Author's Note:
Be still my beating heart! After shadowing your all for a time I am finally coming to the party with my very first fanfic story. I am so happy to be here within this wonderful community!
I've thought very carefully about what I wanted to explore with Anne and Gilbert, and have always been intrigued by the idea of who they might have become without each other. What if Anne had never come to Green Gables? Had never experienced the support of Marilla and Matthew, the friendship of Diana, the steadfast love and admiration of Gilbert, and the sense of home and self she found in Avonlea? And what of Gilbert? Who is he without Anne, his muse, his touchstone? How are they all made different, and what aspects remain the same? Obviously this is a very AU story, with aspects of both the novels and occasionally the Sullivan mini series sneaking in.
Of course, though, with the beauty of Providence there are some things and people destined to find you, and you them. There is Redmond College, and there is English class …
THE LAND OF HEART'S DESIRE
Chapter One
Hindrances and Perplexities
The small, lily white hand moved with mesmerising speed across the page, filling it with line upon line of neat, looping script. If he stared at it just so, unblinking, he could imagine himself hypnotised by the sensation of the letters materialising, of the weak shaft of sun through the threadbare curtain hitting that hand and turning it golden. His eyes travelled from the hand to the arm, encased in its long sleeved green cloth, with the cream lace at the wrist, swishing gently. Further still, up to a narrow shoulder, then a glimpse of collarbone above collar and more cream lace; and ever upwards to a pale, graceful neck. Finally to that fair face, complexion almost translucent; the chin tilted, usually in stubbornness; the pale cheeks which flushed with color so easily; the proud nose with its smattering of freckles; the dark auburn brows, so expressive they almost spoke a language of their own; the pale forehead, often wearing a tiny crease of concentration; and crowning it, that lustrous, arresting flame of hair, encased today in a single thick braid twisted into a circlet at her nape. If his gaze travelled down again it could linger on that quizzical mouth and lips of shell pink, but it was certainly best not to… and those clear, intelligent grey eyes with the lighter green flecks, which generally regarded him - and it seemed only him – so acrimoniously, he tried to avoid entirely.
The drone of voices that had seemed a mere background accompaniment to his own inner musings, he realised suddenly, had abruptly halted. Really, he must snap himself to attention. His studies were already so focussed on his end goal – so heavily laden with the mathematical and scientific, of the serious and practical – that his one glimmer of whimsy in the week, his one indulgence that was their current tutorial on Great English Literature – should have him on the edge of his seat in anticipation, not slumped in it hunched over like Quasimodo.
Gilbert slowly came back to his senses, blinked, and looked about the room, to find that every pair of eyes rested on him. Expectantly.
"And what is your opinion on the matter, Mr Blythe? We have been uncharacteristically quiet today."
Gilbert fairly bolted upright, as if shocked out of his stupor. He fought not to open and close his mouth like a feckless fish flapping about at the end of the line.
"Sir?" he queried, hoping his voice didn't emerge as strangled as it sounded to his own ears.
"Your response to Miss Shirley's point, Mr Blythe. We'd appreciate you having one," their venerable professor explained dryly, eyebrow raised in sardonic good humour.
At the mention of her name, Gilbert swung his eyes back to her, to see her observing him, carefully, a little frown line appearing between her own brows, which had lowered in confusion. He could have given many responses to the good professor's demand; such as why the young lady opposite him had taken grave steps to counter – if not actively destroy - every utterance he had made since the beginning of the term a little over a month ago; why she shared her otherwise sunny disposition and wide, generous smile with everyone else, including the perpetually whiny Ed Sanderson, but saved for him her very darkest looks of affronted disapproval; why she had not shared two words with him outside of their class discussions, even when he had, several times, good naturedly enquired after her welfare, to be met with the briefest of acknowledgements as dictated by common courtesy; and why he had the uncomfortable and altogether astonishing realisation that, for whatever unfathomable reason, she might actually hate him.
Those thoughts were the ones to assail him; conversely, there was absolutely nothing to assist him in grasping what on earth the others had been discussing the last ten minutes. Were they still on Dickens?
Gilbert cleared his throat. Twice.
His long fingers adjusted his tie.
"Ah…" he floundered, about to drop himself into a very deep pit of humiliation.
"Professor!" came an interruption, a trifle urgently. "I just wanted to make sure I clarified myself properly. Although each book is entitled to be judged on its own merits, in respect to Mr Dickens in particular, athough I acknowledge many of his characterisations to be rather broad, I do believe that they served his deeper purpose; he exercised the obligation he felt to act as a moral guide and to be the voice of those who had none!"
