Curlydown and Bagwax
There had been a sort of pledge given at the trial by Sir John Joram
that the matter of the envelope should be further investigated. He had
complained in his defence that the trial had been hurried on,--that time
had not been allowed for full inquiries, seeing that the character of
the deed by which his client had been put in jeopardy depended upon what
had been done on the other side of the globe. 'This crime,' he had said,
'if it be a crime, was no doubt committed in the parish church of
Utterden in the early part of last year; but all the evidence which has
been used or which could be used to prove it to have been a crime, has
reference to things done long ago, and far away. Time has not been
allowed us for rebutting this evidence by counter-evidence.' And yet
much time had been allowed. The trial had been postponed from the spring
to the summer assizes; and then the offence was one which, from its very
nature, required speedy notice. The Boltons, who became the instigators
of the prosecution, demanded that the ill-used woman should be relieved
as quickly as possible from her degradation. There had been a general
feeling that the trial should not be thrown over to another year; and,
as we are aware, it had been brought to judgment and the convicted
criminal was in jail. But Sir John still persevered, and to this
perseverance he had been instigated very much by a certain clerk in the
post-office.
Two post-office clerks had been used as witnesses at the trial, of whom
the elder, Mr. Curlydown, had been by no means a constant or an
energetic witness. A witness, when he is brought up for the defence,
should not be too scrupulous, or he will be worse than useless. In a
matter of fact a man can only say what he saw, or tell what he heard, or
declare what he knew. He should at least do no more. Though it be to
save his father, he should not commit perjury. But when it comes to
opinion, if a man allows himself to waver, he will be taken as thinking
the very opposite of what he does think. Such had been the case with Mr.
Curlydown. He had intended to be very correct. He had believed that the
impression of the Sydney stamp was on the whole adverse to the idea that
it had been obtained in the proper way; and yet he had, when
cross-examined, acknowledged that it might very probably have been
obtained in the proper way. It certainly had not been 'smudged' at all,
and such impressions generally did become 'smudged.' But then he was
made to say also that impressions very often did not become smudged. And
as to the word 'Nobble' which should have been stamped upon the
envelope, he thought that in such a case its absence was very
suspicious; but still he was brought to acknowledge that post-masters in
provincial offices far away from inspection, frequently omit that part
of their duty. All this had tended to rob the envelope of those
attributes of deceit and conspiracy which Sir John Joram attributed to
it, and had justified the judge in his opinion that Mr. Curlydown's
evidence had told them little or nothing. But even Mr. Curlydown had
found more favour with the judge than Samuel Bagwax, the junior of the
two post-office witnesses. Samuel Bagwax had perhaps been a little too
energetic. He had made the case his own, and was quite sure that the
envelope had been tampered with. I think that the counsel for the Crown
pressed his witness unfairly when he asked Mr. Bagwax whether he was
absolutely certain that an envelope with such an impression could not
have passed through the post-office in the ordinary course of business.
'Nothing is impossible,' Mr. Bagwax had replied. 'Is it not very much
within the sphere of possibility?' the learned gentleman had asked. The
phrase was misleading, and Mr. Bagwax was induced to say that it might
be so. But still his assurance would probably have had weight with the
jury but for the overstrained honesty of his companion. The judge had
admonished the jury that in reference to such a point they should use
their own common-sense rather than the opinion of such a man as Mr.
Bagwax. A man of ordinary common-sense would know how the mark made by a
die on a letter would be affected by the sort of manipulation to which
the letter bearing it would be subjected;--and so on. From all which it
came to pass that the judge was understood to have declared that that
special envelope might very well have passed in ordinary course through
the Sydney post-office.
But Samuel Bagwax was not a man to be put down by the injustice of
lawyers. He knew himself to have been ill-treated. He was confident that
no man alive was more competent than himself to form an opinion on such
a subject; and he was sure, quite sure,--perhaps a little too
sure,--that there had been some dishonesty with that envelope. And thus
he became a strong partisan of John Caldigate and of Mrs. John
Caldigate. If there had been tampering with that envelope, then the
whole thing was fraudulent, false, and the outcome of a base conspiracy.
