Time Out of Mind (84 page)
Authors: John R. Maxim
Tags: #Horror, #General, #Psychological, #Suspense, #Memory, #Thrillers, #Fiction, #Time Travel
Mississippi to recover. Once they were back in Chicago,
their sorrow over the champion's defeat turned immediately
to gladness because they were to attend the wedding of
Lucy Stone to a roofing contractor named Amos Tuttle
who'd been called in one day to repair a leak in the shingles
of Margaret's house. Lucy moved into her own home in
the colored part of Evanston but still spent her days with
Margaret and Jonathan. Jonathan had begun calling Tilden
Uncle Tilden. Tilden told Margaret he'd much rather be
called Father but could offer no practical suggestion unless
of course Margaret stopped all this foolishness and came
back to New York and married him. Margaret would smile
and kiss him and say, once again, ”I will wait for you,
Tilden.”
Jay Gould's end finally came in December of that year,
not five months after Cyrus Field's passing. It was said that
he declined all the more rapidly from the day of Field's
service, that he seemed a man for whom there was no hope
and no consolation. Tilden had told no one but Margaret
of his curious conversation with a man who saw no evil in
the harm he did to those he did not admire, but who seemed
to see damnation in the harm he did to a better man and
who saw his only hope of salvation to be in restoring the
good man he'd broken. It was an obsession that Tilden
never quite understood. But, as Margaret pointed out, many dark workings of the mind are beyond all reason and un
derstanding. What of Collis P. Huntington, who built his
great house on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fifty-seventh
Street and then refused to live in it upon hearing a chance
remark that rich men build fine homes only to die in them?
What of A. T. Stewart, who spent millions on a gallery of
fine paintings and then allowed not a single human being
to see them, not even a servant with a feather duster? What
of Russell Sage, who will inquire into the cost of a man's suit upon meeting him and will eat no meal costing more
than a dollar though he's worth fifty million? Tilden agreed.
He could think of none among the very rich men he'd
known who'd been spared some sort of madness. Perhaps
madness is what is required of one who aspires to be rich.
Madness and an essential unattractiveness, because Tilden
could also think of none he'd care to meet again in this world or the next if the choice were his.
“
Move to Chicago, Tilden,” she said. “Be with me and Jonathan.”
“
Come back to New York,” he replied. “You'll find
greater peace there with Jay Gould gone.”
“
In my mind,” she answered, ”I see Jay Gould's fallen body. And I see a circle of dogs closing on it. The dogs
will always be there, Tilden. They'll be there for you, too,
in the end.”
You could watch my back, dear Margaret, as John Flood used to do.”
I will watch sunsets with you, I will watch our child's
face on Christmas mornings, I will watch your naked body
on a moonlit beach. But I will not watch your back, Tilden.
No one with a choice should live that way.”
before Margaret, who was then to the
Chicago Sun
very
nearly what her friend Nelly Bly had been to the
New York
World,
saw on the wire service reports that Teddy Roose
velt had been commissioned a lieutenant colonel of the First
United States Volunteer Cavalry soon after the opening of
hostilities with Spain. A phone call to his office on the new Chicago-New York telephone connection confirmed an ap
palling intuition that Tilden Beckwith, heaven save us, had
dashed on down to enlist as one of Teddy's cowboys.
The Rough Riders are not cowboys, dear Margaret.
They might just be the finest light cavalry in the world short
of the Ogalala Sioux.”
“
Whatever. Tell me that you have not enlisted.”
“
What choice have I? Our nation is at war. As long as
I have no wife to mourn me, I must do my duty. Of course,
if I were married, it would be another matter.”
”
I
am
your wife, Tilden. License or no, I have been your
wife for ten years. Have you enlisted or have you not?”
”
I have just enough time to rush to Chicago and marry
you before the troopship leaves. Then you can come back
with me and wave tearfully from the pier.”
“
Tilden, you didn't!”
“
Not yet. I thought I'd give you a chance to prevent it.”
“
I see.”
“
You see what?”
“
Teddy turned you down.”
“
That's not exactly true at all.”
Margaret howled with glee. “He said you're too old,
didn't he?”
“
Thirty-eight is not old. Teddy's forty, for God's sake.”
“
He did. He wouldn't take you,” she whooped.
“
This is not a laughing matter, Margaret.”
“
Get out here, Tilden. Let's see how old thirty-eight re
ally is.”
“
What an absolutely shocking thing to suggest on a pub
lic telephone.”
“
When, Tilden?”
“
Friday next. My wife, you say.”
