Time Out of Mind (83 page)
Authors: John R. Maxim
Tags: #Horror, #General, #Psychological, #Suspense, #Memory, #Thrillers, #Fiction, #Time Travel
of finding Tilden, if Tilden could have wired her directly
and not used Laura as an intermediary, she would almost
surely have been on the first train east. She would have
come quickly, even though it was Tilden’ s wish that she
stay until his fever was broken and his cruel injuries had healed, stay until it was known that all outside threats
to their happiness were gone from them. She would have
come back even if she did not yet know that it was in
Tilden’s mind to ask her to be his wife.
But Tilden’s message to Margaret was not at all direct. It
was filtered first through Teddy, a friend deeply concerned
for him, and again through Laura, a friend just as well intentìoned where Margaret's welfare was involved. It is best that
you stay away, was the meaning Margaret saw in the lan
guage of the message she received. The second message, the
one which broke her heart, was one which had lost even
more in translation. It had occurred to Tilden near the end of his first week at Bellevue that Margaret might find herself in
need of cash. He arranged, through Teddy, for the bank in
Greenwich to send her a draft in the amount of five hundred
dollars and to advise her of the much larger amount which
was on deposit in her name. He scribbled a loving note that
was meant to accompany the draft.
The draft and the intelligence of the larger deposit were fo
rwarded by wire once Laura Hemmings provided the
bank with her address, but Tilden's note did not go with it.
If he had been less befogged by laudanum and less dis
tracted by the pain of his wired jaw, he would have known
that the banker, J. H. Hinckley, would not have opened a
sealed envelope in order to add its message to the wire
bearing the draft, nor would he have considered that Hinck
ley, having placed the letter in his rolltop desk to await a forwarding address, would have forgotten it entirely. What
Margaret received, then, was simply the five-hundred-dollar
draft and a statement of the balance of her account. The transaction being complete in and of itself, Mr. Hinckley added, as was his custom in such matters, that no further
communication was required from her. Margaret was
crushed. It appeared to her that she had been paid in full
for services rendered.
tragic misunderstanding. Margaret promptly mailed the
draft back to Laura Hemmings, together with her interpretation of its meaning. Laura presumed that interpretation to
be accurate because she presumed it to be based upon a
clear communication from Tilden and not upon a banker's routine addendum. Furious, Laura forwarded the draft to
Tilden's office with the advice that Margaret did not want
his goddamned money and that no further communication
would be required of him, either, if she had her way. A full
five weeks had passed since he left Margaret to do his “er
rand” at Lyndhurst and three weeks since Margaret had
departed for her Evanston visit when Tilden felt well
enough to ask his head clerk, Mr. Levi Scoggins, to bring
his accumulated correspondence to his room at Bellevue. It
was then, to his horror, when he realized that either a ter
rible mistake had somehow been made or that Margaret had
simply decided that she'd had enough of Greenwich, of
living with her fears and in an indefinite relationship, and
of Tilden Beckwith himself. He leaped into his clothes and
rushed from Bellevue without the leave of any doctor.
Cursing the wired jaw that prevented him from telephoning
Laura Hemmings, he caught the first available train from Grand Central to Greenwich and was pounding upon Laura
Hemmings's door within three hours of opening her letter.
Three hours after that, he was aboard a train to Chicago.
placed letter. He would never fully understand all the things
which contributed to Margaret's decision that she would
not return with him. There were times when he thought that
the soaring ecstasy of their reunion was, in its own odd
way, as responsible as any other factor for what would fol
low. ”I almost think,” she told him, “that it is better to be
melancholy all the time, or happy all the time, than it is to
swing so greatly and so often between those two ends of
the same frayed rope.” She had refused to see him at first,
though her resolution lasted not a quarter hour, and that
was well because the ladies of the WCTU were becoming certain that their stoutest doors and Evanston's burliest po
licemen would not long keep him at bay. After sending
down word that she would consent to a brief interview, she
steeled herself and descended the stairs toward the building
foyer where he waited, pacing, and she dissolved into tears
at her first sight of the sutures on his face and his bandaged
hands and at his first words through jaws that would not
open. It took a half hour more before he could scribble all
that was in his heart, all the news of the past five weeks,
on the backs of every scrap of paper he could find. And all
the while he cried as hard as she.
They spent that night together, appearances be damned, and all the next day as well. There was scarcely a moment when Tilden's arms were not around Margaret, or around
Jonathan, or around both of them together.
