Authors: John R. Maxim
Tags: #Horror, #General, #Psychological, #Suspense, #Memory, #Thrillers, #Fiction, #Time Travel
Time Out of Mind (36 page)
“
How could you have known?” he asked. ”I mean, how
did it happen that you came to her rescue in the nick of
time? Speaking of melodramas.”
“
The reporter, whom I pay to keep his eyes open, rec
ommended her as a prospect.”
”
A pimp.”
”
A talent scout, Tilden.”
“
And you seduced her.”
I befriended her, Tilden.” A flash of her eyes showed
that she was controlling her temper. ”Margaret was and is
free to leave at any time. I pay her a small salary to do my
typewriting and to keep my books. My hope is that the
money she can earn here as one of my girls will encourage her to embrace this life just long enough to accumulate the
means to begin a new life elsewhere.”
“
I'm sorry, Georgiana.” He turned away. ”I still think
this is terrible.”
“
Twenty thousand girls, Tilden. Most with a choice be
tween starving virtue and a few years of selling those same
bodies which men take and discard so freely. I was not, I'll
tell you, the first of my calling to approach Margaret. I
would not have been the last. She is so beautiful, you see,
and so alone. And the fact that you think it terrible, Tilden, is one of the most endearing things about you. Most men
would leap at the chance without a care in the world for
her. And as for me, remembering, Tilden, that she is alone and friendless and easy prey to those who would take ad
vantage of her, tell me in whose hands you would rather
have found Margaret. I will bank her money for her, invest
it safely, and when I send her off at the age of twenty-five,
she need never depend on anyone else again.”
If she does indeed retire. And if you do indeed send
her off.”
“
Do not insult me, Tilden.”
“
What guarantee do you offer that she will not simply
move on to another such house?”
“
If she does, she forfeits her money and she signs a
paper to that effect at the start. No girl of mine, Tilden, has
ever ended up in some Irish or German crib on Sixth Av
enue. No girl of mine will ever walk the streets. Least of
all a girl like Margaret.”
“
Assuming she accepts your proposition.”
“
Assuming that, yes.”
“
How do you know I won't try to dissuade her?”
“
You are free to try.” Georgiana smiled.
to maintain Margaret Barrie's virtue at its present imperfect
level when the alternative is a night of pleasure with that
wonderfully firm body and gentle face.
”
I must consider this,Georgiana,'' Tilden said slowly. “It is not an arrangement one is offered every day.”
“
Not overlong, Tilden. I have been offered a thousand
dollars for the first night with her. And by quite an impor
tant man, though older and rougher than you.”
Now Tilden smiled, albeit uncertainly. ”I have read in
the newspaper that the Brooklyn Bridge has been sold more
than once by a persuasive bunco steerer. I think it might
have been you.”
”
I don't know what you mean, sir,” she said innocently.
”I do not lie about the thousand dollars. There are some
who would pay ten.”
“
Still older and still rougher, I presume.”
“
Richer, Tilden.”
“
Very well,” he said. “What, by the way, is my price to be?”
“
With my compliments.” Georgiana leaned forward to
kiss his cheek. “Plus whatever generous gift you choose to
have me invest for her. Through your firm, of course.”
“
Of course.” Tilden grinned helplessly. ”I will consider
it, Georgiana. May I pay you a call tomorrow at this hour?”
“
You are always welcome here, Tilden.”
He walked north along Fifth Avenue more slowly than before. Many feelings had to be sorted out. The first of these,
the one that kept the smile upon his face all the way past
the towering fortress like walls of the Croton Reservoir and on across Forty-second Street, was the fantasy vision of
knowing the sweet body of that marvelous woman who
played so beautifully and who had eyes like a wounded
bird. The next, as the scaffolded and skeletal spires of Saint
Patrick's came into view, was the sickening thought that
that same body was being bid upon by fat and balding old men with cigar-stained teeth. Tilden dashed away that im
age. There it was. His conscience could hardly bear his
being the one to take her, yet he could not stand the thought
of her body being pressed against some other.
Georgiana,
the witch, well knew that he would be thus confused. A thousand dollars, someone had bid. Another might bid ten.
Was this an invention, one of Georgiana’ s celebrated wiles,
or was it true? In Tilden's heart he knew it was. Or must
be. He would pay that much himself to relieve the ache his
heart felt for her.
He walked on. Approaching Forty-seventh Street his eye
drifted to the northeast corner where stood the four-story
brownstone of Jay Gould. Tilden frowned. There was a man
who could buy and sell Margaret a thousand times over.
