Chapter XI: “how She Endeavored to Explain Her Life.” (1)

THURSDAY morning it rained. Hetzel was seated in Mrs. Hart’s dining-room, making such an apology for a breakfast as, under the circumstances, could be expected of him, when the waitress announced that Josephine was in the kitchen, and wished to speak with her master.

“All right,” said Hetzel; “ask her to step this way.”

Josephine presented herself. Not without some embarrassment, she declared that she had heard what rumor had to say of Mrs. Ripley’s imprisonment and of Mr. Ripley’s sickness, and that she was anxious to learn the very truth of the matter from Hetzel’s lips. Hetzel replied good-naturedly to her interrogations; and at length Josephine rose to go her way. But having attained the door, she halted and faced about.

“Ach Gott!” she exclaimed. “I was forgetting about these.” She drew a bunch of letters from her pocket, and deposited them upon the table beside Hetzel’s plate.

Alone, Hetzel picked the letters up, and began to study their superscriptions. One by one, he threw them aside without breaking their seals, till at last “Hello!” he cried, “who has been writing a book for me to read? Half an inch thick, as I’m alive; looks like a lady’s hand, too; seems somehow as though I recognized it. Let me see.—Ah! I remember. It must be from her!”

Without further preliminary, he pushed back his chair, tore the envelope open, and set out to read the missive through.

“Dear Mr. Hetzel: I received a very kind note from you last night, and I should have answered it at once, only I had so much to say that I thought it would be better to wait till morning, in order to begin and finish it at a sitting. The lights are turned off here at nine o’clock: and therefore if I had begun to write last evening, I should have been interrupted in the midst of it; and that would have rendered doubly difficult what in itself is difficult enough.

“I have much to explain, much to justify, much to ask forgiveness for. I am going to bring myself to say things to you, which, a few days ago, I believed it would be impossible for me to say to any living being, except my husband; and it would have been no easy matter to say them to him. But a great change has happened in the last few days. Now I can not say those things to my husband—never can. Now my wretched failure of a life is nearly ended. I am going to a prison where, I know very well, I shall not survive a great while.

“And something, which there is no need to analyze, impels me to put in writing such an explanation of what I have done and left undone in this world, as I may be able to make. Perhaps I am prompted to this course by pride, or if you choose, by vanity. However that may be, I do feel that in justice to myself as well as to my friends, I ought to try to state the head and front of my offending so as to soften the judgment that people aware only of my outward acts, and ignorant of my inner motives, would be disposed to pass upon me. I have ventured to address myself to you, instead of to Mrs. Hart, out of consideration for her. It would be too hard for her to have to read this writing through. You, having read it, can repeat its upshot to her in such a manner as to make it easier for her to bear. I know that you will be willing to do this, because I know that both she and I have always had a friend in you.

“For my own assistance, let me state clearly beforehand the points upon which I must touch in this letter. First, I must explain why, having a blot upon my life—being, that is to say, who I am—I allowed Arthur Ripley to marry me. Then I must go on to perform that most painful task of all—tell the story of the death of Bernard Peixada and Edward Bolen. Next, I must justify—what you appear to misunderstand, though the grounds of it are really very simple—the deep resentment which I can not help cherishing against your bosom friend, my husband. Finally, I must give the reasons that induced me to plead guilty of murder an hour ago in court.

“But no. I have put things in their wrong order at the outset. It will not be possible for me to explain why I consented to become Arthur’s wife, until I have given you the true history of Bernard Peixada’s death. I must command my utmost strength to do this. I must forget nothing.

“I must force myself to recount every circumstance, hateful as the whole subject is. I must search my memory, subdue my feelings, and as dispassionately as will be possible, put the entire miserable tale in writing. I pray God to help me.

“I am just twenty-six years old—ten months younger than Arthur. My birthday fell while he and I were at New Castle together—August 4th. How little I guessed then that in ten days every thing would be so altered! It is strange. I trusted him as I trusted myself. I could not conceive the possibility of his deceiving me. He seemed so sincere, so simple-minded, so single-hearted, I could as easily have fancied a toad issuing from his mouth, as a lie. Yet all the time—even while we were alone together there in New Castle—he was lying to me. That whole fortnight—that seemed so wonderfully serene and pure and light—was one dark falsehood. Even then, he was having my career investigated here in New York, behind my back. And I—I had offered to tell him every thing. Painful as it would have been, I should have told him the whole story; but he would not let me.

“He preferred to hear Benjamin Peixada’s—my enemy’s—version of it. Even now, when I have—plenty—to remind me of the truth, even now, I can scarcely believe it.

“But I must not deviate. As I was saying, I am twenty-six years old. More than six years ago, when I was nineteen, nearing twenty, my father said to me one day, ’Mr. Peixada has done us the honor to ask for your hand in marriage. We have accepted. So, on the eighth of next August, you will be married to him.’

“You can not realize, Mr. Hetzel, a tithe of the horror I experienced when my father spoke those words to me, until I have gone back further still, and told something of my life up to that time. At this moment, as I recall the occasion of my father’s saying that to me, my heart turns to ice, my cheeks burn, my limbs quake, my nature recoils with disgust and loathing. It is painful to have to go over it all again, to have to live through it all again; yet that is what I have started out to do.

