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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0a9824c --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #67123 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/67123) diff --git a/old/67123-0.txt b/old/67123-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 382ee59..0000000 --- a/old/67123-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,11968 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of Showboat, by Edna Ferber - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: Showboat - -Author: Edna Ferber - -Release Date: January 7, 2022 [eBook #67123] - -Language: English - -Produced by: Al Haines PM, Cindy Beyer, and the online Distributed - Proofreaders Canada team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net. - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHOWBOAT *** - - - [Cover Illustration] - - - - - =_SHOW BOAT_= - - =BY= - =_EDNA FERBER_= - - =AUTHOR OF= - =“SO BIG,” Etc.= - - - =[Illustration]= - - - =_GROSSET & DUNLAP_= - =PUBLISHERS NEW YORK= - - - - - COPYRIGHT, 1926, BY EDNA FERBER. - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED IN - THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY - LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y. - - - - - =To= - =Winthrop Ames= - =Who First Said Show Boat= - =to Me= - - - - - INTRODUCTION - -“Show Boat” is neither history nor biography, but fiction. This -statement is made in the hope that it will forestall such protest as may -be registered by demon statisticians against certain liberties taken -with characters, places, and events. In the Chicago portion of the book, -for example, a character occasionally appears some three or four years -after the actual date of his death. Now and then a restaurant or -gambling resort is described as running full blast at a time when it had -vanished at the frown of civic virtue. This, then, was done, not through -negligence in research, but because, in the attempt to give a picture of -the time, it was necessary slightly to condense a period of fifteen or -twenty years. - - E. F. - - - - - _SHOW BOAT_ - - - - - I - - -Bizarre as was the name she bore, Kim Ravenal always said she was -thankful it had been no worse. She knew whereof she spoke, for it was -literally by a breath that she had escaped being called Mississippi. - -“Imagine Mississippi Ravenal!” she often said, in later years. “They’d -have cut it to Missy, I suppose, or even Sippy, if you can bear to think -of anything so horrible. And then I’d have had to change my name or give -up the stage altogether. Because who’d go to see—seriously, I mean—an -actress named Sippy? It sounds half-witted, for some reason. Kim’s bad -enough, God knows.” - -And as Kim Ravenal you doubtless are familiar with her. It is no secret -that the absurd monosyllable which comprises her given name is made up -of the first letters of three states—Kentucky, Illinois, and -Missouri—in all of which she was, incredibly enough, born—if she can -be said to have been born in any state at all. Her mother insists that -she wasn’t. If you were an habitué of old South Clark Street in -Chicago’s naughty ’90s you may even remember her mother, Magnolia -Ravenal, as Nola Ravenal, soubrette—though Nola Ravenal never achieved -the doubtful distinction of cigarette pictures. In a day when the stage -measured feminine pulchritude in terms of hips, thighs, and calves, she -was considered much too thin for beauty, let alone for tights. - -It had been this Magnolia Ravenal’s respiratory lack that had saved the -new-born girl from being cursed through life with a name boasting more -quadruple vowels and consonants than any other in the language. She had -meant to call the child Mississippi after the tawny untamed river on -which she had spent so much of her girlhood, and which had stirred and -fascinated her always. Her accouchement had been an ordeal even more -terrifying than is ordinarily the case, for Kim Ravenal had actually -been born on the raging turgid bosom of the Mississippi River itself, -when that rampageous stream was flooding its banks and inundating towns -for miles around, at five o’clock of a storm-racked April morning in -1889. It was at a point just below Cairo, Illinois; that region known as -Little Egypt, where the yellow waters of the Mississippi and the -olive-green waters of the Ohio so disdainfully meet and refuse, with -bull-necked pride, to mingle. - -From her cabin window on the second deck of the Cotton Blossom Floating -Palace Theatre, Magnolia Ravenal could have seen the misty shores of -three states—if any earthly shores had interested her at the moment. -Just here was Illinois, to whose crumbling clay banks the show boat was -so perilously pinioned. Beyond, almost hidden by the rain veil, was -Missouri; and there, Kentucky. But Magnolia Ravenal lay with her eyes -shut because the effort of lifting her lids was beyond her. Seeing her, -you would have said that if any shores filled her vision at the moment -they were heavenly ones, and those dangerously near. So white, so limp, -so spent was she that her face on the pillow was startlingly like one of -the waxen blossoms whose name she bore. Her slimness made almost no -outline beneath the bedclothes. The coverlet was drawn up to her chin. -There was only the white flower on the pillow, its petals closed. - -Outside, the redundant rain added its unwelcome measure to the swollen -and angry stream. In the ghostly gray dawn the grotesque wreckage of -flood-time floated and whirled and jiggled by, seeming to bob a mad -obeisance as it passed the show boat which, in its turn, made stately -bows from its moorings. There drifted past, in fantastic parade, great -trees, uprooted and clutching at the water with stiff dead arms; logs, -catapulted with terrific force; animal carcasses dreadful in their -passivity; chicken coops; rafts; a piano, its ivory mouth fixed in a -death grin; a two-room cabin, upright, and moving in a minuet of stately -and ponderous swoops and advances and chassés; fence rails; an armchair -whose white crocheted antimacassar stared in prim disapproval at the -wild antics of its fellow voyagers; a live sheep, bleating as it came, -but soon still; a bed with its covers, by some freak of suction, still -snugly tucked in as when its erstwhile occupant had fled from it in -fright—all these, and more, contributed to the weird terror of the -morning. The Mississippi itself was a tawny tiger, roused, furious, -bloodthirsty, lashing out with its great tail, tearing with its cruel -claws, and burying its fangs deep in the shore to swallow at a gulp -land, houses, trees, cattle—humans, even; and roaring, snarling, -howling hideously as it did so. - -Inside Magnolia Ravenal’s cabin all was snug and warm and bright. A wood -fire snapped and crackled cosily in the little pot-bellied iron stove. -Over it bent a veritable Sairey Gamp stirring something hot and savoury -in a saucepan. She stirred noisily, and talked as she stirred, and -glanced from time to time at the mute white figure in the bed. Her own -bulky figure was made more ponderous by layer on layer of ill-assorted -garments of the kind donned from time to time as night wears on by one -who, having been aroused hastily and in emergency, has arrived scantily -clad. A gray flannel nightgown probably formed the basis of this -costume, for its grizzled cuffs could just be seen emerging from the -man’s coat whose sleeves she wore turned back from the wrists for -comfort and convenience. This coat was of box-cut, double-breasted, blue -with brass buttons and gold braid, of the sort that river captains wear. -It gave her a racy and nautical look absurdly at variance with her bulk -and occupation. Peeping beneath and above and around this, the baffled -eye could just glimpse oddments and elegancies such as a red flannel -dressing gown; a flower-besprigged challis sacque whose frill of -doubtful lace made the captain’s coat even more incongruous; a brown -cashmere skirt, very bustled and bunchy; a pair of scuffed tan kid -bedroom slippers (men’s) of the sort known as romeos. This lady’s back -hair was twisted into a knob strictly utilitarian; her front hair -bristled with the wired ends of kid curlers assumed, doubtless, the -evening before the hasty summons. Her face and head were long and -horse-like, at variance with her bulk. This, you sensed immediately, was -a person possessed of enormous energy, determination, and the gift of -making exquisitely uncomfortable any one who happened to be within -hearing radius. She was the sort who rattles anything that can be -rattled; slams anything that can be slammed; bumps anything that can be -bumped. Her name, by some miracle of fitness, was Parthenia Ann Hawks; -wife of Andy Hawks, captain and owner of the Cotton Blossom Floating -Palace Theatre; and mother of this Magnolia Ravenal who, having just -been delivered of a daughter, lay supine in her bed. - -Now, as Mrs. Hawks stirred the mess over which she was bending, her -spoon regularly scraped the bottom of the pan with a rasping sound that -would have tortured any nerves but her own iron-encased set. She removed -the spoon, freeing it of clinging drops by rapping it smartly and -metallically against the rim of the basin. Magnolia Ravenal’s eyelids -fluttered ever so slightly. - -“Now then!” spake Parthy Ann Hawks, briskly, in that commanding tone -against which even the most spiritless instinctively rebelled, “Now -then, young lady, want it or not, you’ll eat some of this broth, good -and hot and stren’th’ning, and maybe you won’t look so much like a wet -dish rag.” Pan in one hand, spoon in the other, she advanced toward the -bed with a tread that jarred the furniture and set the dainty dimity -window curtains to fluttering. She brought up against the side of the -bed with a bump. A shadow of pain flitted across the white face on the -pillow. The eyes still were closed. As the smell of the hot liquid -reached her nostrils, the lips of the girl on the bed curled in -distaste. “Here, I’ll just spoon it right up to you out of the pan, so’s -it’ll be good and hot. Open your mouth! Open your eyes! I say open—— -Well, for land’s sakes, how do you expect a body to do anything for you -if you——” - -With a motion shocking in its swift unexpectedness Magnolia Ravenal’s -hand emerged from beneath the coverlet, dashed aside the spoon with its -steaming contents, and sent it clattering to the floor. Then her hand -stole beneath the coverlet again and with a little relaxed sigh of -satisfaction she lay passive as before. She had not opened her eyes. She -was smiling ever so slightly. - -“That’s right! Act like a wildcat just because I try to get you to sup -up a little soup that Jo’s been hours cooking, and two pounds of good -mutton in it if there’s an ounce, besides vegetables and barley, and -your pa practically risked his life getting the meat down at Cairo and -the water going up by the foot every hour. No, you’re not satisfied to -get us caught here in the flood, and how we’ll ever get out alive or -dead, God knows, and me and everybody on the boat up all night long with -your goings on so you’d think nobody’d ever had a baby before. Time I -had you there wasn’t a whimper out of me. Not a whimper. I’d have died, -first. I never saw anything as indelicate as the way you carried on, and -your own husband in the room.” Here Magnolia conveyed with a flutter of -the lids that this had not been an immaculate conception. “Well, if you -could see yourself now. A drowned rat isn’t the word. Now you take this -broth, my fine lady, or we’ll see who’s——” She paused in this dramatic -threat to blow a cooling breath on a generous spoonful of the steaming -liquid, to sup it up with audible appreciation, and to take another. She -smacked her lips. “Now then, no more of your monkey-shines, Maggie -Hawks!” - -No one but her mother had ever called Magnolia Ravenal Maggie Hawks. It -was unthinkable that a name so harsh and unlovely could be applied to -this fragile person. Having picked up the rejected spoon and wiped it on -the lace ruffle of the challis sacque, that terrible termagant grasped -it firmly against surprise in her right hand and, saucepan in left, now -advanced a second time toward the bed. You saw the flower on the pillow -frosted by an icy mask of utter unyieldingness; you caught a word that -sounded like shenanigans from the woman bending over the bed, when the -cabin door opened and two twittering females entered attired in garments -strangely akin to the haphazard costume worn by Mrs. Hawks. The foremost -of these moved in a manner so bustling as to be unmistakably official. -She was at once ponderous, playful, and menacing—this last attribute -due, perhaps, to the rather splendid dark moustache which stamped her -upper lip. In her arms she carried a swaddled bundle under one flannel -flap of which the second female kept peering and uttering strange -clucking sounds and words that resembled izzer and yesseris. - -“Fine a gal’s I ever see!” exclaimed the bustling one. She approached -the bed with the bundle. “Mis’ Means says the same and so”—she glanced -contemptuously over her shoulder at a pale and haggard young man, -bearded but boyish, who followed close behind them—“does the doctor.” - -She paused before the word doctor so that the title, when finally it was -uttered, carried with it a poisonous derision. This mysterious sally -earned a little snigger from Mis’ Means and a baleful snort from Mrs. -Hawks. Flushed with success, the lady with the swaddled bundle -(unmistakably a midwife and, like all her craft, royally accustomed to -homage and applause) waxed more malicious. “Fact is, he says only a -minute ago, he never brought a finer baby that he can remember.” - -At this the sniggers and snorts became unmistakable guffaws. The wan -young man became a flushed young man. He fumbled awkwardly with the -professionally massive watch chain that so unnecessarily guarded his -cheap nickel blob of a watch. He glanced at the flower-like face on the -pillow. Its aloofness, its remoteness from the three frowzy females that -hovered about it, seemed to lend him a momentary dignity and courage. He -thrust his hands behind the tails of his Prince Albert coat and strode -toward the bed. A wave of the hand, a slight shove with the shoulder, -dismissed the three as nuisances. “One moment, my good woman. . . . _If_ -you please, Mrs. Hawks. . . . Kindly don’t jiggle . . .” - -The midwife stepped aside with the bundle. Mrs. Hawks fell back a step, -the ineffectual spoon and saucepan in her hands. Mis’ Means ceased to -cluck and to lean on the bed’s footboard. From a capacious inner coat -pocket he produced a stethoscope, applied it, listened, straightened. -From the waistcoat pocket came the timepiece, telltale of his youth and -impecuniosity. He extracted his patient’s limp wrist from beneath the -coverlet and held it in his own strong spatulate fingers—the fingers of -the son of a farmer. - -“H’m! Fine!” he exclaimed. “Splendid!” - -An unmistakable sniff from the midwife. The boy’s florid manner dropped -from him. He cringed a little. The sensitive hand he still held in his -great grasp seemed to feel this change in him, though Magnolia Ravenal -had not opened her eyes even at the entrance of the three. Her wrist -slid itself out of his hold and down until her fingers met his and -pressed them lightly, reassuringly. The youth looked down, startled. -Magnolia Ravenal, white-lipped, was smiling her wide gay gorgeous smile -that melted the very vitals of you. It was a smile at once poignant and -brilliant. It showed her gums a little, and softened the planes of her -high cheek-bones, and subdued the angles of the too-prominent jaw. A -comradely smile, an understanding and warming one. Strange that this -woman on the bed, so lately torn and racked with the agonies of -childbirth, should be the one to encourage the man whose clumsy -ministrations had so nearly cost her her life. That she could smile at -all was sheer triumph of the spirit over the flesh. And that she could -smile in sympathy for and encouragement of this bungling inexpert young -medico was incredible. But that was Magnolia Ravenal. Properly directed -and managed, her smile, in later years, could have won her a fortune. -But direction and management were as futile when applied to her as to -the great untamed Mississippi that even now was flouting man-built -barriers; laughing at levees that said so far and no farther; jeering at -jetties that said do thus-and-so; for that matter, roaring this very -moment in derision of Magnolia Ravenal herself, and her puny pangs and -her mortal plans; and her father Captain Andy Hawks, and her mother -Parthenia Ann Hawks, and her husband Gaylord Ravenal, and the whole -troupe of the show boat, and the Cotton Blossom Floating Palace Theatre -itself, now bobbing about like a cork on the yellow flood that tugged -and sucked and tore at its moorings. - -Two tantrums of nature had been responsible for the present precarious -position of the show boat and its occupants. The Mississippi had -furnished one; Magnolia Ravenal the other. Or perhaps it might be fairer -to fix the blame, not on nature, but on human stupidity that had failed -to take into account its vagaries. - -Certainly Captain Andy Hawks should have known better, after thirty-five -years of experience on keelboats, steamboats, packets, and show boats up -and down the great Mississippi and her tributaries (the Indians might -call this stream the Father of Waters but your riverman respectfully -used the feminine pronoun). The brand-new show boat had done it. Built -in the St. Louis shipyards, the new _Cotton Blossom_ was to have been -ready for him by February. But February had come and gone, and March as -well. He had meant to be in New Orleans by this time, with his fine new -show boat and his troupe and his band of musicians in their fresh -glittering red-and-gold uniforms, and the marvellous steam calliope that -could be heard for miles up and down the bayous and plantations. -Starting at St. Louis, he had planned a swift trip downstream, playing -just enough towns on the way to make expenses. Then, beginning with -Bayou Teche and pushed by the sturdy steamer _Mollie Able_, they would -proceed grandly upstream, calliope screaming, flags flying, band -tooting, to play every little town and landing and plantation from New -Orleans to Baton Rouge, from Baton Rouge to Vicksburg; to Memphis, to -Cairo, to St. Louis, up and up to Minnesota itself; then over to the -coal towns on the Monongahela River and the Kanawha, and down again to -New Orleans, following the crops as they ripened—the corn belt, the -cotton belt, the sugar cane; north when the wheat yellowed, following -with the sun the ripening of the peas, the tomatoes, the crabs, the -peaches, the apples; and as the farmer garnered his golden crops so -would shrewd Captain Andy Hawks gather his harvest of gold. - -It was April before the new _Cotton Blossom_ was finished and ready to -take to the rivers. Late though it was, when Captain Andy Hawks beheld -her, glittering from texas to keel in white paint with green trimmings, -and with Cotton Blossom Floating Palace Theatre done in letters two feet -high on her upper deck, he was vain enough, or foolhardy enough, or -both, to resolve to stand by his original plan. A little nervous fussy -man, Andy Hawks, with a horrible habit of clawing and scratching from -side to side, when aroused or when deep in thought, at the little -mutton-chop whiskers that sprang out like twin brushes just below his -leather-visored white canvas cap, always a trifle too large for his -head, so that it settled down over his ears. A capering figure, in light -linen pants very wrinkled and baggy, and a blue coat, double-breasted; -with a darting manner, bright brown eyes, and a trick of talking very -fast as he clawed the mutton-chop whiskers first this side, then that, -with one brown hairy little hand. There was about him something -grotesque, something simian. He beheld the new _Cotton Blossom_ as a -bridegroom gazes upon a bride, and frenziedly clawing his whiskers he -made his unwise decision. - -“She won’t high-water this year till June.” He was speaking of that -tawny tigress, the Mississippi; and certainly no one knew her moods -better than he. “Not much snow last winter, north; and no rain to speak -of, yet. Yessir, we’ll just blow down to New Orleans ahead of French’s -_Sensation_”—his bitterest rival in the show-boat business—“and start -to work the bayous. Show him a clean pair of heels up and down the -river.” - -So they had started. And because the tigress lay smooth and unruffled -now, with only the currents playing gently below the surface like -muscles beneath the golden yellow skin, they fancied she would remain -complaisant until they had had their way. That was the first mistake. - -The second was as unreasoning. Magnolia Ravenal’s child was going to be -a boy. Ma Hawks and the wise married women of the troupe knew the signs. -She felt thus-and-so. She had such-and-such sensations. She was carrying -the child high. Boys always were slower in being born than girls. -Besides, this was a first child, and the first child always is late. -They got together, in mysterious female conclave, and counted on the -fingers of their two hands—August, September, October, November, -December—why, the end of April, the soonest. They’d be safe in New -Orleans by then, with the best of doctors for Magnolia, and she on land -while one of the other women in the company played her parts until she -was strong again—a matter of two or three weeks at most. - -No sooner had they started than the rains began. No early April showers, -these, but torrents that blotted out the river banks on either side and -sent the clay tumbling in great cave-ins, down to the water, jaundicing -it afresh where already it seethed an ochreous mass. Day after day, -night after night, the rains came down, melting the Northern ice and -snow, filtering through the land of the Mississippi basin and finding -its way, whether trickle, rivulet, creek, stream, or river, to the great -hungry mother, Mississippi. And she grew swollen, and tossed and flung -her huge limbs about and shrieked in labour even as Magnolia Ravenal was -so soon to do. - -Eager for entertainment as the dwellers were along the little Illinois -and Missouri towns, after a long winter of dull routine on farm and in -store and schoolhouse, they came sparsely to the show boat. Posters had -told them of her coming, and the news filtered to the back-country. Town -and village thrilled to the sound of the steam calliope as the Cotton -Blossom Floating Palace Theatre, propelled by the square-cut clucking -old steamer, _Mollie Able_, swept grandly down the river to the landing. -But the back-country roads were impassable bogs by now, and growing -worse with every hour of rain. Wagon wheels sank to the hubs in mud. -There were crude signs, stuck on poles, reading, “No bottom here.” The -dodgers posted on walls and fences in the towns were rain-soaked and -bleary. And as for the Cotton Blossom Floating Palace Theatre Ten Piece -Band (which numbered six)—how could it risk ruin of its smart new red -coats, gold-braided and gold-buttoned, by marching up the water-logged -streets of these little towns whose occupants only stared wistfully out -through storm-blurred windows? It was dreary even at night, when the -show boat glowed invitingly with the blaze of a hundred oil lamps that -lighted the auditorium seating six hundred (One Thousand Seats! A -Luxurious Floating Theatre within an Unrivalled Floating Palace!). -Usually the flaming oil-flares on their tall poles stuck in the steep -clay banks that led down to the show boat at the water’s edge made a -path of fiery splendour. Now they hissed and spluttered dismally, almost -extinguished by the deluge. Even when the bill was St. Elmo or East -Lynne, those tried and trusty winners, the announcement of which always -packed the show boat’s auditorium to the very last seat in the balcony -reserved for Negroes, there was now only a damp handful of -shuffle-footed men and giggling girls and a few children in the cheaper -rear seats. The Mississippi Valley dwellers, wise with the terrible -wisdom born of much suffering under the dominance of this voracious and -untamed monster, so ruthless when roused, were preparing against -catastrophe should these days of rain continue. - -Captain Andy Hawks clawed his mutton-chop whiskers, this side and that, -and scanned the skies, and searched the yellowing swollen stream with -his bright brown eyes. “We’ll make for Cairo,” he said. “Full steam -ahead. I don’t like the looks of her—the big yella snake.” - -But full steam ahead was impossible for long in a snag-infested river, -as Andy Hawks well knew; and in a river whose treacherous channel -shifted almost daily in normal times, and hourly in flood-time. -Cautiously they made for Cairo. Cape Girardeau, Gray’s Point, -Commerce—then, suddenly, near evening, the false sun shone for a brief -hour. At once everyone took heart. The rains, they assured each other, -were over. The spring freshet would subside twice as quickly as it had -risen. Fittingly enough, the play billed for that evening was Tempest -and Sunshine, always a favourite. Magnolia Ravenal cheerfully laced -herself into the cruel steel-stiffened high-busted corset of the period, -and donned the golden curls and the prim ruffles of the part. A goodish -crowd scrambled and slipped and slid down the rain-soaked clay bank, -torch-illumined, to the show boat, their boots leaving a trail of mud -and water up and down the aisles of the theatre and between the seats. -It was a restless audience, and hard to hold. There had been an angry -sunset, and threatening clouds to the northwest. The crowd shuffled its -feet, coughed, stirred constantly. There was in the air something -electric, menacing, heavy. Suddenly, during the last act, the north wind -sprang up with a whistling sound, and the little choppy hard waves could -be heard slapping against the boat’s flat sides. She began to rock, too, -and pitch, flat though she was and securely moored to the river bank. -Lightning, a fusillade of thunder, and then the rain again, heavy, like -drops of molten lead, and driven by the north wind. The crowd scrambled -up the perilous clay banks, slipping, falling, cursing, laughing, -frightened. To this day it is told that the river rose seven feet in -twenty-four hours. Captain Andy Hawks, still clawing his whiskers, still -bent on making for Cairo, cast off and ordered the gangplank in as the -last scurrying villager clawed his way up the slimy incline whose -heights the river was scaling inch by inch. - -“The Ohio’s the place,” he insisted, his voice high and squeaky with -excitement. “High water at Cincinnati, St. Louis, Evansville, or even -Paducah don’t have to mean high-water on the Ohio. It’s the old yella -serpent making all this kick-up. But the Ohio’s the river gives Cairo -the real trouble. Yessir! And she don’t flood till June. We’ll make for -the Ohio and stay on her till this comes to a stand, anyway.” - -Then followed the bedlam of putting off. Yells, hoarse shouts, bells -ringing, wheels churning the water to foam. Lively now! Cramp her down! -Snatch her! Snatch her! - -Faintly, above the storm, you heard the cracked falsetto of little -Captain Andy Hawks, a pilot for years, squeaking to himself in his -nervousness the orders that river etiquette forbade his actually giving -that ruler, that ultimate sovereign, the pilot, old Mark Hooper, whose -real name was no more Mark than Twain’s had been: relic of his leadsmen -days, with the cry of, “Mark three! Mark three! Half twain! Quarter -twain! M-A-R-K twain!” gruffly shouted along the hurricane deck. - -It was told, on the rivers, that little Andy Hawks had been known, under -excitement, to walk off the deck into the river and to bob afloat there -until rescued, still spluttering and shrieking orders in a profane -falsetto. - -Down the river they went, floating easily over bars that in normal times -stood six feet out of the water; clattering through chutes; shaving the -shores. Thunder, lightning, rain, chaos outside. Within, the orderly -routine of bedtime on the show boat. Mis’ Means, the female half of the -character team, heating over a tiny spirit flame a spoonful of goose -grease which she would later rub on her husband’s meagre cough-racked -chest; Maudie Rainger, of the general business team, sipping her bedtime -cup of coffee; Bert Forbush, utility man, in shirt sleeves, check pants, -and carpet slippers, playing a sleep-inducing game of canfield—all this -on the stage, bare now of scenery and turned into a haphazard and -impromptu lounging room for the members of this floating theatrical -company. Mrs. Hawks, in her fine new cabin on the second deck, off the -gallery, was putting her sparse hair in crimpers as she would do if this -were the night before Judgment Day. Flood, storm, danger—all part of -river show-boat life. Ordinarily, it is true, they did not proceed down -river until daybreak. After the performance, the show boat and its -steamer would stay snug and still alongside the wharf of this little -town or that. By midnight, company and crew would have fallen asleep to -the sound of the water slap-slapping gently against the boat’s sides. - -To-night there probably would be little sleep for some of the company, -what with the storm, the motion, the unwonted stir, and the noise that -came from the sturdy _Mollie Able_, bracing her cautious bulk against -the flood’s swift urging; and certainly none for Captain Andy Hawks, for -pilot Mark Hooper and the crew of the _Mollie Able_. But that, too, was -all part of the life. - -Midnight had found Gaylord Ravenal, in nightshirt and dressing gown, a -handsome and distraught figure, pounding on the door of his -mother-in-law’s cabin. From the cabin he had just left came harrowing -sounds—whimpers, and little groans, and great moans, like an animal in -agony. Magnolia Ravenal was not one of your silent sufferers. She was -too dramatic for that. Manœuvred magically by the expert Hooper, they -managed to make a perilous landing just above Cairo. The region was -scoured for a doctor, without success, for accident had followed on -flood. Captain Andy had tracked down a stout and reluctant midwife who -consented only after an enormous bribe to make the perilous trip to the -levee, clambering ponderously down the slippery bank with many groanings -and forebodings, and being sustained, both in bulk and spirit, by the -agile and vivacious little captain much as a tiny fussy river tug guides -a gigantic and unwieldy ocean liner. He was almost frantically -distraught, for between Andy Hawks and his daughter Magnolia Ravenal was -that strong bond of affection and mutual understanding that always -exists between the henpecked husband and the harassed offspring of a -shrew such as Parthy Ann Hawks. - -When, an hour later, Gaylord Ravenal, rain-soaked and mud-spattered, -arrived with a white-faced young doctor’s assistant whose first -obstetrical call this was, he found the fat midwife already in charge -and inclined to elbow about any young medical upstart who might presume -to dictate to a female of her experience. - -It was a sordid and ravaging confinement which, at its climax, teetered -for one dreadful moment between tragedy and broad comedy. For at the -crisis, just before dawn, the fat midwife, busy with ministrations, had -said to the perspiring young doctor, “D’you think it’s time to snuff -her?” - -Bewildered, and not daring to show his ignorance, he had replied, -judicially, “Uh—not just yet. No, not just yet.” - -Again the woman had said, ten minutes later, “Time to snuff her, I’d -say.” - -“Well, perhaps it is.” He watched her, fearfully, wondering what she -might mean; cursing his own lack of knowledge. To his horror and -amazement, before he could stop her, she had stuffed a great pinch of -strong snuff up either nostril of Magnolia Ravenal’s delicate nose. And -thus Kim Ravenal was born into the world on the gust of a series of -convulsive a-CHOOs! - -“God almighty, woman!” cried the young medico, in a frenzy. “You’ve -killed her.” - -“Run along, do!” retorted the fat midwife, testily, for she was tired by -now, and hungry, and wanted her coffee badly. “H’m! It’s a gal. And they -had their minds all made up to a boy. Never knew it to fail.” She turned -to Magnolia’s mother, a ponderous and unwieldy figure at the foot of the -bed. “Well, now, Mis’—Hawks, ain’t it?