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Gilbert thinks Marilla is just being polite the first time she asks him to come to dinner at Green Gables.
It doesn’t matter that their families now have a well established history together, that Matthew and Marilla are essentially another set of grandparents for Delly, that for some very strange reason, Elijah seems to just get Matthew. He is certain of Marilla’s pity, that she had made up her mind to feed him in an attempt to make up for Anne’s behavior.
He had never intended to actually go through with it, but she had insisted, bringing along some of her strawberry tarts as a bribe.
Gilbert had spent the entire lead-up to that meal thinking the humiliation was going to be too strong for him to bear. He had pictured Anne bringing his letter to Marilla, her eyes wide with anxiety, and Marilla coaching her through what to write back. Guiding her through telling a person— telling him— that she didn’t feel the same way. Gilbert had imagined Marilla’s stern voice saying “don’t spin yourself into a tizzy, Anne, just turn the boy down!” and Anne not listening until it had all become too much and she had decided to do nothing in the hope that they would never, ever see each other again. And Marilla would have been so disappointed in her for being rude, and so that was why she was inviting him to dinner.
Of course, there had been nothing to apologize for and nothing to worry about either. Gilbert had spent the whole dinner dreading Marilla bringing it up and it had wound up a perfectly nice time. So much so that, when Marilla sent him home with some yarn she had promised Hazel, he had agreed to come back for supper the next week, shouting it over his shoulder towards Green Gables as he mounted his horse.
It becomes a bit of a habit after that.
At first he begins cataloging the little things he wants to tell her. (Marilla’s being good about wearing her glasses. Matthew made a particularly amusing comment with a small smile down to his plate, clearly expecting no one to see it. He has taken to setting the table like Anne used to and nearly left a place for her). Eventually, he makes himself stop. Anne’s never going to hear any of it– would probably be alarmed if he reached out to her, would probably think he was propositioning her again. He wonders sometimes if Matthew and Marilla even know what he had said to her, if they both knew that he had told her he wasn’t going to get engaged unless it was to her. Maybe they’re preparing him for a life of spending all his time with other unmarried people.
He almost writes Anne once, on the day she gets her Charlottetown teaching post.
Matthew and Marilla are both so excited for her, and she should know the way they’re gushing to all their neighbors. Even Matthew, who keeps his peace most of the time, is seeking people out to tell them how proud he is of his daughter. It makes Gilbert miss his own father so much that it squeezes his chest inside, not releasing him for a long, jealous while.
He sits down at his desk. Writes out the letters carefully: Dear Anne. His handwriting still comes in the sloppy, childish shapes that he wrote that letter to her with such a long time ago. He stops. Puts down the fountain pen. Pictures the look of alarm and disgust on Anne’s face as she picks up his letter, thinking he must be writing to beg. And then he crinkles up the paper and lets the fire eat it.
Ultimately, he doesn’t think perpetual bachelorhood will present many challenges. He’ll have a busy career as a doctor; he could potentially spend more time caring for his patients if he were to have no one to look forward to coming home to. Perhaps it will be a good thing for someone like him to be a doctor. He can put all of his love and care and time into his work, into saving people, without longing for his wife or missing his children. And a doctor’s wife doesn’t have the position in town that a preacher’s wife would– it’s not as though the town will be missing out on much of anything, wherever he lands.
The most prevalent challenge of bachelorhood arrives when Rachel Lynde realizes that he is committed to staying in town for the next stretch of his life, now that he knows Anne won’t be moving back after school. She sends young women to his doorstep time after time, forcing Elijah to hide in the back hallway so he won’t descend into fits of giggles while Bash begins to interview them as if they’re truly potential candidates.
“They’re getting younger every day,” Gilbert complains to Diana during a barn dance one time. She’s giving her husband a much needed break, having roped Gilbert into a dance before he had the time to protest. He’ll go over to her home with Bash when they have their knitting lessons sometimes, and the awkwardness between them has thawed slowly but surely. She’s become steady to him in the same way Matthew and Marilla have.
“What do you want me to say?” Diana asks, cantering around him, clearly enjoying the gossip even more than the dance, “you’re running out of unmarried women our age. Of course they’re getting younger, they’re all getting married while you putter around doing nothing.”
“I’m not doing nothing!” Gilbert protests. “I’m working the farm and helping the doctor.”
“I meant with your life,” Diana emphasizes. He wonders if she was this smug about his decision making prior to getting married. “It’s time for you to settle down. Otherwise you’ll end up marrying someone Minnie May’s age.”
