John Caldigate Part 62

'Of course, Mr. Shand, as you have come to me, I will hear what you may have to say. But what is the use of it? The man has been tried and found guilty.'

'They can let him out again if he's innocent.'

'The Queen can pardon him, no doubt;--but even the Queen cannot quash the conviction. The evidence was as clear as noonday. The judge and the jury and the public were all in one mind.'

'But I wasn't here, then,' said d.i.c.k Shand, with perfect confidence.

Robert Bolton could only look at him and raise his eyebrows. He could not tell him to his face that no unprejudiced person would believe the evidence of such a witness. 'He's your brother-in-law said d.i.c.k, 'and I supposed you'd be glad to know that he was innocent.'

'I can't go into that question, Mr. Shand. As I believe him to have been guilty of as wicked a crime as any man can well commit, I cannot concern myself in asking for a pardon for him. My own impression is that he should have been sent to penal servitude.'

'By George!' exclaimed d.i.c.k. 'I tell you that it is all a lie from beginning to end.'

'I fear we cannot do any good by talking about it, Mr. Shand.'

'By George!' d.i.c.k hitched up his yellow trousers as though he were preparing for a fight. He wore his yellow trousers without braces, and in all moments of energy hitched them up.

'If you please I will say good morning to you.'

'By George! when I tell you that I was there all the time, and that Caldigate never spoke to the woman, or so much as saw her all that month, and that therefore your own sister is in honest truth Caldigate's wife, you won't listen to me! Do you mean to say that I'm lying?'

'Mr. Shand, I must ask you to leave my office.'

'By George! I wish I had you, Mr. Bolton, out at Ahalala, where there are not quite so many policemen as there are here at Cambridge.'

'I shall have to send for one of them if you don't go away, Mr. Shand.'

'Here's a man who, even for the sake of his own sister, won't hear the truth, just because he hates his sister's husband! What have I got to get by lying?'

'That I cannot tell.' Bolton, as he said this, prepared himself for a sudden attack; but Shand had sense enough to know that he would injure the cause in which he was interested, as well as himself, by any exhibition of violence, and therefore left the office.

'No,' said Mr. Bromley, when all this was told him; 'he is not a cruel man, nor dishonest, nor even untrue to his sister. But having quite made up his mind that Caldigate had been married in Australia, he cannot release himself from the idea. And, as he thinks so, he feels it to be his duty to keep his sister and Caldigate apart.'

'But why does he not believe me?' demanded d.i.c.k.

'In answer to that, I can only say that I do believe you.'

Then there came a request from Babington that d.i.c.k Shand would go over to them there for a day. At Babington opinion was divided. Aunt Polly and her eldest daughter, and with them Mr. Smirkie, still thought that John Caldigate was a wicked bigamist; but the Squire and the rest of the family had gradually gone over to the other side. The Squire had never been hot against the offender, having been one of those who fancied that a marriage at a very out-of-the-way place such as Ahalala did not signify much. And now when he heard of d.i.c.k Shand's return and proffered evidence, he declared that d.i.c.k Shand having been born a gentleman, though he had been ever so much a sinner, and ever so much a drunkard, was ent.i.tled to credence before a host of Crinketts. But with Aunt Polly and Julia there remained the sense of the old injury, robbing Shand of all his attributes of birth, and endowing even Crinkett with truth.

Then there had been a few words, and the Squire had a.s.serted himself, and insisted upon asking Shand to Babington.

'Did you ever see such trousers?' said Julia to her mother. 'I would not believe him on his oath.'

'Certainly not,' said Mr. Smirkie, who of the three was by far the most vehement in his adherence to the verdict. 'The man is a notorious drunkard. And he has that look of wildness which bad characters always bring with them from the colonies.'

'He didn't drink anything but water at lunch,' said one of the younger girls.

'They never do when they're eating,' said Mr. Smirkie. For the great teetotal triumph had not as yet been made known to the family at Babington. 'These regular drunkards take it at all times by themselves in their own rooms. He has delirium tremens in his face. I don't believe a word that he says.'

'He certainly does wear the oddest trousers I ever saw,' said Aunt Polly.

At the same time d.i.c.k himself was closeted with the Squire, and was convincing him that there had been no Australian marriage at all. 'They didn't jump over a broomstick, or anything of that kind?' asked the Squire, intending to be jocose.

'They did nothing at all,' said d.i.c.k, who had worked himself up to a state of great earnestness. 'Caldigate wouldn't as much as look at her at that time;--and then to come home here and find him in prison because he had married her! How any one should have believed it!'

'They did believe it. The women here believe it now, as you perceive.'

'It's an awful shame, Mr. Babington. Think of her, Mr. Babington. It's harder on her even than him, for he was,--well, fond of the woman once.'

'It is hard. But we must do what we can to get him out. I'll write to our member. Sir George supports the Government, and I'll get him to see the Secretary. It is hard upon a young fellow just when he has got married and come into a nice property.'

'And her, Mr. Babington!'

'Very bad, indeed. I'll see Sir George myself. The odd part of it is, the Boltons are all against him. Old Bolton never quite liked the marriage, and his wife is a regular Tartar.'

Thus the Squire was gained, and the younger daughter. But Mr. Smirkie was as obdurate as ever. Something of his ground was cut from under his feet when d.i.c.k's new and peculiar habits were observed at dinner. Mr.

