poorer than Eben and I were when we started out.”
Mrs. Jonas heaved a sigh of relief.
“I’m real glad you take that view of it, Louisa. I’m not displeased, either, although Mrs. Harmon would take my head off if she heard me say so. I always liked Lige. But I must say I’m amazed, too, after the way Sara used to rail at him.”
“Well, we might have expected it,” said Mrs. Eben sagely. “It was always Sara’s way. When any creature got sick or unfortunate she seemed to take it right into her heart. So you may say Lige Baxter’s failure was a success after all.”
THE SON OF HIS MOTHER
Thyra Carewe was waiting for Chester to come home. She sat by the west window of the kitchen, looking out into the gathering of the shadows with the expectant immovability that characterized her. She never twitched or fidgeted. Into whatever she did she put the whole force of her nature. If it was sitting still, she sat still.
“A stone image would be twitchedly beside Thyra,” said Mrs. Cynthia White, her neighbor across the lane. “It gets on my nerves, the way she sits at that window sometimes, with no more motion than a statue and her great eyes burning down the lane. When I read the commandment, ‘Thou shalt have no other gods before me,’ I declare I always think of Thyra. She worships that son of hers far ahead of her Creator. She’ll be punished for it yet.”
Mrs. White was watching Thyra now, knitting furiously, as she watched, in order to lose no time. Thyra’s hands were folded idly in her lap. She had not moved a muscle since she sat down. Mrs. White complained it gave her the weeps.
“It doesn’t seem natural to see a woman sit so still,” she said. “Sometimes the thought comes to me, ‘what if she’s had a stroke, like her old Uncle Horatio, and is sitting there stone dead!’”
The evening was cold and autumnal. There was a fiery red spot out at sea, where the sun had set, and, above it, over a chill, clear, saffron sky, were reefs of purple-black clouds. The river, below the Carewe homestead, was livid. Beyond it, the sea was dark and brooding. It was an evening to make most people shiver and forebode an early winter; but Thyra loved it, as she loved all stern, harshly beautiful things. She would not light a lamp because it would blot out the savage grandeur of sea and sky. It was better to wait in the darkness until Chester came home.
He was late tonight. She thought he had been detained over-time at the harbor, but she was not anxious. He would come straight home to her as soon as his business was completed — of that she felt sure. Her thoughts went out along the bleak harbor road to meet him. She could see him plainly, coming with his free stride through the sandy hollows and over the windy hills, in the harsh, cold light of that forbidding sunset, strong and handsome in his comely youth, with her own deeply cleft chin and his father’s dark gray, straightforward eyes. No other woman in Avonlea had a son like hers — her only one. In his brief absences she yearned after him with a maternal passion that had in it something of physical pain, so intense was it. She thought of Cynthia White, knitting across the road, with contemptuous pity. That woman had no son — nothing but pale-faced girls. Thyra had never wanted a daughter, but she pitied and despised all sonless women.
Chester’s dog whined suddenly and piercingly on the doorstep outside. He was tired of the cold stone and wanted his warm corner behind the stove. Thyra smiled grimly when she heard him. She had no intention of letting him in. She said she had always disliked dogs, but the truth, although she would not glance at it, was that she hated the animal because Chester loved him. She could not share his love with even a dumb brute. She loved no living creature in the world but her son, and fiercely demanded a like concentrated affection from him. Hence it pleased her to hear his dog whine.
It was now quite dark; the stars had begun to shine out over the shorn harvest fields, and Chester had not come. Across the lane Cynthia White had pulled down her blind, in despair of out-watching Thyra, and had lighted a lamp. Lively shadows of little girl-shapes passed and repassed on the pale oblong of light. They made Thyra conscious of her exceeding loneliness. She had just decided that she would walk down the lane and wait for Chester on the bridge, when a thunderous knock came at the east kitchen door.
She recognized August Vorst’s knock and lighted a lamp in no great haste, for she did not like him. He was a gossip and Thyra hated gossip, in man or woman. But August was privileged.
She carried the lamp in her hand, when she went to the door, and its upward-striking light gave her face a ghastly appearance. She did not mean to ask August in, but he pushed past her cheerfully, not waiting to be invited. He was a midget of a man, lame of foot and hunched of back, with a white, boyish face, despite his middle age and deep-set, malicious black eyes.
He pulled a crumpled newspaper from his pocket and handed it to Thyra. He was the unofficial mail-carrier of Avonlea. Most of the people gave him a trifle for bringing their letters and papers from the office. He earned small sums in various other ways, and so contrived to keep the life in his stunted body. There was always venom in August’s gossip. It was said that he made more mischief in Avonlea in a day than was made otherwise in a year, but people tolerated him by reason of his infirmity. To be sure, it was the tolerance they gave to inferior creatures, and August felt this. Perhaps it accounted for a good deal of his malignity. He hated most those who were kindest to him, and, of these, Thyra Carewe above all. He hated Chester, too, as he hated strong, shapely creatures. His time had come at last to wound them both, and his exultation shone through his crooked body and pinched features like an illuminating lamp. Thyra perceived it and vaguely felt something antagonistic in it. She pointed to the rocking-chair, as she might have pointed out a mat to a dog.
August crawled into it and smiled. He was going to make her writhe presently, this woman who looked down upon him as some venomous creeping thing she disdained to crush with her foot.
“Did you see anything of Chester on the road?” asked Thyra, giving August the very opening he desired. “He went to the harbor after tea to see Joe Raymond about the loan of his boat, but it’s the time he should be back. I can’t think what keeps the boy.”
“Just what keeps most men — leaving out creatures like me — at some time or other in their lives. A girl — a pretty girl, Thyra. It pleases me to look at her. Even a hunchback can use his eyes, eh? Oh, she’s a rare one!”
“What is the man talking about?” said Thyra wonderingly.
“Damaris Garland, to be sure. Chester’s down at Tom Blair’s now, talking to her — and looking more than his tongue says, too, of that you may be sure. Well, well, we were all young once, Thyra — all young once, even crooked little August Vorst. Eh, now?”
“What do you mean?” said Thyra.
She had sat down in a chair before him, with her hands folded in her lap. Her face, always pale, had not changed; but her lips were curiously white. August Vorst saw this and it pleased him. Also, her eyes were worth looking at, if you liked to hurt people — and that was the only pleasure August took in life. He would drink this delightful cup of revenge for her long years of disdainful kindness — ah, he would drink it slowly to prolong its sweetness. Sip by sip — he rubbed his long, thin, white hands together — sip by sip, tasting each mouthful.
“Eh, now? You know well enough, Thyra.”
“I know nothing of what you would be at, August Vorst. You speak of
