John Caldigate Part 64

The dinner was very pleasant; and as Curlydown and his guest drank their bottle of port together at the open window, it was definitely settled that Bagwax should reveal the mystery of the postage-stamp to Sir John Joram at once. 'I should have it like a lump of lead on my conscience all the time I was on the deep,' said Bagwax, solemnly.

'Conscience is conscience, to be sure,' said Curlydown

'I don't think that I'm given to be afraid,' said Bagwax. 'The ocean, if I know myself, would have no terrors for me;--not if I was doing my duty. But I should hear the ship's sides cracking with every blast if that secret were lodged within my breast.'

'Take another gla.s.s of port, old boy.'

Bagwax did take another gla.s.s, finishing the bottle, and continued.

'Farewell to those smiling sh.o.r.es. Farewell, Sydney, and all her charms.

Farewell to her orange groves, her blue mountains, and her rich gold-fields.'

'Take a drop of whitewash to wind up, and then we'll join the ladies.'

Curlydown was a strictly hospitable man, and in his own house would not appear to take amiss anything his guest might say. But when Bagwax became too poetical over his wine, Curlydown waxed impatient. Bagwax took his drop of whitewash, and then hurried on to the lawn to join Jemima.

'And you really are not going to those distant parts?'

'No,' said Bagwax, with all that melancholy which wine and love combined with sorrow can produce. 'That dream is over.'

'I am so glad.'

'Why should you be glad? Why should a resolve which it almost breaks my heart to make be a source of joy to you?'

'Of course you would have nothing to regret at leaving, Mr. Bagwax.'

'Very much,--if I were going for ever. No;--I could never do that, unless I were to take some dear one with me. But, as I said, that dream is over. It has ever been my desire to see foreign climes, and the chance so seldom comes in a man's way.'

'You've been to Ostend, I know, Mr. Bagwax.'

'Oh yes, and to Boulogne,' said Bagwax, proudly. 'But the desire of travel grows with the thing it feeds on. I long to overcome great distances,--to feel that I have put illimitable s.p.a.ce behind me. To set my foot on sh.o.r.es divided from these by the thickness of all the earth would give me a sense of grandeur which I--which,--which,--would be magnificent.'

'I suppose that is natural in a man.'

'In some men,' said Bagwax, not liking to be told that his heroic instincts were shared by all his brethren.

'But women, of course, think of the dangers. Suppose you were to be cast away!'

'What matter? With a father of a family of course it would be different.

But a lone man should never think of such things.' Jemima shook her head and walked silently by his side. 'If I had some dear one who cared for me I suppose it would be different with me.'

'I don't know,' said Jemima. 'Gentlemen like to amuse themselves sometimes, but it doesn't often go very deep.'

'Things always go deep with me,' said Bagwax. 'I panted for that journey to the Antipodes;--panted for it! Now that it is over, perhaps some day I may tell you under what circ.u.mstances it has been relinquished. In the meantime my mind pa.s.ses to other things; or perhaps I should say my heart--Jemima!' Then Bagwax stopped on the path.

'Go on, Mr. Bagwax. Papa will be looking at you.'

'Jemima,' he said, 'will you recompense me by your love for what I have lost on the other side of the globe?' She recompensed him, and he was happy.

The future father and son-in-law sat and discussed their joint affairs for an hour after the ladies had retired. As to Jemima and his love, Bagwax was allowed to be altogether triumphant. Mrs. Curlydown kissed him, and he kissed Sophia. That was in public. What pa.s.sed between him and Jemima no human eye saw. The old post-office clerk took the younger one to his heart, and declared that he was perfectly satisfied with his girl's choice. 'I've always known that you were steady,' he said, 'and that's what I look to. She has had her admirers, and perhaps might have looked higher; but what's rank or money if a man's fond of pleasure?'

But when that was settled they returned again to the Caldigate envelope.

Curlydown was not quite so sure as to that question of duty. The proposed journey to Sydney, with a pound a-day allowed for expenses, and the traveller's salary going on all the time, would put a nice sum of ready-money into Bagwax's pocket. 'It wouldn't be less than two hundred towards furnishing my boy,' said Curlydown. 'You'll want it. And as for the delay, what's six months? Girls like to have a little time to boast about it.'