—that’s right—Hawks. Well, now, -Mis’ Hawks, we’ll get this young lady washed up and then I’d thank you -for a pot of coffee and some breakfast. I’m partial to a meat -breakfast.” - -All this had been a full hour ago. Magnolia Ravenal still lay inert, -unheeding. She had not even looked at her child. Her mother now uttered -bitter complaint to the others in the room. - -“Won’t touch a drop of this good nourishing broth. Knocked the spoon -right out of my hand, would you believe it! for all she lays there -looking so gone. Well! I’m going to open her mouth and pour it down.” - -The young doctor raised a protesting palm. “No, no, I wouldn’t do that.” -He bent over the white face on the pillow. “Just a spoonful,” he coaxed, -softly. “Just a swallow?” - -She did not vouchsafe him another smile. He glanced at the irate woman -with the saucepan; at the two attendant vestals. “Isn’t there -somebody——?” - -The men of the company and the crew were out, he well knew, with pike -poles in hand, working to keep the drifting objects clear of the boats. -Gaylord Ravenal would be with them. He had been in and out a score of -times through the night, his handsome young face (too handsome, the -awkward young doctor had privately decided) twisted with horror and pity -and self-reproach. He had noticed, too, that the girl’s cries had abated -not a whit when the husband was there. But when he took her writhing -fingers, and put one hand on her wet forehead, and said, in a voice that -broke with agony, “Oh, Nola! Nola! Don’t. I didn’t know it was like -. . . Not like this. . . . Magnolia . . .”—she had said, through -clenched teeth and white lips, surprisingly enough, with a knowledge -handed down to her through centuries of women writhing in childbirth, -“It’s all right, Gay. . . . Always . . . like this . . . damn it. . . . -Don’t you worry. . . . It’s . . . all . . .” And the harassed young -doctor had then seen for the first time the wonder of Magnolia Ravenal’s -poignant smile. - -So now when he said, shyly, “Isn’t there somebody else——” he was -thinking that if the young and handsome husband could be spared for but -a moment from his pike pole it would be better to chance a drifting log -sent crashing against the side of the boat by the flood than that this -white still figure on the bed should be allowed to grow one whit whiter -or more still. - -“Somebody else’s fiddlesticks!” exploded Mrs. Hawks, inelegantly. They -were all terribly rude to him, poor lad, except the one who might have -felt justified in being so. “If her own mother can’t——” She had -reheated the broth on the little iron stove, and now made a third -advance, armed with spoon and saucepan. The midwife had put the swaddled -bundle on the pillow so that it lay just beside Magnolia Ravenal’s arm. -It was she who now interrupted Mrs. Hawks, and abetted her. - -“How in time d’you expect to nurse,” she demanded, “if you don’t eat!” - -Magnolia Ravenal didn’t know and, seemingly, didn’t care. - -A crisis was imminent. It was the moment for drama. And it was -furnished, obligingly enough, by the opening of the door to admit the -two whom Magnolia Ravenal loved in all the world. There came first the -handsome, haggard Gaylord Ravenal, actually managing, in some incredible -way, to appear elegant, well-dressed, dapper, at a time, under -circumstances, and in a costume which would have rendered most men -unsightly, if not repulsive. But his gifts were many, and not the least -of them was the trick of appearing sartorially and tonsorially flawless -when dishevelment and a stubble were inevitable in any other male. Close -behind him trotted Andy Hawks, just as he had been twenty-four hours -before—wrinkled linen pants, double-breasted blue coat, oversize -visored cap, mutton-chop whiskers and all. Together he and Ma Hawks, in -her blue brass-buttoned coat that was a twin of his, managed to give the -gathering quite a military aspect. Certainly Mrs. Hawks’ manner was -martial enough at the moment. She raised her voice now in complaint. - -“Won’t touch her broth. Ain’t half as sick as she lets on or she -wouldn’t be so stubborn. Wouldn’t have the strength to be, ’s what I -say.” - -Gaylord Ravenal took from her the saucepan and the spoon. The saucepan -he returned to the stove. He espied a cup on the washstand; with a -glance at Captain Andy he pointed silently to this. Andy Hawks emptied -its contents into the slop jar, rinsed it carefully, and half filled it -with the steaming hot broth. The two men approached the bedside. There -was about both a clumsy and touching but magically effective tenderness. -Gay Ravenal slipped his left arm under the girl’s head with its hair all -spread so dank and wild on the pillow. Captain Andy Hawks leaned -forward, cup in hand, holding it close to her mouth. With his right -hand, delicately, Gay Ravenal brought the first hot revivifying spoonful -to her mouth and let it trickle slowly, drop by drop, through her lips. -He spoke to her as he did this, but softly, softly, so that the others -could not hear the words. Only the cadence of his voice, and that was a -caress. Another spoonful, and another, and another. He lowered her again -to the pillow, his arm still under her head. A faint tinge of palest -pink showed under the waxen skin. She opened her eyes; looked up at him. -She adored him. Her pain-dulled eyes even then said so. Her lips moved. -He bent closer. She was smiling almost mischievously. - -“Fooled them.” - -“What’s she say?” rasped Mrs. Hawks, fearfully, for she loved the girl. - -Over his shoulder he repeated the two words she had whispered. - -“Oh,” said Parthy Ann Hawks, and laughed. “She means fooled ’em because -it’s a girl instead of a boy.” - -But at that Magnolia Ravenal shook her head ever so slightly, and looked -up at him again and held up one slim forefinger and turned her eyes -toward the corners with a listening look. And in obedience he held up -his hand then, a warning for silence, though he was as mystified as -they. And in the stillness of the room you heard the roar and howl and -crash of the great river whose flood had caught them and shaken them and -brought Magnolia Ravenal to bed ahead of her time. And now he knew what -she meant. She wasn’t thinking of the child that lay against her arms. -Her lips moved again. He bent closer. And what she said was: - -“The River.” - - - - - II - - -Surely no little girl had ever had a more fantastic little girlhood than -this Magnolia Ravenal who had been Magnolia Hawks. By the time she was -eight she had fallen into and been fished out of practically every river -in the Mississippi Basin from the Gulf of Mexico to Minnesota. The -ordinary routine of her life, in childhood, had been made up of doing -those things that usually are strictly forbidden the average child. She -swam muddy streams; stayed up until midnight; read the lurid -yellow-backed novels found in the cabins of the women of the company; -went to school but rarely; caught catfish; drank river water out of the -river itself; roamed the streets of strange towns alone; learned to -strut and shuffle and buck-and-wing from the Negroes whose black faces -dotted the boards of the Southern wharves as thickly as grace notes -sprinkle a bar of lively music. And all this despite constant -watchfulness, nagging, and admonition from her spinster-like mother; for -Parthy Ann Hawks, matron though she was, still was one of those women -who, confined as favourite wife in the harem of a lascivious Turk, would -have remained a spinster at heart and in manner. And though she lived on -her husband’s show boat season after season, and tried to rule it from -pilot house to cook’s galley, she was always an incongruous figure in -the gay, careless vagabond life of this band of floating players. The -very fact of her presence on the boat was a paradox. Life, for Parthy -Ann Hawks, was meant to be made up of crisp white dimity curtains at -kitchen windows; of bi-weekly bread bakings; of Sunday morning service -and Wednesday night prayer meeting; of small gossip rolled evilly under -the tongue. The male biped, to her, was a two-footed animal who tracked -up a clean kitchen floor just after it was scoured and smoked a pipe in -defiance of decency. Yet here she was—and had been for ten -years—leading an existence which would have made that of the Stratford -strollers seem orderly and prim by comparison. - -She had been a Massachusetts school teacher, living with a henpecked -fisherman father, and keeping house expertly for him with one hand while -she taught school with the other. The villagers held her up as an -example of all the feminine virtues, but the young males of the village -were to be seen walking home from church with this or that plump -twitterer who might be a notoriously bad cook but who had an undeniable -way of tying a blue sash about a tempting waist. Parthenia Ann, prayer -book clasped in mitted hands, walked sedately home with her father. The -vivacious little Andy Hawks, drifting up into Massachusetts one summer, -on a visit to fishermen kin, had encountered the father, and, through -him, the daughter. He had eaten her light flaky biscuit, her -golden-brown fries; her ruddy jell; her succulent pickles; her juicy -pies. He had stood in her kitchen doorway, shyly yet boldly watching her -as she moved briskly from table to stove, from stove to pantry. The -sleeves of her crisp print dress were rolled to the elbow, and if those -elbows were not dimpled they were undeniably expert in batter-beating, -dough-kneading, pan-scouring. Her sallow cheeks were usually a little -flushed with the heat of the kitchen and the energy of her movements, -and, perhaps, with the consciousness of the unaccustomed masculine eye -so warmly turned upon her. She looked her bustling best, and to little -impulsive warm-hearted Andy she represented all he had ever known and -dreamed, in his roving life, of order, womanliness, comfort. She was -some years older than he. The intolerance with which women of Parthenia -Ann’s type regard all men was heightened by this fact to something -resembling contempt. Even before their marriage, she bossed him about -much as she did her old father, but while she nagged she also fed them -toothsome viands, and the balm of bland, well-cooked food counteracted -the acid of her words. Then, too, Nature, the old witch-wanton, had set -the yeast to working in the flabby dough of Parthy Ann’s organism. Andy -told her that his real name was André and that he was descended, through -his mother, from a long line of Basque fisher folk who had lived in the -vicinity of St. Jean-de-Luz, Basses-Pyrénées. It probably was true, and -certainly accounted for his swarthy skin, his bright brown eyes, his -impulsiveness, his vivacious manner. The first time he kissed this tall, -raw-boned New England woman he was startled at the robustness with which -she met and returned the caress. They were married and went to Illinois -to live in the little town of Thebes, on the Mississippi. In the village -from which she had married it was said that, after she left, her old -father, naturally neat and trained through years of nagging to -super-neatness, indulged in an orgy of disorder that lasted days. As -other men turn to strong drink in time of exuberance or relief from -strain, so the tidy old septuagenarian strewed the kitchen with dirty -dishes and scummy pots and pans; slept for a week in an unmade bed; -padded in stocking feet; chewed tobacco and spat where he pleased; -smoked the lace curtains brown; was even reported by a spying neighbour -to have been seen seated at the reedy old cottage organ whose palsied -pipes had always quavered to hymn tunes, picking out with one gnarled -forefinger the chorus of a bawdy song. He lived one free, blissful year -and died of his own cooking. - -As pilot, river captain, and finally, as they thrived, owner and captain -of a steamer accommodating both passengers and freight, Captain Andy was -seldom in a position to be guilty of tracking the white-scoured kitchen -floor or discolouring with pipe smoke the stiff folds of the window -curtains. The prim little Illinois cottage saw him but rarely during the -season when river navigation was at its height. For many months in the -year Parthy Ann Hawks was free to lead the spinsterish existence for -which nature had so evidently planned her. Her window panes glittered, -her linen was immaculate, her floors unsullied. When Captain Andy came -home there was constant friction between them. Sometimes her gay, -capering little husband used to look at this woman as at a stranger. -Perhaps his nervous habit of clawing at his mutton-chop whiskers had -started as a gesture of puzzlement or despair. - -The child Magnolia was not born until seven years after their marriage. -That Parthy Ann Hawks could produce actual offspring was a miracle to -give one renewed faith in certain disputed incidents recorded in the New -Testament. The child was all Andy—manner, temperament, colouring. -Between father and daughter there sprang up such a bond of love and -understanding as to make their relation a perfect thing, and so sturdy -as successfully to defy even the destructive forces bent upon it by Mrs. -Hawks. Now the little captain came home whenever it was physically -possible, sacrificing time, sleep, money—everything but the safety of -his boat and its passengers—for a glimpse of the child’s piquant face, -her gay vivacious manner, her smile that wrung you even then. - -It was years before Captain Andy could persuade his wife to take a river -trip with him on his steamer down to New Orleans and back again, -bringing the child. It was, of course, only a ruse for having the girl -with him. River captains’ wives were not popular on the steamers their -husbands commanded. And Parthy Ann, from that first trip, proved a -terror. It was due only to tireless threats, pleadings, blandishments, -and actual bribes on the part of Andy that his crew did not mutiny -daily. Half an hour after embarking on that first trip, Parthy Ann poked -her head into the cook’s galley and told him the place was a disgrace. -The cook was a woolly-headed black with a rolling protuberant eye and -the quick temper of his calling. - -Furthermore, though a capable craftsman, and in good standing on the -river boats, he had come aboard drunk, according to time-honoured -custom; not drunk to the point of being quarrelsome or incompetent, but -entertaining delusions of grandeur, varied by ominous spells of sullen -silence. In another twelve hours, and for the remainder of the trip, he -would be sober and himself. Captain Andy knew this, understood him, was -satisfied with him. - -Now one of his minions was seated on an upturned pail just outside the -door, peeling a great boiler full of potatoes with almost magic celerity -and very little economy. - -Parthy Ann’s gimlet eye noted the plump peelings as they fell in long -spirals under the sharp blade. She lost no time. - -“Well, I declare! Of all the shameful waste I ever clapped my eyes on, -that’s the worst.” - -The black at the stove turned to face her, startled and uncomprehending. -Visitors were not welcome in the cook’s galley. He surveyed without -enthusiasm the lean figure with the long finger pointing accusingly at a -quite innocent pan of potato parings. - -“Wha’ that you say, missy?” - -“Don’t you missy me!” snapped Parthy Ann Hawks. “And what I said was -that I never saw such criminal waste as those potato parings. An inch -thick if they’re a speck, and no decent cook would allow it.” - -A simple, ignorant soul, the black man, and a somewhat savage; as mighty -in his small domain as Captain Andy in his larger one. All about him now -were his helpers, black men like himself, with rolling eyes and great -lips all too ready to gash into grins if this hard-visaged female -intruder were to worst him. - -“Yo-all passenger on this boat, missy?” - -Parthy Ann surveyed disdainfully the galley’s interior, cluttered with -the disorder attendant on the preparation of the noonday meal. - -“Passenger! H’mph! No, I’m not. And passenger or no passenger, a -filthier hole I never saw in my born days. I’ll let you know that I -shall make it my business to report this state of things to the Captain. -Good food going to waste——” - -A red light seemed to leap then from the big Negro’s eyeballs. His lips -parted in a kind of savage and mirthless grin, so that you saw his great -square gleaming teeth and the blue gums above them. Quick as a panther -he reached down with one great black paw into the pan of parings, -straightened, and threw the mass, wet and slimy as it was, full at her. -The spirals clung and curled about her—on her shoulders, around her -neck, in the folds of her gown, on her head, Medusa-like. - -“They’s something for you take to the Captain to show him, missy.” - -He turned sombrely back to his stove. The other blacks were little less -grave than he. They sensed something sinister in the fury with which -this garbage-hung figure ran screaming to the upper deck. The scene -above decks must have been a harrowing one. - -They put him off at Memphis and shipped another cook there, and the big -Negro, thoroughly sobered now, went quite meekly down the gangplank and -up the levee, his carpet bag in hand. In fact, it was said that, when he -had learned it was the Captain’s wife whom he had treated thus, he had -turned a sort of ashen gray and had tried to jump overboard and swim -ashore. The gay little Captain Andy was a prime favourite with his crew. -Shamefaced though the Negro was, there appeared something akin to pity -in the look he turned on Captain Andy as he was put ashore. If that was -true, then the look on the little captain’s face as he regarded the -miscreant was certainly born of an inward and badly concealed -admiration. It was said, too, but never verified, that something round -and gold and gleaming was seen to pass from the Captain’s hairy little -brown hand to the big black paw. - -For the remainder of the trip Mrs. Hawks constituted herself a sort of -nightmarish housekeeper, prowling from corridor to cabins, from dining -saloon to pantry. She made life wretched for the pert yellow wenches who -performed the cabin chamber-work. She pounced upon them when they -gathered in little whispering groups, gossiping. Thin-lipped and baleful -of eye, she withered the very words they were about to utter to a waiter -or deck-hand, so that the flowers of coquetry became ashes on their -tongues. She regarded the female passengers with suspicion and the males -with contempt. This was the latter ’70s, and gambling was as much a part -of river-boat life as eating and drinking. Professional gamblers often -infested the boats. It was no uncommon sight to see a poker game that -had started in the saloon in the early evening still in progress when -sunrise reddened the river. It was the day of the flowing moustache, the -broad-brimmed hat, the open-faced collar, and the diamond stud. It -constituted masculine America’s last feeble flicker of the picturesque -before he sank for ever into the drab ashes of uniformity. A Southern -gentleman, particularly, clad thus, took on a dashing and dangerous -aspect. The rakish angle of the hat with its curling brim, the flowing -ends of the string tie, the movement of the slender virile fingers as -they stroked the moustache, all were things to thrill the feminine -beholder. Even that frigid female, Parthenia Ann Hawks, must have known -a little flutter of the senses as she beheld these romantic -and—according to her standards—dissolute passengers seated, silent, -wary, pale, about the gaming table. But in her stern code, that which -thrilled was wicked. She belonged to the tribe of the Knitting Women; of -the Salem Witch Burners; of all fanatics who count nature as an enemy to -be suppressed; and in whose veins the wine of life runs vinegar. If the -deep seepage of Parthy Ann’s mind could have been brought to the -surface, it would have analyzed chemically thus: “I find these men -beautiful, stirring, desirable. But that is an abomination. I must not -admit to myself that I am affected thus. Therefore I think and I say -that they are disgusting, ridiculous, contemptible.” - -Her attitude was somewhat complicated by the fact that, as wife of the -steamer’s captain, she was treated with a courtly deference on the part -of these very gentlemen whom she affected to despise; and with a -gracious cordiality by their ladies. The Southern men, especially, gave -an actual effect of plumes on their wide-brimmed soft hats as they bowed -and addressed her in their soft drawling vernacular. - -“Well, ma’am, and how are you enjoying your trip on your good husband’s -magnificent boat?” It sounded much richer and more flattering as they -actually said it. “. . . Yo’ trip on yo’ good husband’s -ma-a-a-yg-nif’cent . . .” They gave one the feeling that they were -really garbed in satin, sword, red heels, lace ruffles. - -Parthenia Ann, whose stays always seemed, somehow, to support her form -more stiffly than did those of any other female, would regard her -inquirers with a cold and fishy eye. - -“The boat’s well enough, I suppose. But what with the carousing by night -and the waste by day, a Christian soul can hardly look on at it without -feeling that some dreadful punishment will overtake us all before we -arrive at the end of our journey.” From her tone you would almost have -gathered that she hoped it. - -He of the broad-brimmed hat, and his bustled, basqued alpaca lady, would -perhaps exchange a glance not altogether amused. Collisions, explosions, -snag-founderings were all too common in the river traffic of the day to -risk this deliberate calling down of wrath. - -Moving away, the soft-tongued Southern voices would be found to be as -effective in vituperation as in flattery. “Pole cat!” he of the phantom -plumes would say, aside, to his lady. - -Fortunately, Parthy Ann’s dour misgivings did not materialize. The trip -downstream proved a delightful one, and as tranquil as might be with -Mrs. Hawks on board. Captain Andy’s steamer, though by no means as large -as some of the so-called floating palaces that plied the Mississippi, -was known for the excellence of its table, the comfort of its -appointments, and the affability of its crew. So now the passengers -endured the irritation of Mrs. Hawks’ presence under the balm of -appetizing food and good-natured service. The crew suffered her nagging -for the sake of the little captain, whom they liked and respected; and -for his wages, which were generous. - -Though Parthenia Ann Hawks regarded the great river—if, indeed, she -noticed it at all—merely as a moist highway down which one travelled -with ease to New Orleans; untouched by its mystery, unmoved by its -majesty, unsubdued by its sinister power, she must still, in spite of -herself, have come, however faintly and remotely, under the spell of its -enchantment. For this trip proved, for her, to be the first of many, and -led, finally, to her spending seven months out of the twelve, not only -on the Mississippi, but on the Ohio, the Missouri, the Kanawha, the Big -Sandy. Indeed, her liking for the river life, together with her zeal for -reforming it, became so marked that in time river travellers began to -show a preference for steamers other than Captain Andy’s, excellently -though they fared thereon. - -Perhaps the attitude of the lady passengers toward the little captain -and the manner of the little captain as he addressed the lady passengers -did much to feed the flame of Parthy Ann’s belligerence. Until the -coming of Andy Hawks she had found favour in no man’s eyes. Cut in the -very pattern of spinsterhood, she must actually have had moments of -surprise and even incredulity at finding herself a wife and mother. The -art of coquetry was unknown to her; because the soft blandishments of -love had early been denied her she now repudiated them as sinful; did -her hair in a knob; eschewed flounces; assumed a severe demeanour; and -would have been the last to understand that any one of these repressions -was a confession. All about her—and Captain Andy—on the steamship were -captivating females, full of winning wiles; wives of Southern planters; -cream-skinned Creoles from New Orleans, indolent, heavy-lidded, -bewitching; or women folk of prosperous Illinois or Iowa merchants, -lawyers, or manufacturers making a pleasure jaunt of the Southern -business trip with husband or father. - -And, “Oh, Captain Hawks!” they said; and, “Oh, Captain Andy! Do come -here like a nice man and tell us what it means when that little bell -rings so fast? . . . And why do they call it the hurricane deck? . . . -Oh, Captain Hawks, is that a serpent tattooed on the back of your hand! -I declare it is! Look, Emmaline! Emmaline, look! This naughty Captain -Andy has a serpent . . .” - -Captain Andy’s social deportment toward women was made up of that most -devastating of combinations, a deferential manner together with an -audacious tongue. A tapering white finger, daringly tracing a rosy nail -over the blue coils of the tattooed serpent, would find itself gently -imprisoned beneath the hard little brown paw that was Andy’s free hand. - -“After this,” the little captain would say, thoughtfully, “it won’t be -long before that particular tattoo will be entirely worn away. Yes, -ma’am! No more serpent.” - -“But why?” - -“Erosion, ma’am.” - -“E—but I don’t understand. I’m so stupid. I——” - -Meltingly, the wicked little monkey, “I’ll be so often kissing the spot -your lovely finger has traced, ma’am.” - -“Oh-h-h-h!” A smart tap of rebuke with her palm-leaf fan. “You _are_ a -saucy thing. Emmaline, did you hear what this wicked captain said!” - -Much of the freedom that Magnolia enjoyed on this first trip she owed to -her mother’s quivering preoccupation with these vivacious ladies. - -If the enchantment of the river had been insidious enough to lure even -Mrs. Hawks, certainly the child Magnolia fell completely under its magic -spell. From that first trip on the Mississippi she was captive in its -coils. Twenty times daily, during that leisurely journey from St. Louis -to New Orleans, Mrs. Hawks dragged her child, squirming and protesting, -from the pilot house perched atop the steamer or from the engine room in -its bowels. Refurbished, the grime removed from face and hands, dressed -in a clean pinafore, she was thumped on one of the red-plush fauteuils -of the gaudy saloon. Magnolia’s hair was almost black and without a -vestige of natural curl. This last was a great cross to Mrs. Hawks, who -spent hours wetting and twining the long dank strands about her -forefinger with a fine-toothed comb in an unconvincing attempt to make a -swan out of her duckling. The rebellious little figure stood clamped -between her mother’s relentless knees. Captured thus, and made fresh, -her restless feet in their clean white stockings and little strapped -black slippers sticking straight out before her, her starched skirts -stiffly spread, she was told to conduct herself as a young lady of her -years and high position should. - -“Listen to the conversation of the ladies and gentlemen about you,” Mrs. -Hawks counselled her, severely, “instead of to the low talk of those -greasy engineers and pilots you’re always running off to. I declare I -don’t know what your father is thinking of, to allow it. . . . Or read -your book. . . . Then where is it? Where is the book I bought you -especially to read on this trip? You haven’t opened it, I’ll be bound. -. . . Go get it and come back directly.” - -A prissy tale about a female Rollo so prim that Magnolia was sure she -turned her toes out even in her sleep. When she returned with a book (if -she returned at all) it was likely to be of a quite different sort—a -blood-curdling tale of the old days of river banditry—a story, perhaps, -of the rapacious and brutal Murrel and his following of ten hundred -cut-throats sworn to do his evil will; and compared to whom Jesse James -was a philanthropist. The book would have been loaned her by one of the -crew. She adored these bloody tales and devoured them with the avidity -that she always showed for any theme that smacked of the river. It was -snatched away soon enough when it came under her mother’s watchful eye. - -Magnolia loathed the red plush and gilt saloon except at night, when its -gilding and mirrors took on a false glitter and richness from the -kerosene lamps that filled wall brackets and chandeliers. Then it was -that the lady passengers, their daytime alpacas and serges replaced by -silks, sat genteelly conversing, reading, or embroidering. Then, if -ever, the gentlemen twirled their mustachios most fiercely so that the -diamond on the third finger of the right hand sparkled entrancingly. -Magnolia derived a sensory satisfaction from the scene. The rich red of -the carpet fed her, and the yellow glow of the lamps. In her best -cashmere dress of brown with the polonaise cut up the front and around -the bottom in deep turrets she sat alertly watching the elaborate -posturings of the silken ladies and the broadcloth gentlemen. - -Sometimes one of the ladies sang to the hoarse accompaniment of the -ship’s piano, whose tones always sounded as though the Mississippi River -mist had lodged permanently in its chords. The Southern ladies rendered -tinkling and sentimental ballads. The Mid-western wives were wont to -deliver themselves of songs of a somewhat sterner stuff. There was one -song in particular, sung by a plain and falsetto lady hailing from Iowa, -that aroused in Magnolia a savage (though quite reasoning) loathing. It -was entitled Waste Not, Want Not; Or: You Never Miss The Water Till The -Well Runs Dry. Not being a psychologist, Magnolia did not know why, -during the rendition of the first verse and the chorus, she always -longed to tear her best dress into ribbons and throw a barrel of flour -and a dozen hams into the river. The song ran: - - When a child I lived at Lincoln, - With my parents at the farm, - The lessons that my mother taught, - To me were quite a charm. - She would often take me on her knee, - When tired of childish play, - And as she press’d me to her breast, - I’ve heard my mother say: - - Chorus: Waste not, want not, is a maxim I would teach—— - -Escape to the decks or the pilot house was impossible of accomplishment -by night. She extracted what savour she could from the situation. This, -at least, was better than being sent off to bed. All her disorderly life -Magnolia went to bed only when all else failed. Then, too, once in her -tiny cabin she could pose and swoop before the inadequate mirror in -pitiless imitation of the arch alpacas and silks of the red plush -saloon; tapping an imaginary masculine shoulder with a phantom fan; -laughing in an elegant falsetto; grimacing animatedly as she squeaked, -“Deah, yes!” and “Deah, no!” moistening a forelock of her straight black -hair with a generous dressing of saliva wherewith to paste flat to her -forehead the modish spit-curl that graced the feminine adult coiffure. - -But during the day she and her father often contrived to elude the -maternal duenna. With her hand in that of the little captain, she roamed -the boat from stem to stern, from bunkers to pilot house. Down in the -engine room she delightedly heard the sweating engineer denounce the -pilot, decks above him, as a goddam Pittsburgh brass pounder because -that monarch, to achieve a difficult landing, had to ring more bells -than the engineer below thought necessary to an expert. But best of all -Magnolia loved the bright, gay, glass-enclosed pilot house high above -the rest of the boat and reached by the ultimate flight of steep narrow -stairs. From this vantage point you saw the turbulent flood of the -Mississippi, a vast yellow expanse, spread before you and all around -you; for ever rushing ahead of you, no matter how fast you travelled; -sometimes whirling about in its own tracks to turn and taunt you with -your unwieldy ponderosity; then leaping on again. Sometimes the waters -widened like a sea so that one could not discern the dim shadow of the -farther shore; again they narrowed, snake-like, crawling so craftily -that the side-wheeler boomed through the chutes with the willows -brushing the decks. You never knew what lay ahead of you—that is, -Magnolia never knew. That was part of the fascination of it. The river -curved and twisted and turned and doubled. Mystery always lay just -around the corner of the next bend. But her father knew. And Mr. Pepper, -the chief pilot, always knew. You couldn’t believe that it was possible -for any human brain to remember the things that Captain Andy and Mr. -Pepper knew about that treacherous, shifting, baffling river. Magnolia -delighted to test them. She played a game with Mr. Pepper and with her -father, thus: - -“What’s next?” - -“Kinney’s woodpile.” - -“Now what?” - -“Ealer’s Bend.” - -“What’ll be there, when we come round that corner?” - -“Patrie’s Plantation.” - -“What’s around that bend?” - -“An old cottonwood with one limb hanging down, struck by lightning.” - -“What’s coming now?” - -“A stump sticking out of the water at Higgin’s Point.” - -They always were right. It was magic. It was incredible. They knew, too, -the depth of the water. They could point out a spot and say, “That used -to be an island—Buckle’s Island.” - -“But it’s water! It couldn’t be an island. It’s water. We’re—why, we’re -riding on it now.” - -Mr. Pepper would persist, unmoved. “Used to be an island.” Or, pointing -again, “Two years ago I took her right down through there where that -point lays.” - -“But