“You must know, to begin with, that my father was a watchmaker, and that he kept a shop on Second Avenue, between Sixth and Seventh Streets. He was a man of great intelligence, of uncommon cultivation, and of a most gentle and affectionate disposition; but he was a Jew of the sternest orthodoxy, and he held old-fashioned, orthodox notions of the obedience children owe to their parents. My father in his youth had intended to become a physician; but while he was a student in Berlin, in 1848, the revolution broke out; he took part in it; and as a consequence he had to leave Germany and come to America before he had won his diploma. Here, friendless, penniless, he fell in with a jeweler, named Oppenhym, who offered to teach him his trade. Thus he became an apprentice, then a journeyman, finally a proprietor. I was born in the house on Second Avenue, in the basement of which my father kept his shop. We lived up stairs. Our family consisted only of my father and mother, myself, and my father’s intimate friend, Marcus Nathan. Mr. Nathan was a very learned gentleman, who had been a widower and childless for many years, and who acted as chazzan in our synagogue. It was to him that my father confided my education. It was he who first taught me to read and write and to care for books and music. How good and loyal a friend he was to me you will learn later on. He died early in 1880.... I did not go to school till I was thirteen years old. Then I was sent to the public school in Twelfth Street, and thence to the Normal College, where I graduated in 1876. I studied the piano at home under the direction of a woman named Emily Millard—an accomplished musician, but unkind and cruel. She used to pull my hair and pinch me, when I made mistakes; and afterward, when they tried me in the court of General Sessions for Bernard Peixada’s murder, Miss Millard came and swore that I was bad.

“Bernard Peixada—whom the newspapers described as ’a retired Jewish merchant’—was a pawnbroker. His shop was straight across the street from ours. I never in my life saw another structure of brick and mortar that seemed to frown with such sinister significance, with such ominous suggestiveness, upon the street in front of it as did that house of Bernard Peixada’s. It was a brick house; but the bricks were concealed by a coat of dark gray stucco, with blotches here and there that were almost black. The shop, of course, was on the ground floor. Its broad windows were protected, like those of a jail, by heavy iron bars. Within them was exhibited an assortment of such goods and chattels as the pawnbroker had contrived to purchase from distress—musical instruments, household ornaments, kitchen utensils, firearms, tarnished suits of uniform, faded bits of women’s finery—ex voto offerings at the shrine of Mammon. Behind these, all was darkness, and mystery, and gloom. Over the door, three golden balls—golden they had been once, but were no longer, thanks to the thief, Time, abetted by wind and weather—the pawnbroker’s escutcheon, swayed in the breeze. Higher up still—big, white, ghastly letters on a sable background—hung a sign, bearing a legend like this: B. PEIXADA.

MONEY LENT ON WATCHES, JEWELRY, PRECIOUS STONES, AND ALL VARIETIES OF PERSONAL PROPERTY.

“And on the side door, the door that let into the private hallway of the house, was screwed a solemn brass plate, with ’B. Peixada’ engraved in Old English characters upon it. (When Bernard Peixada retired from business, he was succeeded by one B. Peinard. On taking possession, Mr. Peinard, for economy’s sake, caused the last four letters of Bernard Peixada’s name on the sign to be painted out, and the corresponding letters of his own name to be painted in: so that, to this day, the time-stained PEI stands as it used to stand years ago, and contrasts oddly with the more recent word that follows.) As I have said, the shop windows were defended by an iron grating. The other windows—those of the three upper stories—were hermetically sealed. I, at least, never saw them open. The blinds, once green, doubtless, but blackened by age, were permanently closed; and the stucco beneath them was fantastically frescoed with the dirt that had been washed from them by the rain.

“I think it was partly due to these black blinds, and’ to the queer shapes that the dirt had taken on the wall, that the house had that peculiarly sinister aspect that I have spoken of. At all events, you could not glance at its façade without shuddering. As early a recollection as any that I have, is of how I used to sit at our front windows, and gaze over at Bernard Peixada’s, and work myself into a very ecstasy of fear by trying to imagine the dark and terrible things that were stored behind them. My worst nightmares used to be that I was a prisoner in Bernard Peixada’s house. I never dreamed that some time my most hideous nightmare would be surpassed by the fact.

