Gilbert had hardly had a chance to hold his son since he'd delivered him, pink and plump and highly, vocally indignant; the baby had peed upon him for good measure and Gilbert had laughed aloud. Anne's labor had been much easier this time and she was not nearly as exhausted so it had been the imperious Queen Anne he remembered from her girlhood who had demanded her baby, promptly unswaddled him and put him to her breast before Gilbert had a chance to draw a breath. He hadn't minded one bit, overjoyed to see her so happy, to see this baby rosy against his mother's fair skin, the silken whorl of hair on his head already showing glints of copper in the early morning sunlight.
There had been a parade through the cottage. Marilla, always looking a little tired these days, sat beside Anne throughout the afternoons, like the chief lady-in-waiting, and now and then mustered some of her old vinegar to remind Anne to rest or eat the meals Susan Baker had delighted in preparing. Leslie came and Miss Cornelia, Captain Jim, various ladies from church each bearing a little smocked garment or tempting dish, and a flurry of letters from Avonlea and further afield, promises of visits and congratulations. Davy sent an impressive wooden carousel he'd carved, joined and painted; the horses' legs would buck as they spun by, even the reins picked out with red and gold enamel paint and every mane rippled in place. Anne had wept a little to see it and the brief scrawl that accompanied it just as much as for the tender lyric Paul Irving had sent.
The visiting nurse was as helpful as she could be, though her work was limited; Anne was very reluctant to let the baby go from her arms and certainly not from their bedroom to the white nursery across the hall. Gilbert had had to insist in his most doctorly tone she nap a little every day and let Nurse McLeod look after the baby. He so rarely commanded her that she agreed with some grace and he had been relieved to find her still asleep in the late afternoon when he returned from his surgery with a basket of Mrs. Wilson's muffins. The room was filled with a soft yellow light, as if a buttercup had spilled its petalled reflections, and Anne lay quietly in their bed, her lacy bed-jacket at its foot. Her hair was in one thick auburn plait, draped over her shoulder and across her breast. The air smelled of sweet milk and flowers Leslie had brought the day before. He'd had an unwelcome vision then of the time before, the long season of grief that had followed Joyce's birth and death, and had been glad to be shaken from it by the happy thump of Susan in the kitchen, Janet McLeod's lilting voice down the hall singing as she sorted diapers or winded Jem.
Jem was six days old before Gilbert was able to take him from Anne's side for any appreciable period of time; she'd fallen asleep nursing him in the early evening and the baby was quietly awake, calmed by her warm body and the scent of the milk he took so eagerly. Anne had struggled a little with that until her milk came in but since then, the only difficulty had been Jem's greedy impatience he demonstrated with red-faced shrieking that would abruptly stop when he began to suckle and Gilbert had said as much. He'd been quickly corrected by Anne, "He can't know he'll get everything he wants, can he, my sweet boy! It's so very hard to wait if you're not sure, isn't it?"
She'd been stroking Jem's head and his cheek as she spoke, looking down at him and the little hand that had found the finger she extended for him to grip. Gilbert thought he'd never seen, not even in the art galleries he'd visited briefly in Toronto, any painting of a Madonna and child that could compare and then she'd lifted her eyes, those starry grey eyes, up to him and he knew she was not only speaking of Jem's frantic hunger.
Now the baby's belly was full and he was alert for the short period of time newborns could manage. Gilbert lifted him carefully to avoid disturbing Anne and walked over to the rocking chair that sat beside the window seat. It was not quite as comfortable as the armchair in his study but it had the advantage of being within the same room should Anne wake and want the baby. It struck him anew how much it had cost her to lose Joyce as he settled Jem on his chest, one hand beneath his bottom, the other supporting his fragile neck, cupping his head with its silky hair, the red muted in the failing light of the evening. The baby, his son he let himself think, tried to lift his head but was not very successful. He looked like a baby more than either one of them, other than the hint of Anne's hair, but Gilbert was familiar with the way a newborn could change swiftly from his practice; soon enough they would see if Jem had Anne's eyes or Gilbert's or Gilbert's mother's dark brown, his grandfather's dimpled chin.