Many points were present to his mind which the lawyers between them
would not allow him to explain properly to a jury. When had that die
been cut, by which so perfect an impression had been formed? If it could
be proved that it had been cut since the date it bore, then of course
the envelope would be fraudulent. But it was only in Sydney that this
could be ascertained. He was sure that a week's ordinary use would have
made the impression less perfect. Some letters must of course be
subjected to new dies, and this letter might in due course have been so
subjected. But it was more probable that a new stamp should have been
selected for a surreptitious purpose. All this could be ascertained by
the book of daily impressions kept in the Sydney post-office;--but
there had not been time to get this evidence from Sydney since this
question of the impression had been ventilated. It was he who had first
given importance to the envelope; and being a resolute and almost heroic
man, he was determined that no injustice on the part of a Crown
prosecutor, no darkness in a judge's mind, no want of intelligence in a
jury, should rob him of the delight of showing how important to the
world was a proper understanding of post-office details. He still
thought that that envelope might be made to prove a conspiracy on the
part of Crinkett and the others, and he succeeded in getting Sir John
Joram to share that belief.
The envelope itself was still preserved among the sacred archives of the
trial. That had not been bodily confided to Samuel Bagwax. But various
photographs had been made of the document, which no doubt reproduced
exactly every letter, every mark, and every line which was to be seen
upon it by the closest inspection. There was the direction, which was
admitted to be in Caldigate's handwriting,--the postage-stamp, with its
obliterating lines,--and the impression of the Sydney postmark. That was
nearly all. The paper of the envelope had no water-marks. Bagwax thought
that if he could get hold of the envelope itself something might be done
even with that; but here Sir John could not go along with him, as it had
been fully acknowledged that the envelope had passed from the possession
of Caldigate into the hands of the woman bearing the written address. If
anything could be done, it must be done by the postmarks,--and those
postmarks Bagwax studied morning, noon, and night.
It had now been decided that Bagwax was to be sent out to Sydney at the
expense of the Caldigates. There had been difficulty as to leave of
absence for such a purpose. The man having been convicted, the
postmaster-general was bound to regard him as guilty, and hesitated to
allow a clerk to be absent so long on behalf of a man who was already in
prison. But the Secretary of State overruled this scruple, and the leave
was to be given. Bagwax was elate,--first and chiefly because he trusted
that he would become the means of putting right a foul and cruel wrong.
For in these days Bagwax almost wept over the hardships inflicted on
that poor lady at Folking. But he was elated also by the prospect of his
travels, and by the godsend of a six months' leave of absence. He was a
little proud, too, at having had this personal attention paid to him by
the Secretary of State. All this was very gratifying. But that which
gratified him was not so charming to his brother clerks. They had never
enjoyed the privilege of leaving that weary office for six months. They
were not allowed to occupy themselves in contemplating an envelope. They
were never specially mentioned by the Secretary of State. Of course
there was a little envy, and a somewhat general feeling that Bagwax,
having got to the weak side of Sir John Joram, was succeeding in having
himself sent out as a first-class overland passenger to Sydney, merely
as a job. Paris to be seen, and the tunnel, and the railways through
Italy, and the Suez Canal,--all these places, not delightful to the
wives of Indian officers coming home or going out, were an Elysium to
the post-office mind. His expenses to be paid for six months on the most
gentleman-like footing, and his salary going on all the time! Official
human nature, good as it generally is, cannot learn that such glories
are to be showered on one not specially deserving head without something
akin to enmity. The general idea, therefore, in the office, was that
Bagwax would do no good in Sydney, that others would have been better
than Bagwax,--in fact, that of all the clerks in all the departments,
Bagwax was the very last man who ought to have been selected for an
enterprise demanding secrecy, discretion, and some judicial severity.
Curlydown and Bagwax occupied the same room at the office in St.
