The Lockwood Concern (12 page)

daughter of Levi. Marriage was one of the items in Abraham Lockwood's consideration of his future, along with the death of his father, which could reasonably be expected in a few years. Moses Lockwood was now in his sixty-first year, shrewd enough in business matters but easily exhausted by physical effort. From now on any time was his time for dying, and he knew it. When one of the Bundy brothers was found drowned in the canal Moses Lockwood said to his son, "One more to go. I want to outlive those bastards, and I want to see my first grandchild. That's going to be up to you, son. The girls will never get a husband, neither one of them. I wrote you during the War. If anything happened to me, you were going to have to take care of Mom and the girls. Mom is all right, but one of these days we're going to have to put Daphne away, and maybe Rhoda too. If they was farm girls they could be farmer women. A farmer woman works like a mule all day and night-time comes and she does something else like a donkey, and that's all their life is. All they got to look forward to. But our girls have a well-to-do father, never had to work, don't show any tendency to work, can't hardly read or write as good as their mother. I doubt if any farmer would have them, and the Lord knows none of the town fellows want them. So that's up to you, too, son. Be nice to them till they have to be put away, the poor miserable creatures. Poor, miserable creatures. And their mother was pretty. Your mother was a pretty young woman. Bright, too. Bright as a new pin. Spunky. All them things. But the girls didn't get any of it. Daphne hiding herself down-cellar or locking herself in the privy. Rhoda doing things if I didn't know them I'd never believe them. Their father. There'll be the money to take care of them. I saw to that. But when all is said and done, I wonder if they wouldn't of been better off poor. The poor can't be so particular when they're picking a wife." His father's observations alarmed Abraham Lockwood: the rich could be particular in picking a husband. Sam Stokes was somewhat of a catch, in all honesty as much of a catch as Abraham Lockwood would be. No single branch of the Stokes family had more money than the Lockwoods, father and son; but the Stokes clan and the mighty Hofman clan, who were closely related, and the Chapins and the Walkers were now suddenly united with the Hoffners of Richterville. Abraham Lockwood, counting his trump, was now not so sure he had enough to win. "Father, he said, a few days after the preceding conversation, "I have a young lady picked out to marry. Levi Hoffner's daughter." "Well, he has enough of them. One fewer than a month ago, but he must have a few left. You like one of them?" "Yes. I met her at the wedding." "Pretty and all that, I guess, or you wouldn't show no interest. Well, why are you telling me?" "Let me have the stage line. That will give me an excuse to go to Richterville." "The hell with the stage line. Levi Hoffner could build a railroad to Swedish Haven if he wanted to. Well-halfway. But why do you want to let those people think of you as a smelly stage driver, or black Ted, our hostler there? That's what they'll think of you as. That's no way to do it, son. Go to Levi with something big and important. Did you talk to him at the wedding?" "No." "Glad to hear that, because if you'd of talked to him you'd of sized him up for a different kind of a man. Not a man that gives a damn for a stage driver for a son-in-law. He knows me, Levi. But he would of thought right away you weren't as smart as your old man. And you are. In some ways smarter, but not always. Levi Hoffner could have stopped your Grandpa and I from putting the stage into Richterville." "How?" "How? A dozen different ways. Refusing us stable room. Ordering the blacksmith and the wagon works to refuse us. Give us trouble with the law. Or just poison our animals." "He'd have done that?" "Levi Hoffner and his father, Jake Hoffner, wouldn't of sat and waited for the Bundy brothers. They would of rode up to Gibbsville and had it out with them right out in the street. I couldn't do that. Nobody knew me. I didn't have nobody I could ask to go with me. But Jake and Levi had all them Hoffners, livin' here since back in George Washington's time. I was the one and only Lockwood in the whole damn county till your mother took the name. The only way we put the stage in Richterville was because the Hoffners let us. And they was sure we'd go broke. We would of, too, if we didn't have other money. We lost money on the stage line the first four years. No mail contract. Philadelphia bastards didn't want us to get the mail contract. They wanted the mail to go all the way around by way of Fort Penn