“You know very well I’m not going to do that,” says Gilbert, leveling her with a stare. He urges her with his eyes, trying to get her to remember without him having to say it.
Diana stops dancing. Luckily, the song has just ended and her next words are nearly lost to the applause.
“I… no. How do you mean?”
Don’t you remember? Is it so insignificant that you’ve forgotten already? Has she?
“I’ll see you around, Diana,” says Gilbert, tipping his hat at her politely before he goes to the back of the barn in search of Marilla, Hazel, or one of the widows that frequently commandeer his time during these functions.
Aside from sticky moments that he will feel uncomfortably on his skin for days afterwards, life in Avonlea is easy. He takes to the rhythm of their days with such finesse, it feels like it’s always been like this. As if maybe Anne was never here at all, and the changes that came over all of them because of her were always there, never needing to be pulled out by clever fingers that wouldn’t give up on the threads of their kindness. It starts to feel like maybe things can remain like this forever. He’ll come to dinner at the house that was hers, walk the paths that she loved, adore the people who are her people. And those people can adore him back, and he’ll have a real family for the first time, and he’ll take care of them for her and never feel alone or lonely because sometimes when he falls asleep at night, the glint of orange in the dying fire looks like a strand of her hair. Maybe it’s alright that the ghost of Anne stalks him around Avonlea, reminding him of what it would be like it Matthew and Marilla had been his in-laws, if they had a house together on this island, if she was still with him, teaching him, challenging his views, making him better, making him laugh.
For all Anne’s talk of imagination, Gilbert had never realized how necessary it was until his heart was broken.
He wonders how old Anne was when her heart had been broken. Was it when her parents died? The first foster home she was in? The first night in the orphanage? And surely the effects of a heart so broken were irreversible, but if things had been different, could he have filled the empty spaces underneath her skin? If he hadn’t startled her by leaving that letter, or nearly married Winnie, or tugged on her braid and called her “carrots,” could he have been the person who held her tight until the pieces of her settled into their proper spots again?
It is possible to be resigned to one’s reality and also to think that it’s the wrong one. Gilbert is so much more gentle for loving her, and what good is that if she cannot treat him as a soft place to land? If she wanted to, she could use him up and he would wring out the last bit of himself for her. He’s comfortable in that. He’s comfortable here, in Avonlea, wanting her and missing her and wondering if she has any regrets. He’s comfortable knowing that he has none, when it comes to other women. He likes his choices.
Until, that is, the pattern is interrupted.
They’re seated at the table, the three of them, and Marilla is teetering on the edge of saying what she really thinks of the women in the book group she’s in. If Gilbert siphons just a bit more, he’ll get her sharp tongued wit that he can usually wheedle out of her once or twice a meal. It always makes Matthew’s eyes crinkle into a smile, and Marilla pretends to look reticent for her actions but Gilbert knows she’s secretly pleased that she’d made them both laugh.
His puppeteering is interrupted when the screen door smacks open to reveal an absolutely heaving Rachel Lynde, her eyes shining at the sight of the three of them at the table. At first Gilbert thinks she’s about to throw another unsuspecting sixteen-year-old at him for his inspection, but a wary glance behind her shows that she’s alone.
“I just heard,” Rachel says, clasping her hands in front of herself. “Oh, Marilla, is it true?”
“Surely there’s no way for me to know without you telling me what is or isn’t supposed to be true,” says Marilla, eyes darting up to the heavens for one brief moment.
“Anne,” gasps out Mrs. Lynde, which makes Gilbert flinch in his seat. “I was just in town watching the workers continue with that ghastly new town hall building they’re attempting to build– really, Marilla, what were they thinking with that siding? I was telling Betsy Mathers that I’d never seen such a hideous building— and Margaret Spurgeon passed by and we got to talking about the dreadful siding and then she mentioned that she’d just been to the schoolhouse because one of her little ones was held after by Muriel– absolutely absurd, you know, he’s needed on the farm after school, I don’t care if he’s having trouble learning arithmetic, I’ll tell you that for nothing– and I asked her about–”
“Rachel,” says Marilla shortly. “Are you planning on reaching your point within the next calendar year or shall I anticipate setting an extra place at the table for Christmas?”
Mrs. Lynde stops to glare. Matthew’s eyes crinkle just right.
“She told me that her son told her that Ruby told him that Anne has a serious beau in Charlottetown. And that he’s rich, and from a good family, and he adores her. Oh, Marilla, why didn’t you tell me!”
“I can’t quite recall.” Marilla’s voice is flat, a sharply creased edge to it. “I suppose if I had to guess, I’d say it’s because it’s not your business.”
