“And she’s flustered because I’m here.”
“Weh-hell, I’ve never heard such egotism—that takes the cake, I must say.”
“You’re just as flustered as she is, only you show it in a different way. Such as going to Scranton when you heard I was coming.”
“If you’re referring to the time I went to Montrose, you had nothing to do with it.”
“Would you swear that on the Bible? Here, here’s the Bible. Put your hand on it and swear.”
“Do no such thing. And what if I did go away because you were coming? I shouldn’t think that’s any proof that I was flustered by the great, charming, handsome Mr. George Lockwood. Quite the opposite, in fact. All that talk about stealing kisses, and worse.”
“Worse? Oh, yes. Seduction.”
“I just hope the rest of the younger men in Swedish Haven aren’t like the one I’ve met. If you’re any criterion, Mr. Lockwood, I feel sorry for any lady that has to live in that town.”
“Be careful what you say. You may be living there some day.”
“I’d rather die. I’d rather die. I’d sooner marry one of the hunkies than be married to you.”
“Just for that I’m going to make you marry me.”
“Not for all the money in Pennsylvania. The world.”
“I haven’t got all the money in Pennsylvania, but I’m going to wait till you marry me, I don’t care how long it takes. And I forbid you to marry anyone else. I forbid you to give yourself to any other man but me. You’re going to be my wife and nobody else’s.”
Home again he realized that in his anger he had said many things that he did not believe and would not have said except in anger. But having said them, having heard himself say them, he believed them. He began to believe, too, that his angry commitment was the right thing, and that the absence of love in the entire transaction made it a better thing, stronger and more sensible and unconfused by emotion. For the next few months she was constantly in his mind. There would be times when he found himself clenching and opening his fists, and discovering that half his thoughts were on Agnes Wynne when he had not been aware he was thinking of her at all. His work did not suffer; on the contrary, he became more engrossed in it than hitherto, but Abraham Lockwood wondered.
That autumn both Presidential candidates were younger men than Abraham Lockwood, Bryan so much younger that biologically he could almost have been Abraham Lockwood’s son; McKinley enough younger so that he could have been a pea-green freshman when Abraham Lockwood was a grand old senior. The outgoing President, Stephen Grover Cleveland, was Abraham Lockwood’s age, and that seemed appropriate too, for Abraham Lockwood was tired and he was quitting. The task of acquainting George with details of the family holdings had been a stimulating one and a timely one; temporarily it had regenerated his own active interest in the Company, and almost daily some call had been made on his memory for details of the various family enterprises. But several times he had caught himself in errors, lapses that he did not confess to George. It was easier to let the errors cost a little money, if that had to be, or to lie to George. (“But Father, you told me thus-and-so.” “No, George, quite the opposite. You got confused. I think I may be going too fast for you. No harm done, son. We all make mistakes, and you can’t be expected to learn everything overnight.”) Abraham Lockwood was not worried about money; there was now so much of it that both sons would be millionaires when he died. There was no one family or no conceivable alliance of Swedish Haven families that would challenge the Lockwood position. Abraham Lockwood’s Concern now was financially secure, and on looking back he saw that it had been contemptibly easy to make the money that was the prime essential to the success of the Concern. The recurring fear that he would not live to see the human continuity of the Concern began to bother him seriously, the more so because he knew that George was not to be hurried in such matters—if in any matter.
It was a relief then to discover that George was interested in a young woman of the Wynne family. The discovery was made because of as well as in spite of George’s silence on the subject: George had made several unexplained trips to the coal region, and had come back in a mood that in a young man explained itself. “Find out for me who your brother is enamored of,” Abraham Lockwood wrote in a letter to Penrose Lockwood. “I am convinced there is someone, but his ‘suit’ is not meeting with success. Naturally I do not wish you to be blunt in your questioning or to reveal to him that I have expressed curiosity.” Penrose was unimaginatively obedient, and the desired information was soon forthcoming.
“You were talking last summer about getting some timber leases,” said Abraham Lockwood to George.
“Last fall, I believe it was.”
“Yes, I believe it was. Well, has anything come of it? There’s a big future in lumber. The population’s increasing. In the 1880 census we only had about fifty million. The 1890, only ten years later, it was over sixty million. A million a year. If that keeps up, George . . .”
“I haven’t looked into it lately.”
“Well, maybe you ought to, before they grab everything in sight.”
“Who is they?”
“The big mills, the mining companies. Speculators like us.”
“We could never do it on as big a scale as those people out in Minnesota.”
“No, but we could cut timber here, in a modest way, and supply the local needs without paying those high freight rates from the Northwest. We could compete.”
“Well, if you want me to, I’ll have another look.”
“Otherwise we’ll soon have to sell our mills, and at a loss.”
“What made you think of timber all of a sudden?”
“Whenever I go to a funeral I think of timber, George. I’m not getting any younger.”
“Oh, Father, you’ll live to be a hundred.”
“I wish I thought so, son. But I buried three college classmates in the last year. Three in one year. We’re dropping off fast . . . Have another look around and get some prices on timberland. Would you like me to go along with you?”
“No use you going to that trouble.”
“Suppose I make some inquiries? Or would you rather I didn’t? This was your idea, so I don’t want to interfere.”
“I’ll look around some more,” said George Lockwood.
His father had no excuse to invade the Wynne country, but he had fortified George Lockwood with an excuse to revisit the region on his own. The rapidity with which George availed himself of the opportunity told Abraham Lockwood what he wanted to know: that George wanted to see the Wynne girl again and needed only an excuse.
George Lockwood went to Hilltop, registered at the miserably uncomfortable hotel, and hired a rig with a driver, a garrulous Irishman named Kane. (George Lockwood was totally ignorant of the fact that his father had maneuvered him into a repetition of combining business with romance, as Abraham Lockwood had done with Adelaide Hoffner.) “Is it a sort of a surveyor you might be?” said Kane.
“You might say that,” said George Lockwood.
“Is it moining properties then that—”
“No, not mining properties.”
“Because I was about to say, not that I don’t need the extra piece of change, mind you, but me conscience would never permit me to take your money under false pretenses. The truth of the matter being, to all intents and purposes, Mr. Lockwood, you won’t find a square acre for miles around that the mineral rights ain’t spoken for be old Tom Wynne, God damn his murderous black heart.”
“Murderous?”
“You’re a stranger, so you wouldn’t be up on the misfortunate slaughter of seven innocent men some twenty years back. The Wynnes and the like of them seen to it that seven innocent men were condemned to be hung.”