The disclosure of the conversations in the Samuel Stokes household was a disconcerting one to Abraham Lockwood. Sam’s marriage to Sarah Hoffner, followed by Abraham’s marriage to Adelaide, had seemed to Abraham Lockwood to have the immediate effect of connecting Richterville, Swedish Haven, and Gibbsville in an alliance that was momentarily a merely social one. But since the alliance plainly did connect the first families of Gibbsville, en bloc, with the first family of Richterville and the first family of Swedish Haven, Abraham Lockwood’s early decision to marry an upstate girl would seem to have been extremely sapient in his long-range plan to be an important, if not dominant, figure in the life of the county. He had accomplished a desirable union with the Gibbsville oligarchy without incurring their suspicions by courting a Gibbsville girl. He had, in fact, by marrying a Richterville girl, made a move that should have disarmed the cynical. He thought of himself as having made his way into the Gibbsville oligarchy modestly, through the back door. Now it appeared from the revelations of the conversations in the Stokes household that he had not made his way into it at all. For he attached greater significance to the remarks of Davey Stokes than those of an eavesdropping child. Sam Stokes was a full-fledged member of the oligarchy, and as he grew older a place would be made for him in the business and social life of Gibbsville; but meanwhile he was very much a lesser member of the Stokes-Hofman-Chapin clan, not likely to express opinions that were contrary to the prevailing mood of the important senior clansmen. He would never be a major figure in the town of Gibbsville or the county of Lantenengo, and Abraham Lockwood had long ago dismissed Sam Stokes as a possible threat to his own ascension to the place occupied by Peter W. Hofman.
Once, and only once, Abraham Lockwood had done something to displease Peter Hofman: after the warning by Harry Penn Downs in the Gibbsville Club the Lockwoods, father and son, paid special attention to the affairs of the Swedish Haven bank, particularly in regard to the decreases in deposits that would give a quick clue to the identity of Swedish Haven business men who might be hoarding money to establish a second bank. Four merchants’ names stood out, and Moses Lockwood was in favor of drastic action; but Abraham Lockwood, the second-generation advocate of good will, had a talk with each of the men. He said he had “received information” that the man was negotiating with Peter Hofman to open a new bank—a complete invention, since he had received no information whatever. He then would pretend to be sympathetic; if the man wanted to start a second bank with out-of-town assistance, there must be some reason. If, on the other hand, the reason was no better than merely that the man wanted to help a Gibbsville banker to go into competition with the Swedish Haven bank, Abraham Lockwood and his father were grievously disappointed. Abraham Lockwood avoided the appearance of a threat to the man. What he wanted was some admission on the man’s part that he was in cahoots with Peter Hofman. In three of the four cases his guess was correct, and he had three names to mention when he paid a call on Peter Hofman.
“Good morning, sir,” said Peter Hofman. “What can I do for you?”
“A great deal, sir,” said Abraham Lockwood. “But the question is, will you? A few years ago my father and I opened a bank in Swedish Haven—”
“Just a moment, sir. I believe the bank was started by some other men, and you and your father came along later and took control.”
“That is the impression, I know, sir. The facts prove otherwise. My father and grandfather, and later my father and I had conducted a business that was for many years the only banking service in Swedish Haven.”
“Yes indeed, and a highly profitable business it was.”
“Oh, yes. My grandfather and my father and I are not in business for our health. Neither were the men that borrowed from us, over those years. Neither are you, Mr. Hofman.”
“Indeed not.”
“Agreed. Now of course any profitable business creates its own imitators. You yourself have seen that in the leasing of coal lands. You and your father used to have that pretty much to yourselves, but others, especially Philadelphia and New York men, have known a good thing when they saw it, and you have a lot of competition.”
“Competition is the life of trade, so they say.”
“And the death of some tradesmen, when the competition gets too fierce. But may I continue, sir? In Swedish Haven there was a movement started to open a bank. Now, Mr. Hofman, who started that movement? That movement was started by some men who had been borrowing money from us, prospered, and decided that now that they were enjoying some prosperity, why not take that business away from the Lockwoods and share it among themselves?”
“Logical. Understandable.”
“But very little goes on in Swedish Haven that my father and I don’t hear about. And we knew inside of a week that a few men wanted to give us competition, but they were going to call themselves a bank. We had never thought to call ourselves a bank. That would have been presumptuous on our part. We weren’t a bank. It was always either my father and grandfather, or my father and I, lending our own money and not the money of anyone else. This little group of men proposed to lend the money of their depositors, and that worried my father.”
“Indeed?”
“Yes. It wasn’t only that some of these self-styled bankers were pretty small potatoes, and not entitled to much credit with our firm. The thing that worried my father was, what if this new bank should fail? Who would suffer? The depositors would suffer.”
“Moses Lockwood was worried about the depositors of this new bank? A touching concern, my dear sir. Very touching.”
“I’ll ignore that, sir. Just hear me out, please. Common courtesy. I don’t argue that my father was worried for sentimental reasons. He was worried for business reasons. If that bank failed, we failed, because it could very well be the end of Swedish Haven. If the people that worked for us put their money in this new, risky bank, and the bank failed, who would be able to pay us our rentals? That’s just one source of our income, but a big one. You know what our holdings are.”
“I can make a pretty good guess.”
“Therefore, my father and I stepped in, got rid of those we knew were not good business men, and, as you put it, took control. But without us there’d have been no bank.”
“Meanwhile, of course, holding on to your money-lending business.”
“Naturally. We could afford to take risks with our money that a bank could not.”
“Oh, that’s the way you put it? How interesting.”
“I challenge you to put it any other way. Because those are the facts, my dear sir. The facts. The hard-cash facts.”
“As seen by you, my dear Mr. Lockwood.”
“As seen by my father and me, who are in a much better position to know the facts than anyone else, whether they’re merchants in Swedish Haven or magnates in Gibbsville. I invite you to dispute anything I have told you.”
“I could dispute it all, if I chose.”
“Oh, you could dispute anything, just for the sake of argument. But would you care to deny that you are now contemplating giving assistance to another group of men, to help them start a second bank in Swedish Haven?”
“My dear young sir, who are you to come to my office and challenge me to dispute this or deny that?”
“Who am I? Well, I’m the legitimate son of a man who made his own way in the world, served his country and was badly wounded in the service of his country. One of the very first. A man who has shown great courage, and without it wouldn’t be alive today. And, in this discussion, most of all, a man with an unblemished business record. Unblemished, Mr. Hofman. Unblemished, I repeat that. Would you say the same for Paul Ulrich?”