Further Chronicles of Avonlea by Lucy Maud Montgomery (best books to read for teens txt) đ
- Author: Lucy Maud Montgomery
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âWhat if I do, mother?â It wouldnât be such a dreadful thing, would it?â
âAnd me? And me?â cried Thyra. âWhat am I to you, then?â
âYou are my mother. I wouldnât love you any the less because I cared for another, too.â
âI wonât have you love another,â she cried. âI want all your loveâall! Whatâs that baby-face to you, compared to your mother? I have the best right to you. I wonât give you up.â
Chester realized that there was no arguing with such a mood. He walked on, resolved to set the matter aside until she might be more reasonable. But Thyra would not have it so. She followed on after him, under the alders that crowded over the lane.
âPromise me that youâll not go there again,â she entreated. âPromise me that youâll give her up.â
âI canât promise such a thing,â he cried angrily.
His anger hurt her worse than a blow, but she did not flinch.
âYouâre not engaged to her?â she cried out.
âNow, mother, be quiet. All the settlement will hear you. Why do you object to Damaris? You donât know how sweet she is. When you know herââ
âI will never know her!â cried Thyra furiously. âAnd she shall not have you! She shall not, Chester!â
He made no answer. She suddenly broke into tears and loud sobs. Touched with remorse, he stopped and put his arms about her.
âMother, mother, donât! I canât bear to see you cry so. But, indeed, you are unreasonable. Didnât you ever think the time would come when I would want to marry, like other men?â
âNo, no! And I will not have itâI cannot bear it, Chester. You must promise not to go to see her again. I wonât go into the house this night until you do. Iâll stay out here in the bitter cold until you promise to put her out of your thoughts.â
âThatâs beyond my power, mother. Oh, mother, youâre making it hard for me. Come in, come in! Youâre shivering with cold now. Youâll be sick.â
âNot a step will I stir till you promise. Say you wonât go to see that girl any more, and thereâs nothing I wonât do for you. But if you put her before me, Iâll not go inâI never will go in.â
With most women this would have been an empty threat; but it was not so with Thyra, and Chester knew it. He knew she would keep her word. And he feared more than that. In this frenzy of hers what might she not do? She 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.
âMother, calm yourself. Oh, surely thereâs no need of all this! Let us wait until to-morrow, and talk it over then. Iâll hear all you have to say. Come in, dear.â
Thyra loosened her arms from about him, and stepped back into a moonlit space. Looking at him tragically, she extended her arms and spoke slowly and solemnly.
âChester, choose between us. If you choose her, I shall go from you to-night, and you will never see me again!â
âMother!â
âChoose!â 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 madeâor, rather that he had no choice.
âHave your way,â 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 againâall would be well; she never doubted this, for she knew he would keep his ungracious promise sacredly.
âOh, my son, my son,â she murmured, âyouâd have sent me to my death if you had chosen otherwise. But now you are mine again!â
She did not heed that he was sullenâthat 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 anotherâs 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.
âHe thinks of her all the time,â she moaned to herself. âHeâll come to hate me yet, I fear, because itâs I who made him give her up. But Iâd rather even that than share him with another woman. Oh, my son, my son!â
She knew that Damaris was suffering, too. The girlâs 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 Damarisâ 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 latterâs 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 Chesterâs 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.
ââT isnât safe this time of year,â he said. âFolks expect no better from that reckless, harum-scarum Joe Raymond. Heâll drown himself some day, thereâs nothing surer. This mad freak of starting off down the shore in November is just of a piece with his usual performances. But you shouldnât have let Chester go, Thyra.â
âI couldnât prevent him. Say what I could, he would go. He laughed when I spoke of danger. Oh, heâs changed from what he was! I know who has wrought the change, and I hate her for it!â
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.
âYouâre too hard on Chester, Thyra. Heâs out of leading-strings now, or should be. You must just let me take an old friendâs privilege, and tell you that youâre taking the wrong way with him. Youâre too jealous and exacting, Thyra.â
âYou donât know anything about it. You have never had a son,â said Thyra, cruelly enough, for she knew that Carlâs sonlessness was a rankling thorn in his mind. âYou donât know what it is to pour out your love on one human being, and have it flung back in your face!â
Carl could not cope with Thyraâs 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.
âItâs sorry work joking with a November gale,â 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 following 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.
âYou have news for me,â she said.
They looked at each other, each man mutely imploring his neighbor to speak.
âYou need not fear to tell me,â said Thyra calmly. âI know what you have come to say. My son is drowned.â
âWe donât know THAT, Mrs. Carewe,â said Abel Blair quickly. âWe havenât got the worst to tell youâthereâs hope yet. But Joe Raymondâs boat was found last night, stranded bottom up, on the Blue Point sand shore, forty miles down the coast.â
âDonât look like that, Thyra,â said Carl White pityingly. âThey may have escapedâthey may have been picked up.â
Thyra looked at him with dull eyes.
âYou know they have not. Not one of you has any hope. I have no son. The sea has taken him from meâmy bonny baby!â
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 Cynthiaâs compassionate look with a fearful smile.
âLong ago, Cynthia White,â she said slowly, âyou 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 canât fight against the Almighty. It was decreed that I must lose himâif not in one way, then in another. He has been taken from me utterly. I shall not even have his grave to tend, Cynthia.â
âAs near to a mad
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