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"Davy?" But Anne could say no more. She carried Dora home with a heavy heart. Her joy at finding the child safe and sound was drowned out in the pain caused by Davy's behavior. The freak of shutting Dora up might easily have been pardoned. But Davy had told falsehoods...downright cold-blooded falsehoods about it. That was the ugly fact and Anne could not shut her eyes to it.
...
"Well, we must try to reform Davy at home then," said Anne cheerfully. "With all his faults he's really a dear little chap. I can't help loving him. Marilla, it may be a dreadful thing to say, but honestly, I like Davy better than Dora, for all she's so good."
"I don't know but that I do, myself," confessed Marilla, "and it isn't fair, for Dora isn't a bit of trouble. There couldn't be a better child and you'd hardly know she was in the house."
-Anne of Avonlea, Lucy Maude Montgomery, 1909
#
Dora had always lived with the nagging feeling that people didn't like her, much. They didn't dislike her--she was such a good little girl, they were always saying--but they didn't particularly like her, neither.
Dora couldn't puzzle it. She did her chores, she said her prayers, she minded her manners, she helped with everything she could think of to help with--she even shelled peas without comment, though she hated the way the pea shells popped open so suddenly and so fast, like little bellies spilling their insides. But she shelled them all anyhow, and never complained.
In the end, she never was at risk of receiving any too-vigorous hugs. Her brother Davy got them sure enough--most especially he got them just after doing some horrendous thing or other to Dora herself. Oh, his contrite tears upon it being found that he had locked Dora in a shed! And he really was sorry, too, for the moment. But Dora had seen those crocodile tears before. And she had seen his punishments before, too. She didn't need to sneak out of bed to find out that he was to be sent to bed without supper (though she did, and listened at the keyhole, and found that of course she was right, for Anne had no imagination for punishments). It was not nearly enough punishment in Dora's opinion, for she had been terribly hungry and thirsty and alone in that shed, and until the very moment Anne opened the door had been quite sure she would find her end that very day, and Davy did not even mind going to bed without supper, for he simply ate an extra helping at breakfast the next morning, if he didn't sneak into the pantry in the middle of the night.
But she was satisfied at least that Anne herself thought it was sufficient, and did mean to punish Davy for frightening Dora. She thought so at least until she pressed her ear to the keyhole and found that locking her up was an eminently forgivable offense--and that he was, rather, being sent to bed for telling falsehoods about it.
Dora stayed at the keyhole until after Davy had been tucked in, and after Anne had come downstairs after comforting him for quite a long time (even though he was being punished and ought to cry about it), hoping very much that there was a proper reason that falsehoods were so much more terrible than her being locked all alone in the miserable old shed, but instead of a good reason she heard that both Anne and Marilla liked Davy more than they liked her.
"I think that we always love best the people who need us," Anne said with an air of fondness that cut Dora viciously. "Davy needs us badly."
Dora felt like a pea pod squeezed tight. What did Anne and Marilla think she was being so very good for, if not for need of them?
She retreated solemnly to her enormous bed--once occupied by a man named Matthew, in whom she was greatly interested but never asked, as she didn't want to bring up old sorrows--and along the way politely refused Marilla's offer to tuck her back into bed. Marilla thought, as she went by, that Dora looked a bit ill, but as it had passed by morning, never again thought anything of it.
Dora said her prayers, tucked herself into bed, curled up deep under the covers with a down pillow pressed to her face, and cried her insides out--silently--for the better part of an hour. When she had finished, she stayed deep under the covers, head resting on the dry side of the pillow, and made several firm decisions she would carry with her all her life.
The first was that she was a good girl, and would continue to be a good girl, though it had so far failed to win the affections of anyone from Anne to her own dear departed mother. She was a good girl, and would be one for her own benefit from now on.
The second was that she would never again trust anyone to take her part over Davy's. Davy would always be loved over her, and though she still couldn't puzzle out why, that was the facts.
And the third was that, as soon as she was big enough, she would run away. She had thought near every day of her life of running away, but her love first of her mother, and then of Anne and Marilla--and sometimes, inexplicably, of Davy--combined with the fearful sense of the great size of the world, kept her home.
But now she knew, and however hard she prayed could not unknow, that no matter how very very good she was (and she couldn't be any gooder; she had tried), Anne and Marilla and everyone else would always love Davy best.
Dora could not bear the knowing, and so she would leave as soon as she was able, for even as broken as her heart was, she was still only six years old and not big enough to drive a pony trap or buy a train ticket. But she got bigger each day. She just had to be good until then.
#
At nine years, Dora woke with her mouth clamped shut, unable to scream, having dreamed of falling into the well into which Davy had very nearly pushed her. He said he had hold of the back of her skirt the whole time, but he didn't know how delicate organdy was.
But she was not big enough.
#
At twelve years, Dora's carefully iced and boxed cake, made special for her piano teacher who was coming to tea, was found missing, and traces of purple frosting found around Davy's mouth. He was sent out to do his chores without tea, but Dora saw him through the window, taunting the pig with scraps of her own cake, having a gay old time.
They had Marilla's preserves, which were pronounced "heavenly" by Mrs. Timothy, but Dora had wanted so much to impress her teacher with her own cake.
But she was not big enough.
#
At fourteen years, Davy told all the boys that Dora sleepwalked all around Barry's Pond on full moon nights, and furthermore that she did so naked, and she wouldn't have minded that so much except that all the girls heard it too, and she went from invisible to ostracized in an afternoon. Anne couldn't tell the difference, and wouldn't have done anything about it anyhow. Davy--having discovered a whole troupe of boys waiting for her down by Barry's Pond the next week, and several more peeping from the garden, thought it was hilarious.
Dora could only think of those eyes burrowing through her window into her bed, where she had remained clothed all night, thank you; and of the front door of Green Gables, always left unlocked.
This time, she was big enough.
#
Anne and Marilla woke to find pony, trap, petty cash, and Dora quite gone. Aside from a receipt left in the cash box--owed, $7.12, to be returned at first opportunity--and a note of apology for the inconvenience they would come to in retrieving the pony trap from the train station, there was no sign of where she had gone. Inquiries at the station revealed that yes, she had been there, and yes, she had purchased a ticket--but the train had already left, and was headed to Orlando. Anne despaired. Once in Orlando, Dora would disappear into the crowds, and there was no way to intercept her train. Anne cried bitterly all the way home, and Marilla drove in stunned silence. Davy sat with his arm around Anne, feeling vaguely guilty but not sure why.
Neither Anne nor Marilla could understand why such a good, steadfast little girl could vanish without warning. She had been so content, dutifully completing her chores and her schoolwork with never a word of nudging from either of them, making pleasant conversation always, and generally giving every sign of contentedness. She even took Davy's teasing and pranks with a level-headedness with which Marilla and Anne had been most impressed.
Marilla sublimated her sadness into anger over the stolen cash; Anne plunged herself fiercely into her work and her friendships, and both recovered from their griefs surprisingly quickly. The emptiness in the corners of their lives was soon forgotten. Davy took to only-childhood with great enthusiasm.
When a precise seven dollars and twelve cents (in, though Anne did not realize, the exact bills as had been taken nine years ago) arrived in the mail, Anne realized with an unpleasant shock that she had not thought about Dora in years, and in fact had forgotten entirely what her agreeable little presence in the house had been like. She put the money uncomfortably in the petty cash box.
For the rest of her life, whenever she lifted that lid, she felt vaguely guilty, as though she had done something terribly wrong, only she could never figure out what, exactly, it had been.