Gold Mountain (19 page)

Ruth disappeared into the kitchen as she spoke. The little girl eyed me soberly, her expression older than her years, then came and took my hand. Together we followed Ruth toward the heady smell of freshly baked cookies, each of us clutching the other’s hand more tightly than was warranted, neither of us saying a word.

I saw Colin O’Connor twice that week. He arrived at Grove Street Sunday afternoon to escort me to a band concert put on by the Policemen’s Brass Orchestra in Washington Square Park. He had smiled when I told him Ruth’s directive to appear at Grove Street and meet my family.

“I don’t blame your sister for giving me marching orders. She wants to be sure you’re keeping time with someone respectable. I’ll be there at two o’clock, and I won’t be late.” He wasn’t, either, knocking on the front door promptly at two.

At his knock, Suey Wah, who had been working on her English in the parlor, scurried upstairs to her room. Without my having to tell her so directly, she understood that her stay with us was to be as much a secret as we could control, and she made it a point to stay out of sight whenever we had a guest. It wouldn’t always have to be so, I told myself hopefully, but I was responsible for her safety now and if that meant her vanishing with every knock on the door, so be it.

Ruth invited Colin into the parlor for a brief inquisition and Martin wandered in, too. Before sitting down on a side chair, I sent Colin a sympathetic look. With her usual gracious subtlety, Ruth had directed him to the chair directly across from where she and Martin sat. Colin O’Connor might be a grown up man and a veteran policeman who had confronted any number of criminals, but I thought he might still feel a trifle nervous facing the Shandlings. I needn’t have worried. Colin had an easy manner about him, much more Irish than German, complimentary to Ruth and respectful about Martin’s position at the bank.

“My mother always wanted me to be a policeman,” Colin told Ruth. “I can’t say it was my first choice, but she liked the idea of law and order, and she felt the job offered security, too. I joined to please her and then found out that she was right, the work suited me. I like keeping the streets safe for respectable folks, and I like the steady work and income the job offers.” That was a clever comment from a potential suitor, I thought to myself, and relaxed even more. Colin knew what he was about.

“You must be both good and practical, Mr. O’Connor. That’s a rare combination,” Ruth replied enigmatically. She had watched and listened to Colin with an inscrutable expression so I couldn’t tell if he were passing inspection or not, but at those words she stood, adding briskly, “If we keep talking, you won’t make the start of the concert. Martin, you should have reminded me how late it was getting.”

Martin rose to the occasion, accepting his responsibility meekly. “Yes, dear. I was just about to say something.”

We walked toward the hallway together when Colin glanced down at the corner table by the door and commented, “It looks like someone’s been practicing his Chinese. Or is it his English?” In her haste, Suey Wah had left her pencil and tablet on the table.

“Dinah’s been quizzing me,” my sister supplied quickly, scooping up the tablet and holding it against her skirts. “I haven’t had to speak the language for years, and she challenged me to improve my rusty skills. She lists Chinese words and sentences and I translate. She times me, too.”

“Dinah’s quite the taskmaster,” Colin observed. He didn’t sound convinced but wasn’t going to ruin the good impression he hoped to make by pursuing the topic. Perhaps he saw the English words written in childish block letters and realized that no adult wrote them. I wished Ruth had let me give an explanation—I was a more accomplished liar than she would ever be—but I was proud of her efforts and not very worried about Colin’s stumbling onto the truth. He had been in on the story of Suey Wah from the beginning. If I hadn’t promised Donaldina to say nothing of the child’s stay with us, I wouldn’t have been at all uneasy talking it over with Colin O’Connor. Members of the Chinatown Squad were some of 920’s strongest allies.

As we walked toward the park, Colin took my hand, a simple gesture that for some reason seemed so intimate that for a moment I felt almost shy with him. He didn’t allow time for shyness, however.

Acting like it was the most natural thing in the world to stroll hand-in-hand, he asked, “Well, how do you think I did? I couldn’t tell from your sister’s expression.”