It didn't make a difference—he'd recognized within himself such a strong emotion for this baby compared to all the others he'd delivered and held; the only equivalent was with his sister but that had been attenuated by his knowledge that Joyce could not live through even one day. This baby, plump and vigorous, the picture of health, drew from him an animal feeling he hadn't known he was capable of; he felt such an overwhelming sense of possession, pride and an urge to touch the baby whenever he was in the room. It had been hard to let Anne hold him in her arms and not to ask, with words or a glance, to take his turn.
He didn't like to think of it and hadn't, as much as he was able, that brilliant summer that had been so dark but it was easier to consider with Jem falling asleep against him, a wonderfully glad weight- how it had been after Joyce died. Anne had suffered bitterly, white and drawn and devastated when her milk had come in, the pain and indignity of it, the days of waiting for the milk to dry up, for her body itself, that mute shape that held her spirit, to recognize the baby's disappearance. They'd had to have the village midwife come and advise her as Gilbert had no training from his medical course; the older woman had met with Anne alone in the bedroom and had been calmly matter-of-fact about the loss and the attendant ills in a way that made Gilbert feel they might somehow come through all of it. Anne had not been so reassured and he'd heard her weep in the night with the burden of her milk-heavy breasts that leaked all over her nightclothes and the bed linens, but so little compared to what the baby would have taken. He'd not been able to warn her since he hadn't known himself, but even if he had, he thought she wouldn't have heard him. She had been abstracted since that first night and her grey eyes had never seemed so grey and distant and icy. After a week when she barely spoke to him, murmured only a little to Marilla and Leslie and Miss Cornelia, Gilbert began writing letters—to Diana and Phil, Stella, Mrs. Allan, Katherine Brooke, anyone he thought might be able to comfort his wife as he was not able to. He wrote to his mother but she was too ill then to do much more than send a brief note of condolence, a spidery trail that read "As much as I am able, I pray for you, for you both and the soul of our grandchild, that God will comfort you," and it was a small comfort to him, not as much as it would have been to have his mother, who wasn't one to say very much, sitting beside him and holding his hand or perhaps telling Anne what she'd barely ever spoken of to him, the two brothers he'd lost before he had a memory of them.
He'd had work to absorb him as Anne had not, but there was a pain he could not share with her—of delivering other women's healthy babies, those that had been wanted and those that had not, where the baby was put right away into whatever passed for a cradle and he had to coax the tired mother to turn away from the wall and nurse the baby while an older child, usually a scrawny girl, started water boiling on the range for tea or began reheating the watery stew that would soon have to stretch even further. So many other babies but none in his home, in his wife's welcoming arms, no delicate, elfin daughter waving small fists in the air, learning to coo, sleeping pink-cheeked in a beribboned basket. He reminded himself he was the village doctor, again and again, and he gripped the handle of his black bag tightly as a talisman, welcomed the weight of the stethoscope around his neck. It helped a little and if it was not enough, it was still all he'd had. He could not burden Anne with anything else, not when she was making such a slow return to health. Leslie gave him encouraging smiles and Miss Cornelia was more direct, telling him "She'll mend, she's made that way, but you must be patient, Gilbert Blythe and not rush her. Nothing to be gained by that, even if you feel she ought to be your same 'Anne-girl' again already."
He had tried very hard to be patient but it was difficult. For a few weeks, she'd taken the medicine he gave her to help her sleep and then one night she'd simply stopped; he was exhausted by an outbreak of a summer fever in the harbor and collapsed in the bed, unable to keep his eyes open, to tell how and when Anne slept. But then the illness passed and he'd lain beside her, woken by the way the bed shivered as Anne wept but did not seek him and then the stillness when she'd stopped and was somehow even more removed. He'd reached out a hand to her but she did not move towards him as she used to.
"Won't you…won't you let me hold you?" he'd asked quietly.
