The Times called Comstock the Paladin of Purity but not, Tilden thought, without a touch of mockery. But Comstock made good and frequent copy with his indiscriminate raids. He seemed to see little difference between libraries, art galleries, and the pornography shops along Ann and Nassau streets. Publishers of popular fiction were also among his targets. He admitted to a reporter that he had once wasted half a day reading a novel. But he never picked up another, he said, except to explore it for its content of smut.
This portly, muttonchopped figure also crusaded against abortion, birth control, and the publication of any information concerning either. He decried any form of nudity in works of art and any painted scene that seemed to hint at impropriety, including those which showed a man and a woman with no chaperone in sight. That was smut. One had only to look deeply and he would see it. Comstock was also the enemy of alcohol, betting parlors, punchboards, and scented stationery in sealed envelopes. He caused the arrest of a woman who had used a mildly salacious expression in a perfumed letter sent to her own husband through the mails. Tilden remembered this well because accounts of it so outraged his father that it was one of the rare times Comstock was discussed at the dinner table. What most incensed Stanton Beckwith was that Comstock's “disgraceful peeping” was legal. Comstock had been almost single-handedly responsible for the passage by Congress of a bill prohibiting the mailing of any lewd, obscene, lascivious, or filthy matter. He asked for and got an appointment as special postal officer to enforce the new law. The problem of defining obscenity was left entirely up to Comstock, who knew it when he saw it. Now even a serious article describing the physical dangers of abortion could not be sent through the mails except at risk of a jail term.
The most sensational of Comstock's forays against abortion came when Tilden was about seventeen. There was a particular mansion on Fifth Avenue, on the northeast corner of Fifty-second Street, which he had never heard discussed in any voice louder than a whisper. It was a place where heavily draped carriages, and sometimes hearses, pulled up to a side door in the darkest part of night. It was where terrified daughters of wealthy men went to be rid of their shame and where even married women went to be free of unwanted or embarrassing babies. Although Tilden did not fully understand how this was accomplished, there was clearly great profit in it. The house was an ornate brown-stone far larger than his father's and, although rather far to the north, it was in an area rapidly becoming fashionable. And the owner of that house, a certain Madame Restell, had the habit of taking the air each day in a most elegant barouche attended by two liveried footmen. Tilden had often seen her while coaching in Central Park. Though her hair was still black, she was an older woman, thin with sharp features. She would smile and nod at passing coaches and that was strange, because the occupants of those coaches would almost always turn their faces away. Far from taking offense, she seemed to find a curious pleasure in that.
By this time, the year being 1878, Madame Restell was essentially in retirement. But Anthony Comstock had vowed that she would not escape temporal punishment for her crimes. He went to her, disguised, wearing a rich man's clothing and having shaved off his muttonchops for the occasion, and begged an interview. Tears streaming down his cheeks, he said that his dear wife was with child but her health was so frail that she could not survive the torment of another birthing. Even now she waited, pale and weak, in a carriage nearby, for word that she might live through the mercy and artistry of Madame Restell. Comstock collapsed into sobs and Madame Restell, cautious at first, relented. Comstock promptly arrested her. To her great surprise, she was indicted solely on the strength of Comstock’s testimony. Several newspapers, under pressure from the YMCA, which largely funded Comstock’s activities, began trumpeting the end of her nefarious career. These same newspapers, which had willingly accepted transparent advertisements for her discreet midwifery and her Infallible French Female Pills, now seemed bent on being rid of her. Her greatest crime, Tilden heard it observed, was that she lived in a part of town where the Vanderbilts were planning fine homes, but she was not an acceptable neighbor. Sixty-seven years old, and facing the certain prospect of a long jail sentence, Madame Restell retired to her marble bathroom and opened a vein at her throat. Thousands of women of good family breathed silent relief that their secrets were at last safe. Madame Restell's assistants, Carrie Todd among them, scattered with the wind. Comstock, however, received little praise. The Times and the Sun roundly condemned him for driving her to suicide by means of fraud. He was unabashed. Madame Restell 's was one of fifteen suicides he would boast of causing.
