The safe, since the abandonment of the business premises by the family,
had stood in a corner of a small nondescript room, sometimes vaguely
called the safe-room, between the shop and what had once been the
kitchen. It was a considerable safe, and it had the room practically to
itself. As Edwin unlocked it, and the prodigious door swung with silent
smoothness to his pull, he was aware of a very romantic feeling of
exploration. He had seen the inside of the safe before; he had even
opened the safe, and taken something from it, under his father's orders.
But he had never had leisure, nor licence, to inspect its interior.
From his boyhood had survived the notion that it must contain many
marvels. In spite of himself his attitude was one of awe.
The first thing that met his eye was his father's large, black-bound
private cash-book, which constituted the most sacred and mysterious
document in the accountancy of the business. Edwin handled, and kept,
all the books save that. At the beginning of the previous week he and
Stifford had achieved the task of sending out the quarterly accounts,
and of one sort or another there were some seven hundred quarterly
accounts. Edwin was familiar with every detail of the printer's
work-book, the daybook, the combined book colloquially called `invoice
and ledger,' the `bought' ledger, and the shop cash-book. But he could
form no sure idea of the total dimensions and results of the business,
because his father always kept the ultimate castings to himself, and
never displayed his private cash-book under any circumstances. By
ingenuity and perseverance Edwin might have triumphed over Darius's
mania for secrecy; but he did not care to do so; perhaps pride even more
than honour caused him to refrain.
Now he held the book, and saw that only a portion of it was in the
nature of a cash-book; the rest comprised summaries and general
statements. The statement for the year 1885, so far as he could hastily
decipher its meaning, showed a profit of 821 pounds. He was not
surprised, and yet the sight of the figures in his father's heavy,
scratchy hand was curiously impressive.
His father could keep nothing from him now. The interior of the safe
was like a city that had capitulated; no law ran in it but his law, and
he was absolute; he could commit infamies in the city and none might
criticise. He turned over piles of dusty cheque-counterfoils, and old
pass-books and other old books of account. He saw a linen bag crammed
with four-shilling pieces (whenever Darius obtained a double florin he
put it aside), and one or two old watches of no value. Also the
title-deeds of the house at Bleakridge, their latest parchment still
white with pounce; the mortgage, then, had been repaid, a fact which
Darius had managed on principle to conceal from his son. Then he came
to the four drawers, and in some of these he discovered a number of
miscellaneous share-certificates with their big seals. He knew that his
father had investments--it was impossible to inhabit the shop-cubicle
with his father and not know that--but he had no conception of their
extent or their value. Always he had regarded all those matters as
foreign to himself, refusing to allow curiosity in regard to them to
awake. Now he was differently minded, owing to the mere physical weight
in his pocket of a bunch of keys! In a hasty examination he gathered
that the stock was chiefly in railways and shipping, and that it
amounted to large sums--anyhow quite a number of thousands. He was
frankly astonished. How had his father's clumsy, slow intellect been
able to cope with the dangerous intricacies of the Stock Exchange? It
seemed incredible; and yet he had known quite well that his father was
an investor!
"Of course he isn't keen on giving it all up!" Edwin exclaimed aloud
suddenly. "I wonder he even forked out the keys as easily as he did!"
The view of the safe enabled him to perform a feat which very few
children ever achieve; he put himself in his father's place. And it was
with benevolence, not with exasperation, that he puzzled his head to
invent some device for defeating the old man's obstinacy about
cheque-signing.
One drawer was evidently not in regular use. Often, in a series of
drawers, one of them falls into the idle habit of being overlooked,
slipping gradually by custom into desuetude, though other drawers may
overflow. This drawer held merely a few scraps of sample paper, and a
map, all dusty. He drew forth the map. It was coloured, and in shaky
Roman characters underneath it ran the legend, "The County of
Staffordshire." He seemed to recognise the map. On the back he read,
in his father's handwriting: "Drawn and coloured without help by my son
Edwin, aged nine."
He had utterly forgotten it. He could in no detail recall the
circumstances in which he had produced the wonderful map. A childish,
rude effort! ... Still, rather remarkable that at the age of nine
(perhaps even before he had begun to attend the Oldcastle Middle School)
he should have chosen to do a county map instead of a map of that
country beloved by all juvenile map-drawers, Ireland! He must have
copied it from the map in Lewis's Gazetteer of England and Wales...
Twenty-one years ago, nearly! He might, from the peculiar effect on
him, have just discovered the mummy of the boy that once had been
Edwin... And his father had kept the map for over twenty years. The
old cock must have been deuced proud of it once! Not that he ever said
so--Edwin was sure of that!
"Now you needn't get sentimental!" he told himself. Like Maggie he had
a fearful, an almost morbid, horror of sentimentality. But he could not
arrest the softening of his heart, as he smiled at the _naivete_ of the
map and at his father's parental simplicity.
As he was closing the safe, Stifford, agitated, hurried into the room.
"Please, sir, Mr Clayhanger's in the Square. I thought I'd better tell
you."
"What? Father?"
"Yes, sir. He's standing opposite the chapel and he keeps looking this
way. I thought you'd like--"
Edwin turned the key, and ran forth, stumbling, as he entered the shop,
against the step-ladder which, with the paper-boy at the summit of it,
overtopped the doorway. He wondered why he should run, and why
Stifford's face was so obviously apprehensive.
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