Apollonius was talking more and more eagerly to the children. He had failed to hear the remark or he did not want to let the angry woman know whose face he carried so vividly within him. He would have recognized the little ones, if they had met him by chance, as his brother's children by their resemblance to their mother. But the question how they had become so quickly intimate with him ought to have been put to old Valentine. It was he who had been continually telling them about the uncle who was soon coming to see them—perhaps only so as to be able to talk with some one about what he liked to talk of so much. The brother and the sister-in-law avoided such conversations, and the father did not make himself familiar enough with the old fellow to talk with him about matters which might give him an excuse to drop into any kind of intimacy. Old Valentine would also have been able to say that the children had not met their uncle just by chance. They had come to find him. Old Valentine had thought of how love that has waited long hurries to meet thousands of homecomers; it had hurt him to think that his favorite alone should fail to find any greeting before he knocked at his father's door.
Apollonius suddenly ceased speaking. He was shocked to think that his embarrassment had caused him to forget his father. His brother understood his start and said with relief: "He's in the little garden." Apollonius jumped up and hurried out.
There, among his beds, crouched the figure of the old gentleman. He was still following old Valentine's shears with his critical hands as the servant slipped along on his knees before him. He found many an inequality which the fellow had to remove at once. It was no wonder. Twice every minute old Valentine thought: "Now he's coming!" And when he thought thus the shears cut crookedly right into the bog. And the old gentleman would have growled in quite another manner if the same thought had not made uncertain the hand that was now his eye.
Apollonius stood before his father and could not speak for pain. He had long known that his father was blind and had often pictured him to himself in sorrowful thought. At such times he had seen him looking as usual, only with a shield over his eyes. He had thought of him sitting or leaning on old Valentine, but never as he now saw him, the tall figure helpless as a child, the trembling and uncertain hands feeling their way. Now he knew for the first time what it meant to be blind.
Valentine laid the shears down and laughed or cried on his knees; it could not be said what he did. The old gentleman first inclined his head to one side as if listening, then he pulled himself together. Apollonius saw that his father felt his blindness to be something of which he must be ashamed. He saw how the old man exerted himself to avoid every movement that might recall the fact that he was blind. The old gentleman felt that the new-comer was somewhere near him. But where? On which side? Apollonius understood that his father felt this uncertainty with shame, and forced himself to cry with a voice that almost failed him. "Father! Dear father!" He dropped on his knees beside the old man and wanted to throw both arms around him. His father made a motion which seemed to beg for forbearance, though it was only intended to keep the young man away from him. Apollonius threw the arms his father had refused around his own breast to hold the pain there which, if it had risen and crossed his lips, would have betrayed to his father how deeply he felt the latter's misery. The same consideration made old Valentine turn his involuntary motion to help the old gentleman to stand upright, into a movement to pick up the shears which lay between him and his master. He too wanted to hide from the son what could not be hidden, so faithfully and deeply had he learned to live in the father's feelings.
The old gentleman had risen and held out his hand to his son much as if the latter had been absent as many days as he had been years. "You must be tired and hungry! I am somewhat troubled with my eyes—but it is of no consequence. As regards the business, talk to Fritz. I have given it up. I want to have peace. But that is not the real reason; young people must become independent some time. It makes them more eager to work."
He came a step nearer his son. He seemed to be carrying on a struggle within himself. He wanted to say something which no one should hear except his son. But he was silent. Why did he suppress what he wanted to say? Did it concern the business, or the honor of the house? And did he know or suspect that the one who was now responsible for both in his place was standing leaning against the gate of the little garden and could hear what he said to the new-comer, or, if he spoke secretly to him, could at least see that he did so? Was this why he had had Apollonius called home from abroad? And did the expression of a "why" now still seem to him incompatible with his position?
It was a curious party at the midday meal. The old gentleman dined alone in his little room as usual. The children too had been sent away, and did not come in again until after the meal. The young wife was more in the kitchen or elsewhere out of the room than at the table; and if she did once sit down there for a few minutes, she was as dumb as she had been when Apollonius greeted her; the resentful cloud did not pass from her forehead. Fritz was accustomed to his father's condition, which pierced Apollonius' heart with the keenness of new-felt pain. He talked only of the old man's oddities; old Blue-coat did not know what he wanted himself, and made life needlessly unpleasant for himself and all the others in the house. If Apollonius began to talk of the business, of the repairs to be made to the roof of St. George's, his brother spoke of pleasures with which he was glad to be able to make his brother's stay with him more agreeable—and he always mentioned this stay as he would a passing visit. When Apollonius told him he had not come to enjoy himself but to work, he laughed as if it were an incomparable joke that Apollonius should want to help to do nothing, and showed that he understood wit, however dry might be its expression. Then, when his wife had gone out of the room, he asked about his brother's understanding with his cousin's daughter, and then laughed again at his brother wag, in whom no one would recognize the old dreamer.
After dinner the children came in again, and with them more life and easy familiarity. While the old conditions still confronted Apollonius as new and strange, to the children what was new had already become old and familiar. All the afternoon Fritz, and apparently his wife too, were occupied only with a ball that was to be given. Fritz forgot more and more whatever might have caused him uneasiness, in thinking of the impression that he, as the chief person, would make on the new-comer at the festivity, and made use of the time till it should begin in giving him a foretaste of the affair by means of tales and hints dropped of the honor and attention shown him on such occasions by the most prominent citizens. He became noticeably more cheerful, and walked more and more proudly up and down the room. The creaking of his well-polished shoes said for the present, before the guests at the ball could do so: "Ah, there he is! Ah, there he is!" And when at intervals he jingled the money in his trousers-pockets all the corners of the hall rang with: "Now the fun will begin! Now the fun will begin!" And thither among those who were welcoming the guests—but he was no longer walking, he was gliding, swimming on the music—every dance was a jubilant overture on the name Nettenmair—he felt no floor, no feet, no legs beneath him, he scarcely still felt young Frau Nettenmair swimming along beside him, hanging to his right fin, the most beautiful among the beautiful, just as he was the most jovial among the jovial, the thumb on the hand of the ball.
And two hours later cries of "There he is!" really did ring from all sides and all the corners shouted: "Now the fun will begin!" Wherever they passed chairs were offered them. No hand was shaken as often and as long as that of jovial Fritz Nettenmair, no member of the company had so much sincere praise poured into his ears as he. But then, how agreeable he was! How condescendingly he accepted all this deserved homage! How witty he showed himself; how pleasantly he laughed! And not at his own jokes alone—there was no art in that; they were so brilliant that he had to laugh even if he didn't want to—he laughed at others too, little as they deserved it, compared with his. There were people, to be sure, who paid little attention to him, but he did not notice them; and those who showed it more plainly were "Philistines, everyday fellows, insignificant people," as he whispered to his brother with contemptuous pity. It was quite peculiar: everyone's greater or lesser importance as a man and a citizen could be measured with perfect exactitude by the degree of his admiration for Fritz Nettenmair.