and Reading. No, don't go to Richterville as the owner of the stage line. Who invited you to that wedding? Not the Hoffners." "No. Sam Stokes was a fraternity brother of mine." "You bet. The Hoffners wouldn't invite the Lockwoods. You see what I mean? When you go to call on Levi Hoffner, you want to be able to look him in the eye as an equal." "We have more than they have." "Now we have, but that ain't the way he remembers it. You sure we have more?" "I did some scouting." "Good boy. Better scouting and maybe I'd have my whole ear. But even if we do have more, son. We don't have something they do have. A big family and over a hundred years in the one neighborhood. We don't even count in Swedish Haven yet. Only our money, our property. But marry this Hoffner girl and by Jesus we'll count. I'll put my brains to work. I know Levi Hoffner, and you don't." Moses Lockwood sat silent for so long that his son thought he had gone to sleep with his eyes open, but presently he spoke. "Son?" "Yes sir." "Go tell Levi Hoffner you want to start a railroad." "Between Swedish Haven and Richterville?" "Levi Hoffner is a stockholder in the Fort Penn, Richterville & Lantenengo. Now listen to me, son. There's only one reason in God's world why the F. P. R. & L. don't come all the way through to Swedish Haven. You know why?" Money. It's always money, son. But why didn't they? Because there's nothing but farms and a few farmers from here to Richterville. That's why there's no money in it. A few head of cabbage, once in a while a farmer. Christ Jesus, I thought this out ten years ago, and I ain't a railroad man. No coal, no heavy freight to speak of. Such a line would never make money." "No. Therefore Levi Hoffner wouldn't think much of me as a business man." "Not right off, he wouldn't. But you'd have to make him wonder why you want to start a railroad. He'd start wondering, and you'd have to start play-acting." "How?" "Let on to him that you have some secret information. You don't have to tell him an out-and-out lie, but you can hint. Hint around that you got secret information that the Philadelphia, Reading & Gibbsville is thinking of building a line from Swedish Haven to Richterville." "He'd see through that right away, Father. He's a stockholder in the F. P. R. & L., and they're owned by the P. R. & G." "Hell, I know that, son. I just told you. But I know Levi Hoffner. He's going to say to himself what do you know? Young Lockwood knows more than he does, and he's a stockholder." "All right. Go on." "But you don't tell him anything, only enough to let him smell the money. That's when he'll start thinking of you as a big man. He'll try to get your information out of you. He'll invite you to his house. And you go after his daughter. That part is up to you." "It sounds fantastic." "Well, I don't know what that word means, but I know Levi Hoffner. And I guess I know you, son. If you want a woman, you know how to go after her. Anybody that can stay single as long as you have, they know how to handle women." "This imaginary line that the P. R. & G. is supposed to be building." "Make Levi believe that you build yours first and then sell it to the P. R. & G." "That's what I thought. Now I see the whole scheme. Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea." "Well, a good lie has to have some truth in it." "Yes. If I marry this girl-" "Then you can tell Levi that you got secret information that the P. R.& G. changed their minds." "Won't he try to get information through the Fort Penn people?" "An honest man would. But Levi's as crooked as anybody. Thinks everybody else is crooked. And he's going to think that the Fort Penn people are giving him a dirty deal. The last thing he'll ever think of is that we cooked this whole thing up so you could marry his daughter." The scheme worked. Adelaide Hoffner and Abraham Lockwood were married in November, and although it was a blustery day, the wedding was the largest ever in Richterville, attended by large delegations from the recent family connections in Gibbsville, selected substantial citizens of Swedish Haven, and all the solvent and some insolvents of Richterville. The small number of family connections of the groom was overlooked in the delighted surprise of the knowing at the prestigious names of his ushers, all of whom wore golden question marks in their cravats. Daphne Lockwood was not there; she had been put away. Rhoda Lockwood was not there; she was dangerously ill at the family home in Swedish Haven. Someone sent Adelaide Hoffner Lockwood a book to take with her to Niagara Falls, a book called Their Wedding Journey, by a man named William Dean Howells. She unwrapped the book on the train from Fort Penn to Buffalo, glanced at the title, and threw it out the coach