As Tilden grew older, what was once titillating became tiresome. And Comstock became so indiscriminate in his assaults that newspaper editors and cartoonists now saw him as a buffoon. In 1887, Comstock took it into his head to declare war on the living French artists of the Barbizon school. He raided the respected art gallery of Herman Knoedler and confiscated all the works of Henner, Perrault, and Bougereau, including prints of the huge Bougereau that hung in the Hoffman House bar. He tried to get that taken down as well but was heaved into the street by patrons.
But Anthony Comstock had not otherwise touched Tilden's life until one June day in 1891, when he thundered into the office of the Greenwich Graphic. Comstock announced to the startled editor that the town of Greenwich had a cancer festering within its borders. A blood-soaked abortionist, a butcher of sweethearts, had disguised herself as a dressmaker, and if the editor would accompany him to her place of business, they would doubtless discover instruments suited to a purpose far more evil than the stitching of feminine adornment. The two men went but found nothing incriminating, Carrie Todd having fully abandoned her past. There were, in fact, at least two other abortionists in the vicinity who did a substantial business, abortion being the most common method of birth control and in the end usually cheaper than the accumulated cost of those rolled rubber skins, which sold for a full dollar each.
Carrie, as it happened, had a common “female problem” and was being treated for it by Dr. Miles Palmer. Among her private records, Comstock found references to frequent visits to his office but no indication in her ledgers that she had paid him for his services. Having secured the distraught dressmaker's arrest on the promise of evidence to come, Comstock went to confront Miles Palmer. He had vaulted to the conclusion that the two must be in business together. Miles Palmer held his temper. Carrie was a patient, no more, no less, her complaint being none of Comstock’s business. Like many of his patients, she paid for her treatment by the barter of goods. When Comstock demanded an examination of his records, Miles Palmer suggested that he leave while he still could under his own power. Comstock persisted, asking why the doctor should wish to be paid in ladies' dresses and demanding a list of their final recipients. Miles Palmer, without a word, then dragged Comstock to the second-floor landing and threw him down the stairs, breaking a banister and three of Comstock’s ribs.
Comstock was not discouraged. He announced that by the time his injuries healed he would have rooted out all that was putrescent in the town. He claimed to have new information charging that more than one notorious prostitute from the New York flesh pits had sought to deny her past and was living in Greenwich under the guise of respectability. Modern invention, he announced, would help him drive the guilty from their hiding places. With one of the new Kodak Detective cameras he would range through Greenwich taking photographs of any woman who might conceivably have been attractive enough that a certain type of man might have paid for her entertainments. These photographs would be shown to the New York City Police for identification of the tainted. Comstock could not be discouraged. He was knocked down or caned at least three more times by outraged husbands or fathers, was slapped or otherwise belabored by a score of women, and had two cameras smashed, one directly over his head. Far more men and women, however, meekly submitted, fearful that any show of reluctance would be wrongly interpreted.
Tilden, in the beginning at least, was more annoyed than conc
erned. Comstock had done this sort of thing before and not much ever came of it. He'd once made a show of purifying nearby New Canaan, presumably because he was born there and still owned the family farm, except in that case his focus had been more on the public library, a small brewery, and a dance class. Nor was Laura Hemmings at all worried. Her past, she felt sure, was known only to Margaret. If Tilden did recognize her he was being a gentleman about it. And she was sure no one in New York would know her likeness the way she looked and dressed now. Nevertheless, when Comstock first approached her as she roller-skated with her pupils at Ray's Hall, she slapped his face on general principles.
Nor was Margaret particularly concerned at the start, except for poor Carrie Todd. Margaret, as Laura pointed out, had hardly been in the mainstream of New York's flesh industry. But the more Margaret saw of Comstock in the streets of Greenwich, and the more she saw other women scurry to avoid him, the more her mind began to work. She thought not so much in terms of discovery but of the devastation that would result. She would lose her lovely home. She could never remain in Greenwich. All the friends she'd made would turn away. Even Laura might not dare stand by her. She would lose Tilden. If he would not take her as his honest wife even after she bore his child and was respected in the eyes of all who knew her, what could she expect if she were publicly branded? The life of her son, Jonathan, might be shattered and shamed almost before it began. What would he think of her once he was old enough to understand the taunts of schoolmates? Would he draw away at her touch?
