Time Out of Mind (85 page)
Authors: John R. Maxim
Tags: #Horror, #General, #Psychological, #Suspense, #Memory, #Thrillers, #Fiction, #Time Travel
Near the end of Teddy's second term, Tilden traveled to Chicago to witness Jonathan's graduation from New Trier
High School in Evanston. Jonathan would be. attending Northwestern University in the fall on, to Tilden's soaring
delight, a full four-year baseball scholarship. For the next
two years he saw Jonathan play as often as his schedule
permitted and read with pride the occasional reports that
the Chicago White Sox had a covetous eye on him. That
pride turned mixed in 1907, when Jonathan announced he was quitting school to pitch for the White Sox at $3000 a
year. That was twice, he told his mother, what he was likely
to earn at any other livelihood upon graduation. Margaret
was unimpressed by that argument, as was Tilden. But Tilden did recognize that athletic careers can be cruelly short
and that the opportunity might not come along again. He
extracted a promise that Jonathan would keep up with his
studies even while traveling with the team and that he
would eventually return for his degree.
Jonathan's career was even briefer than Tilden antici
pated, lasting not quite two seasons. The pitch on which
he'd built his reputation was the spitball, followed by two variations of his own design called the scuffball and the
greaseball. By the end of the very year he'd signed, both leagues outlawed the spitball and all other creative uses of
foreign matter. Jonathan spent the intervening winter trying
to develop an alternate repertoire, but his efforts, particu
larly on his fastball, brought on a worsening tendinitis in
his shoulder. The White Sox kept him on for the better part of the 1909 season, but the shoulder failed to improve. He
was retired in time to register for the fall term at North
western. Jonathan graduated the next year, stayed on as a graduate instructor and baseball coach, and eventually be
came an associate professor of English literature.
Jonathan tried to enlist as a flyer but was rejected because
of his age, twenty-seven. A relieved Margaret then pre
vailed upon him to wait out the current school year before
trying any other branch of the service. During that year, Jonathan began keeping serious company with a former
repertory actress who was the drama coach at Northwest
ern, Barbara Holman. Sweetheart or no, there was a war
on and many of Jonathan's friends were already in France.
Jonathan volunteered for the American Expeditionary Force
in June of 1917. He passed the physical and was as good
as in uniform when he was asked to raise his right hand
for the oath. An officer, one he recognized as an acquain
tance of his mother's, asked him to please raise his hand
higher. Jonathan complied but with obvious pain and dif
ficulty. The officer asked him to step out of ranks and report
to another room for further examination by a doctor. The
doctor concluded that Jonathan's chronic shoulder problem was such that he could neither salute nor sight a rifle sat
isfactorily. Jonathan was sent home. When he asked his
mother whether she'd seen a certain officer lately, she could
not imagine, she insisted, what he could be talking about.
This near miss, however, became the impetus for Barbara Holman to press her intentions. They were married at the
end of l917.
To Margaret's astonishment, Tilden arrived for the wed
ding in a private railway car. He had advised her that he
might bring another guest or two. Margaret let out a shriek
as Laura Hemmings stepped from the car behind him, tow
ing Dr. Miles Palmer, whom she'd long since married, and their two blond daughters, both in their early teens. Next
came Big John Flood in one of his wildly checked suits
that never quite fit him, Nat Goodwin with the latest and
last of his seven wives, and a waving, shouting Peggy Gan
non, who was in her fourth term in the Connecticut State
Legislature. Last off, his bellowing voice preceding him,
was all three hundred pounds of the former heavyweight
champion of the world, “Yours truly, John L. Sullivan,”
as he announced his presence to the city of Chicago. Teddy
Roosevelt, who'd been ill for some time, was represented
by five dozen hothouse roses for Margaret
and an auto
graphed
photo of himself for the newlyweds, framed in the
claws of a bear he'd shot in Wyoming.
The next two years, however, brought more sorrow than
joy. Most of the joy attended the birth of Tilden's grandson,
Whitney Corbin. Margaret had hoped that the boy would
be named for Tilden, but Jonathan had chosen to honor his mother with his first-born by giving the baby her unsus
pectedly false maiden name. At the christening, Margaret
could only shrug helplessly at Tilden, who crossed his eyes
in return.
The first sorrow came with the passing of John L. Sul
livan not long after the wedding. A heart attack took him
at his small Massachusetts farm the following February.
Tilden was a pallbearer, as was Jake Kilrain. Margaret
missed the funeral because she was traveling on assignment
from her newspaper but came later and spent several days
with Kate Sullivan, John's widow.
Less than a year later came the numbing news that Teddy
Roosevelt had died in his sleep of a blocked artery in his
chest. Margaret rushed to New York when word came over
the wire service. It was her first return to that city, except
to change trains, in nearly thirty years. She attended the funeral at Sagamore Hill with Tilden and John Flood, both
of whom were honorary pallbearers. Tilden did not speak
at the service nor could he. have done so if he'd been asked.