“
If you need proof, wait till you see me box your ears for upsetting me.”
relinquished and of which he took full advantage. He no sooner returned a hero than he announced himself a can
didate for governor of New York and won the election
handily. Margaret and Tilden traveled to Albany to attend
his swearing in. Tilden met privately with Teddy over
breakfast during his second day in office. It amused Teddy
to tell him that there was already talk of his running for
vice president in another two years just on the strength of
a single hill climb in Cuba, not that he had any interest in
that office. In any case, there was enough to do as reform governor of the state of New York. There was a civil service to be restructured, a wilderness to be conserved, Indian
children to be educated, and Negro children to be integrated
into New York's schools. On the matter of civil service, he asked, would Tilden believe that there are those who resist
the notion that a policeman ought to be able to read and
write or be able to approximately identify the president of
the United States?
“
Clubber Williams,.by the way, is finished.” Teddy
rapped the table. “I've told him I'll have his resignation in
January or I'll have him in prison by June. It might interest
you that his house in Greenwich, the Cos Cob section of it, actually, contributed as much as anything to his downfall. He had trouble recalling how he could buy a Connecticut
estate, buy a
yacht, and spend thirty-nine thousand dollars on a dock for
it, all on a salary of thirty-five hundred a year.”
“
Careful budgeting, perhaps,” Tilden suggested dryly.
He recalled the Lexow Committee of the previous year,
which had established that the opportunities for acquiring wealth as a New York City police officer were so great that
an appointment as a $1200-a-year patrolman sold for as
much as $300 on a sliding scale that brought an average of
$15,000 for a captaincy.
One must admire the man's boldness, however. I've
always liked audacity in a fellow, no matter what his other
sins. I've admired your audacity,Tilden.''
go.
“
Has he ever bothered you again, Tilden?”
“
Who? You mean Williams?”
“
Yes. Did he ever put any further pressure on you, either
in Gould's interest or his own?”
No.” Tilden's eyes narrowed.
“I’d never
even seen
him again except from a distance around town. Teddy, why
are you asking?”
“
No particular reason.”
“
Hogwash.”
would have married by now.”
”
I thought we would as well. One day we will.”
”
I wondered if there is perhaps something in your past, some secret, some regret, the exposure of which by Wil
liams or Gould or someone else might possibly bring trag
edy to a marriage once undertaken.”
“
In
my
past, you say.”
“
Yes.”
‘‘‘‘
Teddy,
what on earth are you talking about?”
His friend looked away. “Gould asked me a question
once. He asked me if you could look me in the eye and tell
me you did not murder Ella.”
“
Look at me, Teddy.”
Roosevelt met his eyes.
Ella ran from me into a blizzard. I went after her to
keep her from going to Ansel Carling. She fell in the snow
and I stood over her for what now seems no more than a
minute or two. It must have been a great deal longer.”
“
And she died there?”
If I had not gone after her, if I had not stood over her,
she would probably not have died. That much is true,
Teddy. There is no way around it.”
“
Was it in your heart to cause her death?”
”
I do not think so.”
“
When you left her... when you turned away, what
were your thoughts?”
“
To be rid of her. To send her and the child back to
Philadelphia. To present Ansel Carling with a bill.” Tilden
indicated his fist.
“
To divorce her, you mean.”
Teddy”—Tilden leaned forward—“you are about to
tell me that if divorce was on my mind, then I could not
have believed that she was dead or dying. I have tried to believe that as well. It is not always easy. I have satisfied myself that I can do little but go on with my life and await
God's judgment at the end of it.”
Well”—Teddy folded his napkin—“when that hap
pens, perhaps it wouldn't be a bad idea to have a pardon
from the governor of New York in your pocket.”
More years peeled by. Teddy did accept the vice-
presidential nomination, he was elected on William Mc
Kinley's ticket, and nine months later a stunned nation
learned that McKinley had been mortally wounded and that
this “damned cowboy” would inevitably be president of
the United States. Tilden was a frequent visitor to Wash
ington, once staying for six months as an adviser on the
abuses of an unregulated securities industry, and for another
four months as a member of Roosevelt's reelection com
mittee. Teddy's first six years in office effectively ended
the days of the great robber barons. They were men whom
Teddy and Tilden despised as individuals, yet there could
be no denying that this relative handful of men had literally
built this country. Whether they did so out of personal
greed was academic. The government could not have done what they did. It had neither the competence nor the imag
ination nor the freedom of action. But the government un
der Roosevelt did learn to put reins on them and to use
them, even to learn from them.