Georgiana's entire house, for that matter. But of course he
would not. Gould was a money-getter, not a woman-getter. A destroyer of men and their dreams. The destroyer of that good man Cyrus Field. Tilden looked at the sidewalk out
side Gould's house where, it was well known, the con
sumptive little insomniac would pace away the night, alone
with his thoughts except for armed guards who stood
watchfully along his path. It was a wonder, armed guards
or no, that someone did not manage to put a ball through his black heart one night. If someone did there would
doubtless be a monument proposed to honor the deed. Til
den would be among the first to reach deep into his pockets
for its subscription.
vistas ahead were more suited to reveries of young Mar
garet Barrie. There were green trees here and there, sprung to life in the time he was away. There were the wonderful
new homes of the Vanderbilt sons and their ambitious
wives, homes as fine as any chateau in Europe. There were
the twin Italianate palazzos directly across from Saint Pat
rick's, built by William Henry Vanderbilt for himself and
his daughters, the most elegant in New York until they were
outdone by the turreted fancy commissioned by William
Kissam Vanderbilt. Actually by Alva, his wife. Decent
enough sort, that Willie K. Spends most of his time aboard
his yacht these days to avoid the tedious entertainments
given by Alva, to which Ella would give her soul to be
invited more often.
Margaret. That an Ella can have had every advantage and
be so mean of spirit and so impoverished of accomplish
ment and that a Margaret, who must be the most gentle girl in the world, could have suffered such pain as Georgiana
described.
his eye. It was taller than most, all of six stories, and fairly
new. Tilden' s glance fell not so much upon that building
as upon the ghost of the dwelling it had replaced by popular
demand just a few years before. Madame Restell had lived
on that site. Madame Restell, the abortionist, who had built
her fortune on the blood of a thousand unwanted babies
and who would proudly and defiantly go coaching along
Fifth Avenue and through the park, indifferent to taunts and protected by those whose secrets she knew until that lunatic vice crusader, Anthony Comstock, entrapped her at last and
drove her to cut her throat rather than suffer her remaining years in a cell on Riker's Island. But how did it all begin?
How, in heaven's name, does one enter such an atrocious
life? Was she not once a charming young girl who ran and
played games and sat in her mother's lap? And if such a
girl could become such a monster by degrees, could not
such a fate be in Margaret's stars as well? No. Tilden shook
his head. It is impossible. Madame Restell was never a charming little girl. She was a grasping little sneak who probably tortured frogs with burning sticks and then cried
her innocence when accused. She was probably not unlike Ella must have been. Ella surely did not blossom in her
adulthood into the petulant, selfish, and fundamentally use
less creature she is now. She must always have been so
except she would have had the guile to conceal her true
character lest the discovery of it interfere with her designs.
But I will not think upon that, he decided. One cannot
condemn Ella without damning oneself for marrying so
foolishly. And that done, there is nothing left but to make
the best of it. I will think upon Margaret. But that is all that I will do. If I could put aside my conscience and be
the first to have her, the first since the swine who ruined her, what then? Could I walk away and leave her to an
endless line of panting old men? Could I return to her
knowing how many sweating bellies have been pressed
down upon hers since the time I first knew her sweetness?
Could I watch her become hard?
Tilden had made up his mind. He turned the comer at Fifty-seventh Street, passing the home of dear Teddy Roo
sevelt at number
6, and continued on toward the looming
mass of the Osborne two blocks in the distance past the
signal tower of the elevated
Dear Teddy. My small joys
and sorrows have been nothing to his, have they? There
could have been no finer wife than Alice
when he married
her, no more blissful life together for the four short years
until her unhappy death. What is it? Three years ago
now.
And since then a year of desperate distraction at his ranch
in the Dakotas; a return to New York, a defeat in his effort to
become mayor, a new marriage to his lovely Edith, and the publishing of another book which, by the way, I must
have him
inscribe for me. An eventful enough life for a
man of fifty but a remarkable one for a man not yet twenty-
nine.
own stupid doing, and you did try to warn me. Here I'm
going home to a woman who will barely raise her head
when I enter my apartment and who will soon retire, with
hardly a word, to her damnable twin bed. Damn the twin
beds. Damn her. And damn Margaret for stirring all this up
inside me.
“
Jonathan?”
He was standing on the far side of the bed nearer the
window when Gwen entered her- uncle's guest room. His
chest rose and fell as if he'd just been startled awake from
a nap. But the turned-down bed he was staring at had not
been disturbed. Corbin blinked at the sound of his name.
“
Jonathan? Are you all right?”
His head lifted in her direction, and his eyes flitted over her features, her form, and the clothing she wore for the
briefest moment until recognition came to them.
tired.”