“Unless what, sir?” Tilden stepped toward him. One guard's thumb touched the hammer of his Winchester.
”I spoke of redirecting Mr. Carling's energies. It is possible that your energies of late, sir, nearly all of them, have been misdirected as well. I do not expect that you would take my advice where your private affairs are concerned, but I have some hope of persuading you that your continued efforts on Mr. Field's behalf are inappropriate.”
“My God!”
Gould closed his eyes. “Do not be pigheaded in this instance, sir.” He clipped off the words. “Do me the goodness to hear me out. In my office. With no ears but ours.”
“My God, are you not finished with that good man yet? What else can you do to him?”
“That good man betrayed me. Or tried to.”
“Betrayal!” Tilden sputtered. He was moved to dispute Gould's choice of that word, but he knew it would be of no use. “‘In any case, the man is beaten. Whatever his designs or mine might be toward the restoration of a decent station for himself and his family, I am willing to assure you that they involve no threat to you whatsoever.”
“He remains a bad example to others, Mr. Beckwith.”
“You can go straight to hell, Mr. Gould.”
Another fortnight passed before Tilden would consider dismissing the Pinkertons who were guarding Margaret's brownstone. It was in that time that Margaret agreed to his proposal. She would bear him a child if she could, and she would remain with him and be his wife in her heart as long as he wished. But if that should end, if he should choose to take a wife who was more suited to his station, let it be understood now that she would not hand over the child as if she were nothing more than a cow whose purpose had been served. Tilden was horrified that she had seriously entertained such a concern. He tore a piece of foolscap from a tablet on which she'd been writing and sat at once to compose a promise of his affection and his love, his most joyous acknowledgment of any child that might come of their union, of his eternal support from his heart as well as his purse, and that, on all his honor, the subject of one or the other giving up the child would never be raised. On that Friday, with the Pinkertons following for the first mile only, Tilden and Margaret drove to the Claremont Inn, where they registered as Mr. and Mrs. Harry Whitney. There and under that name the child was conceived.
It was June of that year before the last traces of the great blizzard melted from deeply shaded nooks and with them at least some of the pain Tilden bore from the night of Ella's death. Nothing more had been heard from Carling or Jay Gould. Not directly. As for Carling, it was said that Gould had sent him first to a surgeon for the repair of his face and then to Texas to do penance supervising the construction of cattle pens along the decaying Southwestern Pacific Railroad. He would forever be useless to Jay Gould in New York, where nearly everyone had heard of his humiliation at the hands of Tilden Beckwith and had marked him a cur and a coward. A good many held the whispered belief that his attentions, which some said were welcomed and some said were not, had somehow been responsible for the death of Tilden’s wife. Those who wondered why Gould kept a man like that on his payroll at all were told it was a question of which had more on the other, but not to worry, for Jay Gould would always let a man hang himself in the end. As for Gould himself, Tilden's firm soon felt the consequences of his displeasure. One account, then another, then several more were withdrawn by sweating men who would not meet Tilden’ s eyes. But luckily for Beckwith & Company, Jay Gould had more enemies than friends. A few of these came forward, providing Tilden with sufficient business that his income was approximately maintained and that no employees were discharged in consequence.
In midsummer, Tilden took permanent rooms at the Claremont Inn and spent all his weekends there with Margaret, plus as many weekdays as he could manage. John Flood joined them on an August Saturday for one of their outings to the Polo Grounds. Flood had sworn to Tilden’s lie that the bruises he showed these few months before were the result of a friendly rough-and-tumble between them and, no, true enough, there had been no new trouble with the Carling fellow. Margaret remained doubtful, but now it seemed forgotten. It was a fine summer day. A good day for baseball. Although John Flood did not fully share Tilden's passion for the sport, and although a day in Margaret's company was inducement enough for him, this day was a banner one because none other than John L. Sullivan, lately back from Europe, was scheduled to pitch three exhibition innings before the regular game against the Providence team. Sullivan, Flood pointed out, had played the game for Boston College and had considered a professional career before his fight on a dare against Cockey Woods, the toughest man in Boston, and his shocking fifth-round knockout persuaded him that a career of swatting heads instead of baseballs might be worth a further look. You could count on your fingers, said Flood, the number of men who've lasted five rounds with him since, yours truly among them, and not counting the shameful thirty-nine-round draw Sullivan just fought in France against the limey Charley Mitchell, who kept running and falling down until his friends saw it was dark enough to claim a draw.
