Well, I'm back. I was hit with a raging case of writer's block-and as a result stayed away from the site, half-afraid to see everyone else's progress. But I finally tapped out the rest of this chapter, and here it is.
It was the church bells that woke Anne up the next morning. That, and the sound of someone puttering about her kitchen, taking the whistling tea kettle off the stove.
She cracked open an eye, seeing the sunlight filtering through the lace curtains at her windows, and then turned her head to look at the door that led onto the landing. Gilbert couldn't still be here, could he?
Her eyes lit on the piece of paper on her nightstand, and she reached out a hand, bringing it closer to her face to read it. She chuckled as she read it-she could hear Gilbert's voice in her head, admonishing her to stay in bed all day...or else.
She cocked her head, listening for the sounds downstairs. It had to be Susan Baker in her kitchen, then. Well, she thought, at least this would give them a chance to better get acquainted. She had heard a good deal about the indomitable Susan Baker during her short time in Glen St. Mary, and yesterday's short visit really hadn't made a dent in her curiosity.
There was a clattering on the stairs, followed by a loud squeak as Susan stepped on the before last stair. Shortly thereafter, Susan entered the room, preceded by a tray with a cup of tea and a piece of toast.
"Good morning, Miss Shirley," she greeted her temporary charge. "Dr. Blythe sent me to look after you until he can come-Dr. Dear seems to have the idea that you'll decide to get out of bed and meet the world head-on, left to your own devices."
Anne sat up slowly, mindful of her head. "Somehow, I doubt that. I believe that I'll follow doctor's orders and stay in bed all day. Although," and here, a wicked grin crossed her face, "he never did tell me what I wasn't allowed to do in bed." Picking up her tea and blowing on it to cool it, she looked up at Susan. "Would you be so kind as to bring up the stack of ungraded papers that's sitting on my desk, when you have a chance?"
Susan took on the appearance of a chicken puffing itself up in indignation, her knot of hair wobbling on top of her head as she did so. "Miss Shirley. The Doctor also said that you were in no way to do anything tiring today."
Unchristian as it may have been, Anne cocked her head (immediately regretting the action, as the room slowly began to twirl) to imitate Susan. "Miss Baker. Trying to tell me not to chop wood is reasonable. Telling me that I cannot grade papers because it is strenuous is not. Now," she lay her tea back on the tray, "I will be very good, and will not get out of bed at all today. However, for Gil-Dr. Blythe to demand that I do absolutely nothing with all my spare time is unreasonable." She nibbled daintily at the piece of toast, her eyes turning greener by the moment.
Susan sniffed. "Very well, Miss Shirley. But I can't speak for what the Doctor will say when he finds out." She turned on her heel and left, taking Anne's hot water bottle with her.
Actually, she knew very well what Dr. Blythe would say when he found out that his patient had graded papers all day. He would be pleased that that was all she had done.
"Let her think that she's won," he'd told Susan that morning, "that way, she'll stay in bed as much as possible. Besides, I can tell you from personal experience that grading papers can be dull work. If anything, they'll put her to sleep."
So down Susan went, to find the stack of papers Dr. Blythe had told her would be on Anne's desk.
Anne looked up from her papers as the church bells rang noon. Distracted from her grading, she did a mental calculation-wasn't today Sunday?
Susan bustled in with a mug of vegetable broth that had been simmering on the stove all morning. Anne took it gratefully, sipping a bit of the nourishing liquid.
"Miss Baker," she looked at the older woman, "I do believe I've kept you from Church."
Susan shook her head. "It's no matter, Miss Shirley dear-I can worship the Lord just as well from your kitchen as I can from the Presbyterian church. Better, probably, since I don't have to hear Cousin Sophia go on about that Mr. Crawford who's courting her. Cousin Sophia has been married twice already, and both gentlemen died," here Susan paused ominously, "of causes unknown. If Mr. Crawford wants to live to see the next century, he'd do well to take his courting elsewhere."
"And if he loves your cousin?"
"Albert Crawford is not, was not, and will not be in love with Cousin Sophia," decreed Susan. "If anything, it's her double inheritances he's after."
Anne patted the chair next to the bed in invitation. "Oh, I can't believe that he's so bad as that, Miss Baker. Surely he wouldn't court her unless he felt something." What that something was, however, could be debatable, thought Anne, remembering a few of her own proposals.
"Usually, Miss Shirley, when a man courts a woman, he feels something for her. But the Crawfords were always more in love with money than anything else." Susan settled herself in the chair, sighing. Seeing an opportunity for information, however, she took it. "Dr. Blythe, on the other hand, now he's the kind'll marry for love." Ah-ha, she thought, seeing the flush creep across Anne's cheek. "I've known the man for six years, Miss Shirley, and I can tell you that I've rarely seen him as happy as I did this morning."
Good Lord, thought Anne, the woman will stop at nothing. She was tempted to bring Susan up to date on her relationship-past and present-with Gilbert, but had an inkling that telling Susan might be like telling Mrs. Lynde; the news could reach Charlottetown by the next morning. But she bit her tongue-a skill developed over many years of trial...and error.
