Content warning: grief, anxiety, minor injury (in a medical context)
Chapter 10: Glen St. Mary
On Friday afternoon, Gilbert stepped off the train onto the sunny platform at Glen St. Mary. He had hardly alighted before he was engulfed in Aunt Katherine's blue moire embrace. Her welcome was so effusive and so unceasing that there was no need for Gilbert to say anything at all. Uncle Dave, a kindly, older gentleman with a voluminous mustache, clapped his great-nephew heartily on the back before setting out in search of his luggage.
A quarter of an hour later, all three were settled in the buggy, jogging along the red roads that skirted Four Winds Harbor. For the first time in a long time, Gilbert felt the tiniest flicker of interest in his surroundings. The harbor was certainly beautiful, an opalescent mirror stretching serenely out to the sand bar and the mighty Atlantic beyond. As they drove, he could see a picturesque lighthouse down at the point, standing guardian over the tumble of jagged rocks that stretched out to sea. Further on, they passed tidy orchards and rose-laden arbors. A close-growing stand of maples guarded a cheerful little valley, revealing only a brief glimmer of the burbling brook at its heart.
As the buggy crested a hill topped by several magnificent old trees, the landscape opened out in both directions. Behind, the harbor road sloped gently down to the shore and Four Winds Point; before, the village of Glen St. Mary nestled snugly among green hollows and pleasant stands of spruce and oak.
She would have gloried in this vista, Gilbert thought with a pang.
No. Stop it. She never saw this view and she never will. Stop torturing yourself.
They rode on through the Glen, Aunt Katherine chatting lightly, naming the houses and shops to either side. Uncle Dave and Aunt Katherine lived in a comfortable blue house at the end of the Glen street, just past the schoolhouse. They had never had any children, but their home was generally raucous with various comings and goings. Gilbert had spent several happy summers there as a boy. As the buggy pulled into the yard, the sight of the grasshopper weathervane topping the highest turret brought back memories of one particularly eventful visit featuring his cousin Andrew, an ill-advised dare, and an unusually large codfish. He nearly smiled.
The remainder of the afternoon passed in a flurry of unpacking. Gilbert was not overburdened with worldly possessions, having left most of his books in Kingsport. Still, Aunt Katherine fussed and hovered, hanging each shirt in the spare room armoire with an air of ceremony. If she wondered why he wore a blue tie, rather than mourning black, she made no attempt to satisfy her curiosity. Gilbert gave her free rein until she reached for a green-and-white striped hatbox at the bottom of the trunk.
"Thanks, Aunt Katherine. I'll take that one," he said, with an approximation of calm.
"Of course, dear." She smiled sweetly. "Why don't you take some time to settle yourself?"
She swept out, leaving Gilbert alone. He sank onto the bed with a sigh. Aunt Katherine really was a duck, but it had been a long day. He regarded the hatbox for a moment before resolving not to open it. Not now. He needed to rally his strength for a social evening, not indulge his sorrow. He crossed the room and stashed the box safely atop the armoire. Another time, he promised himself. For now, he needed a distraction. Drawing Treasure Island from his coat pocket, he flopped across the bed like the schoolboy he had been not so very long ago and lost himself in the tale.
When Gilbert was "settled," the housekeeper, Mrs. MacAllister, laid out a sumptuous supper that even a hale and hearty visitor would have struggled to appreciate to its full extent. Gilbert did his best, taking what was offered to him, even if it did tend to collect on his plate.
"I've been thinking," said Uncle Dave, leaning back from the table after a second slice of pie, "that you might be interested in tagging along with me these next few days, Gil."
"Tagging along?"
"Yes. Patients come to see me here in my office and I make rounds to check on those who can't. It would give you a real first-rate experience, seeing what a doctor does up close. None of these over-complicated medical texts or pen-and-paper exams. In my day, we learned by apprenticeship. I read a bit, sure, but I got my real medical education from old Doc Crawford, and he was right when he said that experience is the best teacher."