“But if I used to terrify myself by the sight of Bernard Peixada’s dwelling, much keener was the terror with which Bernard Peixada’s person inspired me. Picture to yourself a—creature—six feet tall, gaunt as a skeleton, always dressed in black—in black broadcloth, that glistened like a snake’s skin—with a head—my pen revolts from an attempt to describe it. Yet I must describe it, so that you may appreciate a little what I endured when my father said that he had chosen Bernard Peixada for my husband. Well, Bernard Peixada’s head was thus: a hawk’s beak for a nose, a hawk’s beak inverted for a chin; lips, two thin, blue, crooked lines across his face, with yellow fangs behind them, that shone horribly when he laughed; eyes, two black, shiny beads, deep-set beneath prominent, black, shaggy brows, with the malevolence of a demon aflame deep down in them; skull, destitute of honest hair, but kept warm by a curling, reddish wig; skin, dry and sallow as old parchment, on which dark wrinkles were traced—a cryptogram, with a meaning, but one which I could not perfectly decipher; these were the elements of Bernard Peixada’s physiognomy—fit features for a bird of prey, were they not? Have you ever seen his brother, Benjamin? the friend of Arthur Ripley? Benjamin is corpulent, florid, and on the whole not ill-looking—morally and physically vastly superior to his elder brother. But fancy Benjamin pumped dry of blood, shrunken to the dimensions of a mummy, then bewigged, then caricatured by an enemy, and you will form a tolerably vivid conception of how Bernard Peixada looked. But his looks were not all. His voice, I think, was worse. It was a thin, piercing voice that, when I heard it, used to set my heart palpitating with a hundred horrible emotions. It was a dry, metallic voice that grated like a file. It was a sharp, jerky voice that seemed to chop the air, each word sounding like a blow from an ax. It was a voice which could not be forced to say a kind and human thing. Cruelty and harshness were natural to it. I can hear it ringing in my ears, as I am writing now; and it makes my heart sink and my hand tremble, as it used to do when I indeed heard it, issuing from his foul, cruel mouth. Will you be surprised—will you think I am exaggerating—when I say that Bernard Peixada’s hideousness did not end with his voice? I should do his portrait an injustice if I were to omit mention of his hands—his claws, rather, for claws they were shaped like; and, instead of fingers, they were furnished with long, brown, bony talons, terminated by black, untrimmed nails. I do not believe I ever saw Bernard Peixada’s hands in repose. They were in perpetual, nervous motion—the talons clutching at the air, if at nothing more substantial—even when he slept. The most painful dreams that I have had, since God delivered me of him, have been those in which I have seen his hands, working, working, the fingers writhing like serpents, as they were wont to do in life. Oh, such a monstrosity! Oh, such a wicked travesty of man! This, Mr. Hetzel, was the person to f-whom my father proposed to marry me. There was no one to plead for me, no one to interfere in my behalf. And I was a young girl, nineteen years old.

“How could my father do it? How could he bring himself to do this thing? It is a long story.

“In the first place, Bernard Peixada was accounted a most estimable member of society. He was rich; he was pious; he was eminently respectable. His ill-looks were ignored. Was he to blame for them? people asked. Did he not close his shop regularly on every holiday? Who was more precise than he in observing the feasts and fasts of the Hebrew calendar? or in attending services at the Synagogue? Was smoke ever to be seen issuing from his chimneys on the Sabbath? Old as he was, did he not abstain from food on the fast of Gedalia, and on that of Tebeth, and on that of Tamuz, as well as on the Ninth of Ab and on Yom Kippur? Had he not, year after year, been elected and re-elected Parnass of the congregation? All honor to him, then, for a wise man and an upright man in the way of the law! It was thus that public opinion in our small world treated Bernard Peixada. On the theory that handsome is that handsome does, he got the credit of being quite a paragon of beauty. To be sure, he lacked social qualities—he was scarcely a hail-fellow-well-met. He cared little for wine and tobacco—he abhorred dominoes—he could not be induced to sit down to a game of penacle; but all the better! The absence of these frivolous interests proved him to be a man of responsible weight and gravity. It was a pity he had never married. Perhaps it was not yet too late. Lucky the girl upon whom his eye should turn with favor. If he had not youth and bodily grace to offer her, he had, at least, wealth, wisdom, and respectability.

“Bernard Peixada had been the black beast of my childhood. When I would go with my mother to the Synagogue, and sit with her in the women’s gallery, I could not keep my eyes off Bernard.. Peixada, who occupied the president’s chair downstairs. The sight of him had an uncanny fascination for me. As I grew older, it was still the same. Bernard Peixada personified to me all that was evil in human nature. He was the Ahriman, the Antichrist, of my theology. He made my flesh creep—gave me a sensation similar to that which a snake gives one—only incomparably more intense.

“Well, one evening in the early spring of 1878, I was seated in our little parlor over the shop, striving to entertain a very dull young man—a Mr. Rimo, Bernard Peixada’s nephew—when the door opened, and who should come gliding in but Bernard Peixada himself? I had never before seen him at such close quarters, unless my father or mother or Mr. Nathan was present too; and then I had derived a sense of security from realizing that I had a friend near by. But now, here he was in the very room with me, and I all alone, except for this nephew of his, Mr. Rimo. I had to catch for my breath, and my heart grew faint within me.

“Bernard Peixada simply said good evening and sat down. I do not remember that he spoke another word until he rose to go away. But for two hours he sat there opposite me, and not for one instant did he take his eyes from off my face. He sat still, like a toad, and leered at me. His blue lips were curled into a grin, which, no doubt, was intended to be reassuring, but which, in fact, sent cold shivers chasing down my back. He stared at me as he might have stared at some inanimate object that had been offered to him in pawn. Then at last, when he must have learned every line and angle of my face by rote, he got up and went away, leading Mr. Rimo after him.

“I lay awake all that night, wondering what Bernard Peixada’s visit meant, hoping that it meant nothing, fearing—but it would take too long for me to tell you all I feared. Suffice it that the next afternoon—I was seated in my bed-room, trying to divert my imagination with a tale of Hawthorne’s—the next afternoon my father called me into his office behind the shop, and there in the presence of my mother he corroborated the worst fears that had beset me during the night.

