Chapter Text
She was walking on quickly, carrying herself with some rigidity due to the bothersome constriction of the corset, but also with a kind of dart-like poise which caused more than one head to turn after her – an action which Anne took to signify that something must be not quite right with either her (or rather, Aunt Jo’s) dress or the elaborate structure that was, for the moment, her hair. Well, at the moment she really couldn’t care less.
She was walking on quickly because she had already taken longer than she’d planned, the afternoon was well advanced on its course towards evening, and she still needed to change back into her normal schoolgirl self and also to tell Cole and Aunt Jo all about her wonderful discovery before running off to make it in time for the train ride back home.
She was walking on quickly through the crowded main street of Charlottetown, keeping her head down for fear of attracting the notice of some stray acquaintance and thus fanning Marilla’s righteous anger into a pitch of white heat from which it would take months to come down.
She was walking on quickly, and thus when her parasol (a ridiculous little thing really, but oh so sophisticated-looking!) got caught in one of the number of large string bags carried by a bustling housewife proceeding up the opposite side of the pavement and subsequently fell to the pavement with a dull thud, it was a moment before she realised what happened and turned round to retrieve it.
By that time, however—
‘Excuse me, M’am? Er— Miss? You’ve dropped your—‘
By that time, someone was already holding it out to her, gazing at her with eyes which were very familiar, very bewildered, and staring her up and down in a disconcertingly direct way.
***
‘Anne?’
He was feeling quite unreal. It surely must be a dream, or else sleep deprivation acting on his brain and making him see things.
Or rather, people.
Or rather, one person, Anne Shirley to be exact; at least, the apparition had Anne’s eyes and mouth and nose and freckles. The hair, tumbling from under a small green hat in masses of coppery curls, was Anne’s beyond a doubt. There was no other hair this colour in the world, Gilbert was sure of that.
The details, then, were all Anne’s. It was the overall appearance that wasn’t.
For the person whom he confronted at that moment was a grown-up woman, tall and upright and striking.
And extremely beautiful, too.
He was, in fact, becoming fast aware of the fact that people – men – were glancing over their shoulders at her, with looks on their faces which caused a pang of anger to go right through him and resulted in his saying with an expression which was little better than a scowl,
‘What on earth are you doing? Where’s Cole? Why—why are you dressed – like this?’
Anne’s face, so disturbingly unfamiliar-looking in its setting of stray curly strands, went first very white, and then very red.
***
Impulsively, she caught at Gilbert’s hand, the one in which he was still clutching her – Aunt Jo’s – parasol, and pulled him to the side of the pavement and out of the tramping passers-by.
‘I’ll explain everything later,’ she said somewhat breathlessly, giving him a pleading look. ‘For now, just please go along with it. As for Cole, I’m just this moment headed to Aunt Jo’s house.’
She was feeling like an unutterable fool.
Altogether, Anne rather wished she had never had the mad idea of dressing up in a grown-up’s clothes, for while Gilbert’s voice when he spoke had been angry the look in his eyes was, for some reason, making her giddy, and causing a sensation of tingling warmth to spread all through her body.
‘But why isn’t he with you?’ he demanded again, making Anne want to scream with temper. ‘Surely you—‘
‘Ahem.’
Anne fairly jumped up, letting go of Gilbert’s hand, which she only now noticed she was still holding, and looked past his shoulder to where a girl was standing with a wide smile painted on her pretty, bland face.
Gilbert looked that way too, and his eyebrows contracted in bewilderment, as though he had forgotten where and in whose company he was.
‘Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend, Gilbert?’ the girl asked in affectedly mincing tones, still smiling widely.
‘I’m Anne,’ Anne said before Gilbert could speak, smiling back at the other girl and extending her hand towards her.
The girl’s eyebrows shot up, and she glanced at Gilbert again, this time with a kind of impatience.
