John Caldigate Part 63

'I have sometimes thought that it was the career for which I was best adapted. But, as to the envelope, the facts are now certain.'

'Any new facts?' asked Curlydown. But he asked the question in a jeering tone, not at all as though desiring confidence or offering sympathy.

'Yes,' replied Bagwax, slowly. 'The facts are certainly new,--and most convincing; but as you have not given attention to the particular branch concerned there can be no good in my mentioning them. You would not understand me.' It was thus that he revenged himself on Curlydown. Then there was again silence between them for a quarter of an hour, during which Curlydown was hurrying through his work, and Bagwax was meditating whether it was certainly his duty to make known the facts as to the postage-stamp. 'You are so unkind,' said Bagwax at last, in a tone of injured friends.h.i.+p, burning to tell his new discovery.

'You have got it all your way,' said Curlydown, without lifting his head. 'And then, as you said just now,--I don't understand.'

'I'd tell you everything if you'd only be a little less hard.'

Curlydown was envious. He had, of course, been told of the civil things which Sir John Joram had said; and though he did not quite believe all, he was convinced that Bagwax was supposed to have distinguished himself.

If there was anything to be known he would like to know it. Nor was he naturally quarrelsome. Bagwax was his old friend. 'I don't mean to be hard,' he said. 'Of course one does feel oneself fretted when one has been obliged to miss two trains.'

'Can I lend a hand?' said Bagwax.

'It doesn't signify now. I can't catch anything before the 5.20. One does expect to get away a little earlier than that on a Sat.u.r.day. What is it that you've found out?'

'Do you really care to know?'

'Of course I do,--if it's anything in earnest. I took quite as much interest as you in the matter when we were down at Cambridge.'

'You see that postage-stamp?' Bagwax stretched out the envelope,--or rather the photograph of the envelope, for it was no more. But the Queen's head, with all its obliterating smudges, and all its marks and peculiarities, were to be seen quite as plainly as on the original, which was tied up carefully among the archives of the trial. 'You see that postage-stamp?' Curlydown took his gla.s.s, and looked at the doc.u.ment, and declared that he saw the postage-stamp very plainly.

'But it does not tell you anything particular?'

'Nothing very particular--at the first glance,' said Curlydown, gazing through the gla.s.s with all his eyes.

'Look again.'

'I see that they obliterate out there with a kind of star.'

'That has nothing to do with it.'

'The bunch of hair at the back of the head isn't quite like our bunch of hair.'

'Just the same;--taken from the same die,' said Bagwax.

'The little holes for dividing the stamps are bigger.'

'It isn't that.'

'Then what the d---- is it?'

'There are letters at every corner,' said Bagwax.

'That's of course,' said Curlydown.

'Can you read those letters?' Curlydown owned that he never had quite understood what those letters meant. 'Those two P's in the two bottom corners tell me that that stamp wasn't printed before '74. It was all explained to me not long ago. Now the postmark is dated '73.' There was an air of triumph about Bagwax as he said this which almost drove Curlydown back to hostility. But he checked himself merely shaking his head, and continued to look at the stamp. 'What do you think of that?'

asked Bagwax.

'You'd have to prove it.'

'Of course I should. But the stamps are made here and are sent out to the colony. I shall see Smithers at the stamp-office on Monday of course.' Mr. Smithers was a gentleman concerned in the manufacture of stamps. 'But I know my facts. I am as well aware of the meaning of those letters as though I had made postage-stamps my own peculiar duty. Now what ought I to do?'

'You wouldn't have to go, I suppose?'

'Not a foot.'

'And yet it ought to be found out how that date got there.' And Curlydown put his finger upon the impression--10th May, 1873.

'Not a doubt about it. I should do a deal of good by going if they'd give me proper authority to overhaul everything in the office out there.

They had the letter stamped fraudulently;--fraudulently, Mr. Curlydown!

Perhaps if I stayed at home to give evidence, they'd send you to Sydney to find all that out.'

There was a courtesy in this suggestion which induced Curlydown to ask his junior to come down and take pot-luck at Apricot Villa. Bagwax was delighted, for his heart had been sore at the coolness which had grown up between him and the man under whose wing he had worked for so many years. He had been devoted to Curlydown till growing ambition had taught him to think himself able to strike out a line for himself. Mr.

Curlydown had two daughters, of whom the younger, Jemima, had found much favour in the eyes of Bagwax. But since the jealousy had sprung up between the two men he had never seen Jemima, nor tasted the fruits of Curlydown's garden. Mrs. Curlydown, who approved of Bagwax, had been angry, and Jemima herself had become sullen and unloving to her father.

On that very morning Mrs. Curlydown had declared that she hated quarrels like poison. 'So do I, mamma,' said Jemima, breaking her silence emphatically. 'Not that Mr. Bagwax is anything to anybody.'

'That does look like something,' said Curlydown, whispering to his friend in the railway carriage. They were sitting opposite to each other, with their knees together,--and were of course discussing the envelope.

'It is everything. When they were making up their case in Australia, and when the woman brought out the cover with his writing upon it, with the very name, Mrs. Caldigate, written by himself,--Crinkett wasn't contented with that. So they put their heads together, and said that if the letter could be got to look like a posted letter,--a letter sent regularly by the post,--that would be real evidence. The idea wasn't bad.'

'Nothing has ever been considered better evidence than postmarks,' said Curlydown, with authority.

'It was a good idea. Then they had to get a postage-stamp. They little knew how they might put their foot into it there. And they got hold of some young man at the post-office who knew how to fix a date-stamp with a past date. How these things become clear when one looks at them long enough!'

'Only one has to have an eye in one's head.'

'Yes,' said Bagwax, as modestly as he could at such a moment. 'A fellow has to have his wits about him before he can do anything out of the common way in any line. You'd tell Sir John everything at once;--wouldn't you?' Curlydown raised his hat and scratched his head.

'Duty first, you know. Duty first,' said Bagwax.

'In a man's own line,--yes,' said Curlydown. 'Somebody else ought to have found that out. That's not post-office. It's stamps and taxes. It's very hard that a man should have to cut the nose off his own face by knowing more than he need know.'

'Duty! Duty!' said Bagwax as he opened the carriage-door and jumped out on to the platform.

When he got up to the cottage, Mrs. Curlydovvn a.s.sured him that it was quite a cure for sore eyes to see him. Sophia, the elder of the two daughters at home, told him that he was a false truant; and Jemima surmised that the great attractions of the London season had prevented him from coming down to Enfield. 'It isn't that, indeed,' he said. 'I am always delighted in running down. But the Caldigate affair has been so important!'

'You mean the trial,' said Mrs. Curlydown. 'But the man has been in prison ever so long.'

'Unjustly! Most unjustly!'

'Is it so, really?' asked Jemima. 'And the poor young bride?'

'Not so much of a bride,' said Sophia. 'She's got one, I know.'

'And papa says you're to go out to Botany Bay,' said Jemima. 'It'll be years and years before you are back again.' Then he explained it was not Botany Bay, and he would be back in six months. And, after all, he wasn't going at all. 'Well, I declare, if papa isn't down the walk already,' said Jemima, looking out of the window.

'I don't think I shall go at all,' said Bagwax in a melancholy tone as he went up-stairs to wash his hands.