When Valentine returned he was no longer the same man who had gone out. He was confused and embarrassed, but in a very different way from what he had been before. He appeared constantly on the point of doing or saying something, became suddenly frightened and did and said something entirely different, and then seemed uncertain whether he should not be frightened at that too. At first the young wife did not notice the change in him, but soon she began to watch him curiously and with increasing apprehension. Gradually she became infected by his behavior. When he laughed involuntarily she glowed with hope, and when he put on a long face she clasped her hands convulsively together and turned pale; sometimes she pressed her hands to her beating heart, sometimes to her burning, hammering temples. At last Valentine considered her sufficiently prepared, to abandon the weather topic. "It is a day," said he, "when men might rise from the dead, and who knows—but please, for my sake, don't be frightened." She became frightened, however. She said to herself, "But it isn't possible." And she was all the more frightened because it was not only possible but certain. "Look toward the back of the house," sobbed Valentine, attempting to laugh. She had looked before he told her to do so. She held fast to the door post as she heard footsteps in the shed. But even the door post no longer stood firmly, she herself stood no longer on firm ground; she rocked dizzily between heaven and earth. When she saw him coming, there was nothing in the world for her except the man for whom she had suffered weeks of death-agony; everything whirled about her in a circle, the walls, the floor, the ceiling, the trees, the sky and the green earth; it was as if the whole world would sink from under her and drag her into its vortex if she did not hold fast to him. She felt herself fall to the ground, and then she knew nothing more.
Apollonius caught her as she fell. He stood and held in his arms the beautiful woman whom he loved, who loved him. She was pale and seemed dead. He did not carry her into the room, he did not let her fall to the ground, he did nothing to revive her. He stood bewildered; he did not know what had happened to him, he had to collect himself. Valentine had not yet spoken with him, he had only heard from the journeyman who was hastening to St. George's that Apollonius was following him and would soon be there. Apollonius had been detained at the gate for a moment by the nail-smith. He had then made haste to obey his father's command which he, however, found surprising, as he could discover no reason for it. He had heard of the slater's death in Tambach; but he did not know that rumor had confused the names of the two places, and that it was possible for anybody to believe that the accident had occurred to him. Absolutely unprepared for that which was to happen in the next moment, he came through the shed. He had meant to go straight to his father in his room, when, seeing Christiane fall fainting to the ground, he hastened toward her. Now he held her in his arms. Slowly her deep blue eyes opened. She looked at him and recognized him. She did not know how she had come into his arms, she did not know that she lay there, she knew only that he lived. She wept and laughed at the same time, and put both arms around him to be sure that he was there. She asked in yearning, anxious eagerness: "Is it you? Are you really here? Are you still alive? You didn't fall? I didn't kill you? You are you, and I am I? But he—he may come." She gazed about wildly. "He will kill you. He will not rest till he has killed you." She clasped him to her as if she wanted to cover him with her body from the enemy, then she forgot all fears in the certainty that he still lived, and she laughed and wept and asked him again if it were really he, and if he were alive. But she must warn him. She must tell him everything that the other had done—and what he had threatened to do to him. She must do it quickly; any minute he might come. Warning, sweet unconscious love-words, weeping, laughter, blessed gladness, fear, anguish over lost happiness, bride-like embarrassment, forgetfulness of the world in the one moment which was life to her—all this trembled through each quivering word she uttered. "He lied to you and to me. He told me that you jeered at me and that you had offered my flower to the highest bidder. You know, at the Whitsun feast, the little blue-bell that I laid there. And you sent it to him. I saw it. I did not know why I was sorry for you. Then he told me during the dance that you had laughed at me. You went away, and he told me you made fun of me in your letters. That hurt me. You don't know how it hurt, even though I did not know why. Father wanted me to marry him. And when you came I was afraid of you, but I was still sorry for you and I loved you though I did not know it. It was he who first told me so. Then I avoided you—I didn't want to become a bad woman—and I still don't want to. Then he compelled me to lie. And he made threats of what he would do to you. He would see to it that you fell and were killed. It was only a joke, he said, but if I told you, then he would do it in earnest. Since then I have not slept a night, I have sat up in my bed and been full of deadly fear. I saw you in danger and could not tell you and could not help you. And he made slits in the rope with the ax the night before you went to Brambach. Valentine told me that our neighbor had seen him creeping into the shed. I thought you were dead, and I wanted to die too. For I was the cause of your death, when I would die a thousand times to save you. And now you are alive and I cannot grasp it. Everything is just as it was, the trees, the shed, the sky, and you are not dead. And I wanted to die because you were dead. And now you are alive, and I don't know whether it is true or whether I am dreaming. Is it true? Tell me, is it true? I will believe anything you say. And if you tell me that I must die, I will die. But he may be coming! Perhaps he has been listening! Tell Valentine to go to the court and have him taken away, so that he can do you no more harm."
