came of a strange breed, as had been said
disapprovingly when Luke Carewe married her. There was
a strain of insanity in the Lincolns. A Lincoln woman
had drowned herself once. Chester thought of the river,
and grew sick with fright. For a moment even his
passion for Damaris weakened before the older tie.
"Mother, calm yourself. Oh, surely there's no need of
all this! Let us wait until to-morrow, and talk it over
then. I'll hear all you have to say. Come in, dear."
Thyra loosened her arms from about him, and stepped
back into a moon-lit space. Looking at him tragically,
she extended her arms and spoke slowly and solemnly.
"Chester, choose between us. If you choose her, I shall
go from you to-night, and you will never see me again!"
"Mother!"
"Choose!" she reiterated, fiercely.
He felt her long ascendancy. Its influence was not to
be shaken off in a moment. In all his life he had never
disobeyed her. Besides, with it all, he loved her more
deeply and understandingly than most sons love their
mothers. He realized that, since she would have it so,
his choice was already made - or, rather that he had no
choice.
"Have your way," he said sullenly.
She ran to him and caught him to her heart. In the
reaction of her feeling she was half laughing, half
crying. All was well again - all would be well; she
never doubted this, for she knew he would keep his
ungracious promise sacredly.
"Oh, my son, my son," she murmured, "you'd have sent me
to my death if you had chosen otherwise. But now you
are mine again!"
She did not heed that he was sullen - that he resented
her unjustice with all her own intensity. She did not
heed his silence as they went into the house together.
Strangely enough, she slept well and soundly that
night. Not until many days had passed did she
understand that, though Chester might keep his promise
in the letter, it was beyond his power to keep it in
the spirit. She had taken him from Damaris Garland; but
she had not won him back to herself. He could never be
wholly her son again. There was a barrier between them
which not all her passionate love could break down.
Chester was gravely kind to her, for it was not in his
nature to remain sullen long, or visit his own
unhappiness upon another's head; besides, he understood
her exacting affection, even in its injustice, and it
has been well-said that to understand is to forgive.
But he avoided her, and she knew it. The flame of her
anger burned bitterly towards Damaris.
"He thinks of her all the time," she moaned to herself.
"He'll come to hate me yet, I fear, because it's I who
made him give her up. But I'd rather even that than
share him with another woman. Oh, my son, my son!"
She knew that Damaris was suffering, too. The girl's
wan face told that when she met her. But this pleased
Thyra. It eased the ache in her bitter heart to know
that pain was gnawing at Damaris' also.
Chester was absent from home very often now. He spent
much of his spare time at the harbor, consorting with
Joe Raymond and others of that ilk, who were but sorry
associates for him, Avonlea people thought.
In late November he and Joe started for a trip down the
coast in the latter's boat. Thyra protested against it,
but Chester laughed at her alarm.
Thyra saw him go with a heart sick from fear. She hated
the sea, and was afraid of it at any time; but, most of
all, in this treacherous month, with its sudden, wild
gales.
Chester had been fond of the sea from boyhood. She had
always tried to stifle this fondness and break off his
associations with the harbor fishermen, who liked to
lure the high-spirited boy out with them on fishing
expeditions. But her power over him was gone now.
After Chester's departure she was restless and
miserable, wandering from window to window to scan the
dour, unsmiling sky. Carl White, dropping in to pay a
call, was alarmed when he heard that Chester had gone
with Joe, and had not tact enough to conceal his alarm
from Thyra.
"'T isn't safe this time of year," he said. "Folks
expect no better from that reckless, harum-scarum Joe
Raymond. He'll drown himself some day, there's nothing
surer. This mad freak of starting off down the shore in
November is just of a piece with his usual
performances. But you shouldn't have let Chester go,
Thyra."
"I couldn't prevent him. Say what I could, he would go.
He laughed when I spoke of danger. Oh, he's changed
from what he was! I know who has wrought the change,
and I hate her for it!"
Carl shrugged his fat shoulders. He knew quite well
that Thyra was at the bottom of the sudden coldness
between Chester Carewe and Damaris Garland, about which
Avonlea gossip was busying itself. He pitied Thyra,
too. She had aged rapidly the past month.
"You're too hard on Chester, Thyra. He's out of
leading-strings now, or should be. You must just let me
take an old friend's privilege, and tell you that
you're taking the wrong way with him. You're too
jealous and exacting, Thyra."
"You don't know anything about it. You have never had a
son," said Thyra, cruelly enough, for she knew that
Carl's sonlessness was a rankling thorn in his mind.
"You don't know what it is to pour out your love on one
human being, and have it flung back in your face!"
Carl could not cope with Thyra's moods. He had never
understood her, even in his youth. Now he went home,
still shrugging his shoulders, and thinking that it was
a good thing Thyra had not looked on him with favor in
the old days. Cynthia was much easier to get along
with.
