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“There’s a way that we can talk about equality without ruining a girl’s life,” he says, stepping towards her.
Anne’s vision tunnels as he moves to stand right in front of her. Suddenly, she can’t see anyone else in the room, forgets they are there. Moody and Miss Stacey and Ruby and Tillie and Diana. She remembers how angry she was as she wrote her piece, how every system of their world seems designed to keep women down, to keep them voiceless, to keep them thinking less of themselves. She sees Gilbert’s calm face, the smooth confidence, the surety that he will be heard and listened to, and, oh, Gilbert may be her friend, but he’s also a man and right now he seems like the embodiment of the problem. “Oh, so now you have an opinion on equality,” she says, seething.
“It’s the same opinion I probably would have had yesterday, had you bothered to ask,” he responds, crossing his arms.
He’s always so calm and collected, and for the first time, Anne doesn’t admire him for it. She wants to see him lose it, wants to push his buttons, wants to make him express himself in such a way that it causes problems because that seems to happen to her constantly. She can’t say anything to anyone without rubbing at the places where she still doesn’t fit in, still won’t play by the rules, the spaces and gaps and edges that chafe no matter how much she tries to get the world to accept Anne Shirley-Cuthbert for who she is. She constantly feels like a loose nail in a too-big hole. And she's had it.
"Interesting, because at the fair I could have sworn I saw you negotiating for an attractive new parcel of land, I mean, wife,” she spits, holding his gaze, daring him to rise up and respond in kind.
"Anne, stop, that has nothing to do with it,” he shakes his head once, a physical tic to try to clear his head to keep his statements on track, unable to process the vitriol that seems to be focused towards Winnie, of all people, which makes no sense to him. He steps again, closer to her, trying to catch her eye again as he finishes. “This is about the paper, about the team, about not placing yourself on a special pedestal above the rest of us where you get special privileges every time you feel like you have something to say!"
Anne stands, up in his face, voice low and bitter, "You are infuriating."
"You're too impulsive, Anne!” he really is almost yelling now, almost like he’s also forgotten they aren’t alone in the school room.
Miss Stacey has moved quietly closer to them and raises a hand to try to stop them before Gilbert continues, “You have that big brain on your shoulders and you never use it to think before you act! You just act and don't worry about the consequences for other people! What's the use of being smart when you waste it like that?"
"You're horrible." Anne storms off, directly out of the schoolhouse without a single glance for anyone else, and doesn’t even slow down enough to slam the door behind her.
Gilbert is huffing and puffing and watches her go.
The rest of the students were watching the scene play out without moving. They aren’t un-used to seeing either Anne or Gilbert impassioned when talking about newspaper stuff with any of the team. Anne and Gilbert go at it sometimes, but never with their teeth out like that.
Diana’s gaze is jumping from the coatroom to the curly-haired boy with his fist clenched who is standing rentirely still. Should she go and comfort Anne?
Something about the way Gilbert’s eyes haven’t moved from the spot Anne’s were last time she spoke convinces her that it’s possible that this is not the role for the bosom friend.
Diana has never understood what is going on between those two, but she knows that nothing she says once Anne has entered the territory of pretty blonde Winifred will do Anne any good. That story is Gilbert’s problem.
Hopefully, well, hopefully he takes it on.
Gilbert turns around, no longer facing the door, still looking at the floor distractedly. He takes a deep breath and says, "Well that got rather personal all of the sudden, sorry about that everyone," when he sees their faces.
For a moment, Diana really thinks that he’s going to leave it there, even though he's visibly uncomfortable with how they left things.
Miss Stacey catches his eye meaningfully. "You should probably..."
"But! She! I!" Gilbert deflates, the air of protest leaving his frame. He has to go after her. He knows it. Miss Stacey knows it. Anne is going to hate it. "You're right, pardon me," he says on a sigh, and sprints out the door, grabbing her hat on the way.
***
Anne runs with all the energy of burst of rage kept tamped down for too long in there. No way she's talking to Gilbert right now, not after she almost showed all her cards in there. She made him lose his temper, but she doesn't feel any better than she did before.
