Gold Mountain (24 page)

I will never know where that particular moment might have led because from the doorway Ruth said my name. I jumped away from Jake, Ruth’s voice acting like a bee sting. Jake turned more slowly.

“Yes.” My voice was only a whisper, too breathy and hardly audible. “Yes,” I repeated more firmly.

With one glance Ruth took in the situation, at least the situation as she saw it. “What are you doing here, for heaven’s sake?” She entered scolding, but when she got a clearer look at me, she whirled on Pandora. “What have you done to my sister to make her cry?” The protective outrage in her voice warmed me. Just then I had two champions, which were two more than I deserved.

“No, no, Ruthie. Jake found me this way. It’s not what you think. I was upset.”

“Upset about what?” Ruth’s tone was mollified, but she still placed herself between me and Jake, her back to him in a dismissive way.

“Everything. Just everything. I met a couple whose grandson died during the Pekin rescue, and it affected me. And then Irene Gallagher kept going on and on as if she enjoyed making me uncomfortable, and I couldn’t stand it anymore. I couldn’t stand any of it. I’m sorry. Is Martin in trouble because of me?”

“Martin? Of course not. The men wandered away for cigars or something—I’m not exactly sure what men do when they wander off in a group—and that’s when I looked for you. Some of the waiters remembered you running down the hallway. Like she was being chased by wild Indians is how they phrased it, and I just followed the trail of witnesses.”

“I won’t go back in there,” I told her firmly. “I’m done for the night, but you should go back and enjoy the rest of the evening. Find your husband and enjoy a few more dances and another glass of punch.” I took a breath before concluding with all the penitence I could muster, “I’m sorry, Ruthie. I wouldn’t spoil your evening for the world. One of the attachés can arrange a cab for me, and I’ll be fine once I’m home. Too much champagne, I think.”

Pandora had stepped farther away from the two of us but still close enough to hear what was said. “I’ll take your sister home, Mrs. Shandling.” When Ruth turned to examine him with a skeptical expression, he gave a faint smile and added, “I give you my word that Miss Hudson would not be safer with a brother than she’ll be with me.”

I was sure that Jake Pandora’s intentions had been anything but brotherly ten minutes earlier, and I think Ruth realized the same.

“I don’t want you to worry, Ruth. I can go home by myself.” My words had the opposite effect on my sister, however.

“That’s not a good idea. I suppose Mr. Pandora will have to do, and we have his word, after all.” Neither Jake nor I missed the faint trace of irony in her tone. She linked her arm with mine and we walked together into the brightly lit hallway where Ruth shook her head at the sight of me.

“You’re a mess, Dinah. Look at your hair,” but I heard affection and loyalty in her tone that said she loved me, mess and all. She didn’t say another word to Jake, hardly acknowledged his presence except for a quick nod of her head in his general direction before she left us.

Jake and I did not exchange any words until he summoned a cab and the two of us were eventually settled inside. Then I felt obligated to defend Ruth’s brusqueness.

“My sister generally shows better manners. So do I, for that matter. The problem is that she doesn’t trust you.”

“Wise woman.”

That’s all we said on the trip to Grove Street. Pandora sat as far away from me as he could get inside the cab, and except for a quick, initial look at me as the cab pulled away, spent the remainder of the trip with his arms folded against his chest and his head dropped. The posture gave him the look of a sleepy but very handsome Buddha, which made me smile to myself. I was tired, too—exhausted would have been more accurate—but relaxed and oddly happy. I thought that the man across from me had a great deal to do with how I felt but realized it wasn’t the most advisable time for me to consider anything with depth or objectivity. Still too shaky, inside and out.

The cabbie pulled up at the curb, and I started to push open the door and step down, but Jake was already there with his hand outstretched.

“You don’t have to—” I started, but he interrupted with the tone I’d come to expect from him.

“I know I don’t. Allow me the opportunity to act the part of a gentleman one last time before I return to the docks from whence I came.” He was mocking himself this time, not me, and I didn’t respond.