More than Thyra looked anxiously to sea and sky that
night in Avonlea. Damaris Garland listened to the
smothered roar of the Atlantic in the murky northeast
with a prescience of coming disaster. Friendly
longshoremen shook their heads and said that Ches and
Joe would better have kept to good, dry land.
"It's sorry work joking with a November gale," said
Abel Blair. He was an old man and, in his life, had
seen some sad things along the shore.
Thyra could not sleep that night. When the gale came
shrieking up the river, and struck the house, she got
out of bed and dressed herself. The wind screamed like
a ravening beast at her window. All night she wandered
to and fro in the house, going from room to room, now
wringing her hands with loud outcries, now praying
below her breath with white lips, now listening in dumb
misery to the fury of the storm.
The wind raged all the next day; but spent itself in
the follo
wing night, and the second morning was calm
and fair. The eastern sky was a great arc of crystal,
smitten through with auroral crimsonings. Thyra,
looking from her kitchen window, saw a group of men on
the bridge. They were talking to Carl White, with looks
and gestures directed towards the Carewe house.
She went out and down to them. None of these who saw
her white, rigid face that day ever forgot the sight.
"You have news for me," she said.
They looked at each other, each man mutely imploring
his neighbor to speak.
"You need not fear to tell me," said Thyra calmly. "I
know what you have come to say. My son is drowned."
"We don't know that, Mrs. Carewe," said Abel Blair
quickly. "We haven't got the worst to tell you -
there's hope yet. But Joe Raymond's boat was found last
night, stranded bottom up, on the Blue Point sand
shore, forty miles down the coast."
"Don't look like that, Thyra," said Carl White
pityingly. "They may have escaped - they may have been
picked up."
Thyra looked at him with dull eyes.
"You know they have not. Not one of you has any hope. I
have no son. The sea has taken him from me - my bonny
baby!"
She turned and went back to her desolate home. None
dared to follow her. Carl White went home and sent his
wife over to her.
Cynthia found Thyra sitting in her accustomed chair.
Her hands lay, palms upward, on her lap. Her eyes were
dry and burning. She met Cynthia's compassionate look
with a fearful smile.
"Long ago, Cynthia White," she said slowly, "you were
vexed with me one day, and you told me that God would
punish me yet, because I made an idol of my son, and
set it up in His place. Do you remember? Your word was
a true one. God saw that I loved Chester too much, and
He meant to take him from me. I thwarted one way when I
made him give up Damaris. But one can't fight against
the Almighty. It was decreed that I must lose him - if
not in one way, then in another. He has been taken from
me utterly. I shall not even have his grave to tend,
Cynthia."
"As near to a mad woman as anything you ever saw, with
her awful eyes," Cynthia told Carl, afterwards. But she
did not say so there. Although she was a shallow,
commonplace soul, she had her share of womanly
sympathy, and her own life had not been free from
suffering. It taught her the right thing to do now. She
sat down by the stricken creature and put her arms
about her, while she gathered the cold hands in her own
warm clasp. The tears filled her big, blue eyes and her
voice trembled as she said:
"Thyra, I'm sorry for you. I - I - lost a child once -
my little first-born. And Chester was a dear, good
lad."
For a moment Thyra strained her small, tense body away
from Cynthia's embrace. Then she shuddered and cried
out. The tears came, and she wept her agony out on the
other woman's breast.
As the ill news spread, other Avonlea women kept
dropping in all through the day to condole with Thyra.
Many of them came in real sympathy, but some out of
mere curiosity to see how she took it. Thyra knew this,
but she did not resent it, as she would once have done.
She listened very quietly to all the halting efforts at
consolation, and the little platitudes with which they
strove to cover the nakedness of bereavement.
When darkness came Cynthia said she must go home, but
would send one of her girls over for the night.
"You won't feel like staying alone," she said.
Thyra looked up steadily.
"No. But I want you to send for Damaris Garland."
"Damaris Garland!" Cynthia repeated the name as if
disbelieving her own ears. There was never any knowing
what whim Thyra might take, but Cynthia had not
expected this.
"Yes. Tell her I want her - tell her she must come. She
must hate me bitterly; but I am punished enough to
satisfy even her hate. Tell her to come to me for
Chester's sake."
Cynthia did as she was bid, she sent her daughter,
Jeanette, for Damaris. Then she waited. No matter what
duties were calling for her at home she must see the
interview between Thyra and Damaris. Her curiosity
would be the last thing to fail Cynthia White. She had
done very well all day; but it would be asking too much
of her to expect that she would consider the meeting of
these two women sacred from her eyes.
She half believed that Damaris would refuse to come.
But Damaris came. Jeanette brought her in amid the
fiery glow of a November sunset. Thyra stood up, and
for a moment they looked at each other.
The insolence of Damaris' beauty was gone. Her eyes
were dull and heavy with weeping, her lips were pale,
and her face had lost its laughter and dimples. Only
her hair, escaping from the shawl she had cast around
it, gushed forth in warm splendor in the sunset light,
and framed her wan face like the aureole of a Madonna.