But Bagwax had made up his mind, and nothing would shake him. 'If they'll let me go out all the same, to set matters right, of course I'd take the job. I should think it a duty, and would bear the delay as well as I could. If Jemima thought it right I'm sure she wouldn't complain.

But since I saw that letter on that stamp my conscience has told me that I must reveal it all. It might be me as was in prison, and Jemima who was told that I had a wife in Australia. Since I've looked at it in that light I've been more determined than ever to go to Sir John Joram's chambers on Monday. Good-night, Mr. Curlydown. I am very glad you asked me down to the cottage to-day; more glad than anything.'

At half-past eleven, by the last train, Bagwax returned to town, and spent the night with mingled dreams, in which Sydney, Jemima, and the envelope were all in their turns eluding him, and all in their turns within his grasp.

Chapter LIII

Sir John Backs His Opinion

Well, Mr. Bagwax, I'm glad that it's only one envelope this time.' This was said by Sir John Joram to the honest and energetic post-office clerk on the morning of Wednesday the 3d September, when the lawyer would have been among the partridges down in Suffolk but for the vicissitudes of John Caldigate's case. It was hard upon Sir John, and went something against the grain with him. He was past the time of life at which men are enthusiastic as to the wrongs of others,--as was Bagwax; and had, in truth, much less to gain from the cause, or to expect, than Bagwax. He thought that the pertinacity of Bagwax, and the coming of d.i.c.k Shand at the moment of his holidays, were circ.u.mstances which justified the use of a little internal strong language,--such as he had occasionally used externally before he had become attorney-general. In fact he had--d.a.m.ned d.i.c.k Shand and Bagwax, and in doing so had considered that Jones his clerk was internal. 'I wish he had gone to Sydney a month ago,' he said to Jones. But when Jones suggested that Bagwax might be sent to Sydney without further trouble, Sir John's conscience p.r.i.c.ked him. Not to be able to shoot a Suffolk partridge on the 1st of September was very cruel, but to be detained wrongfully in Cambridge jail was worse; and he was of opinion that such cruelty had been inflicted on Caldigate. On the Sat.u.r.day d.i.c.k Shand had been with him. He had remained in town on the Monday and Tuesday by agreement with Mr. Seely. Early on the Tuesday intimation was given to him that Bagwax would come on the Wednesday with further evidence,--with evidence which should be positively conclusive.

Bagwax had, in the meantime, been with his friend Smithers at the stamp-office, and was now fully prepared. By the help of Smithers he had arrived at the fact that the postage-stamp had certainly been fabricated in 1874, some months after the date imprinted on the cover of the letter to which it was affixed.

'No, Sir John;--only one this time. We needn't move anything.' All the chaos had been restored to its normal place, and looked as though it had never been moved since it was collected.

'And we can prove that this queen's-head did not exist before the 1st January, 1874.'

'Here's the deposition,' said Bagwax, who, by his frequent intercourse with Mr. Jones, had become almost as good as a lawyer himself,--'at least, it isn't a deposition, of course,--because it's not sworn.'

'A statement of what can be proved on oath.'

'Just that, Sir John. It's Mr. Smithers! Mr. Smithers has been at the work for the last twenty years. I knew it just as well as he from the first, because I attend to these sort of things; but I thought it best to go to the fountain-head.'

'Quite right.'

'Sir John will want to hear it from the fountain-head I said to myself; and therefore I went to Smithers. Smithers is perhaps a little conceited, but his word is--gospel. In a matter of postage-stamps Smithers is gospel.'

Then Sir John read the statement; and though he may not have taken it for gospel, still to him it was credible. 'It seems clear,' he said.

'Clear as the running stream,' said Bagwax.

'I should like to have all that gang up for perjury, Mr. Bagwax.'

'So should I, Sir John;--so should I. When I think of that poor dear lady and her infant babe without a name, and that young father torn from his paternal acres and cast into a vile prison, my blood boils within my veins, and all my pa.s.sion to see foreign climes fades into the distance.'

'No foreign climes now, Mr. Bagwax.'

'I suppose not, Sir John,' said the hero, mournfully

'Not if this be true.'

'It's gospel, Sir John;--gospel. They might send me out to set that office to rights. Things must be very wrong when they could get hold of a date-stamp and use it in that way. There must be one of the gang in the office.'

'A bribe did it, I should say.'