John Caldigate II

‘By George!’ exclaimed Dick. ‘I tell you that it is all a lie from beginning to end.’

Then there came a request from Babington that Dick 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 Dick Shand’s return and proffered evidence, he declared that Dick Shand having been born a gentleman, though he had been

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

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 Nobble, on 10th May, 1873, had certainly been manufactured and sent out to the colony since that date!

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

‘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 friendship, burning to tell his new discovery.