window. "Why did you do that?" said Abraham Lockwood. "I know what kind of a book that would be," said Adelaide Lockwood. "How do you know if you don't read it?" said her bridegroom. "I chust know, that's how. Their Wedding Journey. I forgot to look who sent it to me." "You think it's spicy?" "Wouldn't you think so?" "Well, it might be. But now that you're married you can read what you please." "You wouldn't mind if I read a book like that?" "What's a book? Something to pass the time. No, I wouldn't mind. Did it have any pictures in it?" "I didn't take the time to find out." "I don't see how you could throw away a book without looking inside it. I hope I haven't married a prude, have I, Adelaide?" "A prude? No, I'm not a prude, but I won't say I want to read a book with that title. Their Wedding Journey. Huh." "Maybe you'll want to write your own book, eh?" "Please don't make such talk, Abraham." "Are you afraid of me, Adelaide?" She shook her head. "No. You're experienced." "Shouldn't you be jealous because I am?" "You didn't marry them. You married me." "Yes, and I love you." "And I love you. I love you more than you love me, but you loved me enough to marry me. And I loved you enough to marry you. We'll make a home and have family, and we'll love one another the same. You as much as me." "You're not afraid of me, are you?" "No." "You're not altogether sure. What are you thinking?" "It hurts the first time, doesn't it?" "I hope it won't." "That's why is better that you're experienced." "And if you're in love. If the girl is in love she doesn't notice the hurt so much." "I wish we were there and it was tomorrow." In their hotel room during their first love-making she lay with her eyes open, staring at him, wincing with the first pain but determined to go through with the necessary ordeal. But when his excitement took control of him she forgot the pain in her wonder at his passion. She was converted to passion immediately, and wanted to repeat it before he was able. "This time I'll do it right," she said. "In a little while," he said. For her the real novelty of the experience was in his passion. She knew the mechanics of erection and orgasm, but she had not been prepared for his eager grabbing of her and his outcries, demonstrations that her past knowledge of this cold thin man had not led her to anticipate. Then, just before they were leaving Niagara Falls, she herself experienced orgasm, and life and the world changed for her and Abraham Lockwood became a hero. There could be no other man, this man was Man. At first they lived in a house of their own, across the side street from the walled square containing the red brick box. There had been no way to avoid telling the Hoffner family that Daphne Lockwood was in the crazy-house, the Insane, as it was also called; but Rhoda's advanced condition had been a secret. Every family had someone who behaved strangely; one of the Hoffner girls had taken a long while to recover from the birth of her first child. But Levi Hoffner had been kept in ignorance of the true illness of Rhoda Lockwood, and it remained for Abraham Lockwood to tell his new wife that Rhoda did not "go out." A person who suffered from a chronic ailment such as consumption was "poorly"; one who had something wrong with the brain "didn't go out." "Is she like your sister Daphne?" said Adelaide. "She's worse. She'd go after you with a pair of scissors." "Then why isn't she put away?" "She's going to be." "What's holding it up, if she's dangerous?" "My mother. She doesn't want to see her go." "How old is your mother?" "Fifty-five or -six." "She'd be lonely, is that why?" "Yes, I guess so. But Rhoda hates her. She hates all females." "But not all males?" "That's what her trouble's been." "Oh, there was one like that in Richterville. When did it start?" "Oh, maybe ten years ago." "The one at home, too. It started about the same age for her. Fourteen or fifteen?" "Yes." "There's nothing you can do for them except put them away. They don't like men, either, you know. The one at home did a terrible thing to a man." "What?" "I won't say." "You know so much, and you know so little." "That's the trouble, Abraham. You're told to act like a lady, but you see things and hear things. But ask anybody a question and they tell you to shut up. One day Sarah and I were in the backyard, sitting in the swing, and we heard some voices in the alleyway back of our barn. We went to see what it was, and there was a man sitting on a log. There were two other men with him. And the girl I told you about, she was doing something to the man. Out in broad daylight. I told Sarah not to look, but she saw. Broad daylight. I thought I was going to faint." "Weren't they afraid of the constable?" "That's it. One of them was the constable. They weren't boys. They were all men. It isn't funny, Abraham." "I guess it isn't, but I have to laugh. Your father, with six daughters, Protecting them from the world, and there in his own back alley, in broad daylight. The constable." "Your father killed two men, didn't he?" "Yes. Why did you bring that up all of a sudden?" "I don't know. Thinking of us girls, and what we saw in the alleyway. And you, so elegant and stylish, but your father killed two men. I often think of things like that. Sin isn't only in New York, or Europe. They try to make us believe that, but it's everywhere. I guess there's just as much in Swedish Haven, and Gibbsville. I heard such things
