THE SEALED PACKET.
Seeing Martin Gurwood's attitude of despair, and the horror-stricken
expression on Humphrey Statham's face, Pauline started back in
amazement.
'Is it possible,' she cried, 'that some one has been beforehand with
me, that you already know the news which I come to bring? But no, that
could not be.'
She addressed herself to Martin, but, after a brief glance at her, he
had resumed his former attitude, and it was Statham who replied. 'You
find us talking over a matter which has caused great surprise and pain
to both of us, but it is not one,' he added quickly, seeing her start,
'in which, Madame Du Tertre, you could be interested, or of which,
indeed, you could have any knowledge. From what you say you would
appear to have some communication to make to us--does it concern Mrs.
Claxton?'
'It does, indeed,' cried Pauline, with a deep sigh, and more than ever
disconcerted at a glimpse of Martin Gurwood's tear-blurred face, which
he lifted up as he heard her words; 'it does, indeed.'
Martin did not say a word, but kept his eyes upon her with a hard
stony gaze. But Humphrey Statham cried out:
'For God's sake, woman, speak, and do not keep us longer in suspense!
Is Alice ill--has anything happened to her?'
'What has happened to her you will be able to guess, when you read
this slip of paper which, on my return from a false errand on which I
had been lured, I found in an envelope addressed to me.'
She handed him a note as she spoke. Humphrey Statham took it, and read
the following words in Alice's handwriting:
'I have found you and your accomplices out! I know my exact position
now, and can guess why I was prevented from seeing John after his
death!'
'Good heavens, what can this mean?' cried Martin Gurwood, after
Statham had read aloud the words of the note.
'Mean!' said Statham. 'There is one portion of it, at all events,
which is sufficiently intelligible. "I know my exact position now;"
she has learned what we have been so long endeavouring to hide from
her! She knows the exact relation in which she stood with Mr. Calverley.'
'Merciful powers, do you think so?' cried Martin.
'What other meaning could that phrase convey?' said Humphrey Statham.
'I myself have no doubt of it, and I think Madame Du Tertre is of my
opinion; are you not, madame?'
'I am, indeed,' said Pauline.
'But where can Alice have learned the secret?' said Martin; 'who can
have told it to her?'
'I have no doubt on that point either,' said Pauline; 'it must have
been told to her by Mr. Wetter.'
'Wetter!' cried Martin and Humphrey both at the same time.
'Mr. Henrich Wetter,' repeated Pauline. 'It was he who beguiled me
into the City upon a false pretence, and on my return home I learned
from the servant that he had been at the house during my absence, and
had a long interview with her mistress. Then I recognised at once that
I had been gotten out of the way for this very purpose.'
'Your suspicions of this man seem to have been just,' said Martin,
turning to Humphrey Statham, and speaking slowly, 'though they did not
point in that direction.'
'Yes, as I told you before, I knew him to be a bad fellow, and a
particularly undesirable acquaintance for Mrs. Claxton,' said Statham.
'But I confess, Madame Du Tertre, that I do not yet see why you should
fix upon Mr. Wetter as the guilty person in the present instance,
independently, that is to say, of the fact that he was with Mrs.
Claxton in the interval between your leaving home and your return,
during which she seems to have acquired this information. I should not
have thought that Wetter could have known anything about the Calverley
and Claxton mystery.'
'He knows everything that he wants to know,' cried Pauline with
energy; 'He is a fiend, a clever merciless fiend. If it were his
interest--and it was, as I happen to know--to make himself acquainted
with Alice's history, he would learn it at whatever cost of money,
patience, and trouble! It is he that has done this and no one else, be
sure of that.'
'We must allow then, I suppose,' said Humphrey Statham, referring to
the paper which he still held in his hand, 'that the discovery which
Mrs. Claxton claims to have made is that of her relations with Mr.
Calverley, and it seems likely that she gained the information from
Mr. Wetter, who gave it her for his own purpose. I take only a
subordinate part in the matter, Martin, as your friend, but it strikes
me that it is for you, as Alice's guardian, to ask Madame Du Tertre,
who has evidently a bad opinion--worse than mine almost--of Mr.
Wetter, why, having that opinion, she introduced this man to Alice,
and suffered him to become intimate at Pollington-terrace.'
