“Of course. George, and Dr. Schwab. That’s all for the time being. I haven’t written to my parents yet. They’d want to come home from their trip and I wouldn’t want that. They’ll be home in plenty of time.”
“This means a lot to me, this baby. To you and George, of course, and your father and mother. But if possible more to me than to anyone else.”
“You said that before I lost my first.”
“This one means just that much more. I’m getting on, and it isn’t only wanting to see a grandchild. I look far beyond that, Agnes. To a time I’ll never see, when this grandchild has grandchildren.”
“I guess everybody does, don’t they?”
“I doubt if they give as much thought to it as I do. All my life I’ve looked ahead to four generations beyond my own.”
“Four generations! Why four?”
“That would be my grandchildren’s grandchildren.”
“But you’ll never see them. Why do you care so much? You don’t have to worry about a royal family.”
“Don’t I? I guess not.”
“And why stop at four generations? Why not six?”
“Because four generations from now, plus my generation and my father’s, that’ll be six generations. A span of two centuries of our family in this town.”
“I wouldn’t count on their wanting to live here fifty years from now. Penrose doesn’t want to live here now, and heaven knows what my children will want to do.”
“Make them stay here. If you promise me that I’ll leave you a million dollars, Agnes.”
“I couldn’t promise that, Mr. Lockwood.”
“You’re going to have a strong influence on your children, Agnes, and if you can persuade one son to stay here, it’s worth it to me.”
“I couldn’t promise that. I couldn’t even promise to influence them. My father wanted to be a missionary, and instead of that he spent his whole life in the coal-mining business.”
“And he’s been very happy.”
“No. You’re not happy going through life never doing the one thing you wanted to do. That’s what kept my father back from higher promotion in the Wynne Company. He didn’t care enough. He did his work, a full day’s work for a full day’s pay, but that was to support his family.”
“He might not have enjoyed the life of a missionary.”
“But he never had a chance to find out, one way or the other. You’ve been happy here, George is happy here, but if I have a son how do I know he’ll be happy here? Swedish Haven is a pretty little town, especially after some of the places I’ve lived in, but the Lockwoods weren’t even the founders of the town.”
“Quite true, but it’s where our branch started to amount to something, beginning with my father. And it’s our town now, Agnes. We own it, to all intents and purposes.”
“Then it is a sort of royal family you have in mind.”
“We don’t believe in royalty in this country.”
“No, but—an aristocracy. Is that what you want, Mr. Lockwood?”
“Everything you say about it, every time you give it a name, you make it sound an unworthy ambition. But believe me, it isn’t. The Wynne family were headed in the same direction, but your cousin didn’t look beyond. You mustn’t take this personally, Agnes, but you know as well as I do that Tom Wynne got rich by taking coal out of the ground and making the countryside ugly. Forests laid bare. That’s not what we want to do. Make money, yes, and we have. But some day, maybe in your own husband’s time, we may own the whole stretch between here and Richterville. Nice clean little towns, prosperous farmers getting their fair share, and us at the head of it. You and George, or your children. Lockwoods, living right here in town, not J. P. Morgans living in New York City, or Drexels in Philadelphia.”
“Then after Richterville? Why not Gibbsville, for instance? That could stand some improvement.”
“It’s too late to do anything about Gibbsville. The Morgans and the Drexels have the control up there. Richterville is where my wife came from, so your husband has some rights there. It sounds like a great deal, to own eleven miles of farmland and two little villages on the way, but we could do it now if we didn’t have our money at work on more profitable enterprises. One of these days George will get hold of the Richterville bank, and with it most of the farms to the east of Richterville for a distance of five miles. Since we already own the bank here, we hold the paper from here west.”
“Gracious! A principality.”
“Nothing wrong about it, Agnes. There are ranches out West that take in forty or fifty miles in one direction. And some of the old Spanish families owned whole states. Nobody can do that in the East. It’s too built up, and the railroads are too big. And I wouldn’t want to do it. All I hope for is this town and the town my wife came from and the land in between.”
“And what about to the east and the south of here?”
“We have a few properties to the south, but the rest I never took any interest in. The Coal & Iron owns the timberland and the big dams. J. P. Morgan. And the farm land to the south is too hilly to cultivate. You have to go twenty miles to the south before you get good farm land, and that’s Reading and Lebanon Dutchmen’s territory. I’m Lutheran, and half Pennsylvania Dutch, but I’ll never be one of those people and I don’t want to be.”
The will to live, to see his first grandson, was not as strong in Abraham Lockwood as Agnes Lockwood’s will to give birth to the child. Abraham Lockwood died of double pneumonia in the seventh month of Agnes Lockwood’s pregnancy. The town, and the southern part of the county, gave Abraham Lockwood a nice send-off; formal and large, with every funeral cab in Gibbsville and Swedish Haven spoken for, and the streets of the town, the railroad stations, some private residences and the Exchange Hotel crowded with very respectable-looking strangers. Agnes Lockwood, big with child, was somewhat surprised by the size of the crowds, but the occasion would be noteworthy in her recollection for two things: on the night of Abraham Lockwood’s death she saw her husband weep for the first and only time; and, secondly, on the afternoon of the funeral, upon returning home after the interment, they encountered a woman in the downstairs hall. She came up to George Lockwood and held out her hand. “You don’t remember me, George, but I knew you when you were a boy. I’m Sterling Downs’s mother.”
“Of course I remember you, Mrs. Downs. You were very nice to come.”
“It isn’t Mrs. Downs any more. It’s Mrs. Wickersham.”
“I beg your pardon,” said George Lockwood. “I’d like you to meet my wife. Agnes, this is Mrs. Wickersham. I went to school with her son, and do you remember the summer you spent at the Run, Mrs. Wickersham?”
“I’ll never forget it. That’s where I really got to know your father and mother. I just had to wait and see you, George, but now I must catch the train.” She released George Lockwood’s hand, smiled at him and at Agnes, and hurried out.
“All the way from Philadelphia,” said George Lockwood.
“And was in love with your father.”
“I don’t know.”
“I do,” said Agnes Lockwood. “She was the woman that day in the summer house. She’s prettier, close to.”
“Good Lord, I wonder how long that had been going on,” said George Lockwood. “Now get some rest, Agnes. Don’t try to see any more people. You’ve done your part.”
She smiled. “I’ll do my part in about six more weeks.”
George Lockwood’s gratitude to Martha Downs Wickersham was of a special kind, having nothing to do with her last respects to his father, and actually having little to do with her. She had revealed, inadvertently and unawares, that his father had had at least one mistress during the life of Adelaide Lockwood, and George Lockwood needed that fact to justify his own affair with Lalie Fenstermacher Brauer.