The Lockwood Concern (15 page)

have you got up your sleeve this time?" Abraham Lockwood made an elaborate business of looking up his sleeve. "A pair of slightly soiled cuffs, and a pair of cuff buttons that my dear mother gave me when I graduated from the University. However, if you ask me what I have in my billycock, I'd have another answer." "A rabbit, no doubt," said the old man. "No, sir, I'm not a magician." Abraham Lockwood took some papers from his hat and extended them toward Hofman, who did not hold out his hand. "Tell me what they are. My eyes are tired." "These are the plans of a toll bridge. Rough drawings, but the figures are accurate." "A toll bridge?" "Where the river bends, between here and Swedish Haven, you know where the river bends and the road follows the curve of the river, then goes up a steep hill below Klauser's farm?" "I know the spot." "This bridge would shorten the distance between the two towns by almost a full mile, and eliminate the two steep grades that a team with a heavy wagonload has to rest on. This toll bridge could be built for about $35,000." "And be washed away in the first flood." "Not this bridge." "Well, go ahead and build it," said the old man. "It's going to make money, Mr. Hofman. It's going to make money now, and it will make more and more as the two towns grow. In due course the county or the Commonwealth will have to buy this bridge." "Well, you have $35,000. You inherited a great deal more than that from your father. It's not all gone, is it?" "Far from it. I have more than doubled the money I inherited from my father." "You have? That's a most unusual statement to make." "I wouldn't make it if I weren't convinced that you're well aware that it's the truth." "I believe I did hear that you've been having some luck with some speculation of yours." "Not only mine. Your friends in Drexel & Company have been in on some of these speculations." "Have they indeed?" "Mr. Hofman, it's now obvious that you don't want to hear any more that I have to say." "I'm only curious as to why you came to me, Mr. Lockwood. You can build this bridge without my help or anyone else's, and I must say I think it appears to be a promising investment. Why did you come to me?" "As a courtesy. You're the leading citizen of Gibbsville, and this toll bridge should make our two towns come closer together. The money it will make won't have any great effect on your fortune, nor for that matter on mine." "I take it then that you consider yourself the leading citizen of Swedish Haven." "Well, I have more money than anyone else. Than any two citizens of Swedish Haven. Possibly any three. And I've begun to follow the example set by you." "Explain that, please." I give more money to the people of the town than anyone else. You do that in Gibbsville. I do it in Swedish Haven, now that I can afford to." "I was brought up to believe in sharing." "So was I, Mr. Hofman. Perhaps you don't know it, but my father built the Lutheran church, and we put up the money for the South Ward public school. I say perhaps you don't know it. I know you don't know it, and very few people do. I am interested in the future of Swedish Haven, and I believe that the future of Swedish Haven and the future of Gibbsville are bound together, one with the other." "I should like to ask you a question. Why do you stay in Swedish Haven, when you could make your fortune in one of the large cities?" "I suppose for the same reason that you stayed in Gibbsville. A man can love his home town, and if he doesn't there must be some reason. I have every reason to be fond of Swedish Haven, and I'll never leave it." "You surprise me, Mr. Lockwood." "I don't see why I should surprise you, Mr. Hofman. You don't know me very well. You scarcely know me at all... Well, I've taken up enough of your time, and we both have other things to do. Good day, sir." He stood up, tossed the papers back in his hat, and turned to go. "Mr. Lockwood, let me have a look at those drawings," said the old man. Now at last they were in a joint venture. The news caused new hostility toward Abraham Lockwood, but of a different kind; and the hostility among jealous relatives of the old man was offset by a gain in local prestige. The old man let it be known that the idea for the toll bridge had originated with his younger partner-of-the-moment, and when Peter Hofman addressed the younger man as Abraham, the minor members of the clan went him one better and called him Abe. At the ceremonies of the bridge opening, where George Lockwood cut a red ribbon, Abe Lockwood smiled in his friendliest fashion at Samuel Stokes, who would not have dared to be absent.