“‘Judith,’ he said, ’our neighbor, Mr. Peixada, has done us the honor of proposing for your hand. Of course we have accepted. He designates the eighth of August for the wedding-day. That will give you plenty of time to get ready in; and on Sundays you will stay at home to receive congratulations.

“It took a little while, Mr. Hetzel, for the full meaning of my father’s speech to penetrate my mind. At first I did not comprehend—I was stupefied, bewildered. My senses were benumbed. Mechanically, I watched my father’s canary-bird hop from perch to perch in his cage, and listened to the shrill whistle that he uttered from time to time. I was conscious of a dizziness in my head, of a sickness and a chill over all my body. But then, suddenly, the horror shot through me—pierced my consciousness like a knife. Suddenly my senses became wonderfully clear. I saw the black misery that they had prepared for me, in a quick, vivid tableau before my eyes. I trembled from head to foot. I tried to speak, to cry out, to protest. If I could only have let the pain break forth in an inarticulate moan, it would have been some relief. But my tongue clove to the roof of my mouth. I could not utter a sound. ’Well, Judith,’ said my father, ’why don’t you speak?’

“His words helped me to find my voice.

“‘Speak!’ I cried. ’What is there to say? Marry Bernard Peixada? Marry that monster? I will never marry him. I would a thousand times rather die.’

“My mother and father looked at me and at each other in dismay.

“‘Judith,’ said my father, sternly, ’that is not the language that a daughter should use toward her parents. That is not the way a young lady should feel, either. Of course you will marry Mr. Peixada. Don’t make a scene about it. It has all been arranged between us; and your betrothed is coming to claim you in half an hour.’

“‘Father,’ I answered, very calmly, ’I am sorry to rebel against your authority, but I tell you now, once for all, I will not marry Bernard Peixada.’ ’Judith,’ rejoined my father, imitating my manner, ’I am sorry to contradict you, but I tell you now, once for all, you will.’

“‘Never,’ said I.

“‘On the eighth of August,’ said my father.

“‘Time will show,’ said I.

“‘Time will show,’ said he, ’in less than fifteen minutes. Judith, listen.’

“It was an old story that my father now proceeded to tell me—old, and yet as new as it is terrible to the girl who has to listen to it. It does not break the heart in two, like the old, old story of Heine’s song: it inflames the heart with a dull, sullen anguish that is the worst pain a woman can be called upon to endure. My father told me how for two years past his pecuniary affairs had been going to the dogs; how he had been getting poor and poorer; how he had become Bernard Peixada’s debtor for sums of money that he could never hope to pay; how Bernard Peixada owned not only the wares in our shop, but the very chairs we sat on, the very beds we slept in, the very plates off which we ate; how, indeed, it was Bernard Peixada who paid for the daily bread that kept our bodies and souls together. My father explained all this to me, concluding thus: ’I was in despair, Judith. I thought I should go crazy. I saw nothing but disgrace and the poor-house before your mother and you and me. I could not sleep at night. I could not work during the day. I could do nothing but think, think, think of the desperate pass to which my affairs had come. It was an agony, Judith. It would soon have killed me, or driven me mad. Then, all at once, the darkness of my—sky is lightened by this good man, whom I have already to thank for so much. He calls upon me. He says he will show me a way out of my difficulties.

“I ask what it is. He answers, why not unite our families, accept him as my son-in-law? and adds that between son-in-law and father-in-law there can be no question of indebtedness. In other words, he told me that he loved you, Judith; that he wished to marry you; and that, once married to you, he would consider my debts to him discharged. Try, Judith, to realize his generosity. I—I owe him thousands. But for him we should have starved. But for him, we should starve to-morrow. Ordinary gratitude alone would have been enough to compel me to say yes to his proposition. But by saying yes, did I not also accomplish our own salvation? Now that you have heard the whole story, Judith, now, like a good girl, promise to make no opposition.’

“‘So that,’ I retorted, indignantly, ’I am to be your ransom—I am to be sacrificed as a hostage. The pawnbroker consents to receive me as an equivalent for the money you owe him. A woman to be literally bought and sold. Oh, father, no, no! There must be some other way. Let me go to work. Have I not already earned money by giving lessons? I will teach from morning to night each day; and every penny that I gain, I will give to you to pay Bernard Peixada with. I will be so industrious! I would rather slave the flesh from my bones—any thing, rather than marry him.’

“‘The most you could earn,’ my father answered, ’would be no more than a drop in the bucket, Judith.’

“‘Well, then,’ I went on, ’there is Mr. Nathan. He has money. Borrow from him. He will not refuse. I know that he would gladly give much money to save me from a marriage with Bernard Peixada. I will ask him.’

“Judith, you must not speak of this to Mr. Nathan,’ cried my father, hastily. ’He must not know but that your marriage to Mr. Peixada is an act of your own choice. I—to tell you the truth—I have already borrowed from Mr. Nathan as much as I dare to ask for.’

