, more revealing. “Matter of fact, I can’t think of a truer thing. I’d have thought it was obvious by now.”
Anne lifts her head swiftly, lips parting around so many words, so many possibilities: I can’t bear to think of us drifting apart at Queen’s Academy and no apples I have ever tasted are as sweet as the ones you bring us and I find myself thinking of you, against all reason or sense, when the leaves turn red in autumn; I find myself thinking of you whenever I visit the sea. Old admissions, memories of the year Avonlea had spent without him, how dreadfully and inexplicably empty that golden summer had felt.
She can see the trembling aspen through the shadows of the night, waiting.
“I haven’t offended you,” Gilbert says warily.
Anne finds her voice again. “No. No, not at all; I just—well. You know.”
“Yeah.” Gilbert nods. “Anyway.”
Anne reaches for his hand before she can think on it, tugging it into her lap, closing her fingers around it. “Anyway.”
She stays in the wagon with Gilbert far too long for it to be considered proper. She thanks the stars above that it’s late enough and dark enough and cold enough that Mrs. Rachel Lynde will not see it. She thanks the stars above for other things, too, larger things, things she hasn’t the words for but that she hopes the stars can understand.
Courage rushes into her before she can deny it with reason. She sets her snow-stung lips to Gilbert’s cheek.
“You were a gallant beau, Gilbert Blythe,” she says.
Gilbert straightens up a bit at that, and were Anne not possessed of a calm and rational head she would find his proud posture endearing. “Swept you off your feet, did I?”
“Oh, yes,” she replies, nodding solemnly. “It will take quite some time to recover.”
“Well,” Gilbert says, squeezing her hand and smiling, and oh, Anne’s heart whispers to her, what a perfect smile it is, what an alarmingly devoted smile, “I suppose Christmas is the time for miracles.”