Smirkie did indeed cling to his doctrine that your real drunkard never drinks at his meals; but when d.i.c.k, on being pressed in regard to wine, apologised by saying that he had become so used to tea in the colonies as not to be able to take anything else at dinner, the peculiarity was discussed till he was driven to own that he had drank nothing stronger for the last two years. Then it became plain that delirium tremens was not written on his face quite so plainly as Mr. Smirkie had at first thought, and there was nothing left but his trousers to condemn him. But Mr. Smirkie was still confident. 'I don't think you can go beyond the verdict,' he said. 'There may be a pardon, of course;--though I shall never believe it till I see it. But though there were twenty pardons she ought not to go back to him. The pardon does not alter the crime,--and whether he was married in Australia, or whether he was not, she ought to think that he was, because the jury has said so. If she had any feeling of feminine propriety she would shut herself up and call herself Miss Bolton.'

'I don't agree with you in the least,' said the Squire; 'and I hope I may live to see a dozen little Caldigates running about on that lawn.'

And there were a few words upstairs on the subject between Mr. Smirkie and his wife--for even Mrs. Smirkie and Aunt Polly at last submitted themselves to d.i.c.k's energy. 'Indeed, then, if he comes out,' said the wife, 'I shall be very glad to see him at Plum-c.u.m-Pippins.' This was said in a voice which did not admit of contradiction, and was evidence at any rate that d.i.c.k's visit to Babington had been successful in spite of the yellow trousers.

Chapter LII

The Fortunes of Bagwax

An altogether new idea had occurred to Bagwax as he sat in his office after his interview with Sir John Joram;--and it was an idea of such a nature that he thought that he saw his way quite plain to a complete manifestation of the innocence of Caldigate, to a certainty of a pardon, and to an immediate end of the whole complication. By a sudden glance at the evidence his eye had caught an object which in all his glances he had never before observed. Then at once he went to work, and finding that certain little marks were distinctly legible, he became on a sudden violently hot,--so that the sweat broke out on his forehead. Here was the whole thing disclosed at once,--disclosed to all the world if he chose to disclose it. But if he did so, then there could not be any need for that journey to Sydney, which Sir John still thought to be expedient. And this thing which he had now seen was not one within his own branch of work,--was not a matter with which he was bound to be conversant. Somebody else ought to have found it out. His own knowledge was purely accidental. There would be no disgrace to him in not finding it out. But he had found it out.

Bagwax was a man who, in his official zeal and official capacity, had exercised his intellect far beyond the matters to which he was bound to apply himself in the mere performance of his duties. Post-marks were his business; and had he given all his mind to postmarks, he would have sufficiently carried out that great doctrine of doing the duty which England expects from every man. But he had travelled beyond postmarks, and had looked into many things. Among other matters he had looked into penny stamps, twopenny stamps, and other stamps. In post-office phraseology there is sometimes a confusion because the affixed effigy of her Majesty's head, which represents the postage paid, is called a stamp, and the postmarks or impressions indicating the names of towns are also called stamps. Those postmarks or impressions had been the work of Bagwax's life; but his zeal, his joy in his office, and the general energy of his disposition, had opened up to him also all the mysteries of the queen's heads. That stamp, that effigy, that twopenny queen's-head, which by its presence on the corner of the envelope purported to have been the price of conveying the letter from Sydney to n.o.bble, on 10th May, 1873, had certainly been manufactured and sent out to the colony since that date!

There are signs invisible to ordinary eyes which are plain as the sun at noonday to the initiated. It is so in all arts, in all sciences. Bagwax was at once sure of his fact. To his instructed gaze the little receipt for twopence was as clearly dated as though the figures were written on it. And yet he had never looked at it before. In the absorbing interest which the postmark had created,--that fraudulent postmark as it certainly was,--he had never condescended to examine the postage-stamp.

But now he saw and was certain.

If it was so,--and he had no doubt,--then would Caldigate surely be released. It is hoped that the reader will follow the mind of Bagwax, which was in this matter very clear. This envelope had been brought up at the trial as evidence that, on a certain day, Caldigate had written to the woman as his wife, and had sent the letter through the post-office. For such sending the postage-stamp was necessary. The postage-stamp had certainly been put on when the envelope was prepared for its intended purpose. But if it could be proved by the stamp itself that it had not been in existence on the date impressed on the envelope, then the fraud would be quite apparent. And if there had been such fraud, then would the testimony of all those four witnesses be crushed into arrant perjury. They had produced the fraudulent doc.u.ment, and by it would be thoroughly condemned. There could be no necessity for a journey to Sydney.

As it all became clear to his mind, he thumped his table partly in triumph,--partly in despair. 'What's the matter with you now?' said Mr.

Curlydown. It was a quarter past four, and Curlydown had not completed his daily inspections. Had Bagwax been doing his proper share of work, Curlydown would have already washed his hands and changed his coat, and have been ready to start for the 4.30 train. As it was, he had an hour of labour before him, and would be unable to count the plums upon his wall, as was usual with him before dinner.

'It becomes more wonderful every day,' said Bagwax solemnly,--almost awfully.

'It is very wonderful to me that a man should be able to sit so many hours looking at one dirty bit of paper.'

'Every moment that I pa.s.s with that envelope before my eyes I see the innocent husband in jail, and the poor afflicted wife weeping in her solitude.'

'You'll be going on to the stage, Bagwax, before this is done.'