The Lockwood Concern (11 page)

on your own. In other words, Locky, you could buy my information for $5,000, but trade on your own with a much larger sum of money." "I thought of that." "Naturally. And you might make a very large profit, much larger than I would make. But that would end our association, and I hate to think what it would do to our friendship." "Of course. Then I take it that we can forget all about Haynes & Webster." "For the moment." "You and I would be partners? Equal partners?" "No, not if we each put in the same amount of money. Sixty-forty. On a basis of $10,000, you would put up six thousand, and I would put up four. We would split the profits evenly." "You take 16 2/3 percent of my investment for your information. Isn't that high?" "I think it's fair. It's the only way I'd do it. My 16 2/3 percent is at the start. It becomes 50 percent at the division of profits. But only fifty percent." "Only?" "Only. You wouldn't be doing the trading. I would." "And the losses?" "You have lost $6,000 as soon as you go into partnership with me. That's the way you have to look at it in these speculations. I never want you to speculate with money you can't afford to lose." "Ah! Now I like the whole thing better. I kept wondering whether you'd ever get around to that, Harry. I wanted to hear you say it." "It's the first time I had a chance to. Well?" "Six thousand dollars?" "Six thousand dollars, and I'll put up four." "I'll send you a cheque tomorrow." "All right. And now I'll tell you the name of the stock I'm watching at present. St. Paul Paper Company." "What's that?" "They make paper for magazines and newspapers. The stock was selling at 6 1/2. Too high to buy. The minute it goes under 5, I will buy. The minute it touches 9, I sell. It has gone to 10 in the past year, but that's a little too much." "Do you own any of it now?" "Oh, no. I've just been studying it for two years. I got interested in it because I happened to notice that three of the Philadelphia newspapers buy their newsprint there. Haynes & Webster have a financial interest in one of the papers and may take over another. Until then I'd never paid any attention to the St. Paul company, but they're almost a monopoly. Oh, the stock will go much higher some day, but you and I will be trading in something else." "Yes. Now, what Gibbsville men were going to encroach on our territory?" "That man sitting over in the corner." "Peter W. Hofman?" "Yes. He had some very unpleasant things to say about your father, Locky. Not so much about you as about your father, although you didn't get off scot-free. He's going to help some of your townsmen start a bank." "We'll see," said Abraham Lockwood. "He's king here, but not in our little empire. But thanks for telling me, partner." "It was only fifteen miles from Richterville to Gibbsville, the county seat; it was thirty-five miles from Richterville to Fort Penn, the capital of the Commonwealth; but it was easier to get from Richterville to Fort Penn than from Richterville to Gibbsville. Richterville thereby came within the Fort Penn sphere of influence rather than the Gibbsville. To go from Richterville to Gibbsville the traveler was then advised to proceed on horseback. There were four steep hills and one mountain intervening and the road that had been scratched out of the mountainside was two frozen ruts in the winter and liable to be a morass at other seasons of the year. No light rig or cutter, only wagons and wide-runner sleds, could be expected to get through without having a wheel or cutter-runner snapped off in the ruts. The mountain road was so narrow that for most of its length one vehicle could not pass another. As a precaution the driver of a wagon, about to enter the road, would blow his horn - literally a horn, cut from a cow and hollowed out - and wait for an answer. If there was no answer he could fairly assume that no other wagon was coming from the opposite direction. If there was an answer he would wait until the oncoming wagon had come along and made the road clear. If the wind was wrong - howling, blowing in the wrong direction - and the warning horns unheard, the two wagons might meet, creating their own impasse. There was a consultation of the two wagoners; a coin would be tossed. The winner of the toss would then help the loser to unhitch his team, unload the wagon, remove the wheels, and lift the empty wagon-box to a place behind the winner's wagon. The loser's wheels would be replaced, his team hitched up, the wagon reloaded, and the two parties, delayed an hour or two, would be on their separate opposite ways. After Moses Lockwood established the Swedish Haven-Richterville stage there was an alternative method of getting from Richterville to the county seat: by stage to Swedish Haven, by rail from Swedish Haven to Gibbsville. As against these inconvenient and hazardous routes, the steam railway line directly connected Richterville and Fort Penn. Richterville, solidly Pennsylvania Dutch, was