Time Out of Mind (72 page)
Authors: John R. Maxim
Tags: #Horror, #General, #Psychological, #Suspense, #Memory, #Thrillers, #Fiction, #Time Travel
Another less practical but potentially satisfying part of her plan was that upon her retirement from Georgiana's
house, she would make one last visit to the community
from which she'd been driven in shame. She would go there in the company of a titled European husband, hired for the
occasion. She would stay in the finest hotel, give evidence
of being annoyingly rich and happy for a few days, then confront both her father and the young man, now married,
who had turned his back on her, announce publicly that she
had forgiven him so that everyone would know that there
was something to forgive, and announce that she and her
husband would now and forever take their leave to his an
cestral home in the south of France.
It pleased Margaret to learn, once she and Laura Hem
mings had a chance to talk, that Little Annie had elected
in the end to forgo the triumphant return to Providence.
Instead, Annie took the name Laura Hemmings, the legit
imacy of which Margaret did not bother to question, and
moved directly to Greenwich, where she tested the waters for a year, laid her historical groundwork, and then an
nounced the opening of Miss Hemmings’s School for
Young Ladies in a six-bedroom house on Maple
Avenue,
just a few hundred feet from Margaret's famous electric
house.
“
Does Tilden know?” was one of Margaret's excited
questions when they spoke in the ladies' convenience at the
Lenox House Hotel. “Or did Tilden suggest Greenwich to
you as well?”
Tilden has no idea,” Laura Hemmings answered. “I've passed him twice while shopping on Main Street and he hasn't shown a glimmer of recognition. As long as I keep my hair out of my face and avoid middy blouses he'll be
none the wiser. Tilden was never one of my Johnnies in
any case.”
Oh, then we mustn't tell him,” Margaret agreed. “You
will be my great new friend from the Temperance Union—
you
will
be my friend, won't you, Annie?”
”
I will if you can stop calling me that.”
Yes, of course. And I'm Charlotte, although that name
will sound especially strange when you say it. How long
have you known I was here, for heaven's sake?”
Almost since you arrived,” Laura said, smiling. ”I saw Tilden first. Remember, you can't get to that beacon of a
house you live in without driving past mine. John Flood
tramped by a few times as well. Actually, I still wasn't sure it was you until you came to the door one evening to greet Dr. Palmer. I was waiting for him in his carriage.” Laura's
smile widened. “Dr. Palmer and I have been keeping com
pany this past year.’'
I remember the visit,” Margaret said. ”I asked him to bring the lady inside, but he said he'd only stay a minute.
You must have been terrified that I'd blurt out your name.”
have shocked you into childbirth right then and there.”
I hope I'd have been glad. You were always so kind
to me. I'd have been more worried about discomforting
you.”
”
I was used to it.” Laura's smile dimmed, but her eyes held their shine. “Yours is not the only familiar face I've
seen in Greenwich.”
no one else, that they were not the only Greenwich ladies
who were not entirely what they seemed. Carrie Todd, a dressmaker in the Sound Beach section, had probably been
there longest. She was a prostitute turned abortionist,
having learned that trade under Madame Restell some fifteen years earlier in New York. Upon Madame Restell's entrapment and subsequent suicide she fled the city. Laura
wouldn't have known her at all but for a chance encounter
when she and Georgiana were shopping for bolts of fabric
at Macy's, and there was Carrie, in the city on a buying
trip for her new business.
Next came Belle Walker, known simply as Spanky in
her New York days because of her skill in satisfying a particular desire some men have. Spanky had married a
former client, the eldest unwed son of the owner of Green
wich's largest oyster fleet. He was at least five years
younger than Spanky, although he probably didn't know it. Spanky—Mrs. Walker—had been there three years and
produced two children. She, too, recognized Carrie Todd,
who might well have prevented several more during
Spanky's early career. Belle Walker had no great fear of
exposure or blackmail because Carrie had at least as much to hide, nor did Carrie wish anything more than to work quietly at her dressmaker's trade. But Belle, who was so
cially ambitious, had invented a past much grander than
that of Laura or Margaret and despised Carrie Todd for knowing a different truth. She took every opportunity to
belittle Carrie's dressmaking skills and her fashion sense in
the hope of forcing her to seek customers elsewhere.
before Margaret's time at Georgiana’s and she and Laura
had overlapped only briefly, a matter of days. Georgiana
had suggested that Belle might be better suited to a house
whose standards were less exacting. It was then that she
allowed young Frank Walker to save her.
It surprised as much as troubled Margaret that there were
at least three former prostitutes, to say nothing of one near
miss, in such a little town. But Laura, who had a head for
mathematics, pointed out that if the statistics cited by var
ious reformers were correct, there were twenty thousand prostitutes in New York and at least one in ten of these left
the life each year or attempted to do so. Where did they
go? Practically none, Margaret agreed, would return to their
places of origin. Only a few would have gone abroad or h
eaded west. Most would have chosen among the many
quiet villages on the periphery of New York City. Laura
postulated that the population density of former whores was
probably greatest in the lower reaches of Westchester
County, in northern New Jersey, and on the north shore of Long Island, gradually diminishing with distance. Further,
the more polished among them would surely apply their
arts to attracting the best of the local young gentry. That
being the case, and with another two thousand retiring each
year, Laura saw a day not more than a generation hence
when the entire matriarchal leadership of suburban society
would be composed of superannuated strumpets. The laws
of statistics and of algebra seemed to require that this be
so.
not mentioning Laura, outlined her theory for him.
would have cause to wonder whether Jay Gould himself
didn't have a hand in it.