“Ruth was somewhat less transparent than usual,” I admitted, “but I’m sure you did fine. I thought you handled all her probing and not very subtle questions well.”

“It’s what you think that matters most to me,” Colin said softly, “so I’ll set my mind at ease.”

“You do that,” I agreed placidly. “I wouldn’t want any undue worry to spoil the music for you.”

The band could have used less enthusiasm and more practice, but I still enjoyed the day. Colin introduced me to several of his colleagues, who were also in the audience, and I could tell from his tone that he was proud to be seen with me. The kind of admiration I heard in Colin’s voice when he said my name was good for a woman’s self-respect and made me reach for his hand on the walk home.

“I liked your friends,” I told him.

“I’ll hear about it tomorrow, all sorts of questions about what a woman like you would see in man like me.”

“Don’t you let them say that!” I answered indignantly.

“I can’t fault them very much because I agree with them, Dinah. The idea that Colin O’Connor would be walking along holding the hand of a woman like you seems as unbelievable to me as I’ve no doubt it does to them. You have a look about you, Dinah, and it’s all the more noticeable because you don’t realize it.”

“What kind of look would that be?”

He stopped to put both hands on my shoulders and turn me to face him, then examined my face with an objective eye. “You look like a queen.”

“A queen!” It was the last thing I expected him to say. “Have you ever seen a queen?”

“In books.”

“”Me, too, and Queen Victoria, God rest her soul, looked like a plump gray-haired grandmother.” He gave a shout of laughter and we started walking again.

“You don’t look anything like a plump, gray-haired grandmother, Dinah. It’s just that you carry yourself like I imagine a queen would, head high like you own the ground you’re walking on. When the sun shines off your hair it shows more gold than red and almost looks like a crown. There’s just something about you, something—” he paused searching for the right word—“regal, I guess it would be.”

I felt enormously flattered. “Thank you, Colin. I don’t remember that anyone has ever paid me such a generous compliment before.”

“If you gave me the opportunity, I’d promise to do it every day.” His words startled me, hinting at something that was too serious too soon, and I made it a point to laugh.

“That would go straight to my head and be bad for my character.” Then I pointedly changed the subject. “What did you think about the orchestra’s performance?”

I think he realized he might have made a tactical error with the earlier comment and being an intelligent man allowed me to divert the conversation to a more inconsequential topic. We talked about the orchestra and the music the rest of the way home.

At supper, Martin remarked that he had liked Colin and found him to be more respectable and more serious than he’d expected, concluding with, “You know how the Irish are.”

I chose not to pursue the subject of the reputation of the Irish but turning to Ruth asked, “What did you think of Colin, Ruthie?”

“He’s not what I expected at all,” my sister answered thoughtfully. “Not at all.”

“Since you didn’t give me any hint about what you expected, how do I know if that’s good or bad?”

“You don’t know,” Ruth stated. “I’m not sure I do, either. Sometimes, Dinah, you surprise me.” I didn’t know what to say to her unusually cryptic pronouncement, and even Martin stared at her with perplexity.

“Will you see him again?” she asked me.

“We’re going to visit the Cliff House on Saturday.”

“Twice in one week seems rather—” Ruth paused to find the proper word and finally continued with, “—exorbitant. You must like Mr. Colin O’Connor.”

I shook my head at her, unable to read her tone. “I don’t know what you’re up to, Ruth, but yes, I do like him. I don’t see what harm taking a sightseeing trip to the Cliff House can do.”

Martin came to my rescue. “No harm at all, Dinah. The man’s a policeman, Ruth. He’ll take good care of her. And you might recall that you and I took a number of enjoyable trips to the Cliff House.”

“Of course, I recall, dear. They were very enjoyable,” Ruth responded with a small smile and the topic of Colin O’Connor apparently exhausted for the time being, she turned her attention back to the meal.