In spite of himself, Gilbert felt a tiny tug of excitement. He tamped it down immediately, feeling somehow disloyal to his grief. But it did not fade completely.
"I'd like that."
"Excellent! Patients generally start turning up at the door about halfway through my morning shave, so let's plan on beginning around eight."
The next morning, Gilbert woke to the realization that he had slept through the night. It was still early, perhaps half an hour before dawn, but a deep and dreamless sleep had left him feeling unexpectedly refreshed.
He had stayed up late the night before, letting Uncle Dave and Aunt Katherine inundate him with stories of the Glen and its inhabitants. There had been no need to participate. All he had to do was nod from time to time and accept refills of tea at decent intervals. At ten o'clock, he had gone heavy-eyed to the spare room and fallen asleep at once.
Now, Gilbert lay awake, wondering about the day ahead. He had read plenty of erudite medical texts, but Uncle Dave's words about the value of experience had had the ring of truth to them. Books were well and good, but they could never stand in for flesh and blood. What would it be like to see actual patients? He tried to imagine.
With heart-stopping suddenness, the blue-papered walls of Aunt Katherine's spare room fell away and he was back in the little white room over the porch at Green Gables. The scent of sickness filled the air, despite the open windows. It was hot, so hot, and nothing could bring down the temperature. A roar, as of a heavy train, passing much, much too close . . .
Gasping.
Find an anchor.
Hatbox above the armoire.
Bad choice.
The wardrobe itself, then. It was tall. No, be more precise. It was slightly shorter than himself, making it 180 centimeters, maybe 182. Dark wood, but not mahogany. Cherry. Yes, that was it. With some brass drawer pulls, no, six brass drawer pulls on three drawers of graduated size . . .
The specificity of this exercise focused his mind. Find something real. Fill your mind with the details of its reality. It seemed stupid, yes, but soon Gilbert's breathing came back under his control. His hands relaxed. When he could, he rolled to the edge of the bed and reached for the towel hanging from the washstand. Steady now. He mopped his face and lay back again.
How are you ever going to get through this day?
How are you ever going to be a doctor?
At seven, an outwardly composed Gilbert dressed and went down to breakfast; at eight Uncle Dave unlocked the side entrance that opened into his office and ushered in his first patient.
There was nothing wrong with little Mary Anna Reese that a vigorous burping wouldn't cure, but Uncle Dave had a difficult time convincing Mrs. Donald Reese of that.
"Mary Anna is a very clever child," protested Mrs. Donald. "She just knows when something is wrong and she tells me!"
Uncle Dave contrived to roll his eyes at Gilbert under cover of checking Mary Anna, who could not have been more than four months old. The baby blinked placidly, communicating only quiet resignation.
In the end, Uncle Dave sent Mrs. Reese away with instructions to give Mary Anna three drops of mint water, morning and evening, which seemed to satisfy her.
When the door had swung shut behind her, Uncle Dave slumped into his chair and rubbed his temples. "I hardly know whether to record that visit in Mary Anna's file or Mrs. Donald's," he muttered.
"Will mint water do anything for a colicky baby?" Gilbert asked skeptically.
"Not a thing except give the mother something to do," answered Uncle Dave. "Ask her in a week and she'll swear an oath that Mary Anna has improved tremendously under her tender ministrations."
Gilbert felt the corner of his mouth begin to twitch. "Surely that isn't quite ethical, is it?"
"Perhaps not, perhaps not. But she's been in here twice a week since the poor child was born, always finding something amiss. And all the time that baby's been about as delicate as a turnip."
The morning passed pleasantly enough. The Murray children had sore throats, but weren't seriously ill; James Millison came to have a boil lanced; Mr. Abner Meade needed his arthritic hands checked. Gilbert felt a strange sort of longing as he watched Uncle Dave work over the elderly man's hands, pressing here, massaging there, leaving him with a receipt for camphor balm and look of sweet relief on his face. Gilbert doubted that anyone could learn to do that in a lecture hall.
