Chapter XLI

Love Takes Up the Glass of Time

“I’ve come up to ask you to go for one of our old-time rambles through

September woods and ‘over hills where spices grow,’ this afternoon,”

said Gilbert, coming suddenly around the porch corner. “Suppose we

visit Hester Gray’s garden.”

Anne, sitting on the stone step with her lap full of a pale, filmy,

green stuff, looked up rather blankly.

“Oh, I wish I could,” she said slowly, “but I really can’t, Gilbert.

I’m going to Alice Penhallow’s wedding this evening, you know. I’ve got

to do something to this dress, and by the time it’s finished I’ll have

to get ready. I’m so sorry. I’d love to go.”

“Well, can you go tomorrow afternoon, then?” asked Gilbert, apparently

not much disappointed.

“Yes, I think so.”

“In that case I shall hie me home at once to do something I should

otherwise have to do tomorrow. So Alice Penhallow is to be married

tonight. Three weddings for you in one summer, Anne—Phil’s, Alice’s,

and Jane’s. I’ll never forgive Jane for not inviting me to her

wedding.”

“You really can’t blame her when you think of the tremendous Andrews

connection who had to be invited. The house could hardly hold them all.

I was only bidden by grace of being Jane’s old chum—at least on Jane’s

part. I think Mrs. Harmon’s motive for inviting me was to let me see

Jane’s surpassing gorgeousness.”

“Is it true that she wore so many diamonds that you couldn’t tell where

the diamonds left off and Jane began?”

Anne laughed.

“She certainly wore a good many. What with all the diamonds and white

satin and tulle and lace and roses and orange blossoms, prim little

Jane was almost lost to sight. But she was _very_ happy, and so was Mr.

Inglis—and so was Mrs. Harmon.”

“Is that the dress you’re going to wear tonight?” asked Gilbert,

looking down at the fluffs and frills.

“Yes. Isn’t it pretty? And I shall wear starflowers in my hair. The

Haunted Wood is full of them this summer.”

Gilbert had a sudden vision of Anne, arrayed in a frilly green gown,

with the virginal curves of arms and throat slipping out of it, and

white stars shining against the coils of her ruddy hair. The vision

made him catch his breath. But he turned lightly away.

“Well, I’ll be up tomorrow. Hope you’ll have a nice time tonight.”

Anne looked after him as he strode away, and sighed. Gilbert was

friendly—very friendly—far too friendly. He had come quite often to

Green Gables after his recovery, and something of their old comradeship

had returned. But Anne no longer found it satisfying. The rose of love

made the blossom of friendship pale and scentless by contrast. And Anne

had again begun to doubt if Gilbert now felt anything for her but

friendship. In the common light of common day her radiant certainty of

that rapt morning had faded. She was haunted by a miserable fear that

her mistake could never be rectified. It was quite likely that it was

Christine whom Gilbert loved after all. Perhaps he was even engaged to

her. Anne tried to put all unsettling hopes out of her heart, and

reconcile herself to a future where work and ambition must take the

place of love. She could do good, if not noble, work as a teacher; and

the success her little sketches were beginning to meet with in certain

editorial sanctums augured well for her budding literary dreams.

But—but—Anne picked up her green dress and sighed again.

When Gilbert came the next afternoon he found Anne waiting for him,

fresh as the dawn and fair as a star, after all the gaiety of the

preceding night. She wore a green dress—not the one she had worn to the

wedding, but an old one which Gilbert had told her at a Redmond

reception he liked especially. It was just the shade of green that

brought out the rich tints of her hair, and the starry gray of her eyes

and the iris-like delicacy of her skin. Gilbert, glancing at her

sideways as they walked along a shadowy woodpath, thought she had never

looked so lovely. Anne, glancing sideways at Gilbert, now and then,

thought how much older he looked since his illness. It was as if he had

put boyhood behind him forever.

The day was beautiful and the way was beautiful. Anne was almost sorry

when they reached Hester Gray’s garden, and sat down on the old bench.

But it was beautiful there, too—as beautiful as it had been on the

faraway day of the Golden Picnic, when Diana and Jane and Priscilla and

she had found it. Then it had been lovely with narcissus and violets;

now golden rod had kindled its fairy torches in the corners and asters

dotted it bluely. The call of the brook came up through the woods from

the valley of birches with all its old allurement; the mellow air was

full of the purr of the sea; beyond were fields rimmed by fences

bleached silvery gray in the suns of many summers, and long hills

scarfed with the shadows of autumnal clouds; with the blowing of the

west wind old dreams returned.