Gilbert stared at that pale face, now ever so slightly flushed, and into those serious, searching grey eyes, now appearing lit by some strange emotion. He was feeling rather strange himself. Miss Shirley, who, particularly a few weeks ago, looked at him like she would smile gladly upon seeing his likeness burned in effigy, had now peered over that deep pit he had dug himself, stared down at him, and had offered him a ladder.
She had quite possibly just paraphrased the entire recent argument for him, complete with emphasis on the most salient points.
He grabbed at the ladder, firmly.
"Yes, thank you, Miss Shirley," their professor was a little impatient now, and turned back to him. "Mr Blythe?"
"Indeed, Sir, Miss Shirley makes an important and valuable point, as she invariably does," Gilbert sat straighter, and the timbre of his voice became steady. His hazel eyes flashed briefly to his unlikely rescuer, risking the fleetest of smiles, before shifting to address the room. He was collecting his thoughts on the hoof, but fortunately his extensive research during the past week – always one of his strengths – came now to support him. He was never better than when he had a firm fact with which to anchor himself.
"Mr Dickens certainly became the voice of the people, and he challenged both church and state to improve the lot of the working poor, the conditions in the workhouses, to improve basic sanitation and such, even back at the time he was a journalist," Gilbert affirmed. "Perhaps he felt an obligation to do so, considering the brushes with poverty he himself experienced growing up, to position himself as some sort of moral guardian of the masses. Absolutely these measures – the Ragged Schools he supported for impoverished children, for instance – were worthy and valuable, and forward thinking, though he was not the only progressive around at the time. What I find problematic is that, as Miss Shirley herself has pointed out, he is known and admired as much if not more for his moral voice ahead of his own indeed broad, rather stereotypical characterisations. That is fine if we are to judge him as a social commentator, even a social anthropologist of sorts,but it is my understanding we are debating his literary merit."
The room fell into an impressed silence, with their professor nodding to himself, appearing rather pleased. However, there was one individual in the room who was, Gilbert could see, startlingly displeased.
Anne Shirley now, rather obviously, itched to respond, and her determined look was one he had quickly come to know. It was the look of a natural scholar and orator, about to step back up onto her soapbox. She may have offered him a ladder, but he was fully aware she wasn't about to stand idly by, holding it for him.
"Mr Blythe, surely when one reads Mr Dickens, one does so in the light of the poverty of the time and the social injustices of which he wrote," she began, warming to her theme. "One cannot separate one from the other. That itself is the point. Mr Dickens did not write of bucolic pastoral scenes or indulge himself with polite drawing room comedies. He wrote about the world he observed around him; of society and its' ills, of the widening division between rich and poor, of corruption and bigotry, of orphan boys beaten and starved in the workhouses!" on the last point Miss Shirley choked slightly, her cheeks now flushed with emotion. It was a rather arresting sight.
"This speaks to me," she continued gamely, "as the very essence of his literary merit; the moral obligation he felt and of which he attempted to stir in others through his writing. He indeed used his voice as a platform for good, and his popularityand influence to introduce and petition for improvements such as those you described. He shone a light into the darkest nooks and crannies of destitute London – perhaps he shone a light into the darkest recesses of man's soul in the process! And if he used archetypes to do so, he did thus in the knowledge that these characters would have the broadest interest and appeal to the very people he was attempting to speak to!"
Gilbert had a flash of an image; of Miss Shirley standing in Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park, London, fist raised to the heavens in protest, titian hair in disarray, a milling crowd surrounding her. Possibly before she was forcibly removed by the erstwhile bobbies for disturbing the peace.
He now found himself very definitely leaning forward, on the edge of his seat in all regards, the quickening of his pulse in direct response to the way his mind fevered with all the possible challenges Miss Shirley could further aim at him. For all the hours until now sitting opposite her in their class, he felt that she had been disputing his arguments in order to gain some sort of personal vindication. Now he could feel the sands shifting, and she was finally challenging his viewpoints, now, and not he himself. During most of his schooling, including his studies at Queens, he had longed to have someone oppose him in this way. It had been dispiriting to win almost every argument and acquire almost every prize and accolade not solely on his own merit, but due just as much to a complete absence of competition. It lit a flame in him now that burned away both the uncertainty with which he viewed his abilities and his occasional overconfidence in them; the dual difficulties that he knew had plagued him. That very flame had heretofore only flickered when he gave into his occasional daydreams of his imagined self, long into the future, striding off in the middle of the night to attend an urgent call, doctor's bag resolutely in hand.