Near noon, there was even a spot of excitement. Billy Carter had been fishing at the Glen pond with his schoolmates and managed to stick a fish hook through the web of his left hand. No one would say exactly how he had done it, though the guilty looks that passed among the boys under Uncle Dave's stern eye spoke plainly of mischief. No matter; the hook must come out , whatever its history. Gilbert helped hold Billy as Uncle Dave attempted to clip the barb, but, in the end, they had to file it down and draw it back through the wound.
"Watch where you set your bait!" Uncle Dave shouted to the boys as they scampered away. To Gilbert, he sighed. "Let's find some dinner."
In the afternoon, they made house calls. Standing on the veranda of the first house, Gilbert felt his stomach drop dangerously, but a few deliberate breaths calmed him.
It wasn't so bad. The Douglas children had been quarantined with chicken pox for two weeks and their mother was nearly driven to distraction.
"As soon as one starts to get better, the next one breaks out in a rash," she moaned as her little ones, speckled but energetic, capered around the sitting room.
"Now, now, Mrs. Douglas," Uncle Dave soothed. "All six of them have got it now, and they're all over the worst. Miller's the last of them, and his spots are already starting to scab over. You can send the older children back to school soon."
"When?" she pleaded.
"I'll come back on Tuesday. If they continue to mend as they have, they can go to school Wednesday."
"Thank you, Doctor Dave," sighed Mrs. Douglas, taking the bottle of calamine lotion he handed her.
The next call was quieter. Gilbert felt a pang as they approached; the little white house down the harbor road had the sweetest garden, and a cunning little gate hung between two firs. He admired the double line of Lombardy poplars that shaded their walk up the lane, and thought, with a clenching of his stomach, how nice and homey the place felt.
A trained nurse opened the door and ushered them into a spare, scrubbed hall with clean pine board floors and an old-fashioned table opposite the stairs. Other houses in Glen St. Mary were cluttered with plush carpets and dark furniture set with beveled mirrors, but this house had a fresh, clean-swept feeling that set Gilbert's heart thumping in his chest. He half expected Marilla Cuthbert to emerge from the kitchen.
It was not Marilla in the big white bed upstairs, but Miss Elizabeth Russell. She was a tiny woman with enormous brown eyes and a puff of snow-white hair pulled into a soft knot at the top of her head. Her piquant little mouth seemed always on the verge of laughter, even as she struggled to sit up in bed.
"Don't you trouble yourself for me, Miss Russell," teased Uncle Dave.
"I wouldn't, Doctor Dave. But it's not every day some old codger drags a handsome young man into my bedroom."
Gilbert put on a smile and stepped forward, taking the soft little hand in his own. "A pleasure to meet you, Miss Russell. I'm Gilbert Blythe."
Miss Russell blushed prettily. "Such a nice young fellow. I understand you're to be a doctor?"
Gilbert swallowed, feigning certainty he did not feel. "Yes, ma'am. I start medical school next month."
She gave him a warm smile that reached all the way to her eyes. "You'll do splendidly, I'm sure. Why, I feel quite better already!"
Uncle Dave clucked impatiently and set to examining Miss Russell's pulse and other vital signs. She had suffered several episodes of fainting over the past few weeks, but seemed to be on the mend.
"You just rest easy, and let the nurse do her job," Uncle Dave scolded.
Miss Russell pouted. "Oh, she's very good at her job. Efficient as a pocket watch. But she isn't a bit sympathetic." This last came out as a conspiratorial whisper, directed as much to Gilbert as to Uncle Dave. "My sheets are always perfectly clean and my gruel just exactly the right temperature, but I do wish she'd bring me flowers from my garden every now and then. I do miss them so."
Something frantic squirmed in Gilbert's gut, but he made reply lightly enough. "May I fetch you some flowers, Miss Russell? I'd be glad to do you a service."
She beamed. "Sweet lad. You're of the race that knows Joseph, as Cornelia Bryant would say. I can always tell."