This was Margaret's state of mind on the day when Anthony Comstock brought his Detective camera to the regular Wednesday meeting of the Women's Christian Temperance Union.
It was also the day on which Tilden, who had been watching a growing anxiety in Margaret, was seen whipping a horse on the Post Road in the direction of Westchester, an expression of black rage upon his face. Unseen, crushed in his pocket, was a letter in Jay Gould's hand.
Sixteen
The trees of Railroad Avenue were bare again and laced with snow. Corbin rubbed his face. For a brief moment he thought he was caught in some netherworld between then and now, because the sweep of the town landscape was the same and even the Walkers' seafood store remained where he'd seen it, although the awning and tubs were gone. He felt a dim urge to hurl a brick through the Walkers' window. He did not quite know why. Nor did he dwell on it or speak again to Tilden. Just get the car, he told himself. Get the car and get back home.
His secondhand Datsun was one of only a handful left in the station lot. Corbin used his hands to sweep the snow from his trunk and then extracted a small folding shovel, which he used to clear a path behind the rear tires. The Datsun started without great protest.
Corbin sat for a while, letting the engine warm. He could feel heat building within himself as well. A low level of anger. He was not having much difficulty now separating Tilden's thoughts from his own. Tilden' s part had to do with the heavyset man with the whiskers and the camera, Comstock, and with one of the Walker women, Belle by name. Corbin wasn't really sure what she'd done. And Gould. Tilden always seemed to be stewing about Gould. Corbin wondered whether Gould could actually have done even half the things Tilden seemed to blame him for. Gould must have had better things to do than spend his life hounding Tilden and the other man, Cyrus Field. Anyway, they were all long dead. Everyone was dead. So what did it matter? There was no more use in brooding over those old hurts than there was in chewing on the bitter moments of your own life. They were just as dead, although you wouldn't think so the way they keep bubbling up to the surface at odd moments. Corbin wondered if his own grandson, if he ever had one, would someday feel the vague sting of one of the ordinary minor humiliations of Corbin's life. Maybe he'd wake up in the middle of the night feeling crushed because his grandfather was left off an invitation list fifty years earlier. Maybe he'd have nightmares about getting beaten up by two aging thugs in an underground garage. Genetic memory. Corbin put the car in gear. Genetic memory is a pain in the ass.
Sorry, Tilden. It's all over. You and Margaret have taken up enough of my life, and I'm finished with you. God, I can't believe what a twerp I've been. Like a puppet with you pulling the strings. If I think any more about this I'm going to feel about you the way you feel about Gould, and it isn't worth the effort.
Gould. Anger.
“No dice.” Corbin shook his head, then cut the Datsun out of its parking space. “I'm going to drive straight up to Maple Avenue, I'm going to go inside, and I'm going to tell Gwen that I'm unloading that house and everything in it. I'll tell that terrific lady that I can't believe she stuck with me this long and why don't we see how fast we can get on a plane to Barbados where we'll lie in the sun and cook all this right out of me. I'll teach her to scuba dive and to wind surf. I'll dance her feet off and bring her breakfast in bed. While she's eating it I'll think up new ways to show her that five minutes with her is worth all the Christmas mornings of my life.”
Corbin was saying these things aloud as he pulled out of the station lot and made the two right turns that would wind him back toward Milbank Avenue. But then he made a third right turn and found himself on the Greenwich entrance ramp to the Connecticut Turnpike. Corbin cursed. He slowed and stopped, checking his rearview mirror, then allowed the car to coast backward down the ramp.
Gould. Please. Corbin heard it. Or felt it.
''Uh-uh.” He shook his head. “Not Gould. Gwen.”
Please.
4‘Oh, nuts!” A pickup truck was turning into the ramp behind him. Corbin angled over to the side to let it pass.
Please, Jonathan.
“Shut up!” Corbin said sharply. “Jay Gould is dead, and even if he wasn't I just told you I'm...” He took a long breath. “Look at this. I just decided I'm through being crazy and here I am sitting around arguing with you.”