“I think,” said Anne softly, “that ‘the land where dreams come true’ is

in the blue haze yonder, over that little valley.”

“Have you any unfulfilled dreams, Anne?” asked Gilbert.

Something in his tone—something she had not heard since that miserable

evening in the orchard at Patty’s Place—made Anne’s heart beat wildly.

But she made answer lightly.

“Of course. Everybody has. It wouldn’t do for us to have all our dreams

fulfilled. We would be as good as dead if we had nothing left to dream

about. What a delicious aroma that low-descending sun is extracting

from the asters and ferns. I wish we could see perfumes as well as

smell them. I’m sure they would be very beautiful.”

Gilbert was not to be thus sidetracked.

“I have a dream,” he said slowly. “I persist in dreaming it, although

it has often seemed to me that it could never come true. I dream of a

home with a hearth-fire in it, a cat and dog, the footsteps of

friends—and _you!_”

Anne wanted to speak but she could find no words. Happiness was

breaking over her like a wave. It almost frightened her.

“I asked you a question over two years ago, Anne. If I ask it again

today will you give me a different answer?”

Still Anne could not speak. But she lifted her eyes, shining with all

the love-rapture of countless generations, and looked into his for a

moment. He wanted no other answer.

They lingered in the old garden until twilight, sweet as dusk in Eden

must have been, crept over it. There was so much to talk over and

recall—things said and done and heard and thought and felt and

misunderstood.

“I thought you loved Christine Stuart,” Anne told him, as reproachfully

as if she had not given him every reason to suppose that she loved Roy

Gardner.

Gilbert laughed boyishly.

“Christine was engaged to somebody in her home town. I knew it and she

knew I knew it. When her brother graduated he told me his sister was

coming to Kingsport the next winter to take music, and asked me if I

would look after her a bit, as she knew no one and would be very

lonely. So I did. And then I liked Christine for her own sake. She is

one of the nicest girls I’ve ever known. I knew college gossip credited

us with being in love with each other. I didn’t care. Nothing mattered

much to me for a time there, after you told me you could never love me,

Anne. There was nobody else—there never could be anybody else for me

but you. I’ve loved you ever since that day you broke your slate over

my head in school.”

“I don’t see how you could keep on loving me when I was such a little

fool,” said Anne.

“Well, I tried to stop,” said Gilbert frankly, “not because I thought

you what you call yourself, but because I felt sure there was no chance

for me after Gardner came on the scene. But I couldn’t—and I can’t tell

you, either, what it’s meant to me these two years to believe you were

going to marry him, and be told every week by some busybody that your

engagement was on the point of being announced. I believed it until one

blessed day when I was sitting up after the fever. I got a letter from

Phil Gordon—Phil Blake, rather—in which she told me there was really

nothing between you and Roy, and advised me to ‘try again.’ Well, the

doctor was amazed at my rapid recovery after that.”

Anne laughed—then shivered.

“I can never forget the night I thought you were dying, Gilbert. Oh, I

knew—I _knew_ then—and I thought it was too late.”

“But it wasn’t, sweetheart. Oh, Anne, this makes up for everything,

doesn’t it? Let’s resolve to keep this day sacred to perfect beauty all

our lives for the gift it has given us.”

“It’s the birthday of our happiness,” said Anne softly. “I’ve always

loved this old garden of Hester Gray’s, and now it will be dearer than

ever.”

“But I’ll have to ask you to wait a long time, Anne,” said Gilbert

sadly. “It will be three years before I’ll finish my medical course.

And even then there will be no diamond sunbursts and marble halls.”

Anne laughed.

“I don’t want sunbursts and marble halls. I just want _you_. You see

I’m quite as shameless as Phil about it. Sunbursts and marble halls may

be all very well, but there is more ‘scope for imagination’ without

them. And as for the waiting, that doesn’t matter. We’ll just be happy,

waiting and working for each other—and dreaming. Oh, dreams will be

very sweet now.”

Gilbert drew her close to him and kissed her. Then they walked home

together in the dusk, crowned king and queen in the bridal realm of

love, along winding paths fringed with the sweetest flowers that ever

bloomed, and over haunted meadows where winds of hope and memory blew.