They held one another in a close embrace. He kissed her hair, her forehead, her lips; she leant her head, sobbing, on his shoulder.
“Oh! my God! is it possible? This morning—even when I came in at the door—here, see! see! I wanted to give you this—my treasure! I meant to part with it, to renounce all happiness. And now, now! I may keep it, may I not, and look to my lord, as the needle does to the pole? I have learnt it from it.”
She kissed the compass and let it slip again into her pocket, and threw her arms again round Reinhold, and said:
“And now, my dearest, that you know that I will be true to you, waking and sleeping, and will be your wife, and will follow you to the ends of the world whenever you call me, do not call me yet, but leave me here with my father, whose support and comfort I am in this affliction, with my Aunt Valerie, who clings to me in the anguish of her heart. Ah! there is so much suffering which I only partly guess, but which does not therefore the less exist, and which I know will overflow so soon as I turn my back. It will perhaps come even now, and I cannot check it, but I shall have done my duty, you know, as Meta would say.”
The old sweet smile gleamed in the brown eyes which shone upon him. “We must just have patience and be sensible, and love each other very, very much, and then everything must come right, will it not, my darling?”
“The man who knows himself beloved by you,” whispered Reinhold, “can only fear one thing in this world—not to deserve your love.”
XIII
The two friends wandered up and down the brightly-illuminated platform of the station, waiting for the train. Uncle Ernst’s carriage which had brought them, had come very quickly, the train was only just being made up, they had still nearly half an hour.
“You will not stop in Sundin?” said Justus.
“Only tomorrow,” answered Reinhold; “I hope that will suffice to present myself before the President, and my immediate superiors, the Government surveyor, and the other gentlemen, and to receive my instructions.”
“I think the President has been here,” said Justus, “for the last four days. He is to be Chairman of the Board for the new railway. They made him the most splendid offer, I am told.”
“So the papers say, but I do not believe it,” answered Reinhold. “A man like the President could not agree to such a project, and moreover, if he were here, he would certainly have sent for me.”
“And the day after tomorrow you will be at your post with a northeaster whistling in your ears, and will swagger about in your pilot coat. What a lucky man you are!”
Justus sighed; Reinhold looked at his friend, who, with downcast eyes walked dejectedly beside him, and then burst into a fit of laughter.
“It is all very well to laugh,” said Justus; “ ‘laden with foreign treasures, he returns to his former home,’ but how do I stand? A leafless stem.”
“Do not cry yourself down, Justus.”
“Ah! cry myself down!” said Justus; “do you mean to say that it is not enough to drive a poor fellow mad! I meant to have spared you this today, so as not to disturb your happiness and joy; but perhaps it is better for me to tell you now, instead of writing to you as I intended. You will be in his immediate neighbourhood, and will surely do me the kindness to go over some day and appeal to the old gentleman’s conscience—though I don’t believe he is old.”
“Alack!” said Reinhold, “blows the wind in that quarter?”
“And how it blows!” cried Justus, “so that one can neither see nor hear. You know that Meta wrote to me on her arrival that everything was going capitally. Mamma was, as she foresaw, entirely on her side, but papa, of course, made a tremendous row—only then, as she also foretold, to give in utterly a little while after, supposing that the ‘stonecutter’ could maintain his daughter suitably, as he could give her nothing—not a shilling—he was a poor, ruined man. Good! I accept the ruined father-in-law, and he accepts me upon my showing that I had already for some years made—but you know all about that, and I only repeat it now to set before you in its proper light the abominable treachery of this man.”
Justus had halted under a lamp, and took a letter out of his pocket. “If the spelling leaves something to be desired, the letters are big enough, as you see, and the interpretation is clear enough from one point of view at any rate.”
Justus struck the crumpled leaf with the back of his hand, and read:
“ ‘Sir’ (the first time I was ‘Dear Sir’),
“ ‘In consequence of a telegram that I have just received from Berlin, the state of my affairs is so completely altered, my daughter’s future prospects are so entirely changed, that the position which you can offer her at the best no longer appears sufficient to me; and before I give a final answer’—as if he had not done so already, the Jesuit!—‘I must, as a conscientious man and provident father, beg for a few weeks delay, until the fortunate conjuncture of circumstances which has just occurred for me can be completely gone into.
“I can’t read that—but it is enough!”
And Justus crumpled up the unfortunate letter, and with a scornful snort stuffed it again into his pocket.
“Am I not right, Reinhold? Every possible difficulty stands in your path, I admit, but through it all, at the worst, you have to deal with a man who is