Thus the feverish woman went on raving, laughing and weeping in his arms. Forgetting everything, like a child playing on the edge of an abyss of which it knows nothing, she unconsciously called into life a danger more deadly than the one which had just been averted, more threatening than the one from which she wanted to guard the man with her body. She did not realize what her passionate movements, the sweetness of her reckless abandon, her caresses, her warm, throbbing embraces must arouse in the man who loved her; that she was doing everything that could make the man whose uprightness and honor she trusted so blindly, forget uprightness and honor in the tumult of his blood. She had no idea what a conflict she was kindling in him, and how hard, if not impossible she was making the victory. Now he knew that the woman in his arms was his, that his brother had defrauded him of her and her of him. Now he knew it, while the woman in his arms revealed to him the greatness of the happiness of which his brother had robbed him. The brother had stolen her and had ill-treated her; and for all that he had suffered and done for his brother's sake, he now persecuted him and sought his life. Did the woman belong to him who had stolen and ill-treated her, to him whom she hated—or to him from whom she had been infamously stolen, who loved her and whom she loved? These were not clearly defined thoughts, but countless detached sensations which, borne along in a stream of deep, wild feeling, rushed through his veins and made taut the muscles in his arms—to clasp to his heart that which was his! But a vague, dark fear rose counter to this current and stiffened his muscles in a convulsive cramp—the feeling that he wanted to do something and did not know what it was or where it might lead him, a far-off recollection that he had made a vow and would break it if he now let himself be carried away. He struggled for a long time beneath the flow of intoxicating sounds before he realized that he was struggling and that the thing for which he struggled was clearness, the fundamental requirement of his nature. At last this clearness came to him and said: "The vow that you have made is to uphold the honor of your house, and what you want to do now will destroy it forever." He was the man, and must answer for himself and for her. The treachery of which he with a touch, with a glance, might be guilty toward this woman whose trust in him was so unbounded, stood before him in all its blackness. There still stood, protectingly, a holy reserve between him and her, which a single touch, a single glance might dispel forever. He looked anxiously about for a helper. If only Valentine would come! Then he would have to let her go from his arms. Valentine did not come. But shame at his weakness that sought help from without, became his helper. He gently laid the defenseless woman down. Not until he felt the soft limbs slip from his grasp did he lose her. He had to turn away and could not choke back a loud sob. Just then the youngest boy peeped curiously into the yard. He hastened to him, took him in his arms, pressed him to his heart and placed him between him and her. It was strange; the pressure with which he clasped the child to his heart relieved his wild yearning and his tense muscles relaxed. In the child he had clasped her to his heart in the only way he dared hold her close to him.
She saw him place the child between him and her and understood him. A burning flush rose to the roots of her brown, unruly locks. She knew now for the first time that she had lain in his arms, had embraced him, had talked to him as only unforbidden love may talk. She saw now for the first time the abyssmal danger in which she had placed him and herself. She raised herself up on her knees, as if she wanted to beseech him not to despise her. Then it occurred to her that her husband might have been listening and might still carry out his threat. Through her joy over his escape she might still be his destruction. He saw all this and suffered with her. He had gained the conflict with himself not to show her what was going on within him, but he had not yet fought the inward struggle to its end. He leaned toward her and said "Above us and your husband is God. Go in now, sister, my dear, good sister." She dared not look up but through her closed lids she saw the benevolence, the deep, inexhaustible kindliness, the indelible respect for man which shone in his eyes and played about his gentle mouth. And as he was her conscious and unconscious standard, so now she knew that she was not bad, could not become so, he would carry her in his strong arms, protected, as a mother carries her child. Herr Nettenmair came from the shed toward them accompanied by the journey-man. Fritz Nettenmair who followed them saw Apollonius lead Christiane to the house door.
When Herr Nettenmair came home, nothing was to be read in his crusty face of all that he had suffered and planned that day. The young wife and Valentine had to listen to a sermon on unfounded imaginings, for the story had proved to be as it was, not as Valentine had imagined it in his fear. He spoke of Fritz Nettenmair's trip as one which his son had had in contemplation for a long time but to which he had not consented until today. Apollonius was told to bring the account books into the old gentleman's room at once.
He had to read them aloud to the old gentleman; a curiously purposeless task, for neither of them had his mind on the figures. And moreover the old gentleman behaved as if he knew all about everything already. Valentine came and received various instructions relative to the departure of the elder son. An hour later he returned, having performed his duties. He told how Fritz Nettenmair was looking forward to his new life in America. They would be astonished when they saw him again. He could hardly await the time. The old gentleman's courage revived. Grimly he commanded Apollonius to go to bed; the work they had begun could be continued another time.
Disquieted, like a tortured spirit, now wringing his hands, now clenching his fists, Fritz Nettenmair wandered from the shed to the house and from the house again to the shed. With each round he made, his soul rose up in the wildest defiance and sank again into despairing helplessness. His heart cried out for a word of love. His arms stretched out convulsively to press something to his heart which was his, that he might know he was not lost. For nobody is lost who has somebody in the world to love. Endowed of a sudden with renewed strength, he hastened through the house door into the room where his children lay. A night-light protected by a shade shone brightly enough for the father to see his children. He sank on his knees before the nearest little bed. A long forgotten sound rose to his lips and he whispered it, yearningly as never before. "Fritz!" He only wanted to clasp his children to his heart once, to see their love and then to go; to go and become another man, a better one, a happier one. The little fellow awakened: he thought his mother had called. Smilingly he opened his eyes and—shivered with fright. He feared the man standing at his bedside; one he knew so well, and yet more strange than a stranger to him. It was the man who had given him such angry glances, the man from whom his mother had locked him in his room that he might not see what the man did to her. But he had got up trembling and listened at the door; and clenched his little fists in powerless rage.
"Fritz," said the father anxiously, "I am going away and I shall not come back. But I will send you beautiful apples and picture-books, and think of you a thousand times a minute."
"I don't want them," replied the boy, frightened but defiant. "Uncle
'Lonius gives me apples. I don't want yours."
"Don't you love me either?" asked the father in a breaking voice at the second little bed. George took flight into his brother's bed. There the children clung to each other in fright. Scorn and repugnance were reflected in George's face. "I love mother and I love Uncle 'Lonius, but I don't like you. Let me alone; I'll tell Uncle 'Lonius."