Part 31

"Mrs. Bruce, I am here with my friend, as an officer of the law, to search your house. Your husband is not what his card purports here, as you well know, but he is a clerk in the employ of"--(naming Mr. Redding's house)--"and is a thief. The most of your splendid wardrobe, which I had the pleasure of inspecting in your absence day before yesterday, is the result of his thefts; and I am here prepared to take possession of it--preferring to do so quietly rather than make any noise in the neighborhood. I do not suppose that you have a guilty knowledge of his crimes. He probably does not tell you of them,--and I have no desire to do you any harm, or him either,--but the firm must have back their property, or as much as they can get; and as I see you possess a great deal of rich jewelry, I shall ask you to put the most of that into my hands till your husband can settle with the firm."

She was perfectly stupefied through all this; declared that she had no belief that Mr. Bruce was any other man than he pretended to her to be; said she had had letters from his sisters living in Pennsylvania, and that she believed he was an honest man, and would gladly give up to officers of the law anything in her possession, if it could help him, to do so.

The upshot of the matter was, that several large trunks left that house that day, filled with rare goods and wares, and under the charge of the Mayor's clerk (for I had arranged it with her that she might name anybody to take charge of the goods). Sarah helped pack the trunks, and rendered us great aid, all unconscious that I was the pipe-repairer, her _quasi_-lover,--until just as I was leaving, catching her alone, I whispered something in her ear, which brought her astoundedly to her senses. She clasped my hand with a convulsive "squeeze," and looked unutterably into my eyes, quite as tragically as a fashionable lover, with her heart just a little broken for the twentieth time might have done, and said "Silence!" in response to my utterance of the same word.

The goods were taken to a proper place of deposit, and Mr. Redding was sent for, and succeeded in identifying some of them as surely having been in his store,--the unmade-up ones in particular,--and a peculiar shawl, of great value, only three of which his house had imported, and he knew where the other two had been sold. Mr. Redding was very anxious to have me proceed at once to unmask the clerk; but I told him that I preferred to await, for some reasons, till the return of his partner, and that just as soon as he returned I wished him to send me word, and a carriage to take me, and say nothing at all to his partner till I arrived. Two days elapsed and the message came. I was fortunately at home, and took the carriage instantly, and was off for the house. I found that the partner and Mr. Phillips had returned but an hour before from a very successful trip to Cincinnati, and Mr. Redding and they were in the counting-room congratulating themselves on their success.

"Well, Mr. Redding," said I, "I suppose it is time to tell you my story. I am ready--"

"Stop," said he; and turning to his partner and Mr. Phillips, he said, "I've some good news to tell you, also. Our friend here has been successful at last, and discovered the thief, and we've got back many of the goods. Go on, and tell us the story, for I don't know yet myself who the thief is."

The partner and Mr. Phillips looked in wonder into our and each other's eyes, and simultaneously said, "Yes, yes, let's hear; and first," said Mr. Phillips, "let us hear the scoundrel's name, if you have it, and then the rest of the story."

"Ah, yes, sir," said I, "that _is_ the point first. His name, Mr. Phillips, is 'William Bruce, dealer in stocks, etc.' (so his card says), '64 Wall Street.'"

Mr. Redding and the partner looked confused at the announcement (for I had told Mr. Redding that it was "an old clerk" of his), and Mr. Phillips, for a second, looked confused for another reason, which confusion was somewhat deepened, when I turned directly upon him, and said,--

"But Mr. Bruce has an alias, another name, and that is Mr. _Charles Phillips_; and you, sir, are the scoundrel you inquired for!"

Phillips turned pale as a ghost, and tried to say something, but his voice failed.

