The widow Engelschall’s first concern was to get the women out of
Karen’s room. To succeed she had to make her command abundantly clear.
She hissed at the Schirmacher girl: “Would you mind taking your
snub-nose out of this here place?” Isolde went, but she felt sure that
the old woman had evil intentions.
When the widow Engelschall approached the bed, she saw that there
was but just time for her to use the last glimmer of her daughter’s
consciousness. If she had miscalculated--well, no harm was done, and
she would be the first one, at all events, to have access to the dead
woman’s body. Only there must be no shilly-shallying.
She began to talk. She sat down on a chair, bent far over toward
Karen, and spoke in a raised voice so that no word should escape the
dying woman. She said that she had meant to bring along some pastry,
but the pastry-cook’s shop had been closed. In the evening, however,
she intended to boil a chicken in rice or make a Styrian pudding with
apple-sauce. That refreshed the stomach and improved the digestion.
Sick people needed strengthening food, and one mustn’t be stingy with
them. Stinginess, she declared, had never been a fault of hers, anyhow.
No one could say that. And she had always been ready to do the right
thing by her children. It had been toil and trouble enough, and she
hadn’t counted on gratitude. You didn’t get that in this world anyhow,
no more from your children than from Tom, Dick, or Harry.
Beset by death as she was, Karen heard only the tone of this
hypocritical speech. She moved her arms. An instinct told her that her
mother wanted something; a last effort at reflection told her what that
was, and a last impulse warned her not to betray herself. She forced
herself to lie still and not to let an eyelid quiver. But the widow
Engelschall knew that she was on the right track. She herself, she
continued, had never striven after riches. If ever a little superfluity
had come to her, she had shared it with others. You couldn’t take
anything into the grave with you anyhow, and though you clung to what
you had like iron, it didn’t do you no good in the end. So it was
more sensible and nobler too to give it up, and live to share the
pleasure of the people you gave it to, and listen to their praises.
Didn’t Karen remember, she asked, how when that old hag of a Kränich
woman had died and eighty-seven pieces of gold had been found in her
straw-mattress--didn’t she remember how, amid the joy, people had
railed at the stingy beast? No one had shed a tear over her. They had
consigned her to hell where she belonged.
Having said this, the widow Engelschall stretched out her hand, and
with apparent carelessness began to feel about the pillow. The rope
of pearls lay under it. She had not yet reached it; but Karen thought
she had grasped it, and with feeble hands fought off the hands of her
mother. Breathing stertorously, she raised herself a little, and threw
herself across the pillow. The widow Engelschall murmured: “Aha, there
we have it!” She was sure now. Swiftly she thrust her hand farther
and pulled out an end of the rope of pearls. She uttered a dull cry.
Her fat face oozed sweat and turned crimson, for she recognized at
once the fabulous value of what she held. Her eyes started from their
sockets, saliva dripped from her mouth. She grasped what she held more
and more firmly, as Karen rested the whole weight of her body upon
the pillow, stretched out her hands, dug her nails into her mother’s
wrists, and whined a long, piteous whine. But in spite of her ghastly
display of strength she succumbed in that unequal struggle. Already
the widow Engelschall, uttering a low howl, had torn the pearls from
their hiding-place; she was about to flee from Karen’s inarticulate
screeching and blind rage and fierce moans and chattering teeth, when
the door opened and Christian entered.
The women in the hall had noticed that something strange and fearful
was taking place in Karen’s room. The struggle between mother and
daughter had not lasted long enough to give them a chance to make a
decision or fight down their fear of the old woman. But they received
Christian with frightened faces and pointed toward the door. They
wanted to follow him into the room; but since he paid no attention to
them and closed the door behind him, they remained where they were and
listened. But they heard no sound.
Christian approached Karen’s bed. He had taken in what was happening.
Silently he took the pearls from the old woman’s hands. Wrought up
and inflamed by greed as she was, she did not dare make a gesture of
resistance. On his face there was an expression which beat down her
boiling rage at his interference. It was a strange expression--a lordly
mournfulness was in it, a proud absorption, a smile that was remote, a
something estranged and penetrating and inviolable. He laid the pearls
upon Karen’s breast, and took both of her hands into his. She looked up
to him--relieved, redeemed. Her body quivered in convulsions, but was
eased as he held her hands. Freezing and icy under the touch of death,
she thrust herself nearer to him, babbling, moaning, trembling in every
limb, and with a hot moisture in her eyes. And he did not recoil. He
did not feel any repulsion at the malodorousness of the dripping sores.
That smile still on his face, he embraced her and gave her a last
warmth against his breast, as though she were a little bird whom the
storm had blown hither. At last she lay very quiet, without motion or
sound.
And thus she died in his arms.