“To cut a long story short, Mr. Hetzel, my father drew for me such a dark picture of his misfortunes, he argued so plausibly that all depended upon my marrying Bernard Peixada, he pleaded so piteously, that in the end I said, ’Well, father, I will do as you wish.’——

“I do not think it is necessary to dwell upon what followed: how my father and mother embraced me, and wept over me, and thanked me, and gave me their benediction; how Bernard Peixada came from his lair across the street, and kissed my hand, and leered at me, and called me ’Judith’ in that voice of his; how then, for weeks afterward, my life was one protracted, hopeless horror; how the sun rose morning after morning, and brought neither warmth nor light, but only a reminder that the eighth of August was one day nearer still; how I could speak of it to no one, but had to bear it all alone in silence; how at night my sleep was constantly beset by nightmares, in which I got a bitter foretaste of the future; how evening after evening I had to spend in the parlor with Bernard Peixada, listening to his voice, watching his fingers writhe, feeling the deadly light of his eyes upon me, breathing the air that his presence tainted; how every Sunday I had to receive people’s congratulations! the good wishes of all our family friends—I need not dwell upon these things. My life was a long heart-ache. I had but one relief—hoping that I might die. I did not think of putting an end to myself; but I did pray that God, in his mercy, would let me die before the eighth of August came. Indeed, my health was very much broken. Our family doctor visited me twice a week. He told my father that marriage would be bad for me. But my father’s hands were tied.

“The people here tell me that there is a man confined in this prison under sentence to be hanged. The day fixed for his execution is the first Friday of next month. Well, I think that that man, now, as he looks forward to the first Friday of September, may feel a little as I felt then, when I would look forward to the eighth of August—only he has the mitigation of knowing that afterward he will be dead, whereas I knew that I should have to live and suffer worse things still. As I saw that day steadily creeping nearer and nearer to me, the horror that bound my heart intensified. It was like the old Roman spectacle. I had been flung ad bestias. I stood still, defenseless, beyond the reach of rescue, hopeless of escape, and watched the wild beast draw closer and closer to me, and all the while endured the agony of picturing to myself the final moment, when he would spring upon me and suck my blood: only, again there was this difference—the martyr in the arena knew that after that final moment, all would be over; but I knew that the worst would then just be begun. Yet, at last—toward the end—I actually fell to wishing that the final moment would arrive. The torture, long drawn out, of anticipation was so unbearable that I actually wished the wild beast would fall upon me, in order that I might enjoy the relief of change. Nothing, I felt, could be more painful than this waiting, dreading, imagining. The eighth of August could bring no terror that I had not already confronted in imagination.

“Well, this one wish of mine was granted. The eighth of August came. I was married to Bernard Peixada. I stood up in our parlor, decked out in bridal costume, holding Bernard Peixada’s hand in mine, and took the vows of matrimony in the presence of a hundred witnesses. The canopy was raised over our heads; the wine was drunken and spilled; the glass was broken. The chazzan sang his song; the rabbi said his say; and I, who had gone through the performance in a sort of stupor—dull, half conscious, bewildered—I was suddenly brought to my senses by a clamor of cheerful voices, as the wedding-guests trooped up around us, to felicitate the bridegroom and to kiss the bride. I realized—no, I did not yet realize—but I understood that I was Bernard Peixada’s wife—his wife, for good and all, for better or for worse! I don’t remember that I suffered any new pain. The intense suffering of the last few months had worn out my capacities for suffering. My brain was dazed, my heart deadened.

“The people came and came, and talked and talked—I remember it as I remember the delirium I had when I was sick once with fever. And after the last person had come and talked and gone away, Bernard Peixada offered me his arm, and said, ’We must take our places at the wedding feast.’ Then he led me up-stairs, where long tables were laid out for supper.

“A strange sense of unreality possessed me. In a vague, dreamy, far-off way, I saw the guests stand up around the tables; saw the men cover their heads with hats or handkerchiefs; heard the voice of Mr. Nathan raised in prayer; heard the company join lustily in his ’Baruch Adonai,’. and reverently in his final ’Amen’ saw the head-gear doffed, the people sink into their seats; heard the clatter of knives and forks mingle with the tinkling of glasses, the bubble of pouring wine, the uproar of talk and laughter; was conscious of glaring lights, of moving forms, of the savor of food, mixed with the perfume of flowers and the odor of cologne on the women’s handkerchiefs: felt hot, dazzled, suffocated, confused—an oppression upon my breast, a ringing in my ears, a swimming in my head: the world was whirling around and around—I alone, in the center of things, was motionless.

“So on for I knew not how long. In the end I became aware that speeches were being made. The wedding feast, that meant, was nearly over. I did not listen to the speeches. But they reminded me of something that I had forgotten. Now, indeed, my heart stood still. They reminded me that the moment was not far off when Bernard Peixada, when my husband, would lead me away with him!

“The speeches were wound up. Mr. Nathan began his last grace. My mother signaled me to be ready to come to her as soon as Mr. Nathan should get through.

“‘Judith,’ she said, when I had reached her side, ’we had better go up-stairs now, and change your dress.’

“We went up-stairs. When we came down again, we found Bernard Peixada waiting in the hall. Through the open door of the parlor, I could hear music, and see young men and women dancing. Oh, how I envied them! My mother and father kissed me. Bernard Peixada grasped my arm. We left my father’s house. We crossed the street. Bernard Peixada kept hold of my arm, as if afraid that I might make a dash for liberty—as, indeed, my impulse urged me to do. With his unoccupied hand, Bernard Peixada drew a key from his pocket, and opened the side door of his own dark abode—the door that bore the brass plate with the Old English letters.