When she hears him coming after her on the path, she leaves it without turning around and runs through the woods. Grrrr, Gilbert. Her mind stalls for a minute over the realization that she is so familiar with him that she knows it's him without turning around. Even though it could just as well be Diana or Ruby, she knows it's Gilbert, not just from the sound of him, but from instinct. Diana would try to smooth things out with the group, always the dutiful social liaison. Gilbert, as much as prior record would indicate otherwise, does actually prefer to talk things out. Which is, of course, why she’s trying to lose him in the trees.
He rolls his eyes at her dodge and goes right after her, aware his boots and trousers are a little more woods-compatible than her dress and that he'll be able to catch up to her easier like this. He can't decide whether calling her name will make her run faster or not.
"Anne, please!"
He hears her stop running but doesn't know where she went, until he hears her either catch her breath or sob. She makes a loud, frustrated "Urgh!!" and kicks the tree behind her.
She’s standing with both fists clenched, trying to keep the tear from running down her cheeks, when she sees him tiptoeing his way closer and turns her back on him again, kicking the tree.
"Better approach me carefully, Mr. Blythe, since I'm clearly a wild animal and liable to spook," she throws at him.
"Anne," he tries, softly.
"Don't try to reason with me. I can't be reasoned with. I just act on instinct without a second thought!" she throws her hands up, still facing away from him.
She drops her head back, looking up at the branches, trying to keep her eyes open to dry them out, trying to will him to go away and leave her be, to leave her with the trees, who have never said anything mean about her and who don’t uphold any sexist societal systems.
"Anne, please."
"Take your soothing bedside manner and throw it in a lake, Gilbert, I'm not interested," the sadness has worked its way past the vitriol in her voice, and it catches a little against her will.
"Oh, sweet mercy," he says under his breath. "Fine," he spits, then turns her around with a grip on her upper arms. He sees the tears on her face and his face and grip both soften, but as she wrenches away, he tightens his grip again, bending his head to look at her eyes. "I don't think that."
"You said it."
"I did not."
"You said I'm a bad colleague and a bad member of the newspaper staff, and it’s clear you certainly don't want to be friends with me--" she raises her eyes to glare at him again like she was in the schoolhouse.
"Of course, I want--"
She drops her eyes again, "-- I'm a drain on your rationality, a spot on your intellect, an outsider--"
His voice rises slightly to try to cut off the negativity, urgent and full-hearted, "Anne, I'm sorry. I shouldn’t have called you impulsive, and I certainly should not have done it in front of everyone. You may be impulsive, but it's not bad! It works in your favor just as often as it gets you into scrapes. It's part of you."
"Part of me! I’m a mess."
"You are not a mess, don't talk about my friend that way. You made a little mess, but we're going to work together and fix it."
"You think I'm not smart,” she says, and on this her voice breaks again.
"Anne." Her cheek is still wet, and he rubs it away with the heel of his hand. "I don't think that. I know that you are the smartest person I know. You aren't just booksmart, you're clever and you're thoughtful. You do your due diligence with everything you are passionate about, and then you think about the way you express it. That's why your piece is so good. Do you think any of the rest of us could have written something so good in one night? Never! That's why you fight so well, which I can appreciate even when it's directed at me."
She laughs a little.
He smiles, but it falls again in earnestness. His hands have fallen from her upper arms to her lower arms, but he hasn't let go of her yet. He swallows. "I'm sorry, Anne. I shouldn't have said it, I know I hurt you. Please don't be mad at me, I hate it when you're mad at me."
His eyes fall, and she looks up at him not looking at her, and sees him, the reality of him, the person of him. She forgives him for being a man, and she forgives herself for holding the entirety of the unfairness of the world against him when it isn’t his fault. He cares enough to not like it when she’s mad at him, and in knowing that, she realizes she’s not mad at him anymore.
"How did you manage for the first year of our acquaintance?"
He chuckles, low in his chest, "Constant misery. Please, Anne?"
"You don't like it when I'm mad at you?"
"I really, really don't," he takes a deep breath, "It makes the world seem grayer.”
Her heart skips a beat and her voice comes out small, an admission that maybe he won’t hear. "I don't like it when you have a low opinion of me."
But of course he heard, and he squeezes her hands in his. "I have the highest opinion of you, Anne. You are wonderful, and you push me to be better because of it. I'm so lucky to have you in my life. I don't want you to think that I think poorly of you."
