"I have introduced this matter only to show you that I keep nothing in reserve; we are now, I hope, of one mind. Might I ask you to call the Major, and let me join the ladies?"
The Major came, and when Eric was alone with him, naturally related first of all the terrors of the extra train, and that the clattering was no longer a perceptible beat, but one continued rumble. He knew how to imitate it very exactly, and to give the precise difference of sound when going by the stations, and the mountains, and over the dikes.
Eric could have replied that he was accurately acquainted with the road; he had gone over it a few days before, without speaking a word, engaged in his own meditations, but the Major did not suffer himself to be interrupted; he asserted that no one had ever before so rode, and no one would ever ride so again, so long as Europe had its iron rails, for Sonnenkamp had fired up after the American fashion.
Then he said,—
"I have come to know Herr Sonnenkamp very thoroughly, since his son went away. I have, indeed, no son, and cannot enter completely into his way of expressing himself, but such lamentation, such reproaches against himself, such raving, such cursing,—our hardest corporal is a tender nun in comparison—such words he brought out. It must truly be a fact! In countries where good tobacco grows, and snakes and parrots, Fräulein Milch has said, there the soil of men's hearts is much hotter, and there things grow up, and creatures creep out and fly about, such as we have no sort of idea about. And how Frau Ceres carried on, I'll not speak of.
"But you know who first told where the youth is? Fräulein Milch told it. And do you know what she said? 'If I were a young girl, I would run after Herr Eric too, over mountain and valley.' That is to say, she has said that in all honor; she has never loved any one but me, and we have known each other now for nine and forty years, and that is something. But why do we speak of such things now? we shall have time enough for this by and by. You are right, you are smarter than I thought for; it is shrewd in you not to make terms at once. Now he has come to you, into the house, you can make whatever conditions you want to. In his raving he cried,—A million to him who restores my son to me! You can claim the million, it belongs to you; I am witness of that."
Eric declared that he was irresistibly attracted towards the boy, but that he could not come to terms, for it would be the highest kind of ingratitude if he should decline the position that had been offered to him in such a friendly way, and of which a report had certainly been made, before this time, to the Prince.
In what light would he stand with his patron, and with the Prince, who had, besides, grounds of displeasure with him, if he should now say, "Thank you kindly; I have, in the mean while, made a previous engagement elsewhere"? The Major drummed with the fore and middle fingers of his right hand rapidly upon the table, as if his fingers were drumsticks.
"Bad, very bad," he said. "Yes, yes, fate often takes an extra train too; everything has an extra train now-a-days."
Eric said, in addition, that service to an individual had its difficulty; he might perhaps be able to consent to appear ungrateful, and forfeit forever all favor, but he feared lest, in the dependent servitude to the rich man, he might often be troubled with the thought how much more free he might have been in the service of the State.