He'll hurt Margaret.
Corbin sighed again and sat back. Barbados was looking better by the second. Yet for the first time since he realized who Tilden was and what he was, Corbin began to feel sorry for him. If Tilden was real, right now, even if he was a real ghost, which seemed to make more sense than to believe he was just a collection of stored memories, he seemed stuck in time. Whether or not Jay Gould hurt Margaret, it's done. It's over. And Tilden and Margaret both survived. If Sturdevant's right,Tilden lived about another fifty years, which isn't all bad, and Margaret—Grandma Corbin—lived at least that long.
Then there's Anthony Comstock. Tilden wants me to share his anger at Comstock, and at Belle Walker for some reason, and even at Laura Hemmings, because they all had something to do with Margaret's packing off to Chicago. But so what? In the next fifty years, nothing good happened? There must have been a whole sequence of..-.
“Sequence,” Corbin whispered. Everything so far was in sequence. Tilden's memories. Or the memories that are Tilden. All the little scenes that played in Corbin's mind. They were all in sequence. Sitting with Gwen before and having all those buzzing thoughts, like about Teddy Roosevelt's new book and taking a walk with J. P. Morgan— none of it made any sense until he got it in some kind of order. Maybe that's Tilden's problem. He can't just put this thing on fast forward and leap ahead. Maybe it's what keeps him around.
“Look.” Corbin turned to the passenger seat as if Tilden were sitting there, then realized what he was doing and
slapped himself on the head. He closed his eyes. “Look, Tilden,” he said quietly, “Gould's house is maybe twenty minutes from here if the roads are decent. It's over on the Hudson.” Which you know damn well, but we're not even going to think about how I know it. “You know it's a museum now, right? There aren't any Goulds there.” In reply, Corbin felt only a distant feeling of profound relief. “All I'm going to do is a flyby because I want to get back before Gwen worries more than she has already. If that gets you off the dime, fine. But whether it does or not, I have to tell you”—Corbin depressed his clutch and put the car in first—“I'm out of here and headed south. If
I were you I'd head for Chicago, which you should have done in the first place.”
“You called it real good, Miss Beckwith.” Tom Burke reentered the shambles of Ella Beckwith’s oversized study. Snow crystals clung to his hair and shoulders, and his trousers were stained white on one side with pulverized plaster. He held out a blue spiral notebook in his hand. “It was stuck behind the backseat in his car.”
Ella tilted her head distractedly, but her eyes remained locked on the crumpled pile that was Raymond Lesko. She knew the notebook would be close by, if not on his person then in his car. He'd as much as said so when she mentioned the fifteen thousand dollars he'd already been paid and his hand went involuntarily to his breast pocket. He would have left the money in a safe place if he'd had the chance. And if he'd thought to conceal anything at all, it would have been his notes. If he still carried one, he carried the other.
Lawrence Ballanchine limped forward and snatched the notebook from Tom Burke's hand. “You still took a terrible risk,” he muttered toward Ella. “You can't be sure he didn't have this photocopied.” The little man still managed to sound peevish, although his clothing was limp with perspiration and his right leg was bloodied below the knee where one of Lesko's wild shots had grazed it.
“He didn't copy it.” Burke walked to Lesko's side and kicked it. There was no response. “If he made a copy”—he looked up at Ella as if for approval—“that's what he would have brought. You stash the original, not the copy. Miss Beckwith knew that right away.”
“He is ruining my carpet.” Ella's voice was small and distant.
Ballanchine leaned over with difficulty and picked up a copy of Architectural Digest that lay amid the shattered glass of a collapsed coffee table. He slid it under Lesko's head, then wiped his hands against his lapels. ”I don't know what we're going to do about this mess,” he said, scanning the room. He counted seven ragged holes in the plaster walls, including the two Lesko had aimed at Burke earlier when Burke tried to force the door. One shot had also smashed a banjo clock and another tore the stuffing from an upholstered chair. And one, he noticed with a shudder, was accented by a tiny spray of his own flesh and blood. Ballanchine was afraid to think of what the adjoining rooms might look like.
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