David turned and walked to the table and sat with his head bowed on his arms. Had he been alone, he would have wept. As it was, he spoke brokenly of his old home, and the responsibilities now so ruthlessly thrust upon him. Of his mother's grief and his own, and of this inheritance that he had never dreamed would be his, and therefore had never desired, now given him by so cruel a blow. He would not shrink from whatever duty or obligation might rest upon him, but how could he adjust his changed circumstances to the conditions he had made for himself by his sudden marriage. At last it was decided that he should sail for England without delay, taking the passage already provisionally engaged for him by Mr. Stretton.
"I can write to Cassandra. She will understand more easily than my mother. She sees into the heart of things. Her thoughts go to the truth like arrows of light. She will see that I must go, but she must never know—I must save her from it if I have to do so at the expense of my own soul—that the reason I cannot take her with me now is that our great friends over there are too small to understand her nature and might despise her. I must go to my mother first and feel my way—see what can be done. Neither of them must be made to suffer."
"That's right, perfectly—but don't wait too long. Just have it out with your mother—all of them; the sooner the simpler, the sooner the simpler."
CHAPTER XXV
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.