Lost Lake House (11 page)

“Oh. Theirs?”—with a furtive nod of her head
toward the island.

“Mmm-hmm.”

Dorothy looked about her again. The silence
of the moonlit lake was pleasing now; the gentle washing and
rippling of the water under the boat was like faint, soothing
music. A night-bird cried somewhere far out over the water. She
looked back at the island of the Lost Lake House. It looked
different from this angle, with the rocky promontories and tilted,
overhanging poplar trees of its north-facing shore. She could still
see the lights, faintly, but somehow they were not the same. It was
an island in the middle of a lake, with people on it, but it was no
longer fairyland.

Dorothy felt she had lived more hours of
real life in this chilly, half-lit time in the old rowboat than she
ever had in her life before. Out here reality was crisp and clear,
like the air; like the moonlight. She looked down and studied her
entwined fingers on her knee for a moment, and then she glanced
across at Marshall—studied him as well. He had certainly done
nothing to try and recommend himself to her; yet she liked him,
oddly enough. There was a streak of something hard and real and
true about him—he had experienced the reality of life in a way that
flirting, thoughtless crowd she had followed on the ferry and in
the ballrooms never had. Perhaps that was why it was no difficulty
to talk to him, even though they were strangers; he knew how to
speak to the point and about things that mattered.

And suddenly she thought:
it doesn’t
matter to me what that crowd thinks
. Their ridicule suddenly
didn’t matter any more. As long as she had one true friend that she
could be proud of, the mocking of a dozen others was nothing.

She looked back over her shoulder at the
receding island. A tiny speck of light, perhaps an electric torch
or a lantern, bobbed down one of its slopes and then vanished like
a firefly going out.

She said to Marshall, “Won’t you be missed?
Tonight, I mean.”

“No,” he said. “It doesn’t matter anyway.
I’m never going back over there again.”

Dorothy gave a bounce on the seat so the
rowboat lurched a little. “Oh, but you’ve got to! You’ve got to
work a few more days at least. If you quit all of a sudden and then
the police come back, they’ll know it was you who tipped them
off.”

Marshall shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Matter! I should say it does! Why, Maurice
Vernon is a gangster, or almost—there’s no telling
what
he
might do to you.”

“I’m not afraid of him,” said Marshall. He
paused, as if he had surprised himself with the words. “No…I wasn’t
ever afraid of him, or Bill Harolday, or any of them. I was scared
of what would happen if I didn’t have the job…too scared to let go
of it. I guess”—His voice lowered as if he were speaking to
himself, and no longer to Dorothy. “I guess I didn’t have the
courage to believe something my mother’s been telling me for
years…not till tonight.”

He drew a deep breath. “I’m going to have to
tell her everything, you know, when I get home tonight—and that’ll
be a million times harder than going to the police.”

For the third time that night, Dorothy felt
the stinging of tears in her eyes. She had the sudden impulsive
feeling that she would have liked to hug him—but only if he had
been a few years younger than she was, for as they were it wouldn’t
do.

Marshall said, reverting to a matter-of-fact
tone that scattered such thoughts, “If your father will help me get
a job I’m not afraid of all the gangsters in Chicago. Do you think
he really will?”

“If he says he will, he will,” said Dorothy.
“That’s one good thing about him: he’s as straight as a line. He
always keeps his word.”

There was the faintest suggestion of humor
in Marshall’s voice. “You sound almost as if you liked him.”

“I think I could like him a whole lot—now,”
said Dorothy softly, “if he’ll give me the chance.”

She whisked the wistful mood away as quickly
as Marshall had done, and leaned forward, her elbows on her knees
and her chin in her hands. “Of course, he may want some kind of
proof that you’re not making all this up—”

Marshall produced the ring of keys from his
pocket again and jingled them before her. “Boathouse, tool shed,
three doors in the grounds. They’ve got the Lake House monogram on
them.”

“Of course!—Golly, that was short-sighted,
wasn’t it.”

Marshall grinned slightly for the first
time. “The monogram, or trusting ‘em to me?”

“Both,” said Dorothy. “Anybody could see
you’re not a crook.
I
did.”

“In the dark?”

“Well, you know what I mean,” said the
inconsistent child.

After a minute she gave a little
self-conscious laugh. “Isn’t it funny? I feel like we’ve known each
other for years and years already.”

“Mmm-hmm—considering it’s not even an hour
yet.”

“What?” cried Dorothy.

“Yep—the moon hasn’t moved an hour’s worth
yet. The shadow won’t be off that shore till past midnight.”

“Oh,” said Dorothy, recollecting with a
dismayed moan, “my coat and hat are still over in the Lake House. I
don’t suppose Dad will mind about
that
on top of everything
else, but I did like that coat.”

“That’s all right. I can probably sneak them
out for you if I’m going back over there tomorrow, if you tell me
what they look like.”

“
Could
you? Oh, Marsh, you
are
a wonder.”

Marshall grinned again as he pulled back on
the oars—it was amazing how much nicer-looking he was without the
sullen expression. “I’ll take that,” he said. “Better than being a
pirate.”

They landed at a spot on the north shore
around on the other side of the shadowing headland—at a steep bank
knotted with tree roots, half in moonlight and half shadowed by
tall pine trees. The boat grounded unevenly in the mud a few inches
below the water, and Marshall shipped the oars.

