He ran his fingers through his hair, and I could see that he was striving manfully to collect his thoughts.
“Identify? I could swear to them if I saw them in the lump—one hundred and forty—one—hundred—and—forty—pence! Yes, I’ll swear that I could swear to them in the lump. But singly—oh, I’ll never see them again!”
“Tell me how it came about that you had so much money in this room,” said I, beginning to open the telegrams. “Man, did you not think of the terrible temptation that you were placing in the way of the less opulent members of the staff? Eleven and eight in a disused chocolate tin! It’s a temptation like this that turns honest men into thieves.”
Then it was that he informed me on the point upon which I confess I was curious—namely, how he came to have this fortune in copper.
His wife, he said, was in the habit of giving him a penny every rainy night, this being his tramcar fare from his house to his office. But—he emphasised this detail—she was usually weak enough not to watch to see whether he got into the tramcar or not, and the consequence was that, unless the night was very wet indeed, he was accustomed to walk the whole way and thus save the penny, which he nightly deposited in the chocolate tin: he could not carry it home with him, he said, for his wife would be certain to find it when she searched his waistcoat pockets before he arose in the morning.
“For a hundred and forty times you persevered in this course of duplicity for the sake of the temporary gain!” said I. “It is this craving to become quickly rich that is the curse of the nineteenth century. I thought that journalists were free from it; I find that they are as bad as Stock Exchange gamblers or magazine proprietors. Oh, gold! gold! Go on with your work or there’ll be a blue-pencilled row to-morrow. Don’t fancy you’ll obtain the sympathy of any human being in your well-earned misfortune. You don’t deserve to have so good a wife. A penny every rainy night—a penny! Oh, I lose all patience when I think of your complaining. Go on with your work.”
He went on with his work.
Some months after this incident he thought it necessary to tell me that he was a Scotchman.
It was not necessary; but I asked him if his wife was one too.
“Not exactly,” said he argumentatively. “But she’s a native of Scotland—I’ll say that much for her.”