Martin's-le-Grand; and there it was their fate in life to arrange,
inspect, and generally attend to those apparently unintelligible
hieroglyphics with which the outside coverings of our correspondence are
generally bedaubed. Curlydown's hair had fallen from his head, and his
face had become puckered with wrinkles, through anxiety to make these
markings legible and intelligible. The popular newspaper, the popular
member of Parliament, and the popular novelist,--the name of Charles
Dickens will of course present itself to the reader who remembers the
Circumlocution office,--have had it impressed on their several
minds,--and have endeavoured to impress the same idea on the minds of
the public generally,--that the normal Government clerk is quite
indifferent to his work. No greater mistake was ever made, or one
showing less observation of human nature. It is the nature of a man to
appreciate his own work. The felon who is made simply to move shot,
perishes because he knows his work is without aim. The fault lies on the
other side. The policeman is ambitious of arresting everybody. The
lawyer would rather make your will for you gratis than let you make your
own. The General can believe in nothing but in well-trained troops.
Curlydown would willingly have expended the whole net revenue of the
post-office,--and his own,--in improving the machinery for stamping
letters. But he had hardly succeeded in life. He had done his duty, and
was respected by all. He lived comfortably in a suburban cottage with a
garden, having some private means, and had brought up a happy family in
prosperity;--but he had done nothing new. Bagwax, who was twenty years
his junior, had with manifest effects, added a happy drop of turpentine
to the stamping-oil,--and in doing so had broken Curlydown's heart. The
'Bagwax Stamping Mixture' had absolutely achieved a name, which was
printed on the official list of stores. Curlydown's mind was vacillating
between the New River and a pension,--between death in the breach and
acknowledged defeat,--when a new interest was lent to his life by the
Caldigate envelope. It was he who had been first sent by the
Postmaster-General to Sir John Joram's chambers. But the matter had
become too large for himself alone, and in an ill-fated hour Bagwax had
been consulted. Now Bagwax was to be sent to Sydney,--almost with the
appointments of a lawyer!
They still occupied the same room,--a fact which infinitely increased
the torments of Curlydown's position. They ought to have been moved very
far asunder. Curlydown was still engaged in the routine ordinary work of
the day, seeing that the proper changes were made in all the stamps used
during the various hours of the day,--assuring himself that the crosses
and letters and figures upon which so much of the civilisation of Europe
depended, were properly altered and arranged. And it may well be that
his own labours were made heavier by the devotion of his colleagues to
other matters. And yet from time to time Bagwax would ask him questions,
never indeed taking his advice, but still demanding his assistance.
Curlydown was not naturally a man of ill-temper or an angry heart. But
there were moments in which he could hardly abstain from expressing
himself with animosity.
On a certain morning in August, Bagwax was seated at his table, which as
usual was laden with the envelopes of many letters. There were some
hundreds before him, the marks on which he was perusing with a strong
magnifying-glass. It had been arranged that he was to start on his great
journey in the first week in September, and he employed his time before
he went in scanning all the envelopes bearing the Sydney postmark which
he had been able to procure in England. He spent the entire day with a
magnifying-glass in his hand;--but as Curlydown was also always armed in
the same fashion, that was not peculiar. They did much of their work
with such tools.
The date on the envelope,--the date conveyed by the impression, to which
so much attention had been given,--was 10th May 1873. Bagwax had
succeeded in getting covers bearing dates very close to that. The 7th of
May had been among his treasures for some time, and now he had acquired
an entire letter, envelope and all, which bore the Sydney impression of
the 13th May. This was a great triumph. 'I have brought it within a
week,' he said to Curlydown, bending down over his glass, and inspecting
at the same time the two dates.
'What's the good of that?' asked Curlydown, as he passed rapidly under
his own glass the stamps which it was his duty to inspect from day to
day.