about the Railroad Street in Gibbsville that would turn your stomach. When we have our children we mustn't pretend as if sin was every place else. I want our children to face the truth. We're not much better than other people, just because our fathers are rich. The girl, the one I was speaking about, she's related to me. Her mother was a Hoffner. They weren't the Close Hoffners. That's what my father and mother called the ones that are related to us closely. But they were Hoffners, all right." "It makes me feel better, to hear that you have some family skeletons too." "Don't tease me, Abraham. My grandfather got rich because he could read and write. He rocked people. I know, because my father bragged about it. He wouldn't to you, but at home, he did. Do you know why we were married in the Reformed? Because my grandfather was expelled from the Lutheran. Somebody that couldn't read took a paper to the Lutheran preacher, some kind of an agreement with my grandfather. And when the preacher read it, it was a scandalous thing. Dishonest. And Grandfather Jacob Hoffner was expelled from the Lutheran Church. Didn't they ever hear that over in Swedish Haven?" "They were too busy talking about my father, I guess." He believed himself when he told her that he loved her. He was becoming accustomed to her Pennsylvania Dutch sing-song and her trouble with Vs and w's; d's that came out t; j's that came out ch; s's for z; z for s; the diphthong in how made to sound like hah; and the words and constructions that Miss Holbrook's School had not corrected. He had grown up with the Pennsylvania Dutch patois as part of his own speech, and he was accustomed to the accent that it left on the English speech of his fellow citizens; but his father did not have it, his mother had only a trace of it, and he himself had largely got rid of it during his years at the University and as an officer in the army. The manner of her speech was a strong, if subtle, factor in the growth of love. Her voice was low, without being especially deep by nature; and the sing-song character of the Pennsylvania Dutch accent retards the speed of speaking. Thus she communicated her words to him in quiet tones and at a rate of utterance that made her delivery always gentle and required a slowing down of his listening faculties. It made what she had to say seem thought out; well considered and deeply felt, even when the most trivial things were being discussed. As against that easy, not unpleasantly musical enunciation was the trusting violence of her love-making, so that he often found as he listened to her that he was thinking as much of the contrasts as of the things she had to say. It was indeed as though the way she spoke of everyday things was an agreed-upon deception, a secret of their own that hinted at a more esoteric secret that they revealed to each other - and she especially to him - when they would make love. The love was genuine enough on her part; on his it was a gradual development. She had been disturbed by him from the first, and it came as a happy discovery that she could have such deep feelings for a man who already met her first requirement for marriage, namely, that he would not be marrying her for her money. The said requirement receded into forgotten unimportance as she saw him more frequently and as he courted her. There was, of course, an element of gratitude in her love; she was thankful that his look and presence made him desirable enough so that his economic status in relation to hers could be so easily dismissed, and she could enter into romance unhindered. Then after their first week of marriage Adelaide Lockwood acquired a female pride in the new knowledge that while he was in control of their store of ecstasy, she could make him eager to share it. Abraham Lockwood's experience with women, wholly a matter of satisfying sexual needs, had paradoxically been preparing him all his mature life for just such a love as began to grow in him. From the whores at Phoebe Adamson's place in Juniper Street he had gone to the whores in Washington; and in later