"My anniversary remembrance for you. And I want a cent for it ... I'm not taking any risks. Such tortures as I've endured this evening! I was eaten up with jealousy of Christine.”
Gilbert looked genuinely astonished. It had never occurred to him that Anne could be jealous of anybody.
"Why, Anne-girl, I never thought you had it in you.”
"Oh, but I have. Why, years ago I was madly jealous of your correspondence with Ruby Gillis.”
"DID I ever correspond with Ruby Gillis? I'd forgotten. Poor Ruby! But what about Roy Gardner? The pot mustn't call the kettle black.”
"Roy Gardner? Philippa wrote me not long ago that she'd seen him and he'd got positively corpulent. Gilbert, Dr. Murray may be a very eminent man in his profession but he looks just like a lath and Dr. Fowler looked like a doughnut. You looked so handsome ... and FINISHED ... beside them.”
"Oh, thanks ... thanks. That's something like a wife should say.
By way of returning the compliment I thought you looked unusually well tonight, Anne, in spite of that dress. You had a little colour and your eyes were gorgeous. Ah-h-h, that's good! No place like bed when you're all in. There's another verse in the Bible ... queer how those old verses you learn in Sunday School come back to you through life! ... 'I will lay me down in peace and sleep.' In peace ... and sleep ... goo'night.”
Gilbert was asleep almost before he finished the word. Dearest tired Gilbert! Babies might come and babies might go but none should disturb his rest that night. The telephone might ring its head off.
Anne was not sleepy. She was too happy to sleep just yet. She moved softly about the room, putting things away, braiding her hair, looking like a beloved woman. Finally she slipped on a negligee and went across the hall to the boys' room. Walter and Jem in their bed and Shirley in his cot were all sound asleep. The Shrimp, who had outlived generations of pert kittens and become a family habit, was curled up at Shirley's feet. Jem had fallen asleep while reading "The Life Book of Captain Jim" ... it was open on the spread. Why, how LONG Jem looked lying under the bedclothes! He would soon be grown up. What a sturdy reliable little chap he was! Walter was smiling in his sleep as someone who knew a charming secret. The moon was shining on his pillow through the bars of the leaded window ... casting the shadow of a clearly defined cross on the wall above his head. In long after years Annie was to remember that and wonder if it were an omen of Courcelette ... of a cross-marked grave "somewhere in France.” But tonight it was only a shadow ... nothing more. The rash had quite gone from Shirley's neck. Gilbert had been right. He was always right.
Nan and Diana and Rilla were in the next room ... Diana with darling little damp red curls all over her head and one little sunburned hand under her cheek, and Nan with long fans of lashes brushing hers. The eyes behind those blue-veined lids were hazel like her father's. And Rilla was sleeping on her stomach. Anne turned her right side up but her buttoned eyes never opened.
They were all growing so fast. In just a few short years they would be all young men and women ... youth tiptoe ... expectant ... a-star with its sweet wild dreams ... little ships sailing out of safe harbour to unknown ports. The boys would go away to their life work and the girls ... ah, the mist-veiled forms of beautiful brides might be seen coming down the old stairs at Ingleside. But they would be still hers for a few years yet ... hers to love and guide ... to sing the songs that so many mothers had sung. Hers ... and Gilbert's.
She went out and down the hall to the oriel window. All her suspicions and jealousies and resentments had gone where old moons go. She felt confident and gay and blithe.
"Blythe! I feel Blythe," she said, laughing at the foolish little pun. "I feel exactly as I did that morning Pacifique told me Gilbert had 'got de turn.'“
Below her was the mystery and loveliness of a garden at night. The far-away hills, dusted with moonlight, were a poem. Before many months she would be seeing moonlight on the far dim hills of Scotland ... over Melrose ... over ruined Kenilworth ... over the church by the Avon where Shakespeare slept ... perhaps even over the Colosseum ... over the Acropolis ... over sorrowful rivers flowing by dead empires.
The night was cool; soon the sharper, cooler nights of autumn would come; then the deep snow ... the deep white snow ... the deep cold snow of winter ... nights wild with wind and storm. But who would care? There would be the magic of firelight in gracious rooms ... hadn't Gilbert spoken not long ago of apple logs he was getting to burn in the fireplace? They would glorify the grey days that were bound to come. What would matter drifted snow and biting wind when love burned clear and bright, with spring beyond? And all the little sweetnesses of life sprinkling the road.
She turned away from the window. In her white gown, with her hair in its two long braids, she looked like the Anne of Green Gables days ... of Redmond days ... of the House of Dreams days. That inward glow was still shining through her. Through the open doorway came the soft sound of children breathing. Gilbert, who seldom snored, was indubitably snoring now. Anne grinned. She thought of something Christine had said. Poor childless Christine, shooting her little arrows of mockery.
"What a family!" Anne repeated exultantly.