"Miss Baker," she changed the subject, "tell me what you think of this essay. Can you believe that Lettie Reese defined an alligator as a large kind of insect?"
Gilbert Blythe found himself humming on the way back from church to Ingleside. Next to him, Joy picked up the tune and hummed along with him, adding the words:
Farewell to Nova Scotia
And your sea bound coast
Let your mountains dark and dreary be
For when I am far away
On the briney oceans tossed
Will you ever heave a sigh
Or a wish for me?
About halfway through, Gilbert joined in, accompanying his daughter a full octave lower.
"Very good, sweetheart," he squeezed her hand when they were done. "You'll be joining the church choir before you know it."
"Will we get to sing Farewell to Nova Scotia?"
Choking back a laugh, he tried not to make it too obvious. "Ah, probably not."
Joy wrinkled her nose. She wasn't too sure she wanted to join a choir where they didn't sing fun songs.
"You'll get to sing the Psalms, though," Gilbert tried pointing out, realizing too late that that probably wasn't much of an enticement.
Joy sniffed in that way only six-year-olds can, letting him know exactly what she thought of the Psalms.
"Joy," said Gilbert, recognizing the need for a subject change, "I'll be going to see Anne this afternoon, after Susan comes back."
"Who's Anne?" To Joy's mind, the Anne Gilbert was referring to was called 'Miss Shirley'.
Gilbert gave himself a mental slap on the wrist. "Miss Shirley. She got quite ill over the weekend, and Susan's been keeping an eye on her this morning."
"Miss Shirley's sick?" Joy looked up at him with big eyes. "Is she going to die?"
He smiled down at her reassuringly. "Not if I have anything to say about it."
"I'm going to draw her a picture so she feels better," Joy nodded once to punctuate her sentence. And Gilbert knew that once that nod had appeared, the plan had been written-not in pencil, not in pen, but chiseled into marble. Joy had decreed it should happen, and so it would be.
"Doctor dear," Susan came in through Ingleside's kitchen door to see both father and daughter scribbling furiously. Joy she could understand-the child turned out stacks of drawings-but Gilbert? He'd come home whistling last night, and was drawing today-she had to wonder: what illness was it, exactly, that Miss Shirley had, and was it catching?
"Anne? Anne?"
Anne looked up blearily, a dark-haired, hazel-eyed face slowly coming into focus. "Gil?" Her voice sounded as though a medium-sized frog had taken up residence in her throat. She tried again: "Gil. Lovely to see you."
Gilbert grinned. "Lovely to see you, too. How are you feeling?" He set his bag down on the foot of her bed, pulling out his stethoscope and looping it around his neck.
"Much better than yesterday," Anne pushed herself into a sitting position. "Thank you for sending Susan-she's done an admirable job of looking after me." She left out her...enlightening...chat with her that morning.
"Well, depending on what I find, I might let you out of bed tomorrow," Gilbert pressed the stethoscope to her back, causing her to give a small squeak at the cold metal. "Breathe, please," she did as she was told. "Cough."
"Everything sounds better," he straightened up, folding up his stethoscope and pulling his ever-present thermometer out of his breast pocket. "Open up, please," he stuck the thermometer under her tongue, sitting back in the chair as he waited for the mercury to show the temperature. "Joy was quite worried to hear you were ill," he started conversationally, "she drew you a get-well card of sorts." He pulled the picture Joy had been working on, neatly folded into fourths, out of his bag and handed it to her.
Anne unfolded it, to find a picture of a decidedly orange-haired figure, holding hands with a smaller one, with dark hair and rather purple eyes. Underneath, in Gilbert's print, it said:
Dear Miss Shirley, I'm glad you're not dead.
Joy (and Gil)
The Joy was written in slightly shaky cursive, while the and Gil was once again in Gilbert's hand. Anne gave a muffled snort of laughter at the message, just as Gilbert pulled the thermometer out of her mouth.
"One hundred point...two, I think," he squinted at the bar of mercury. "Not as low as I'd like it to be, but much better than yesterday. I think I'll let you out of bed tomorrow, provided you don't do anything overly taxing, and remain horizontal as much as possible." He looked at Anne, who was smoothing out the paper over her quilt.
"Of all the get-well-soon cards I've gotten," she said, "I think this one's my favorite. Tell her I'm glad I'm not dead, either."
He made for the door, tucking his thermometer back into his pocket. "I'm going to refill your hot water bottle and find dinner-is tea and toast alright?"
"Sounds wonderful," she called after him.
As she listened to him clatter down the stairs of the cottage, she thought of how easily they had slipped back into their old friendship. There wasn't a trace of awkwardness left now-probably due in part to the fact that he had now seen her in her nightgown, hacking her lungs out. That did tend to have a relaxing effect on a relationship.
She was glad to have him back as her friend. Diana would always be her bosom friend, as would Phil, Stella and Priss, but Gilbert had been her best friend in their Queen's and teaching days. She didn't want to lose that.
Gilbert reappeared, interrupting her thoughts, carrying a tray with two teacups and a plate of buttered toast in one hand, and a hot water bottle in the other. "Dinner is served."