She holds her breath, then lets it out, letting something release with it, something pained inside her, now free into the world. Gilbert thinks she’s wonderful. She grins a little and tries desperately not to blush. Voice back in full now, she says, "I'm not calling another truce, they never stick."
"No truce necessary, but can you forgive me? For this specific incident?"
He's looking at her, pleading. Staying quiet for seemingly as long as she needs. The words are bubbling up her throat, the ‘of course, for anything, forever,’ and her arm flexes to reach for him when she suddenly remembers in a flash the image of Winifred on Gilbert's arm at the fair. She drops her eyes, squinting shut trying to erase the memory, trying to keep that, all of those ugly jealousy feelings, out of this conversation, even if she can't deny that the ugly jealousy feelings were the reason she'd baited him into fighting with her in the school room. Ugh, she was a mess, Gilbert had no idea. "I forgive you," she lets out, voice small again and still avoiding his eyes.
It felt so disingenuous to forgive him for this small thing when the rest of her was so upset, but it was what he wanted and he was so hard to resist with his full attention on her. His full attention was intoxicating, even when they were arguing. It was when his attention was divided that Anne felt her insides pulling apart. Another tear escapes and she brushes it away.
Gilbert can feel that there's something else, that she's still upset. He looks at her face for two more beats before deciding that pursuing it is not the right course of action, but he's worried for his friend. He picks up her hat from where he'd set in on the ground and hands it to her. "Can I walk you home?"
She nods, then laughs a little, "Can we volley article pitches?"
"Of course!"
*********
The next day, after a long session with the newspaper staff, only Miss Stacey, Anne and Gilbert are still in the schoolhouse. Gilbert and Miss Stacey are doing some light maintenance on the printing press, silently polishing and passing oil back and forth as they listen to the squeak of the moving parts and rub until they move without a sound.
Anne has a draft of her column in front of her and three dismissed, crosshatched, scribbled-out drafts on the floor.
Anne is so involved in her writing, constantly muttering to herself or staring intently at the empty spot in front of her for minutes at a time until gasping and applying her pen again to the paper with renewed fervor. This is always Anne’s process, her complete focus often looking to an outsider like distraction or empty-headedness. In the hustle and bustle of a busy day, she can fall into the background or be the eye of the storm, forming words with her mouth and tracing ideas in front of her as if they are floating on a blackboard only she can see. It’s disconcerting, sometimes, to be seemingly directly in her line of sight and yet she does not register your presence at all. Moody calls it ‘eerie,’ and Tillie’s not above throwing balls of paper past her sightline and giggling when she doesn’t react, but Gilbert finds it fascinating, and admirable, to have such concentration on her craft.
Gilbert knows this is her process, he’s seen her like this for hours, and yet, still, every time her head rises he glances over, as if this is going to be the time she starts talking her ideas out loud to the room. He knows if there’s something interesting to talk about in the fertilizer column, she will have figured it out, and he desperately, selfishly, wants to know what it is before everyone else does.
Miss Stacey reads her two young students, the glances Gilbert is throwing every time Anne moves her head, the way he’s so keyed into her rhythms, but she has complete confidence in Anne’s hyper-focus, and catches Gilbert’s eye.
Miss Stacey gestures to Anne and then raises one eyebrow in a question for him, and he answers with a smile and nod.
“You patched things up?” she mouths.
“You were right, as always, Miss Stacey,” he says very quietly, with a little laugh. “I apologized.”
“Don’t give me too much credit, you would have gone after her on your own. You have good instincts, Gilbert, and you always follow them,” she says kindly. “You can trust yourself.”
“Thank you,” he blushes, then looks at Anne again, head bent and pen moving a mile a minute. “I don’t mind arguing with her about other stuff, but I do hate that I hurt her feelings.”
“I’m sure she’s forgiven you. She always seems to,” Miss Stacey says, a knowing smile tucked into the corner of her mouth.
“She does, doesn’t she?” Gilbert muses, his eyes catching again on the red braids and the smudge of ink Anne has left on her forehead, and he looks down at his own hands, also ink-stained from the machine, as he rubs them on the dirty cloth aggressively. “Heaven knows why. I’m sure I’ll reach my limit one of these days and she’ll stop entirely.”
