“What do you mean? You found something for yourself?”
“What do I mean? I mean just what I said. I have always known that there was something crooked about that money.”
“What money are you talking about? Listen, don’t speak to me in riddles! When you have anything to say to me, say it. Do you understand?”
“I mean Gottfried Nothafft’s money, Jason Philip,” said Theresa, almost in a whisper.
Jason Philip bent over the table. “Then you have at last found the old receipt, have you?” he asked with wide-opened eyes. “Ahem! You have found the receipt that I’ve been looking for for years ...?”
Theresa nodded. She took out a hairpin, and stuck it in a crust of bread. Jason Philip got up, clasped his hands behind his back, and began to walk back and forth. Just then Rieke came in and began to clear off the table. She went about her business in a slow but noisy fashion. She made things rattle, even if she could not make them hum. When she was through, Jason Philip, his hands pressed to his hips, his elbows protruding, planted himself before Theresa.
“I suppose you think I am going to let you browbeat me,” he began. “Well, my dear woman, you’re mistaken. Listen! Are you angry at me because I have created for you and your children a dignified existence? Do you take it amiss of me for having kept your sister from going to the poor-house? You act as though I had won that much money at the county fair, or had squandered an equal amount at the same place. The truth is, Gottfried Nothafft entrusted me with three thousand taler. That’s what he did; that’s the truth. It was his intention to keep the whole affair from the chatter of women. And he willed that I should use this hard-earned capital in a productive way, and not give it to the culprit who would waste it in debauchery and worse if possible.”
“Ill-gotten goods seldom prosper,” said Theresa, without looking up. “Things may go along all right for ten years, and that seems like a long time, but the vengeance of Heaven comes in the eleventh, as it has already come in the case of little Marcus.”
“Theresa—you’re talking like a mad woman,” said Jason Philip at the top of his voice. With that he picked up a chair, and threw it on the floor so violently that every cup, spoon, and plate in the room shook.
Theresa turned her peasant face toward him without the shadow of a trace of fear. He was a trifle alarmed: “You’ll have to be responsible, if you can, for any misfortune that visits us in the future.” She spoke these words with a deep voice.