The Pearl

How a Jewel Comes Between an Honest Doctor and His Pretty Wife

FERENC MOLNAR

THERE had been an orchestral concert in the Rcdoutensaal.

As a young woman descended the stairway she was seen to stoop suddenly and pick something up from the red velvet carpet.

Eugene Ratoti asked her what it was she had picked up.

"Nothing," she answered.

Eugene Ratoti looked at her face. This he had been doing for the last year and a half —and he noticed only that it had more colour than usual. Behind them came the Doctor, her husband. When they came to their carriage, he also asked her what it was she had picked up off the red carpet, but the answer he received was the same:

"Nothing."

The doctor's wife was a healthy, well-built young woman, who loved light-coloured clothes and strolling about by herself in the town at noontime.

II.

As they were driving home, the doctor said:

"It would have been better po have gone to a restaurant for supper as I am very hungry!"

His wife answered:

"You may cat all you want, my dear. I can't cat a thing!"

The doctor begged her to cat, but without success. She could not be persuaded. Something had taken her appetite away. She felt as if a band had been tied around her throat, and she were incapable of swallowing anything. She had found a large, genuine pearl on the red-carpeted steps.

III

They went to bed and the doctor fell off to sleep immediately. He had been busy the entire day and it was no wonder that he was overcome by sleep as soon as he had the pillow underneath his head. But about quarter to three, he awoke and heard his wife sighing deeply as she lay beside him.

In the lazy languor of his sleepiness he might have gone off to sleep again had she not got out of bed.

He watched her as she rose, saw her spread a silk handkerchief over the small lamp beside the bed, saw her turn on the light. She went to her wardrobe, opened the door, and poked mysteriously amid the linen. While doing so, she cast several furtive glances in the direction of her husband.

This frightened him, and his heart began to pound violently against his sides. The feeling of jealousy ran through his body like the strange, unpleasant tingling of an electric current.

IV.

The next day, after dinner, the following conversation took place:

DOCTOR: What makes you so nervous all the time?

WIFE: Leave me alone.

DOCTOR: YOU needn't be so cross about it. I only remarked that you were nervous. Thcre's no offense in saying that. 1 have the right to make the remark.

WIFE: NO. YOU should let me alone.

DOCTOR: All right. If you like it better, I'll leave you alone entirely and not speak to you at all.

WIFE: I should like to see you try.

DOCTOR: If you force me . . . Oh, what's the use of arguing with you . . .

They spoke no further and the doctor took his hat and left. He felt ill at ease, went to a Cafe, read an article in a paper, not one word of which did he understand. At half past three, Eugene Ratoti paid a visit to his wife.

V.

Eugene Ratoti was a non-existent being, who had gazed ineffectively at this woman's face for the past year and a half. He rarely spoke when not spoken to and when he did he said nothing worth listening to. He was a Socialist, a Modern, a lover of music, an admirer of Richard Strauss and his opinion of anything and everything was based upon what he read in his favourite newspaper.

"My dear," he said to the Doctor's wife, in that disgustingly pleasant manner, men of his type are wont to cultivate, "my dear, why are you so ill-natured since yesterday?"

"Am I?" she asked, pleased with the phrase.

"Indeed, you arc."

"I really can't understand why, my dear."

She looked at him strangely, almost intimately, for the first time, and she was thinking to herself: "He is the one to whom I shall show the pearl."

VI.

She asked Ratoti to call on her the next day at half-past live. He felt that he had slightly achieved his purpose, but still, he was unable to account for the headway he had made. However, he shaved with great care, rubbed his face all over with Eau do Cologne, brushed his hair very smooth and hesitated for ten minutes in deciding which of four neckties to wear.

Her face glowed with pleasure when Ratoti entered.

After a few insincere remarks on the usual trite conversational topics had been exchanged between them, her voice suddenly failed her. She gazed meltingly at Ratoti and impulsively threw her arms around his neck.

"Eugene," she cried, half sobbing, "Eugene."

Thus awakened, Eugene embraced her in his most elegant manner and was happy at the thought that, at this most sublime of moments, he reeked of Eau dc Cologne. "My dear girl," he said, softly, "my poor little girl ..."

The woman held tight to Eugene's neck for a long while without uttering a word, then, disengaging herself, she rushed and flung open the wardrobe door. With a strange feline grin she showed him the pearl.

"I found it ... I stole it ... " she said, choking with emotion.

Eugene closed his eyes in ecstasy. He imagined himself now very modern and at this confession fancied himself the lover of a Parisian apache girl and the receiver of her stolen goods. His thoughts thus wandered between the possibility of execution on the guillotine and the reck of Eau dc Cologne. In short, at this moment, he was supremely happy.

VII.

"I am yours, body and soul," said the doctor's wife platitudinously, in the hotel room which Eugene Ratoti had hired for the especial purpose of hearing his beloved make this compromising admission. They sat together on a red plush sofa and once more she showed him the pearl. Nowhere, to no one else in the world, could she have shown it.

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"You don't love me," said Eugene, petulantly. Somehow he felt that the woman did not desire him any too eagerly.

"I do." Thereupon the woman kissed him, unconvincingly.

Meanwhile the pearl lay on the table, pale and dented.

"Throw it away," said Eugene, with surprising abruptness.

The woman looked at him with withering contempt, as if he had advised her to commit some base act. She looked at him as women always look at men who (they believe) do not understand them.

"You ought to be ashamed," she said to Ratoti, "you don't love me for my own sake."

VIII.

It lasted for two months. The woman no longer looked healthy, and her rosy cheeks had disappeared. She grew pale as a lily; she did not sleep and did not relish her food. Her husband was much worried about her.

"What's the trouble, my child?" he asked her one day.

Without a word in reply, she fell upon his neck and wept bitter tears.

"I am unhappy, so unhappy," she sobbed.

This brought tears to the doctor's eyes, for he felt that the time had arrived when his wife would own to an adultery, and at this great moment in his life he fretted a trifle at the impending confession, for he feared lest he would not know how to act. It was easier, he felt, for the Russian aristocrats in a novel by Tolstoi.

IX.

Until nightfall the doctor did not say another word. After protracted mental agonies, he decided that should his wife confess her sin of sins, he would forgive her.

"Speak, my beloved," he said, assuming a tone he believed to be worthy of a Tolstoi aristocrat, "speak to me as you would to a brother."

His wife, who began to cry softly, whispered:

"Kill me."

"Why?" asked her husband with duly downcast eyes.

"Because I stole. I found a real pearl on the steps at the Redoutensaal and did not say a word about it to anyone. I have still got it."

And with the happy sigh of one who is suddenly relieved of all torments, she handed the pearl to her husband.

X.

"Where were you yesterday?" whispered Eugene Ratoti to his mistiess when they were left alone for a moment.

But the husband returned immediately.

"I beg your pardon," said the wife loudly and smiled. Eugene blushed.

"I beg your pardon," she repeated. "What were you saying? Just now when my husband went out you started to whisper something to me but I did not catch it ... "

"Oh . . . nothing ..." stammered Eugene, and a cold shiver ran. down his back. He stayed a moment or two longer, then he made his apologies and left. The wife never saw him again.

XI.

"My love," she said later to her husband, "since I got rid of the pearl, I've found you ... I didn't dare to look you in the face ... I was afraid of you ... I was ashamed ... I should have given it to you straight away . . . But I feel no woman would have done that ..." She cried a little, laughed, sang, then looked out of the window thoughtfully.

And she kissed her husband with all her heart.

That's'the end of the storv.