Goshen is reached by stage, a common country mail stage only, of the cheapest pattern, running up from Litchfield, several miles north. Litchfield itself being four or five miles from the station on the Naugatuck Railroad, and reached only over a heavy and steep road, at points almost perpendicular to the horizon, and withal a dangerous ride, if the stage-horses are not kept perfectly in hand. I did not know of this road, and the jolting character of the stages from the station to Litchfield, and from Litchfield on to Goshen, or all the alluring words of my brother's letters might not have seduced me into acceptance, finally, of his invitation. But I went up to Goshen, and once there, in the society of my brother, and some genial citizens to whom he presented me, passed four or five days of my stolen vacation most pleasantly.
The supposed widow—and who proved to be one in fact—had, at the time I arrived in Goshen, ceased to be talked about so generally as before, had won everybody's respect and kindness, and had taught the villagers one good lesson—the value of little, rather than great curiosity, about others and their business, by her impenetrable silence upon those matters about which they had no right to know anything.
In her daily promenades with her little bouncing girl, of about five years of age, she passed by the house where I stopped, and one day, when my brother and I were taking the air along the public street, we met her. My brother—who knew her, but not well enough to arrest her in her walk, and present me—bowed to her, and on her turning up her face to respond to his salute, I felt that I had never seen such chastened beauty before. There was a slight evidence of a present, or the mark of a former grief or suffering in that rich face, which only seemed, however, to add to its beauty, or rather the soul-beauty which beamed through it. I felt as if I would almost be glad if that woman were to suffer some dire calamity, if I could only have the privilege of relieving her from it.
Years before, I had heard the late Dr. Ives, formerly Episcopal Bishop of North Carolina, but who had then become a Roman Catholic, lecture one night in the old Tabernacle, on Broadway, New York. His discourse touched upon charity. He said, among other things, in substance, that God made some people miserable in order that others might cultivate the sweet grace of charity in their own hearts, by administering to their sufferings! I thought it a monstrous doctrine, and felt like throwing a book, which I chanced to have with me, at the doctor's head. But when I found myself imagining misery for that sweet woman, in order that I might abate it, the doctor's discourse came back to memory with a new meaning; and, in fact, I don't know but I could have seen a horse run over her, breaking an arm, if I could have been on the spot in time to so far save her as to prevent a probable imminent death.
The reader may well judge that my emotions were not of a faint nature, but such as it would be less improper for me to express here, perhaps, had I not at that time been a married man, with one of the best of soulful wives at home, longing for my return "from the country." But strange thoughts sometimes rise in the greedy souls of men, and we would love to possess, in order to make them happy, all the good beings of both sexes in the world.
Mrs. Stevens—for so we will call her for the sake of a name—announced to the family, with whom she was stopping a day or two before I was to leave, that she was necessitated to return to New York in a day or two. The family were astonished, because she had previously declared her intention to remain a month longer. Of course everybody in the village soon heard of her intended departure, and all begged her to stay. I was a little surprised; but I said to my brother, "Her leaving so suddenly has some connection with that grief which we remarked in her face. She'll probably go by the same stage with me, and I'll learn more of her."
The morning of my departure came, and brother said he would ride down to Litchfield with me, and we took the lumbering stage together, confident that we should "take up" Mrs. Stevens on our way; but the stage passed the house at which she boarded, without her! The driver said she had started out before him, in a private wagon, with a neighbor, who was going to Litchfield, and I felt easier; that I should, in short, still be able to keep my eye on her, and learn her evidently mysterious history, and possibly yet have the gratifying opportunity of being of service to her.
We rode on. Stage-drivers in the country, with their two-horse teams, have a peculiar pride in out-driving the one-horse vehicles which they may come upon on the road, and our ordinarily slow old driver became quite a Jehu that morning, and drove past two or three teams which we overtook on the way, one of them being that which bore the beautiful widow and her no less beautiful child, and we arrived in Litchfield before them, alighting at the "Mansion House," the chief hotel of that centre of country aristocracy—a centre once of the best talent in the land, when Calhoun, and many other great men of the nation, were students there, under such other great men as Judges Reeve and Gould, of the once famous Law School.
Mrs. Stevens had received letters nearly every day, it was said, while in Goshen, and it had been remarked that she had had letters as often as every other day from somebody, evidently a man, who wrote a peculiar hand, as the superscriptions showed. This, the family with whom she boarded, and who brought the letters from the post office to her, had said. My brother had occasion to carry up the letters for that family once or twice, and had remarked the peculiar style of writing in the address of letters to Mrs. Stevens.
We naturally went into the office of the hotel, and brother, carelessly turning over the register, and noting the arrivals of the evening before, called to me: "See here—here's a 'mare's nest,' perhaps. I would swear that the man who writes so much to Mrs. Stevens wrote that name," said he, pointing to an inscription—"C. B. Le Roy, New York,"—made in a style which it would be almost impossible to successfully imitate; as markedly singular as a style of writing could well be. "I will swear it. What do you think?" asked my brother.