the trading center for farmers and trappers to the east and south, coal miners to the north, farmers and iron miners to the southwest, horse and pony breeders to the west. In the town were a tannery, a foundry, a brick kiln, a wagon works, two grain mills, and the end-of-rail for the all-important Fort Penn, Richterville & Lantenengo Railway. There was not a Catholic, Episcopalian, or Presbyterian in the town, although there was a Baptist church for the sizable Negro community, many of whom were Pennsylvania Dutch-speaking. There was no high school prior to 1855. The numerous Hoffners in Richterville were headed by Levi Hoffner, who had six daughters and was unhappy that he could not make a boy. Adelaide Hoffner, the second daughter, was the prettiest, but she was as determined as her father that she would not be married for her money. In due course three of her sisters were matched to suitable young men and in 1870 she had become the oldest unmarried Hoffner girl, still the prettiest, still determined to remain single until she could marry a man who would appreciate her good looks, of which she was fully conscious. It was beginning to look as if she might become the richest spinster in Richterville when Abraham Lockwood came into her life. As a small boy he had been taken for rides in the family-owned stage. It was a two-hour journey, if all went well. At Richterville the stage would change horses for the return trip, and while this was being done Abraham's father would take him to Mohn's Hotel for dinner, transact whatever business was to be done in Richterville, and go back to Swedish Haven on the afternoon stage. Abraham Lockwood as a consequence had no acquaintances in Richterville except Ted, the Negro hostler at the stage stable, and Chris Mohn, owner of the hotel. At age fifteen the novelty of the trip had worn off for Abraham Lockwood, and he did not again go to Richterville until he was in his thirty-first year, in 1871. "The occasion then was a wedding, the marriage of Sarah, the fourth Hoffner daughter, to a Gibbsville young man who had been a Zeta Psi at the University. Samuel Stokes was younger than Abraham Lockwood and no close friend, but it was an important wedding. A two-coach special train took Gibbsville guests by way of Reading and Fort Penn, a distance of 105 miles by rail. Abraham Lockwood and six other Swedish Haven guests made the eleven-mile trip in the newer of the Lockwood stages. The ceremony took place at noon, followed by what was called a banquet on the Hoffner lawn. There was champagne in barely sufficient quantity for the wedding toasts, but there was no dancing. It was a hot day, and the out-of-town guests, their duty performed, were beginning to look homeward. Abraham Lockwood, looking at his watch, was about to round up his fellow passengers for the trip back to Swedish Haven when Adelaide Hoffner, in her bridesmaid's dress, came up to him. "I saw you look at your watch. Are you going home already?" she said. "I'm afraid we must, Miss Hoffner. I think we're in for a thunder shower." "That's too bad, then. I was tolt to inwite you to a party. Couldn't I persuade you to stay a while?" "Well, if anyone could, you could." "Ach, now." "Who's having the party and what it is and where is it?" "Some of the young ones, we're going over to Barbara Shellenberger's place. Stay a while. There'll be a lot of pretty girls and Mr. Shellenberger bought more champagne. More than my father bought." "Who told you to invite me? I'm not one of the young ones. "I was tolt to inwite anyone I felt like, you forced me to admit." "Well, in that case I couldn't possibly say no, could I?" "You better not." "Do we walk? Is it far?" "There it is, so. The white brick on the corner. Can you walk it?" "I can walk it." "I was afrait you't say it was too far for such an olt person like yourself." Abraham Lockwood arranged to have the others return to Swedish Haven without him, and he accompanied Adelaide Hoffner to the Shellenberger party. The house was cool, even with the two dozen young men and women who were enjoying the unexpected release from the sobering presence of their elders. The young men were from the colleges - Lafayette, Muhlenberg, Franklin & Marshall, Lebanon Valley - and wore their fraternity pins on their lapels. Soon they would return to their shyness, but at the moment they and the girls were chattering, being reintroduced, getting names straight, laughing over nothing, rather desperately wanting to be gay together. "As you can readily see, I shouldn't have come," said Abraham Lockwood. "To them I'm an old fossil." "But not to me. I'm older than those girls." "Yes. You must be two years older than some of them." "You and I will go sit in the hall, say?" "That's fine," said Abraham Lockwood. "I wonder where is the champagne? Ah, here it comes. Take two glasses and then you can have mine." "Don't you like champagne?" "I had enough. I took an extra to give myself the courage to inwite you to the