Mrs. Lynde frowns.
“But this is wonderful! Someone’s finally managed to tame that girl.”
Matthew coughs on the sip of water he’d been taking. Gilbert wants to grin at the joke, but it feels like his heart has dropped all the way into his stomach and he can barely manage the weight of it. It’s all he can do to remain sitting up straight at the table with an unaffected face.
“Rachel. When there is anything to report, I’ll report it.”
“It seems as though the size of his father’s accounts is in fact reportable,” argues Mrs. Lynde.
“I assure you, it is not.”
From the look on Marilla’s face, he can tell that this suitor, whoever he is, is wealthy.
Her life will be full of adventure, at least. Travel that he would never be able to give her, not with the career he’s chosen. She’ll be happy. She’ll be happy. She never needed what he could give her in the first place. She’ll be–
“Will you excuse us?” Matthew says suddenly, standing up. “I reckon a bit of fresh air might do me some good at the moment. Gilbert, would you mind stepping out with me?”
He rises from the bench quickly, watching as Matthew plucks his pipe box from the front table. He waves Gilbert outside, plopping himself on the bench outside of the door and beginning to lovingly prepare his pipe.
“I think it’s good to let Rachel rile Marilla up every so often,” Matthew comments, taking the first puff. “Good for her heart to have someone to fight with.”
“That’s the thing about family, I guess.” Gilbert stumbles over the words, a bit clumsy. He doesn’t know how they’re related to what Matthew’s said, but Matthew doesn’t ask. He waits for Gilbert to find it himself, and he does, meeting an image of his father somewhere in the back of his brain. “They always come back.”
“They bring us back to ourselves too, my mother always said. We can change all we want, but family’s there to remind us of who we are at the bone.”
Gilbert doesn’t know whether or not this is a comfort. There is no one left on this planet who remembers him as a baby. There is no family for him that hasn’t been chosen over time, nobody there from the very start.
And yet he still feels tied by his love for them. Still feels tied to being who she would want him to be, complete with a bow on top.
“We can never really escape ourselves as long as there are people who know us, I guess.”
Matthew hums his agreement, low in his throat. The moment chimes wrong wrong wrong in Gilbert’s body, all the way through his pinkies. He feels that he should be somewhere else, touching something else, standing next to someone else.
“I’ve been missing Anne lately,” Matthew says, passing his pipe to Gilbert. “Feels like she’s all around this place, doesn’t it.”
“It certainly does.” Gilbert takes a puff of the pipe, letting his lungs burn for just a moment before exhaling lengthily, trying to singe her out of his system.
It doesn’t work. The smell of Matthew’s pipe smoke would sometimes cling to her clothes when they were in school together, and the visceral taste of it in his mouth makes the hair stand up on his arms as if Anne herself has wrapped herself around him. So it doesn’t work.
“Life’s changing, that’s for sure and certain,” Matthew says in his kind, mumbling way. “Makes you think about things.”
“Makes you want things,” Gilbert adds without meaning anything by it. When he looks over at Matthew, the man is studying him with that piercing gaze.
“Family comes back,” Matthew tells him eventually. “Like you did. When you were traveling. Or when you were at school. Family comes back.”
“I know,” Gilbert says, not sure what Matthew is trying to get across. “I know that.”
“Hmm,” Matthew says, turning around and heading back towards the door. He pauses, hand on the screen. Marilla’s and Rachel’s faint voices still screech behind him. “I reckon it’s not that we can’t escape ourselves. It’s that we can’t escape who we are when we love ‘em.”
He nods decisively once, mostly to himself, and then opens the screen door and walks back into the house, leaving Gilbert holding Matthew’s pipe on the front porch of the house in which Anne grew up.
Gilbert watches the trail of smoke leave the bottom of the pipe and float over to the flowers that Anne had planted the last time she was home, so long ago. He’s seen Marilla watering them in her absence, even though she hadn’t wanted them in the first place. He doesn’t know when he had come to know that piece of information, or when he had begun to pay enough attention to Anne’s flowers to know that Marilla was taking care of them.
Unable to stand looking at them anymore, Gilbert turns his head to the side, searching for anything else around the yard that could capture his attention. The garden gate had seemed a little stiff when he had walked through it today. Maybe he’ll check it before he goes, see if anything needs fixing. Make sure the wood doesn’t have any splinters in it so that Matthew and Marilla won’t be bothered by it.
Anne doesn’t need him to take care of her. She never will. But he can be in the place she loves, caring about the people she loves. And wanting her, missing her, growing without her, will have to be enough for him.