it’s dry land. You’re just fooling, aren’t you, Mr. Pepper? Because -you couldn’t take a boat on dry land. It’s got things growing on it! -Little trees, even. So how could you?” - -“Water there two years ago—good eleven foot.” - -Small wonder Magnolia was early impressed with this writhing monster -that, with a single lash of its tail, could wipe a solid island from the -face of the earth, or with a convulsion of its huge tawny body spew up a -tract of land where only water had been. - -Mr. Pepper had respect for his river. “Yessir, the Mississippi and this -here Nile, over in Egypt, they’re a couple of old demons. I ain’t seen -the Nile River, myself. Don’t expect to. This old river’s enough for one -man to meet up with in his life. Like marrying. Get to learn one woman’s -ways real good, you know about all there is to women and you got about -all you can do one lifetime.” - -Not at all the salty old graybeard pilot of fiction, this Mr. Pepper. A -youth of twenty-four, nerveless, taciturn, gentle, profane, charming. -His clear brown eyes, gazing unblinkingly out upon the river, had tiny -golden flecks in them, as though something of the river itself had taken -possession of him, and become part of him. Born fifty years later, he -would have been the steel stuff of which aviation aces are made. - -Sometimes, in deep water, Mr. Pepper actually permitted Magnolia to turn -the great pilot wheel that measured twice as high as she. He stood -beside her, of course; or her father, if he chanced to be present, stood -behind her. It was thrilling, too, when her father took the wheel in an -exciting place—where the water was very shoal, perhaps; or where the -steamer found a stiff current pushing behind her, and the tricky dusk -coming on. At first it puzzled Magnolia that her father, omnipotent in -all other parts of the _Creole Belle_, should defer to this stripling; -should actually be obliged, on his own steamer, to ask permission of the -pilot to take the wheel. They were both beautifully formal and polite -about it. - -“What say to my taking her a little spell, Mr. Pepper?” - -“Not at all, Captain Hawks. Not at all, sir,” Mr. Pepper would reply, -cordially if ambiguously. His gesture as he stepped aside and -relinquished the wheel was that of one craftsman who recognizes and -respects the ability of another. Andy Hawks had been a crack Mississippi -River pilot in his day. And then to watch Captain Andy skinning the -wheel—climbing it round and round, hands and feet, and looking for all -the world like a talented little monkey. - -Magnolia even learned to distinguish the bells by tone. There was the Go -Ahead, soprano-voiced. Mr. Pepper called it the Jingle. He explained to -Magnolia: - -“When I give the engineer the Jingle, why, he knows I mean for him to -give her all she’s got.” Strangely enough, the child, accustomed to the -sex of boats and with an uncannily quick comprehension of river jargon, -understood him, nodded her head so briskly that the hand-made curls -jerked up and down like bell-ropes. “Sometimes it’s called the Soprano. -Then the Centre Bell—the Stopping Bell—that’s middle tone. About alto. -This here, that’s the Astern Bell—the backup bell. That’s bass. The -Boom-Boom, you call it. Here’s how you can remember them: The Jingle, -the Alto, and the Boom-Boom.” - -A charming medium through which to know the river, Mr. Pepper. An -enchanting place from which to view the river, that pilot house. -Magnolia loved its shining orderliness, disorderly little creature that -she was. The wilderness of water and woodland outside made its -glass-enclosed cosiness seem the snugger. Oilcloth on the floor. You -opened the drawer of the little table and there lay Mr. Pepper’s pistol, -glittering and sinister; and Mr. Pepper’s Pilot Rules. Magnolia lingered -over the title printed on the brick-coloured paper binding: - - PILOT RULES - FOR THE - RIVERS WHOSE WATERS FLOW INTO THE GULF OF - MEXICO AND THEIR TRIBUTARIES - AND FOR - THE RED RIVER OF THE NORTH - -The Red River of the North! There was something in the words that -thrilled her; sent little delicious prickles up and down her spine. - -There was a bright brass cuspidor. The expertness with which Mr. Pepper -and, for that matter, Captain Hawks himself, aimed for the centre of -this glittering receptacle and sustained a one-hundred-per-cent. record -was as fascinating as any other feature of this delightful place. -Visitors were rarely allowed up there. Passengers might peer wistfully -through the glass enclosure from the steps below, but there they were -confronted by a stern and forbidding sign which read: No Visitors -Allowed. Magnolia felt very superior and slightly contemptuous as she -looked down from her vantage point upon these unfortunates below. -Sometimes, during mid-watch, a very black texas-tender in a very white -starched apron would appear with coffee and cakes or ices for Mr. -Pepper. Magnolia would have an ice, too, shaving it very fine to make it -last; licking the spoon luxuriously with little lightning flicks of her -tongue and letting the frozen sweet slide, a slow delicious trickle, -down her grateful throat. - -“Have another cake, Miss Magnolia,” Mr. Pepper would urge her. “A pink -one, I’d recommend, this time.” - -“I don’t hardly think my mother——” - -Mr. Pepper, himself, surprisingly enough, the father of twins, was sure -her mother would have no objection; would, if present, probably -encourage the suggestion. Magnolia bit quickly into the pink cake. A -wild sense of freedom flooded her. She felt like the river, rushing -headlong on her way. - -To be snatched from this ecstatic state was agony. The shadow of the -austere and disapproving maternal figure loomed always just around the -corner. At any moment it might become reality. The knowledge that this -was so made Magnolia’s first taste of Mississippi River life all the -more delicious. - - - - - III - - -Grim force though she was, it would be absurd to fix upon Parthy Ann -Hawks as the sole engine whose relentless functioning cut down the -profits of Captain Andy’s steamboat enterprise. That other metal -monster, the railroad, with its swift-turning wheels and its growing -network of lines, was weaving the doom of river traffic. The Prince -Albert coats and the alpaca basques were choosing a speedier, if less -romantic, way to travel from Natchez to Memphis, or from Cairo to -Vicksburg. Illinois, Minnesota, and Iowa business men were favouring a -less hazardous means of transporting their merchandise. Farmers were -freighting their crops by land instead of water. The river steamboat was -fast becoming an anachronism. The jig, Captain Andy saw, was up. Yet the -river was inextricably interwoven with his life—was his life, actually. -He knew no other background, was happy in no other surroundings, had -learned no other trade. These streams, large and small of the North, the -Mid-west, the South, with their harsh yet musical Indian -names—Kaskaskia, Cahokia, Yazoo, Monongahela, Kanawha—he knew in every -season: their currents, depths, landings, banks, perils. The French -strain in him on the distaff side did not save him from pronouncing the -foreign names of Southern rivers as murderously as did the other -rivermen. La Fourche was the Foosh. Bayou Teche was Bayo Tash. As for -names such as Plaquemine, Paincourteville, and Thibodaux—they emerged -mutilated beyond recognition, with entire syllables lopped off, and flat -vowels protruding everywhere. Anything else would have been considered -affected. - -Captain Andy thought only in terms of waterways. Despite the prim little -house in Thebes, home, to Andy, was a boat. Towns and cities were to him -mere sources of supplies and passengers, set along the river banks for -the convenience of steamboats. He knew every plank in every -river-landing from St. Paul to Baton Rouge. As the sky is revealed, a -printed page, to the astronomer, so Andy Hawks knew and interpreted -every reef, sand bar, current, and eddy in the rivers that drained the -great Mississippi Basin. And of these he knew best of all the -Mississippi herself. He loved her, feared her, respected her. Now her -courtiers and lovers were deserting her, one by one, for an -iron-throated, great-footed, brazen-voiced hussy. Andy, among the few, -remained true. - -To leave the river—to engage, perforce, in some landlubberly pursuit -was to him unthinkable. On the rivers he was a man of consequence. As a -captain and pilot of knowledge and experience his opinion was deferred -to. Once permanently ashore, penduluming prosaically between the precise -little household and some dull town job, he would degenerate and wither -until inevitably he who now was Captain Andy Hawks, owner and master of -the steamboat _Creole Belle_, would be known merely as the husband of -Parthy Ann Hawks, that Mistress of the Lace Curtains, Priestess of the -Parlour Carpet, and Keeper of the Kitchen Floor. All this he did not -definitely put into words; but he sensed it. - -He cast about in his alert mind, and made his plans craftily, and put -them warily, for he knew the force of Parthenia’s opposition. - -“I see here where old Ollie Pegram’s fixing to sell his show boat.” He -was seated in the kitchen, smoking his pipe and reading the local -newspaper. “_Cotton Blossom_, she’s called.” - -Parthy Ann was not one to simulate interest where she felt none. -Bustling between stove and pantry she only half heard him. “Well, what -of it?” - -Captain Andy rattled the sheet he was holding, turned a page leisurely, -meanwhile idly swinging one leg, as he sat with knees crossed. Each -movement was calculated to give the effect of casualness. - -“Made a fortune in the show-boat business, Ollie has. Ain’t a town on -the river doesn’t wait for the _Cotton Blossom_. Yessir. Anybody buys -that outfit is walking into money.” - -“Scallywags.” Thus, succinctly, Parthenia thought to dismiss the subject -while voicing her opinion of water thespians. - -“Scallywags nothing! Some of the finest men on the river in the -show-boat business. Look at Pegram! Look at Finnegan! Look at Hosey -Watts!” - -It was Mrs. Hawks’ habit to express contempt by reference to a ten-foot -pole, this being an imaginary implement of disdain and a weapon of -defence which was her Excalibur. She now announced that not only would -she decline to look at the above-named gentlemen, but that she could not -be induced to touch any of them with a ten-foot pole. She concluded with -the repetitious “Scallywags!” and evidently considered the subject -closed. - -Two days later, the first pang of suspicion darted through her when Andy -renewed the topic with an assumption of nonchalance that failed to -deceive her this time. It was plain to this astute woman that he had -been thinking concentratedly about show boats since their last brief -conversation. It was at supper. Andy should have enjoyed his home-cooked -meals more than he actually did. They always were hot, punctual, -palatable. Parthenia had kept her cooking hand. Yet he often ate -abstractedly and unappreciatively. Perhaps he missed the ceremony, the -animation, the sociability that marked the meal hours in the dining -saloon of the _Creole Belle_. The Latin in him, and the unconsciously -theatrical in him, loved the mental picture of himself in his blue coat -with brass buttons and gold braid, seated at the head of the long table -while the alpacas twittered, “Do you think so, Captain Hawks?” and the -Prince Alberts deferred to him with, “What’s your opinion, sir?” and the -soft-spoken black stewards in crackling white jackets bent over him with -steaming platters and tureens. - -Parthenia did not hold with conversation at meal time. Andy and Magnolia -usually carried on such talk as occurred at table. Strangely enough, -there was in his tone toward the child none of the usual patronizing -attitude of the adult. No what-did-you-learn-at-school; no -have-you-been-a-good-girl-to-day. They conversed like two somewhat rowdy -grown-ups, constantly chafed by the reprovals of the prim Parthenia. It -was a habit of Andy seldom to remain seated in his chair throughout a -meal. Perhaps this was due to the fact that he frequently was called -away from table while in command of his steamer. At home his jumpiness -was a source of great irritation to Mrs. Hawks. Her contributions to the -conversation varied little. - -“Pity’s sake, Hawks, sit still! That’s the third time you’ve been up and -down, and supper not five minutes on the table. . . . Eat your potato, -Magnolia, or not a bite of cup cake do you get. . . . That’s a fine -story to be telling a child, I must say, Andy Hawks. . . . Can’t you -talk of anything but a lot of good-for-nothing drunken river -roustabouts! . . . Drink your milk, Maggie. . . . Oh, stop fidgeting, -Hawks! . . . Don’t cut away all the fat like that, Magnolia. No wonder -you’re so skinny I’m ashamed of you and the neighbours think you don’t -get enough to eat.” - -Like a swarm of maddening mosquitoes, these admonitions buzzed through -and above and around the conversation of the man and the child. - -To-night Andy’s talk dwelt on a dramatic incident that had been told him -that day by the pilot of the show boat _New Sensation_, lately burned to -the water’s edge. He went on vivaciously, his bright brown eyes -sparkling with interest and animation. Now and then, he jumped up from -the table the better to illustrate a situation. Magnolia was following -his every word and gesture with spellbound attention. She never had been -permitted to see a show-boat performance. When one of these gay water -travellers came prancing down the river, band playing, calliope tooting, -flags flying, towboat puffing, bringing up with a final flare and -flourish at the landing, there to tie up for two or three days, or even, -sometimes, for a week, Magnolia was admonished not to go near it. Other -children of the town might swarm over it by day, enchanted by its -mystery, enthralled by its red-coated musicians when the band marched up -the main street; might even, at night, witness the performance of a play -and actually stay for the song-and-dance numbers which comprised the -“concert” held after the play, and for which an additional charge of -fifteen cents was made. - -Magnolia hungered for a glimpse of these forbidden delights. The little -white house at Thebes commanded a view up the river toward Cape -Girardeau. At night from her bedroom window she could see the lights -shining golden yellow through the boat’s many windows, was fired with -excitement at sight of the kerosene flares stuck in the river bank to -light the way of the lucky, could actually hear the beat and blare of -the band. Again and again, in her very early childhood, the spring -nights when the show boats were headed downstream and the autumn nights -when they were returning up river were stamped indelibly on her mind as -she knelt in her nightgown at the little window of the dark room that -faced the river with its dazzling and forbidden spectacle. Her bare feet -would be as icy as her cheeks were hot. Her ears were straining to catch -the jaunty strains of the music, and her eyes tried to discern the faces -that passed under the weird glow of the torch flares. Usually she did -not hear the approaching tread of discovery until the metallic, -“Magnolia Hawks, get into your bed this very minute!” smote cruelly on -her entranced ears. Sometimes she glimpsed men and women of the -show-boat troupe on Front Street or Third Street, idling or shopping. -Occasionally you saw them driving in a rig hired from Deffler’s Livery -Stable. They were known to the townspeople as Show Folks, and the term -carried with it the sting of opprobrium. You could mark them by -something different in their dress, in their faces, in the way they -walked. The women were not always young. Magnolia noticed that often -they were actually older than her mother (Parthy was then about -thirty-nine). Yet they looked lively and somehow youthful, though their -faces bore wrinkles. There was about them a certain care-free gaiety, a -jauntiness. They looked, Magnolia decided, as if they had just come from -some interesting place and were going to another even more interesting. -This was rather shrewd of her. She had sensed that the dulness of -village and farm life, the look that routine, drudgery, and boredom -stamp indelibly on the countenance of the farm woman or the village -housewife, were absent in these animated and often odd faces. Once she -had encountered a little group of three—two women and a man—strolling -along the narrow plank sidewalk near the Hawks house. They were eating -fruit out of a bag, sociably, and spitting out the seeds, and laughing -and chatting and dawdling. One of the women was young and very pretty, -and her dress, Magnolia thought, was the loveliest she had ever seen. -Its skirt of navy blue was kilted in the back, and there were puffs up -each side edged with passementerie. On her head, at a saucy angle, was a -chip bonnet of blue, trimmed with beaded lace, and ribbon, and adorable -pink roses. The other woman was much older. There were queer deep lines -in her face—not wrinkles, though Magnolia could not know this, but the -scars left when the gashes of experience have healed. Her eyes were -deep, and dark, and dead. She was carelessly dressed, and the -box-pleated tail of her flounced black gown trailed in the street, so -that it was filmed with a gray coating of dust. The veil wound round her -bonnet hung down her back, imparting a Spanish and mysterious look. The -man, too, though young and tall and not bad-looking, wore an unkempt -look. His garments were ill assorted. His collar boasted no cravat. But -all three had a charming air of insouciance as they strolled up the -tree-shaded village street, laughing and chatting and munching and -spitting out cherry stones with a little childish ballooning of the -cheeks. Magnolia hung on the Hawks fence gate and stared. The older -woman caught her eye and smiled, and immediately Magnolia decided that -she liked her better than she did the pretty, young one, so after a -moment’s grave inspection she smiled in return her sudden, brilliant -wide smile. - -“Look at that child,” said the older woman. “All of a sudden she’s -beautiful.” - -The other two surveyed her idly. Magnolia’s smile had vanished now. They -saw a scrawny sallow little girl, big-eyed, whose jaw conformation was -too plainly marked, whose forehead was too high and broad, and whose -black hair deceived no one into believing that its dank curls were other -than tortured. - -“You’re crazy, Julie,” remarked the pretty girl, without heat; and -looked away, uninterested. - -But between Magnolia and the older woman a filament of live liking had -leaped. “Hello, little girl,” said the older woman. - -Magnolia continued to stare, gravely; said nothing. - -“Won’t you say hello to me?” the woman persisted; and smiled again. And -again Magnolia returned her smile. “There!” the woman exclaimed, in -triumph. “What did I tell you!” - -“Cat’s got her tongue,” the sloppy young man remarked as his -contribution to the conversation. - -“Oh, come on,” said the pretty girl; and popped another cherry into her -mouth. - -But the woman persisted. She addressed Magnolia gravely. “When you grow -up, don’t smile too often; but smile whenever you want anything very -much, or like any one, or want them to like you. But I guess maybe -you’ll learn that without my telling you. . . . Listen, won’t you say -hello to me? H’m?” - -Magnolia melted. “I’m not allowed,” she explained. - -“Not——? Why not? Pity’s sake!” - -“Because you’re show-boat folks. My mama won’t let me talk to show-boat -folks.” - -“Damned little brat,” said the pretty girl, and spat out a cherry stone. -The man laughed. - -With a lightning gesture the older woman took off her hat, stuffed it -under the man’s arm, twisted her abundant hair into a knob off her face, -pulled down her mouth and made a narrow line of her lips, brought her -elbows sharply to her side, her hands clasped, her shoulders suddenly -pinched. - -“Your mama looks like this,” she said. - -“Why, how did you know!” cried Magnolia, amazed. The three burst into -sudden loud laughter. And at that Parthy Hawks appeared at the door, -bristling, protective. - -“Maggie Hawks, come into the house this minute!” - -The laughter of the three then was redoubled. The quiet little village -street rang with it as they continued their leisurely care-free ramble -up the sun-dappled leafy path. - -Now her father, at supper, had a tale to tell of these forbidden -fascinators. The story had been told him that afternoon by Hard Harry -Swager, river pilot, just in at the landing after a thrilling -experience. - -“Seems they were playing at China Grove, on the Chappelia. Yessir. Well, -this girl—La Verne, her name was, or something—anyway, she was on the -stage singing, he says. It was the concert, after the show. She comes -off and the next thing you know there’s a little blaze in the flies. -Next minute she was afire and no saving her.” To one less initiated it -might have been difficult to differentiate in his use of the pronoun, -third person, feminine. Sometimes he referred to the girl, sometimes to -the boat. “Thirty years old if she’s a day and burns like greased paper. -Went up in ten minutes. Hard Harry goes running to the pilot house to -get his clothes. Time he reaches the boiler deck, fire has cut off the -gangway. He tries to lower himself twelve feet from the boiler deck to -the main, and falls and breaks his leg. By that time they were cutting -the towboat away from the _Sensation_ to save her. Did save her, too, -finally. But the _Sensation_ don’t last long’s it takes to tell it. -Well, there he was, and what did they have to do but send four miles -inland for a doctor, and when he comes, the skunk, guess what?” - -“What!” cries Magnolia not merely to be obliging in this dramatic -crisis, but because she is frantic to know. Captain Andy is on his feet -by this time, fork in hand. - -“When the doc comes he takes a look around, and there they all are in -any kind of clothes they could grab or had on. So he says he won’t set -the leg unless he’s paid in advance, twenty-five dollars. ‘Oh, you -won’t, won’t you!’ says Hard Harry, laying there with his broken leg. -And draws. ‘You’ll set it or I’ll shoot yours off so you won’t ever walk -again, you son of a bitch!’” - -“Captain Andy Hawks!” - -He has acted it out. The fork is his gun. Magnolia is breathless. Now -both gaze, stricken, at Mrs. Hawks. Their horror is not occasioned by -the word spoken but by the interruption. - -“Go on!” shouts Magnolia; and bounces up and down in her chair. “Go -_on_!” - -But the first fine histrionic flavour has been poisoned by that -interruption. Andy takes his seat at table. He resumes the eating of his -pork steak and potatoes, but listlessly. Perhaps he is a little ashamed -of the extent to which he has been carried away by his own recital. -“Slipped out,” he mumbled. - -“Well, I should say as much!” Parthy retorted, ambiguously. “What kind -of language can a body expect, you hanging around show-boat riff-raff.” - -Magnolia would not be cheated of her dénouement. “But did he? Did he -shoot it off, or did he fix it, or what? What did he do?” - -“He set it, all right. They gave him his twenty-five and told him to get -the h—— out of there, and he got. But they had to get the boat -out—the towboat they’d saved—and no pilot but Hard Harry. So next day -they put him on the hurricane deck, under a tarpaulin because the rain -was pouring the way it does down there worse than any place in the -world, just about. And with two men steering, he brings the boat to -Baton Rouge seventy-five miles through bayou and Mississippi. Yessir.” - -Magnolia breathed again. - -“And who’s this,” demanded Mrs. Hawks, “was telling you all this -fol-de-rol, did you say?” - -“Swager himself. Harry. Hard Harry Swager, they call him.” (You could -see the ten-foot pole leap of itself into Mrs. Hawks’ hand as her -fingers drummed the tablecloth.) “I was talking to him to-day. Here of -late he’s been with the _New Sensation_. He piloted the _Cotton Blossom_ -for years till Pegram decided to quit. Well, sir! He says five hundred -people a night on the show boat was nothing, and eight hundred on -Saturday nights in towns with a good back-country. Let me tell you right -here and now that runs into money. Say a quarter of ’em’s fifty centers, -a half thirty-five, and the rest twenty-five. The niggers all -twenty-five up in the gallery, course. Naught . . . five times five’s -. . . five and carry the two . . . five times two’s ten carry the one -. . . five . . .” - -Parthy was no fool. She sensed that here threatened a situation -demanding measures even more than ordinarily firm. - -“I may not know much”—another form of locution often favoured by her. -The tone in which it was spoken utterly belied the words; the tone told -you that not only did she know much, but all. “I may not know much, but -this I do know. You’ve got something better to do with your time than -loafing down at the landing like a river rat with that scamp Swager. -Hard Harry! He comes honestly enough by that name, I’ll be bound, if he -never came honestly by anything else in his life. And before the child, -too. Show boats! And language!” - -“What’s wrong with show boats?” - -“Everything, and more, too. A lot of loose-living worthless scallywags, -men _and_ women. Scum, that’s what. Trollops!” Parthy could use a good -old Anglo-Saxon word herself, on occasion. - -Captain Andy made frantic foray among the whiskers. He clawed like a -furious little monkey—always the sign of mental disturbance in him. “No -more scum than your own husband, Mrs. Hawks, ma’am. I used to be with a -show-boat troupe myself.” - -“Pilot, yes.” - -“Pilot be damned.” He was up now and capering like a Quilp. “Actor, Mrs. -Hawks, and pretty good I was, too, time I was seventeen or eighteen. You -ought to’ve seen me in the after-piece. Red Hot Coffee it was called. I -played the nigger. Doubled in brass, too. I pounded the bass drum in the -band, and it was bigger than me.” - -Magnolia was enchanted. She sprang up, flew round to him. “Were you -really? An actor? You never told me. Mama, did you know? Did you know -Papa was an actor on a show boat?” - -Parthy Ann rose in her wrath. Always taller than her husband, she seemed -now to tower above him. He defied her, a terrier facing a mastiff. - -“What kind of talk is this, Andy Hawks! If you’re making up tales to -tease me before the child I’m surprised at you, that thought nothing you -could do would ever surprise me again.” - -“It’s the truth. The _Sunny South_, she was called. Captain Jake -Bofinger, owner. Married ten times, old Jake was. A pretty rough lot we -were in those days, let me tell you. I remember time we——” - -“Not another word, Captain Hawks. And let me tell you it’s a good thing -for you that you kept it from me all these years. I’d never have married -you if I’d known. A show-boat actor!” - -“Oh, yes, you would, Parthy. And glad of the chance.” - -Words. Bickering. Recriminations. Finally, “I’ll thank you not to -mention show boats again in front of the child. You with your La Vernes -and your Hard Harrys and your concerts and broken legs and fires and ten -wives and language and what not! I don’t want to be dirtied by it, nor -the child. . . . Run out and play, Magnolia. . . . And let this be the -last of show-boat talk in this house.” - -Andy breathed deep, clung with both hands to his whiskers, and took the -plunge. “It’s far from being the last of it, Parthy. I’ve bought the -_Cotton Blossom_ from Pegram.” - - - - - IV - - -Many quarrels had marked their married life, but this one assumed -serious proportions. It was a truly sinister note in the pageant of -mismating that passed constantly before Magnolia’s uncomprehending -eyes in childhood. Parthenia had opposed him often, and certainly -always when a new venture or plan held something of the element of -unconventionality. But now the Puritan in her ran rampant. He would -disgrace her before the community. He was ruining the life of his child. -She would return to her native New England. He would not see Magnolia -again. He had explained to her—rather, it had come out piecemeal—that -his new project would necessitate his absence from home for months at a -time. He would be away, surely, from April until November. If Parthy and -the child would live with him on the show boat part of that -time—summers—easy life—lots to see—learn the country—— - -The storm broke, raged, beat about his head, battered his diminutive -frame. He clutched his whiskers and hung on for dear life. In the end he -won. - -All that Parthy ever had in her life of colour, of romance, of change, -he brought her. But for him she would still be ploughing through the -drifts or mud of the New England road on her way to and from the frigid -little schoolhouse. But for him she would still be living her barren -spinster life with her salty old father in the grim coast town whence -she had come. She was to trail through the vine-hung bayous of -Louisiana; float down the generous rivers of the Carolinas, of -Tennessee, of Mississippi, with the silver-green weeping willows misting -the water’s edge. She was to hear the mellow plaintive voices of Negroes -singing on the levees and in cabin doorways as the boat swept by. She -would taste exotic fruits; see stirring sights; meet the fantastic -figures that passed up and down the rivers like shadows drifting in and -out of a weird dream. Yet always she was to resent loveliness; fight the -influence of each new experience; combat the lure of each new face. -Tight-lipped, belligerent, she met beauty and adventure and defied them -to work a change in her. - -For three days, then, following Andy’s stupendous announcement, -Parthenia threatened to leave him, though certainly, in an age that -looked upon the marriage tie as well-nigh indissoluble by any agent -other than death, she could not have meant it, straight-laced as she -was. For another three days she refused to speak to him, conveying her -communications to him through a third person who was, perforce, -Magnolia. “Tell your father thus-and-so.” This in his very presence. -“Ask your father this-and-that.” - -Experience had taught Magnolia not to be bewildered by these tactics; -she was even amused, as at a game. But finally the game wearied her; or -perhaps, child though she was, an instinctive sympathy between her and -her father made her aware of the pain twisting the face of the man. -Suddenly she stamped her foot, issued her edict. “I won’t tell him -another single word for you. It’s silly. I thought it was kind of fun, -but it isn’t. It’s silly for a great big grown-up person like you that’s -a million years old.” - -Andy was absent from home all day long, and often late into the night. -The _Cotton Blossom_ was being overhauled from keel to pilot house. She -was lying just below the landing; painters and carpenters were making -her shipshape. Andy trotted up and down the town and the river bank, -talking, gesticulating, capering excitedly. There were numberless -supplies to be ordered; a troupe to be assembled. He was never without a -slip of paper on which he figured constantly. His pockets and the lining -of his cap bristled with these paper scraps. - -One week following their quarrel Parthy Ann began to evidence interest -in these negotiations. She demanded details. How much had he paid for -that old mass of kindling wood? (meaning, of course, the _Cotton -Blossom_). How many would its theatre seat? What did the troupe number? -What was their route? How many deck-hands? One cook or two? Interspersed -with these questions were grumblings and dire predictions anent money -thrown away; poverty in old age; the advisability of a keeper being -appointed for people whose minds had palpably given way. Still, her -curiosity was obviously intense. - -“Tell you what,” suggested Andy with what he fancied to be infinite -craft. “Get your hat on come on down and take a look at her.” - -“Never,” said Parthenia; and untied her kitchen apron. - -“Well, then, let Magnolia go down and see her. She likes boats, don’t -you, Nola? Same’s her pa.” - -“H’m! Likely I’d let her go,” sniffed Parthy. - -Andy tried another tack. “Don’t you want to come and see where your -papa’s going to live all the months and months he’ll be away from you -and ma?” - -At which Magnolia, with splendid dramatic sense, began to cry wildly and -inconsolably. Parthy remained grim. Yet she must have been immediately -disturbed, for Magnolia wept so seldom as to be considered a queer child -on this count, among many others. - -“Hush your noise,” commanded Parthy. - -Great sobs racked Magnolia. Andy crudely followed up his advantage. “I -guess you’ll forget how your papa looks time he gets back.” - -Magnolia, perfectly aware of the implausibility of any such prediction, -now hurled herself at her father, wrapped her arms about him, and -howled, jerking back her head, beating a tattoo with her heels, -interspersing the howls