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.”