At the foot of the front porch steps I stopped and said involuntarily, “The front door’s open!”

“It shouldn’t be?”

“You must live in an interesting neighborhood if leaving the front door ajar when you leave is normal practice,” I retorted. “Of course it shouldn’t be open. When we left, the door was shut. Firmly shut. ”

“And there’s no one else here?”

Fortunately, I had delivered Suey Wah to Miss Cameron that afternoon for an overnight stay at 920 in our absence and knew the house had been left empty. I recalled Martin pulling the door closed behind him when we had departed for the Palace Hotel. In passing I thought that Pandora had asked an odd question for the occasion. What did he know or at least suspect?

“No,” I finally answered. “No one. How odd.” I turned to step onto the porch but was halted by his hand grasping my wrist.

“I’ll go. You stay here.” The idea that he thought I would do as he ordered was almost laughable.

“Of course, master,” I replied and fell into step right behind him. I’m sure he wanted to say something quelling about my insubordination, but by then he had pushed open the front door and we both stepped into the hallway.

“We could stand here in the dark,” I whispered, “or I could go and turn on the lights.” Without waiting for his approval, I moved quickly to the oil light on the bureau in the hallway and then to the parlor electric lights Martin had had installed when he’d commissioned the house.

“Will you please try to stay close to me?” I couldn’t miss the exasperation in Jake’s tone. “At least let me make sure there’s no one in the house before you assert your independence.”

I had already noticed a few things that made me uneasy. “The closet door is open,” I volunteered, “and I’m sure it was closed when we left. And the sofa is pulled away from the wall. We didn’t leave it like that.”

He and I moved from room to room as I mentioned all the small, subtle changes I noticed. Finally, the upstairs and downstairs inspected and as much put back to normal as I could manage, I stated the obvious.

“Someone was here while we were gone.”

“Looking for something,” he agreed. “Something small. Or someone small.”

“Oh, damn!” I said, realizing what his words meant and slipping into profanity, which I didn’t recall doing even in the middle of a Boxer attack. I wasn’t quite myself, I suppose, so it took me longer than it should have to work out why intruders had spent time in such a careful search of the house.

“What is it?” he asked.

For a moment I had the distinct feeling that Jake Pandora knew exactly what the trespassers had been looking for, knew but wanted me to say the words out loud anyway. Wanted me to trust him. He had to remember as clearly as I that not very long ago I’d been prepared to trust him with every part of me, would have been, however briefly, clay in his hands to touch and form and mold any way he chose. But this was different. This wasn’t about me; it had to do with a little girl and regardless of what I wanted, I couldn’t risk her. Dolly Cameron had made me promise complete confidentiality and I wouldn’t betray her or Suey Wah.

“Burglars I suspect,” I said lightly, “but nothing’s missing, and they’re obviously gone so you don’t need to stay any longer. I’m safe. Thank you, though.” Feeling awkward for a moment, I added, “For everything,” and hoped he understood. He stepped closer and with one hand lightly fingered a loose curl that bounced annoyingly against my cheek.

“Your sister was right.” This time when he waited for me to rise to his verbal bait, I didn’t respond. He smiled, recognized my silence for the gesture it was, and concluded, “You are a mess.”

Good, I thought, we’re back to bad manners, but I felt a faint regret that was difficult to pin down. He didn’t say good night, only asked when he reached the door, “Have you ever read a book called
The Red Badge of Courage
?” When I shook my head, he advised, “Read it. You’ll understand why when you do.” His concluding words advised me to lock the door behind him when he left. I didn’t, however, because I knew I was safe. Whoever had been in the house had hoped to find Suey Wah, had left without their quarry, and would not be back any more that night.

I had so much to think about, so many emotions to untangle and sort through that I thought I would not be able to sleep, but I was wrong. I fell asleep as soon as I pulled up the covers and only awakened briefly when Ruth later pushed open the door of my bedroom to be sure I was home safe and sound. I thought she might want to discuss the evening in more detail and did not feel up to that kind of conversation, so I closed my eyes, prepared to feign slumber for as long as necessary, and then fell quickly, deeply, and dreamlessly back to sleep.