Margaret, watching through opera glasses from their carriage parked beyond the outfield stakes; could not believe the man she saw was the great John L. He looked ten years older than Tilden, not the two that Tilden claimed. His face was soft and puffy, and he carried what must have been thirty pounds of excess above his belt. The crowd in the grandstand noticed as well, because there was more murmur than cheer when he took the field and doffed his hat. “It's the bottle,” John Flood said sadly. “Too many saloons and too many rounds stood by him and by those who'd say they drank with John L. hisself and shook his hand. Maybe a draw against the likes of Charley Mitchell was not such mischief after all.”
Sullivan pitched well enough in the exhibition innings, throwing underhand as even many professionals still did. The grandstand crowd forgot its first surprise at his appearance and was cheering every called strike and miss. A two-base hit in his first at bat brought them screaming to their feet. But John Flood continued to be grim. Near the end of the final exhibition inning, he excused himself and walked down the left field foul line toward the Giants' dugout. A policeman moved to stop him, but then several in the grandstand recognized the Bull's Head Terror and began chanting his name. John L. Sullivan was in mid-windup when he heard the sound. He stopped and turned, searching the faces on the sidelines until he found John Flood, then bowed with a flourish in his direction.
”I didn't know they were friends,” Margaret said excitedly.
“Oh yes.” Tilden nodded. “John says after he fought Sullivan they drank their way through half the bars and clubs in New York. They did the same in Philadelphia and Chicago. John went with him on the road and worked his corner for several fights while picking up a few of his own along the way.”
Margaret watched as the inning ended on a grounder to third. Sullivan bowed like an actor taking curtain calls; then, before the cheers could thin, he strode off to the sideline, where he pounded the shoulders of the waiting John Flood.
“My goodness,” she exclaimed, “John Flood is a full head taller than Mr. Sullivan. How on earth could he have been beaten?”
“It's mostly in the hands. Sullivan's are lightning fast and he's able to hit much harder than other men.”
“How could he hit harder,” she asked, “than a bear of a man like John Flood?’'
“Most bare-knuckle prizefighters,” Tilden explained, “don't hit nearly as hard as you'd think. Heads, jaws, and elbows are much tougher than knuckles. A fighter must protect his hands and wear the other man down with body blows and by slamming him to the ground, but most blows to the head must be pulled. Sullivan is different. Through some freak of creation his hands are much stronger than those of other men, so he's never reluctant to try for the knockout punch.”
“Oh look.” She peered through the glasses. ”I think they're quarreling.”
Tilden saw. John Flood had put an arm around Sullivan's back and was walk
ing him in the general direction of their carriage. Annoyance was plain in the champion's manner. “'I suspect John L. is being told of the evils of demon rum. Though I think it's demon champagne in this case.”
“John Flood doesn't drink at all, does he?”
Tilden shook his head. “He took the pledge four years ago. John will tell anyone who'll listen that it was alcohol more than Sullivan's fists that denied him the heavyweight belt. Now he's afraid that alcohol will take that belt away from Sullivan. Sullivan just went thirty-nine rounds with a man he easily knocked out in three, five years ago. And he's about to be challenged by Jake Kilrain, a hard man who takes his training seriously. I for one would have trouble betting on Sullivan.”
“Oh.” Margaret touched her hair. “They're coming here. They're coming to the carriage.”
John Flood's frown and John L. Sullivan's scowl turned to pleasant smiles as if on signal as they approached Tilden's hired landau. Sullivan doffed his cap with a glance toward Margaret and extended a hand to Tilden. “Ah, young Mr. Beckwith. You are looking well and fit, sir. I have become expert on the subject of fitness these last few minutes.”