'Why did you do this?' cried Martin, turning almost fiercely upon her.
'You say yourself that this is a bad man, and that nothing will stop
him when his mind is once made up to the commission no matter of what
crime, and yet you bring him to the house and present him to this
girl, whom it was so necessary to shield and protect.'
He spoke so wrathfully that Statham looked up in surprise at his
friend, and then glancing with pity at the shrinking figure of
Pauline, said, in mitigation:
'You must recollect that Mr. Wetter discovered Madame Du Tertre's
address by accident, and that he was her cousin!'
'He is not my cousin,' said Pauline, in a low subdued voice, gazing at
Martin with tearful eyes, 'I deceived you in that statement, as in
many others about Mr. Wetter, and about myself.'
'Not your cousin!' said Martin; 'why, then, did you represent him to
be so?'
'Because he insisted on it,' said Pauline, gesticulating freely;
'because he had a certain hold over me which I could not shake off,
and which he would have exercised to my detriment if I had not
implicitly obeyed him.'
'But how could he have done anything to your detriment so far as we
were concerned?' asked Martin.
'Very easily,' replied Pauline. 'It was my earnest desire for--for
several reasons to live in the house with Alice as her companion. And
Mr. Wetter would have prevented that.'
'How could he have done so?'
'By exercising the influence which he possessed, and which lay in his
acquaintance with a portion of my early life. He would have told you
what he knew of me, and you would not have suffered me to remain with
Alice.'
'You mean to say--' cried Martin, with a certain shrinking.
'O, don't mistake me,' she interrupted; 'I was never wicked, as you
seem to imagine; only the manner of my bringing-up, and the
associations of my youth were such that, if you had known them, you
might not have thought me a desirable companion for your friend.'
'Let me ask you one question, Madame Du Tertre,' said Humphrey
Statham. 'Up to this crisis you have undoubtedly discharged your
duties with fidelity, and proved yourself to be Alice Claxton's warm
and excellent friend. But what first induced you to seek for that post
of companion--what made you desire to ally yourself so closely with
this young woman?'
'What first influenced me to seek her out?' said Pauline; 'not love
for her, you may be assured of that. When first I saw this girl who
has played such a part in my life, her head was resting on the
shoulder of a man who, in bidding her adieu, bent down to kiss her
upturned face, down which the tears were rolling. And that man was my
husband.'
'Your husband!' cried Martin.
'My husband. I knew not who the girl was; I had never seen her before;
I had never heard of the existence of any one between whom and my
husband there could properly exist such familiarity, and I at once
jumped to the conclusion that he was her lover, and I hated her
accordingly.'
'But you have satisfied yourself that that was not the case,' asked
Humphrey Statham hurriedly.
'O, yes,' said Pauline; 'but not until a long time after I first saw
them together, not until, so far as one of them was concerned, any
feeling of mine was useless. I determined that if ever I saw this
woman again I would be revenged upon her! Fortune stood my friend; I
did see her; I became acquainted with the mystery of her story, and
thus supplied myself with a weapon which could at any time be made
fatal to her; I won your confidence,' turning to Martin, 'and made
myself necessary to you all, and then, and not till then, did I
discover how ill-founded and unjust had been my suspicions; not till
then did I learn, by the merest accident, that Alice, instead of
having been the mistress of my husband, who was dead by that time, was
his sister.'
'Alice your husband's sister?' cried Martin Gurwood in amazement. 'And
you were not aware of that fact until animated by false suspicions you
had laid yourself out for revenge upon her?'
'Not until I had gained your confidence,' said Pauline, 'or at least
taken the first steps towards gaining it. Not until that night at
Hendon, when I was left alone with her, and when, while she was under
the influence of the narcotic, I looked through her papers--you see I
am speaking frankly now, and am desirous of hiding nothing, however
much to my own disadvantage it may be--and discovered her relationship
to my dead husband.'
'Who was your husband?' said Martin Gurwood in a softened voice.
'It is not likely that you ever heard of him,' replied Pauline. 'His
name was Durham. In his last days he had some connection with the
house of Calverley and Co., being sent out as an agent to represent
them in Ceylon.'