Miss Stacey knows she has a limit to how much wisdom she can effectively impart in one day, but she leaves him with one last tidbit. “I’m sure if I were having this conversation with her she would say something similar. Friendship is about give and take, and I think it’s more important to Anne that she’s on equal ground with you. You two work well together because you respect each other and you can forgive each other.”
Gilbert takes this in thoughtfully, for once distracted when Anne snaps out of her concentration state and snaps her folder closed.
Miss Stacey stands and raises her voice from the somber advice-giving tones, addressing both of them while also concluding her conversation with Gilbert. “In fact, you’re so well matched, I was going to pair you for a column, though that’s out of the question now with Anne’s new beat.”
“Miss Stacey, I am going to make big strides with this fertilizer column, I just know it” Anne says, mostly cheerfully. “I am making a lot of progress.”
“Well I’m glad!” Miss Stacey responds, crossing to Anne to talk to her individually. “I can’t wait to read it.”
Miss Stacey puts on her hat and gathers her things, asking “So Anne, do you want to talk about yesterday, or did you and--” she drops her voice, excluding him from the conversation “--Gilbert clear things up?”
Anne responds at full tone, smiling at Gilbert and then at Miss Stacey, while she grabs her own hat, “Everything’s fine now, Miss Stacey. I apologized for being a mess,” she says cheerfully.
“Well, I’m certainly glad to hear it, and I’ll see you two tomorrow.” Miss Stacey nods at both of them and then subtly but quickly exits the schoolhouse.
***
Gilbert sighs, simply not allowing it to drop, "You aren't a mess, Anne."
Anne turns back to him, surprised he spoke, since she thought the conversation was over when Miss Stacey left. "If I weren't a mess then why did you --" she slams her mouth shut and looks for an escape route again.
Gilbert waits for a second to see if she's going to finish, but she doesn't. "Why did I what?"
"Nothing."
"Anne." He remembers the tear, the tear that came from Anne still looking so upset about something, the tear he'd thought about before falling asleep last night, perplexed and worried about her, still worried he'd wronged her somehow. "Are you still thinking about what I said when we argued, because I shouldn't have said it."
"No, it's not that, it's nothing, forget it." Anne waves her hand dismissively, and tries to move but finds herself rooted to the spot.
He looks at her and realizes he recognized the look in her eyes. It was the same look from the fair, from when she blurted out that she wished him and Winnifred every happiness, and her voice had sounded so strange. Something clicks in his brain and he isn’t quite sure what.
"It's about the fair? about... my guest?"
"Who told you that?" she says, eyes wide, defensive, running over the day in her mind to see if she remembers Diana and him talking without her.
"No one, Anne, no one. Is that what it is?" he's searching her face, and tips his head down a little, trying to urge her to speak, knowing she will if he gives her enough time.
"I..." She pauses. "I ... yesterday, before, last week, I… I thought you liked me."
"I do like you," he says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
She continues past the interruption, "But you were courting, and I didn't know, you didn't tell me, but it's not my business, you didn't have to tell me, but then yesterday, and we were fighting, and then I thought you didn't even like me at all and it was just too much."
"I do like you."
"I meant the other way."
"I do like you, Anne," he grabs her hand and she startles at the sparks that run between them, at the intensity of his eyes, "You thought this was just you? You thought I didn't feel it too?"
She stares up at him, her eyes clearing.
"Anne, Winnie is charming," - her eyes cloud over again - "but I can't breathe right when I'm around you. My heart skips beats. It's a completely different ball game."
"Then why did you…?" she barely gets it out, begging him internally to just answer the question before she has to ask the rest of it.
"I didn't know, my mind wasn't clear, but that night, later, when there wasn’t anything else happening, I wasn't thinking about when I'd danced with her at the fair, I was still thinking about when I'd danced with you. A week ago. About the fire blazing in your eyes when you confronted Billy, I..."
He's coming to these realizations in the moment. He gets antsy all of the sudden, lets go of her hand and starts pacing in front of her, rubbing the side of his neck.
She watches him in a sort of shock, her hands trembling slightly, but oddly still and speechless to see him this raw and organic.
"I should talk this over with Bash, he's good at feelings," Gilbert mutters, before returning his words to Anne, "I shouldn't be laying all of this at your feet, I'm just figuring out ---.”