“‘Well,’ he said, ’come in.’

“With a shudder, I crossed the threshold of that mysterious, sinister house—of that house which had been the terror of my childhood, and was to be—what? In the midst of my fear and my bewilderment, I could not suppress a certain eagerness to confront my fate and know the worst at once—a certain curiosity to learn the full ghastliness of my doom. In less time than I had bargained for, I had my wish.”

Thus far Hetzel had read consecutively. At this point he was interrupted by the entrance of Mrs. Hart.

“Are you busy?” she asked. “Because, if you’re not, I think you had better go up-stairs and sit with Arthur. The nurse wants to eat her breakfast and lie down for a while. And I, you know, am expected by Ruth.”

“Oh, to be sure,” Hetzel replied, with a somewhat abstracted manner. “Oh, yes—I’ll do as you wish at once. But it is a pity that you should have to go down-town alone—especially in this weather.”

“Oh, I don’t mind that. Good-by.”

Hetzel gained the sick-room. The nurse said, “You won’t have much to do, except sit down and keep quiet.”

Arthur lay motionless, for all the world as if asleep, save that his eyes were open. The room was darkened. Hetzel sat down near to the window, and returning to Ruth’s letter, read on by the light that stole in through the chinks in the blinds. The wind and rain played a dreary accompaniment.

“To detain you, Mr. Hetzel, with an account of my married life would be superfluous. It was as bad as I had expected it to be, and worse. It bore that relation to my anticipations which pain realized must always bear to pain conjectured. The imagination, in anticipating pleasure, generally goes beyond the reality and paints a too highly colored picture. But in anticipating suffering, it does not go half far enough. It is not powerful enough to foretell suffering in its complete intensity.

“Sweet is never so sweet as we imagine it will be; bitter is always at least a shade bitterer than we are prepared for. Imagination slurs over the little things—and the little things, trifles in themselves, are the things that add to the poignancy of suffering. Bernard Peixada had a copy of Dante’s Inferno, illustrated by Doré, on his sitting-room table. You may guess what my life was like, when I tell you that I used to turn the pages of that book, and literally envy the poor wretches portrayed there their fire and brimstone. The utmost refinement of torture that Dante and Doré between them could conceive and describe, seemed like child’s play when I contrasted it to what I had to put up with everyday. Bernard Peixada was cruel and coarse and false. It did not take him a great while to fathom the disgust that he inspired me with; and then he undertook to avenge his wounded self-love. He contrived mortifications and humiliations for me that I can not bring myself to name, that you would have difficulty in crediting. Besides, this period of my life is not essential to what I have set myself to make plain to you. It was simply a period of mental and moral wretchedness, and of bodily decline. My health, which, I think I have said, had been failing before the eighth of August, now proceeded steadily from bad to worse. It was aggravated by the daily trials I had to endure. Of course I strove to bear up as bravely as I could.

“I did not wish Bernard Peixada to have the satisfaction of seeing how unhappy he had succeeded in making me. I did not wish my poor father and mother to witness the misery I had taken upon myself in obedience to their behests. I said, ’That which is done is done, and can not be undone, therefore let it not appear what the ordeal costs you.’ And in the main I think I was successful. Only occasionally, when I was alone, I would give myself the luxury of crying. I had never realized what a relief crying could be till now. But now well, when I would be seized by a paroxysm of grief that I could not control, when amid tears and sobs I would no doubt look most pitiable—it was then that I came nearest to being happy. I remember, on one of these occasions—Bernard Peixada had gone out somewhere—I was surprised by a sanctimonious old woman, a friend of his, if friendship can subsist between such people, a certain Mrs. Washington Shapiro. ’My dear,’ said she, ’what are you crying for?’ I was in a desperate mood. I did not care what I said; nay, more than this, I enjoyed a certain forlorn pleasure in speaking my true mind ’for once, especially to this friend of Bernard Peixada’s. ’Oh,’ I answered, ’I am crying because I wish Bernard Peixada was dead and buried.’ I had to smile through my tears at the horror-stricken countenance Mrs. Shapiro now put on. ’What! You wish Bernard Peixada was dead?’ she exclaimed. ’Shame upon you! How can you say such a thing!’—’He is a monster—he makes me unhappy,’ I responded. ’In that case,’ said Mrs. Shapiro, ’you ought to wish that you yourself were dead, not he. It is you who are monstrous, for thinking and saying such wicked things of that good man.’—’Oh,’ I rejoined, ’I am young. I have much to live for. He is an old, bad man. If he should die, it would be better for every body.’—This was, as nearly as I can remember, a month or two before the night of July 30th. As I have told you, it was a piece of self-indulgence.

“I enjoyed speaking my true sentiments; I enjoyed horrifying Mrs. Shapiro. But I was duly punished. She took pains to repeat what I had said to Bernard Peixada. He did not fail to administer an adequate punishment. Afterward, when I was tried for murder, Mrs. Shapiro turned up, and retailed our conversation to the jury, for the purpose of establishing my evil disposition.