Gilbert wasn't quite sure what to say to that, but took his leave and headed for the garden. Kitchen shears in hand, he wandered the flower-crowded paths. Late roses bowed the bushes with their heavy, crimson heads, but Gilbert passed them by. They were too much for the airy sickroom and its spritely inhabitant. Instead, he went down to the little brook that cut across the far corner of the garden and gathered the sort of flowers that sometimes grow in gardens, even as they dream of sunswept fields and secret places by the woods. Cornflowers and cosmos, larkspur and black-eyed susans, a riot of color without order or theme. Gilbert added a few bright yellow day lilies for splash and looked critically at the result. It was exactly right for . . .
No.
How she would have loved . . .
No.
It was as if a charged wire had been laid around part of his brain. Get too close and zap. It hurt excruciatingly to recoil at that new-set boundary, to be held separate not just in reality, but in thought as well. But the barrier was there, and perhaps that was for the best. Useful, at least, if it could help him walk through the world without collapsing.
Feeling slightly nauseous, Gilbert turned back to bring Miss Russell her flowers. Her delight at the exuberant bouquet chased away some of his lingering jitters.
"Exactly right! Well done, my lad. I'm sure I shall get better faster with such flowers by my side."
Gilbert set the blooms in a vase on the bedside table, moving aside a pair of spectacles and a stack of novels.
"Oh, give those here," chirped Miss Russell. "I'm working my way through the Brontës again, but just now I've got a delicious little yellow-covered novel full of gore and forbidden love. I put it at the bottom of the pile for appearances, but I won't be satisfied until I know who's done the murder."
"Rest, Miss Russell," admonished Uncle Dave, not unkindly. "Don't go exciting yourself so much you can't sleep."
Miss Russell arranged her features into the semblance of docility, but a wicked sparkle in the depths of her soft brown eyes made Gilbert feel quite sure that she would do exactly as she wished.
"She's a sweet old thing," Uncle Dave commented as he and Gilbert climbed back into the buggy at the bottom of the lane.
"Is it her heart that troubles her?" Gilbert asked.
"Not especially. Just age, and pushing herself to do more than she ought. You'd think a little old lady, all alone, could find time to sit and rest a spell every now and again, but that never was Elizabeth Russell's way."
"Maybe she just needs more novels," said Gilbert, smiling inwardly.
"Novels indeed. As if Elizabeth Russell ever needed more queer notions."
Gilbert decided that he liked Miss Elizabeth Russell, and resolved to visit her whenever he could find an excuse.
As they neared the next stop, Uncle Dave's face turned suddenly grave. He gave Gilbert an appraising look, then heaved a sigh.
"Gil, I'm not entirely sure about this next one. You can stay with the buggy if you like."
Gilbert felt cold fingers creep up his spine at this pronouncement, but choked out a reply. "What is the case?"
"Mrs. Amy Elliott. She's 37 years old, and she's dying. Cancer of the breast. Nothing to be done. Her mother's come from over harbor to tend her and the children have been sent away, but it's a sad case and no hope at all."
Gilbert set his jaw and swallowed.
"That's . . . part of the job, isn't it? Caring for the dying."
Uncle Dave nodded. "It is. But you aren't a doctor yet, Gil. And you don't have to come in if you don't want to."
Something in his tone irked Gilbert. He might have accepted solicitude from his mother, or Phil, or even Aunt Katherine, but he was vaguely embarrassed to have Uncle Dave doubt him. Was he afraid of being thought unmanly? Or was it his nascent professional pride that was bruised? In either case, he stuck out his chin and answered with more assurance than he felt.
"I'll come, Uncle Dave. I need to see it all."
Uncle Dave looked askance at his nephew, but did not contradict him.
At the Elliott house, all was quiet. Not the prim, friendly, quiet of Miss Russell's house, but a burdensome, insidious silence that clung to the drapes like the ghosts of the absent children. A hollow-eyed, gray-haired woman led Uncle Dave and Gilbert up the carpeted stairs and showed them into the shadowy recesses of a dim bedroom.
Gilbert took a single step over the threshold and froze. He never even saw Amy Elliott, but he heard her soft, thick breathing. Without a word, he turned on his heel and fled.