VI

“Oh, you’re lying to me!” Karen screamed, as Christian handed her the

jewel-box. He had not even spoken, but his gesture had promised her the

incredible; and she screamed to guard herself against the ravage of a

premature delight.

The greed with which she opened the little lock and lifted the top of

the box was indescribable. Her blood fled from beneath her skin. She

felt throttled. There lay the lustrous pearls, with their faint tints

of pink and lilac. “Latch the door!” she hissed, and raced to do it,

since he seemed too slow. She shot the bolt and turned the key. For a

moment she stood still and pressed her hands to her head. Then she went

back to the jewels.

She touched the pearls with timid finger-tips. She had two fears:

the pearls seemed as warm as living flesh; her own touch, though so

gentle, might have been too rough. The glance she turned upon Christian

faltered like a wounded bird. Suddenly she grasped his left hand

brutally with both of hers, bowed deep down, and pressed her mouth to

it.

“Don’t, Karen, don’t,” Christian stammered, but he sought in vain to

draw his hand from her furious clasp. More than a minute she crouched

there on her knees, over his hand, and he saw the flesh of her back

quiver under the cloth of her garment. “Be sensible, Karen,” he begged

her, and tried to persuade himself that he neither felt a profound

stirring of the soul nor gazed into the depth of another. “What are you

doing, Karen? Please don’t!”

She released him, and he left her. Behind him she locked the door

again. It was a curious circumstance that she took off her shoes and

thus approached the treasure. When she was not beholding it, she still

doubted its presence. With disconnected gestures, full of fear, she

finally lifted the pearls from their case. At every soft clink she

sighed and looked around. The unexpected length and weight of the

chain amazed her utterly. Gently she let it glide upon the floor, then

followed it first on her knees, then with her whole body, until she

had brought her lips, her breath, her eyes as near as possible to that

gleaming splendour. She counted the pearls, and counted them again.

She made an error. Once she counted one hundred and thirty-three, and

another time one hundred and thirty-seven. Then she counted no more,

but looked at single pearls and breathed upon them, or moistened her

finger and touched them.

She started at a rustling in the outer hall; then she again sunk her

whole self into the act of seeing. She dreamed herself into rooms which

had known the glow of these marvels, into the bodies of women whom they

had adorned, into coils of events in which they had played a part.

Shivers ran over her body. She fought with the desire to place the

pearls about her own neck. First it seemed blasphemous rashness; then

it seemed conceivable after all. She arose softly, held the necklace in

her hand, and slipped it over her head. On tip-toe she walked to the

mirror, and peered at her image from half-closed lids. It was here,

here with her, and she wore it like that woman in the picture. The

pearls were on her body--the pearls!

Evening came upon her, then night, but it brought no sleep. The pearls

were in bed with her, close to her breast, warm by her skin. She felt

them to assure herself of their presence; she listened to vague noises

in the house, which were like threats of robbery to her. Then she lit a

lamp and gazed at the pearls, and already she knew some of them. They

turned faces upon her, and whispered to her, and were distinguishable

through a warmer glow or a more pallid tint. Some of these were

familiar and some quite strange, but they were all here--a shimmering

wonder and a new life.

Thus too she passed the day that came and the night that followed the

day. She knew that disease was burrowing in her body. She had expected

it to show; but when it came, it was not with sudden violence but with

treacherous sloth. One part of her after another was affected, and at

last she could move freely no longer. She knew, too, that it was no

ordinary indisposition from which one recovers within a few days. She

felt it to be a process as of ripening which brings a fruit to its

fall, as a concentration of the hostile forces that had before been

scattered in effectiveness and in time. The life she had lived demanded

a reckoning. The physician in the Hamburg hospital had foretold it all

months before; now the time had come. She was very undemonstrative

about her condition. She lay quietly in bed. She suffered no pain, and

had but little fever.