“It was in the autumn after my marriage that my father was stricken with paralysis, and died. It was better for him. If he had lived, he could not have: remained ignorant of his daughter’s misery; and then he would have had to suffer the pangs of futile self reproach. Of course he left nothing for my mother. The creditors took possession of every thing. Bernard Peixada had been false to his bargain. Instead of canceling my father’s indebtedness to him, as he had promised, he had simply j sold his claims. Immediately after my father’s death, the creditors swooped down upon his house and shop, and sold the last stick of: furniture over my mother’s head. Mr. Nathan generously bought in the things that were most precious as keep-sakes and family relics, and returned them to my mother, after the vultures had flown away. Oddly enough, they did not appear to blame Bernard Preixada—did not hold him accountable.

“They continued to regard him as a paragon of manly virtue. Perhaps he contrived some untruthful explanation, by which they were deceived I had naturally hoped that now my mother would come to live with us. It would have been a great comfort to me, if she had done so. But Bernard Peixada wished otherwise. He cunningly persuaded her that she and I had best dwell apart. So he supplied her with enough money to pay her expenses and sent her to board in the family of a friend of his.

“Well, somehow, that fall and winter dragged away. It is something terrible for me to look back at—that blackest, bleakest winter of my life. I not understand how I managed to live through it without going mad. I was a prisoner in Bernard Peixada’s house. My mother and Mr. Nathan came to see me quite frequently; but Bernard was present during their visits and therefore I got but little solace from them.

“The only persons except my mother and Mr. Nathan whom Bernard Peixada permitted me to receive, were his own friends. And they were one and all hateful to me. To my friends he denied admittance, I was physically very weak. My ill health made it impossible for me to forget myself in my books. The effort of reading was too exhausting. I could not sit for more than a quarter of an hour at the piano? either, without all but fainting away. (Mr. Nathan had given me a piano for a wedding-present.) At the time I am referring to—when I was unable to play upon it—Bernard Peixada allowed me the free use of it. But afterward—when I had become stronger, and began to practice regularly—one day I found it locked. Bernard Peixada stood near by, and watched me try to open it. I looked at him, when I saw that I could not open it, and he looked at me. Oh, the contortion of his features, the twisting of his thin blue lips, the glitter of his venomous little eyes, the loathsome gurgle in his throat, as he laughed! He laughed at my dismay. Laughter? At least, I know no other word by which to name the hideous spasm that convulsed his voice. The result was, I passed my days moping. He objected to my leaving the house, except in his company. I had therefore to remain within doors. I used to sit at the window, and watch the life below in the street, and look across at our house—now occupied by strangers—and live over the past—my childhood, my girlhood—always stopping at the day and the hour when my father had called me from the reading of that story of Hawthorne’s, to announce my doom to me. But I am wasting your time. All this is aside from the point. I did survive that winter. And when the spring came, I began to get better in health, and to become consequently more hopeful in spirit. I said, Why, you are not yet twenty-one years old. He is sixty—and feeble at that. Only try hard to hold out a little longer—a few years at the most—and he must, in the mere course of nature, die. Then you will not yet be an old woman. Life will still be worth something to you. You will have your music, and you will be rid of him.’ Wicked? Unwomanly? Perhaps so; but I think it was the way every girl in my position would have felt. However, the consolation that came from thoughts like this, was short-lived. The next moment it would occur to me, ’He may quite possibly live to be ninety!’ And my heart would sink at the prospect of thirty years—thirty years—more of life as his wife.

“In March, 1879, Bernard Peixada spoke to me as follows: ’Judith, you are not going to be a pawnbroker’s wife much longer. I have, made arrangements to sell my business. I have leased a house up-town. We shall move on the 1st of May. After that we shall be a gentleman and lady of leisure.’

“Surely enough, on the 1st of May we moved. The house he had leased was a frame house, standing all alone in the middle of the block, between Eighty-fifth and Eighty-sixth Streets and Ninth and Tenth Avenues. It was a large, substantial, comfortable house, dating from Knickerbocker times. He had caused it to be furnished in a style which he meant to be luxurious, but which was, in truth, the extreme of ugliness. The grounds around it were laid out in a garden. We went to live there punctually on the 1st of May.

“Bernard Peixada now began to spend money with a lavish hand. He bought fine clothes and jewels, in which he required me to array myself. He even went to the length of purchasing a carriage and a pair of horses. Then he would make me go driving at his side through Central Park. He kept a coachman. The coachman was Edward Bolen. (Meanwhile, I must not forget to tell you, Bernard Peixada had quarreled and broken with my mother and Mr. Nathan. Now he allowed neither of them to enter his house.) I was in absolute ignorance concerning them. Once I ventured to ask him for news of them. He scowled. He said, ’You must never mention them in my presence.’ And he accompanied this injunction with such a look that I was careful to observe it scrupulously thereafter. I received no letters from them. You may imagine what an addition all this was to my burden.

“But it is of Edward Bolen that I must tell you at present. He was a repulsive looking Irishman. It is needless that I should describe him. Suffice it that at first I was unsuspicious enough to accept him for what he ostensibly was—Bernard Peixada’s coachman—but that ere a great while I discovered, that he was something else, besides. I discovered that he and Bernard Peixada had secrets together.