‘Ah—yes,’ Gilbert said quickly with the appearance of shaking himself out of a trance. ‘Anne, this is Miss Rose, Dr Ward’s secretary. Winnie,’ he went on with just the slightest falter, ‘this is Miss Shirley-Cuthbert, my—my classmate.’
‘Classmate?’ Winifred repeated in tones of undisguised surprise, looking Anne up and down, the smile still on her lips. ‘Why, Gilbert, you never told me grown-up ladies attended your school.’
‘Oh, you mean this?’ Anne asked, gesturing with a self-conscious little laugh at her dress and all the while wondering whatever Gilbert could mean by behaving like that (and also why she’d never to this day known anything about this girl, with whom he was familiar enough to call her by her Christian name). ‘This is not what I usually wear. It was just – it was for practical reasons that I got all turned out like this. Usually, I dress plain as plain can be.’
‘Oh, I see,’ said Winifred drawlingly, sounding as though she knew a great deal more than Anne had told her about herself. ‘Well, I’m afraid we must be getting on. Isn’t that so, Gilbert?’
***
Forcing himself to take his eyes off of Anne, Gilbert looked round at Winifred and nodded.
‘Yes. Yes, of course we must. Dr Ward is probably wondering what’s become of us.’
He turned back towards Anne, forcing himself to give her a smile which, he hoped, looked merely casual.
It was, however, very difficult for him to be casual in front of this Anne.
Mostly, he rather wished to get away from her and collect his thoughts before he blurted out something he would be sure to regret for the rest of his life, like telling her that she was the girl of his dreams, and always had been—
‘Well, he knows we always have tea together now,’ Winifred’s voice chirped in the background. ‘So he’ll just assume we’ve lost track of time. It’s not difficult in such pleasant company.’
Anne, who had been smiling somewhat stiffly, shot a quick glance at the other girl and, a pink spot appearing in either cheek, said in a voice whose coolness grated on Gilbert’s ears,
‘Of course. Still, I’d better hurry up as well. Cole will be getting worried,’ she added with a quick look at Gilbert.
Swallowing thickly, he nodded, and then remembered the parasol.
‘Here,’ he said, holding it out to her. ‘I hope it’s not damaged.’
Anne flashed him a perfunctory smile and accepted the troublesome item. Then, turning promptly towards Winifred, said briskly,
‘It was lovely to meet you. Have a good day, and pay my respects to Dr Ward.’
Gilbert opened his mouth to say something more, to make her understand – well, he hardly knew what, except that he really, really hated the way she had looked at him a moment ago, with that cold, withdrawn glance.
However, before he could do that, Anne had already swung round on her heels and was walking quickly down the pavement, looking, from behind, like a complete stranger, a rich, perfectly poised, elegantly dressed lady to whom a farm-bred boy like himself could indeed hardly hope to find anything to say.
***
‘Is she very rich?’
Gilbert looked at Winifred, who asked the question in a carefully casual tone, with a slight frown between his brows.
He wished very much to be alone, and wondered that it had never occurred to him before how affected Winnie’s way of speaking was. As though she had her mouth full of something that made it impossible for her to articulate words properly.
‘No,’ he said shortly.
‘Well, that outfit she had on must have cost more than my year’s wages amount to. It fairly screamed Paris-made. I suppose that man she’s mentioned – Cole, was it? – is courting her, and it’s a present from him? A stuffy old bore, but terribly well-off, I presume?’
‘No,’ Gilbert said again, and then went on with a shrug, ‘I mean, I suppose he is pretty much well-off now, but he is neither old nor a bore. He’s an art student, I think.’
‘Oh, how romantical,’ Winifred said with exaggerated gush. ‘Just the right kind of husband for a girl like her, so striking and haughty. I suppose it won’t be long now before she stops being your classmate and becomes his muse,’ she added with a small, meaningful laugh.
To which series of remarks, although they caused his stomach to churn unpleasantly, Gilbert did not succeed in coming up with a pertinent reply.