years, after his return to Swedish Haven, he had used a dressmaker in Gibbsville. Arrangements with her had to be made in advance and by letter. Annabella. Crowe's house was in Second Street, only a square away from the main business thoroughfare. On the first floor of the house she had a room in which her lady customers could examine materials and make their decisions; a second room where they could be measured and have their try-ons; a third room, in which her sewing women worked; a fourth room, a kitchen, which also served as her dining room. Annabella Crowe's living quarters were on the second story, more than adequate since she lived alone. She was a woman in her early thirties who had been deserted by her husband and had been briefly and secretly the mistress of a county judge, who set her up in the dressmaking establishment before parting company with her. In the vicinity of the railway and canal station there had been whorehouses for several decades when Abraham Lockwood returned from the War, but none of them had been operated with any sense of discretion, and he avoided them. A Gibbsville lawyer introduced him to Annabella Crowe. "What do you do for a piece of tail," Abraham Lockwood had asked. The lawyer answered evasively, but optimistically, and shortly thereafter, he gave Lockwood the name and address of Annabella Crowe. "Go there at ten o'clock Tuesday night," said the lawyer. At the appointed hour he knocked on the door, which was swung open immediately and quickly closed. A woman he could not see said, "Go upstairs where you see the light." He mounted the stairs, and the woman, who followed him, said: "To your left." It was the middle of three rooms on the second story and the only one in which there was any illumination. It had a single, heavily curtained window, a large, ornately carved double bed, with a wardrobe, dresser, and chairs belonging to the same suite. "I'm Mrs. Crowe, and I know who you are but I don't know much about you. "You're single?" "Yes." "Are you courting anyone?" "No." "Are you a drinker?" "Some. Not much." "I don't like to have friends of mine that get drunk and tell everything they know." "I can understand that." "And I never let a friend of mine come here without he makes an appointment ahead of time. I don't open my door if I'm not expecting a person. I don't care whether he's been a friend of mine before. He don't get in. You understand that all right?" "Yes." "Another thing you have to promise, if you get to be a friend of mine, don't ever tell anybody you're a friend of mine before you ask my permission." "I see." "One other thing. Don't ever come here inebriated, regardless of whether you have an appointment. Don't come here inebriated. Did our friend say how much a visit?" "No, he didn't." "Twenty dollars a visit." "Twenty dollars?" "And always have the money with you. I don't extend any credit. This isn't a place, you know. I only have a very few friends. You agree to everything?" "Yes." "Then hang up your clothes in the wardrobe and I'll be back in a couple minutes. Oh, I almost forgot. No cigars. Never light a cigar while you're visiting me." She went out and he undressed and hung his clothes in the wardrobe and sat on the edge of the bed. She returned, wearing a bathrobe, which she quickly took off and hung on the back of a chair. "Say," he said, admiring her body. For the first time she smiled. "Worth it, huh?" She made a complete turn. "Just about perfect, " he said. "I had one friend of mine wanted to carve me in marble. He said I ought to be carved in marble." "He's right." "Well, a woman likes to hear compliments. You waiting for me to get in?" "I guess I was." "Let me have a look at you first. Oh. Our friend didn't tell me about this. "You're young, aren't you? Twenty-six? Twenty-seven?" "Almost twenty-seven." "I have mostly older friends. I guess you're the youngest. Well, lie down, honey, and we'll get used to each other. Would you like that, honey? We get used to each other? The first couple times we got to get used to each other's ways." In 1871 she said to him, "Well, I guess I'll be losing you as a friend, Abe. I heard my customers talking about you courting a young lady in Richterville. Is that true?" "Yes." "Well, tell me when it's our last night and I'll give it to you for a wedding present." "I want to give you a present." "All right, if it's cash. You know me, the only kind of presents I take are cash." "Oh, it'll be cash." "A young fellow getting married - if you wanted to make me a present of five hundred dollars, I'll agree to have you be a friend of mine for a year, in case the young lady's hard to get along with. Some are, and I had a friend of mine wish to visit me again, but I only take so many." "All right, I'll give you