“At night, after the household had gone to bed, he and Bernard Peixada would meet in the parlor, and hold long conversations in low tones. What they talked about, I did not know. But this I did know—it was not about the horses. I concluded that they were mutually interested in some bad business—that they were hatching some villainous plots together—but, I confess, I did not much care what the business was, or what the plots were. Only, the fact that they were upon this footing of confidence with each other, struck me, and abode in my memory.

“One afternoon, about a fortnight before the thirtieth of July, Bernard Peixada had taken me to drive in Central Park. As I was getting out of the carriage, upon our return, I tripped somehow, and fell, and sprained my ankle. This sent me to my room. Dr. Gunther, Bernard Peixada’s physician, attended me. He said I should not be able to walk, probably for a month.

“More than a week later, toward sunset, I was lying there on my bed. Bernard Peixada had been absent from the house all day. Now I heard his footfall below in the corridor—then on the stairs—then in the hall outside my door. I took for granted that he was coming to speak with me. I recoiled from the idea of speaking with him just then. So I closed my eyes, and pretended to be asleep.

“He came in. He approached my bedside, kept my eyes shut tight. ’Judith,’ he said, did not answer—feigned not to hear. ’Judith,’ repeated. Again I did not answer. He placed his hand upon my forehead. I tried not to shudder. I guess she’s sound asleep,’ he said; ’that’s good.’ He moved off.

“His words, ’that’s good,’ Mr. Hetzel, frightened me. Why was it ’good’ that I should be asleep? Did he intend to do me a mischief while I slept? I opened my eyes the least bit. I saw him standing sidewise to me, a yard or so away. He drew a number of papers from the inside pocket of his coat. He ran them over. He laid one of them aside, and replaced the others in his pocket. Then he went to the safe—he kept a small safe in our bed-chamber—and opening the door—the door remained unlocked all day; his habit being to lock it at night and unlock it in the morning—he thrust the paper I have mentioned into one of the pigeonholes, pushed the door to, and left the room. I had seen him do all this through half closed eyes. Doubtless this was why it was ’good’ for me to be asleep—so that he could do what he had done, unobserved.

“I suppose I was entirely reprehensible—that my conduct admitted of no excuse. However that may be, the fact is that an impulse prompted me to get up from my bed, and to possess myself of the paper that he had put into the safe. I did not stop to question or to combat that impulse. No sooner thought, than I jumped up—and cried out loud! I had forgotten my sprained ankle! For an instant I stood still, faint with pain, terrified lest he might have heard my scream—lest he might return, find me on my feet, divine my intention, and punish me as he knew so well how to do. But while I stood there, undetermined whether to turn back or to pursue my original idea, the terror passed away. I limped across the floor, pulled the safe door open, put in my hand, grasped the paper, drew it out, swung the door back, regained my bed.

“There I had to lie still for a little, and recover my breath. I had miscalculated my strength. The effort had exhausted me. My ankle was aching cruelly—the pains shot far up into my body. But by and by I felt better. I unfolded the paper, smoothed it out, glanced at it.. This was all I had earned by my exertions:—’R. 174.—L. 36s.—R. 222.—L. 30.’ This was all that was written upon the paper. And what this meant, how could I tell? I made up my mind, after much puzzling, that it must be a secret writing—a cipher of one sort or another. I was not sorry that I had purloined it, though I was disappointed at its contents. I felt sure that Bernard Peixada could scarcely mean to employ it for good ends. So it was just as well that I should have taken it from him. I was on the point of destroying it, when I decided not to. ’No, I had best not destroy it,’ I thought. ’It possibly may be of value. I will hide it where he can not find it.’ I hid it beneath the mattress on which I lay.

“How absurd and unreasonable my whole proceeding had been, had it not? Much ado about nothing! With no adequate motive, and at the cost of much suffering to myself, I had committed an unnecessary theft; and the fruit of it was that incomprehensible row of figures. The whim of a sick woman. And yet, though I recognized this aspect of the case with perfect clearness, I could not find it in me to repent what I had done.

“That night Bernard Peixada and Edward Bolen talked together till past midnight, in the parlor.

“I don’t know whether you believe in premonitions, in presentiments, Mr. Hetzel. I scarcely know whether I do, myself. But from the moment I woke up, on the morning of July 30th, I was possessed by a strange, vague, yet irresistible foreboding that something was going to happen—something extraordinary, something of importance. At first this was simply a not altogether unpleasant feeling of expectancy. As the day wore on, however, it intensified. It became a fear, then a dread, then a breathless terror. I could ascribe it to no rational cause. I struggled with it—endeavored to shake it off. No use. It clutched at my heart—tightly—more tightly. I sought to reassure myself, by having recourse to a little materialism. I said, ’It is because you are not as well as usual to-day. It is the reaction of body upon mind.’ Despite the utmost I could say, the feeling grew and grew upon me, till it was well-nigh insupportable. Yet I could not force it to take a definite shape. Was it that something had happened, or was going to happen, to my mother? to Mr. Nathan? to me? I could not tell—all I knew was that my heart ached, that at every slightest sound it would start into my mouth—then palpitate so madly that I could scarcely catch my breath.