"Mr. Phillips," said I, "the house in 19th Street has delivered up its treasures. They are all in my possession, together with your mistress's pearls, diamonds, and watches, and everything valuable which she, as your 'wife,' would permit me and the officer to take, and you are now my prisoner, without the slightest possibility, on your part, of escape from the full penalties of the law; and now I propose to send a carriage at once for 'Mrs. Bruce.' She, I am sure, don't know of your guilt, and would be happy to encounter her returned husband here in the person of Mr. Charles Phillips, the time-old, confidential clerk of this house."

Phillips reached out his hands imploringly to me, and begged that I would not send for "Mrs. Bruce,"--said he was justly caught, and was ready to confess all, without our going to the trouble of a trial, and then commenced crying like a girl--hysterically.

The astonishment of Mr. Redding and his partner can better be imagined, perhaps, than portrayed here. I never saw such a change come over a man as that which Mr. Redding evinced. All his old strength seemed to come back to him at once. He was inflexible and severe. He said but few words, and these always to the purpose. His disgust for Phillips was something sublime. "O, you pious hypocrite!" said he; "you d----est of all 'whited sepulchres' that ever disgraced our common humanity! I am more angry that I have been so deceived by your pious villany, than for all the anxiety and sickness you have brought upon me. But, in your own pious cant, as you have meted it to others, 'so shall it be meted unto you,' you thief, libertine, and saintly class-leader!"

Mr. Redding's partner, on the other hand, was differently affected. He cried, and said to Phillips, "O, Charles Phillips, how could you? I know you must have had dreadful temptations. It was all that woman: she spurred you on."

Phillips was silent for a moment; and I, who believed the woman innocent of any knowledge of his crimes, waited anxiously to hear what he would say in reply; and the hardened man had the magnanimity to not shield himself behind the woman, but said, "O, no; she knows nothing of my guilt. She has not prompted me to it directly, but it was to support and to please her that I, without her knowledge, pursued my career of crime. I am the wickedest 'whited sepulchre,' as Mr. Redding calls me, that ever walked Broadway, or disgraced the inside of a church. But I have got my punishment, in part, now, and I am ready, if you demand it, to suffer the penalties of the law; but for my wife's and children's sake, I could wish that I could compromise with you, and go away from New York forever." (His family resided in Brooklyn.)

To cut the tale short, I will only add, that Mr. Redding unbent, in the course of a day or two, sufficiently to let Phillips off, on his promise to go at once to New Orleans, where he had relations, and never show his face again in New York.

The goods were returned--made and unmade dresses, and all; and the jewelry amounted to nearly enough to cover the best estimate of the losses which we could make. Phillips made a full confession of how he did things. He was sly and wily, and easily abstracted such goods as he desired, and doing them up himself, sent them off by the porter, when sending out other packages. One of the porters remembered to have gone many times with packages for Mr. or Mrs. William Bruce; and he also, he said, sent packages to various hotels, to impossible names, and marked on the corner, "To be called for;" and being able to describe the goods, if any query arose as to the propriety of giving the package to him, always succeeded in getting it. It was thus he managed.

The house, at my suggestion, very generously furnished Mrs. Bruce with three months' support, out of compliment to her giving up the goods without resistance, and in order to give her time to turn about and find something to do; for, though unmarried, by legal formula, to Phillips, as Mr. Bruce, she supposed herself his legal wife under the laws of the State, and was by no means a bad woman. Indeed, she was a good woman at heart; and after in vain trying to get together a little private school, as the widow of William Bruce,--for she insisted on being called Mrs. Bruce,--she turned to dressmaking, and did very well; and being a fine-looking, indeed, a showy woman, succeeded, in the course of two years after Phillips's flight, in winning the affections of a much older man than Phillips, but a wealthy and honest one; and was duly, and this time, with much ceremony, married.

I did not meet Sarah Crogan again for over five years from the time I last saw her at 19th Street; but she had not forgotten the Croton Water Company's man. She had married meanwhile; but she vowed that it came "nare breakin' her heart, so it did," when she discovered that the "bould officer of the law" was her sweetheart of a day or two before, and had but "thricked" her into letting him go all over the house, "like a wild rover!"

