“I told him what I have told you. He said I must have a lawyer—that he would engage a lawyer for me. He engaged two lawyers—Mr. Short and Mr. Sondheim. I repeated my story to them. They listened. When I had done, they laughed. I asked them why they laughed. They replied that, though my story was unquestionably true, no jury would believe it. They said the lawyer for the prosecution would mix me upon cross-examination, and turn my defense to ridicule. They said I should have to plead lunacy. I need not detain you with a rehearsal of the dispute I had with Messrs. Short and Sondheim. Eventually—in deference chiefly to the urging of Mr. Nathan—I consented to let them take their own course. So I was led to court, and tried, and acquitted. It would be useless for me to go over my trial again now in this letter. I shall say enough when I say that it was conducted in the same room that I had to plead in this morning—that the room was crowded—that I had to sit there all day long, for two mortal days, and listen to the lawyers, and the witnesses, and the judge, and support the gaze of a multitude of people. If it had not been for Mr. Nathan, I don’t know how I should have lived through the ordeal. But he sat by me from beginning to end, and held my hand, and inspired me with strength and hope. My mother, meantime, I had not seen. Mr. Nathan said she was away from the city, visiting with friends, whom he named; and added that it would be kinder not to let her know what was going on. After my release, Mr. Nathan confessed that, thinking I had already enough to bear, he had deceived me. My mother had been sick; while my trial was in progress, she had died. Well, at last the trial was over, and the jury had declared me not guilty, and the prison people let me go. Mr. Nathan and I went together to an apartment he had rented in Sixty-third Street. Thither came Messrs. Short and Sondheim, and made me sign numberless papers—the nature of which I did not inquire into—and after a while I understood that I had inherited a great deal of money from Bernard Peixada—more than a hundred thousand dollars. This money I asked Mr. Nathan to dispose of, so that it might do some good. He invested it, and made arrangements to have the income divided between a hospital, an orphan asylum, a home for working women, an industrial school, and a society for the protection of children who are treated cruelly by their parents. (I have just now received a paper with a red seal on it, from which I learn that Bernard Peixada left a will, and that the money I have spoken of will have to be paid over to his brother.)
“That winter—the winter of 1879-80—Mr. Nathan and I spent alone together. For the first time since the day on which my father had told me I must marry Bernard Peixada, for the first time, I began to have a feeling of peace, and repose, and security. Mr. Nathan was so good to me—oh, such a good, kind, tender friend, Mr. Hetzel—that I became almost happy. It was almost a happiness just to spend my time near to Mr. Nathan—he was so gentle, so strong; he made me feel so safe, so far away from the storm and the darkness of the past. Was I not tormented by remorse? Did I not repent having taken two human lives? Not for one instant. I held myself wholly irresponsible. If Bernard Peixada and Edward Bolen had died by my hand, it was their own fault, their own doing. No, I did not suffer the faintest pang of remorse. Only, now and then I would remember—now and then the night of July 30th would re enact itself in my memory—and then I would shudder and grow sick at heart; but that was not remorse. It was disgust and horror. Of course I do not mean that I was happy in a positive sense, this winter. Real happiness I never knew until I met Arthur. But I was less unhappy than I had been for a long, long while.
“But in the early spring Mr. Nathan died. The last person I had left to care for, the last person who cared for me, the man who had stood as a rock of strength for me to lean upon, to whom I had perhaps been too much of a burden, but whom I had loved as a woman in my relation to him must needs have loved him—this man died. I was absolutely alone in the world. That was a dreary, desolate spring.
“Soon after his death, I received a paper something like this paper with the red seal that I have received to-day. I found that he had made a will and left me all his money. My doctor said I needed a change. I went to Europe. I traveled alone in Europe for some months, trying to forget myself in sight-seeing—in constant motion. At last I settled down in Vienna, and devoted myself to studying music. I staid about a year in Vienna. Then a spirit of restlessness seized upon me. I left Vienna and went to London.
“In London I met Mrs. Hart. We became friends at once. She was about to make a short trip on the Continent, before returning to America. She asked me to accompany her. I said I would go to the Continent with her, but that I could not return to America. She wanted to know why. I answered by telling her a little something of my recent history. I said, ’In America I am Judith Peixada—the notorious woman who killed her husband. Here I am unknown. So I will remain here.’ She asked, ’How old are you?’ I said, ’Twenty-three, nearing twenty-four.’ She said, ’You are a child. You have a long life before you. You are wasting it, moping about in this aimless way here in Europe. Come home with me. Nobody shall recognize you for Judith Peixada. I will give you a new name. You shall be Ruth Lehmyl. Ruth Lehmyl was the name of my daughter who is dead. You may guess how dearly I love you, when I ask you to take my daughter’s name. Come home and live with me, Ruth, and make me happy.’—As you know, I was prevailed upon. After a month or two spent at Aix-les-Bains, we came back to America. We dwelt for a while in an apartment on Fifty-ninth Street. Last April we moved into Beekman Place.