He was crushed. Most of that winter passed before Tilden
was able to accept a world in which there was no more
Teddy. Margaret stayed a month with him, then forced him to spend another month with her in Evanston. They had no
sooner recovered from that loss when the influenza epi
demic, which was killing millions worldwide, reached into Evanston and took Barbara Holman Corbin. She was carrying Jonathan's second child at the time. Margaret and Lucy
Stone Tuttle undertook to raise young Whitney just as
they'd raised his father.
In the meantime, Huntington Beckwith, the false son
sired by Ansel Carling, grew up, was sent to Yale, and then
to Columbia Law School. He was sent anywhere he had
the slightest interest in going as long as it kept him away
from Beckwith & Company. Margaret reminded Tilden on
several occasions, the latest being on one of their stays at
a charming Wisconsin inn they'd discovered, that Hunting
ton could hardly be blamed for the circumstances of his b
irth. Truth be told, his life thus far seemed more blameless
than either of theirs.
“
But that's just it,” Tilden said, agreeing. “There's no
blame to him but there's little else, either. No passion, no
joy, no friends to speak of, no interest in athletics, and above all he's extremely neat. I detest neat people. He
doesn't even perspire. His body somehow repels dust. He
speaks only when he is spoken to, and while he's waiting
to be addressed he sits there and watches. Like cats watch.
I detest cats and neat people with equal feeling.”
“
He resembles Ansel Carling, doesn't he,” Margaret
said softly.
”
I suppose he must. My right fist develops a twitch
whenever I stand close to him.”
“
You have not been kind to him, Tilden.”
”
I am not kind to cats, either. But they go away and he
doesn't.”
“
You cannot punish him for Ella's sin, Tilden. That is wrong. It is also unworthy of you. Can there be no place
for him in your business if not in your heart?”
“
As for my heart, it has been filled to overflowing for
more than thirty years. It has been broken again and again
by a great lady whom I seem doomed never to possess.
Even the spaces between my heartbeats are filled with you.
It's a wonder that I find room to love Jonathan as well.”
“
And Whitney? Not Whitney?” She smiled.
“
Whitney, too. He fills the cracks where my heart has broken in the knowledge that he will never call me Grand
father.”
“
He'll know one day. I promise.”
“
Yet one more uncertain treasure.”
“
What is that?”
reflecting on it. It goes, ‘Margaret's love, uncertain treasure,
hast thou more of pain or pleasure? Endless torments dwell
about thee. But who would live, and live without thee?”
“
Margaret's
love?”
' 'I made a change or two. The fact remains, I would not
live without you, Margaret.”
“
Nor I without you, Tilden, my bent-nosed gladiator.”
Who knows perfectly well when he's being buttered up. What do you hope to extort from me?”
It would lighten my heart if you would soften yours
toward Ella's child.”
Already done. He will have a place in my business
because he's studied for it and there seems to be no help
for it. He also plans to marry soon. All things considered, I cannot decently deny him a situation.”
Margaret seemed pleased though startled by the news.
“This is already decided? That you'll take him in?”
It was done three months ago. He'll have his chance to earn a partnership and possibly even my esteem, although
it's a long way from my ledgers to my affections. I'm
afraid, though, that his chosen wife will make it doubly
hard for him. She's another of those cat people. Stares si
lently all the time. They doubtless spend their evenings
hunting mice together.”
Tilden assured Margaret that young Huntington would
be treated fairly and even receive some consideration in Tilden's will. But she, Margaret, and their son, Jonathan,
would be the major beneficiaries. He would also hold her
to her promise that Jonathan would one day be told that Tilden was his father.
The young man is not a dunce, you know.” This con
versation took place several years before Jonathan married
Barbara. “All his life he's been hearing people remark on
how closely he and I resemble each other. I bet he's just
too polite to bring it up.”
”
I know.” She looked away.
Then why don't we tell him together and get it over
with?”
to him all his life. I've had to tell him that Wilkes-Barre
train-wreck story. Then, of course, it's also on my official
WCTU biography, one result of which is that it's also
turned up in nearly every other piece that's been written
about me. Talk about tangled webs.”
“
Telling Jonathan and telling the whole world are not the same thing.”
“
Let's wait a while, Tilden. Please.”
Huntington Beckwith did marry his cat-woman wife and
quickly produced two children. The first was a daughter,
whom he named Ella to Tilden's unspoken displeasure. The
second was a son, whom he named Tilden Beckwith II to
Tilden's even greater annoyance. Tilden had refused to consider himself a grandfather until Barbara and Jonathan pro
duced Whitney.
taken, he could not deny that Huntington was resourceful
and industrious. The Great War, like all wars, brought good
business to those who were far from the battlefields. Beck
with & Company expanded as never before. Where the
firm's real estate subsidiary had previously been a builder
or improver of property, under Huntington’s management its emphasis shifted more toward speculation. Real estate
speculation could certainly be profitable under boom con
ditions but still, Tilden found it distasteful. It smacked too much of money changing and profiteering as opposed to
adding value to a thing and helping it grow. Nonetheless,
he gave Huntington his head because the profits allowed him to buy a fine old hotel he'd long had his eye on, the
Regency, plus a once-elegant brownstone house on Thirty-sixth Street just off Fifth Avenue, which he gave to the city
on condition that it be used as a hospice for homeless young
girls. He enjoyed thinking that Georgiana Hastings would be pleased, wherever she was.