“Listen, Daniel,” she said in a begging, beseeching tone, “don’t be so ugly! Don’t be so mean toward me! Don’t be so jealous!”
The wench’s infamous smile, her hair hanging down over her eyes, her big red hands, the snow-flakes on her short cloak, the border on her fiery red dress below her cloak, and the poison green ribbon on her hat—this ensemble of ugliness filled Daniel with the loathing he might have experienced had he stood face to face with the most detestable picture he had ever seen from the world of human beings. But as he turned his head, a feeling of sympathy came over him; he suspected that the girl was bound to him by bonds that did not reach him until after they had taken their course through the dark channels of some subterranean labyrinth. What she had done filled him with dismay; but as a revelation of character it surprised him and set him to thinking.
He went over to the washing table to put his bleeding hand in the water. Philippina took a fresh handkerchief from the cabinet, and handed it to him as a bandage. He looked at her with piercing eyes, and said: “What kind of a person are you? What sort of a devil is in you, anyway? Be careful, Jason Philip’s daughter, be careful!”
Since there was a tone of kindness in these words, the muscles of Philippina’s face moved in a mysterious way. Her features were distorted as if by a grin, and yet she was not grinning. She drew a leather purse from her cloak pocket, opened it, and took out two one-hundred-mark notes and a gold coin. They had been wrapped in paper. She unfolded the paper and the notes, laid them, together with the coin, on the table, and handed Daniel a written statement.
He read it: “I, the undersigned, Daniel Nothafft, promise to pay to Philippina Schimmelweis two hundred and twenty marks at five per cent interest, for value received.”
“With that you c’n pay the sheriff and git yourself out of this mess,” said Philippina, in a most urgent tone. “You can’t give piano lessons on a rolling pin, and that music box of yours is after all the tool you make your living by. Sign that, and you will be in peace.”
“Where did you get the money?” asked Daniel. “How did you ever come by so much money? Tell me the truth.” All of a sudden he remembered Theresa’s words: “All that nice money, all that nice money!”
Philippina began to chew her finger nails. “That’s none of your business,” she said gruffly, “it ain’t been stolen. Moreover, I c’n tell you,” she said, as she felt that his distrust was taking on a threatening aspect, “mother give it to me on the sly. She didn’t want me to be without a penny if anything happened. For my father—he would like to see me strung up. She give it to me, I say, on the side, and she made me swear before the cross that I would never let any one know about it.”
This tale of horror made Daniel shake his head; he had his doubts. He felt she was lying, and yet there was a mysterious force back of her statement and in her eyes. He was undecided; he thought it over. His livelihood was at stake. Weeks, months might pass by before he could get another piano. Philippina’s readiness to help him was a riddle to him, everything she said was repulsive and banal; but after all she was willing to help in a most substantial way, and he was in such difficulties that voices of admonition simply had to be drowned out.
“It is nothing but money,” he thought contemptuously, and sat down to put his name to the note.