It was at the end of the second day, at dinner, when
Margaret told Tilden that she'd been asked to consider
moving permanently to Evanston. She confessed that she'd
told the ladies there that she and Jonathan were quite alone
in the world and without ties to Greenwich or any other
place. And they spoke to her of the wonderful opportunities that existed for women in this fine new Chicago which
had
risen from the great fire of 1871. Women were a great force
here, they'd told her. There had been too much work to do,
too much need for women's energies, to waste time perpetuating
silly myths about the proper role of that sex. A
newspaper, the
Chicago Sun,
had already printed a piece
she'd written on the work of the Temperance Union and
had asked her to do another on—''Do not laugh at this,
Tilden”—the high-priced sporting houses of South Dear
born Street from a decent woman's perspective.
indeed amused, but he listened as if the topic had no real significance because she and Jonathan would, after all, be
returning with him as soon as she could complete the task
for which she'd come.
he did not consider moving to Chicago as well. He could
surely begin a new brokerage business there, or else open
a new office. Tilden answered that he, in fact, had considered starting a branch office or two, and Chicago was certainly a candidate for one of them, what with all the new
building still going on and most of the nation's cattle and grain wealth being funneled through that city. But such a
move was at least a year or two in the future. If and when
it happened, he promised Margaret, they would visit Chi
cago often. These words spoken, it was Margaret's silence that made him all the more attentive. And this time he did
not smile.
My heart stopped beating just now.” Tilden placed his
hand against it. “I had the strangest notion and it turned
me cold.”
Your heart is listening to mine, I think,” she said
softly.
Do not say it, Margaret.” He forced these words
through his wired jaw. “Please don't say you'll not return
with me.”
”
I will not go back to Greenwich.”
“
But you love it there. You said so.”
I love its beauty. I love our home there. Our friends.
Our little cove where we slip off to swim. I do not love all
the new people who are moving there from New York, like
that Inspector Williams of yours. I do not love living so close to a man who hates you that I can almost feel his breath. I do not love Anthony Comstock.'`
“
Gould has pulled in his claws and Comstock is gone.
You have nothing to fear.”
Gould only waits. You said yourself that he's a man
who eats his revenge cold. As for Comstock, he left a stain
on that town, Tilden, which will never wash away.”
New York, then,” he said urgently. “We'll be married
and we'll live in New York.”
' The fate of Carrie Todd and Belle Walker can find me
there just as easily, Tilden. Marry me and it will find you
at the same time.”
In which case we'll have a perfectly good reason to move to Chicago.”
ling?”
To Chicago, to London, or in a hut among the heathen Chinee. It is all the same if you are with me. If you are
not,there is no life for me at all.”
“
Then move here now. Move to Chicago.”
I cannot.” He touched his lips to her fingertips. “Not
now. The business has been given to me by my father. It
is a sacred trust. Even more sacred is my responsibility to
those employees and friends who stood by me through time
of great difficulty and who made sacrifices on my behalf.
Please say you understand that, Margaret.”
”
I do, Tilden,” she answered gently. “If I had no child,
I would be on the train with you tomorrow. But I have no right to risk Jonathan's name. And I will not risk his good
opinion of me if I can help it.”
saw were from pain as well as sorrow. “Do not leave me,
Margaret.” Tilden's jaw trembled. ”I will die.”
”
I will never leave you, Tilden,” she whispered.
“
Does that mean you will—”
will wait for you, Tilden.”
Margaret made that promise. The house in Greenwich was sold within the year and Tilden sent some of the money to Margaret and invested the rest in her name. Tilden traveled t
o Chicago twice more that summer. On the second trip he brought Lucy Stone who, having heard on Margaret's au
thority that the coloreds of Evanston lived in houses as nice as the whites, had elected to join Margaret. The press of
business kept Tilden in New York through the early fall,
but he came for a long Thanksgiving holiday and again
over Christmas of l891.
Between visits and well into 1892, Tilden and Margaret exchanged letters every week without fail. A planned visit for July of 1892 was delayed by the death of Cyrus Field. Tilden was chosen as a pallbearer and as one of the eulog
izers at Field's service. As he looked down from the pulpit
and saw that Jay Gould had taken a preeminent place
among the mourners, Tilden was sorely tempted to depart
from his prepared text and heap public scorn upon Gould
and those like him. But he chose to honor Cyrus Field by
doing no such thing. Gould called enough attention to him
self by coughing away a little more of his life at intervals throughout the service.
gesting an excursion by riverboat to New Orleans, where
in September they would watch John L. Sullivan defend his
title against the San Francisco Dancing Master, James J.
Corbett. Margaret was thrilled. She quickly wheedled a re
porter's assignment from the
Chicago Sun
so there would
be no question of her being allowed inside the arena. Even then it took Sullivan's intercession to get her past the gate-
men. John Flood was there, of course, and to Tilden's
delight Nat Goodwin as well, along with Bat Masterson,
once a famous frontier lawman, now a sportswriter. These
men toasted Sullivan's chances before the fight, then his
grace in defeat after he lost it, all with equal enthusiasm.