Lying still there did not make her impatient. She was glad of the

necessity; there was no better way of guarding the pearls. People

might come and go. She had her treasure next her body, beside her very

breast. She was sure of it at every moment and with every movement,

and no one was the wiser. She pictured to herself what they would say

and do, if she were to show them her secret treasure, if she were to

call in one of those who all unconsciously passed her door or climbed

the rickety stairs, or some one from the street or the tavern or the

grog-shop--a poor fellow who had slaved all week, or a woman who

sold her body for three marks, or another who had seven children to

feed. In concentrated triumph she looked through the window at the

rows of windows across the street. There lived the others whom misery

throttled and in whom suffering whined. Like ants they crept about in

the tall houses from cellar to garret, and had no suspicion of Karen’s

pearls. Karen’s pearls! How that sounded and sang and glowed and

glimmered--Karen’s pearls....

At last the secrecy became a burden. She did not enjoy her great

possession as she would have done, had but one other shared the

knowledge of it. She needed at least one other pair of eyes. She

thought of Isolde Schirmacher, but the girl was too talkative and too

stupid. She thought of the wife of Gisevius, of a seamstress on the

fourth floor, of the huckstress in the street, of Amadeus Voss.

At last she hit upon Ruth Hofmann. The girl seemed the least harmful of

all, and she determined to show her the pearls.

Under the pretext of asking the girl to fetch her something from the

apothecary’s, she sent a message to the Hofmanns, and Ruth came in.

Karen waited until Isolde had left the room; then she sat up and asked

the girl to lock the door. Then she said: “Come here!” She turned the

coverlet aside, and there lay the great heap of pearls upon the linen.

“Look at that,” she said. “Those are real pearls, and they’re mine.

But if you mention it to anybody, God help you, or my name ain’t Karen

Engelschall.”

Ruth was amazed. Yet she looked on the pearls not with womanish

desirousness, but like an imaginative soul beholding a marvel of

the natural world. There was tension in her face, but it was wholly

pleasurable. “Where did you get them?” she asked naïvely. “How

wonderful they are. I’ve never seen anything like them. Are they all

yours? They remind me of the Arabian Nights.” She kneeled down beside

the bed, and surrounded the heap of pearls with her hands and smiled.

The hanging lamp burned, and in the dim light of the room the pearls

had an almost purple glow, and seemed animated by some dusky blood that

pulsed within them.

Karen was annoyed by Ruth’s question, and yet she was almost as happy

as she thought she would be in the surprise of another beholder.

“Stupid! ’Course they belong to me. D’you think I’d steal them?

They’re his mother’s pearls,” she added mysteriously, and bowed her

head to Ruth’s ear. She was startled for a moment as she did so by the

fragrance as of grass or the moist earth of February that emanated from

the girl. “They’re his mother’s pearls,” she repeated, “and he brought

them to me.” She did not know in what a deeply moved and reverential

tone she spoke of Christian. Ruth listened to that tone, and doubts and

guesses of her own were hushed.

“What ails you?” she asked, as she arose from her knees.

“I don’t know,” Karen answered, covering the pearls again. “Maybe

nothing. I like to rest; sometimes it does a person good.”

“Is any one with you at night? It might happen that you need something.

Have you no one?”

“Lord, I don’t need anything,” Karen answered with as much

indifference as possible. “And if I do, I can get out o’ bed and fetch

it. I’m not that bad yet.” The coarseness vanished from her face, and

yielded to an expression of helpless wonder as she went on hurriedly:

“He offered to stay up here at night. He wanted to sleep on the sofa,

so I could wake him up if I felt bad. He said he wouldn’t mind and

it’d be a pleasure. He spends his whole evenings here now, and sits at

the table studying in his books. Why does he study so much? Does a man

like him have to do that? But what do you think of him wanting to sleep

there and watch me? It’s foolish!”

“Foolish?” Ruth answered. “No, I don’t think so at all. I was going to

suggest doing the same thing. He and I could take turns. I can work

while I watch too. I mean, of course, if it is necessary. But it won’t

do to leave any one who is sick alone at night.” She shook her head,

and her ash-blond hair moved gently.

“What funny people you are,” Karen said, and thrust her disordered hair

almost to her eyes. “Real funny people.” She feigned to be looking for

something on the bed, and her eyes that refused to look at Ruth seemed

to flee.

Ruth determined to consult Christian concerning the night-watches.