Ferdinand finished his College course, and went out, as he had said, into the great world, and Klaus went with him. And so throughout his third year Peer was mostly to be seen alone, always with books under his arm, and head bent forward.
Just as he was getting ready to go up for his final examination, a letter from Ferdinand arrived, written from Egypt. “Come over here, young fellow,” he wrote. “We have got good billets at last with a big British firm—Brown Bros., of London—a firm that’s building railways in Canada, bridges in India, harbour works in Argentina, and canals and barrages here in Egypt. We can get you a nice little post as draughtsman to begin with, and I enclose funds for the passage out. So come along.”
But Peer did not go at once. He stayed on another year at the College, as assistant to the lecturer on mechanics, while himself going through the road and railway construction course, as his half-brother had done. Some secret instinct urged him not to be left behind even in this.
As the year went on the letters from his two comrades became more and more pressing and tempting. “Out here,” wrote Klaus, “the engineer is a missionary, proclaimer, not Jehovah, but the power and culture of Europe. You’re bound to take a hand in that, my boy. There’s work worthy of a great general waiting for you here.”
At last, one autumn day, when the woods stood yellow all around the town, Peer drove away from his home with a big new travelling-trunk strapped to the driver’s seat. He had been up to the churchyard before starting, with a little bunch of flowers for Louise’s grave. Who could say if he would ever see it again?
At the station he stood for a moment looking back over the old city with its cathedral, and the ancient fortress, where the sentry was pacing back and forth against the skyline. Was this the end of his youth? Louise—the room above the stables—the hospital, the lazarette, the College. . . . And there lay the fjord, and far out somewhere on the coast there stood no doubt a little grey fisher-hut, where a pock-marked goodwife and her bow-legged goodman had perhaps even now received the parcel of coffee and tobacco sent them as a parting gift.
And so Peer journeyed to the capital, and from there out into the wide world.