John Flood cleared his throat. “‘May I present Mrs. Charlotte Whitney,” he said, sparing Tilden the need to lie to an old acquaintance.
“Your most bedazzled servant, madam.” He bowed. “May I say that you are the loveliest flower I've seen this summer.”
A smile split Margaret's face. “Are all pugilists so gallant, Mr. Sullivan?”
“Only champions, madam. It comes with the job. Certain others, as a rule, remain tiresome nags for the rest of their lives.” He turned to Tilden, throwing an elbow into John Flood's stomach in the process. “Your father, Tilden. I trust he is well?”
“He is retired to Charleston and he writes that the sea air is having good effect. A better tonic, of course, would be the news that you've beaten Jake Kilrain.”
“Then I shall make a point of it, sir.”
“Can you picnic with us, Mr. Sullivan?” Margaret asked. “We have fried chicken, orange juice, and some wonderful canned peaches in syrup.”
John Flood coughed again.
”I can imagine no finer lunch, Mrs. Whitney, and no grander company with one oversized exception. I have people waiting for me who will not make faces with every bite I take. Another time perhaps.”
“We must make a point of that as well, sir.”
“Your servant, madam.”
John Flood spent much of the regulation game deep in thought as Tilden attempted to follow the action while responding to Margaret's frequent questions about the champion. She was thrilled that he and Tilden knew each other in spite of Tilden’s insistence that Sullivan probably would not have remembered his name but for John Flood reminding him as they approached the carriage. At the seventh-inning stretch, a new custom unique to the Polo Grounds, John Flood asked if he might excuse himself and return downtown by other means. There were a few more things he wished to say to Sullivan about his ruinous habits. It was time, he said, that someone not in awe of him stepped forward to take him in hand.
A few days later, Tilden noticed an item in the sports pages of the New York World which read uncannily like the exchange that had occurred with Sullivan, right down to the record of .his two fights with Mitchell and his reluctance to partake of peaches in heavy syrup, having promised a return to form and a victory over Jake Kilrain, a hard man who took his training seriously. The article carried no byline. But Tilden recalled that Margaret had been briefly in the World's employ, and he recalled the tablet from which he'd torn the page to record his promise of fidelity. Many of the pages had been filled in her fine hand with what seemed like random notes. “Is it possible, my dearest Margaret,” he asked when they dined that night at the Claremont, “that I am acquainted with the author of this piece?”
“I'm sure I have no idea, Tilden,” she replied innocently. “Do you think, by the way, that my figure is beginning to resemble a toad's?”
“Madam, I will not be diverted.” He tried to be firm. ' ‘Nor will I be manipulated into telling you that you are all the lovelier in your condition, nor will I allow you to fluster me by inviting me to feel the child's movements as we sup in a public place. Did you write this item?’'
”I thought you would never ask.”
“How is it that Margaret Barrie, piano teacher, bookkeeper, and tutor of French, is now revealed to be a newspaper correspondent?”
“Well, Tilden,” she reminded him, “we did discuss my need to earn my own way. In the short time that I was employed by Mr. Pulitzer's newspaper, I became quite excited by all the bold new things he was doing. I had never realized what a telling instrument a newspaper could be in the cause of social justice, as Mr. Pulitzer put it, or of the many worthwhile issues that needed to be faced and fought.”
“Such as John L. Sullivan's capacity to lose his paunch.”
“Tilden!”
“Forgive me.”
“And Mr. Pulitzer,” she went on, “was also the first publisher in New York to hire a female correspondent. She is only the smallest slip of a girl named Elizabeth Cochrane and yet she quickly became his star reporter. I went to see her. Elizabeth writes under the name of Nelly Bly, you know, and she is a marvelous young woman of enormous pluck. Just this year she had herself committed to the lunatic asylum at Blackwell's Island for ten whole days and then wrote an expose of conditions there which—”
”I read it, dearest.” Tilden touched her hand. “Pray do not tell me that you intend being convicted of a capital crime so that you may write firsthand of Sing Sing's new electric chair.”