Chapter Nine

W
hen I stepped into the breakfast room the next morning, I said involuntarily, “Ruthie! You look tired. Why don’t you skip church this morning? God will understand.”

“Understand what exactly? That I stayed out too late carousing and so cannot keep the Sabbath Day?” Her tone made my comment sound like a recommendation to kill the family cat.

“First, from someone who has spent a little time around sailors, let me assure you that dancing with your husband and drinking punch is not carousing. And you have to think about the baby.”

My sister’s face, even with smudged circles under the eyes and pale cheeks, got a set, stubborn look that told me I should concede defeat because she had made up her mind and would not change it, whatever sensible idea I put forward.

“Well, you can nap this afternoon, I suppose, while I go collect Suey Wah from 920.”

Ruth accepted my compromise and asked hesitantly, “Dinah, when you got home last night, did everything seem all right to you here at the house?”

Because I had been expecting her to bring up my behavior of last night or my feelings about Jake Pandora, I heard Ruth’s question with something close to relief because that was one thing I was prepared and able to discuss.

“Well, the front door was open.”

“What?!”

“Yes, I thought it was strange, too, and I was glad Mr. Pandora was along because he went in first and checked out the house from top to bottom. Of course, the house was empty, and it didn’t seem that anything was missing. Why?”

Ruth shrugged lightly. “Just a feeling I had, that’s all. The sense that something was different. Do you think it was a burglar?”

“No. Nothing was stolen, was it? Maybe the front door just didn’t latch properly. Or maybe”—I paused dramatically—“we have a ghost!” Ruth’s skeptical response was what I hoped for and my ploy to steer the conversation away from last night seemed to work. Mention Jake Pandora casually, like he was no one special—which of course he wasn’t, was he?
Was he
?—acknowledge the open door, and credit anything amiss that I might have neglected to return to normal to the presence of something unseen and slightly ridiculous. Burglars and ghosts. Perfect scapegoats.

We walked to the Old Presbyterian church, despite Martin’s forceful intention to get a carriage for us. “You’re tired, Ruth, and we can afford to hire a carriage. We could afford to own one, for that matter. It will take me just a minute to find one to hire. They’re always waiting down at the corner. She shouldn’t walk, don’t you agree, Dinah?”

“Yes, Martin, I do. I agree completely and absolutely. However, I can tell from having been exposed to that particular look on my sister’s face for many more years than you that you are wasting your breath about the carriage.” To Ruth, I added, “I hope the fact that you’re distressing the two people closest to you doesn’t get in the way of your worship. I never realized that God intended the Sabbath Day to be a day of worry and discord, but it seems you know more about that than I and apparently more than the Almighty, too.” I felt a twinge of guilt when my sarcasm made Ruth flush, but it had the desired effect.

“Perhaps we could take a carriage home,” she offered. “There’s usually a line of them lined up on the street after the service.”

Martin flashed me a small, quick smile before answering, “That’s a fair compromise. I’m sure we’ll all welcome being off our feet by then.”

For a while Ruth ignored me, still feeling the sting of my criticism, but she kept the upper hand, after all. As we settled ourselves in the pew, she leaned toward me to whisper, “Don’t think your distraction worked, Sister. Regardless of robbers and ghosts and naps and carriages, I’ll still want to hear about your evening.” As the organ sounded the chords of the opening hymn, she smiled at me too sweetly and opened her hymnal.

The promised discussion didn’t occur until much later that evening, Suey Wah retrieved and tucked away for the night, my sister back to her usual bright self, and Martin quietly snoring in the parlor with his chin fallen onto his chest. Ruth and I sat over tea at the kitchen table, and that was all right because I thought I was ready to talk about most of what had gone on the previous evening. Not everything, though. Not that rush of feeling I’d had toward Jake Pandora, not the way his touch had turned me briefly into a stranger, not what I now realized had been good, old-fashioned lust. Not as old-fashioned as all that, I suppose, and definitely, surprisingly good—but lust, just the same.