A FORCED-MARRIAGE SCHEME DEFEATED.

GOSHEN, CONN.--A LADY STRANGER THERE--A PILGRIMAGE TO GOSHEN, VIA THE FAR-FAMED MOUNTAIN TOWN OF LITCHFIELD--THE BEAUTIFUL WIDOW--AN UNPLEASANT REMINISCENCE OF DR. IVES, LATE BISHOP OF NORTH CAROLINA--MORE ABOUT THE WIDOW--SHE LEAVES FOR NEW YORK--AT THE "MANSION HOUSE," LITCHFIELD--A MARKED CHARACTER ENCOUNTERED THERE--MR. "C. B. LE ROY" STUDIED AND WEIGHED--THE BEAUTIFUL WIDOW AND LE ROY MEET--HER FACE DISCLOSES CONFLICTING EMOTIONS--MR. LE ROY AND THE BEAUTIFUL WIDOW, MRS. STEVENS, TAKE A WALK DOWN SOUTH STREET, IN THE "PARADISE OF LOAFERS"--SYMPATHIES SILENTLY EXCHANGED--WE ALL START FOR THE "STATION"--THE STAGE-COACH "TURNS OVER"--THE AFFRIGHTED LE ROY REVEALS HIS MANNERS--A PECULIAR SCENE IN THE CARS--AT BRIDGEPORT I PRESENT MYSELF TO MRS. STEVENS--AT NEW YORK AGAIN--A TALE OF COMPLICATIONS--MRS. STEVENS IN DEEP TROUBLE--A FRIEND OF HERS SEEKS ME--REVELATIONS--A FEARFUL STORY--A SECRET MARRIAGE AND UNHAPPY CONSEQUENCES--THE WRETCH LE ROY WANTS THE WIDOW'S MONEY--A TRAP SET FOR LE ROY--HE FALLS INTO IT--THE WEDDING SCENE DISARRANGED--THE WIDOW SAVED, AND THE INTENDED FORCED MARRIAGE DEFEATED.

In the summer of 185-, I had occasion to visit my brother, who was a clerk in a wholesale grocery store of one Lyman, on Water Street, I think, and who, being consumptively inclined, had, at Mr. Lyman's suggestion, and through his kindness, gone to the town of Goshen, Litchfield County, Connecticut, to spend a few weeks in the genial family of Mr. Lyman's father, and taste the bracing air of the hills of Litchfield County, so far-famed. So delighted was my brother with his "country home," as he called it, that he wrote me as often as once a week, and sometimes twice, varying his letters, in the enthusiasm with which they were filled over the mountain scenery, the fresh air, the excellent hunting, the rides and drives, with now and then a word about a beautiful, mysterious lady, supposed to be from New York, and by some supposed to be a widow,--a gentle, sweet, good woman,--who bore some grief or other in her soul, as was evident, he said, but who, with excellent good sense, kept her affairs to herself, and would not obligingly recite the history of her life to the gossiping villagers of that country town, who, like those of all other towns away from the centres of business, and not even on the line of any great thoroughfare, "must have something to busy themselves about," and therefore mind each other's business considerably.

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.

"Why, nothing, only that Mr. Le Roy is here, and that his coming accounts for the sudden departure of Mrs. Stevens. We must get a view of him," I said.

I had hardly uttered the words, before a man entered the room, and said to the young man behind the desk of the office,--

"Is not that Goshen stage behindhand this morning? I thought it was to arrive a half hour ago."

"Yes, sir, 'tis a little late this morning, but it has come," replied the young man.

"Come?" exclaimed the man; "and whom did it bring?"

