Chapter Text
Dear Anne,
I should be asleep. It is the dead of night after a long journey west. My body is tired - I feel the aching desire for rest in each slow, calming breath. I sat on the train for much too long with the same heavy tiredness I now feel. I have laid in my new bed in my new room with its street-facing window (on a busy thoroughfare in a relatively old boarding house called Sloane House, located on Danforth Avenue about three kilometers away from the medical studies building on the University of Toronto campus - just in-case knowing more about my location helps you picture me better) for hours that have felt like days, and can only come to one conclusion: sleep will not come. Not until I write to you to ask this one pressing question - the same question that has begun to pound in my ears and set my pulse racing at every attempt to drift off to sleep.
Anne. My Anne with an e... are you truly mine ?
Was our brief meeting in Charlottetown some kind of fever dream that my brain procured to help me cope with leaving my family and home for an unknown city where I have no contacts and, especially notable, where I am hundreds and hundreds of kilometers away from the girl that I love? Or…
Or did I really find you? Was I truly allowed at long, long last to hold your face in my hand, to touch your freckled cheek, to kiss the full, pink lips on your expressive, perfect mouth?
There goes my heart again, pounding away as I print out what was either the most incredible moment of my life thus far, or the beginnings of a steep descent into insanity.
No, putting my memories of your ample lips on mine to paper in this way has allowed me to definitively say that I never could have imagined what happened then. Nor especially what happened next (after all, not all of us are blessed to have imaginative powers of such magnitude as a certain red-headed girl I know and love).
Anne, my Anne; though finally convinced of the reality of our encounter, I fear that I may never sleep again. What good would the respite of sleep and dreams be when I have already lived through the height of earthly happiness?
Oh, that I could spend this sleepless night with you, Anne.
Forgive me, that last line was much too forward. I only meant to say that I would love to be with you now so that I might ask you any of the questions that are buzzing around my head like angry bees.
You mentioned that you have questions, and all I could think at the time was for myself: “How on earth are you going to leave her now that you finally have her?”
That question has now shape-shifted into an angry accusation in my mind; one that I am afraid you, yourself may be asking of me now. “How could you accost me in such a way, and then leave me without so much as a promise -- or even a forwarding address?”
I can only pray that you have not spent the time since our meeting thinking me a cad and a bounder. I did not intend to be so… enthusiastic… when I found you at last outside of your boarding house. The only thought in my head at the time was, “She loves you. She loves you. Diana said there was a letter, and in it she told you she loves you.”
- By the way, I never received such a letter, and admit myself wildly curious as to its advent, contents, and mysterious disappearance. I am also mortified to wonder at how long you must have thought me ambivalent toward your declaration of love… I cannot think on it for too long. It is too horrible a thought for such an otherwise incredible day.
I approached you today with the intention of speaking to you about my wishes and feelings (did… did you happen to receive a letter I left on your bedroom table at Green Gables recently?).
As to what happened next, I can only say that the hope that lifted me off of the train and into the streets of Charlottetown did not slow or stop when I had found you at last, but instead it carried me perhaps too far in my lighthearted happiness - to think that Anne Shirley-Cuthbert might love me the way I have loved her for so, so long…
It was a heady thing, my darling. I cannot say that I regret kissing you so eagerly (and… ahem… frequently…), but I do hope that my behavior didn’t alarm or upset you.
Though, in my experience with you thus far, I can venture with some certainty that had my advances had offended you, you would have let me know, and most definitely not by holding my own face in your soft, small hands, and kissing me back with such… I can almost feel you in my arms now, pulling your waist close to me as you…
Pardon me, Miss. I think I’ll go for a quick walk around the block.
I’m back. The air in Toronto tonight is crisp and cool. Danforth Avenue is lined with tall trees, and, though nothing about this bustling city could remind me of the peaceful pathways at home, there was something to remind me of you in every breeze ruffling my hair and in each blooming tree standing tall, wild, confident, beautiful. And to be with you is to be home, my darling island dryad.
As I rambled along the city streets, one of my favorite poems ran through my mind to the beat of each measured step I took:
“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -
And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -
I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.
Emily Dickinson wrote those words before either of us was born, but I am convinced she knew something of love and longing and what it feels like to be at home in you, Anne. You have always been the thing with feathers in my life. When I received your letter halfway across the world, I heard your song. Its melody has been branded upon my heart - on chillest land and strangest sea, you have sung to me, asking nothing in return.
But, Anne, I have so much to give you. Everything, that is what I want for you and me.
Only the knowledge that becoming a doctor is my life’s calling has kept me from turning around, going back to PEI, back to Charlottetown, back to you, and creating a good-enough life for us. I could attend Queens by your side, could work my family’s land side-by-side with Bash, could live a small and happy life with you by my side, Anne. I know I could.
But medicine is the only other song that has called to me through these years, and it harmonizes perfectly with your tune, Anne-girl. You have taught me that being true to myself is a guarantee for happiness, and that my ambition and hard work can turn my dreams into our reality. I am on the cusp of having everything I have ever needed to truly make an extraordinary life, and cannot be satisfied in creating a merely-content existence for us, now. You will become the world’s best teacher, and I… I will do something important to further the cause of the good country doctor.
Everything. I’m giving everything I have to these dreams. It will take time, distance, and I fear more patience than I have. The longing to be with you now that I have held you in my arms…
Everything. I will settle for nothing less than giving you the very best of me and everything that I can give to you and to this world. So I’ll stay here and give everything that is in me to become a man who deserves the love of the girl who is everything he ever wanted.
More questions to come. And answers. And sleepless nights too far from you.
But for now I will open my window wide and feel the breeze that feels like hope that feels like weightlessness that feels like Anne Shirley-Cuthbert loves me pour over me, and dream of everything that is to come.
All my love,
Gilbert