'All the good in the world,' said Bagwax, brandishing his own magnifier
with energy. 'It is almost conclusive.' Now the argument with Bagwax was
this,--that if he found in the Sydney postmarks of 7th May, and in those
of 13th May, the same deviations or bruises in the die, those deviations
must have existed also on the days between these two dates;--and as the
impression before him was quite perfect, without any deviation, did it
not follow that it must have been obtained in some manner outside the
ordinary course of business?
'There are a dozen stamps in use at the Sydney office,' said Curlydown.
'Perhaps so; or, at any rate, three or four. But I can trace as well as
possible the times at which new stamps were supplied. Look here.' Then
he threw himself over the multitude of envelopes, all of which had been
carefully arranged as to dates, and began to point out the periods.
'Here, you see, in 1873, there is nothing that quite tallies with the
Caldigate letter. I have measured them to the twentieth part of an inch,
and I am sure that early in May '73 there was not a stamp in use in the
Sydney office which could have made that impression. I have eighteen
Mays '73, and not one of them could have been made by the stamp that did
this.' As he spoke thus, he rapped his finger down on the copy of the
sacred envelope which he was using. 'Is not that conclusive?'
'If it was not conclusive to keep a man from going to prison,' said
Curlydown, remembering the failure of his own examination, 'it will not
be conclusive to get him out again.'
'There I differ. No doubt further evidence is necessary and therefore I
must go to Sydney.'
'If it is conclusive, I don't see why you should go to Sydney at all. If
your proof is so perfect, why should that fellow be kept in prison while
you are running about the world?'
This idea had also occurred to Bagwax, and he had thought whether it
would be possible for him to be magnanimous enough to perfect his proof
in England, so as to get a pardon from the Secretary of State at once,
to his own manifest injury. 'What would satisfy you and me,' said
Bagwax, 'wouldn't satisfy the ignorant.' To the conductor of an omnibus
on the Surrey side of the river, the man who does not know what 'The
Castle' means is ignorant. The outsider who is in a mist as to the
'former question,' or 'the order of the day,' is ignorant to the member
of Parliament. To have no definite date conveyed by the term 'Rogation
Sunday' is to the clerical mind gross ignorance. The horsey man thinks
you have been in bed all your life if the 'near side' is not as
descriptive to you as 'the left hand.' To Bagwax and Curlydown, not to
distinguish postmarks was to be ignorant. 'I fear it wouldn't satisfy
the ignorant,' said Bagwax, thinking of his projected journey to
Sydney.
'Proof is proof,' said Curlydown. 'I don't think you'll ever get him
out. The time has gone by. But you may do just as much here as there.'
'I'm sure we shall get him out. I'll never rest in my bed till we have
got him out.'
'Mr. Justice Bramber won't mind whether you rest in your bed or
not,--nor yet the Secretary of State.'
'Sir John Joram--' began Bagwax. In these discussions Sir John Joram was
always his main staff.
'Sir John Joram has got other fish to fry before this time. It's a
marvel to me, Bagwax, that they should give way to all this nonsense. If
anything could be done, it could be done in half the time,--and if
anything could be done, it could be done here. By the time you're back
from Sydney, Caldigate's time will be half out. Why don't you let Sir
John see your proof? You don't want to lose your trip, I suppose.'
Caldigate was languishing in prison, and that poor, nameless lady was
separated from her husband, and he had the proof lying there on the table
before him,--sufficient proof, as he did in his heart believe! But how
often does it fall to the lot of a post-office clerk to be taken round
the world free of expense? The way Curlydown put it was ill-natured and
full of envy. Bagwax was well aware that Curlydown was instigated solely
by envy. But still, these were his own convictions,--and Bagwax was in
truth a soft-hearted, conscientious man.
'I do think it ought to be enough for any Secretary of State,' said he,
'and I'll go to Sir John Joram to-morrow. Of course, I should like to see
the world;--who wouldn't? But I'd rather be the means of restoring that
fellow to his poor wife, than be sent to all the four quarters of the
globe with a guinea a-day for personal expenses.' In this way he nobly
made up his mind to go at once to Sir John Joram.