Her plan was to gain a goodly measure of independence through the money she had stolen. For she always felt convinced that the day would come when her parents would debar her from their home. She was convinced that her father and mother were merely waiting for some plausible excuse to rid themselves of her for good and all.
Moreover, she had two pronounced passions: one for candy and one for flashy ribbons.
The candy she always bought in the evening. She would slip into the shop of Herr Degen, and, with her greedy eyes opened as wide as possible, buy twenty pfennigs’ worth of sweets, at which she would nibble until she went to bed.
The ribbons she sewed together into sashes, which she wore on her hat or around her neck or on her dress. The gaudier the colour the better she liked it. If her mother asked her where she got the ribbons she was forced to lie. Although she had no girl friends, as a matter of fact no friends of any kind, she would say that this or that girl had given them to her. When her wealth became too conspicuous, she would leave the house and not tie her sashes about her until she had reached some unlighted gateway or dark corner.
She never dared go to the attic more than once a week; she did this when her brothers were at school and her parents in the shop. The fear lest some one find her out and take her stolen riches from her made her more and more uneasy, lending to her face an expression of virulent distrust.
She would go up the thirteen steps from the landing to the attic with trembling feet. The fact that there were exactly thirteen was the first thing that awakened her superstition. As the months crept on, she resigned to this superstition with the abandon of an inveterate voluptuary. If she chanced to put her left foot first on the bottom step and not to notice it until she was half way up, she would turn around, come down, and relinquish the pleasure of seeing her treasures for the rest of that week.
She was afraid of ghosts, witches, and magicians; if a cat ran across the street in front of her, she turned as white as chalk.
Theresa did not keep a maid; Philippina helped in the kitchen; this ruined her complexion, and made her skin rough and horny. Frequently she got out of washing dishes by simply running away. On these occasions Theresa would create such an uproar that the neighbours would come to the window and look out. Philippina avenged herself by purposely ruining the sheets, towels, and shirts that lay in the clothes basket. When in this mood and at this business, she made use of a regular oath that she herself had formulated: it consisted of sentences that sounded most impressive, though they had no meaning.
She cherished the odd delusion that it lay in her power to bring misfortune to other people. The time Jason Philip complained of poor business she felt an infernal sense of satisfaction. His change of political views had driven away his old customers, and the new ones had no confidence in him. He had to go in for the publication of dubious works, if he wished to do any business at all. The result of this was that when people passed by the Schimmelweis bookshop, they stopped before the window, looked at his latest output, and smiled contemptuously. The workman’s insurance no longer paid as it used to, for the credit of the Prudentia and its agents had suffered a violent setback.
The rise and fall in bourgeois life follows a well established law. In a single day the honesty and diligence of one man, the tricks and frauds of another, grow stale, antiquated. Thus Jordan’s affairs started on the down grade, and Jason Philip’s likewise.