Seite:Marsh Hallig 1856.djvu/124

124THE HALLIG.

sonage, Mander was already gone, and Hold had now
an opportunity to say a few words to Godber abeut his
relations to Idalia and Maria. But scarcely had he al-
luded to the subject, when Grodber interrupted him with
a cry which, however, sounded in no way like a willful re-
jection of counsel, but rather like an exclamation of
despair, "I know all you are going to say, and rushed
out of the house.
  Idalia waited that evening in vain for his return. She
now indeed wept bitter tears ; though only deeply
wounded pride had at first called them forth, yet as
she ascribed them to the pain of injured love, they had
raised her feelings to the height of real affection.
  The next morning Godber was missing at the breakfast
table, and no one knew whether he had been in the house
during the course of the night. Idalia first saw him
again when, pale and agitated, he passed on before the
funeral procession, carrying the mourning flag.
  Godber had watched that night with the dead, and
excluded every other person from this vigil, reluctant as
the two surviving sailors had been from love to their
old commander and companions to consent to this ar-
rangement. He wished to be alone with the happy
dead and his own unhappy heart. His anguish was
here relieved by tears of sorrow. His whole joyous
childhood, his plays with Maria, the vows he had made
to her, the letters he had written her, the dreams of a
bright future at her side in which he had indulged
through all the perils of the ocean, through all the con-
fused activity incident to his calling, the lonely nights
at the helm, when the waves of foreign seas dashing
round the keel brought, as it were, a greeting from his