"You're tired, you should just go back to sleep," Anne had replied, in a tone that had become familiar to him, but which was a sort of ghost of how she had sounded before, everything vibrant and wholesome and utterly Anne fading from her voice.
He hadn't known this, when he'd know Joyce would die- he hadn't known he could lose Anne this way; he would have imagined her weeping and clinging, her grief all stormy passion, not what this was and it was worse. It was worse to lose her than to lose his baby and he could never tell her that, but he couldn't stop from tightening his hand on her wrist, couldn't stop the broken sob in his voice when he couldn't stop himself from asking,
"Don't you want me anymore, Anne? Is that gone too?"
He'd never cried much so he had little to compare this with, but the tears in his eyes had burned and they'd stung on his cheek. There had been a terrible pause before she made a sound, a moment when he thought she would not answer and that there would be nothing left to him, whatever faith he'd had limping along would die if she didn't answer.
"Gilbert, no, I do want you, I need, I love you—my darling, I'm so sorry, I've been selfish…I thought I mustn't trouble you any more than I already have," she'd said, but she'd said it with her head laid against his chest, an arm wrapped around him, even a slender leg hooked over his, her billowing nightdress tangling around them. He felt no desire for her at all, but the relief that the Anne he knew was still there and still loved him was more powerful than any lust for her he'd known before.
"You seemed to return to the way things were, so much more easily than I could, and I know you have been busy with your practice and I've been so slow, mired in myself really, in these endless questions I ask myself… I didn't want to be a burden to you and you have said so little," Anne had explained and he'd felt he almost couldn't care what she said, because he felt the vibration of her voice against his chest and she was warm, her hand stroking his arm. She was his wife again.
"I was waiting for you," he'd said and turned a little, taking her in his arms, the first real embrace they'd shared since after Joyce died and she'd clung to him blindly until she slept, her face, her hair wet with tears.
But this time, he had been the one to cry and she to comfort. It had been the inflection point; they had found more comfort in each other since that night, though she hadn't conceived Jem for several months. He'd woken with her still in his arms, had looked down to see the pale curve of her cheek faintly rosy with sleep, had felt her soft breathing against the open neck of his nightshirt. She'd opened her eyes within a few minutes and just looked at him, drowsy, the sorrow that was in her eyes every day now leavened with her concern for him and even the pleasure she took from his hands on her, his body against hers. When he had come home that evening, Leslie had still been visiting and he heard their two voices first when he came in; it was a relief to enter the house and not feel the dragging weight of grief as the primary aspect of the home. Leslie had whispered,
"She seemed much better today, thank God," as she bid him good-night and walked back to her own house.
When he'd gone back to Anne, thoughtful on the sofa in the sitting room, it was not as it had been before she'd conceived or borne Joyce, but it was their marriage again and he enjoyed the meal Susan made for the first time in months. The faith he'd wondered he might lose had been replenished as he saw the odd and perfect ways God worked through them, allowing them to regain comfort first and the easy appetites before they turned to each other in the night and she'd been so surprised by the pleasure he brought her that she'd dashed away the tears that had begun with an impatient hand before she pulled him back to her, again and again. She had confided she was pregnant more cautiously, without that same blissful look she'd never have again, lost with Joyce, but she'd carried Jem far more easily and he'd been robust from the start, startling them both with the vigor of his kicking, his hiccoughs, the way he would press a foot so purposefully against his hand or hers.
Now that invisible baby lay against his chest, warm and breathing and so alive. Gilbert knew Jem would wake within the hour and want to nurse but he was calm now and Gilbert knew this too was as God had wanted it for him, awake in the room with the two people he loved most both sleeping, the blessing he needed as Captain Jim needed the open water and his own father needed the Blythe fields gold with barley, winter wheat, Mother at the door calling him back for his supper. Gilbert only needed one more thing, which he got when Anne woke and called for them both, confident that he'd bring the baby and would lie beside her very quietly they could both hear the sound of Jem's hungry swallows.