Mrs Peixada. Harland Henry

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       Henry Harland

      Mrs Peixada

      Published by Good Press, 2019

       [email protected]

      EAN 4064066216061

Table of Contents

       CHAPTER I—A CASE IS STATED.

       CHAPTER II.—“A VOICE, A MYSTERY.”

       CHAPTER III.—STATISTICAL.

       CHAPTER IV.—“THAT NOT IMPOSSIBLE SHE.”

       CHAPTER V.—“A NOTHING STARTS THE SPRING.”

       CHAPTER VI.—“THE WOMAN WHO HESITATES.”

       CHAPTER VII.—ENTER MRS. PEIXADA.

       CHAPTER VIII.—“WHAT REST TO-NIGHT?”

       CHAPTER IX.—AN ORDEAL.

       CHAPTER X.—“SICK OF A FEVER.”

       CHAPTER XI.—“HOW SHE ENDEAVORED TO EXPLAIN HER LIFE.”

       B. PEIXADA.

       CHAPTER XII.—“THE FINAL STATE O’ THE STORY.”

       THE END.

CHAPTER I—A CASE IS STATED.

       Table of Contents

      ON more than one account the 25th of April will always be a notable anniversary in the calendar of Mr. Arthur Ripley. To begin with, on that day he pocketed his first serious retainer as a lawyer.

      He got down-town a little late that morning. The weather was superb—blue sky and summer temperature. Central Park was within easy walking distance. His own engagements, alas, were not pressing. So he had treated himself to an afterbreakfast ramble across the common.

      On entering his office, toward eleven o’clock, he was surprised to find the usually empty chairs already tenanted. Mr. Mendel, the brewer, was established there, in company with two other gentlemen whom Arthur did not recognize. The sight of these visitors caused the young man a palpitation. Could it be—? He dared not complete the thought. That a client had at last sought him out, was too agreeable an hypothesis to be entertained.

      Mr. Mendel greeted him with the effusiveness for which he is distinguished, and introduced his companions respectively as Mr. Peixada and Mr. Rimo. Of old time, when Arthur’s father was still alive, and when Arthur himself had trotted about in knee-breeches and short jackets, Mr. Mendel had been their next door neighbor. Now he made the lawyer feel undignified by asking a string of personal questions: “Vail, how iss mamma?” and “Not married yet, eh?” and “Lieber Gott! You must be five-and-twenty—so tall, and with dot long mustache—yes?” And so forth; smiling the while with such benevolence that Arthur could not help answering politely, though he did hope that a desire for family statistics was not the sole motive of the brewer’s visit.

      But by and by Mendel cleared his throat, and assumed a look of importance. His voice modulated into a graver key, as he announced, “The fact is that we—or rather, my friends, Mr. Peixada and Mr. Rimo—want to consult you about a little matter of business.” He leaned back in his chair, drawing a deep breath, as though the speech had exhausted him; mopped his brow with his handkerchief, and flourished his thumb toward Peixada.

      “Ah,” replied Arthur, bowing to the latter, “I am happy to be at your service, sir.”

      “Yes,” said Peixada, in a voice several sizes larger than the situation required, “Mr. Mendel recommends you to us as a young man who is smart, and who, at the same time, is not so busy but that he can bestow upon our affairs the attention we wish them to have.”

      Notwithstanding Arthur’s delight at the prospect of something to do, Peixada’s tone, a mixture as it was of condescension and imperiousness, jarred a little. Arthur did not like the gratuitous assumption that he was “not so busy,” etc., true though it might be; nor did he like the critical way in which Peixada eyed him. “Indeed,” he said, speaking of it afterward, “it gave me very much such a sensation as a fellow must experience when put up for sale in the Turkish slave market—a feeling that my ’points’ were being noted, and my money value computed. I half expected him to continue, ’Open your mouth, show your teeth!’.rdquo; Peixada was a tall, portly individual of fifty-odd, with a swarthy skin, brown, beady eyes, a black coat upon his back, and a fat gold ring around his middle finger. The top of his head was as bald as a Capuchin’s, and shone like a disk of varnished box-wood. It was surrounded by a circlet of crisp, dark, curly hair. He had a solemn manner that proclaimed him to be a person of consequence. It turned out that he was president of a one-horse insurance company. Mr. Rimo appeared to be but slightly in advance of Arthur’s own age—a tiny strip of a body, wearing a resplendent cravat, a dotted waistcoat, pointed patent-leather gaiters, and finger-nails trimmed talon-shape—a thoroughbred New York dandy, of the least effeminate type.

      “I suppose the name, Peixada,” the elder of the pair went on, “is not wholly unfamiliar to you.”

      “Oh, no—by no means,” Arthur assented, wondering whether he had ever heard it before.

      “I suppose the circumstances of my brother’s death are still fresh in your mind.”

      Arthur put on an intelligent expression, and inwardly deplored his ignorance. Yet—Peixada?

      Peixada? the name did have a familiar ring, of a truth. But where and in what connection had he heard it?

      “Let me see,” he ventured, “that was in—?”

      “In July, ’seventy-nine—recollect?”

      Ah, yes; to be sure; he recollected. So this man was a brother of the Peixada who, rather less than half a dozen years ago, had been murdered, and whose murder had set New York agog. In a general way Arthur recalled the glaring accounts of the matter that had appeared in the newspapers at the time. “Yes,” he said, feeling that it behooved him to say something, “it was very sad.”

      “Fearful!” put in Mr. Mendel.

      “Of course,” Peixada resumed, in his pompous style, “of course you followed the trial as it was reported in the public prints; but perhaps you have forgotten the particulars. Had I better refresh your memory?”

      “That would be a good idea,” said Arthur.—To what was the way being paved?

      With