"Those two men only," said the clerk. The man inquiring was a dark-complexioned, black-whiskered fellow, dressed a little _outre_, in a dandy-sort of style, had a half-professional look, but something very hard in the muscles of his cheek. He was evidently a little vexed at the stage's having brought no other freight, and a little nervous withal; and when in one of those spasms of nervousness in which men do this or that, or what not, without consciousness, he raised his hat from his head, I saw in him the imperious, heartless wretch, who could do anything which his baseness might chance to incline him to. He could play the merciless tyrant--if need were, cold-blooded, and without a pulse of sympathy for any suffering: and I saw more. That head was one never to be forgotten in its singular shape; a head that sends a thrill of disgust through one; and I at once saw that "C. B. Le Roy" (for I was sure the man before me was the man who had made the entry in the strange handwriting), was no other than a very wicked, low-lived lawyer, of whom I had had occasion to know something; but the name Le Roy was assumed. At last the wagon came, and Mr. "Le Roy" was on the piazza in time, having been pacing the hall, evidently making up his mind to do something, he knew not what--something desperate, perhaps; and he bounded across the "walk" in front of the house, reached out his hand to Mrs. Stevens, caught the little girl in his arms first, and handed Mrs. Stevens to the ground.

I happened to be watching the scene. The lady's face, on which for a moment was a forced smile, betrayed terribly conflicting emotions in her soul, as she passed into the hotel parlor behind Le Roy, who led the little girl playfully by the hand.

"That Le Roy is a villain," said I to my brother; "and that woman is in some way in his power. There is no attraction between them. She hates him. But he has her in his grasp. If it were not that the Goshen people think they know she has not much money, I should believe that he either has funds of hers in his possession, or that he is doggedly persisting in wringing them from her."

"O, no, brother," replied my brother. "You detectives are always looking out for evil. I don't like that scamp's looks myself. I guess he's a bad fellow; but why not put the most natural construction upon the matter; that is, that the fellow is in love with that beautiful woman, as almost every other man in the world might be; for there isn't one in ten thousand like her; and that she, like thousands of other women, loves a scamp. They have met here evidently by appointment. He's going to take her home."

"But didn't you see how she looked?" I asked.

"Yes; but she's a prudent woman; wasn't going to exhibit her affection outdoors, where she might be discovered by a dozen; besides, that neighbor who brought her might have an unpleasant story to tell. I know him and he's as gossipy as an old woman; she knows him, too, of course."

"But my opinion is formed, brother," said I. "I shall keep an eye on them, and I'll let you know in time, all about it. I haven't told you yet that I know that scamp. I detest him. He is no less than ----;" but my brother chanced not to have heard of him, and so the conversation dropped for the moment.

We were obliged to wait for the stage to the station for some two hours; and Mr. Le Roy and Mrs. Stevens sallied out with the little girl, to enjoy the fine air, perhaps, of the morning, and sauntered down "South Street," so I think it is called; a fine broad avenue, lined with beautiful elms, and on which are many of the residences of the principal "nabobs" of that old town of Litchfield, which somebody has facetiously termed "The Paradise of Loafers"--elegant ones. In summer, many people from cities, far and near, spend weeks and months at Litchfield; and my brother and I followed along after Le Roy and Mrs. Stevens, for I was bound to study him then and there as much as possible. We noticed that all of the promenaders who were coming in the opposite direction,--and there were several out that morning,--gazed upon Mrs. Stevens with expression of wonder at her beauty; and then seemed to look from her to her attendant with shrugs of the shoulders and a leer of the eyes, as they instinctively read his true character.

There is a magnetism about the coarser villains, a something indescribable and individual too, not of the same kind and degree in all, which discloses their real nature, however much they may try to hide it. As well might a short man hope to appear tall. But the great, successful villains, the keen men, who succeed by their genius, and not so much by force, constitute another class; genial, affable, often very delicate and refined in their appearance, attractive in short, especially to women. Indeed, they seem to work a spell over nearly every woman they meet. Le Roy was one of the coarser class, whose villanous natures the tailor's art cannot hide, however neatly they may be dressed,--and he was much adorned that day.