The father without a plan ruled because he was the father; the father with a plan, an Abraham Lockwood, was more likely to extend the scope of his supervision to take in the small and large things as they advanced or hindered his plan. The father who confided his plan to his wife was acting voluntarily; even the most unreasonable actions often went unexplained and unjustified, for in that time and especially in that geographical - sociological area the husband and father was impervious to criticism - or the wife's criticism was made at her own risk. Divorce was almost nonexistent, and the wife who endured the intolerable could not count on the support or encouragement of her parents, let alone of her friends, if in her desperation she went to law. Having taken that step she still had to put her case before a judge who in all probability was opposed to any and all divorce. A woman who wanted to be free of her husband at any cost could achieve her freedom at the price of her reputation: she could be so flagrantly adulterous that the husband would sue, and he would win. Under such conditions marriage was permanent and the rule of the husband and father was absolute, and these things were understood by all nubile girls. If Adelaide Hoffner questioned her sister's chances of compatibility with Samuel Stokes on Sarah's wedding day, the questioning was academic. Academic and forlorn, so far as correction of a condition might be concerned. Marriage was entered into joyfully, as the realization of an ambition; but the finality of the new status was as much a source of apprehension as the hazards of the physical union. A lucky, attractive girl might have her choice of suitors, but they seldom numbered more than two or three, and the maiden's true preference of one to the others was often discouraged. Love was not regarded seriously as a determining factor, since the girl's mother in all probability had not been allowed to marry for love. The delightful novelty of the use of the expression, "a real love match," was unintended evidence of the rarity of the phenomenon; it did not often apply. Sometimes love - as always promised - came into being after the marriage was an accomplished fact, and the marriage then could be considered a happy one; but love itself could be threatened by the propinquity that had originally brought it into being. Thus Adelaide Lockwood, in love with her husband after the first months of their marriage, was confused by his unexplained, intense concern for their children. The greatest pleasure in many women's lives was their right to mother their young, and they mildly resented paternal interference. The father could stay out of the nursery; time enough to exercise his authority when the children were grown. Abraham Lockwood, however, had shown an interest and made decisions governing the upbringing of his sons from their birth. Their diet, their sleeping habits, the temperature of their bath water, the selection of nurses, the children's exposure to sunlight, the degree and method of punishment and reward - nothing escaped Abraham Lockwood's attention, and the only explanation he offered was that he was one of the "new" fathers, who took a more active part in the raising of the children. Adelaide, unable to protest on any reasonable grounds, did not accept her husband's explanation. She deduced that her husband had ambitions for their sons, but this was as close as she ever came to comprehending his plan. The evolution of the plan had commenced earlier than Abraham Lockwood's decision to stay out of Philadelphia society. In spite of his election to membership in The Ruffes he had not long deceived himself as to his actual standing in the off-campus life of his clubmates. He did not agree with Thomas Fuller (1608-1661) that manners and money make a gentleman, nor with the contemporary John Cardinal Newman that a gentleman was one who never inflicted pain. Abraham Lockwood's association with the University bucks had taught him that Fuller was overly cynical and Newman not cynical enough, and that both had failed to define a gentleman. At the University, then in Washington, then in the post-bellum years, Abraham Lockwood had been evolving his plan with more thoroughness than the time he spent thinking about it might indicate. He had been fortunate in the kind of woman he made his wife - sound breeding, financially well off, adequately educated - but he realized at some undeterminable stage that his plan was not merely to raise his sons to be gentlemen. They would be gentlemen according to Fuller, but for them to be gentlemen was not the ultimate desideratum; it was only a phase, a step toward the family status in the generation that would succeed his sons'. Abraham Lockwood knew that his grandsons and great-grandsons would have no titles, but if his plan was successful, "Mr. Lockwood of Swedish Haven" would be sufficient, and he was becoming convinced that what he sought to achieve could be