One of the rare sentimental impulses in the lifetime of George Lockwood was to ask Robert Leeds to be an usher at his wedding to Agnes Wynne, and Leeds’s elaborately polite refusal nearly led to the breaking of the engagement.
“He’s a damned, filthy snob,” said George Lockwood.
“No,” said Agnes Wynne. “Bob isn’t a snob the way you mean it.”
“I wonder how far back they can go, the Leeds family, before they come across something they’d rather hide.”
“I can tell you exactly how far. Bob’s uncle, at one time a minister of the gospel, but now dear knows what he is, living out West. Left his wife and three children and an important pastorate in Schenectady. Just disappeared. Although there may have been reasons that were hushed up. No, Bob isn’t what you say.”
“These coal barons. They’re all alike, every one of them. Your father doesn’t want us to get married because your cousin doesn’t approve of the Lockwoods. What right has he? My grandfather killed two men, but how many others did he kill fighting with the Union army? Do they hold that against him? No. They never mention that, because the Wynnes all stayed out of the army. They stayed home and got rich.”
“George, it wasn’t so much what your grandfather did that worries Cousin Tom.”
“Cousin Tom, Cousin Tom.”
“Please—let me say this. You must listen.”
“I’m listening.”
“You’ve always thought people held your grandfather against you, and it’s true, some people do. But that isn’t what has Cousin Tom worried. Oh, I wish I didn’t have to say this.”
“Say it, say it.”
“Do you know about your father’s two sisters? Your aunts?”
“Of course I do. They died of consumption, but my father’s healthy, and I never showed any signs of it, or my brother or anyone else in our family.”
“They didn’t die of consumption, George.”
“They died of consumption in the county hospital.”
“In the county hospital, but it was something else.”
“Of drink?”
“No. Brain fever.”
“Brain fever? Who made that up? That’s a damned lie. They were only—I don’t know how old they were, but they had galloping consumption and died of it very young.”
“Ask your father.”
“I don’t have to ask my father. How else did I know?”
“Ask him again. Make him tell you the truth. I’m not afraid of the truth, I’m willing to marry you. But it’s not fair to have other people know this and keep you in the dark.”
“You’re willing to marry me? After this accusation maybe I’m not willing to marry you.”
He left her house and returned to the Hilltop Hotel, although it was early evening. Now that they were engaged to be married it was unthinkable that he would spend the night in the Wynne house, and his visits to her, involving two train rides at awkward hours each way, and a night in the grubby hotel, were a test of his devotion. He was angry at her and at his father, and the next morning, having had to shave in cold water after very little sleep, and to ride in a slow combination freight-and-passenger train to Gibbsville and wait over for the next train to Swedish Haven, he was impatient to attack his father.
He went directly from the depot to the Lockwood office, and the morning was almost gone. “Did you have an enjoyable trip?” said Abraham Lockwood.
“I’ve got something I want to talk about. Now.” He closed the door of his father’s office.
“Talk away,” said Abraham Lockwood. “Although you might have the politeness to say good-morning. I’m not used to having people storm in my office like a bull in a china shop.”
George Lockwood dropped his satchel on the floor. “What did my aunts die of? My Lockwood aunts.”
“Oh. Somebody’s been putting a bug in your ear. Very well, I’ll tell you. Your Aunt Rhoda died of the quinsy. Your Aunt Daphne died of obstruction of the intestine.”
“You always said they died of consumption.”
“They often say that about people that die in the county hospital. They both died there.”
“Why are you lying to me? How can you sit there and tell these bland lies when you know I know better?”
“Well, what do you know?”
“They were both crazy in the head and they didn’t have consumption. They were in the Insane, not with the consumptives.”
“All right. They were. I suppose Agnes has broken your engagement.”
“I wouldn’t blame her if she did, the things I said last night. But if you’d ever told me the truth I wouldn’t have said those things.”
Abraham Lockwood was gathering strength, and now he began to fight back. “Sit down, you contemptible pup, and listen to me for a minute. Who are you to come in here and show disrespect to your father? I’ll tell you something about yourself. For years you’ve believed that my sisters, your aunts, died of consumption. Consumption. An incurable disease. You’ve always known that about your aunts, but twice you’ve gone ahead and proposed marriage in spite of believing there was consumption in the family. Did you tell that girl in Lebanon that you had two aunts die of consumption? I’ll just bet you didn’t. And Agnes Wynne—did you tell her? No. But you were willing to marry those girls without telling them. Now all of a sudden you hear that they didn’t die of consumption but were put away for being out of their heads. Which is worse? Consumption, or being mentally unbalanced? Consumption is, and any doctor will tell you. People get over nervous breakdowns, and I could name you ten people right here in town that had them and got over them. But consumption is in the blood.”
“So is insanity.”
“Prove it. Prove to me that it’s inherited. Do you know how people go insane? They have a certain disease and they go insane. Syphilis. They get scarlet fever and sometimes they go insane. They get overexposed to the sun and they get softening of the brain. Or—they aren’t delivered right, at birth, and the mother or the midwife or the doctor does something to the skull while it’s still soft. There’s any number of ways, such as being hit on the head in an accident or thrown from a horse. But it’s always either some kind of a pressure on the skull or else some fever sickness.”
“Then are you going to tell me your sisters caught the syphilis?” said George Lockwood. “Or they both got thrown from their ponies?”
Abraham Lockwood now told one of his safest lies. “Your aunts caught the scarlet fever, Rhoda caught it from Daphne, and they never got over it. That happened so long ago, it was before I even married your mother. They nearly died of it, and they would have been better off if they had. They changed overnight from bright healthy children to weak and sickly children. They couldn’t keep anything on their stomachs and my mother and father had to watch them wasting away, and not only that, but the girls got so they didn’t recognize their own parents. Then the next thing was they had to be put away or they’d have done away with themselves. Anything would have been better than what they went through, not to mention my father and mother suffering along with them and unable to do a thing for them. Every doctor we had said the same thing. Brain fever from the scarlet fever, and no hope of a cure. But they both lived for several years, till Rhoda got the quinsy, and Daphne an obstruction of the intestine. You can find proof of that in their death certificates, in the court house, and not a word about brain fever. And if they’d died of brain fever it would have said so, but they didn’t. If they’d died of consumption it would have said consumption, too. If the Wynne family want to make an issue of it, you can’t deny it that your aunts had brain fever. But it was caused by scarlet fever, and brain fever wasn’t the cause of their deaths. Now you can go home and think things over, and I hope when you get through thinking you’ll come to the conclusion that a boy owes his father more respect. Go on, George. You’ve hurt me inside, and I don’t feel like eating any dinner today.”