Now he’s talking to himself again, faster, “I ran after you yesterday because you were mad at me! RAN! Without even thinking about it for a second! I can't picture running to catch Winnie about anything, ever. I can't picture her running away from me in a rage either..."
Anne is incredibly anxious to be witnessing this in real time. She squints her eyes closed again, and mostly whispers, "Please stop talking about Winifred," more of a plea to heaven than a plea to Gilbert himself.
Gilbert doesn't even miss a beat. “You're right, she's not the point, and when you were talking about the take notice board all those months ago, and then mentioned Ruby and I was so confused and, my goodness, I was disappointed! I'd wanted you to be hinting for yourself! I can't believe I didn't..."
He has both hands in his hair now, and stares at her for a moment, for three breaths before setting off again. He's not usually this verbose or this energetic, but he seems to have to be moving in order for the words to come this fast, even as he starts making less and less sense.
“That day you were late for the hockey game and I couldn't even focus until you'd gotten there, and once you did show up your hair was loose, and," turning to face her again, “Why don't you wear your hair loose, Anne?"
Startled, Anne sputters, "I, Marilla thinks it's... is that the point?"
"No, you're right, that's not the point either." He stops. As if he's totally lost his train of thought. Looking at her. At her hair?
Anne's old insecurities rear their head for a moment, she tugs her braid back behind her shoulder, "It's just... it's so red."
Gilbert shakes his head, stops in front of her, slides one finger under her braid to pull it in front of her shoulder again. “Your hair is beautiful, Anne. You're beautiful."
She catches her breath.
"But that's not the point either, I already knew that," he's pacing again.
She lets the breath back out.
He's really acting weird now. Not just weird-for-Gilbert, like, actively strange by any standard. Even though Anne knows there's a more important realization happening, she kind of just wants another compliment.
"That can be the point if you want,” she says, angling for confident and falling slightly short.
"No, that's not the point."
"Then what is the point?"
"The point is.... I don't know what the point is. I'm sorry about this."
She stares at him, trying not to think about how handsome he is as he works his hands through his curls while he's thinking out loud, trying as hard as she can to give him space to think this through without ploughing him over with a torrent of words about her own feelings, about a fortune teller, about the dough she was kneading after dance practice, about Charlie Sloane and his complete lack of understanding about anything regarding her, about how she felt when the girls pushed her ahead of them to ask Gilbert a question they all had to know the answer to, how the embarrassment passed, but the moment of ownership, of ‘he’s mine, and for some reason, everyone knows it’ swung around her and warmed her from the inside. She wants to tell him all of this, but he looks like he’s on the brink of something, and, more than talk, she really, really, really wants to know what he has to say.
He's been pacing the full breadth of the schoolhouse, and he's been talking rather loud, so it's kind of a shock when he takes six long strides to stand in front of her, and gently, almost one finger at a time, picks up her hand, which is still trembling slightly, to grip it in his own, to say one syllable at the very bottom of his voice, "Anne?"
"Yes, Gilbert?" What on earth is he going to say? Is she going to get a romantic declaration now? On a July Tuesday? Here?? In the schoolhouse? From this new, wild-eyed Gilbert she feels like she's never seen before?
He trails a hair out of her face with a fingertip grazing over her forehead and her ear, then speaks, "I have to think this through, Anne. Can I come by Green Gables tonight after dinner and tell you what the point is?"
She feels like she should be deflated and yet doesn’t feel deflated at all, still feels like maybe she’s floating slightly off the floor. "Yes?" she says, as certain as she can be in the face of something as strange as this uncertain Gilbert.
He sighs, and a smile breaks through, "I'll see you."
He walks to the door and grabs his hat, then, after opening the door, closes it again, whips himself around back to her and, quickly, without making eye contact, grabs her hand and presses her knuckles to his lips. He lingers there for a moment, taking a breath in.
It's not a declaration, but it eases her anxious heart enough to be sure that whatever she hears from him tonight will be good news, not bad.
"Tonight," he says.
He leaves and she sees him through the schoolhouse window, actually running towards home. Her knees give out and she sits down with a plop on the window bench.
"I think that boy may love me," she says to the empty room, dazed and dreamy. "What exquisite luck."