He placed the tray on the nightstand next to the pitcher of leaves, pushed the water bottle under the covers, and poked at the coals in the fireplace, adding another log before he sat down in the chair, taking a piece of toast.
"I'm afraid that tea and toast are about the extent of my cooking abilities," he apologized. "I survived medical school on them, and I'm afraid that if I tried to cook anything else, I'd end up poisoning both myself and Joy."
"Have you ever tried?" Anne raised an eyebrow.
"There was the time Susan went to a cousin's wedding," he offered. "I had every intent of cooking a pot roast that would at least be edible."
"And…?"
"Joy refers to it as 'the day Papa nearly burnt the house down'."
"What did you end up eating?"
He grimaced. "Tea and toast."
"Were there any other mishaps?"
"One more," he remembered, "I tried to make scrambled eggs once."
"Tried? Come on, scrambling eggs is quite probably the easiest culinary task available."
"One would think so," he drew himself up in his chair. "But how was I to know you had to scramble them in the pan? I ended up with a hard, leathery mat roughly the size and shape of my frying pan."
"Tea and toast again?" Anne guessed. "Gil, didn't you ever watch your mother cook?"
"I did," he defended himself. "But the moment I go near a stove, things magically seem to go wrong. It's like you and cows."
"I would take offense at that, Dr. Blythe, if it weren't so true," she informed him, nibbling at a piece of toast. "Remember when I sold Dolly to your father?"
"The cow you thought was Dolly, you mean?" he teased her.
"The one," she moaned, leaning her head back against the pillows. "She looked so much like Dolly-how was I to know she was Mr. Harrison's?"*
"By the fact that she was in his field?" he suggested, ever helpful.
"But he had been complaining that Dolly had been in his field-" she stopped abruptly and gripped his arm. "Gil, you don't suppose Mr. Harrison had gotten confused as well? Did he mistake his cow for Dolly?"
"It's entirely possible," a grin stole across Gilbert's face, "those two cows were awfully similar to one another...and Mr. Harrison never did have the best eyesight," he added jokingly.
Anne laughed and tried to cover a yawn, not succeeding entirely.
Gilbert caught the movement. "All right, bedtime for you," he said.
Anne slid beneath the quilt, turning onto her side to face him. "I forgot to ask: how was church?"
"The sermon was on Mark 12:31…"**
"...'Love thy neighbor,' she said, "how fitting."
"But the real excitement was the announcement of the engagement of one Albert Crawford to Mrs. Sophia Hanson."
"Albert Crawford," Anne thought out loud, "isn't he courting Susan's cousin Sophia?"
"He is," Gilbert agreed. "Was, rather. He's moved a bit further than that, now."
"Susan won't be all too happy to hear that," Anne chuckled. "She spent some of this morning telling me how Mr. Crawford was only after Cousin Sophia's money."
"I'm not sure he is," Gilbert said thoughtfully. Catching another muffled yawn from her direction, he took the book of Tennyson's poems off the nightstand, and pulling the thermometer back out of his pocket, employed a tactic that tended to work with his younger patients.
"Now," he popped the thermometer into her mouth, "I'll read, and you keep the thermometer in your mouth." He ran a finger down the table of contents. "Does The Princess suit?"
At her nod, he flipped to the page, beginning with,
Sir Walter Vivian all a summer's day
Gave his broad lawns until the set of sun
Up to the people: thither flocked at noon
His tenants, wife and child, and thither half
The neighbouring borough with their Institute
Of which he was the patron. I was there
From college, visiting the son,—the son
A Walter too,—with others of our set,
Five others: we were seven at Vivian-place.***
Anne settled into her pillow, listening to his voice more than the words, feeling them wrap about her like a warm blanket. There was something in the way he read that made her feel drowsy…
Gilbert saw Anne's eyes drift shut, and slowly pulled the thermometer out of her mouth. Ninety-nine point nine. Much better.
He continued to read until he came to the end of part one, and then, much as the night before, scribbled a note, turned the light down, and hied himself home.
He found Susan washing up in Ingleside's kitchen when he arrived. She looked up from the dishwater, pointing him to a bowl of stew warming on the stove. "How is she?" she asked, scrubbing out the inside of a large pot.
Gilbert smiled to himself. "Oh, I think she's on the mend."
*Anne of Anvonlea, "Selling in Haste and Repenting at Leisure"
I combined the cow incident here with the one in the movie (I'll let you pick out which parts are which). I chose to do this so that it would be more memorable for Gilbert-may L.M.M. forgive me :)
** "And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these." (Matthew 12:31, King James Version)
***The Princess-Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
I confess, I'm not sure where to go now. I've exhausted the illness card, and I think Susan's done enough snooping for now...so what next? Anne and Gil are such good friends now...and I've had an Anne-ish moment of not wanting to spoil their friendship. But Anne must marry her widower and fulfill Mrs. Lynde's prophecy ;)
With the holidays upon us, I'm tempted to throw some Christmas at my story, and see where it goes...anybody got any ideas?
Love to you all,
Anne