And that flickering flame he also saw, before him, burning brightly in a pair of remarkable grey eyes, made more intensely green than he had ever seen them.
"Miss Shirley," Gilbert countered, a small, determined smile in place, "This is the difficulty I am outlining. Are we to forgive Mr Dickens' caricatures, his sentimentalism, his laughable use of coincidence, just because his message is an important one?"
"Rather the message be an important one, Mr Blythe, and rather that the message be heard than be ignored or not even offered at all! Or would you have preferred these social issues to be swept under the carpet? Is it not better to have readers cry over the death of Little Nell or ponder the circumstances wherein an orphan becomes involved in petty crime, without dwelling on whether the writing of such is too manipulative or sensational? I am sure those in the tenements who saved their precious pennies to have read to them the latest monthly instalment of one of his stories did not concern themselves with such matters!" her voice, usually so gently melodious, had leapt an octave in both tone and volume, and now felt like it reverberated off the walls.
Gilbert fought to remain calm, for Miss Shirley was becoming impassioned and incensed enough for the both of them. He shouldn't rise to her invective. He really shouldn't, but he couldn't stop himself. "I hazard that Mr Dickens, for all his noble intentions such as you believe, Miss Shirley, wasn't out in his shirtsleeves distributing alms to the poor of those tenements on a Sunday," he noted dryly, "but was rather writing about their plight from the comfort of his study, or reading his own serialisations in the paper before the warmth of the fire in his front parlour. We cannot deny that he achieved great fame and fortune for himself on the back of the misfortunes of the poor he wrote about."
Gilbert's implication was clear in the horrified gasp emitted from the scandalised lips of Miss Shirley.
"Mr Blythe," he thought her teeth may well be gritted in response, thought he wasn't entirely sure. "Do you have the indecency to suggest that – "
"Oh for goodness sake!" Ed Sanderson bleated in desperation. "Can't we just read Dickens because we enjoy his stories?"
Both Mr Blythe and Miss Shirley turned to the hapless Mr Sanderson, agog, as if he had just had the temerity to interrupt an important private conversation.
Their professor chuckled loudly. "Excellent, excellent…" he beamed, rubbing his hands together gleefully before pausing to notate a series of marks in his ledger. "Let's continue next week, shall we? When I am sure we can all look forward to hearing Miss Shirley's thoughts on Mr Thomas Hardy's exploration of the bucolic pastoral life and its inevitable dark underbelly." He gave the Miss Shirley in question a broad smile, shaking his head in amusement, his smile still in place as he nodded to Gilbert and followed his students out the door, no doubt anticipating the hot midday dinner awaiting him of which he may have occasionally remarked, to his associates, would make Mr Bumble himself green with envy.
Soon the room had emptied, and Gilbert, who had stood in respect for his professor's exit, now watched Miss Shirley, her cheeks stained bright pink, as she hurriedly packed up her books and papers, shoving them into a beaten brown leather satchel. As he slowly did the same, he gathered his newfound courage, beaming over their exchange. He didn't know who had been the victor today, but he was quite sure it didn't matter.
"Miss Shirley? Might I have a word with you?" he ventured.
She whipped around to him, her face thunderous. "Do you wish to continue your assassination of the good name of one of England's finest novelists and social commentators, Mr Blythe?"
He almost took a step back at her fury, which would have been almost comical if not for the way her hands shook and her eyes sparked with moisture.
"No indeed, Miss Shirley," his tone was surprised and contrite. His eyes widened at her aggrieved state. "I am sorry if you objected to my argument on a personal level, or if the progression of our discussion upset you. I myself was swept away by our exchange. I thought it was all rather brilliant. I just wished to… thank you."
"To thank me, Mr Blythe?" her little laugh was brittle.
"Yes, to thank you, for your thoughts today. They inspired me as you cannot imagine. And to thank you for … earlier. I was rather unfortunately… distracted, today, and wasn't as mindful of the start of the discussion as I should have been. I believe you rescued me there. I'm in your debt, Miss Shirley."
Gilbert tried a gallant smile, which was met with a stern glare in return.
"Did you not observe the ledger out? The Professor was marking us on our contributions today."
"No, actually, I'm afraid I didn't, not till it was too late. I was…"
"Distracted," Miss Shirley's sigh was despairing.