party. My Daddy was watching me to see if I drank too much of the toasts." Abraham Lockwood lifted two glasses from the tray offered by the Negro maid. He handed a glass to Adelaide Hoffner. "Well, here's to us," he said. She touched his glass with hers but did not drink. "Not drinking?" "You don't want me to get intoxicated, do you?" "No, not if you don't." "I don't. Do you like Sam?" "Sam? Oh, Sam Stokes. Yes, I like him. I don't know any reason why I shouldn't like him. Do you have reservations about him?" "No, not for Sarah. My sister. But I wouldn't marry him." "Well, you never will now, that's sure." "I newer would ewer. Gootness, I'm having trouble with my wees and my wubbleyews. I'm so Dutchy already yet. My Daddy wasted his money at Miss Holbrook's." "Miss Holbrook's in Fort Penn?" "I went there two years as a boarting stutent already ye." "Now you're putting it on. What's the matter, Adelaide? You are Adelaide, aren't you?" "How dit you know?" "I deduced it. All the girls and most of the young men called you Adelaide, so I deduced that that was your name. What's the matter?" "Nothing serious. Just thinking about Sarah. Now she's locked together with a man. What if she doesn't like it? She's still locked with him. For that matter, what if he doesn't like it?" "Well, that is serious." "Yes, it is. I didn't mean it wasn't serious. I meant it wasn't anything for me to fret about. Is that why you're still single?" "Maybe. I haven't had time to think of matrimony." "Then you must have thought about it a great deal." "Well, you're handsome and wealthy, and the only way you could have stayed single was by making up your mind to. Therefore, you gave it a lot of thought, so?" "You're right." She turned and faced him. "You're experienced, aren't you?" "Yes." "I knew that, all right." "How?" She smiled. "How? I could tell by the way you looked at the girls. A man without experience doesn't look at the girls that way." "How should I look at them?" "You can't change the way you look at them, not now anymore. That's what experience does to a person. And girls know when a man is experienced." "Woman's instinct?" "Yes. It warns them. But the warning doesn't always do any good." "Where did you learn all this? At Miss Holbrook's?" "There I never learned anything. Yes, how to serve tea. How to curtsey if I ever meet the Queen of England. I didn't learn at Miss Holbrook's. I taught." She laughed. "You taught?" he said. "What?" "I'd rather not say. Certain things you learn on the farm. My Daddy has a farm two miles out." "Oh, I understand. And you taught the girls at Miss Holbrook's about a calf being born." "Calf? Babies, yet!" "Well, that's something I've never seen. Would you like to teach me?" She blushed and looked at him with alarm. "No." The word was more a protest than an answer. "I talk too much for my own good. " "Are you afraid of me? You look it. " "I don't know. Yes, I guess so." "Would you like me to leave?" "Stay, but don't talk such a way. It was my fault." "Would you like to kiss me, Adelaide?" "Sure, but I'm not going to." "Would you like me to kiss you?" "Stop doing that." "I'm not doing anything. I'm asking you a question." "You're experienced. You know what you're doing." "Yes, I do. And you do want to kiss me, don't you?" "Yes, but I'm not going to." "And you want me to kiss you, don't you? To put my arms around you." "Yes." "Tight. You against me." She nodded, and she was breathing like a tired swimmer. "Have you ever kissed anyone?" "No," she said. "But when you do, it will be me, won't it?" "Yes. I guess so." "When?" "I don't know." "It would be nice if we were alone, wouldn't it?" "Yes." "Are you still afraid of me?" "I don't know. Yes." "Do you think I'm bad, Adelaide?" "Yes." "Wicked?" "Yes." "Evil?" "I don't know. Let me go." "I'm not touching you. I haven't touched you." She looked at her arms, one, then the other, and then she straightened up. "Let's go and get some fresh air," she said. "All right, but you made a promise." "I know." "I'm going to see that you keep it." "When I kiss somebody it will be you, but maybe I don't want to kiss anybody." "We know better. Both of us," he said. He left the party while she was still disturbed by their conversation, reintroduced himself to Chris Mohn, and engaged a room at the hotel. Then, not to waste the visit, he called on the blacksmith, hay and feed dealers, and the owner of the wagon works - all men with whom the stage line did business. The stage was an enterprise that Moses Lockwood administered personally, but Abraham Lockwood was Moses Lockwood's son, and the men were accordingly pleasant. In the course of his conversations with them he learned more about the Hoffner family, the Levi Hoffner family, and came away convinced that - modesty to one side - they were the Lockwoods of Richterville, with a larger share of good will than the Lockwoods could claim. In a week Adelaide Hoffner, the emotional girl, was less in his thoughts than Adelaide Hoffner,