“Marshall,” said Dorothy, “what was it that
made you decide the way you did, tonight?”

Marshall sat still for a moment, as if
thinking what to say. “Cowardice is a pretty ugly thing when you
come face to face with it,” he said at last. “Sometimes, if you
won’t see it in yourself, it takes seeing it in somebody else to
make
you see.”

Dorothy said softly, “Or sometimes, seeing
somebody with more courage than you could ever have—to shame you
out of it.”

Marshall stood up, and climbed out onto the
bank, and then reached down to help Dorothy up out of the boat. For
a moment, as she stood close to him on the bank, his strong hands
held both of her small cold ones. “I do think you’re pretty
wonderful,” he said in a lowered voice.

Then he let go of her hands and turned
toward the woods. “The flivver’s parked a little ways in,” he said.
“I’d better go scout it out and make sure nobody else is around.
Will you be all right staying here a minute?”

Dorothy nodded. She sat down on a splintered
pine stump, wrapping her arms about her, and shivered a little.

“Cold?” said Marshall, arrested on the point
of turning to leave.

“A little. My dress and shoes are still
wet.”

“Better take this,” he said, beginning to
take off his sweater.

Dorothy attempted to demur: “Oh, no, I don’t
need it. You should—”

“Take it, you silly,” said Marshall in a
kind of exasperated growl, hauling the sweater over his head. “I
didn’t get wet. Your dress is thin as paper and you’ve got nothing
on your arms. Want to catch pneumonia?”

Dorothy accepted the sweater meekly, not
entirely displeased by his solicitousness. Marshall ducked into the
woods, and she heard the snapping of twigs and rustle of branches
as he moved away, and then silence.

Dorothy put the sweater on, and looked up
from her perch on the stump at the radiant moon above her. The tang
of pine was in the chill air; the silver moon etched the peaked
black tops of the pine trees sharply against the deep-blue sky.
Somewhere at hand, an owl hooted up in the trees; a muted,
surreptitious sound like a secret signal. This, Dorothy thought,
was
real
adventure…this was living real life.

She huddled a little closer in the depths of
the sweater, a thick knitted pullover too big for her, with the
faint scents of wood and lake seeming to cling about it, still warm
from being worn by its owner. Dorothy folded her arms again inside
it, almost a little shyly. Her mind drifted back to the warm
feeling of Marshall’s hands holding hers. How different from Sloop
Jackson’s moist white hand that only made her want to pull away.
Marshall was different…he was only an ordinary boy; he didn’t have
the smooth manners or sophistication of Sloop Jackson and his
ilk…and yet somehow she had felt safe with him all that night.

She heard footsteps in the woods, and a
moment later Marshall was with her again. “All clear,” he said.
“Let’s go.”

Dorothy got up and he pushed back a heavy
pine branch for her to duck into the trees. There was a narrow
footpath, barely visible in bits of moonlight and perilous with
twisted tree roots, and they pushed their way through this for
several rods. It gave way to a faint dirt track made by automobile
tires, and here an old jalopy was pulled off to one side under the
pine trees. Marshall opened the door for her and Dorothy got
in.

“You’ll have to tell me where to go once we
get around the lake,” he said as he opened the other door and got
into the driver’s seat.

“It’s 133 King Street. It’s a brick house,
on a corner; it’s easy to find.”

Marshall wrestled with the clutch of the
jalopy for a moment, and Dorothy inspected the wet wreck of her
shoes by a beam of moonlight with detached curiosity. This had to
be the most complete ruin of a pair of shoes ever effected, even by
her.

“Dad’s going to like you,” she remarked.
“Bringing him home his wayward daughter, and a tip on the biggest
speakeasy in the city, all in one night!”

Marshall, on the verge of achieving victory
with the clutch, let it go and turned to stare at her, in utter
bewilderment. He said, “Who
are
you?”

“I told you, Dorothy Perkins. Alderman
Perkins is my father.”

For a long moment Marshall was without
speech. Then he leaned back against the seat and began to laugh
quietly. He rubbed his nose with the back of his hand.

“I guess this must be my lucky night,” he
said. He sat up and reached for the ignition—and added, with a
glance at Dorothy, “I hope he does like me.”

Dorothy considered for a moment what
particular significance this remark held, but could not arrive at
any wholly definite conclusion. So she let it go for the present,
and scrunched down against the burst moth-eaten cushions of the old
jalopy, snuggling comfortably into her borrowed sweater.

Marshall started the jalopy, which responded
with a valiant choking rattle, and turned it into the bumpy track,
long pine branches sweeping against the doors. The silver-blue
moonlight filtered down through the trees over them, and the cool
night wind came fresh in their faces as they pulled up the winding
dirt road away from the lake.

On a mellow evening a week later, Alderman
Perkins stood on the front porch of his house and contemplated a
tranquil street. The front door stood open behind him, admitting
the soft air to the house through a screen door; the street was
streaming with golden sunset light and patterned along its
curbstones with the shadows of oak and maple trees. He looked upon
this prospect with the feeling that he had not seen it in some
time, though it lay outside his windows every evening. He looked at
his neighbors’ houses, and listened to the voices drifting from
other yards and front-porches, and wondered just how many things
had been passing him by unawares. The events of the past seven days
had done a good deal to jar him from the absent concentration he
had lived in so long, and he was still looking round him with an
air of just having woken.