In the course of time Daniel had to provide for an increase in his
annual salary. Dorothea had made a great many innovations that cost
money. She had bought a dressing table, a number of cabinets, and a
bath tub. The lamps, dishes, bed covers, and curtains she found
old-fashioned, and simply went out and bought new ones.
Nothing gave her greater pleasure than to go shopping. Then the bills
came in, and Daniel shook his head. He begged her to be more saving, but
she would fall on his neck, and beseech and beseech until he acceded to
every single one of her wishes.
She rarely came home with empty hands. It may have been only little
things that she bought, a manikin of porcelain with a tile hat and an
umbrella, or a pagoda with a wag-head, or even merely a mouse-trap--but
they all cost money.
Philippina would be called in; Philippina was to admire the purchases.
And she would say with apparent delight: "Now ain't that sweet!" Or,
"Now that's fine; we needed a mouse-trap so bad! There was a mouse on
the clothes rack just yesterday, cross my heart, Daniel."
As to hats, dresses, stockings, shoes, laces, and blouses--when it came
to these Dorothea was a stranger to such concepts as measure or modesty.
She wanted to compete with the wives of the rich people whose parties
she attended, and next to whom she sat in the pastry shop or at the
theatre.
She was given free tickets to the theatre and the concerts. But once
when she had told Daniel that the director had sent her a ticket, he
learned from Philippina that she had bought the ticket and paid for it
with her own money. He did not call her to account, but he could not
get the thought out of his mind that she had believed she had deceived
him.
He did not accompany her on her pleasure jaunts; he wanted to work and
not double even the smallest expenditure by going with her. Dorothea had
become accustomed to this. She looked upon his apathy toward the theatre
and his dislike of social distractions as a caprice, a crotchet on his
part. She never considered what he had gone through in the way of
theatricals and concerts; she had completely forgotten what he had
confessed to her in a decisive hour.
When she came home late in the evening with burning cheeks and glowing
eyes, Daniel did not have the courage to give her the advice he felt she
so sorely needed. "Why snatch her from her heaven?" he thought. "She
will become demure and quiet in time; her wild lust for pleasure will
fade and disappear."
He was afraid of her pouting mien, her tears, her perplexed looks, her
defiant running about. But he lacked the words to express himself. He
knew how ineffectual warning and reproach might be and were. Empty
talking back and forth he could not stand, while if he made a really
human remark it found no response. She did not appreciate what he said;
she misunderstood, misinterpreted everything. She laughed, shrugged her
shoulders, pouted, called him an old grouch, or cooed like a dove. She
did not look at him with real eyes; there was no flow of soul in what
she did.
Gloom filled his heart.
The waste in the household affairs became worse and worse from week to
week. Daniel would have felt like a corner grocer if he had never let
her know how much he had saved, or had given her less than she asked
for. And so his money was soon all gone. Dorothea troubled herself very
little about the economic side of their married life. She told
Philippina what to do, and fell into a rage if her orders were not
promptly obeyed.
"It's too dull for her here. My God, such a young woman!" said
Philippina to Daniel with simulated regret. "She wants to have a good
time; she wants to enjoy her life. And you can't blame her."
Philippina was the mistress of the house. She went to the market, paid
the bills, superintended the cook and the washwoman, and rejoiced with
exceeding great and fiendish joy when she saw how rapidly everything was
going downhill, downhill irresistibly and as sure as your life.