accomplished in the third generation, the second after his own. Abraham Lockwood's plan was more than a plan - which was only a method - and more than an ambition - which was only a desire. It was a Concern, in the Quaker sense of the term. Although he was not a Quaker, he had heard of the Concern, which was the name given to obsessive act or thought, or both, of a religious nature. A Quaker who accosted strangers on the street, a Quaker who used his money for special missionary purposes - each was said to be influenced by a Concern. Abraham Lockwood's Concern was the establishment of a dynasty of his own line, beginning with Moses Lockwood, and apart from and independent of the 1630-Watertown line. He would proceed, and was already proceeding, with his Concern as the theme and motivation of his life and of the lives of his family. The gentlemanliness of his sons was not an end in itself but only a desirable, minor characteristic. Its place, its value in Abraham Lockwood's Concern was quite possibly inferior to the place and value of the two fatal shootings in which Moses Lockwood had been involved. Assuming that his father had killed two men in cold blood, Abraham Lockwood felt no shame or even lasting embarrassment. Murder had never disqualified a family from a position in history; it was the method by which kings became kings, barons became dukes, and in the year 2000 the only Bundy and the only Lichtmann worth remembering might easily be the early Nineteenth Century victims of Moses Lockwood's quickness on the trigger. Then, too, assuming that there would be a friendlier appraisal of Moses Lockwood, the historian could make much of the man's bravery in the first Battle of Bull Run. For the present, Abraham Lockwood would have his father remembered as a hero a man of action, for of such stuff is family pride fashioned; for the present and the near future Abraham Lockwood would have himself regarded as a man of business and leading citizen; for the more distant future he would have his sons regarded as gentlemen, men of affairs, patrons of the arts, third-generation leaders of their community and the first generation upon which the national public would bestow the title, Lockwood of Swedish Haven. He sometimes hoped for more sons, so that he could direct them into the professions - the law, medicine, the clergy, the army but a larger family naturally increased the chances of breeding a scoundrel, and he could not give to five or six boys the same supervision that he could concentrate on George and Penrose. Abraham Lockwood, as stated, had heard of the Quaker Concern, and he was aware that his great plans could be called a Concern, but he did not so refer to them, or it. He gave no name to it. A concern. A cause. A campaign. A plan. A strategy. An obsession. A purpose. A mania - it did not matter that he gave it no name. It could have mattered if he had given it a name, since a designation, a definition would have inhibited his actions within the meaning of the name. It was so constantly in his thoughts and took so many forms of action that an action that could be called loving was sometimes followed by an action that could be called cruel, and neither modifier would be applicable to a third action. Since the Concern was Abraham Lockwood's secret it did not need a name. Adelaide would have understood a father's ambition to have George become a lawyer and Penrose a banker, but Abraham Lockwood could not make the daughter of Levi Hoffner understand the Concern, and he did not try. There was, after all, the danger that Adelaide might not agree with her husband's plans for her sons' future, and Abraham Lockwood had a respect for her potential influence. The boys loved her, and properly so. She was prettier than most mothers, she was strict but kindly, she bound their wounds and calmed their fears, and her education had not taken her so far from their mental level that she was unable to comprehend their small, daily discoveries. She was extremely useful to their well-being and as a symbol of gentle discipline, which prepared the boys for unquestioning obedience of their father's orders. He could, moreover, count on her support even in situations where she was not sincerely on his side. George wanted a dog, but Abraham Lockwood had seen dogs go mad with hydrophobia, racing up and down the street until someone brought out the shotgun. Therefore George was denied a dog, although Adelaide had all but given her consent to the purchase of the red setter that he asked for. George did not want to go to school in Gibbsville, although the trip back and forth every day meant a ride on the railroad train. "Naturally, he doesn't want to go to private school. The school he's going to now doesn't start till October and ends in April," said Abraham Lockwood. "And if he stays in public school here, pretty soon you and I won't be able to understand him, he's so Dutchy." To Adelaide it did not seem fair that once a week George had to