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 clustering 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 spaces 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 Cassandra, voluminously. He found it a pleasant way of passing the hours. He described his surroundings and unfolded such of his anticipations 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 embarrassment 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 encompassed 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 pass 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.