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‘It was glorious, Winnie, it was — it was incredible!’
‘Slow down, Gilbert, I… I don’t understand.’
Gilbert stops directly in the molten sunlight pooling in through the window and drops his arms. He’s more excited than Winifred has ever seen him, pacing the room, motioning wildly with his hands while she sits still on the sofa and desperately tries to follow what he’s saying. With the exams on the horizon he’s been spending much more time at home than in Charlottetown. She’d only be fooling herself if she didn’t admit to the vague disquiet she feels at the disconnect opening up between them.
‘An organised action,’ Gilbert repeats, clearly savouring the words. ‘Oh, the looks on their faces.’
‘Who?’
‘The trustees. I wish you’d been there to see it.’
‘Ah,’ she says, and tries to feel reassured by the sentiment. That’s good — isn’t it? Gilbert wants her around, Gilbert’s thinking of her. ‘Well, I must congratulate you.’
‘Thanks — thanks, but it really came down to Anne.’
Winifred will not permit herself to stoop so low as to flinch at the name. Gilbert laughs again, just a half chuckle this time, and says, almost to himself, ‘I can’t believe she pulled it off. She did it.’
‘You did, too.’
He exclaims, ‘We did it!’ with such exultance that Winifred almost feels included. But of course this is not her victory. It was pulled off miles away in Avonlea while she sat here on this very sofa doing who knows what: arranging flowers perhaps, drinking tea, dreaming of the little cobblestoned streets of Paris. Or maybe she was at Dr Ward's, whiling away lonely hours in conversation with Mr Bones (he's become an indispensable friend, now that Gilbert doesn't come in any longer). That makes her feel a little better — she's not completely useless. Either way, never imagining that at that very instant there were people her age fighting for their right to a voice. Freedom of speech, how much grown-up gravity there is to it. Winifred may be a big town girl, but how little she really knows of the ways of the world.
And all Gilbert wants her to do is watch. Doesn’t he wish she was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with him against the world? Doesn’t he wish they were partners? Equals?
‘Remind me how it all happened,’ she says.
He sits down beside her, but almost immediately springs up again. ‘I sat down in church the Sunday after the county fair, and was completely blindsided by this article in the Avonlea Gazette. “What Is Fair?” — I don’t think I can get that out of my head for as long as I live. Huge, in black and white.’
‘What was it about?’
‘Women’s rights. Or rather, gender equality. It was splendid. Explosive, certainly, you understand. Half the newspaper was furious, we never expected any of us would go behind the others’ backs and print something like that. If Mrs Lynde thought she had a near-medical conniption — the rest of us are marvels of nature for being here today.’
‘You were angry?’
‘Dumbfounded is the word. And there was that whole mess with Josie Pye that took a while to smooth over. But she was right. She set things right. She always does.’
‘Who?’
‘Anne.’
He tosses it her way so off-handedly, this barbed curveball, that for a moment Winifred feels relieved. There’s no change, no break in Gilbert’s voice, no guilty softening of his manner, that betrays the little suspicions that have been glimmering in her mind since that fateful fair. But then she looks at him, and suddenly she realises that the steadiness of the light in his eyes might be a much more dangerous thing.
‘Anne,’ she says, ‘had something to say on gender equality?’
Gilbert snorts. ‘Oh, didn’t she. A whole page of it.’
‘Well, it must have been… quite something!’
With nervous finality Winifred hopes that this will be the end of the subject. Surely Gilbert must have more to tell her about. Like how his studies are going. Or whether he likes the bowl of purple geraniums she’s put on the table, as a reminder of the tea place they used to go to between shifts at Dr Ward’s. He notices little things like that. He’s detailed — he will make a good doctor. Yes, she’ll ask him about the Sorbonne. His thoughts don’t revolve around Anne and her adventures… do they? Don’t they?
‘“We all deserve the right to bodily autonomy and to be treated with dignity and respect”,’ says Gilbert suddenly.
‘What?’ She is startled.
‘“Women are not made whole by men. Women are made whole the moment they enter this world.”’
‘Certainly, I couldn’t agree more, but I… I —’
‘You agree?’
‘Of course.’
‘Good,’ he says. ‘Good. I’m not a woman, but I want to stand by all of you.’
‘Is that what she wrote?’
‘There’s no one I can think of who could’ve done it better.’
Winifred tightens her grip on the armrest of the sofa. Should she call the butler, ring for more tea? Bring in her father?
Gilbert goes on. ‘There’s something else. Something I need to talk to you about, Winnie.’
‘Oh!’ It freezes her fingers above the little tabletop bell. He’s looking at her soberly. She tries to lighten the mood with a smile. Gilbert, she thinks, has always liked her smile. ‘Well, now you’ve got me curious. What is it?’
‘No,’ he says, ‘I’m serious, Winnie.’
‘Alright then.’ Yes, she can be serious too.
‘That day, at the fair. All that talk about… intentions, and the Sorbonne, and everything.’
‘Yes.’ She feels faint. Is this how it happens, then? Is this how she… she gets to belong to someone?
‘I’ve been thinking about it.’
Winifred clutches her hands together tightly. She’s happy, she’s… she’s thrilled, really, almost in heaven. But she’s in such a flutter. It’s so sudden. Shouldn’t Gilbert finish his exams first? Shouldn’t he let things settle down before asking her? Settle down — he’s ready to settle down. Now, that has gravity. But she can do it, they’ll work through it together. They’re going to be a team. Partners. Equals.
‘I realised how it could all have come across,’ Gilbert says seriously, ‘and I’m sorry, Winnie, I am.’
All her cherished hopes, on rebound, slash her across the cheek like a whip. ‘What?’