'Durham!' cried Martin Gurwood. 'Surely I have some recollection of
that name. Yes; I remember it all now. He was the man who mysteriously
disappeared from on board one of the Peninsular and Oriental Company's
ships, and who was supposed to have fallen overboard and been drowned
on his passage out.'
'The same,' said Pauline; 'he was my husband.'
'Durham!' cried Statham. 'What was his Christian name?'
'Thomas. All his friends knew him as Tom Durham.
'Tom Durham; I knew him well--at one time intimately; but I had no
idea that he was married, much less that you were his wife. I
recollect now reading the paragraph about his supposed drowning the
last time I left London on my holiday.'
'You knew Tom Durham well?' cried Pauline, clasping her hands. '_Mon
Dieu_, I see it all! You are the H. S., whose letter I have here!'
As she spoke she took a pocket-book from the bosom of her dress, and
from it extracted a paper, which she handed to Statham.
'That is my handwriting, surely,' said Humphrey, running his eyes over
the document. 'In it I acknowledge the receipt of a packet which I
promised to take care of, and declare I will not give it up save to
Tom himself, or to some person duly accredited by him. The packet is
in that iron safe, where it has remained ever since.'
'What do you imagine it contains?' asked Martin.
'I have not the remotest idea,' replied his friend. 'As you will see,
by a perusal of this paper, Tom Durham offered to inform me, but I
declined to receive his confidence, partly because I thought my
ignorance might be of service to him, partly to prevent myself being
compromised.'
'Do you think it could have any bearing upon Alice?' asked Pauline.
'If I thought so, I should not hesitate for an instant to place it in
your hands. Whatever may have been the motive by which you were
actuated at first, you have been a sure and steady friend to that poor
girl, and I have perfect reliance on you.'
'This poor man, Durham, will now never come to claim the packet
himself,' said Martin Gurwood, 'and his widow is plainly his nearest
representative. If there be anything in it which concerns Mrs. Claxton,
we should never forgive ourselves for not having taken advantage of
the information which it may contain.'
'You think, then, perhaps on the whole I should be justified in handing
it to Madame Du-- I mean to this lady,' said Statham.
'Certainly, I think so.'
'So be it,' said Statham, walking round to the desk at which Martin was
seated, and taking from the top drawer a key, with which he proceeded
to unlock the iron safe; 'there it is,' he added, 'duly marked "Akhbar
K," and exactly in the same condition as when I received it from poor
Tom's messenger.'
And with these words he placed a packet in Pauline's hands.
She broke the seals, and the outside cover fell to the ground. Its
contents were two sheets of paper, one closely written.
'There is nothing but this,' she said, looking though it; then turning
to Mr. Statham, 'it will be as well, perhaps,' she said, 'if you were
to read it aloud.'
Humphrey took the paper from her hand and read as follows:
'My dear Humphrey Statham,--Within a week after this reaches you I
shall have left England for what may possibly prove a very long
absence; and although I am pretty well accustomed to a roving life,
and have been so busy, that I have never had time to be superstitious,
I, for the first time, feel a desire to leave my affairs as much in
order as possible, and to put as good a polish on my name as that name
will bear.
'After all, however, I do not see that I need inflict a true and
particular history of my life and adventures upon a man so busied as
yourself. It would not be very edifying reading, my dear Statham, nor
do I imagine that being mixed up in any way with my affairs would be
likely to do you much good with the governor of the Bank of England or
the directors of Lloyd's. I scarcely know how you, a steady,
prosperous man of business, ever managed to continue your friendship
with a harum-scarum fellow like myself! It was all very well in the
early days when we were lads together, and you were madly in love with
that Leeds milliner-girl'--Humphrey Statham's voice changed as he read
the passage--'but now you are settled and respectable, and I am as
great a ne'er-do-weel as ever.
'Not quite so great, perhaps, you will think, when you see that I am
going to try to make amends for one wrong which I have done. I shall
not bother you with anything else, my dear Statham; but I will leave
this one matter in your hands, and I am sure that if any question
about it ever arises, you will look to it and see it put straight for
the sake of our old friendship, and don't break down or give it up
because I seem to come out rather rough at the first, dear old man.
Read it through, and stand by me.
'You do not know--nor any one else scarcely, for the matter of
that--that I have a half-sister, the sweetest, prettiest, dearest, and
most innocent little creature that ever shed sunshine on a household.