with piteous supplications not to be left -behind. She wanted to see the show boat; and, with the delightful memory -of the _Creole Belle_ trip fresh in her mind, she wanted to travel on -the _Cotton Blossom_ as she had never wanted anything in her life. Her -eyes were staring and distended; her fingers clutched; her body writhed; -her moans were heart-breaking. She gave a magnificent performance. - -Andy tried to comfort her. The howls increased. Parthy tried stern -measures. Hysteria. The two united then, and alarm brought pleadings, -and pleadings promises, and finally the three sat intertwined, Andy’s -arm about Magnolia and Parthenia; Parthenia’s arm embracing Andy and -Magnolia; Magnolia clinging to both. - -“Come get your hair combed. Mama’ll change your dress. Now stop that -crying.” Magnolia had been shaken by a final series of racking sobs, -real enough now that the mechanics had been started. Her lower lip -quivered at intervals as the wet comb chased the strands of straight -black hair around Mrs. Hawks’ expert forefinger. When finally she -appeared in starched muslin petticoats and second best plaid serge, -there followed behind her Parthy Ann herself bonneted and cloaked for -the street. The thing was done. The wife of a showman. The Puritan in -her shivered, but her curiosity was triumphant even over this. They -marched down Oak Street to the river-landing, the child skipping and -capering in her excitement. There was, too, something of elation in -Andy’s walk. If it had not been for the grim figure at his side and the -restraining hand on his arm, it is not unlikely that the two—father and -child—would have skipped and capered together down to the water’s edge. -Mrs. Hawks’ tread and mien were those of a matronly Christian martyr on -her way to the lions. As they went the parents talked of unimportant -things to which Magnolia properly paid no heed, having had her -way. . . . Gone most of the time. . . . It wouldn’t hurt her any, I tell -you. . . . Learn more in a week than she would in a year out of -books. . . . But they _ain’t_, I tell you. Decent folks as you’d ever -want to see. Married couples, most of ’em. . . . What do you think I’m -running? A bawdy-boat? . . . Oh, language be damned! . . . Now, Parthy, -you’ve got this far, don’t start all over again. . . . There she is! -Ain’t she pretty! Look, Magnolia! That’s where you’re going to -live. . . . Oh, all right, all right! I was just talking . . . - -The _Cotton Blossom_ lay moored to great stobs. Long, and wide and plump -and comfortable she looked, like a rambling house that had taken -perversely to the nautical life and now lay at ease on the river’s broad -breast. She had had two coats of white paint with green trimmings; and -not the least of these green trimmings comprised letters, a foot high, -that smote Parthy’s anguished eye, causing her to groan, and Magnolia’s -delighted gaze, causing her to squeal. There it was in all the finality -of painter’s print: - - CAPT. ANDY HAWKS COTTON BLOSSOM FLOATING PALACE THEATRE - -Parthy gathered her dolman more tightly about her, as though smitten by -a chill. The clay banks of the levee were strewn with cinders and ashes -for a foothold. The steep sides of a river bank down which they would -scramble and up which they would clamber were to be the home path for -these three in the years to come. - -An awninged upper deck, like a cosy veranda, gave the great flatboat a -curiously homelike look. On the main deck, too, the gangplank ended in a -forward deck which was like a comfortable front porch. Pillars, adorned -with scroll-work, supported this. And there, its mouth open in a -half-oval of welcome, was the ticket window through which could be seen -the little box office with its desk and chair and its wall rack for -tickets. There actually were tickets stuck in this, purple and red and -blue. Parthy shut her eyes as at a leprous sight. A wide doorway led -into the entrance hall. There again double doors opened to reveal a -stairway. - -“Balcony stairs,” Andy explained, “and upper boxes. Seat hundred and -fifty to two hundred, easy. Niggers mostly, upstairs, of course.” Parthy -shuddered. An aisle to the right, an aisle to the left of this stairway, -and there was the auditorium of the theatre itself, with its rows of -seats and its orchestra pit; its stage, its boxes, its painted curtain -raised part way so that you saw only the lower half of the Venetian -water scene it depicted; the legs of gondoliers in wooden attitudes; -faded blue lagoon; palace steps. Magnolia knew a pang of disappointment. -True, the boxes bore shiny brass railings and boasted red plush -upholstered seats. - -“But I thought it would be all light and glittery and like a fairy -tale,” she protested. - -“At night,” Andy assured her. He had her warm wriggling little fingers -in his. “At night. That’s when it’s like a fairy tale. When the lamps -are lighted; and all the people; and the band playing.” - -“Where’s the kitchen?” demanded Mrs. Hawks. - -Andy leaped nimbly down into the orchestra pit, stooped, opened a little -door under the stage, and beckoned. Ponderously Parthy followed. -Magnolia scampered after. Dining room and cook’s galley were under the -stage. Great cross-beams hung so low that even Andy was forced to stoop -a little to avoid battering his head against them. Magnolia could touch -them quite easily with her finger-tips. In time it came to seem quite -natural to see the company and crew of the _Cotton Blossom_ entering the -dining room at meal time humbly bent as though in a preliminary attitude -of grace before meat. - -There were two long tables, each accommodating perhaps ten; and at the -head of the room a smaller table for six. - -“This is our table,” Andy announced, boldly, as he indicated the third. -Parthy snorted; but it seemed to the sensitive Andy that in this snort -there was just a shade less resentment than there might have been. -Between dining room and kitchen an opening, the size of a window frame, -had been cut in the wall, and the base of this was a broad shelf for -convenience in conveying hot dishes from stove to table. As the three -passed from dining room to kitchen, Andy tossed over his shoulder -further information for the possible approval of the bristling Parthy. -“Jo and Queenie—she cooks and he waits and washes up and one thing -another—they promised to be back April first, sure. Been with the -_Cotton Blossom_, those two have, ten years and more. Painters been -cluttering up here, and what not. And will you look at the way the -kitchen looks, spite of ’em. Slick’s a whistle. Look at that stove!” -Crafty Andy. - -Parthenia Ann Hawks looked at the stove. And what a stove it was! -Broad-bosomed, ample, vast, like a huge fertile black mammal whose -breast would suckle numberless eager sprawling bubbling pots and pans. -It shone richly. Gazing upon this generous expanse you felt that from -its source could emerge nothing that was not savoury, nourishing, -satisfying. Above it, and around the walls, on hooks, hung rows of pans -and kettles of every size and shape, all neatly suspended by their -pigtails. Here was the wherewithal for boundless cooking. You pictured -whole hams, sizzling; fowls neatly trussed in rows; platoons of brown -loaves; hampers of green vegetables; vast plateaus of pies. Crockery, -thick, white, coarse, was piled, plate on plate, platter on platter, -behind the neat doors of the pantry. A supplementary and redundant -kerosene stove stood obligingly in the corner. - -“Little hot snack at night, after the show,” Andy explained. “Coffee or -an egg, maybe, and no lighting the big wood burner.” - -There crept slowly, slowly over Parthy’s face a look of speculation, and -this in turn was replaced by an expression that was, paradoxically, at -once eager and dreamy. As though aware of this she tried with words to -belie her look. “All this cooking for a crowd. Take a mint of money, -that’s what it will.” - -“Make a mint,” Andy retorted, blithely. A black cat, sleek, lithe, at -ease, paced slowly across the floor, stood a moment surveying the two -with wary yellow eyes, then sidled toward Parthy and rubbed his arched -back against her skirts. “Mouser,” said Andy. - -“Scat!” cried Parthy; but her tone was half-hearted, and she did not -move away. In her eyes gleamed the unholy light of the housewife who -beholds for the first time the domain of her dreams. Jo and Queenie to -boss. Wholesale marketing. Do this. Do that. Perhaps Andy, in his zeal, -had even overdone the thing a little. Suddenly, “Where’s that child! -Where’s—— Oh, my goodness, Hawks!” Visions of Magnolia having fallen -into the river. She was, later, always to have visions of Magnolia -having fallen into rivers so that Magnolia sometimes fell into them out -of sheer perversity as other children, cautioned to remain in the yard, -wilfully run away from home. - -Andy darted out of the kitchen, through the little rabbit-hutch door. -Mrs. Hawks gathered up her voluminous skirts and flew after; scrambled -across the orchestra pit, turned at the sound of a voice, Magnolia’s, -and yet not Magnolia’s, coming from that portion of the stage exposed -below the half-raised curtain. In tones at once throaty, mincing, and -falsely elegant—that arrogant voice which is childhood’s unconscious -imitation of pretence in its elders—Magnolia was reciting nothing in -particular, and bringing great gusto to the rendition. The words were -palpably made up as she went along—“Oh, do you rully think so! . . . My -little girl is very naughty . . . we are rich, oh dear me yes, ice cream -every day for breakfast, dinner, and supper. . . .” She wore her -mother’s dolman which that lady had unclasped and left hanging over one -of the brass railings of a box. From somewhere she had rummaged a bonnet -whose jet aigrette quivered with the earnestness of its wearer’s -artistic effort. The dolman trailed in the dust of the floor. Magnolia’s -right hand was held in a graceful position, the little finger elegantly -crooked. - -“Maggie Hawks, will you come down out of there this instant!” Parthy -whirled on Andy. “There! That’s what it comes to, minute she sets foot -on this sink of iniquity. Play acting!” - -Andy clawed his whiskers, chuckling. He stepped to the proscenium and -held out his arms for the child and she stood looking down at him, -flushed, smiling, radiant. “You’re about as good as your pa was, Nola. -And that’s no compliment.” He swung her to the floor, a whirl of dolman, -short starched skirt and bonnet askew. Then, as Parthy snatched the -dolman from her and glared at the bonnet, he saw that he must create -again a favourable impression—contrive a new diversion—or his recent -gain was lost. A born showman, Andy. - -“Where’d you get that bonnet, Magnolia?” - -“In there.” She pointed to one of a row of doors facing them at the rear -of the stage. “In one of those little bedrooms—cabins—what are they, -Papa?” - -“Dressing rooms, Nola, and bedrooms, too. Want to see them, Parthy?” He -opened a little door leading from the right-hand box to the stage, -crossed the stage followed by the reluctant Parthenia, threw open one of -the doors at the back. There was revealed a tiny cabin holding a single -bed, a diminutive dresser, and washstand. Handy rows of shelves were -fastened to the wall above the bed. Dimity curtains hung at the window. -The window itself framed a view of river and shore. A crudely coloured -calendar hung on the wall, and some photographs and newspaper clippings, -time-yellowed. There was about the little chamber a cosiness, a -snugness, and, paradoxically enough, a sense of space. That was the open -window, doubtless, with its vista of water and sky giving the effect of -freedom. - -“Dressing rooms during the performance,” Andy explained, “and bedrooms -the rest of the time. That’s the way we work it.” - -Mrs. Hawks, with a single glance, encompassed the tiny room and rejected -it. “Expect me to live in a cubby-hole like that!” It was, -unconsciously, her first admission. - -Magnolia, behind her mother’s skirts, was peering, wide-eyed, into the -room. “Why, I _love_ it! Why, I’d love to live in it. Why, look, there’s -a little bed, and a dresser, and a——” - -Andy interrupted hastily. “Course I don’t expect you to live in a -cubby-hole, Parthy. No, nor the child, neither. Just you step along with -me. Now don’t say anything; and stop your grumbling till you see. Put -that bonnet back, Nola, where you got it. That’s wardrobe. Which room’d -you get it out of?” - -Across the stage, then, up the aisle to the stairway that led to the -balcony, Andy leading, Mrs. Hawks following funereally, Magnolia playing -a zigzag game between the rows of seats yet managing mysteriously to -arrive at the foot of the stairs just as they did. The balcony reached, -Magnolia had to be rescued from the death that in Mrs. Hawks’ opinion -inevitably would result from her leaning over the railing to gaze -enthralled on the auditorium and stage below. “Hawks, will you look at -that child! I declare, if I ever get her off this boat alive I’ll never -set foot on it again.” - -But her tone somehow lacked conviction. And when she beheld those -two upper bedrooms forward, leading off the balcony—those two square -roomy bedrooms, as large, actually, as her bedroom in the cottage, -she was lost. The kitchen had scored. But the bedrooms won. They were -connected by a little washroom. Each had two windows. Each held bed, -dresser, rocker, stove. Bedraggled dimity curtains hung at the windows. -Matting covered the floors. Parthy did an astonishing—though -characteristic—thing. She walked to the dresser, passed a practised -forefinger over its surface, examined the finger critically, and uttered -that universal tongue-and-tooth sound indicating disapproval. “An inch -thick,” she then said. “A sight of cleaning this boat will take, I can -tell you. Not a curtain in the place but’ll have to come down and washed -and starched and ironed.” - -Instinct or a superhuman wisdom cautioned Andy to say nothing. From the -next room came a shout of joy. “Is this my room? It’s got a chair that -rocks and a stove with a res’vore and I can see my whole self in the -looking-glass, it’s so big. Is this my room? Is it? Mama!” - -Parthy passed into the next room. “We’ll see. We’ll see. We’ll see.” -Andy followed after, almost a-tiptoe; afraid to break the spell with a -sudden sound. - -“But is it? I want to know. Papa, make her tell me. Look! The window -here is a little door. It’s a door and I can go right out on the -upstairs porch. And there’s the whole river.” - -“I should say as much, and a fine way to fall and drown without anybody -being the wiser.” - -But the child was beside herself with excitement and suspense. She could -endure it no longer; flew to her stern parent and actually shook that -adamantine figure in its dolman and bonnet. “Is it? Is it? Is it?” - -“We’ll see.” A look, then, of almost comic despair flashed between -father and child—a curiously adult look for one of Magnolia’s years. It -said: “What a woman this is! Can we stand it? I can only if you can.” - -Andy tried suggestion. “Could paint this furniture any colour Nola -says——” - -“Blue,” put in Magnolia, promptly. - -“—and new curtains, maybe, with ribbons to match——” He had, among -other unexpected traits, a keen eye for colour and line; a love for -fabrics. - -Parthy said nothing. Her lips were compressed. The look that passed -between Andy and Magnolia now was pure despair, with no humour to -relieve it. So they went disconsolately out of the door; crossed the -balcony, clumped down the stairs, like mutes at a funeral. At the foot -of the stairs they heard voices from without—women’s voices, high and -clear—and laughter. The sounds came from the little porch-like deck -forward. Parthy swooped through the door; had scarcely time to gaze upon -two sprightly females in gay plumage before both fell upon her lawful -husband Captain Andy Hawks and embraced him. And the young pretty one -kissed him on his left-hand mutton-chop whisker. And the older plain one -kissed him on the right-hand mutton-chop whisker. And, “Oh, dear Captain -Hawks!” they cried. “Aren’t you surprised to see us! And happy! Do say -you’re happy. We drove over from Cairo specially to see you and the -_Cotton Blossom_. Doc’s with us.” - -Andy flung an obliging arm about the waist of each and gave each armful -a little squeeze. “Happy ain’t the word.” And indeed it scarcely seemed -to cover the situation; for there stood Parthy viewing the three -entwined, and as she stood she seemed to grow visibly taller, broader, -more ominous, like a menacing cloud. Andy’s expression was a protean -thing in which bravado and apprehension battled. - -Magnolia had recognized them at once as the pretty young woman in the -rose-trimmed hat and the dark woman who had told her not to smile too -often that day when, in company with the sloppy young man, they had -passed the Hawks house, laughing and chatting and spitting cherry stones -idly and comfortably into the dust of the village street. So she now -took a step forward from behind her mother’s voluminous skirts and made -a little tentative gesture with one hand toward the older woman. And -that lively female at once said, “Why, bless me! Look, Elly! It’s the -little girl!” - -Elly looked. “What little girl?” - -“The little girl with the smile.” And at that, quite without -premeditation, and to her own surprise, Magnolia ran to her and put her -hand in hers and looked up into her strange ravaged face and smiled. -“There!” exclaimed the woman, exactly as she had done that first time. - -“Maggie Hawks!” came the voice. - -And, “Oh, my God!” exclaimed the one called Elly, “it’s the——” sensed -something dangerous in the air, laughed, and stopped short. - -Andy extricated himself from his physical entanglements and attempted to -do likewise with the social snarl that now held them all. - -“Meet my wife Mrs. Hawks. Parthy, this is Julie Dozier, female half of -our general business team and one of the finest actresses on the river -besides being as nice a little lady as you’d meet in a month of -Sundays. . . . This here little beauty is Elly Chipley—Lenore La Verne -on the bills. Our ingénue lead and a favourite from Duluth to New -Orleans. . . . Where’s Doc?” - -At which, with true dramatic instinct, Doc appeared scrambling down the -cinder path toward the boat; leaped across the gangplank, poised on one -toe, spread his arms and carolled, “Tra-da!” A hard-visaged man of about -fifty-five, yet with kindness, too, written there; the deep-furrowed, -sad-eyed ageless face of the circus shillaber and showman. - -“Girls say you drove over. Must be flush with your spondulicks, -Doc. . . . Parthy, meet Doc. He’s got another name, I guess, but -nobody’s ever used it. Doc’s enough for anybody on the river. Doc goes -ahead of the show and bills us and does the dirty work, don’t you, Doc?” - -“That’s about the size of it,” agreed Doc, and sped sadly and accurately -a comet of brown juice from his lips over the boat’s side into the -river. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.” - -Andy indicated Magnolia. “Here’s my girl Magnolia you’ve heard me talk -about.” - -“Well, well! Lookit them eyes! They oughtn’t to go bad in the show -business, little later.” A sound from Parthy who until now had stood a -graven image, a portent. Doc turned to her, soft-spoken, courteous. -“Fixin’ to take a little ride with us for good luck I hope, ma’am, our -first trip out with Cap here?” - -Mrs. Hawks glanced then at the arresting face of Julie Dozier, female -half of our general business team and one of the finest actresses on the -river. Mrs. Hawks looked at Elly Chipley (Lenore La Verne on the bills), -the little beauty and favourite from Duluth to New Orleans. She breathed -deep. - -“Yes. I am.” And with those three monosyllables Parthenia Ann Hawks -renounced the ties of land, of conventionality; forsook the staid -orderliness of the little white-painted cottage at Thebes; shut her ears -to the scandalized gossip of her sedate neighbours; yielded grimly to -the urge of the river and became at last its unwilling mistress. - - - - - V - - -When April came, and the dogwood flashed its spectral white in -the woods, the show boat started. It was the most leisurely and -dream-like of journeys. In all the hurried harried country that -still was intent on repairing the ravages of a Civil War, they -alone seemed to be leading an enchanted existence, suspended on -another plane. Miles—hundreds—thousands of miles of willow-fringed -streams flowing aquamarine in the sunlight, olive-green in the shade. -Wild honeysuckle clambering over black tree trunks. Mules. Negroes. -Bare unpainted cabins the colour of the sandy soil itself. Sleepy -little villages blinking drowsily down upon a river which was some -almost forgotten offspring spawned years before by the Mississippi. -The nearest railroad perhaps twenty-five miles distant. - -They floated down the rivers. They floated down the rivers. Sometimes -they were broad majestic streams rolling turbulently to the sea, and -draining a continent. Sometimes they were shallow narrow streams little -more than creeks, through which the _Cotton Blossom_ picked her way as -cautiously as a timid girl picking her way among stepping stones. Behind -them, pushing them maternally along like a fat puffing duck with her -silly little gosling, was the steamboat _Mollie Able_. - -To the people dwelling in the towns, plantations, and hamlets along the -many tributaries of the Mississippi and Ohio, the show boat was no -longer a novelty. It had been a familiar and welcome sight since 1817 -when the first crude barge of that type had drifted down the Cumberland -River. But familiarity with these craft had failed to dispel their -glamour. To the farmers and villagers of the Mid-west; and to the small -planters—black and white—of the South, the show boat meant music, -romance, gaiety. It visited towns whose leafy crypts had never echoed -the shrill hoot of an engine whistle. It penetrated settlements whose -backwoods dwellers had never witnessed a theatrical performance in all -their lives—simple childlike credulous people to whom the make-believe -villainies, heroics, loves, adventures of the drama were so real as -sometimes to cause the _Cotton Blossom_ troupe actual embarrassment. -Often quality folk came to the show boat. The perfume and silks and -broadcloth of the Big House took frequent possession of the lower boxes -and the front seats. - -That first summer was, to Magnolia, a dream of pure delight. Nothing -could mar it except that haunting spectre of autumn when she would have -to return to Thebes and to the ordinary routine of a little girl in a -second best pinafore that was donned for school in the morning and -thriftily replaced by a less important pinafore on her return from -school in the late afternoon. But throughout those summer months -Magnolia was a fairy princess. She was Cinderella at the ball. She shut -her mind to the horrid certainty that the clock would inevitably strike -twelve. - -Year by year, as the spell of the river grew stronger and the easy -indolence of the life took firmer hold, Mrs. Hawks and the child spent -longer and longer periods on the show boat; less and less time in the -humdrum security of the cottage ashore. Usually the boat started in -April. But sometimes, when the season was mild, it was March. Mrs. Hawks -would announce with a good deal of firmness that Magnolia must finish -the school term, which ended in June. Later she and the child would join -the boat wherever it happened to be showing at the time. - -“Couple of months missed won’t hurt her,” Captain Andy would argue, -loath as always to be separated from his daughter. “May’s the grandest -month on the rivers—and April. Everything coming out fresh. Outdoors -all day. Do her good.” - -“I may not know much, but this I do know, Andy Hawks: No child of mine -is going to grow up an ignoramus just because her father has nothing -better to do than go galumphing around the country with a lot of -riff-raff.” - -But in the end, when the show boat started its leisurely journey, there -was Mrs. Hawks hanging fresh dimity curtains; bickering with Queenie; -preventing, by her acid presence, the possibility of a too-saccharine -existence for the members of the _Cotton Blossom_ troupe. In her old -capacity as school teacher, Parthy undertook the task of carrying on -Magnolia’s education during these truant spring months. It was an -acrimonious and painful business ending, almost invariably, in temper, -tears, disobedience, upbraidings. Unconsciously Andy Hawks had done much -for the youth of New England when he ended Parthy’s public teaching -career. - -“Nine times seven, I said. . . . No, it isn’t! Just because fifty-six -was the right answer last time it isn’t right every time. That was seven -times eight and I’ll thank you to look at the book and not out of the -window. I declare, Maggie Hawks, sometimes I think you’re downright -simple.” - -Magnolia’s under lip would come out. Her brow was lowering. She somehow -always looked her plainest and sallowest during these sessions with her -mother. “I don’t care what nine times seven is. Elly doesn’t know, -either. I asked her and she said she never had nine of anything, much -less nine times seven of anything; and Elly’s the most beautiful person -in the world, except Julie sometimes—and me when I smile. And my name -isn’t Maggie Hawks, either.” - -“I’d like to know what it is if it isn’t. And if you talk to me like -that again, young lady, I’ll smack you just as sure as I’m sitting -here.” - -“It’s Magnolia—Magnolia—uh—something beautiful—I don’t know what. -But not Hawks. Magnolia—uh——” a gesture with her right hand meant to -convey some idea of the exquisiteness of her real name. - -Mrs. Hawks clapped a maternal hand to her daughter’s somewhat bulging -brow, decided that she was feverish, needed a physic, and promptly -administered one. - -As for geography, if Magnolia did not learn it, she lived it. She came -to know her country by travelling up and down its waterways. She learned -its people by meeting them, of all sorts and conditions. She learned -folkways; river lore; Negro songs; bird calls; pilot rules; profanity; -the art of stage make-up; all the parts in the _Cotton Blossom_ troupe’s -repertoire including East Lynne, Lady Audley’s Secret, Tempest and -Sunshine, Spanish Gipsy, Madcap Margery, and Uncle Tom’s Cabin. - -There probably was much that was sordid about the life. But to the -imaginative and volatile little girl of ten or thereabouts it was a -combination playhouse, make-believe theatre, and picnic jaunt. Hers were -days of enchantment—or would have been were it not for the practical -Parthy who, iron woman that she was, saw to it that the child was -properly fed, well clothed, and sufficiently refreshed by sleep. But -Parthy’s interests now were too manifold and diverse to permit of her -accustomed concentration on Magnolia. She had an entire boatload of -people to boss—two boatloads, in fact, for she did not hesitate to -investigate and criticize the manners and morals of the crew that manned -the towboat _Mollie Able_. A man was never safe from her as he sat -smoking his after-dinner pipe and spitting contemplatively into the -river. It came about that Magnolia’s life was infinitely more free -afloat than it had ever been on land. - -Up and down the rivers the story went that the _Cotton Blossom_ was the -sternest-disciplined, best-managed, and most generously provisioned boat -in the business. And it was notorious that a sign back-stage and in each -dressing room read: “No lady of the company allowed on deck in a -wrapper.” It also was known that drunkenness on the _Cotton Blossom_ was -punished by instant dismissal; that Mrs. Captain Andy Hawks was a holy -terror; that the platters of fried chicken on Sunday were inexhaustible. -All of this was true. - -Magnolia’s existence became a weird mixture of lawlessness and order; of -humdrum and fantasy. She slipped into the life as though she had been -born to it. Parthy alone kept her from being utterly spoiled by the -members of the troupe. - -Mrs. Hawks’ stern tread never adjusted itself to the leisurely rhythm of -the show boat’s tempo. This was obvious even to Magnolia. The very first -week of their initial trip she had heard her mother say briskly to -Julie, “What time is it?” Mrs. Hawks was marching from one end of the -boat to the other, intent on some fell domestic errand of her own. -Julie, seated in a low chair on deck, sewing and gazing out upon the -yellow turbulence of the Mississippi, had replied in her deep indolent -voice, without glancing up, “What does it matter?” - -The four words epitomized the divinely care-free existence of the -_Cotton Blossom_ show-boat troupe. - -Sometimes they played a new town every night. Sometimes, in regions that -were populous and that boasted a good back-country, they remained a -week. In such towns, as the boat returned year after year until it -became a recognized institution, there grew up between the show-boat -troupe and the townspeople a sort of friendly intimacy. They were warmly -greeted on their arrival; sped regretfully on their departure. They -almost never travelled at night. Usually they went to bed with the sound -of the water slap-slapping gently against the boat’s flat sides, and -proceeded down river at daybreak. This meant that constant warfare raged -between the steamboat crew of the _Mollie Able_ and the show-boat troupe -of the _Cotton Blossom_. The steamer crew, its work done, retired early, -for it must be up and about at daybreak. It breakfasted at four-thirty -or five. The actors never were abed before midnight or one o’clock and -rose for a nine o’clock breakfast. They complained that the steamer -crew, with its bells, whistles, hoarse shouts, hammerings, puffings, and -general to-do attendant upon casting off and getting under way, robbed -them of their morning sleep. The crew grumbled and cursed as it tried to -get a night’s rest in spite of the noise of the band, the departing -audience, the midnight sociability of the players who, still at high -tension after their night’s work, could not yet retire meekly to bed. - -“Lot of damn scenery chewers,” growled the crew, turning in sleep. - -“Filthy roustabouts,” retorted the troupers, disturbed at dawn. “Yell -because they can’t talk like human beings.” - -They rarely mingled, except such members of the crew as played in the -band; and never exchanged civilities. This state of affairs lent spice -to an existence that might otherwise have proved too placid for comfort. -The bickering acted as a safety valve. - -It all was, perhaps, the worst possible environment for a skinny, -high-strung, and sensitive little girl who was one-quarter French. But -Magnolia thrived on it. She had the solid and lumpy Puritanism of -Parthy’s presence to counteract the leaven of her volatile father. This -saved her from being utterly consumed. - -The life was at once indolent and busy. Captain Andy, scurrying hither -and thither, into the town, up the river bank, rushing down the aisle at -rehearsal to squeak a false direction to the hard-working company, -driving off into the country to return in triumph laden with farm -produce, was fond of saying, “We’re just like one big happy family.” - -Captain Andy knew and liked good food (the Frenchman in him). They ate -the best that the countryside afforded—not a great deal of meat in the -height of summer when they were, perhaps, playing the hot humid Southern -river towns, but plenty of vegetables and fruit—great melons bought -from the patch with the sun still hot on their rounded bulging sides, -and then chilled to dripping deliciousness before eating; luscious yams; -country butter and cream. They all drank the water dipped out of the -river on which they happened to be floating. They quaffed great -dippersful of the Mississippi, the Ohio, and even the turbid Missouri, -and seemed none the worse for it. At the stern was the settling barrel. -Here the river water, dipped up in buckets, was left to settle before -drinking. At the bottom of this receptacle, after it was three-quarters -empty, one might find a rich layer of Mississippi silt intermingled with -plummy odds and ends of every description including, sometimes, a -sizable catfish. - -In everything but actual rehearsing and playing, Magnolia lived the life -of the company. The boat was their home. They ate, slept, worked, played -on it. The company must be prompt at meal time, at rehearsals, and at -the evening performances. There all responsibility ended for them. - -Breakfast was at nine; and under Parthy’s stern régime this meant nine. -They were a motley lot as they assembled. In that bizarre setting the -homely, everyday garb of the men and women took on a grotesque aspect. -It was as though they were dressed for a part. As they appeared in the -dining room, singly, in couples, or in groups, with a cheerful or a dour -greeting, depending on the morning mood of each, an onlooker could think -only of the home life of the Vincent Crummleses. Having seen Elly the -night before as Miss Lenore La Verne in the golden curls, short skirts, -and wide-eyed innocence of Bessie, the backwoodsman’s daughter, who -turned out, in the last act, to be none other than the Lady Clarice -Trelawney, carelessly mislaid at birth, her appearance at breakfast was -likely to have something of the shock of disillusionment. The baby stare -of her great blue eyes was due to near-sightedness to correct which she -wore silver-rimmed spectacles when not under the public gaze. Her -breakfast jacket, though frilly, was not of the freshest, and her kid -curlers were not entirely hidden by a silk-and-lace cap. Elly was, -despite these grotesqueries, undeniably and triumphantly pretty, and -thus arrayed gave the effect of a little girl mischievously tricked out -in her grandmother’s wardrobe. Her husband, known as Schultzy in private -and Harold Westbrook on the bills, acted as director of the company. He -was what is known in actor’s parlance as a raver, and his method of -acting was designated in the show-boat world as spitting scenery. A -somewhat furtive young man in very tight pants and high collar always a -trifle too large. He was a cuff-shooter, and those cuffs were secured -and embellished with great square shiny chunks of quartz-like stuff -which he frequently breathed upon heavily and then rubbed with his -handkerchief. Schultzy played juvenile leads opposite his wife’s ingénue -rôles; had a real flair for the theatre. - -Sometimes they were in mid-river when the breakfast bell sounded; -sometimes tied to a landing. The view might be plantation, woods, or -small town—it was all one to the _Cotton Blossom_ company, intent on -coffee and bacon. Long before white-aproned Jo, breakfast bell in hand, -emerged head first from the little doorway beneath the stage back of the -orchestra pit, like an amiable black python from its lair, Mrs. Hawks -was on the scene, squinting critically into cream jugs, attacking flies -as though they were dragons, infuriating Queenie with the remark that -the biscuits seemed soggy this morning. Five minutes after the bell was -brandished, Jo had placed the breakfast on the table, hot: oatmeal, -steaming pots of coffee, platters of fried eggs with ham or bacon, -stacks of toast, biscuits fresh from the oven. If you were prompt you -got a hot breakfast; tardy, you took it cold. - -Parthy, whose breakfast cap, designed to hide her curl papers, always -gave the effect, somehow, of a martial helmet, invariably was first at -the small table that stood at the head of the room farthest from the -little doorway. So she must have sat at her schoolhouse desk during -those New England winters, awaiting the tardy morning arrival of -reluctant and chilblained urchins. Magnolia was one of those children -whom breakfast does not interest. Left to her own devices, she would -have ignored the meal altogether. She usually entered late, her black -hair still wet from the comb, her eyes wide with her eagerness to impart -the day’s first bit of nautical news. - -“Doc says there’s a family going down river on a bumboat, and they’ve -got a teensy baby no bigger than a——” - -“Drink your milk.” - -“—doll and he says it must have been born on the boat and he bets it’s -not more than a week old. Oh, I hope they’ll tie up somewhere near——” - -“Eat your toast with your egg.” - -“Do I have to eat my egg?” - -“Yes.” - -If Magnolia was late, Andy was always later. He ate quickly and -abstractedly. As he swallowed his coffee you could almost see his agile -mind darting here and there, so that you wondered how his electric -little body resisted following it as a lesser force follows a -greater—up into the pilot house, down in the engine room, into the -town, leaping ahead to the next landing; dickering with storekeepers for -supplies. He was always the first to finish and was off at a quick trot, -clawing the mutton-chop whiskers as he went. - -Early or late, Julie and Steve came in together, Steve’s great height -ludicrously bent to avoid the low rafters of the dining room. Julie and -Steve were the character team—Julie usually cast as adventuress, older -sister, foil for Elly, the ingénue. Julie was a natural and intuitive -actress, probably the best in the company. Sometimes she watched Elly’s -unintelligent work, heard her slovenly speech and her silly inflections, -and a little contemptuous look would come into her face. - -Steve played villains and could never have kept the job, even in that -uncritical group, had it not been for Julie. He was very big and very -fair, and almost entirely lacking in dramatic sense. A quiet gentle -giant, he always seemed almost grotesquely miscast, his blondeur and his -trusting faithful blue eyes belying the sable hirsuteness of villainy. -Julie coached him patiently, tirelessly. The result was fairly -satisfactory. But a nuance, an inflection, was beyond him. - -“Who has a better right!” his line would be, perhaps. Schultzy, -directing at rehearsal, would endeavour fruitlessly to convey to him its -correct reading. After rehearsal, Julie could be heard going over the -line again and again. - -“Who has a better _right_!” Steve would thunder, dramatically. - -“No, dear. The accent is on ‘better.’ Like this: ‘Who has a _better_ -right!’” - -Steve’s blue eyes would be very earnest, his face red with effort. “Oh, -I see. Come down hard on ‘better,’ huh? ‘Who has a better _right_!’” - -It was useless. - -The two were very much in love. The others in the company sometimes -teased them about this, but not often. Julie and Steve did not respond -to this badinage gracefully. There existed between the two a relation -that made the outsider almost uncomfortable. When they looked at each -other, there vibrated between them a current that sent a little shiver -through the beholder. Julie’s eyes were deep-set and really black, and -there was about them a curious indefinable quality. Magnolia liked to -look into their soft and mournful depths. Her own eyes were dark, but -not like Julie’s. Perhaps it was the whites of Julie’s eyes that were -different. - -Magnolia had once seen them kiss. She had come upon them quietly and -unexpectedly, on deck, in the dusk. Certainly she had never witnessed a -like passage of love between her parents; and even her recent -familiarity with stage romance had not prepared her for it. It was long -before the day of the motion picture fade-out. Olga Nethersole’s famous -osculation was yet to shock a Puritan America. Steve had held Julie a -long long minute, wordlessly. Her slimness had seemed to melt into him. -Julie’s eyes were closed. She was quite limp as he tipped her upright. -She stood thus a moment, swaying, her eyes still shut. When she opened -them they were clouded, misty, as were his. The two then beheld a -staring and fascinated little girl quite palpably unable to move from -the spot. Julie had laughed a little low laugh. She had not flushed, -exactly. Her sallow colouring had taken on a tone at once deeper and -clearer and brighter, like amber underlaid with gold. Her eyes had -widened until they were enormous in her thin dark glowing face. It was -as though a lamp had been lighted somewhere behind them. - -“What makes you look like that?” Magnolia had demanded, being a -forthright young person. - -“Like what?” Julie had asked. - -“Like you do. All—all shiny.” - -“Love,” Julie had answered, quite simply. Magnolia had not in the least -understood; but she remembered. And years later she did understand. - -Besides Elly, the ingénue, Schultzy, juvenile lead, Julie and Steve, -character team, there were Mr. and Mrs. Means, general business team, -Frank, the heavy, and Ralph, general utility man. Elly and Schultzy sat -at table with the Hawkses, the mark of favour customary to their lofty -theatrical eminence. The others of the company, together with Doc, and -three of the band members, sat at the long table in the centre of the -room. Mrs. Means played haughty dowagers, old Kentucky crones, widows, -mothers, and middle-aged females. Mr. Means did bankers, Scrooges, old -hunters and trappers, comics, and the like. - -At the table nearest the door and the kitchen sat the captain and crew -of the _Mollie Able_. There were no morning newspapers to read between -sips of coffee; no mail to open. They were all men and women of -experience. They had knocked about the world. In their faces was a lived -look, together with an expression that had in it a curiously childlike -quality. Captain Andy was not far wrong in his boast that they were like -one big family—a close and jealous family needing no outside stimulus -for its amusement. They were extraordinarily able to amuse themselves. -Their talk was racy, piquant, pungent. The women were, for the most -part, made of sterner stuff than the men—that is, among the actors. -That the men had chosen this drifting, care-free, protected life, and -were satisfied with it, proved that. Certainly Julie was a force -stronger than Steve; Elly made a slave of Schultzy; Mrs. Means was a -sternly maternal wife to her weak-chested and drily humorous little -husband. - -Usually they lingered over their coffee. Jo, padding in from the -kitchen, would bring on a hot potful. - -Julie had a marmoset which she had come by in New Orleans, where it had -been brought from equatorial waters by some swarthy earringed sailor. -This she frequently carried to the table with her, tucked under her arm, -its tiny dark head with the tragic mask of a face peering out from -beneath her elbow. To Mrs. Hawks’ intense disgust, Julie fed the tiny -creature out of her own dish. In her cabin its bed was an old sealskin -muff from whose depths its mournful dark eyes looked appealingly out -from a face that was like nothing so much as that of an old old baby. - -“I declare,” Parthy would protest, almost daily, “it fairly turns a -body’s stomach to see her eating out of the same dish with that dirty -little rat.” - -“Why, Mama! it isn’t a rat any such thing! It’s a monkey and you know -it. Julie says maybe Schultzy can get one for me in New Orleans if I -promise to be very very careful of it.” - -“I’d like to see her try,” grimly putting an end to that dream. - -The women took care of their own cabins. The detail of this occupied -them until mid-morning. Often there was a rehearsal at ten that lasted -an hour or more. Schultzy announced it at breakfast. - -As they swept up a river, or floated down, their approach to the town -was announced by the shrill iron-throated calliope, pride of Captain -Andy’s heart. Its blatant voice heralded the coming of the show boat -long before the boat itself could be seen from the river bank. It had -solid brass keys and could plainly be heard for five miles. George, who -played the calliope, was also the pianist. He was known, like all -calliope players, as the Whistler. Magnolia delighted in watching him at -the instrument. He wore a slicker and a slicker hat and heavy gloves to -protect his hands, for the steam of the whistles turned to hot raindrops -and showered his hands and his head and shoulders as he played. As they -neared the landing, the band, perched atop the show boat, forward, -alternated with the calliope. From the town, hurrying down the streets, -through the woods, dotting the levee and the landing, came eager -figures, black and white. Almost invariably some magic-footed Negro, -overcome by the music, could be seen on the wharf executing the -complicated and rhythmic steps of a double shuffle, his rags flapping -grotesquely about him, his mouth a gash of white. By nine o’clock in the -morning every human being within a radius of five miles knew that the -Cotton Blossom Floating Palace Theatre had docked at the waterfront. - -By half-past eleven the band, augmented by two or three men of the -company who doubled in brass, must be ready for the morning concert on -the main street corner. Often, queerly enough, the town at which they -made their landing was no longer there. The Mississippi, in prankish -mood, had dumped millions of tons of silt in front of the street that -faced the river. Year by year, perhaps, this had gone on, until now that -which had been a river town was an inland town, with a mile of woodland -and sandy road between its main street and the waterfront. The old -serpent now stretched its sluggish yellow coils in another channel. - -By eleven o’clock the band would have donned its scarlet coats with the -magnificent gold braid and brass buttons. The nether part of these -costumes always irritated Magnolia. Her colour-loving eye turned away -from them, offended. For while the upper costume was splendidly martial, -the lower part was composed merely of such everyday pants as the band -members might be wearing at the time of the concert hour, and were a -rude shock to the ravished eye as it travelled from the gay flame and -gold of the jacket and the dashing impudence of the cap. Especially in -the drum major did this offend her. He was called the baton spinner and -wore, instead of the scarlet cap of the other band members, an imposing -(though a slightly mangy) fur shako, very black and shaggy and -fierce-looking, and with a strap under the chin. Pete, the bass drummer, -worked in the engine room. Usually, at the last minute, he washed up -hastily, grabbed his drum, buttoned on his coat, and was dazzlingly -transformed from a sooty crow into a scarlet tanager. - -Up the levee they scrambled—two cornets, a clarinet, a tuba, an alto -(called a peck horn. Magnolia loved its ump-a ump-a ta-ta-ta-ta, ump-a -ump-a ta-ta-ta-ta), a snare drummer who was always called a “sticks,” -and the bass drum, known as the bull. - -When the landing was a waterfront town, the band concert was a pleasant -enough interval in the day’s light duties. But when a mile or more of -dusty road lay between the show boat and the main street it became a -real chore. Carrying their heavy instruments, their scarlet coats open, -their caps in their hands, they would trudge, tired, hot, and sweating, -the long dusty road that led through the woods. When the road became a -clearing and they emerged abruptly into the town, they would button -their coats, mop their hot faces, adjust cap or shako, stiffen their -drooping shoulders. Their gait would change from one of plodding -weariness to a sprightly strut. Their pepper-and-salt, or brown, or -black trousered legs would move with rhythmic precision in time to the -music. From tired, sticky, wilted plodders, they would be transformed -into heroic and romantic figures. Up came the chest of the baton -spinner. His left hand rested elegantly on his hip, his head and -shoulders were held stiffly, arrogantly; his right hand twirled the -glittering baton until it dazzled the eyes like a second noonday sun. -Hotel waitresses, their hearts beating high, scurried to the windows: -children rushed pell-mell from the school yard into the street; clerks -in their black sateen aprons and straw sleevelets stood in the shop -doorways; housewives left their pots a-boil as they lingered a wistful -moment on the front porch, shading their eyes with a work-seamed hand; -loafers spilled out of the saloons and stood agape and blinking. And as -the music blared and soared, the lethargic little town was transformed -for an hour into a gay and lively scene. Even the old white fly-bitten -nags in the streets stepped with a jerky liveliness in their -spring-halted gait, and a gleam came into their lack-lustre eyes as they -pricked up their ears to the sound. Seeking out the busiest corner of -the dull little main street, the band would take their stand, bleating -and blaring, the sun playing magnificently on the polished brass of -their instruments. - -Although he never started with them, at this point Captain Andy always -turned up, having overtaken them in some mysterious way. Perhaps he -swung from tree to tree through the woods. There he was in his blue -coat, his wrinkled baggy linen pants, his white canvas cap with the -leather visor; fussy, nervous, animated, bright-eyed, clawing the -mutton-chop whiskers from side to side. Under his arm he carried a sheaf -of playbills announcing the programmes and extolling the talents of the -players. After the band had played two lively numbers, he would make his -speech, couched in the absurd grandiloquence of the showman. He talked -well. He made his audience laugh, bizarre yet strangely appealing little -figure that he was. “Most magnificent company of players every assembled -on the rivers . . . unrivalled scenery and costumes . . . Miss Lenore La -Verne . . . dazzling array of talent . . . fresh from triumphs in the -East . . . concert after the show . . . singing and dancing . . . bring -the children . . . come one, come all. . . . _Cotton Blossom_ troupe -just one big happy family. . . .” - -The band would strike up again. Captain Andy would whisk through the -crowd with uncanny swiftness distributing his playbills, greeting an -acquaintance met on previous trips, chucking a child under the chin, -extolling the brilliance and gaiety of the performance scheduled for -that evening. At the end of a half hour the band would turn and march -playing down the street. In the dispersing crowd could be discerned -Andy’s agile little figure darting, stooping, swooping as he thriftily -collected again the playbills that, once perused, had been dropped in -the dust by careless spectators. - -Dinner was at four, a hearty meal. Before dinner, and after, the _Cotton -Blossom_ troupe was free to spend its time as it would. The women read -or sewed. There were always new costumes to be contrived, or old ones to -mend and refurbish. The black-hearted adventuress of that morning’s -rehearsal sat neatly darning a pair of her husband’s socks. There was -always the near-by town to visit; a spool of thread to be purchased, a -stamp, a sack of peppermint drops, a bit of muslin, a toothbrush. The -indolence of the life was such that they rarely took any premeditated -exercise. Sometimes they strolled in the woods at springtime when the -first tender yellow-green hazed the forest vistas. They fished, though -the catch was usually catfish. On hot days the more adventuresome of -them swam. The river was their front yard, grown as accustomed as a -stretch of lawn. They were extraordinarily able to amuse themselves. -Hardly one that did not play piano, violin, flute, banjo, mandolin. - -By six o’clock a stir—a little electric unrest—an undercurrent of -excitement could be sensed aboard the show boat. They came sauntering -back from the woods, the town, the levee. They drifted down the aisles -and in and out of their dressing rooms. Years of trouping failed to -still in them the quickened pulse that always came with the approach of -the evening’s performance. - -Down in the orchestra pit the band was tuning up. They would play atop -the show boat on the forward deck before the show, alternating with the -calliope, as in the morning. The daytime lethargy had vanished. On the -stage the men of the company were setting the scene. Hoarse shouts. Lift -’er up there! No—down a little. H’ist her up. Back! Closer! -Dressing-room doors opened and shut. Calls from one room to another. -Twilight came on. Doc began to light the auditorium kerosene lamps whose -metal reflectors sent back their yellow glow. Outside the kerosene -search-light, cunningly rigged on top of the _Mollie Able’s_ pilot -house, threw its broad beam up the river bank to the levee. - -Of all the hours in the day this was the one most beloved of Magnolia’s -heart. She enjoyed the stir, the colour, the music, the people. Anything -might happen on board the Cotton Blossom Floating Palace Theatre between -the night hours of seven and eleven. And then it was that she was -banished to bed. There was a nightly struggle in which, during the first -months of their life on the rivers, Mrs. Hawks almost always won. -Infrequently, by hook or crook, Magnolia managed to evade the stern -parental eye. - -“Let me just stay up for the first act—where Elly shoots him.” - -“Not a minute.” - -“Let me stay till the curtain goes up, then.” - -“You march yourself off to bed, young lady, or no trip to the pirate’s -cave to-morrow with Doc, and so I tell you.” - -Doc’s knowledge of the gruesome history of river banditry and piracy -provided Magnolia with many a goose-skinned hour of delicious terror. -Together they went excursioning ashore in search of the blood-curdling -all the way from Little Egypt to the bayous of Louisiana. - -Lying there in her bed, then, wide-eyed, tense, Magnolia would strain -her ears to catch the words of the play’s dialogue as it came faintly up -to her through the locked door that opened on the balcony; the almost -incredibly naïve lines of a hackneyed play that still held its audience -because of its full measure of fundamental human emotions. Hate, love, -revenge, despair, hope, joy, terror. - -“I will bring you to your knees yet, my proud beauty!” - -“Never. I would rather die than accept help from your blood-stained -hand.” - -Once Parthy, warned by some maternal instinct, stole softly to -Magnolia’s room to find the prisoner flown. She had managed to undo the -special lock with which Mrs. Hawks had thought to make impossible her -little daughter’s access to the upper veranda deck just off her room. -Magnolia had crept around the perilously narrow ledge enclosed by a low -railing just below the upper deck and was there found, a shawl over her -nightgown, knitted bed-slippers on her feet, peering in at the upper -windows together with adventuresome and indigent urchins of the town who -had managed somehow to scramble to this uncertain foothold. - -After fitting punishment, the ban was gradually removed; or perhaps Mrs. -Hawks realized the futility of trying to bring up a show-boat child -according to Massachusetts small-town standards. With natural human -perversity, thereafter, Magnolia frequently betook herself quietly to -bed of her own accord the while the band blared below, guns were fired, -love lost, villains foiled, beauty endangered, and blood spilled. -Curiously enough, she never tired of watching these simple -blood-and-thunder dramas. Automatically she learned every part in every -play in the Cotton Blossom’s repertoire, so that by the time she was -thirteen she could have leaped on the stage at a moment’s notice to play -anything from Simon Legree to Lena Rivers. - -But best of all she liked to watch the audience assembling. -Unconsciously the child’s mind beheld the moving living drama of a -nation’s peasantry. It was such an audience as could be got together in -no other kind of theatre in all the world. Farmers, labourers, Negroes; -housewives, children, yokels, lovers; roustabouts, dock wallopers, -backwoodsmen, rivermen, gamblers. The coal-mining regions furnished the -roughest audiences. The actors rather dreaded the coal towns of West -Virginia or Pennsylvania. They knew that when they played the -Monongahela River or the Kanawha there were likely to be more brawls and -bloodshed off the stage than on. - -By half-past six the levee and landing were already dotted with the -curious, the loafers, the impecunious, the barefoot urchins who had -gathered to snatch such crumbs as could be gathered without pay. They -fed richly on the colour, the crowds, the music, the glimpses they -caught of another world through the show boat’s glowing windows. - -Up the river bank from the boat landing to the top of the bluff flared -kerosene torches suspended on long spikes stuck in the ground. Magnolia -knew they were only kerosene torches, but their orange and scarlet -flames never failed to excite her. There was something barbaric and -splendid about them against the dusk of the sky and woods beyond, the -sinister mystery of the river below. Something savage and elemental -stirred in her at sight of them; a momentary reversion to tribal days, -though she could not know that. She did know that she liked the -fantastic dancing shadows cast by their vivid tongues on the figures -that now teetered and slid and scrambled down the steep clay bank to the -boat landing. They made a weird spectacle of the commonplace. The whites -of the Negroes’ eyes gleamed whiter. The lights turned their cheeks to -copper and bronze and polished ebony. The swarthy coal miners and their -shawled and sallow wives, the farmers of the corn and wheat lands, the -backwoods poor whites, the cotton pickers of Tennessee, Louisiana, -Mississippi, the small-town merchants, the shambling loafers, the lovers -two by two were magically transformed into witches, giants, princesses, -crones, gnomes, Nubians, genii. - -At the little ticket window sat Doc, the astute, or Captain Andy. Later -Mrs. Hawks was found to possess a grim genius for handling -ticket-seeking crowds and the intricacies of ticket rack and small -coins. Those dimes, quarters, and half dollars poured so willingly into -the half-oval of the ticket window’s open mouth found their way there, -often enough, through a trail of pain and sweat and blood. It was all -one to Parthy. Black faces. White faces. Hands gnarled. Hands calloused. -Men in jeans. Women in calico. Babies. Children. Gimme a ticket. I only -got fifteen. How much for her here? Many of them had never seen a -theatre or a play. It was a strangely quiet crowd, usually. Little of -laughter, of shouting. They came to the show boat timid, wide-eyed, -wondering, like children. Two men of the steamboat crew or two of the -musicians acted as ushers. After the first act was over they had often -to assure these simple folk that the play was not yet ended. “This is -just a recess. You come back to your seat in a couple of minutes. No, it -isn’t over. There’s lots more to the show.” - -After the play there was the concert. Doc, Andy, and the ushers passed -up and down between the acts selling tickets for this. They required an -additional fifteen cents. Every member of the _Cotton Blossom_ troupe -must be able to sing, dance, play some musical instrument or give a -monologue—in some way contribute to the half hour of entertainment -following the regular performance. - -Now the band struck up. The kerosene lamps on the walls were turned low. -The scuffling, shuffling, coughing audience became quiet, quiet. There -was in that stillness something of fright. Seamed faces. Furrowed faces. -Drab. Bitter. Sodden. Childlike. Weary. Sometimes, startlingly clear-cut -in that half light, could be glimpsed a profile of some gaunt Southern -labourer, or backwoodsman; and it was the profile of a portrait seen in -some gallery or in the illustration of a book of history. A nose -high-bred, aquiline; a sensitive, haughty mouth; eyes deep-set, -arrogant. Spanish, French, English? The blood of a Stuart, a -Plantagenet? Some royal rogue or adventurer of many many years ago whose -seed, perhaps, this was. - -The curtain rose. The music ceased jerkily, in mid-bar. They became -little children listening to a fairy tale. A glorious world of unreality -opened before their eyes. Things happened. They knew that in life things -did not happen thus. But here they saw, believed, and were happy. -Innocence wore golden curls. Wickedness wore black. Love triumphed, -right conquered, virtue was rewarded, evil punished. - -They forgot the cotton fields, the wheatfields, the cornfields. They -forgot the coal mines, the potato patch, the stable, the barn, the shed. -They forgot the labour under the pitiless blaze of the noonday sun; the -bitter marrow-numbing chill of winter; the blistered skin; the frozen -road; wind, snow, rain, flood. The women forgot for an hour their -washtubs, their kitchen stoves, childbirth pains, drudgery, worry, -disappointment. Here were blood, lust, love, passion. Here were warmth, -enchantment, laughter, music. It was Anodyne. It was Lethe. It was -Escape. It was the Theatre. - - - - - VI - - -It was the theatre, perhaps, as the theatre was meant to be. A place in -which one saw one’s dreams come true. A place in which one could live a -vicarious life of splendour and achievement; winning in love, foiling -the evildoer; a place in which one could weep unashamed, laugh aloud, -give way to emotions long pent-up. When the show was over, and they had -clambered up the steep bank, and the music of the band had ceased, and -there was left only the dying glow of the kerosene flares, you saw them -stumble a little and blink, dazedly, like one rudely awakened to reality -from a lovely dream. - -By eleven the torches had been gathered in. The show-boat lights were -dimmed. Troupers as they were, no member of the _Cotton Blossom_ company -could go meekly off to sleep once the work day was over. They still were -at high tension. So they discussed for the thousandth time the -performance that they had given a thousand times. They dissected the -audience. - -“Well, they were sitting on their hands to-night, all right. Seemed they -never would warm up.” - -“I got a big laugh on that new business with the pillow. Did you -notice?” - -“Notice! Yeh, the next time you introduce any new business you got a -right to leave me know beforehand. I went right up. If Schultzy hadn’t -thrown me my line where’d I been!” - -“I never thought of it till that minute, so help me! I just noticed the -pillow on the sofa and that minute it came to me it’d be a good piece of -business to grab it up like it was a baby in my arms. I didn’t expect -any such laugh as I got on it. I didn’t go to throw you off.” - -From Schultzy, in the rôle of director: “Next time you get one of those -inspirations you try it out at rehearsal first.” - -“God, they was a million babies to-night. Cap, I guess you must of threw -a little something extra into your spiel about come and bring the -children. They sure took you seriously and brought ’em, all right. I’d -just soon play for a orphan asylum and be done with it.” - -Julie was cooking a pot of coffee over a little spirit lamp. They used -the stage as a common gathering place. Bare of scenery now, in readiness -for next night’s set, it was their living room. Stark and shadowy as it -was, there was about it an air of coziness, of domesticity. Mrs. Means, -ponderous in dressing gown and slippers, was heating some oily mess for -use in the nightly ministrations on her frail little husband’s delicate -chest. Usually Andy, Parthy, Elly, and Schultzy, as the _haute monde_, -together with the occasional addition of the _Mollie Able’s_ captain and -pilot, supped together at a table below-stage in the dining room, where -Jo and Queenie had set out a cold collation—cheese, ham, bread, a pie -left from dinner. Parthy cooked the coffee on the kerosene stove. On -stage the women of the company hung their costumes carefully away in the -tiny cubicles provided for such purpose just outside the dressing-room -doors. The men smoked a sedative pipe. The lights of the little town on -the river bank had long been extinguished. Even the saloons on the -waterfront showed only an occasional glow. Sometimes George at the piano -tried out a new song for Elly or Schultzy or Ralph, in preparation for -to-morrow night’s concert. The tinkle of the piano, the sound of the -singer’s voice drifted across the river. Up in the little town in a drab -cottage near the waterfront a restless soul would turn in his sleep and -start up at the sound and listen between waking and sleeping; wondering -about these strange people singing on their boat at midnight; envying -them their fantastic vagabond life. - -A peaceful enough existence in its routine, yet a curiously crowded and -colourful one for a child. She saw town after town whose waterfront -street was a solid block of saloons, one next the other, open day and -night. Her childhood impressions were formed of stories, happenings, -accidents, events born of the rivers. Towns and cities and people came -to be associated in her mind with this or that bizarre bit of river -life. The junction of the Ohio and Big Sandy rivers always was -remembered by Magnolia as the place where the Black Diamond Saloon was -opened on the day the _Cotton Blossom_ played Catlettsburg. -Catlettsburg, typical waterfront town of the times, was like a knot that -drew together the two rivers. Ohio, West Virginia, and Kentucky met just -there. And at the junction of the rivers there was opened with high and -appropriate ceremonies the Black Diamond Saloon, owned by those -picturesque two, Big Wayne Damron and Little Wayne Damron. From the deck -of the _Cotton Blossom_ Magnolia saw the crowd waiting for the opening -of the Black Diamond doors—free drinks, free lunch, river town -hospitality. And then Big Wayne opened the doors, and the crowd surged -back while their giant host, holding the key aloft in his hand, walked -down to the river bank, held the key high for a moment, then hurled it -far into the yellow waters of the Big Sandy. The Black Diamond Saloon -was open for business. - -The shifting colourful life of the rivers unfolded before her ambient -eyes. She saw and learned and remembered. Rough sights, brutal sights; -sights of beauty and colour; deeds of bravery; dirty