‘I’m not buying a place in the Sorbonne with your hand in marriage. That would be… disgusting. Your worth and the worth of a chance like that are two completely separate things, and I never mean to conflate them for my own benefit. You’re not to be bargained over like a piece of land. It’s degrading.’
‘Thank you,’ she falters, stumblingly, ‘but I never dreamed… my parents liked you so much, of course we didn’t think…’
‘You’re too kind for that. It was never what I intended. But now that I’ve been made aware of it, I’m determined it won’t happen again.’
Does this mean he will never marry her? Just because of some stupid misunderstanding, of how it might look to someone else? Whose opinion is he worried about, anyway? ‘But that’s a horrible thing to say about you! Who in the world would —’
He waves it aside.
‘Anne,’ she says. ‘It was Anne.’
Gilbert rubs the back of his neck. ‘I wish, sometimes, she saw less.’
‘You can’t see something that isn’t there!’
‘You have to understand. This is Anne’s calling. This is what she’s meant to do in life. She is the bearer of truth. She tells people all the things they don’t want to hear.’
‘Just because things are unpleasant doesn’t mean they’re true.’
‘I’m not saying she’s always right. But I’ve never seen her wrong. And the truth, Winnie — “The truth will set you free”.’
Winifred is not going to argue with the Sunday sermon.
‘The gold fever. There wasn’t any gold, obviously, but if she hadn’t written to me to come home, I wouldn’t be here today.’
So it was Anne who had turned that ship around on the high seas, had stopped Gilbert’s wandering feet back on home soil.
‘She brought Cole to Josephine Barry. Granted, she nearly ruined his life in the process — but they are inseparable now.’
Has she ever, Winifred asks herself, changed the course of someone else’s destiny?
‘She stood up to Billy at the barn dance,’ says Gilbert. ‘It was inadvisable. Actually, it was insane — and Josie Pye has the magnanimity of a saint for forgiving her for that. Still, it took courage. And now this article. Anne gets things wrong just the same as the rest of us, and her transgressions are greater for the heroic efforts she makes. But the good that she does… is incomparable. “A strong effort of the spirit of good”, that’s Anne.’
‘And what does she say… what does she say about me?’
Bemused, Gilbert — finally — looks at her. The painfulness of Winifred’s whisper seems to have eluded his notice. If he wants to be a doctor, he should brush up on that. ‘Bless you, Winnie, why would she have anything to say about you?’
For the same reason that Winifred should have so many things to say about her — because Gilbert does. ‘Nothing,’ she says. ‘Of course she wouldn’t. I’ve only met her once. You seem to know a lot about her.’
‘It feels like I’ve known her forever. I suppose I have, for all the time that matters.’
‘Of course, she is a special family friend.’
‘She was a joy and comfort to Mary,’ says Gilbert. ‘She was the first to make Bash feel like he belonged in Avonlea. And she is wonderful with Delphine, the best of people to bring her up in love and faith, to keep the memory of her mother alive. Anne will never be… she will always be here. We’re kin.’
‘“Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same”?’
He laughs. ‘I’ll try to avoid being a Heathcliff. More — “tightly knotted to a similar string in you”.’
‘You prefer Mr Rochester?’
‘It’s a happier ending.’
A happier ending in which he doesn’t marry Winifred. She’s been embarrassed by her father’s talk of intentions, but there’s no doubt that it’s weighing on everyone’s minds. Her mother is drawing up plans to prepare the fourth arrondissement flat; her father says nothing, but letters from his friend in the Sorbonne pile up on a corner of his desk in the study. They’ve extended an invitation to Gilbert to dine with them after his exams in Charlottetown. Her mother had made it seem like the most natural thing in the world: ‘Of course you must come. It would be dreadful to put you back on the train on an empty stomach. Not to mention an empty brain — you’ll be exhausted. Isn’t that right, Nigel?’
‘You see, Gilbert, my wife is hinting at me to give up my solitary afternoon cigar.’
‘You are very badly behaved.’
‘But you bear it with fortitude, my dear. And amusement — I think I may safely flatter myself that I amuse you.’
‘Not so safely as you imagine.’
‘She wounds me! Though not as much as the loss of an afternoon to myself. Nevertheless, dear boy, for you…’
Winifred knows that Gilbert soaks it all in — he’s never seen a happy marriage before, save the few years when Mary was with them. It seems like something he would like to have, if he knew how. Winifred will teach him. She’s learned from the best, and she will give him the best: her courageous, determined, complicated Gilbert. That’s alright, Winifred will make things easy.
She is just congratulating herself on an averted crisis when Gilbert speaks.
‘You saw that prize ribbon she had pinned on before the barn dance?’
‘I did.’
‘It was from Matthew’s enormous radish. “Most Unusual”. Suits her down to the ground, wouldn’t you say?’
‘I would.’
‘She’s incendiary,’ he says. ‘She’s… extraordinary.’
Anne is a sweetheart. Winifred could like her if she tried — she almost likes her already. Still, however brilliant and thoughtful and bright Anne is, she’s just a girl. Incendiary as she may be in the face of the whole of Avonlea, she’d been struck dumb at the sight of Winifred. It would be easy if it was her that Winifred’s up against, but it’s not. She’s fighting Gilbert. The tender wonder in his voice. The way he cradles Anne’s name when he says it, although he hardly ever does. It’s as if he expects the world to know, instinctively, who he must be thinking of — as if there should be no doubt that there’s only one “her” for him.
This is ridiculous, of course. She shakes herself. They are not enemies, she and Gilbert and Anne. They will weave in and out of each other’s lives as seamlessly as they did during the Dashing White Sergeant, and at the end of it all, Gilbert will return — as he did before — to her.
She is a lucky girl.
Winifred washes the sad bitterness from her mouth with the last of her tea. No need for all that. ‘So,’ she says. ‘About the Sorbonne…’