Margaret closed one eye. “Elizabeth told me I should expect to be patronized by men.”
“Again, I apologize.” Tilden raised his hands. “What is it you intend doing in this new career, and how will it be possible from the Claremont Inn?”
“Stories are everywhere”—Margaret made a gesture embracing the world around her—“and you seem to know everyone. All I need do is be attentive as with Mr. Sullivan, compose a little story, and send it in to Elizabeth by telegram.”
“Hmmm.” Tilden took a bite of his bluefish. ”I do applaud your resourcefulness, Margaret.''
“But you're about to ask me to curtail it.”
Tilden shook his head. “Not at all, my dear. The Sullivan story is harmless enough, but you did meet him through me. Now you speak of my knowing a great many other people. In future, if you intend submitting an item in which I am in any way involved, might I ask that you show it to me first?”
“Done.” She clapped her hands. “Oh, Tiíden, I'm so pleased that you don't mind.”
“You're going to do it anyway, so I might as well get credit for supporting the proposition.”
“'I have so many exciting ideas. Would you like to hear them?”
”I am breathless.”
“What if I were the first woman to report firsthand on a championship fight?”
Tilden winced. Aside from the Blackwell's Island asylum, he could imagine no worse assemblage of human dross. After an hour in that company, she'll want to burn her clothing.
‘‘Exciting, yes.” He tried not to stammer. “That is an exciting one.” But not while I have a breath in my body.
“My other thought,” she enthused, “one that you could assist with, Tilden, was that I could write some wonderful inside scoops based upon the stories you've told me about Jay Gould.”
Tilden choked. A bit of bluefish sprayed from his lips.
“Are you all right, Tilden?”
“Yes.” He touched his napkin to his mouth and held it there. “Yes. A bit of bone in the fillet.”
“You don't like that idea, do you?”
“It's just, umm, I can't imagine what good it would do. There's hardly a newspaper in the country, including the World, which Gould, in fact, used to own before Pulitzer bought it, which has not attacked Gould at one time or another. The man is absolutely impervious to criticism or rej
ection. When the Academy of Music refused to sell him a box, he simply gathered some other rich outcasts and founded the Metropolitan Opera. When the New York Yacht Club rejected his membership application, he founded the AmericanYacht Club up in Rye. Here is a man who publicly said that he could hire any half of a striking work force to kill the other half. Do you understand what I'm saying, Margaret?”
“You're telling me, I think, that you find this proposal even more appalling than the first.”
“The first was better.” He shook his head. “Not by a great deal, but better.”
“And where Mr. Gould is concerned, you're saying you'd prefer to let sleeping dogs lie.”
“Exactly so. Yes.”
“As always, Tilden”—Margaret lowered her eyes demurely—“it shall be as you wish.”
Looking back upon that conversation over the next several weeks, Tilden could not escape the suspicion that he had been shamelessly manipulated by Margaret and, further, that Margaret had been coached by Miss Elizabeth Cochrane in the technique of getting a man to agree to the lesser of two evils. That business about exposing Jay Gould was a stratagem, he was sure. He could only hope that the one of watching two men pound each other's faces into liver was a tactic as well. In any case, he had already given Margaret his blessing to write as she pleased within reasonable limits, and he resolved to give Jay Gould as little thought as he could manage.
That resolution, however, was more easily made than kept. In late September,Tiíden went with Margaret to the first four games of the 1888 World Series against the St. Louis Browns. A week later,after the series had moved on to St. Louis,where the Giants sewed up the championship by winning six out of the first eight games of the ten-game series, that first dismaying item appeared in Town Topics. Tilden waited for a second item to be brought to his attention before he swallowed both his anger and his pride and sent a message to Colonel William D'Alton Mann to the effect that he was prepared to offer a donation in the cause of future anonymity. To Tilden's surprise, the message went unacknowledged.
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