The following week at 920 passed uneventfully, no bad characters on the doorstep or panicky summons for assistance. I helped with English lessons but generally had time on my hands, a circumstance that didn’t agree with me. Miss Cameron finally shooed me out the door early on Tuesday and I decided to make an unplanned—and on his part no doubt unexpected and unwelcome—visit to Jake Pandora at the Broadway Dock.
I’ll be
in touch
was a promise he hadn’t kept and one I wasn’t going to let him forget. If I found the man physically attractive and enjoyed the unstated challenge of his condescension, I was not prepared to admit that those factors had anything to do with the trip. Unfortunately, the steamship office was dark and uninhabited. I pushed open the unlocked door and stepped inside, called Pandora’s name, and waited for a response. When none came, I stepped back into the street, pulled the door shut behind me, and gazed up at the curtained windows of the second story. As I watched, I noticed one curtain twitch and then saw a hand pull the curtain back farther to reveal the young face of a lovely, dark-haired woman. We stared at each other a long moment before she dropped the curtain. She had features similar to Pandora’s, the same dark eyes and golden-olive skin of the Greeks, glowing complexions that implied their homeland’s seductive sun-lit warmth and hinted that it permeated through their skin into the core of their being. She had carried a touch of his arrogance, too, I thought, and was embarrassed at my intrusive and unwarranted speculations. Jake Pandora lived above his office, apparently with that beautiful woman who might well be his wife. I couldn’t have said why I had assumed the man was unmarried. Something about the tone of his answer to my question about children of his own—
None that I know of. Yet
.—had cast him as a bachelor in my eyes, but now with the memory of that beautiful face in my mind, I realized the answer could have been a husband’s answer, just not a father’s. Yet. I had jumped to that conclusion because I wanted him to be unmarried, I told myself honestly as I trudged back to my waiting cab. Jake Pandora was the most handsome man I’d ever seen, and I enjoyed sparring with him and showing him how smart and fearless I was, enjoyed showing off. How humbling self-knowledge can sometimes be!

Of course, maybe Jake Pandora and that young woman lived together but weren’t married, a circumstance I knew occurred but one that people didn’t talk about openly. In fact, except from the pulpit, fornication didn’t come up very often in polite conversation. A very unfashionable topic for all its universality. More’s the pity, I thought on the ride home, because maybe if we talked about it, we would have fewer brothels and parlor houses, fewer young women dead too young from syphilis and the effects of brutality, fewer men like Wing Chee and Ivan Fletcher and Quentin Farmer profiting from fornication.

Still considering the subject, I arrived home and once inside, stopped to unpin my hat and pull off my gloves. The sound of a child’s giggle startled me and I looked to the side to see Ruth and Suey Wah watching me from the foot of the stairs.

“You were deep in thought,” Ruth said, smiling. “A penny for them.”

The question in my sister’s voice invited sharing, but I didn’t have either the courage or the heart to discuss what had occupied my mind the whole trip home. I doubted that even Ruth, to whom I was closer than any other person and who had been a married woman for three years, would welcome a conversation about the topic I had been mulling. So much in our lives was left unsaid and for the time being, at least, I should probably keep fornication on that list.

Chapter Eight

S
aturday dawned warm and sunny and perfect for an outing to the famous Cliff House. Colin, understanding his duty as respectable suitor, knocked on the front door but did not accept Ruth’s invitation to come inside for cake and lemonade.

“It was very smart of you not to step through the doorway,” I complimented, patting Colin’s arm as we walked to catch the cable car, which would connect to the train that would finally deposit us at the beach. “I believe Ruth wanted to continue quizzing you about your character, your prospects, and your intentions. We’d have been there all afternoon.”

“That’s what I thought,” Colin agreed. “She had that look about her.”

“What look?”

“The ‘I-don’t-know-if you-should-be-trusted-with-my-sister’ look. I’ve encountered the sight before and believe me, ‘tis a frightful thing for a man to face.” He slid into an Irish brogue so thick I had to giggle.

“So exactly how often have you had to prove your worth to the families of young women with whom you want to spend time?”