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jomiddlemarch · 16 days

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That it alone is high fantastical

“Oh, Mother, you’ll never guess! You’ll never guess in century of guessing!” Rilla cried out, sounding so much as she had as a little girl, for a moment, Anne could convince herself the War had never happened and that somewhere in Rainbow Valley, Walter sat writing a crown of sonnets in his leather-bound journal, his face dappled by the light, back braced against the bole of a birch tree, his grey eyes unfocused as he searched for his next word.

There was still a white stone in the graveyard. Shirley was in Toronto, having refused (albeit politely) to return to Glen St. Mary, much to Susan’s dismay, and Jem walked with a pronounced limp, his uneven gait announcing him as much as Mary’s voice.

There was a mystery there, Jem and Mary Vance, but Anne couldn’t see any way through it and Gilbert, lying beside her in bed, both of them tired but sleepless, told her not to try. Jem had seemed less removed, less falsely cheerful lately, and had begun talking about the medical course again, perhaps a specialty in obstetrics, a hospital practice. As far away from men dying in battle as he can get, Gilbert had observed and Anne had recalled Joyce’s little face, white as a mayflower blossom, and held her tongue.

Rilla, remarkably, given her exuberant entrance, had done the same in the absence of Anne’s response. Miss Oliver had left Ingleside some weeks ago, so there was no one to suggest Rilla either elaborate or calm herself, as her likeness to a whistling copper tea-kettle was increasingly pronounced.

“If I’ll never guess, dear, you must tell me,” Anne said. It was a relief that Rilla could still be the young girl she ought to be, for all that she wore Ken Ford’s diamond ring on her finger and was capable of a brisk, warm matronliness when it came to raising Jims, now reserved for the writing of letters to his new British stepmother and clucking over the missives she received.

“Faith Meredith has eloped!”

Anne did admit to herself she would never have guessed that, because for all her imagination, she wouldn’t have guessed something impossible.

“But, Rilla, Jem is with your father today, doing the Lowbridge rounds. Susan and I packed a lunch with plenty of pie for Dad and some of that flapjack Jem took to after being in England,” Anne said. He’d been in hospital in England, recovering from the injuries he’d sustained at the Front, in the prison camp, during his escape, none of which was spoken of. Only flapjack and stewed tea and how no cook in England was a patch on Susan and that you may tie to, uttered with some semblance of his old roguish humor.

“I didn’t say she married Jem, Mother!” Rilla exclaimed. Her cheeks were pink and her eyes were bright. She had a look of Gilbert at his most delighted about him, an expression Anne remembered from their childhood. Anne opened her mouth to speak but Rilla interrupted.

“It’s Bertie Shakespeare Drew! Faith Meredith is Mrs. Bertie Shakespeare!” Rilla said.

If Anne hadn’t already been sitting down, she would have, suddenly and gracelessly. As it was, the shirt she’d been mending fell from her lap.

“That’s—why, Rilla, are you sure?”

“I heard it directly from Mary Vance,” Rilla said, lifting a hand to stop Anne from speaking. “And Miss Cornelia Bryant. You know Miss Cornelia has no taste for gossip. Miss Cornelia’d heard it from Mrs. Meredith—”

“Poor Rosemary,” Anne said, before she could stop herself.

“Why poor Rosemary? I suppose they thought Faith and Jem would make a go of it, at least, perhaps Reverend Meredith and Mrs. Meredith did, but the War’s done funny things to people and Faith and Jem, they just didn’t fit any longer,” Rilla said. Sometimes, Anne felt Rilla reminded her of someone she couldn’t name and realized her youngest daughter spoke with the wisdom Anne’s own mother might have had. Plenty of folks in the Glen would find such a thought eerie, but Anne was comforted, for all that she ought to be the one offering a thoughtful explanation rather than receiving it.

“I suppose I meant the surprise, an elopement—”

“They must not have wanted to wait. Or were afraid someone would try to talk them out of it. Bertie’s mother maybe,” Rilla said.

Rosemary or her father, Anne thought. Jem, if he’d been given the chance, perhaps. Perhaps not, if Rilla was correct.

“Bertie Shakespeare Drew,” Anne said. “I remember when he was born. He’s just Jem’s age.”

“He’s not much like you remember him, Mother. He’s all tall and stalwart now and they say he’s going in for engineering, that he learned quite a bit in France, found he had a talent for that sort of thing. And his ears don’t stick out quite so much anymore,” Rilla said.

“There’re more things on heav’n and earth,” Anne said, mangling the quote a bit, fairly certain Rilla would not correct her. “D’you suppose Faith calls him Bertie? Or his full name—it’s quite a mouthful.”

Queenly Faith Meredith, the undisputed beauty of Glen St. Mary, who had a sense of humor but also a sense of herself as beyond any teasing, now to be Mrs. Bertie Shakespeare Drew. Anne smiled to herself and thought how Mary Vance would find a way to make Jem grin over it all. She’s lucky to get him, Mary would say, reversing the order the Glen would have assumed, and Mary, canny and unexpectedly kind, would have the right of it, perhaps.

Susan would be quite outraged and the pastry of her next pie might suffer for it, but Gilbert had always taken an unchristian glee in Susan’s outrage and wouldn’t mind the pastry being a bit heavier. It was still the best piecrust on Prince Edward Island, now that Mrs. Rachel Lynde was no longer living to give Susan a run for her money.

“Miss Cornelia said Faith was heard to call him Will, when she spoke to her parents. It’s after Shakespeare of course, and because he was so determined they marry,” Rilla said.

“And because Faith wanted to,” Anne said. She wasn’t sure if she meant the elopement or the name, but it was all of a piece.

“Miss Cornelia said they’d gone to New York for their honeymoon and she hoped Faith didn’t come back with a bunch of silly Yankee airs but Mary and I didn’t think that was likely,” Rilla said, sitting down beside Anne, picking up the shirt and starting to sew.

“She didn’t come back from England any different, after all,” Rilla said.

“Except that she didn’t marry your brother,” Anne replied.

“D’you know, Mother, even without the War, I don’t think they’d ever have gone through with it, Faith and Jem,” Rilla said. “It was, how shall I put it, like a childhood fairy tale, the honorable knight and the maiden fair, all sorts of adventures they had in Rainbow Valley. They were always going to grow up. We all were.”

Not Walter, Anne’s heart said. Not Joyce.

“I’m glad of Ken’s name, anyway. And don’t worry, I wouldn’t elope for anything. I want our families around us, as many as we can get, even if we have to wait. We’re rather good at that,” Rilla said. She’d finished the one shirt and picked up another. She peered at it, frowned. “I can’t think what Dad does to his clothes—”

“I’ve made up a thousand stories to try to explain that and I still don’t think I’ve figured it out,” Anne said. “Some things, my darling girl, are beyond explanation.”

This one's for @freyafrida because I didn't manage to squeeze Faith/Bertie Shakespeare into my Jem/Mary fic...

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