She didn't shed it long on ours though; for as soon as she was old
enough, she was sent away to earn her own living, which she did by
becoming governess in a Quaker's family at York. I was fond of
her--very fond in my odd way--but I never saw much of her, as I was
always rambling about; and when, after a return from an absence of
many months, I heard that Alice was married to an elderly man named
Claxton, who was well off, and lived in comfort near London, I thought
it was a good job for her, and troubled myself but little more about
the matter.
'But one day, no matter how, my suspicions were aroused. I made
inquiries, and--to cut the matter short--I discovered that the
respectable Mr. Claxton, to whom I had heard Alice was married, was a
City merchant, whose real name was Calverley, and who had already a
wife. I never doubted Alice for a moment; I knew the girl too well for
that. I felt certain this old scoundrel had deceived her, and, as they
say in the States, "I went for him."
'There's no use denying it, Humphrey, I acted like a mean hound; but
what was I to do? I was always so infernally hard up. I brought the
old boy to his bearings, and made him confess that he had acted a
ruffian's part. And then I ought to have killed him, I suppose. But I
didn't. He pointed out to me that Alice was in perfect ignorance of
her real position, that to be informed of it would probably be her
death. And then--he is a tremendously knowing old bird--he made
certain suggestions about improving my financial position and getting
me regular employment, and giving me a certain sum of money down, so
that somehow I listened to him more quietly than I was at first
disposed to do. Not that I wasn't excessively indignant on Alice's
account. Don't make any mistake about that. I told old Calverley that
he had done her a wrong which must be set right, so far as lay in his
power; and I made him write out a paper at my dictation and sign it in
full, with his head-clerk as witness to the signature. Of course the
clerk did not know the contents of the document, but he saw his master
sign it, and put his own name as witness. This was done two-days ago,
just at the time when they had been writing a lot of letters in the
office about my taking up their agency in Ceylon, and no doubt he
thought it had something to do with that. I shall enclose that paper in
this letter, and you can use it in case of need. Not that I think old
Calverley will go away from his word; in the first place, because,
notwithstanding this rascally trick he has played poor Alice, he seems
a decent kind of fellow; and in the next, because he would be afraid
to, so long as I am to the fore. But something might happen to him or
to me, and then the paper would be useful.
'Here is the whole story, Humphrey, confided to your common sense and
judgment, to act with as you think best, by
'Your old friend,
'TOM DURHAM.'
'Something has happened to both of them,' said Humphrey Statham,
solemnly, picking up the paper which had fluttered to the ground. 'Now
let us look at the enclosure:
'I, John Calverley, merchant, of Mincing-lane and Great
Walpole-street, do hereby freely confess that having made the
acquaintance of Alice Durham, to whom I represented myself as a
bachelor of the name of Claxton, I married the said Alice Durham at
the church of Saint Nicholas, at Ousegate, in the city of York, I
being, at the same time, a married man; and having a wife then, and
now, living. And I solemnly swear, and hereby set forth, that the said
Alice Durham, now known as Alice Claxton, was deceived by me, had no
knowledge of my former marriage, or of my name being other than that
which I gave her, but fully and firmly believes herself to be my true
and lawful wife.
'This I swear,
'JOHN CALVERLEY.
'Witness,
'THOMAS JEFFREYS,
'Head Clerk to Messrs. Calverley and Co.'
'That appears to me decisive as an assertion of Alice's innocence,'
said Martin Gurwood, looking round as Humphrey finished reading.
'To most persons it would be so,' said Statham; 'but Mrs. Calverley,
with whom we chiefly have to deal, is not of the ordinary stamp. It
will be advisable, however, I think, that we should see her at once,
taking this document with us. If Madame Du--if Mrs. Durham's
suspicions of Mr. Wetter are well founded, he will not have uttered
his bark without being prepared to bite, and it is probably to Mrs.
Calverley that he will first address himself.'
'Do you wish me to accompany you?' asked Pauline.
'No,' said Statham, 'I think you had better return home.'
'I think so, too,' said Martin; 'your sister may be expecting you.'
Her sister! In her broken condition it was some small comfort to
Pauline to hear the acknowledgement of that connection from Martin's
lips.