five hundred dollars." "My downstairs business is getting bigger, and I just as soon weed out some of my friends, but I can't afford it yet. When I have enough saved up I'm going to move away. Sell the downstairs business and go live in New York City. I want to get some millionaire for my keeper before I start getting old. But first and foremost I want to leave here respectable, no talk about me. If I don't find a millionaire I may open up a high-class place, and that'll take money. Be the best in the long run, pay better, because I'd run the place as long as I live. But it takes money and you have to know the right people. You can't just open up somewhere. My dream come true would be if I found a millionaire and he knew the right people, and maybe put up enough to get me started. A place where a lady could go. I know ladies right here in town, if they had a place to go, they'd go there. I had a lady, one of my downstairs customers, she keeps hinting around that she'd like to see my upstairs rooms. I know what she wants. She wants to see if she can trust me, and then make me an offer to use these rooms. But women are big-mouthed. So are men, but I never had a friend of mine talk, so far. I don't want any women up here, only me. I spend an hour every day keeping these rooms neat and clean so I don't have to hire a servant-girl ... So you're going to leave me, Abe? Well, if it's who they say it is, five hundred dollars won't break you, and maybe you'll want to come back. But that doesn't say I don't wish you luck. And maybe some time she's in the family way, you can come and see me. You'd be much better off with me instead of somebody you didn't know." "Thanks, Annabella." "And, like I just said, five hundred won't break you." "I'll have it with me the next time I come to visit you." "Where's she getting her wedding dress, your bride-to-be? Do you know?" "No. Fort Penn, I guess. Why?" "Well, it'd be funny if she got it here. I could get a good look at her before you do. I could tell her a few things, too, couldn't I, Abe? Maybe if she knew what I know she'd run like a cat shot in the behind." "Now, Annabella." "Oh, don't worry. I'm only teasing you." With no question of fidelity involved he had yet been faithful to Annabella Crowe for nearly five years. All during that period he had known that Mrs. Crowe was going to bed with - as well as he could figure out - three other men and possibly four. But he had known this from the beginning, and he neither felt jealousy nor expressed any desire for exclusive rights to her services. The machinery of a well regulated need and its satisfaction created neither lasting gratitude nor masculine vanity nor any other item in the stuff of love. Spontaneity was, of course, entirely absent because of the precautionary appointment arrangements, and Annabella Crowe was so candidly in the business of hiring out her lovely body that she could not more effectively have thwarted romantic notions. After an hour in bed with a man she would sit in her wrapper, holding his folded banknotes in her hand as he dressed, sometimes fanning herself with the money, sometimes using it, gestures, chatting amiably until it was time to lead him to the front door and close it behind him for the night. But the sexual act with Adelaide was so unlike the brief, calculated meetings with Annabella Crowe that it was a relationship and not a transaction, similar only in the union of their bodies. There was never, when a variation was tried, the suspicion that the variation had originated with Adelaide and another man. It was all, all new and unique with Adelaide, and here was the beginning of love. Abraham Lockwood chose to think of himself as a man of experience, but for the first time in the more than thirty years of his life he was living with a woman and not visiting her. If it was seduction by marriage it was still the larger experience of living with her, and the marriage as a personal institution gained and was strengthened and finally became love. When it happened Adelaide knew the difference, but she made no comment. She only loved the more. Abraham Lockwood's mother died of weariness a few weeks after Rhoda was put away. Weariness, some shame, uselessness, hard work, an uninspiring future, a too demanding past, and, on the death certificate, quinsy. It was not an easy death, to strangle slowly and look into the eyes of husband and son and read so plainly their wish to have the laborious breathing come to an end. Within a week Moses Lockwood had pleaded successfully with Adelaide and Abraham to move into the red brick box, and there, in 1873, their son was born. He was called George Bingham Lockwood, in honor of the Governor of the Commonwealth, who was a close friend of Levi Hoffner's.