Thyra looked upon her with a shock of remorse. This was
not the radiant creature she had met on the bridge that
summer afternoon. This - this - was her work. She held
out her arms.
"Oh, Damaris, forgive me. We both loved him - that must
be a bond between us for life."
Damaris came forward and threw her arms about the older
woman, lifting her face. As their lips met even Cynthia
White realized that she had no business there. She
vented the irritation of her embarrassment on the
innocent Jeanette.
"Come away," she whispered crossly. "Can't you see
we're not wanted here?"
She drew Jeanette out, leaving Thyra rocking Damaris in
her arms, and crooning over her like a mother over her
child.
When December had grown old Damaris was still with
Thyra. It was understood that she was to remain there
for the winter, at least. Thyra could not bear her to
be out of her sight. They talked constantly about
Chester; Thyra confessed all her anger and hatred.
Damaris had forgiven her; but Thyra could never forgive
herself. She was greatly changed, and had grown very
gentle and tender. She even sent for August Vorst and
begged him to pardon her for the way she had spoken to
him.
Winter came late that year, and the season was a very
open one. There was no snow on the ground and, a month
after Joe Raymond's boat had been cast up on the Blue
Point sand shore, Thyra, wandering about in her garden,
found some pansies blooming under their tangled leaves.
She was picking them for Damaris when she heard a buggy
rumble over the bridge and drive up the White lane,
hidden from her sight by the alders and firs. A few
&nb
sp; minutes later Carl and Cynthia came hastily across
their yard under the huge balm-of-gileads. Carl's face
was flushed, and his big body quivered with excitement.
Cynthia ran behind him, with tears rolling down her
face.
Thyra felt herself growing sick with fear. Had anything
happened to Damaris? A glimpse of the girl, sewing by
an upper window of the house, reassured her.
"Oh, Thyra, Thyra!" gasped Cynthia.
"Can you stand some good news, Thyra?" asked Carl, in a
trembling voice. "Very, very good news!"
Thyra looked wildly from one to the other.
"There's but one thing you would dare to call good news
to me," she cried. "Is it about - about - "
"Chester! Yes, it's about Chester! Thyra, he is alive -
he's safe - he and Joe, both of them, thank God!
Cynthia, catch her!"
"No, I am not going to faint," said Thyra, steadying
herself by Cynthia's shoulder. "My son alive! How did
you hear? How did it happen? Where has he been?"
"I heard it down at the harbor, Thyra. Mike McCready's
vessel, the Nora Lee, was just in from the Magdalens.
Ches and Joe got capsized the night of the storm, but
they hung on to their boat somehow, and at daybreak
they were picked up by the Nora Lee, bound for Quebec.
But she was damaged by the storm and blown clear out of
her course. Had to put into the Magdalens for repairs,
and has been there ever since. The cable to the islands
was out of order, and no vessels call there this time
of year for mails. If it hadn't been an extra open
season the Nora Lee wouldn't have got away, but would
have had to stay there till spring. You never saw such
rejoicing as there was this morning at the harbor, when
the Nora Lee came in, flying flags at the mast head."
"And Chester - where is he?" demanded Thyra.
Carl and Cynthia looked at each other.
"Well, Thyra," said the latter, "the fact is, he's over
there in our yard this blessed minute. Carl brought him
home from the harbor, but I wouldn't let him come over
until we had prepared you for it. He's waiting for you
there."
Thyra made a quick step in the direction of the gate.
Then she turned, with a little of the glow dying out of
her face.
"No, there's one has a better right to go to him first.
I can atone to him - thank God, I can atone to him!"
She went into the house and called Damaris. As the girl
came down the stairs Thyra held out her hands with a
wonderful light of joy and renunciation on her face.
"Damaris," she said, "Chester has come back to us - the
sea has given him back to us. He is over at Carl
White's house. Go to him, my daughter, and bring him to
me!"
Chapter XI
The Education Of Betty
WHEN Sara Currie married Jack Churchill I was broken-
hearted . . . or believed myself to be so, which, in a
boy of twenty-two, amounts to pretty much the same
thing. Not that I took the world into my confidence;
that was never the Douglas way, and I held myself in
honor bound to live up to the family traditions. I
thought, then, that nobody but Sara knew; but I dare
say, now, that Jack knew it also, for I don't think
Sara could have helped telling him. If he did know,
however, he did not let me see that he did, and never
insulted me by any implied sympathy; on the contrary,
he asked me to be his best man. Jack was always a
thoroughbred.
I was best man. Jack and I had always been bosom
friends, and, although I had lost my sweetheart, I did
not intend to lose my friend into the bargain. Sara had
made a wise choice, for Jack was twice the man I was;
he had had to work for his living, which perhaps
accounts for it.
So I danced at Sara's wedding as if my heart were as
light as my heels; but, after she and Jack had settled
down at Glenby I closed The Maples and went abroad . .
. being, as I have hinted, one of those unfortunate
mortals who need consult nothing but their own whims in
the matter of time and money. I stayed away for ten