While he carried the tale down to the parting with Cynthia she smiled and frowned in turn, and wiped her eyes before he had finished. A mother's intuition read between the lines and when the rueful confession halted, her arm stole around his neck, and she kissed him again.
"It is a sad story," she said; "but never let me hear that word disgrace as long as you live. Of course, I was nearly killed about it to-day, and I should have been crying for four nights at sea if I could have heard the news before I started. But it would have been only because you were unhappy and disappointed. What else are mothers for than to understand when the world seems upside down? When you were seven years old, you were kept home from a Sunday-school picnic by the chicken-pox, and you told me in floods of tears that you didn't 'b'lieve you could never, never be happy again.' I knew how small your world was, and that the chicken-pox was big enough to fill it to overflowing.
"Now you have tried your best, you rowed as well as you knew how, and the crew was everything to you, just as it ought to be. But some day you may have larger troubles, and they, too, shall pass away, and more and more you will come back to the simple gospel of living I have tried to teach you, that there is only one standard by which to judge success or failure. Is the thing worth while, and have you done your best in the best way to gain it? I don't mean to preach, my boy mine. You don't want that. You want your mother. I know, I know."
She stroked his cheek as he went deep into his heart, and brought up more than he had ever told her before of his dreams of love, first love, and of what he had been building. His mother knew that she must be careful, and she hesitated, as if pondering how best to speak her view-point.
"She did not understand, poor girl. It is not all her fault, and it is not yours, laddie boy. When the race began and I saw that you were not in the crew, it seemed as if I were in the depths of a bad dream. I was with you all the way, and I thought of nothing else. And I know that while you would have been with me if you could, yet if the girl were here you would wish in your heart to find her first. No, don't try to deny it. But she did not know at all what it meant to you, she could not know. But if she had loved you, she would have understood as I did. We will talk about her all night if it will make your heartache any better. What are we going to do now?"
The boy straightened himself and threw back his wide shoulders, because his mother saw no cause for reproach in his downfall. But he did not want to see the crew again, and he wished to avoid the riotous celebration soon to burst. Obviously the best plan was to go to New Haven at once, where they could find refuge in his rooms, and pack his trunk for the vacation departure.
To him this little journey from New London was a panic flight, to her it was made radiant by the one fact that her boy had come back to her. After dinner, in a quiet corner of the college town, they went to his rooms on the campus. The sight of the two twelve-foot oars on the walls, his own trophies of two victories, their handles stained dark with the sweat of his hands, made her turn to him as they entered:
"Nothing can ever take those away from you, with all their splendid story of success."
The boy looked at them for an instant, then brushed a hand across his tired young eyes.