The newspapers, it seemed to Tilden, had been full of An
thony Comstock all his life. As a boy, and like many his
age, he eagerly followed the often bizarre adventures of the
curious figure who dedicated his being to a one-man war
against smut in all its forms. And because Comstock found
smut everywhere, there was always much for Tilden to
read, whether in his clandestine copies of the
Police Gazette
or in his father's
New York Times.
The
Times
called Comstock the Paladin of Purity but not, Tilden thought, without a touch of mockery. But Comstock made good and frequent copy with his indiscriminate raids.
He seemed to see little difference between libraries, art galleries, and the pornography shops along Ann and Nassau streets. Publishers of popular fiction were also among his
targets. He admitted to a reporter that he had once wasted
half a day reading a novel. But he never picked up another,
he said, except to explore it for its content of smut.
This portly, muttonchopped figure also crusaded against abortion, birth control, and the publication of any infor
mation concerning either. He decried any form of nudity in
works of art and any painted scene that seemed to hint at
impropriety, including those which showed a man and a
woman with no chaperone in sight. That was smut. One
had only to look deeply and he would see it. Comstock was
also the enemy of alcohol, betting parlors, punchboards,
and scented stationery in sealed envelopes. He caused the
arrest of a woman who had used a mildly salacious ex
pression in a perfumed letter sent to her own husband
through the mails. Tilden remembered this well because
accounts of it so outraged his father that it was one of the
rare times Comstock was discussed at the dinner table.
What most incensed Stanton Beckwith was that Comstock's
“disgraceful peeping” was legal. Comstock had been al
most single-handedly responsible for the passage by Con
gress of a bill prohibiting the mailing of any lewd, obscene,
lascivious, or filthy matter. He asked for and got an appointment as special postal officer to enforce the new law. The problem of defining obscenity was left entirely up to
Comstock, who knew it when he saw it. Now even a serious article describing the physical dangers of abortion could not
be sent through the mails except at risk of a jail term.
The most sensational of Comstock's forays against abortion came when Tilden was about seventeen. There was a
particular mansion on Fifth Avenue, on the northeast corner
of Fifty-second Street, which he had never heard discussed
in any voice louder than a whisper. It was a place where
heavily draped carriages, and sometimes hearses, pulled up
to a side door in the darkest part of night. It was where
terrified daughters of wealthy men went to be rid of their
shame and where even married women went to be free of
unwanted or embarrassing babies. Although Tilden did not
fully understand how this was accomplished, there was
clearly great profit in it. The house was an ornate brown-stone far larger than his father's and, although rather far to the north, it was in an area rapidly becoming fashionable.
And the owner of that house, a certain Madame Restell,
had the habit of taking the air each day in a most elegant
barouche attended by two liveried footmen. Tilden had of
ten seen her while coaching in Central Park. Though her
hair was still black, she was an older woman, thin with
sharp features. She would smile and nod at passing coaches
and that was strange, because the occupants of those
coaches would almost always turn their faces away. Far
from taking offense, she seemed to find a curious pleasure in that.
By this time, the year being 1878, Madame Restell was
essentially in retirement. But Anthony Comstock had
vowed that she would not escape temporal punishment for her crimes. He went to her, disguised, wearing a rich man's clothing and having shaved off his muttonchops for the
occasion, and begged an interview. Tears streaming down
his cheeks, he said that his dear wife was with child but
her health was so frail that she could not survive the tor
ment of another birthing. Even now she waited, pale and weak, in a carriage nearby, for word that she might live through the mercy and artistry of Madame Restell. Comstock collapsed into sobs and Madame Restell, cautious at
first, relented. Comstock promptly arrested her. To her great
surprise, she was indicted solely on the strength of Com
stock’s testimony. Several newspapers, under pressure from
the YMCA, which largely funded Comstock’s activities,
began trumpeting the end of her nefarious career. These
same newspapers, which had willingly accepted transparent advertisements for her discreet midwifery and her Infallible
French Female Pills, now seemed bent on being rid of her.
Her greatest crime, Tilden heard it observed, was that she
lived in a part of town where the Vanderbilts were planning
fine homes, but she was not an acceptable neighbor. Sixty-
seven years old, and facing the certain prospect of a long
jail sentence, Madame Restell retired to her marble bath
room and opened a vein at her throat. Thousands of women
of good family breathed silent relief that their secrets were
at last safe. Madame Restell's assistants, Carrie Todd
among them, scattered with the wind. Comstock, however,
received little praise. The
Times
and the
Sun
roundly con
demned him for driving her to suicide by means of fraud.
He was unabashed. Madame Restell 's was one of fifteen
suicides he would boast of causing.