“This brings me to the second point. Why, with that dark stain upon my past—why, being Judith Peixada, for all my change of name—why did I consent to become Arthur Ripley’s wife? Oh, Mr. Hetzel, it was because I loved him. I was a woman, and I loved him, and I was weak. He said that he loved me, that it would break his heart if I should refuse him; and I could not help it. I tried hard. I tried to act against my heart. I told him that my life had not been what he might wish it to be. I begged him to go away. But he said that he cared nothing for the past, and he urged me and pleaded with me, and I—I loved him so the temptation was so strong—it was as if he had opened the gates of heaven and invited me to enter—I caught a glimpse of the great joy—of the great sorrow, too, of the sorrow that would follow to him and to me if I sent him away—and my strength was insufficient—and we were married.
“I am very tired, Mr. Hetzel. I have been writing for so long a time that my fingers are cramped, and my back aches from bending over, and my body has become chilled through by sitting still in this damp place, and my head is thick and heavy. Yet I have some things still left to say. You must pardon me if I am stupid and roundabout in coming to the point. And if I do not succeed in making what I have on my mind very clear to you, you must excuse me on the ground that I am quite worn out.
“As I have said, I was frank with Arthur Ripley. I warned him that my past life had been darkened by sin. I said, ’If you knew about it, you would not care to marry me.’ He retorted, The past is dead. You and I have just been born.’ It did indeed seem so to me—as though I had just been born. I allowed myself to be persuaded. We were married. But then, Mr. Hetzel, as soon as I had yielded, I said to Arthur, ’It is not right that I, your betrothed, should keep a secret from you. I will tell you the whole story.’ I said this to him on more than one occasion before we were married. And I repeated it again and again afterward. But every time that I broached the subject, he put it aside. He answered, ’No. Keep your secret as a reminder of my unwavering confidence and perfect love.’ I supposed that he was sincere. I marveled at his generosity, and loved him all the better, because of it. Yet what was the truth? The truth was that in his inmost heart? he could not help wishing to know what his wife’s secret was. But he played the hypocrite. He forbade me to tell it to him—forbade me to unseal my lips—and so got the credit for great magnanimity. Then, behind my back, he associated with Benjamin Peixada, and learned from his lips—not my secret—no, but the false, distorted version of it, which Bernard Peixada’s brother would delight to give. What Benjamin Peixada told him, he believed; and it was worse than he had bargained for. When he understood that his wife had committed murder, that his wife had stood, a common criminal, at the bar of the court of General Sessions, lo! all the love that he had boasted, died an instant death. And then—this is what is most infamous—then he contrived a cruel method of letting me know that he knew. Instead of coming to me, and telling me in a straightforward way, he put that advertisement into the paper. That, I do think, was infamous. And all the time, he was pretending that he loved me, and I was believing him, and treating him as a wife treats her husband. I read that advertisement, and was completely deceived by it. I went to Benjamin Peixada’s place. ’What do you wish with me?’ I asked. He answered, ’Wait a little while, and the gentleman who wrote that advertisement will come and explain to you. Wait a little while, and I promise you a considerable surprise.’ I waited. The gentleman came. The gentleman was Arthur. Not content with having decoyed me to that place in that way, he—he called me by that name—he called me Mrs. Peixada! The surprise was considerable, I confess. And yet, you and Mrs. Hart wonder that I am indignant.
“Oh, of course, I understand that Arthur had no share in causing my arrest. I understand that all he intended was to confront me there in Benjamin Peixada’s office, and inform me that he knew who I was, and denounce me, and repudiate me. But Benjamin Peixada had a little plan of his own to carry through. When Arthur saw what it was—when he saw that Benjamin Peixada had set a trap for me, and that I was to be taken away to prison—then he was shocked and pained, and felt sorry for what he had helped to do. You don’t need to explain that to me. That is not why I feel the deep resentment toward him which, I admit, I do feel. The bare fact that he pried into my secrets behind my back, and went on pretending to love me at the same time, shows me that he never truly loved me. You speak of my seeing him. It would be useless for me to see him. He could not undo what he has done. All the explanations and excuses that he could make, would not alter the fact that he went to work without my knowledge, and found out what I had again and again volunteered to tell him. If he suffers from supposing that I think he had a share in causing my imprisonment, you may tell him that I think no such thing. Tell him that I understand perfectly every thing that he could say. Tell him that a meeting between us would only be productive of fresh pain for each.
“Mr. Hetzel, if you were a woman, and if you had ever gone through the agony of a public trial for murder in a crowded court-room, and if all at once you beheld before you the prospect of going through that agony for a second time, I am sure you would grasp eagerly at any means within your reach by which to escape it. That is the case with me. I am a woman. I have been tried for murder once—publicly tried, in a crowded court-room. I would rather spend all the rest of my life in prison, than be tried again. That is why I pleaded guilty this morning. If there were any future to look forward to—if Arthur had acted differently—if things were not as they are—then, perhaps—but it is useless to say perhaps. I have nothing to live for—nothing worth purchasing at the price of another trial.