Anne's House of Dreams - L. M. Montgomery [55]
‘You mustn’t talk, Anne – wait till you’re stronger,’ said Marilla warningly.
‘You know how hard it is for me not to talk,’ smiled Anne.
At first she was too weak and too happy to notice that Gilbert and the nurse looked grave and Marilla sorrowful. Then, as subtly, and coldly, and remorselessly as a sea-fog stealing landward, fear crept into her heart. Why was not Gilbert gladder? Why would he not talk about the baby? Why would they not let her have it with her after that first heavenly-happy hour? Was – was there anything wrong?
‘Gilbert’ whispered Anne imploringly, ‘the baby – is all right – isn’t she? Tell me – tell me.’
Gilbert was a long while in turning round; then he bent over Anne and looked in her eyes. Marilla, listening fearfully outside the door, heard a pitiful, heart-broken moan, and fled to the kitchen where Susan was weeping.
‘Oh, the poor lamb – the poor lamb! How can she bear it, Miss Cuthbert? I am afraid it will kill her. She has been that built up and happy, longing for that baby, and planning for it. Cannot anything be done nohow, Miss Cuthbert?’
‘I’m afraid not, Susan. Gilbert says there is no hope. He knew from the first the little thing couldn’t live.’
‘And it is such a sweet baby,’ sobbed Susan. ‘I never saw one so white – they are mostly red or yallow. And it opened its big eyes as if it was months old. The little, little thing! Oh, the poor young Mrs Doctor!’
At sunset the little soul that had come with the dawning went away, leaving heartbreak behind it. Miss Cornelia took the wee white lady from the kindly but stranger hands of the nurse, and dressed the tiny waxen form in the beautiful dress Leslie had made for it. Leslie had asked her to do that. Then she took it back and laid it beside the poor, broken, tear-blinded little mother.
‘The Lord has given and the Lord has taken away, dearie,’ she said through her own tears. ‘Blessed be the name of the Lord.’
Then she went away, leaving Anne and Gilbert alone together with their dead.
The next day the small white Joy was laid in a velvet casket which Leslie had lined with apple-blossoms, and taken to the graveyard of the church across the harbour. Miss Cornelia and Marilla put all the little love-made garments away, together with the ruffled basket which had been befrilled and belaced for dimpled limbs and downy head. Little Joy was never to sleep there; she had found a colder, narrower bed.
‘This has been an awful disappointment to me,’ sighed Miss Cornelia. ‘I’ve looked forward to this baby – and I did want it to be a girl, too.’
‘I can only be thankful that Anne’s life was spared,’ said Marilla, with a shiver, recalling those hours of darkness when the girl she loved was passing through the valley of the shadow.
‘Poor, poor lamb! Her heart is broken,’ said Susan.
‘I envy Anne,’ said Leslie suddenly and fiercely, ‘and I’d envy her even if she had died! She was a mother for one beautiful day. I’d gladly give my life for that!’
‘I wouldn’t talk like that, Leslie, dearie,’ said Miss Cornelia deprecatingly. She was afraid that the dignified Miss Cuthbert would think Leslie quite terrible.
Anne’s convalescence was long, and made bitter for her by many things. The bloom and sunshine of the Four Winds world grated harshly on her; and yet, when the rain fell heavily, she pictured it beating so mercilessly down on that little grave across the harbour; and when the wind blew around the leaves she heard sad voices in it she had never heard before.
Kindly callers hurt her, too, with the well-meant platitudes with which they strove to cover the nakedness of bereavement. A letter from Phil Blake was an added sting. Phil had heard of the baby’s birth, but not of its death, and she wrote Anne a congratulatory letter of sweet mirth which hurt her horribly.
‘I would have laughed over it so happily if I had my baby,’ she sobbed to Marilla.