deeds. Through the -wheat lands, the corn country, the fruit belt, the cotton, the timber -region. The river life flowed and changed like the river itself. Shanty -boats. Bumboats. Side-wheelers. Stern-wheelers. Fussy packets, -self-important. Races ending often in death and disaster. Coal barges. A -fleet of rafts, log-laden. The timber rafts, drifting down to -Louisville, were steered with great sweeps. As they swept down the Ohio, -the timbermen sang their chantey, their great shoulders and strong -muscular torsos bending, straightening to the rhythm of the rowing song. -Magnolia had learned the words from Doc, and when she espied the oarsmen -from the deck of the _Cotton Blossom_ she joined in the song and rocked -with their motion out of sheer dramatic love of it: - - “The river is up, - The channel is deep, - The wind blows steady and strong. - Oh, Dinah’s got the hoe cake on, - So row your boat along. - Down the river, - Down the river, - Down the O-hi-o. - Down the river, - Down the river, - Down the O- - hi- - O!” - -Three tremendous pulls accompanied those last three long-drawn -syllables. Magnolia found it most invigorating. Doc had told her, too, -that the Ohio had got its name from the time when the Indians, standing -on one shore and wishing to cross to the other, would cup their hands -and send out the call to the opposite bank, loud and high and clear, -“O-_HE_-O!” - -“Do you think it’s true?” Magnolia would say; for Mrs. Hawks had got -into the way of calling Doc’s stories stuff-and-nonsense. All those -tales, it would seem, to which Magnolia most thrilled, turned out, -according to Parthy, to be stuff-and-nonsense. So then, “Do you think -it’s true?” she would demand, fearfully. - -“Think it! Why, pshaw! I know it’s true. Sure as shootin’.” - -It was noteworthy and characteristic of Magnolia that she liked best the -rampant rivers. The Illinois, which had possessed such fascination for -Tonti, for Joliet, for Marquette—for countless _coureurs du bois_ who -had frequented this trail to the southwest—left her cold. Its clear -water, its gentle current, its fretless channel, its green hillsides, -its tidy bordering grain fields, bored her. From Doc and from her father -she learned a haphazard and picturesque chronicle of its history, and -that of like rivers—a tale of voyageurs and trappers, of flatboat and -keelboat men, of rafters in the great logging days, of shanty boaters, -water gipsies, steamboats. She listened, and remembered, but was -unmoved. When the _Cotton Blossom_ floated down the tranquil bosom of -the Illinois Magnolia read a book. She drank its limpid waters and -missed the mud-tang to be found in a draught of the Mississippi. - -“If I was going to be a river,” she announced, “I wouldn’t want to be -the Illinois, or like those. I’d want to be the Mississippi.” - -“How’s that?” asked Captain Andy. - -“Because the Illinois, it’s always the same. But the Mississippi is -always different. It’s like a person that you never know what they’re -going to do next, and that makes them interesting.” - -Doc was oftenest her cicerone and playmate ashore. His knowledge of the -countryside, the rivers, the dwellers along the shore and in the -back-country, was almost godlike in its omniscience. At his tongue’s end -were tales of buccaneers, of pirates, of adventurers. He told her of the -bloodthirsty and rapacious Murrel who, not content with robbing and -killing his victims, ripped them open, disembowelled them, and threw -them into the river. - -“Oh, my!” Magnolia would exclaim, inadequately; and peer with some -distaste into the water rushing past the boat’s flat sides. “How did he -look? Like Steve when he plays Legree?” - -“Not by a jugful, he didn’t. Dressed up like a parson, and used to -travel from town to town, giving sermons. He had a slick tongue, and -while the congregation inside was all stirred up getting their souls -saved, Murrel’s gang outside would steal their horses.” - -Stories of slaves stolen, sold, restolen, resold, and murdered. Murrel’s -attempted capture of New Orleans by rousing the blacks to insurrection -against the whites. Tales of Crenshaw, the vulture; of Mason, terror of -the Natchez road. On excursions ashore, Doc showed her pirates’ caves, -abandoned graveyards, ancient robber retreats along the river banks or -in the woods. They visited Sam Grity’s soap kettle, a great iron pot -half hidden in a rocky unused field, in which Grity used to cache his -stolen plunder. She never again saw an old soap kettle sitting plumply -in some Southern kitchen doorway, its sides covered with a handsome -black velvet coat of soot, that she did not shiver deliciously. Strong -fare for a child at an age when other little girls were reading the -Dotty Dimple Series and Little Prudy books. - -Doc enjoyed these sanguinary chronicles in the telling as much as -Magnolia in the listening. His lined and leathery face would take on the -changing expressions suitable to the tenor of the tale. Cunning, -cruelty, greed, chased each other across his mobile countenance. Doc had -been a show-boat actor himself at some time back in his kaleidoscopic -career. So together he and Magnolia and his ancient barrel-bellied -black-and-white terrier Catchem roamed the woods and towns and hills and -fields and churchyards from Cairo to the Gulf. - -Sometimes, in the spring, she went with Julie, the indolent. Elly almost -never walked and often did not leave the _Cotton Blossom_ for days -together. Elly was extremely neat and fastidious about her person. She -was for ever heating kettles and pans of water for bathing, for washing -stockings and handkerchiefs. She had a knack with the needle and could -devise a quite plausible third-act ball gown out of a length of satin, -some limp tulle, and a yard or two of tinsel. She never read. Her -industry irked Julie as Julie’s indolence irritated her. - -Elly was something of a shrew (Schultzy had learned to his sorrow that -your blue-eyed blondes are not always doves). “Pity’s sake, Julie, how -you can sit there doing nothing, staring out at that everlasting river’s -more than I can see. I should think you’d go plumb crazy.” - -“What would you have me do?” - -“Do! Mend the hole in your stocking, for one thing.” - -“I should say as much,” Mrs. Hawks would agree, if she chanced to be -present. She had no love for Elly; but her own passion for industry and -order could not but cause her to approve a like trait in another. - -Julie would glance down disinterestedly at her long slim foot in its -shabby shoe. “Is there a hole in my stocking?” - -“You know perfectly well there is, Julie Dozier. You must have seen it -the size of a half dollar when you put it on this morning. It was there -yesterday, same’s to-day.” - -Julie smiled charmingly. “I know. I declare to goodness I hoped it -wouldn’t be. When I woke up this morning I thought maybe the good -fairies would have darned it up neat’s a pin while I slept.” Julie’s -voice was as indolent as Julie herself. She spoke with a Southern drawl. -Her I was Ah. Ah declah to goodness—or approximately that. - -Magnolia would smile in appreciation of Julie’s gentle raillery. She -adored Julie. She thought Elly, with her fair skin and china-blue eyes, -as beautiful as a princess in a fairy tale, as was natural in a child of -her sallow colouring and straight black hair. But the two were -antipathetic. Elly, in ill-tempered moments, had been known to speak of -Magnolia as “that brat,” though her vanity was fed by the child’s -admiration of her beauty. But she never allowed her to dress up in her -discarded stage finery, as Julie often did. Elly openly considered -herself a gifted actress whose talent and beauty were, thanks to her -shiftless husband, pearls cast before the river-town swinery. Pretty -though she was, she found small favour in the eyes of men of the company -and crew. Strangely enough, it was Julie who drew them, quite without -intent on her part. There was something about her life-scarred face, her -mournful eyes, her languor, her effortlessness, her very carelessness of -dress that seemed to fascinate and hold them. Steve’s jealousy of her -was notorious. It was common boat talk, too, that Pete, the engineer of -the _Mollie Able_, who played the bull drum in the band, was openly -enamoured of her and had tried to steal her from Steve. He followed -Julie into town if she so much as stepped ashore. He was found lurking -in corners of the _Cotton Blossom_ decks; loitering about the stage -where he had no business to be. He even sent her presents of imitation -jewellery and gaudy handkerchiefs and work boxes, which she promptly -presented to Queenie, first urging that mass of ebon royalty to bedeck -herself with her new gifts when dishing up the dinner. In that close -community the news of the disposal of these favours soon reached Pete’s -sooty ears. There had even been a brawl between Steve and Pete—one of -those sudden tempestuous battles, animal-like in its fierceness and -brutality. An oath in the darkness; voices low, ominous; the thud of -feet; the impact of bone against flesh; deep sob-like breathing; a high -weird cry of pain, terror, rage. Pete was overboard and floundering in -the swift current of the Mississippi. Powerful swimmer though he was, -they had some trouble in fishing him out. It was well that the _Cotton -Blossom_ and the _Mollie Able_ were lying at anchor. Bruised and -dripping, Pete had repaired to the engine room to dry, and to nurse his -wounds, swearing in terms ridiculously like those frequently heard in -the second act of a _Cotton Blossom_ play that he would get his revenge -on the two of them. He had never, since then, openly molested Julie, but -his threats, mutterings, and innuendoes continued. Steve had forbidden -his wife to leave the show boat unaccompanied. So it was that when -spring came round, and the dogwood gleaming white among the black trunks -of the pines and firs was like a bride and her shining attendants in a -great cathedral, Julie would tie one of her floppy careless hats under -her chin and, together with Magnolia, range the forests for wild -flowers. They would wander inland until they found trees other than the -willows, the live oaks, and the elms that lined the river banks. They -would come upon wild honeysuckle, opalescent pink. In autumn they went -nutting, returning with sackfuls of hickory and hazel nuts—anything but -the black walnut which any show-boat dweller knows will cause a storm if -brought aboard. Sometimes they experienced the shock of gay surprise -that follows the sudden sight of gentian, a flash of that rarest of -flower colours, blue; almost poignant in its beauty. It always made -Magnolia catch her breath a little. - -Julie’s flounces trailing in the dust, the two would start out sedately -enough, though to the accompaniment of a chorus of admonition and -criticism. - -From Mrs. Hawks: “Now keep your hat pulled down over your eyes so’s you -won’t get all sunburned, Magnolia. Black enough as ’tis. Don’t run and -get all overheated. Don’t eat any berries or anything you find in the -woods, now. . . . Back by four o’clock the latest . . . poison ivy . . . -snakes . . . lost . . . gipsies. . . .” - -From Elly, trimming her rosy nails in the cool shade of the front deck: -“Julie, your placket’s gaping. And tuck your hair in. No, there, on the -side.” - -So they made their way up the bank, across the little town, and into the -woods. Once out of sight of the boat the two turned and looked back. -Then, without a word, each would snatch her hat from her head; and they -would look at each other, and Julie would smile her wide slow smile, and -Magnolia’s dark plain pointed little face would flash into sudden -beauty. From some part of her person where it doubtless was needed Julie -would extract a pin and with it fasten up the tail of her skirt. Having -thus hoisted the red flag of rebellion, they would plunge into the woods -to emerge hot, sticky, bramble-torn, stained, flower-laden, and late. -They met Parthy’s upbraidings and Steve’s reproaches with cheerful -unconcern. - -Often Magnolia went to town with her father, or drove with him or Doc -into the back-country. Andy did much of the marketing for the boat’s -food, frequently hampered, supplemented, or interfered with by Parthy’s -less openhanded methods. He loved good food, considered it important to -happiness, liked to order it and talk about it; was himself an excellent -cook, like most boatmen, and had been known to spend a pleasant half -hour reading the cook book. The butchers, grocers, and general store -keepers of the river towns knew Andy, understood his fussy ways, liked -him. He bought shrewdly but generously, without haggling; and often -presented a store acquaintance of long standing with a pair of tickets -for the night’s performance. When he and Magnolia had time to range the -countryside in a livery rig, Andy would select the smartest and most -glittering buggy and the liveliest nag to be had. Being a poor driver -and jerky, with no knowledge of a horse’s nerves and mouth, the ride was -likely to be exhilarating to the point of danger. The animal always was -returned to the stable in a lather, the vehicle spattered with -mud-flecks to the hood. Certainly, it was due to Andy more than Parthy -that the _Cotton Blossom_ was reputed the best-fed show boat on the -rivers. He was always bringing home in triumph a great juicy ham, a side -of beef. He liked to forage the season’s first and best: a bushel of -downy peaches, fresh-picked; watermelons; little honey-sweet seckel -pears; a dozen plump broilers; new corn; a great yellow cheese ripe for -cutting. - -He would plump his purchases down on the kitchen table while Queenie -surveyed his booty, hands on ample hips. She never resented his -suggestions, though Parthy’s offended her. Capering, Andy would poke a -forefinger into a pullet’s fat sides. “Rub ’em over with a little -garlic, Queenie, to flavour ’em up. Plenty of butter and strips of -bacon. Cover ’em over till they’re tender and then give ’em a quick -brown the last twenty minutes.” - -Queenie, knowing all this, still did not resent his direction. “That -shif’less no-’count Jo knew ’bout cookin’ like you do, Cap’n Andy, Ah’d -git to rest mah feet now an’ again, Ah sure would.” - -Magnolia liked to loiter in the big, low-raftered kitchen. It was a -place of pleasant smells and sights and sounds. It was here that she -learned Negro spirituals from Jo and cooking from Queenie, both of which -accomplishments stood her in good stead in later years. Queenie had, for -example, a way of stuffing a ham for baking. It was a fascinating -process to behold, and one that took hours. Spices—bay, thyme, onion, -clove, mustard, allspice, pepper—chopped and mixed and stirred -together. A sharp-pointed knife plunged deep into the juicy ham. The -incision stuffed with the spicy mixture. Another plunge with the knife. -Another filling. Again and again and again until the great ham had grown -to twice its size. Then a heavy clean white cloth, needle and coarse -thread. Sewed up tight and plump in its jacket the ham was immersed in a -pot of water and boiled. Out when tender, the jacket removed; into the -oven with it. Basting and basting from Queenie’s long-handled spoon. The -long sharp knife again for cutting, and then the slices, juicy and -scented, with the stuffing of spices making a mosaic pattern against the -pink of the meat. Many years later Kim Ravenal, the actress, would serve -at the famous little Sunday night suppers that she and her husband -Kenneth Cameron were so fond of giving a dish that she called ham _à la_ -Queenie. - -“How does your cook do it!” her friends would say—Ethel Barrymore or -Kit Cornell or Frank Crowninshield or Charley Towne or Woollcott. “I’ll -bet it isn’t real at all. It’s painted on the platter.” - -“It is not! It’s a practical ham, stuffed with all kinds of devilment. -The recipe is my mother’s. She got it from an old Southern cook named -Queenie.” - -“Listen, Kim. You’re among friends. Your dear public is not present. You -don’t have to pretend any old Southern aristocracy Virginia belle mammy -stuff with _us_.” - -“Pretend, you great oaf! I was born on a show boat on the Mississippi, -and proud of it. Everybody knows that.” - -Mrs. Hawks, bustling into the show-boat kitchen with her unerring gift -for scenting an atmosphere of mellow enjoyment, and dissipating it, -would find Magnolia perched on a chair, both elbows on the table, her -palms propping her chin as she regarded with round-eyed fascination -Queenie’s magic manipulations. Or perhaps Jo, the charming and -shiftless, would be singing for her one of the Negro plantation songs, -wistful with longing and pain; the folk songs of a wronged race, later -to come into a blaze of popularity as spirituals. - -For some nautical reason, a broad beam, about six inches high and -correspondingly wide, stretched across the kitchen floor from side to -side, dividing the room. Through long use Jo and Queenie had become -accustomed to stepping over this obstruction, Queenie ponderously, Jo -with an effortless swing of his lank legs. On this Magnolia used to sit, -her arms hugging her knees, her great eyes in the little sallow pointed -face fixed attentively on Jo. The kitchen was very clean and shining and -stuffy. Jo’s legs were crossed, one foot in its great low shapeless shoe -hooked in the chair rung, his banjo cradled in his lap. The once white -parchment face of the instrument was now almost as black as Jo’s, what -with much strumming by work-stained fingers. - -“Which one, Miss Magnolia?” - -“I Got Shoes,” Magnolia would answer, promptly. - -Jo would throw back his head, his sombre eyes half shut: - -[Illustration] - - [Lyrics] - I got a shoes, you got a shoes. - All of God’s chil-dren got a shoes; - When I get to Heav-en goin’ to put on my shoes. - Goin’ to walk all over God’s Heav’n. - - Heav’n, Heav’n, - Ev-’ry bod-y talk-in’ ’bout heav’n ain’t go-in’ there; - Heav’n, Heav’n, - Goin’ to shout all over God’s Heav’n. - -The longing of a footsore, ragged, driven race expressed in the -tragically childlike terms of shoes, white robes, wings, and the wise -and simple insight into hypocrisy: “Ev’rybody talkin ’bout Heav’n ain’t -goin’ there. . . .” - -“Now which one?” His fingers still picking the strings, ready at a word -to slip into the opening chords of the next song. - -“Go Down, Moses.” - -She liked this one—at once the most majestic and supplicating of all -the Negro folk songs—because it always made her cry a little. Sometimes -Queenie, busy at the stove or the kitchen table, joined in with her high -rich camp-meeting voice. Jo’s voice was a reedy tenor, but soft and -husky with the indescribable Negro vocal quality. Magnolia soon knew the -tune and the words of every song in Jo’s repertoire. Unconsciously, -being an excellent mimic, she sang as Jo and Queenie sang, her head -thrown slightly back, her eyes rolling or half closed, one foot beating -rhythmic time to the music’s cadence. Her voice was true, though -mediocre; but she got into this the hoarsely sweet Negro -overtone—purple velvet muffling a flute. - -Between Jo and Queenie flourished a fighting affection, deep, true, and -lasting. There was some doubt as to the actual legal existence of their -marriage, but the union was sound and normal enough. At each season’s -close they left the show boat the richer by three hundred dollars, clean -new calico for Queenie, and proper jeans for Jo. Shoes on their feet. -Hats on their heads. Bundles in their arms. Each spring they returned -penniless, in rags, and slightly liquored. They had had a magnificent -time. They did not drink again while the _Cotton Blossom_ kitchen was -their home. But the next winter the programme repeated itself. Captain -Andy liked and trusted them. They were as faithful to him as their -childlike vagaries would permit. - -So, filled with the healthy ecstasy of song, the Negro man and woman and -the white child would sit in deep contentment in the show-boat kitchen. -The sound of a door slammed. Quick heavy footsteps. Three sets of nerves -went taut. Parthy. - -“Maggie Hawks, have you practised to-day?” - -“Some.” - -“How much?” - -“Oh, half an hour—more.” - -“When?” - -“’Smorning.” - -“I didn’t hear you.” - -The sulky lower lip out. The high forehead wrinkled by a frown. Song -flown. Peace gone. - -“I did so. Jo, didn’t you hear me practising?” - -“Ah suah did, Miss Magnolia.” - -“You march right out of here, young lady, and practise another half -hour. Do you think your father’s made of money, that I can throw -fifty-cent pieces away on George for nothing? Now you do your exercises -fifteen minutes and the Maiden’s Prayer fifteen. . . . Idea!” - -Magnolia marched. Out of earshot Parthy expressed her opinion of nigger -songs. “I declare I don’t know where you get your low ways from! White -people aren’t good enough for you, I suppose, that you’ve got to run -with blacks in the kitchen. Now you sit yourself down on that stool.” - -Magnolia was actually having music lessons. George, the Whistler and -piano player, was her teacher, receiving fifty cents an hour for weekly -instruction. Driven by her stern parent, she practised an hour daily on -the tinny old piano in the orchestra pit, a rebellious, skinny, pathetic -little figure strumming painstakingly away in the great emptiness of the -show-boat auditorium. She must needs choose her time for practice when a -rehearsal of the night’s play was not in progress on the stage or when -the band was not struggling with the music of a new song and dance -number. Incredibly enough, she actually learned something of the -mechanics of music, if not of its technique. She had an excellent rhythm -sense, and this was aided by none other than Jo, whose feeling for time -and beat and measure and pitch was flawless. Queenie lumped his song -gift in with his general shiftlessness. Born fifty years later he might -have known brief fame in some midnight revue or Club Alabam’ on -Broadway. Certainly Magnolia unwittingly learned more of real music from -black Jo and many another Negro wharf minstrel than she did from hours -of the heavy-handed and unlyrical George. - -That Mrs. Hawks could introduce into the indolent tenor of show-boat -life anything so methodical and humdrum as five-finger exercises done an -hour daily was triumphant proof of her indomitable driving force. Life -had miscast her in the rôle of wife and mother. She was born to be a -Madam Chairman. Committees, Votes, Movements, Drives, Platforms, Gavels, -Reports all showed in her stars. Cheated of these, she had to be content -with such outlet of her enormous energies as the _Cotton Blossom_ -afforded. Parthy had never heard the word Feminist, and wouldn’t have -recognized it if she had. One spoke at that time not of Women’s Rights -but of Women’s Wrongs. On these Parthenia often waxed tartly eloquent. -Her housekeeping fervour was the natural result of her lack of a more -impersonal safety valve. The _Cotton Blossom_ shone like a Methodist -Sunday household. Only Julie and Windy, the _Mollie Able_ pilot, defied -her. She actually indulged in those most domestic of rites, canning and -preserving, on board the boat. Donning an all-enveloping gingham apron, -she would set frenziedly to work on two bushels of peaches or seckel -pears; baskets of tomatoes; pecks of apples. Pickled pears, peach -marmalade, grape jell in jars and pots and glasses filled shelves and -cupboards. Queenie found a great deal of satisfaction in the fact that -occasionally, owing to some culinary accident or to the unusual motion -of the flat-bottomed _Cotton Blossom_ in the rough waters of an open -bay, one of these jars was found smashed on the floor, its rich purple -or amber contents mingling with splinters of glass. No one—not even -Parthy—ever dared connect Queenie with these quite explicable mishaps. - -Parthy was an expert needlewoman. She often assisted Julie or Elly or -Mis’ Means with their costumes. To see her stern implacable face bent -over a heap of frivolous stuffs while her industrious fingers swiftly -sent the needle flashing through unvarying seams was to receive the -shock that comes of beholding the incongruous. The enormity of it -penetrated even her blunt sensibilities. - -“If anybody’d ever told me that I’d live to see the day when I’d be -sewing on costumes for show folks!” - -“Run along, Parthy. You like it,” Andy would say. - -But she never would admit that. “Like it or lump it, what can I do! -Married you for better or worse, didn’t I!” Her tone leaving no doubt as -to the path down which that act had led her. Actually she was having a -rich, care-free, and varied life such as she had never dreamed of and of -which she secretly was enamoured. - -Dwellers in this or that river town loitering down at the landing to see -what manner of sin and loose-living went on in and about this show boat -with its painted women and play-acting men would be startled to hear -sounds and sniff smells which were identical with those which might be -issuing that very moment from their own smug and godly dwellings ashore. -From out the open doors of the Cotton Blossom Floating Palace Theatre -came the unmistakable and humdrum sounds of scales and five-finger -exercises done painfully and unwillingly by rebellious childish hands. -Ta-ta-ta—_TA_—ta-ta-ta. From below decks there floated up the -mouth-watering savour of tomato ketchup, of boiling vinegar and spices, -or the perfumed aroma of luscious fruits seething in sugary kettles. - -“Smells for all the world like somebody was doing up sweet pickles.” One -village matron to another. - -“Well, I suppose they got to eat like other folks.” - -Ta-ta-ta—_TA_—ta-ta-ta. - -It was inevitable, however, that the ease and indolence of the life, as -well as the daily contact with odd and unconventional characters must -leave some imprint on even so adamantine an exterior as Parthy’s. Little -by little her school-teacherly diction dropped from her. Slowly her -vowels began to slur, her aren’ts became ain’ts, her crisp new England -utterance took on something of the slovenly Southern drawl, her -consonants were missing from the end of a word here and there. True, she -still bustled and nagged, managed and scolded, drove and reproached. She -still had the power to make Andy jump with nervousness. Whether -consciously or unconsciously, the influence of this virago was more -definitely felt than that of any other one of the _Cotton Blossom’s_ -company and crew. Of these only Julie Dozier, and Windy, the pilot (so -called because he almost never talked) actually triumphed over Mrs. -Hawks. Julie’s was a negative victory. She never voluntarily spoke to -Parthy and had the power to aggravate that lady to the point of frenzy -by remaining limp, supine, and idle when Parthy thought she should be -most active; by raising her right eyebrow quizzically in response to a -more than usually energetic tirade; by the habitual disorder of the tiny -room which she shared with Steve; by the flagrant carelessness and -untidiness of her own gaunt graceful person. - -“I declare, Hawks, what you keep that slatternly yellow cat around this -boat for beats me.” - -“Best actress in the whole caboodle, that’s why.” Something fine in -little Captain Andy had seen and recognized the flame that might have -glorified Julie had it not instead consumed her. “That girl had the -right backing she’d make her mark, and not in any show boat, either. -I’ve been to New York. I’ve seen ’em down at Wallack’s and Daly’s and -around.” - -“A slut, that’s what she is. I had my way she’d leave this boat bag and -baggage.” - -“Well, this is one time you won’t have your way, Mrs. Hawks, ma’am.” She -had not yet killed the spirit in Andy. - -“Mark my words, you’ll live to regret it. The way she looks out of those -black eyes of hers! Gives me the creeps.” - -“What would you have the girl look out of,” retorted Andy, not very -brilliantly. “Her ears?” - -Julie could not but know of this antagonism toward her. Some perverse -streak in her otherwise rich and gentle make-up caused her to find a -sinister pleasure in arousing it. - -Windy’s victory was more definitely dramatic, though his defensive -method against Parthy’s attacks resembled in sardonic quiet and poise -Julie’s own. Windy was accounted one of the most expert pilots on the -Mississippi. He knew every coil and sinew and stripe of the yellow -serpent. River men used his name as a synonym for magic with the pilot’s -wheel. Starless night or misty day; shoal water or deep, it was all one -to Windy. Though Andy’s senior by more than fifteen years, the two had -been friends for twenty. Captain Andy had enormous respect for his -steersmanship; was impressed by his taciturnity (being himself so -talkative and vivacious); enjoyed talking with him in the bright quiet -security of the pilot house. He was absolute czar of the _Mollie Able_ -and the _Cotton Blossom_, as befitted his high accomplishments. No one -ever dreamed of opposing him except Parthy. He was slovenly of person, -careless of habit. These shortcomings Parthy undertook to correct early -in her show-boat career. She met with defeat so prompt, so complete, so -crushing as to cause her for ever after to leave him unmolested. - -Windy had muddy boots. They were, it seemed, congenitally so. He would -go ashore in mid-afternoon of a hot August day when farmers for miles -around had been praying for rain these weeks past and return in a -downpour with half the muck and clay of the countryside clinging to his -number eleven black square-toed elastic-side boots. A tall, emaciated -drooping old man, Windy; with long gnarled muscular hands whose enlarged -knuckles and leathery palms were the result of almost half a century at -the wheel. His pants were always grease-stained; his black string tie -and gray shirt spattered with tobacco juice; his brown jersey frayed and -ragged. Across his front he wore a fine anchor watch chain, or “log” -chain, as it was called. And gleaming behind the long flowing -tobacco-splotched gray beard that reached almost to his waist could be -glimpsed a milkily pink pearl stud like a star behind a dirty -cloud-bank. The jewel had been come by, doubtless, in payment of some -waterfront saloon gambling debt. Surely its exquisite curves had once -glowed upon fine and perfumed linen. - -It was against this taciturn and omnipotent conqueror of the rivers that -Parthy raised the flag of battle. - -“Traipsin’ up and down this boat and the _Mollie Able_, spitting his -filthy tobacco and leaving mud tracks like an elephant that’s been in a -bog. If I’ve had those steps leading up to the pilot house scrubbed -once, I’ve had ’em scrubbed ten times this week, and now look at them! I -won’t have it, and so I tell you. Why can’t he go up the side of the -boat the way a pilot is supposed to do! What’s that side ladder for, I’d -like to know! He’s supposed to go up it; not the steps.” - -“Now, Parthy, you can’t run a boat the way you would a kitchen back in -Thebes. Windy’s no hired man. He’s the best pilot on the rivers, and I’m -lucky to have him. A hundred jobs better than this ready to jump at him -if he so much as crooks a finger. He’s pulled this tub through good many -tight places where any other pilot’d landed us high and dry on a sand -bar. And don’t you forget it.” - -“He’s a dirty old man. And I won’t have it. Muddying up my clean . . .” - -Parthy was not one of your scolds who takes her grievances out in mere -words. With her, to threaten was to act. That very morning, just before -the _Cotton Blossom_ was making a late departure from Greenville, where -they had played the night before, to Sunnisie Side Landing, twelve miles -below, this formidable woman, armed with hammer and nails, took -advantage of Windy’s temporary absence below decks to nail down the -hatch above the steps leading to the pilot house. She was the kind of -woman who can drive a nail straight. She drove ten of them, long and -firm and deep. A pity that no one saw her. It was a sight worth seeing, -this accomplished and indomitable virago in curl papers, driving nails -with a sure and steady stroke. - -Below stairs Windy, coming aboard from an early morning look around, -knocked the ashes out of his pipe, sank his great yellow fangs into a -generous wedge of Honest Scrap, and prepared to climb the stairs to the -_Cotton Blossom_ pilot house, there to manipulate wheel and cord that -would convey his orders to Pete in the engine room. - -Up the stairs, leaving a mud spoor behind. One hand raised to lift the -hatch; wondering, meanwhile, to find it closed. A mighty heave; a -pounding with the great fist; another heave, then, with the powerful old -shoulder. - -“Nailed,” said Windy aloud to himself, mildly. Then, still mildly, “The -old hell-cat.” He spat, then, on the hatchway steps and clumped -leisurely down again. He leaned over the boat rail, looking benignly -down at the crowd of idlers gathered at the wharf to watch the show boat -cast off. Then he crossed the deck again to where a capacious and -carpet-seated easy chair held out its