Gilbert smiled again, more shamefacedly, and he thought he almost saw a faint flicker, a miniscule quirk, pass her own lips. It gave him the encouragement, in the quiet hush of the otherwise now empty room, to press on.
"As I say, Miss Shirley, thank you. I was grateful and, perhaps, a little surprised by your actions, given that you… you seem to dislike me."
There, he had made the leap, painful though it was, and her response, read in her swiftly reddening face (and here he thought those cheeks could not have turned darker than they already were) demonstrated that his intuition had been correct.
Miss Shirley turned back to her satchel, taking an inordinate amount of time in securing the straps.
"I felt it unfair that you should be marked down for this tutorial," she explained, seeming to carefully chose her words, "considering that at every other time you have been prepared and engaged, and rather insightful in your observations, even if I haven't always agreed with them." She faced him slowly, her eyes not quite meeting his. "And as to that other matter… well, I don't dislike you, Mr Blythe," the last admission was almost a murmur.
Gilbert was quietly buoyed by her praise, but still not entirely reassured.
"So do you look as black as a thundercloud at every new acquaintance for the first month as a matter of course, Miss Shirley, or did I just receive special treatment?" he queried wryly, hands in pockets, trying to make light of his lingering concern.
She huffed in exasperation, giving a remarkably accurate rendition of the face he had just described.
"I fear you are in a class entirely by yourself, Mr Blythe. Good afternoon!" she grabbed at her satchel, stalking out the door.
Gilbert watched her depart, his mind whirring. He really should put the matter to rest; at least she was speaking to him now, and although her defence of Dickens was puzzlingly passionate to the point of fervour, perhaps they had brokered some sort of stalemate regarding their adversarial relations. But that wasn't quite good enough for him, he realised with a disquiet pang.
He bounded down the stairs of the beautiful old building, taking some two at a time, to find her poised at the entranceway, scanning the now darkening skies.
"Miss Shirley!" he demanded breathlessly.
She turned back, startled, and then rolled her eyes.
"Mr Blythe! You do try one's patience, don't you?"
"I do my best," he grinned unrepentantly, taking up position beside her.
She pursed her lips firmly together as if trying not to let a smile escape, and paid great attention to adjusting her gloves.
"Miss Shirley, please be honest with me. Today notwithstanding, I have to admit to being rather puzzled by our interactions thus far. Have I, in the past, offended you in some way?"
She gave another laugh, as forced and unconvincing as the first. "Offend me, Mr Blythe?"
"Yes," he replied firmly, looking down at her, his eyes steady and unwavering on hers.
She broke his gaze, looking away. "It hardly matters now, Mr Blythe. Don't concern yourself."
"But I am concerned, Miss Shirley!" his composure finally began to break. "When have you not looked at me, during our entire brief acquaintance, with anything other than scowling disapproval?"
Something in her seemed to break as well. He could see her struggle. "And I guess you go around flattering every female freshman with lurid metaphors about their appearance!" she snapped.
Gilbert looked at the intriguing and unfortunately infuriating Miss Shirley in astonishment, afraid she had taken sudden leave of her senses.
"Miss Shirley, I don't understand you! If you could stop hedging and avoiding long enough to give me a straightforward answer to a straightforward question… "
"Carrots!" she hissed, eyes blazing.
She stared, furious, into his eyes, waiting for comprehension to dawn. Gilbert stared back, mulling over the extraordinary declaration, his dark brows knotted together in frustration. Did she mean in relation to the color of her hair? What on God's good earth would possess her to describe herself in that way?
He himself had only used the silly schoolboy description once, when –
His eyes widened. Oh blast it!
Gilbert paled, remembering. "You heard," he whispered, his stomach making a slow plummet down to his shoes.
Her steely grey gaze was all the confirmation he required. Wordlessly she launched herself into the wind, absolutely uncaring as to the threat of rain now hovering in the air. Or maybe she simply preferred even the company of the gathering storm to one more minute with him.
Chapter Notes
I lovingly take my story title and inspiration for chapter titles from Anne of the Island where possible.
"In imagination she sailed over storied seas… with the evening star for pilot, to the land of Heart's Desire." (Anne of the Island, Ch.1)
[With acknowledgement to JennWithaPenn, who wrote the lovely story 'Heart's Desire' a few years ago – obviously we drew title inspiration from the same source!]
''All the hindrances and perplexities will be taken away, and we shall see clearly.'' (Anne of the Island Ch.14)
[I hope I will be forgiven for taking Anne's words to poor Ruby and giving them a very different context].