Mrs Peixada. Harland Henry

afterward, however, he heard the shades fly clattering upward; and then, all at once, the silence was cloven by the same beautiful soprano voice that had interested him so much the night before. At first it was very low and soft, a mere liquid murmur; but gradually it waxed stronger and more resonant; and Arthur recognized the melody as that of Schubert’s Wohin. The dreamy, plaintive phrases, tremulous with doubt and tense with yearning, gushed in a mellow stream from out the darkness. No wonder they set Arthur’s curiosity on edge. The exquisite quality of the voice, and the perfect understanding with which the song was interpreted, were enough to prompt a myriad visions of feminine loveliness in any man’s brain. That a woman could sing in this wise, and yet not be pure and bright and beautiful, seemed a self-contradictory proposition. Arthur seated himself comfortably upon the broad stone balustrade of his door-step, and made up his mind that he would retain that posture until the musical entertainment across the way should be concluded.

      “I wonder,” he soliloquized, “why she chooses to sing in the dark. I hope, for reasons of sentiment—because it is in darkness that the effect of music is strongest and most subtle. I wonder whether she is alone, or whether she is singing to somebody—perhaps her lover. I wonder—ah, with what precision she caught that high note! How firmly she held it! How daintily she executed the cadenza! A woman who can sing like this, how she could love! Or rather, how she must have loved already! For such a comprehension of passion as her music reveals, could never have come to be, except through love. I wonder whether I shall ever know her. Heaven help me, if she should turn out, as Hetzel suspects, old and ugly. But that’s not possible. Whatever the style of her features may be, whatever the number of her years, a young and ardent spirit stirs within her. Isn’t it from the spirit that true beauty springs? I mean by the spirit, the capability of inspiring and of experiencing noble emotions. This woman is human. Her music proves that. And just in so far as a woman is deeply, genuinely human, is she lovely and lovable.”

      In this platitudinous vein Arthur went on. Meanwhile the lady had wandered away from Schubert’s Wohin, and after a brief excursion up and down the keyboard, had begun a magically sweet and thrilling melody, which her auditor presently identified as Chopin’s Berceuse, so arranged that the performer could re-enforce certain periods with her voice. He listened, captivated, to the supple modulations of the music: and it was with a sensation very like a pang of physical pain that suddenly he heard it come to an abrupt termination-break sharply off in the middle of a bar, as though interrupted by some second person. “If it is her lover to whom she is singing,” he said, “I don’t blame him for stopping her. He could no longer hold himself back—resist the impulse to kiss the lips from which such beautiful sounds take wing.” Then, immediately, he reproached himself for harboring such impertinent fancies. And then he waited on the alert, hoping that the music would recommence. But he waited and hoped in vain. At last, “Well, I suppose there’ll be no more to-night,” he muttered, and turned to enter the house. As he was inserting his latch-key into the lock, somebody below on the sidewalk pronounced a hoarse “G’d evening, Mr. Ripley.”

      “Ah, good evening, William,” returned Arthur, affably, looking down at a burly figure at the bottom of the steps.—William was the night-watchman of Beekman Place.

      “Oh, I say—by the way—William—” called Arthur, as the watchman was proceeding up the street.

      “Yassir?” queried William, facing about.

      Arthur ran down the stoop and joined his interlocutor at the foot.

      “I say, William, I see No. 46 has found a tenant. You don’t happen to know who it is?”

      “Yes,” responded William; “moved in Thursday—old party of the name of Hart.”

      “Old party? Indeed! Then I suppose he has a daughter—eh? It was the daughter who was singing a little while ago?”

      “I dunno if she’s got a darter. Party’s a woman. I hain’t seen no darter. Mebbe it was the lady herself.”

      “Oh, no; that’s not possible.—Hart, do you say the name is?”

      “Mrs. G. Hart.”

      “What does G. stand for?”

      “I dunno. Might be John.”

      “Who is Mr. G. Hart?”

      “I guess there ain’t none. Folks say she’s a I widder.—Well, Wiggins ought to thank his stars to have that house taken at last. It’s going on four years now, it’s lain there empty.”

      Mused Arthur, absently, “An old lady named Hart; and he doesn’t know whether the musician is her daughter or not.”

      “Fact is,” put in William, “I dunno much about ’em—only what I’ve heerd. But we’ll know all about them before long. Every body knows every body in this neighborhood.”

      “Yes, that’s so.—Well, good night.”

      “Good night, sir,” said William, touching his cap.

      Upstairs in the sitting-room, Arthur threw himself upon a sofa. Hetzel was away. By and by Arthur picked up a book from the table, and tried to read. He made no great headway, however: indeed, an hour elapsed, and he had not yet turned the page. His thoughts were busy with the fair one of the corner house. He had spun out quite a history for her before he had done. He devoutly trusted that ere long Fate would arrange a meeting between her and himself. He whistled over the melody of Wohin, imitating as nearly as he could the manner in which she had sung it. When his mind reverted to the Peixada business, as it did presently, lo! the prospective trip to Europe had lost half its charm. He felt that there was plenty to keep one interested here in New York.

      All day Sunday, despite the fun at his expense in which Hetzel liberally indulged, Arthur haunted the front of the house. But when he went to bed Sunday night, he was no wiser respecting his musical neighbor than he had been four-and-twenty hours before.

CHAPTER III.—STATISTICAL.

       Table of Contents

      MONDAY morning Arthur entered Peixada’s warehouse promptly as the clock struck ten. Peixada had not yet got down.

      Arthur was conducted by a dapper little salesman to an inclosure fenced off at the rear of the showroom, and bidden to “make himself at home.” By and by, to kill time, he picked up a directory—the only literature in sight—and extracted what amusement he could from it, by hunting out the names of famous people—statesmen, financiers, etc. The celebrities exhausted, he turned to his own name and to those of his friends. Among others, he looked for Hart. Of Harts there were a multitude, but of G. Harts only three—a Gustav, a Gerson, and a George. George was written down a laborer, Gerson a peddler, Gustav a barber; none, it was obvious, could be the G. Hart of Beekman Place. In about half an hour Peixada arrived.

      “Ah, good morning,” he said briskly. “Well?”

      “I am sorry to bother you so soon again, Mr. Peixada,” said Arthur, stiffly; “but——”

      “Oh, that’s all right,” Peixada interrupted. “Glad to see you. Sit down. Smoke a cigar.”

      “Then,” pursued Arthur, his cigar afire, “having thought the matter well over——”

      “You have concluded—?”

      “That your view of the case was correct—that we’re in for a long, expensive, and delicate piece of business.”

      “Not a doubt of it.”

      “You see, beforehand it would strike one as the simplest thing in the world to locate a woman like your sister-in-law. But this case is peculiar. It’s going on four years that nobody has heard from her. Clear back in January, 1881, she was somewhere in Vienna. But since then she’s had the leisure to travel