Anne of Windy Poplars - L. M. Montgomery [97]
I wish I could take little Elizabeth for a walk. She loves a moonlight walk. We had some delightful ones when she was at Green Gables. But at home Elizabeth never sees moonlight except from the window.
I am beginning to be a little worried about her, too. She is going on ten now, and those two old ladies haven’t the least idea what she needs, spiritually and emotionally. As long as she has good food and good clothes they cannot imagine her needing anything more. And it will be worse with every succeeding year. ‘What kind of a girlhood will the poor child have?
6
Jarvis Morrow walked home from the High School Commencement with Anne and told her his woes.
‘You’ll have to run away with her, Jarvis. Everybody says so. As a rule I don’t approve of elopements’ (I said that like a teacher of forty years’ experience, thought Anne, with an unseen grin), ‘but there are exceptions to all rules.’
‘It takes two to make a bargain, Anne. I can’t elope alone. Dovie is so frightened of her father I can’t get her to agree. And it wouldn’t be an elopement, really. She’d just come to my sister Julia’s – Mrs Stevens, you know – some evening. I’d have the minister there, and we could be married respectably enough to please anybody, and go over to spend our honeymoon with Aunt Bertha in Kingsport. Simple as that. But I can’t get Dovie to chance it. The poor darling has been giving in to her father’s whims and crotchets so long she hasn’t any will-power left.’
‘You’ll simply have to make her do it, Jarvis.’
‘Great Peter, you don’t suppose I haven’t tried, do you, Anne? I’ve begged till I was black in the face. When she’s with me she’ll almost promise it, but the minute she’s home again she sends me word she can’t. It seems odd, Anne, but the poor child is really fond of her father, and she can’t bear the thought of his never forgiving her.’
‘You must tell her she has to choose between her father and you.’
‘And suppose she chooses him?’
‘I don’t think there’s any danger of that.’
‘You can never tell,’ said Jarvis gloomily. ‘But something has to be decided soon. I can’t go on like this for ever. I’m crazy about Dovie. Everybody in Summerside knows that. She’s like a little red rose just out of reach. I must reach her, Anne.’
‘Poetry is a very good thing in its place, but it won’t get you anywhere in this instance, Jarvis,’ said Anne coolly. ‘That sounds like a remark Rebecca Dew would make, but it’s quite true. What you need in this affair is plain, hard common sense. Tell Dovie you’re tired of shilly-shallying, and that she must take you or leave you. If she doesn’t care enough for you to leave her father it’s just as well for you to realize it.’
Jarvis groaned. ‘You haven’t been under the thumb of Franklin Westcott all your life, Anne. You haven’t any realization of what he’s like. Well, I’ll make a last and final effort. As you say, if Dovie really cares for me she’ll come to me, and if she doesn’t I might as well know the worst. I’m beginning to feel I’ve made myself rather ridiculous.’
‘If you’re beginning to feel like that,’ thought Anne, ‘Dovie had better watch out.’
Dovie herself slipped into Windy Willows a few evenings later to consult Anne.
‘What shall I do, Anne? What can I do? Jarvis wants me to elope – practically. Father is to be in Charlottetown one night next week attending a Masonic banquet, and it would be a good chance. Aunt Maggie would never suspect. Jarvis wants me to go to Mrs Stevens’s and be married there.’
‘And why don’t you, Dovie?’
‘Oh, Anne, do you really think I ought to?’ Dovie lifted a sweet coaxing face. ‘Please, please make up my mind for me! I’m just distracted.’ Dovie’s voice broke on a tearful note. ‘Oh, Anne, you don’t know Father. He just hates Jarvis – I