remain late in Gibbsville for his piano lesson with Professor Fischer. "He doesn't get home any day before four-twenty-five. That doesn't give him much time to play with his chums," she said. "He has all the other afternoons and all day Saturday. You wish you could play the piano, and I wish I could," said Abraham Lockwood. So matters stood until several months later. "Poppa, George wants to tell you something," said Adelaide one evening before supper. The boy was flustered. "Go ahead and tell Poppa," said Adelaide. "I'll leave you two alone." She went out. "What is it, son?" "Poppa, I don't like Professor kissing me all the time. He makes me sit on his lap and kisses me." "Professor Fischer?" "Yes sir." "What else does he do?" "He squeezes my behind." "In front, too? Your pecker?" "Yes. He wants me to squeeze his pecker, too. I don't like him. I don't want to squeeze his pecker, but he makes me. Do I have to take piano lessons, Poppa?" "You can stop taking them from Professor." George's study of the bass clef was resumed under Miss Bessie Auchmuty, organist at the Swedish Haven Lutheran Church. Abraham Lockwood concluded that it was not his duty to inform the Gibbsville parents of Fischer's overtures. The joint venture between Abraham Lockwood and Peter Hofman entailed no such responsibility. The Gibbsville parents could safeguard their own young, and Abraham Lockwood would do the same for his. It was altogether possible that the Gibbsville parents had deliberately refrained from warning him that Fischer was a degenerate, and in any event Abraham Lockwood, in undertaking to build a toll bridge that would mutually benefit the two towns, had not committed himself to a program of furthering the interests of a town where so many leading citizens still looked down their noses at him. If any Gibbsville parents should ask why he had changed piano teachers, he would tell the truth; otherwise he would remain silent. (As it happened, the Gibbsville parents, without having had any information from Abraham Lockwood, subsequently banished Fischer, and for several years musical education of the very young was at a standstill.) The boys' religious training was left to Adelaide; Abraham Lockwood was not on sure ground in such matters. He could not convincingly give the fundamentalist answers to their inevitable questions, and attendance at church on Sunday was as far as he cared to carry his recognition of the place of formal religion. For a time he considered the desirability of subsidizing an Episcopal mission in Swedish Haven. The Episcopal was the church of fashion, increasingly so in the East and especially so in Philadelphia and Gibbsville. There were not enough potential Episcopalians in Swedish Haven to warrant the forming of a parish, but Trinity Church in Gibbsville served a mission in Collieryville, which was the same distance from Gibbsville as Swedish Haven. A Trinity Church curate conducted weekly services in the Collieryville Odd Fellows Hall, and Abraham Lockwood had no doubt that he could persuade the rector of Trinity to provide the same facility for Swedish Haven. But Abraham Lockwood, after viewing the project from the point of view of his Concern, decided that the boys were better off as Lutherans, at least until they were ready to go away to boarding school. He and his father were forever on the records as donors of the Swedish Haven Lutheran Church, and it would be foolish to toss away such a respectable bit of family history. ("My grandfather gave the Lutheran Church.") The boys already were third-generation Lutherans. Then too, the Lutheran faith was, in a manner of speaking, the indigenous denomination of Swedish Haven, comparable to the Society of Friends in Philadelphia, or even the Catholics in New Orleans. In Abraham Lockwood's view it was all the same God when you came right down to it, and when the boys sang about the Faith of Our Fathers they were stating a historic fact. The Lockwoods of Swedish Haven would naturally be Lutherans, and it was no more inconsistent for Lockwoods to be Lutherans than for the important German name brewers and meat packers to belong to Trinity Church in Gibbsville. At this stage of their growth the boys chose their playmates among their contemporaries, without regard to the economic or social status of the playmates' parents. During the school day George and, later, Penrose were in the company of boys whose families could afford private schooling; at home in Swedish Haven, George had for chums the sons of a minister, a physician, a grocer, a railway brakeman, and the Negro porter at the Exchange Hotel. Penrose's playmates were from the families of the physician and the grocer, and the others were sons of a jeweler-watchmaker, a widowed schoolteacher, and a second cousin of the notorious Bundy brothers. There were certain areas where the boys were forbidden to go: the railroad yards, the quarry pond, and the jungle north of town which was snake-infested and full