IN WHICH DAVID THRYNG VISITS HIS MOTHER

How wise was the advice of the old doctor to make short work of the confession to his mother, and to face the matter of his marriage bravely with his august friends and connections, David little knew. If his marriage had been rash in its haste, nothing in the future should be done rashly. Possibly he might be obliged to return to America before he made a full revelation that a wife awaited him in that far and but dimly appreciated land. In his mind the matter resolved itself into a question of time and careful adjustment.

Slowly as the boat ploughed through the never resting waters,--slowly as the western land with its dreams and realities drifted farther into the vapors that blended the line of the land and the sea,--so slowly the future unveiled itself and drew him on, into its new dreams, revealing, with the inevitable progression of the hours, a life heretofore shrouded and only vaguely imagined, as a glowing reality filled with opportunity and power.

He felt his whole nature expand and become imbued with intoxicating ambitions, as if hereafter he would be swept onward to ride through life triumphant, even as the boat was riding the sea, surmounting its mysterious depths and taking its unerring way in spite of buffeting of winds and beating of waves.

Still young, with renewed vitality, his hopes turned to the future, recognizing the tremendous scope for his energies which his own particular prospects presented. Often he stood alone in the prow, among the coils of rope, and watched the distance unroll before him, while the salt breeze played with his cl.u.s.tering hair and filled his lungs. He loved the long sweep of the prow, as it divided the water and cast it foaming on either side, in opaline and turquoise tints, shifting and falling into the indigo depths of the vastness around.

In thought he spanned the wide s.p.a.ces and leaped still toward the future; before him the gray-haired mother who trembled to hold him once more in her arms, behind him the young wife waiting his return, enclosing him serenely and adoringly in her heart.

Each day while on shipboard, David wrote to Ca.s.sandra, voluminously. He found it a pleasant way of pa.s.sing the hours. He described his surroundings and unfolded such of his antic.i.p.ations as he felt she could best understand and with which she could sympathize, trying to explain to her what the years to come might hold for them both, and telling her always to wait with patience for his return. This could not be known definitely until he had looked into the state of his uncle's affairs--which would hereafter be his own.

Sometimes his letter contained only a review of some of the happiest hours they had spent together, as if he were placing his thoughts of those blessed days on paper, that they might be for their mutual communing. Sometimes he discoursed of the calamity he had suffered, the uselessness of his brother's death, and the cruelty and wastefulness of war. At such times he was minded to write her of the opportunity now given him to serve his country, and the power he might some day attain to promote peace and avert rash legislation.

Never once did he allow an inadvertent word to slip from his pen, whereby she could suspect that she, as his wife, might be a cause of embarra.s.sment to him, or a clog in the wheel of the chariot which from now on was to bear him triumphantly among his social friends or political enemies. Never would he disturb the sweet serenity that encompa.s.sed her. Yet well he knew what an incongruity she would appear should he present her now--as she had stood by her loom, or in the ploughed field at his side--to the company he would find in his mother's home.

Simple and direct as she was, she would walk over their conventions and proprieties, and never know it. How strange many of those customs of theirs would appear to her, and how unnecessary! He feared for her most in her utter ignorance of everything pertaining to the daily existence of the over-civilized circle to which the changed conditions of his life would bring her.

Much, he knew, would pa.s.s unseen by her, but soon she would begin to understand, and to wince under their exclamations of "How extraordinary!" The masklike expression would steal over her face, her pride would encase her spirit in the deep reserve he himself had found so hard to penetrate, and he could see her withdrawing more and more from all, until at last-- Ah! it must not be. He must manage very carefully, lest Doctor Hoyle's prophecy indeed be fulfilled.

At last the lifting of the veil to the eastward revealed the bold promontory of Land's End, and soon, beyond, the fair green slopes of his own beautiful Old England. For all of the captious criticism he had fallen in the way of bestowing upon her, how he loved her! He felt as if he must throw up his arms and shout for joy. Suddenly she had become his, with a sense of possession new to him, and sweet to feel. The orderliness and stereotyped lines of her social system against which he had rebelled, and the iron bars of her customs which his soul had abhorred in the past,--against which his spirit had bruised and beaten itself,--now lured him on as a security for things stable and fine. In subtile ways as yet unrealized, he was being drawn back into the cage from which he had fled for freedom and life.

How quickly he had become accustomed to the air of deference in Mr.

Stretton's continual use of his newly acquired t.i.tle--"my lord." Why not? It was his right. The same laws which had held him subservient before, now gave him this, and he who a few months earlier had been proudly ploughing his first furrows in his little leased farm on a mountain meadow, now walked with lifted head, "to the manor born," along the platform, and entered the first-cla.s.s compartment with Mr. Stretton, where a few rich Americans had already installed themselves.

David noticed, with inward amus.e.m.e.nt, their surrept.i.tious glances, when the lawyer addressed him; how they plumed themselves, yet tried to appear nonchalant and indifferent to the fact that they were riding in the same compartment with a lord. In time he would cease to notice even such incongruities as this tacit homage from a professedly t.i.tle-scorning people.

David's mother had moved into the town house, whither his uncle had sent for her, when, stricken with grief, he had lain down for his last brief illness. The old servants had all been retained, and David was ushered to his mother's own sitting-room by the same household dignitary who was wont to preside there when, as a lad, he had been allowed rare visits to his cousins in the city.

How well he remembered his fine, punctilious old uncle, and the feeling of awe tempered by antic.i.p.ation with which he used to enter those halls.

He was overwhelmed with a sense of loss and disaster as he glanced up the great stairway where his cousins were wont to come bounding down to him, handsome, hearty, romping lads.

It had been a man's household, for his aunt had been dead many years--a man's household characterized by a man's sense of heavy order without the many touches of feminine occupation and arrangement which tend to soften a man's half military reign. As he was being led through the halls, he noticed a subtile change which warmed his quick senses. Was it the presence of his mother and Laura? His entrance interrupted an animated conversation which was being held between the two as the manservant announced his name, and, in another instant, his mother was in his arms.

"Dear little mother! Dear little mother!" But she was not small. She was tall and dignified, and David had to stoop but little to bring his eyes level with hers.

"David, I'm here, too." A hand was laid on his arm, and he released his mother to turn and look into two warm brown eyes.

"And so the little sister is grown up," he said, embracing her, then holding her off at arm's-length. "Five years! When I look at you, mother, they don't seem so long--but Laura here!"

"You didn't expect me to stay a little girl all my life, did you, David?"

"No, no." He took her by the shoulder and shook her a little and pinched her cheeks. "What roses! Why, sis, I say, you know, I'm proud of you.

What have you been up to, anyway?" He flung himself on the sofa and pulled her down beside him. "Give an account of yourself."

"I've gone in for athletics."

"Right."

"And-- Oh! lots of things. You give an account of yourself."

David glanced at his mother. She was seated opposite them, regarding him with br.i.m.m.i.n.g eyes. No, he could not give an account of himself yet. He would wait until he and his mother were alone. He lifted Laura's heavy hair, which, confined only by a great bow of black ribbon, hung streaming down her back, in a dark ma.s.s that gave her a tousled, unkempt look, and which, taken together with her dead black dress, and her dark tanned skin, roughened by exposure to wind and sun, greatly marred her beauty, in spite of her roses and the warmth of her large dark eyes.

As David surveyed his sister, he thought of Ca.s.sandra, and was minded then and there to describe her--to attempt to unveil the events of the past year, and make them see and know, as far as possible, what his life had been. He held this thought a moment, poised ready for utterance--a moment of hesitation as to how to begin, and then forever lost, as his mother began speaking.

"Laura hasn't come out yet. As events have turned, it is just as well, for her chances, naturally, will be much better now than they would have been if we had had her coming out last year."

"I don't see how, mamma, with all this heavy black. I can't come out until I leave it off, and it will be so long to wait." Laura pouted a little, discontentedly, then flushed a disfiguring flush of shame under her dark skin, as she caught the look in her brother's eyes. "Not but what I shall keep on mourning for Bob, as long as I live--he was such a dear," she added, her eyes filling with quick, impulsive tears. "But how you make out my chances will be better now, mamma, I can't see, really,--I look such a fright."

"Chances for what?" asked David, dryly.

"For matrimony--naturally," his sister flung out defiantly, half smiling through her tears. "Don't you know that's all a girl of my age lives for--matrimony and a kennel? I mean to have one, now we will have our own preserves. It will be ripping, you know."

"Certainly, our own preserves," said David, still dryly, thinking how Ca.s.sandra would wonder what preserves were, and what she would say if told that in preserves, wild harmless animals were kept from being killed by the common people for food, in order that those of his own cla.s.s might chase them down and kill them for their amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Oh, David, I remember how you used to be always putting on a look like that, and thinking a lot of nasty things under your breath. I hoped you would come home vastly improved. Was it what I said about matrimony?

Mamma knows it's true."

"Hardly as you put it, my child; there is much besides for a girl to think about."

"You said 'chances' yourself, mamma."

"Certainly, but that is for me to consider. You must remember that it was you who refused to have your coming out last year."

"I didn't want my good times cut short then, mamma, and have to take up proprieties--or at least I would have had to be dreadfully proper for a while, anyway--and now--why I have to be naturally; and here I am unable to come out for another year yet and my hair streaming down my back all the time. I'm sure I can't see how my chances are in the least improved by it all; and by that time I shall be so old."

"Oh, you will be quite young enough," said David.

"You occupy a far different position now, child. To make your debut as Lady Laura will give you quite another place in the world. Your headstrong postponement, fortunately, will do no harm. It will make your introduction to the circle where you are eventually to move, much simpler."

Laura lifted her eyebrows and glanced from her mother to her brother.

"Very well, mamma, but one thing you might as well know now. I shan't drop some of my friends--if being Lady Laura lifts me above them as high as the moon. I like them, and I don't care."

She whistled, and a beautiful, silken-haired setter crept from under the sofa whereon she had been sitting, and wriggled about after the manner of guilty dogs.

"Laura, dear!"

"Yes, mamma, I've been hiding him with my skirts by sitting there. He was bad and followed me in. We've been out riding together." She stroked his silken coat with her riding crop. "Mamma won't allow him in here, and he jolly well knows it. Bad Zip, bad, sir! Look at him. Isn't he clever? I must go and dress for dinner. Mamma wants you to herself, I know, and Mr. Stretton will be here soon. You can't think, David, how glad I am we have you back! You couldn't think it from my way--but I am--rather! It's been awful here--simply awful, since the boys all left."

Again her eyes filled with quick tears, and she dashed out with the dog bounding about her and leaping up to thrust his great tongue in her face. "You are too big for the house, Zip. Down, sir!" In an instant she was back, putting her tousled head in at the door.

"David, when mamma is finished with you, come out and see my dogs. I have five already, and Nancy is going to litter soon. Calkins is to take them into the country to-morrow, for they are just cooped up here." She withdrew, and David heard her heavy-soled shoes clatter down the long halls. He and his mother smiled as they listened, looking into each other's eyes.

"She is a dear child, but life means only a good time to her as yet."

"Well, let it. She has splendid stuff in her and is bound to make a splendid woman."