inviting arms. Into this he sank -with a grunt of relaxation. From his pocket he took the pipe so recently -relinquished, filled it, tamped it, lighted it. From another pocket he -took a month-old copy of the New Orleans _Times-Democrat_, turned to the -column marked Shipping News, and settled down, apparently, for a long -quiet day with literature. - -Up came the anchor. In came the hawser. Chains clanked. The sound of the -gangplank drawn up. The hoarse shouts from land and water that always -attend the departure of a river boat. “Throw her over there! Lift ’er! -Heh, Pete! Gimme hand here! Little to the left. Other side! Hold on! -Easy!” - -The faces of the crowd ashore turned expectantly toward the boat. -Everything shipshape. Pete in the engine room. Captain Andy scampering -for the texas. Silence. No bells. No steam. No hoarse shouts of command. -God A’mighty, where’s Windy? Windy! Windy! - -Windy lowers his shielding newspaper and mildly regards the capering -captain and bewildered crew and startled company. He is wearing his -silver-rimmed reading spectacles slightly askew on his biblical-looking -hooked nose. Andy rushes up to him, all the Basque in him bubbling. -“God’s sake, Windy, what’s . . . why don’t you take her! We’re going.” - -Windy chewed rhythmically for a moment, spat a long brown jet of juice, -wiped his hairy mouth with the back of one gnarled hand. “We ain’t -going, Cap’n Hawks, because she can’t go till I give her the go-ahead. -And I ain’t give her the go-ahead. I’m the pilot of this here boat.” - -“But why? What the . . . Wh——” - -“The hatch is nailed down above the steps leading to the pilot house, -Cap’n Andy. Till that hatchway’s open, I don’t climb up to no pilot -house. And till I climb up to the pilot house, she don’t get no -go-ahead. And till I give her the go-ahead, she don’t go, not if we stay -here alongside this landing till the _Cotton Blossom_ rots.” - -He looked around benignly and resumed his reading of the New Orleans -_Times-Democrat_. - -Profanity, frowned upon under Parthy’s régime, now welled up in Andy and -burst from him in spangled geysers. Words seethed to the surface and -exploded like fireworks. Twenty-five years of river life had equipped -him with a vocabulary rich, varied, purple. He neglected neither the -heavens above nor the earth beneath. Revolt and rage shook his wiry -little frame. Years of henpecking, years of natural gaiety suppressed, -years of mincing when he wished to stride, years of silence when he -wished to sing, now were wiped away by the stream of undiluted rage that -burst from Captain Andy Hawks. It was a torrent, a flood, a Mississippi -of profanity in which hells and damns were mere drops in the mighty -roaring mass. - -“Out with your crowbars there. Pry up that hatch! I’m captain of this -boat, by God, and anybody, man or woman, who nails down that hatch again -without my orders gets put off this boat wherever we are, and so I say.” - -Did Parthenia Ann Hawks shrink and cower and pale under the blinding -glare of this pyrotechnic profanity? Not that indomitable woman. The -picture of outraged virtue in curl papers, she stood her ground like a -Roman matron. She had even, when the flood broke, sent Magnolia indoors -with a gesture meant to convey protection from the pollution of this -verbal stream. - -“Well, Captain Hawks, a fine example you have set for your company and -crew I must say.” - -“_You_ must say! You——! Let me tell you, Mrs. Hawks, ma’am, the less -you say the better. And I repeat, anybody touches that hatchway -again——” - -“Touch it!” echoed Parthy in icy disdain. “I wouldn’t touch it, nor the -pilot house, nor the pilot either, if you’ll excuse my saying so, with a -ten-foot pole.” - -And swept away with as much dignity as a _Cotton Blossom_ early morning -costume would permit. Her head bloody but unbowed. - - - - - VII - - -Julie was gone. Steve was gone. Tragedy had stalked into Magnolia’s -life; had cast its sable mantle over the _Cotton Blossom_. Pete had kept -his promise and revenge had been his. But the taste of triumph had not, -after all, been sweet in his mouth. There was little of the peace of -satisfaction in his sooty face stuck out of the engine-room door. The -arm that beat the ball drum in the band was now a listless member, so -that a hollow mournful thump issued from that which should have given -forth a rousing boom. - -The day the _Cotton Blossom_ was due to play Lemoyne, Mississippi, Julie -Dozier took sick. In show-boat troupes, as well as in every other -theatrical company in the world, it is an unwritten law that an actor -must never be too sick to play. He may be sick. Before the performance -he may be too sick to stand; immediately after the performance he may -collapse. He may, if necessary, die on the stage and the curtain will -then be lowered. But no real trouper while conscious will ever confess -himself too sick to go on when the overture ends and the lights go down. - -Julie knew this. She had played show boats for years, up and down the -rivers of the Middle West and the South. She had a large and loyal -following. Lemoyne was a good town, situated on the river, prosperous, -sizable. - -Julie lay on her bed in her darkened room, refusing all offers of aid. -She did not want food. She did not want cold compresses on her head. She -did not want hot compresses on her head. She wanted to be left -alone—with Steve. Together the two stayed in the darkened room, and -when some member of the company came to the door with offers of aid or -comfort, there came into their faces a look that was strangely like one -of fear, followed immediately by a look of relief. - -Queenie sent Jo to the door with soup, her panacea for all ailments, -whether of the flesh or the spirit. Julie made a show of eating it, but -when Jo had clumped across the stage and down to his kitchen Julie -motioned to Steve. He threw the contents of the bowl out of the window -into the yellow waters of the Mississippi. - -Doc appeared at Julie’s door for the tenth time though it was only -mid-morning. “Think you can play all right, to-night, though, don’t you, -Julie?” - -In the semi-darkness of her shaded room Julie’s eyes glowed suddenly -wide and luminous. She sat up in bed, pushing her hair back from her -forehead with a gesture so wild as to startle the old trouper. - -“No!” she cried, in a sort of terror. “No! I can’t play to-night. Don’t -ask me.” - -Blank astonishment made Doc’s face almost ludicrous. For an actress to -announce ten hours before the time set for the curtain’s rising that she -would not be able to go on that evening—an actress who had not suffered -decapitation or an amputation—was a thing unheard of in Doc’s -experience. - -“God a’mighty, Julie! If you’re sick as all that, you’d better see a -doctor. Steve, what say?” - -The great blond giant seated at the side of Julie’s bed did not look -round at his questioner. His eyes were on Julie’s face. “Julie’s funny -that way. She’s set against doctors. Won’t have one, that’s all. Don’t -coax her. It’ll only make her worse.” - -Inured as he was to the vagaries of woman, this apparently was too much -for Doc. Schultzy appeared in the doorway; peered into the dimness of -the little room. - -“Funny thing. I guess you must have an admirer in this town, Jule. -Somebody’s stole your picture, frame and all, out of the layout in the -lobby there. First I thought it might be that crazy Pete, used to be so -stuck on you. . . . Now, now, Steve! Keep your shirt on! Keep your shirt -on! . . . I asked him, straight, but he was surprised all right. He -ain’t good enough actor to fool me. He didn’t do it. Must be some town -rube all right, Julie, got stuck on your shape or something. I put up -another one.” He stood a moment, thoughtfully. Elly came up behind him, -hatted and gloved. - -“I’m going up to town, Julie. Can I fetch you something? An orange, -maybe? Or something from the drug store?” - -Julie’s head on the pillow moved a negative. “She says no, thanks,” -Steve answered for her, shortly. It was as though both laboured under a -strain. The three in the doorway sensed it. Elly shrugged her shoulders, -though whether from pique or indifference it was hard to say. Doc still -stood puzzled, bewildered. Schultzy half turned away. “S’long’s you’re -all right by to-night,” he said cheerfully. - -“Says she won’t be,” Doc put in, lowering his voice. - -“Won’t be!” repeated Schultzy, almost shrilly. “Why, she ain’t _sick_, -is she! I mean, sick!” - -Schultzy sent his voice shrilling from Julie’s little bedroom doorway -across the bare stage, up the aisles of the empty auditorium, so that it -penetrated the box office at the far end of the boat, where Andy, at the -ticket window, was just about to be relieved by Parthy. - -“Heh, Cap! Cap! Come here. Julie’s sick. Julie’s too sick to go on. Says -she’s too sick to . . .” - -“Here,” said Andy, summarily, to Parthy; and left her in charge of -business. Down the aisle with the light quick step that was almost a -scamper; up the stage at a bound. “Best advance sale we’ve had since we -started out. We never played this town before. License was too high. But -here it is, not eleven o’clock, and half the house gone already.” He -peered into the darkened room. - -From its soft fur nest in the old sealskin muff the marmoset poked its -tragic mask and whimpered like a sick baby. This morning there was a -strange resemblance between the pinched and pathetic face on the pillow -and that of the little sombre-eyed monkey. - -By now there was quite a little crowd about Julie’s door. Mis’ Means had -joined them and could be heard murmuring about mustard plasters and a -good hot something or other. Andy entered the little room with the -freedom of an old friend. He looked sharply down at the face on the -pillow. The keen eyes plunged deep into the tortured eyes that stared -piteously up at him. Something he saw there caused him to reach out with -one brown paw, none too immaculate, and pat that other slim brown hand -clutching the coverlet so tensely. “Why, Jule, what’s—— Say, s’pose -you folks clear out and let me and Jule and Steve here talk things over -quiet. Nobody ain’t going to get well with this mob scene you’re putting -on. Scat!” Andy could distinguish between mental and physical anguish. - -They shifted—Doc, Elly, Schultzy, Mis’ Means, Catchem the torpid. -Another moment and they would have moved reluctantly away. But Parthy, -torn between her duty at the ticket window and her feminine curiosity as -to the cause of the commotion at Julie’s door became, suddenly, all -woman. Besides—demon statistician that she was—she suddenly had -remembered a curious coincidence in connection with this sudden illness -of Julie’s. She slammed down the ticket window, banged the box-office -door, sailed down the aisle. As she approached Doc was saying for the -dozenth time: - -“Person’s too sick to play, they’re sick enough to have a doctor’s what -I say. Playing Xenia to-morrow. Good a stand’s we got. Prolly won’t be -able to open there, neither, if you’re sick’s all that.” - -“I’ll be able to play to-morrow!” cried Julie, in a high strained voice. -“I’ll be able to play to-morrow. To-morrow I’ll be all right.” - -“How do you know?” demanded Doc. - -Steve turned on him in sudden desperation. “She’ll be all right, I tell -you. She’ll be all right as soon as she gets out of this town.” - -“That’s a funny thing,” exclaimed Parthy. She swept through the little -crowd at the door, seeming to mow them down with the energy of her -progress. “That’s a funny thing.” - -“What?” demanded Steve, his tone belligerent. “What’s funny?” - -Captain Andy raised a placating palm. “Now, Parthy, now, Parthy. Sh-sh!” - -“Don’t shush _me_, Hawks. I know what I’m talking about. It came over me -just this minute. Julie took sick at this very town of Lemoyne time we -came down river last year. Soon as you and Doc decided we wouldn’t open -here because the license was too high she got well all of a sudden, just -like that!” She snapped a thumb and forefinger. - -Silence, thick, uncomfortable, heavy with foreboding, settled down upon -the little group in the doorway. - -“Nothing so funny about that,” said Captain Andy, stoutly; and threw a -sharp glance at the face on the pillow. “This hot sticky climate down -here after the cold up north is liable to get anybody to feeling queer. -None too chipper myself, far’s that goes. Affects some people that way.” -He scratched frenziedly at the mutton-chop whiskers, this side and that. - -“Well, I may not know _much_——” began Parthy. - -Down the aisle skimmed Magnolia, shouting as she came, her child’s voice -high and sharp with excitement. “Mom! Mom! Look. What do you think! -Julie’s picture’s been stolen again right out of the front of the lobby. -Julie, they’ve taken your picture again. Somebody took one and Schultzy -put another in and now it’s been stolen too.” - -She was delighted with her news; radiant with it. Her face fell a little -at the sight of the figure on the bed, the serious group about the -doorway that received her news with much gravity. She flew to the bed -then, all contrition. “Oh, Julie darling, I’m so sorry you’re sick.” -Julie turned her face away from the child, toward the wall. - -Captain Andy, simulating fury, capered a threatening step toward the -doorway crowd now increased by the deprecating figure of Mr. Means and -Ralph’s tall shambling bulk. “Will you folks clear out of here or will I -have to use force! A body’d think a girl didn’t have the right to feel -sick. Doc, you get down and ’tend to that ticket window, or Parthy. If -we can’t show to-night we got to leave ’em know. Ralph, you write out a -sign and get it pasted up at the post office. . . . Sure you won’t be -feeling better by night time, are you, Julie?” He looked doubtfully down -at the girl on the bed. - -With a sudden lithe movement Julie flung herself into Steve’s arms, -clung to him, weeping. “No!” she cried, her voice high, hysterical. “No! -No! No! Leave me alone, can’t you! Leave me alone!” - -“Sure,” Andy motioned, then, fiercely to the company. “Sure we’ll leave -you alone, Julie.” - -But Tragedy, having stalked her victim surely, relentlessly, all the -morning, now was about to close in upon her. She had sent emissary after -emissary down the show-boat aisle, and each had helped to deepen the -look of terror in Julie’s eyes. Now sounded the slow shambling heavy -tread of Windy the pilot, bearded, sombre, ominous as the figure of fate -itself. The little group turned toward him automatically, almost -absurdly, like a badly directed mob scene in one of their own improbable -plays. - -He clumped up the little flight of steps that led from the lower -left-hand box to the stage. Clump, clump, clump. Irresistibly Parthy’s -eyes peered sharply in pursuit of the muddy tracks that followed each -step. She snorted indignantly. Across the stage, his beard waggling up -and down as his jaws worked slowly, rhythmically on a wedge of Honest -Scrap. As he approached Julie’s doorway he took off his cap and rubbed -his pate with his palm, sure sign of great mental perturbation in this -monumental old leviathan. The yellow skin of his knobby bald dome-like -head shone gold in the rays of the late morning sun that came in through -the high windows at the side of the stage. - -He stood a moment, chewing, and peering mildly into the dimness of the -bedroom, Sphinx-like, it seemed that he never would speak. He stood, -champing. The _Cotton Blossom_ troupe waited. They had not played -melodrama for years without being able to sense it when they saw it. He -spoke. “Seems that skunk Pete’s up to something.” They waited. The long -tobacco-stained beard moved up and down, up and down. “Skinned out half -an hour back streaking toward town like possessed. He yanked that -picture of Julie out of the hall there. Seen him. I see good deal goes -on around here.” - -Steve sprang to his feet with a great ripping river oath. “I’ll kill him -this time, the ——” - -“Seen you take that first picture out, Steve.” The deep red that had -darkened Steve’s face and swelled the veins on his great neck receded -now, leaving his china-blue eyes staring out of a white and stricken -face. - -“I never did! I never did!” - -Julie sat up, clutching her wrapper at the throat. She laughed shrilly. -“What would he want to steal my picture for! His own wife’s picture. -Likely!” - -“So nobody in this town’d see it, Julie,” said Windy, mildly. “Listen. -Fifty years piloting on the rivers you got to have pretty good eyesight. -Mine’s as good to-day as it was time I was twenty. I just stepped down -from the texas to warn you I see Pete coming along the levee with Ike -Keener. Ike’s the sheriff. He’ll be in here now any minute.” - -“Let him,” Andy said, stoutly. “Our license is paid. Sheriff’s as -welcome around this boat as anybody. Let him.” - -But no one heard him; no one heeded him. A strange and terrible thing -was happening. Julie had sprung from her bed. In her white nightgown and -her wrapper, her long black hair all tumbled and wild about her face, a -stricken and hunted thing, she clung to Steve, and he to her. There came -a pounding at the door that led into the show-boat auditorium from the -fore deck. Steve’s eyes seemed suddenly to sink far back in his head. -His cheek-bones showed gaunt and sharp as Julie’s own. His jaw was set -so that a livid ridge stood out on either side like bars of white-hot -steel. He loosened Julie’s hold almost roughly. From his pocket he -whipped a great clasp-knife and opened its flashing blade. Julie did not -scream, but the other women did, shriek on shriek. Captain Andy sprang -for him, a mouse attacking a mastodon. Steve shook him off with a fling -of his powerful shoulders. - -“I’m not going to hurt her, you fool. Leave me be. I know what I’m -doing.” The pounding came again, louder and more insistent. “Somebody go -down and let him in—but keep him there a minute.” - -No one stirred. The pounding ceased. The doors opened. The boots of Ike -Keener, the sheriff, clattered down the aisle of the _Cotton Blossom_. - -“Stop those women screeching,” Steve shouted. Then, to Julie, “It won’t -hurt much, darling.” With incredible swiftness he seized Julie’s hand in -his left one and ran the keen glittering blade of his knife firmly -across the tip of her forefinger. A scarlet line followed it. He bent -his blond head, pressed his lips to the wound, sucked it greedily. With -a little moan Julie fell back on the bed. Steve snapped the blade into -its socket, thrust the knife into his pocket. The boots of Sheriff Ike -Keener were clattering across the stage now. The white faces clustered -in the doorway—the stricken, bewildered, horrified faces—turned from -the two within the room to the one approaching it. They made way for -this one silently. Even Parthy was dumb. Magnolia clung to her, -wide-eyed, uncomprehending, sensing tragedy though she had never before -encountered it. - -The lapel of his coat flung back, Ike Keener confronted the little cowed -group on the stage. A star shone on his left breast. The scene was like -a rehearsal of a _Cotton Blossom_ thriller. - -“Who’s captain of this here boat?” - -Andy, his fingers clutching his whiskers, stepped forward. “I am. What’s -wanted with him? Hawks is my name—Captain Andy Hawks, twenty years on -the rivers.” - -He looked the sheriff of melodrama, did Ike Keener—boots, black -moustaches, wide-brimmed black hat, flowing tie, high boots, and all. -Steve himself, made up for the part, couldn’t have done it better. -“Well, Cap, kind of unpleasant, but I understand there’s a miscegenation -case on board.” - -“What?” whispered Magnolia. “What’s that? What does he mean, Mom?” - -“Hush!” hissed Parthy, and jerked the child’s arm. - -“How’s that?” asked Andy, but he knew. - -“Miscegenation. Case of a Negro woman married to a white man. Criminal -offense in this state, as you well know.” - -“No such thing,” shouted Andy. “No such thing on board this boat.” - -Sheriff Ike Keener produced a piece of paper. “Name of the white man is -Steve Baker. Name of the negress”—he squinted again at the slip of -paper—“name of the negress is Julie Dozier.” He looked around at the -group. “Which one’s them?” - -“Oh, my God!” screamed Elly. “Oh, my God! Oh, my God!” - -“Shut up,” said Schultzy, roughly. - -Steve stepped to the window and threw up the shade, letting the morning -light into the crowded disorderly little cubicle. On the bed lay Julie, -her eyes enormous in her sallow pinched face. - -“I’m Steve Baker. This is my wife.” - -Sheriff Ike Keener tucked the paper in his pocket. “You two better dress -and come along with me.” - -Julie stood up. She looked an old woman. The marmoset whimpered and -whined in his fur nest. She put out a hand, automatically, and plucked -it from the muff and held it in the warm hollow of her breast. Her great -black eyes stared at the sheriff like the wide-open unseeing eyes of a -sleep walker. - -Steve Baker grinned—rather, his lips drew back from his teeth in a -horrid semblance of mirth. He threw a jovial arm about Julie’s shrinking -shoulder. For once she had no need to coach him in his part. He looked -Ike Keener in the eye. “You wouldn’t call a man a white man that’s got -Negro blood in him, would you?” - -“No, I wouldn’t; not in Mississippi. One drop of nigger blood makes you -a nigger in these parts.” - -“Well, I got more than a drop of—nigger blood in me, and that’s a fact. -You can’t make miscegenation out of that.” - -“You ready to swear to that in a court of law?” - -“I’ll swear to it any place. I’ll swear it now.” Steve took a step -forward, one hand outstretched. “I’ll do more than that. Look at all -these folks here. There ain’t one of them but can swear I got Negro -blood in me this minute. That’s how white I am.” - -Sheriff Ike Keener swept the crowd with his eye. Perhaps what he saw in -their faces failed to convince him. “Well, I seen fairer men than you -was niggers. Still, you better tell that——” - -Mild, benevolent, patriarchal, the figure of old Windy stepped out from -among the rest. “Guess you’ve known me, Ike, better part of twenty-five -years. I was keelboatin’ time you was runnin’ around, a barefoot on the -landin’. Now I’m tellin’ you—me, Windy McKlain—that that white man -there’s got nigger blood in him. I’ll take my oath to that.” - -Having thus delivered himself of what was, perhaps, the second longest -speech in his career, he clumped off again, across the stage, down the -stairs, up the aisle, looking, even in that bizarre environment, like -something out of Genesis. - -Sheriff Ike Keener was frankly puzzled. “If it was anybody else but -Windy—but I got this straight from—from somebody ought to know.” - -“From who?” shouted Andy, all indignation. “From a sooty-faced scab of a -bull-drumming engineer named Pete. And why? Because he’s been stuck on -Julie here I don’t know how long, and she wouldn’t have anything to do -with him.” - -“Is that right?” - -“Yes, it is,” Steve put in, quickly. “He was after my wife. Anybody in -the company’ll bear me out. He wouldn’t leave her alone, though she -hated the sight of him, and Cap here give him a talking—didn’t you, -Cap? So finally, when he wouldn’t quit, then there was nothing for it -but lick him, and I licked him good, and soused him in the river to get -his dirty face clean. He crawls out swearing he’ll get me for it. Now -you know.” - -Keener now addressed himself to Julie for the first time. “He says—this -Pete—that you was born here in Lemoyne, and that your pop was white and -your mammy black. That right?” - -Julie moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. “Yes,” she said. -“That’s—right.” - -A sudden commotion in the group that had been so still. Elly’s voice, -shrill with hysteria. “I will! I’ll tell right out. The wench! The lying -black——” - -Suddenly stifled, as though a hand had been clapped none too gently -across her mouth. Incoherent blubberings; a scuffle. Schultzy had picked -Elly up like a sack of meal, one hand still firmly held over her mouth; -had carried her into her room and slammed the door. - -“What’s she say?” inquired Keener. - -Again Andy stepped into the breach. “That’s our ingénue lead. She’s kind -of high strung. You see, she’s been friends with this—with Julie -Dozier, here—without knowing about her—about her blood, and like that. -Kind of give her a shock, I guess. Natural.” - -It was plain that Sheriff Ike Keener was on the point of departure, -puzzled though convinced. He took off his broad-brimmed hat, scratched -his head, replaced the hat at an angle that spelled bewilderment. His -eye, as he turned away, fell on the majestic figure of Parthenia Ann -Hawks, and on Magnolia cowering, wide-eyed, in the folds of her mother’s -ample skirts. - -“You look like a respectable woman, ma’am.” - -Imposing enough at all times, Parthy now grew visibly taller. Cold -sparks flew from her eyes. “I am.” - -“That your little girl?” - -Andy did the honours. “My wife, Sheriff. My little girl, Magnolia. What -do you say to the Sheriff, Magnolia?” - -Thus urged, Magnolia spoke that which had been seething within her. -“You’re bad!” she shouted, her face twisted with the effort to control -her tears. “You’re a bad mean man, that’s what! You called Julie names -and made her look all funny. You’re a——” - -The maternal hand stifled her. - -“If I was you, ma’am, I wouldn’t bring up no child on a boat like this. -No, nor stay on it, neither. Fine place to rear a child!” - -Whereupon, surprisingly enough, Parthy turned defensive. “My child’s as -well brought up as your own, and probably better, and so I tell you. And -I’ll thank you to keep your advice to yourself, Mr. Sheriff.” - -“Parthy! Parthy!” from the alarmed Andy. - -But Sheriff Ike Keener was a man of parts. “Well, women folks are all -alike. I’ll be going. I kind of smell a nigger in the woodpile here in -more ways than one. But I’ll take your word for it.” He looked Captain -Andy sternly in the eye. “Only let me tell you this, Captain Hawks. You -better not try to give your show in this town to-night. We got some -public-spirited folks here in Lemoyne and this fix you’re in has kind of -leaked around. You go to work and try to give your show with this mixed -blood you got here and first thing you know you’ll be riding out of town -on something don’t sit so easy as a boat.” - -His broad-brimmed hat at an angle of authority, his coat tails flirting -as he strode, he marched up the aisle then and out. - -The little huddling group seemed visibly to collapse. It was as though -an unseen hand had removed a sustaining iron support from the spine of -each. Magnolia would have flown to Julie, but Parthy jerked her back. -Whispering then; glance of disdain. - -“Well, Julie, m’girl,” began Andy Hawks, kindly. Julie turned to him. - -“We’re going,” she said, quietly. - -The door of Elly’s room burst open. Elly, a rumpled, distraught, -unlovely figure, appeared in Julie’s doorway, Schultzy trying in vain to -placate her. - -“You get out of here!” She turned in a frenzy to Andy. “She gets out of -here with that white trash she calls her husband or I go, and so I warn -you. She’s black! She’s black! God, I was a fool not to see it all the -time. Look at her, the nasty yellow——” A stream of abuse, vile, -obscene, born of the dregs of river talk heard through the years, now -welled to Elly’s lips, distorting them horribly. - -“Come away from here,” Parthy said, through set lips, to Magnolia. And -bore the child, protesting, up the aisle and into the security of her -own room forward. - -“I want to stay with Julie! I want to stay with Julie!” wailed Magnolia, -overwrought, as the inexorable hand dragged her up the stairs. - -In her tiny disordered room Julie was binding up her wild hair with a -swift twist. She barely glanced at Elly. “Shut that woman up,” she said, -quietly. “Tell her I’m going.” She began to open boxes and drawers. - -Steve approached Andy, low-voiced. “Cap, take us down as far as Xenia, -will you, for God’s sake! Don’t make us get off here.” - -“Down as far as Xenia you go,” shouted Captain Andy at the top of his -voice, “and anybody in this company don’t like it they’re free to git, -bag and baggage, now. We’ll pull out of here now. Xenia by afternoon at -four, latest. And you two want to stay the night on board you’re -welcome. I’m master of this boat, by God!” - -They left, these two, when the _Cotton Blossom_ docked at Xenia in the -late afternoon. Andy shook hands with them, gravely; and Windy clumped -down from the pilot house to perform the same solemn ceremony. You -sensed unseen peering eyes at every door and window of the _Cotton -Blossom_ and the _Mollie Able_. - -“How you fixed for money?” Andy demanded, bluntly. - -“We’re fixed all right,” Julie replied, quietly. Of the two of them she -was the more composed. “We’ve been saving. You took too good care of us -on the _Cotton Blossom_. No call to spend our money.” The glance from -her dark shadow-encircled eyes was one of utter gratefulness. She took -up the lighter pieces of luggage. Steve was weighed down with the -others—bulging boxes and carpet bags and bundles—their clothing and -their show-boat wardrobe and their pitifully few trinkets and personal -belongings. A pin cushion, very lumpy, that Magnolia had made for her at -Christmas a year ago. Photographs of the _Cotton Blossom_. A book of -pressed wild flowers. Old newspaper clippings. - -Julie lingered. Steve crossed the gangplank, turned, beckoned with his -head. Julie lingered. An unspoken question in her eyes. - -Andy flushed and scratched the mutton-chop whiskers this side and that. -“Well, you know how she is, Julie. She don’t mean no harm. But she -didn’t let on to Magnolia just what time you were going. Told her -to-morrow, likely. Women folks are funny, that way. She don’t mean no -harm.” - -“That’s all right,” said Julie; picked up the valises, was at Steve’s -side. Together the two toiled painfully up the steep river bank, Steve -turning to aid her as best he could. They reached the top of the levee. -They stood a moment, breathless; then turned and trudged down the dusty -Southern country road, the setting sun in their faces. Julie’s slight -figure was bent under the weight of the burden she carried. You saw -Steve’s fine blond head turned toward her, tender, concerned, -encouraging. - -Suddenly from the upper deck that fronted Magnolia’s room and Parthy’s -came the sound of screams, a scuffle, a smart slap, feet clattering -pell-mell down the narrow wooden balcony stairs. A wild little figure in -a torn white frock, its face scratched and tear-stained, its great eyes -ablaze in the white face, flew past Andy, across the gangplank, up the -levee, down the road. Behind her, belated and panting, came Parthy. Her -hand on her heart, her bosom heaving, she leaned against the inadequate -support offered by Andy’s right arm, threatening momentarily to topple -him, by her own dead weight, into the river. - -“To think that I should live to see the day when—my own child—she -slapped me—her mother! I saw them out of the window, so I told her to -straighten her bureau drawers—a sight! All of a sudden she heard that -woman’s voice, low as it was, and she to the window. When she saw her -going she makes for the door. I caught her on the steps, but she was -like a wildcat, and raised her hand against me—her own mother—and tore -away, with me holding this in my hand.” She held out a fragment of torn -white stuff. “Raised her hand against her own——” - -Andy grinned. “Good for her.” - -“What say, Andy Hawks!” - -But Andy refused to answer. His gaze followed the flying little figure -silhouetted against the evening sky at the top of the high river bank. -The slim sagging figure of the woman and the broad-shouldered figure of -the man trudged down the road ahead. The child’s voice could be heard -high and clear, with a note of hysteria in it. “Julie! Julie! Wait for -me! I want to say good-bye! Julie!” - -The slender woman in the black dress turned and made as though to start -back and then, with a kind of crazy fear in her pace, began to run away -from the pursuing little figure—away from something that she had not -the courage to face. And when she saw this Magnolia ran on yet a little -while, faltering, and then she stopped and buried her head in her hands -and sobbed. The woman glanced over her shoulder, fearfully. And at what -she saw she dropped her bags and bundles in the road and started back -toward her, running fleetly in spite of her long ruffled awkward skirts; -and she held out her arms long before they were able to reach her. And -when finally they came together, the woman dropped on her knees in the -dust of the road and gathered the weeping child to her and held her -close, so that as you saw them sharply outlined against the sunset the -black of the woman’s dress and the white of the child’s frock were as -one. - - - - - VIII - - -Magnolia, at fifteen, was a gangling gawky child whose eyes were too big -for her face and whose legs were too long for her skirts. She looked, in -fact, all legs, eyes, and elbows. It was a constant race between her -knees and her skirt hems. Parthy was for ever lengthening frocks. -Frequently Magnolia, looking down at herself, was surprised, like Alice -in Wonderland after she had eaten the magic currant cake, to discover -how far away from her head her feet were. Being possessed of a natural -creamy pallor which her mother mistook for lack of red corpuscles, she -was dosed into chronic biliousness on cod liver oil, cream, eggs, and -butter, all of which she loathed. Then suddenly, at sixteen, legs, -elbows, and eyes assumed their natural proportions. Overnight, -seemingly, she emerged from adolescence a rather amazing looking young -creature with a high broad forehead, a wide mobile mouth, great dark -liquid eyes, and a most lovely speaking voice which nobody noticed. Her -dress was transformed, with Cinderella-like celerity, from the pinafore -to the bustle variety. She was not a beauty. She was, in fact, -considered rather plain by the unnoticing. Being hipless and almost -boyishly flat of bust in a day when the female form was a thing not only -of curves but of loops, she was driven by her mother into wearing all -sorts of pads and ruffled corset covers and contrivances which somehow -failed to conceal the slimness of the frame beneath. She was, even at -sixteen, what might be termed distinguished-looking. Merely by standing -tall, pale, dark-haired, next to Elly, that plump and pretty ingénue was -transformed into a dumpy and rather dough-faced blonde in whose -countenance selfishness and dissatisfaction were beginning to etch -telltale lines. - -She had been now almost seven years on the show boat. These seven years -had spread a tapestry of life and colour before her eyes. Broad rivers -flowing to the sea. Little towns perched high on the river banks or -cowering flat and fearful, at the mercy of the waters that often crept -like hungry and devouring monsters, stealthily over the levee and into -the valley below. Singing Negroes. Fighting whites. Spawning Negroes. A -life fantastic, bizarre, peaceful, rowdy, prim, eventful, calm. On the -rivers anything might happen and everything did. She saw convict chain -gangs working on the roads. Grisly nightmarish figures of striped -horror, manacled leg to leg. At night you heard them singing plantation -songs in the fitful glare of their camp fires in the woods; simple songs -full of hope. Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel? they sang. Swing Low Sweet -Chariot, Comin’ for to Carry Me Home. In the Louisiana bayou country she -saw the Negroes perform that weird religious rite known as a ring shout, -semi-savage, hysterical, mesmerizing. - -Iowa, Illinois, and Missouri small-town housewives came to be Magnolia’s -friends, and even Parthy’s. The coming of the show boat was the one -flash of blazing colour in the drab routine of their existence. To them -Schultzy was the John Drew of the rivers, Elly the Lillian Russell. You -saw them scudding down the placid tree-shaded streets in their morning -ginghams and calicoes, their bits of silver clasped in their work-seamed -hands, or knotted into the corner of a handkerchief. Fifty cents for two -seats at to-night’s show. - -“How are you, Mis’ Hawks? . . . And the little girl? . . . My! Look at -the way she’s shot up in a year’s time! Well, you can’t call her little -girl any more. . . . I brought you a glass of my homemade damson -preserve. I take cup of sugar to cup of juice. Real rich, but it is good -if I do say so. . . . I told Will I was coming to the show every night -you were here, and he could like it or lump it. I been saving out of the -housekeeping money.” - -They brought vast chocolate cakes; batches of cookies; jugs of -home-brewed grape wine; loaves of fresh bread; jars of strained honey; -stiff tight bunches of garden flowers. Offerings on the shrine of Art. - -Periodically Parthy threatened to give up this roving life and take -Magnolia with her. She held this as a weapon over Andy’s head when he -crossed her will, or displeased her. Immediately boarding schools, -convents, and seminaries yawned for Magnolia. - -Perhaps Parthy was right. “What kind of a life is this for a child!” she -demanded. And later, “A fine kind of a way for a young lady to be -living—slopping up and down these rivers, seeing nothing but loafers -and gamblers and niggers and worse. What about her Future?” Future, as -she pronounced it, was spelled with a capital F and was a thin disguise -for the word husband. - -“Future’ll take care of itself,” Andy assured her, blithely. - -“If that isn’t just like a man!” - -It was inevitable that Magnolia should, sooner or later, find herself -through force of circumstance treading the boards as an actress in the -Cotton Blossom Floating Theatre company. Not only that, she found -herself playing ingénue leads. She had been thrown in as a stop-gap -following Elly’s defection, and had become, quite without previous -planning, a permanent member of the troupe. Strangely enough, she -developed an enormous following, though she lacked that saccharine -quality which river towns had come to expect in their show-boat -ingénues. True, her long legs were a little lanky beneath the short -skirts of the woodman’s pure daughter, but what she lacked in one -extremity she made up in another. They got full measure when they looked -at her eyes, and her voice made the small-town housewives weep. Yet when -their husbands nudged them, saying, “What you sniffling about?” they -could only reply, “I don’t know.” And no more did they. - -Elly was twenty-eight when she deserted Schultzy for a gambler from -Mobile. For three years she had been restless, fault-finding, -dissatisfied. Each autumn she would announce to Captain Andy her -intention to forsake the rivers and bestow her talents ashore. During -the winter she would try to get an engagement through the Chicago -booking offices contrary to the custom of show-boat actors whose habit -it was to hibernate in the winter on the savings of a long and -economical summer. But the Chicago field was sparse and uncertain. She -never had the courage or the imagination to go as far as New York. April -would find her back on the _Cotton Blossom_. Between her and Schultzy -the bickerings and the quarrels became more and more frequent. She -openly defied Schultzy as he directed rehearsals. She refused to follow -his suggestions though he had a real sense of direction. Everything she -knew he had taught her. She invariably misread a line and had to be -coached in it, word by word; inflection; business; everything. - -Yet now, when Schultzy said, “No! Listen. You been kidnapped and -smuggled on board this rich fella’s yacht, see. And he thinks he’s got -you in his power. He goes to grab you. You’re here, see. Then you point -toward the door back of him, see, like you saw something there scared -the life out of you. He turns around and you grab the gun off the table, -see, and cover him, and there’s your big speech. _So_ and so and _so_ -and so and _so_ and so and _so_ and so——” the _ad lib._ directions -that have held since the day of Shakespeare. - -Elly would deliberately defy him. Others in the company—new -members—began to take their cue from her. - -She complained about her wardrobe; refused to interest herself in it, -though she had been an indefatigable needlewoman. Now, instead of -sewing, you saw her looking moodily out across the river, her hands -idle, her brows black. An unintelligent and unresourceful woman turned -moody and thoughtful must come to mischief, for within herself she finds -no solace. - -At Mobile, then, she was gone. It was, they all knew, the -black-moustached gambler who had been following the show boat down the -river since they played Paducah, Kentucky. Elly had had dozens of -admirers in her show-boat career; had received much attention from -Southern gallants, gamblers, loafers, adventurers—all the romantic -beaux of the river towns of the ’80s. Her attitude toward them had been -puritanical to the point of sniffiness, though she had enjoyed their -homage and always displayed any amorous missives or gifts that came her -way. - -True to the melodramatic tradition of her environment, she left a note -for Schultzy, written in a flourishing Spencerian hand that made up, in -part, for the spelling. She was gone. He need not try to follow her or -find her or bring her back. She was going to star at the head of her own -company and play Camille and even Juliet. He had promised her. She was -good and sick and tired of this everlasting flopping up and down the -rivers. She wouldn’t go back to it, no matter what. Her successor could -have her wardrobe. They had bookings through Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, -and Kansas. She might even get to New York. (Incredibly enough, she did -actually play Juliet through the Mid-west, to audiences of the -bewildered yokelry.) She was sorry to leave Cap in the lurch like this. -And she would close, and begged to remain his loving Wife (this inked -out but still decipherable)—begged to remain, his truly, Elly Chipley. -Just below this signature the added one of Lenore La Verne, done in -tremendous sable downstrokes and shaded curlecues, especially about the -L’s. - -It was a crushing blow for Schultzy, who loved her. Stricken, he thought -only of her happiness. “She can’t get along without me,” he groaned. -Then, in a stunned way, “Juliet!” There was nothing of bitterness or -rancour in his tone; only a dumb despairing wonder. “Juliet! And she -couldn’t play Little Eva without making her out a slut.” He pondered -this a moment. “She’s got it into her head she’s Bernhardt, or -something. . . . Well, she’ll come back.” - -“Do you mean to say you’d take her back!” Parthy demanded. - -“Why, sure,” Schultzy replied, simply. “She never packed a trunk in her -life, or anything. I done all those things for her. Some ways she’s a -child. I guess that’s how she kept me so tight. She needed me all the -time. . . . Well, she’ll come back.” - -Captain Andy sent to Chicago for an ingénue lead. It was then, pending -her arrival, that Magnolia stepped into the breach—the step being made, -incidentally, over what was practically Parthy’s dead body. For at -Magnolia’s calm announcement that she knew every line of the part and -all the business, her mother stormed, had hysterics, and finally took to -her bed (until nearly time for the rise of the curtain). The bill that -night was The Parson’s Bride. Show-boat companies to this day still tell -the story of what happened during that performance on the _Cotton -Blossom_. - -They had two rehearsals, one in the morning, another that lasted -throughout the afternoon. Of the company, Magnolia was the calmest. -Captain Andy seemed to swing, by invisible pulleys, from the orchestra -pit below to Parthy’s chamber above. One moment he would be sprawled in -the kerosene footlights, his eyes deep in wrinkles of delight, his -little brown paws scratching the mutton-chop whiskers in a frenzy of -excitement. - -“That’s right. That’s the stuff! Elly never give it half the——’Scuse -me, Schultzy—I didn’t go for to hurt your feelings, but by golly, -Nollie! I wouldn’t of believed you had it in you, not if your own mother -told——” Then, self-reminded, he would cast a fearful glance over his -shoulder, that shoulder would droop, he would extricate himself from the -welter of footlights and music racks and prompt books in which he -squatted, and scamper up the aisle. The dim outline of a female head in -curl papers certainly could not have been seen peering over the top of -the balcony rail as he fancied, for when he had clattered up the balcony -stairs and had gently turned the knob of the bedroom door, there lay the -curl-papered head on the pillow of the big bed, and from it issued -hollow groans, and plastered over one cheek of it was a large moist -white cloth soaked in some pungent and nostril-pricking stuff. The eyes -were closed. The whole figure was shaken by shivers. Mortal agony, you -would have said (had you not known Parthy), had this stricken and -monumental creature in its horrid clutches. - -In a whisper—“Parthy!” - -A groan, hollow, heartrending, mortuary. - -He entered, shut the door softly, tiptoed over to the bed, laid a -comforting brown paw on the shivering shoulder. The shoulder became -convulsive, the shivers swelled to heaves. “Now, now, Parthy! What you -taking on so for? God A’mighty, person’d think she’d done something to -shame you instead of make you mighty proud. If you’d see her! Why, say, -she’s a born actress.” - -The groans now became a wail. The eyes unclosed. The figure raised -itself to a sitting posture. The sopping rag rolled limply off. Parthy -rocked herself to and fro. “My own daughter! An actress! That I should -have lived to see this day! . . . Rather have . . . in her grave . . . -why I ever allowed her to set foot on this filthy scow . . .” - -“Now, Parthy, you’re just working yourself up. Matter of fact, that time -Mis’ Means turned her ankle and we thought she couldn’t step on it, you -was all for going on in her part, and I bet if Sophy Means hadn’t tied -up her foot and gone on like a soldier she is, we’d of had you acting -that night. You was rarin’ to. I watched you.” - -“Me! Acting on the stage! Not that I couldn’t play better than any Sophy -Means, and that’s no compliment. A poor stick if I couldn’t.” But her -defence lacked conviction. Andy had surprised a secret ambition in this -iron-armoured bosom. - -“Now, come on! Cheer up! Ought to be proud your own daughter stepping in -and saving us money like this. We’d of closed. Had to. God knows when -that new baggage’ll get here, if she gets here at all. What do you think -of that Chipley! Way I’ve treated that girl, if she’d been my own -daughter—well! . . . How’d you like a nice little sip of whisky, -Parthy? Then you come on down give Nollie a hand with her costumes. -Chipley’s stuff comes up on her like ballet skirts.—Now, now, now! I -didn’t say she——Oh, my God!” - -Parthy had gone off again into hysterics. “My own daughter! My little -girl!” - -The time for severe measures had come. Andy had not dealt with actresses -for years without learning something of the weapons with which to fight -hysteria. - -“All right. I’ll give you something to screech for. The boys paraded -this noon with a banner six feet long and red letters a foot high -announcing the Appearance Extraordinaire of Magnolia the Mysterious -Comedy Tragedienne in The Parson’s Bride. I made a special spiel on the -corner. We got the biggest advance sale we had this season. Yessir! -Doc’s downstairs raking it in with both hands and you had the least bit -of gumption in you, instead of laying here whining and carrying on, -you’d——” - -“What’s the advance?” spake up Parthy, the box-office expert. - -“Three hundred; and not anywheres near four o’clock.” - -With one movement Parthy had flung aside the bedclothes and stepped out -of bed revealing, rather inexplicably, a complete lower costume -including shoes. - -Andy was off, down the stairs, up the aisle, into the orchestra pit just -in time to hear Magnolia say, “Schultzy, _please_! Don’t throw me the -line like that, I know it. I didn’t stop because I was stuck.” - -“What’d you stop for, then, and look like you’d seen spooks!” - -“I stopped a-purpose. She sees her husband that she hates and that she -thought was dead for years come sneaking in, and she wouldn’t start -right in to talk. She’d just stand there, kind of frozen and stiff, -staring at him.” - -“All right, if you know so much about directing, go ahead and di——” - -She ran to him, threw her arms about him, hugged him, all contrition. -“Oh, Schultzy, don’t be mad. I didn’t go to boss. I just wanted to act -it like I felt. And I’m awfully sorry about Elly and everything. I’ll do -as you say, only I just can’t help thinking, Schultzy dear, that she’d -stand there, staring kind of silly, almost.” - -“You’re right. I guess my mind ain’t on my work. I ought to know how -right you are. I got that letter Elly left for me, I just stood there -gawping with my mouth open, and never said a word for I don’t know how -long——Oh, my God!” - -“There, there, Schultzy.” - -By a tremendous effort (the mechanics of which were not entirely -concealed) Schultzy, the man, gave way to Harold Westbrook, the artist. - -“You’re right, Magnolia. That’ll get ’em. You standing there like that, -stunned and pale.” - -“How’ll I get pale, Schultzy?” - -“You’ll feel pale inside and the audience’ll think you are.” (The whole -art of acting unconsciously expressed by Schultzy.) “Then Frank here has -his sneery speech—_so_ and so and _so_ and so and _so_ and so—and -thought you’d marry the parson, huh? And then you open up with your big -scene—_so_ and so and _so_ and so and _so_ and so——” - -Outwardly calm, Magnolia took only a cup of coffee at dinner, and -Parthy, for once, did not press her to eat. That mournful matron, though -still occasionally shaken by a convulsive shudder, managed her usual -heartening repast and actually spent the time from four to seven -lengthening Elly’s frocks for Magnolia and taking them in to fit the -girl’s slight frame. - -Schultzy made her up, and rather overdid it so that, as the deserted -wife and school teacher and, later, as the Parson’s prospective bride, -she looked a pass between a healthy Camille and Cleopatra just before -she applied the asp. In fact, in their effort to bridge the gap left by -Elly’s sudden flight, the entire company overdid everything and thus -brought about the cataclysmic moment which is theatrical show-boat -history. - -Magnolia, so sure of her lines during rehearsal, forgot them a score of -times during the performance and, had it not been for Schultzy, who -threw them to her unerringly and swiftly, would have made a dismal -failure of this, her first stage appearance. They were playing Vidallia, -always a good show-boat town. The house was filled from the balcony -boxes to the last row downstairs near the door, from which point very -little could be seen and practically nothing heard. Something of the -undercurrent of excitement which pervaded the _Cotton Blossom_ troupe -seemed to seep through the audience; or perhaps even an audience so -unsophisticated as this could not but sense the unusual in this -performance. Every one of the troupe—Schultzy, Mis’ Means, Mr. Means, -Frank, Ralph, the Soapers (Character Team that had succeeded Julie and -Steve)—all were trembling for Magnolia. And because they were fearful -for her they threw themselves frantically into their parts. Magnolia, -taking her cue (literally as well as figuratively) from them, did -likewise. As ingénue lead, her part was that of a young school mistress -earning her livelihood in a little town. Deserted some years before by -her worthless husband, she learns now of his death. The town parson has -long been in love with her, and she with him. Now they can marry. The -wedding gown is finished. The guests are invited. - -This is her last day as school teacher. She is alone in the empty -schoolroom. Farewell, dear pupils. Farewell, dear schoolroom, -blackboard, erasers, water-bucket, desk, etc. She picks up her key. But -what is this evil face in the doorway! Who is this drunken, leering -tramp, grisly in rags, repulsive—— My God! You! My husband! - -(Never was villain so black and diabolical as Frank. Never was heroine -so lovely and frail and trembling and helpless and white—as per -Schultzy’s directions. As for Schultzy himself, the heroic parson, very -heavily made up and pure yet brave withal, it was a poor stick of a -maiden who wouldn’t have contrived to get into some sort of distressing -circumstance just for the joy of being got out of it by this godly yet -godlike young cleric.) - -Frank, then: “I reckon you thought I was dead. Well, I’m about the -livest corpse you ever saw.” A diabolical laugh. “Too damn bad you won’t -be able to wear that new wedding dress.” - -Pleadings, agony, despair. - -Now his true villainy comes out. A thousand dollars, then, and quick, or -you don’t walk down the aisle to the music of no wedding march. - -“I haven’t got it.” - -“No! Where’s the money you been saving all these years?” - -“I haven’t a thousand dollars. I swear it.” - -“So!” Seizes her. Drags her across the room. Screams. His hand stifles -them. - -Unfortunately, in their very desire to help Magnolia, they all -exaggerated their villainy, their heroism, their business. Being a -trifle uncertain of her lines, Magnolia, too, sought to cover her -deficiencies by stressing her emotional scenes. When terror was required -her face was distorted with it. Her screams of fright were real screams -of mortal fear. Her writhings would have wrung pity from a fiend. Frank -bared his teeth, chortled like a maniac. He wound his fingers in her -long black hair and rather justified her outcry. In contrast, Schultzy’s -nobility and purity stood out as crudely and unmistakably as white -against black. Nuances were not for show-boat audiences. - -So then, screams, protestations, snarls, ha-ha’s, pleadings, agony, -cruelty, anguish. - -Something—intuition—or perhaps a sound from the left upper box made -Frank, the villain, glance up. There, leaning over the box rail, his -face a mask of hatred, his eyes glinting, sat a huge hairy backwoodsman. -And in his hand glittered the barrel of a businesslike gun. He was -taking careful aim. Drama had come late into the life of this literal -mind. He had, in the course of a quick-shooting rough-and-tumble career, -often seen the brutal male mishandling beauty in distress. His code was -simple. One second more and he would act on it. - -Frank’s hand released his struggling victim. Gentleness and love -overspread his features, dispelling their villainy. To Magnolia’s -staring and open-mouthed amazement he made a gesture of abnegation. -“Well, Marge, I ain’t got nothin’ more to say if you and the parson want -to get married.” After which astounding utterance he slunk rapidly off, -leaving the field to what was perhaps the most abject huddle of heroism -that every graced a show-boat stage. - -The curtain came down. The audience, intuitively glancing toward the -upper box, ducked, screamed, or swore. The band struck up. The -backwoodsman, a little bewildered but still truculent, subsided -somewhat. A trifle mystified, but labouring under the impression that -this was, perhaps, the ordinary routine of the theatre, the audience -heard Schultzy, in front of the curtain, explaining that the villain was -taken suddenly ill; that the concert would now be given free of charge; -that each and every man, woman, and child was invited to retain his -seat. The backwoodsman, rather sheepish now, took a huge bite of Honest -Scrap and looked about him belligerently. Out came Mr. Means to do his -comic Chinaman. Order reigned on one side of the footlights at least, -though behind the heaving Venetian lagoon was a company saved from -collapse only by a quite human uncertainty as to whether tears or -laughter would best express their state of mind. - -The new ingénue lead, scheduled to meet the _Cotton Blossom_ at Natchez, -failed to appear. Magnolia, following her trial by firearms, had played -the absent Elly’s parts for a week. There seemed to be no good reason -why she should not continue to do so at least until Captain Andy could -engage an ingénue who would join the troupe at New Orleans. - -A year passed. Magnolia was a fixture in the company. Now, as she, in -company with Parthy or Mis’ Means or Mrs. Soaper, appeared on the front -street of this or that little river town, she was stared at and -commented on. Round-eyed little girls, swinging on the front gate, gazed -at her much as she had gazed, not so many years before, at Elly and -Julie as they had sauntered down the shady path of her own street in -Thebes. - -She loved the life. She worked hard. She cherished the admiration and -applause. She took her work seriously. Certainly she did not consider -herself an apostle of art. She had no illusions about herself as an -actress. But she did thrive on the warm electric current that flowed -from those river audiences made up of miners, farmers, Negroes, -housewives, harvesters, backwoodsmen, villagers, over the footlights, to -her. A naïve people, they accepted their theatre without question, like -children. That which they saw they believed. They hissed the villain, -applauded the heroine, wept over the plight of the wronged. The plays -were as naïve as the audience. In them, onrushing engines were cheated -of their victims; mill wheels were stopped in the nick of time; heroes, -bound hand and foot and left to be crushed under iron wheels, were -rescued by the switchman’s ubiquitous daughter. Sheriffs popped up -unexpectedly in hidden caves. The sound of horses’ hoofs could always be -heard when virtue was about to be ravished. They were the minstrels of -the rivers, these players, telling in terms of blood, love, and -adventure the crude saga of a new country. - -Frank, the Heavy, promptly fell in love with Magnolia. Parthy, quick to -mark the sheep’s eyes he cast in the direction of the ingénue lead, -watched him with a tigress glare, and though he lived on the _Cotton -Blossom_, as did Magnolia; saw her all day, daily; probably was seldom -more than a hundred feet removed from her, he never spoke to her alone -and certainly never was able to touch her except in the very public -glare of the footlights with some hundreds of pairs of eyes turned on -the two by the _Cotton Blossom_ audiences. He lounged disconsolately -after her, a large and somewhat splay-footed fellow whose head was too -small for his shoulders, giving him the look of an inverted exclamation -point. - -His unrequited and unexpressed passion for Magnolia would have bothered -that young lady and her parents very little were it not for the fact -that his emotions began to influence his art. In his scenes on the stage -with her he became more and more uncertain of his lines. Not only that, -his attitude and tone as villain of the piece took on a tender note most -mystifying to the audience, accustomed to seeing villainy black, with no -half tones. When he should have been hurling Magnolia into the mill -stream or tying her brutally to the track, or lashing her with a -horsewhip or snarling at her like a wolf, he became a cooing dove. His -blows were caresses. His baleful glare became a simper of adoration. - -“Do you intend to speak to that sheep, or shall I?” demanded Parthy of -her husband. - -“I’ll do it,” Andy assured her, hurriedly. “Leave him be till we get to -New Orleans. Then, if anything busts, why, I can always get some kind of -a fill-in there.” - -They had been playing the Louisiana parishes—little Catholic -settlements between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, their inhabitants a -mixture of French and Creole. Frank had wandered disconsolately through -the miniature cathedral which each little parish boasted and, returning, -had spoken darkly of abandoning the stage for the Church. - -New Orleans meant mail for the _Cotton Blossom_ troupe. With that mail -came trouble. Schultzy, white but determined, approached Captain Andy, -letter in hand. - -“I got to go, Cap. She needs me.” - -“Go!” squeaked Andy. His squeak was equivalent to a bellow in a man of -ordinary stature. “Go where? What d’you mean, she?” But he knew. - -Out popped Parthy, scenting trouble. - -Schultzy held out a letter written on cheap paper, lined, and smelling -faintly of antiseptic. “She’s in the hospital at Little Rock. Says she’s -had an operation. He’s left her, the skunk. She ain’t got a cent.” - -“I’ll take my oath on that,” Parthy put in, pungently. - -“You can’t go and leave me flat now, Schultzy.” - -“I got to go, I tell you. Frank can play leads till you get somebody, or -till I get back. Old Means can play utility at a pinch, and Doc can do -general business.” - -“Frank,” announced Parthy, with terrible distinctness, “will play no -leads in this company, and so I tell you, Hawks.” - -“Who says he’s going to! A fine-looking lead he’d make, with that -pin-head of his, and those elephant’s hoofs. . . . Now looka here, -Schultzy. You been a trouper long enough to know you can’t leave a show -in the ditch like this. No real show-boat actor’d do it, and you know -it.” - -“Sure I know it. I wouldn’t do it for myself, no matter what. But it’s -her. I wrote her a letter, time she left. I got her bookings. I said if -the time comes you need me, leave me know, and I’ll come. And she needs -me, and she left me know, and I’m coming.” - -“How about us!” demanded Parthy. “Leaving us in the lurch like that, -first Elly and now you after all these years. A fine pair, the two of -you.” - -“Now, Parthy!” - -“Oh, I’ve no patience with you, Hawks. Always letting people get the -best of you.” - -“But I told you,” Schultzy began again, almost tearfully, “it’s for her, -not me. She’s sick. You can pick up somebody here in New Orleans. I bet -there’s a dozen better actors than me laying around the docks this -minute. I got to talking to a fellow while ago, down on the wharf. The -place was all jammed up with freight, and I was waiting to get by so’s I -could come aboard. I said I was an actor on the _Cotton Blossom_, and he -said he’d acted and that was a life he’d like.” - -“Yes,” snapped Parthy. “I suppose he would. What does he think this is! -A bumboat! Plenty of wharf rats in New Orleans’d like nothing -better——” - -Schultzy pointed to where a slim figure leaned indolently against a huge -packing case—one of hundreds of idlers dotting the great New Orleans -plank landing. - -Andy adjusted the pair of ancient binoculars through which he recently -had been scanning the wharf and the city beyond the levee. He surveyed -the graceful lounging figure. - -“I’d go ashore and talk to him, I was you,” advised Schultzy. - -Andy put down the glasses and stared at Schultzy in amazement. “Him! -Why, I couldn’t go up and talk to him about acting on no show boat. He’s -a gentleman.” - -“Here,” said Parthy, abruptly, her curiosity piqued. She in turn trained -the glasses on the object of the discussion. Her survey was brief but -ample. “He may be a gentleman. But nobody feels a gentleman with a crack -in his shoe, and he’s got one. I can’t say I like the looks of him, -specially. But with Schultzy playing us this dirty trick—well, that’s -what it amounts to, and there’s no sense trying to prettify it—we can’t -be choosers. I’d just step down talk to him if I was you, Hawks.” - - - - - IX - - -This, then, turned out to be Magnolia’s first glimpse of Gaylord -Ravenal—an idle elegant figure in garments whose modish cut and fine -material served, at a distance, to conceal their shabbiness. Leaning -moodily against a tall packing case dumped on the wharf by some -freighter, he gazed about him and tapped indolently the tip of his -shining (and cracked) boot with an exquisite little ivory-topped malacca -cane. There was about him an air of distinction, an atmosphere of -richness. On closer proximity you saw that the broadcloth was shiny, the -fine linen of the shirt-front and cuffs the least bit frayed, the slim -boots undeniably split, the hat (a delicate gray and set a little on one -side) soiled as a pale gray hat must never be. From the _Cotton Blossom_ -deck you saw him as the son, perhaps, of some rich Louisiana planter, -idling a moment at the water’s edge. Waiting, doubtless, for one of the -big river packets—the floating palaces of the Mississippi—to bear him -luxuriously away up the river to his plantation landing. - -The truth was that Gaylord Ravenal was what the river gamblers called -broke. Stony, he would have told you. No one had a better right to use -the term than he. Of his two possessions, save the sorry clothes he had -on, one was the little malacca cane. And though he might part with cuff -links, shirt studs and, if necessary, shirt itself, he would always -cling to that little malacca cane, emblem of good fortune, his mascot. -It had turned on him temporarily. Yet his was the gambler’s -superstitious nature. To-morrow the cane would bring him luck. - -Not only was Gaylord Ravenal broke; he had just politely notified the -Chief of Police of New Orleans that he was in town. The call was not -entirely one of social obligation. It had a certain statutory side as -well. - -In the first place, Chief of Police Vallon, in a sudden political spasm -of virtue, endeavouring to clear New Orleans of professional gamblers, -had given them all twenty-four hours’ shrift. In the second place, this -particular visitor would have come under the head of New Orleans -undesirables on his own private account, even though his profession had -been that of philanthropist. Gaylord Ravenal had one year-old notch to -his gun. - -It had not been murder in cold blood or in rage, but a shot fired in -self-defence just the fraction of a second before the other man could -turn the trick. The evidence proved this, and Ravenal’s final -vindication followed. But New Orleans gathered her civic skirts about -her and pointed a finger of dismissal toward the door. Hereafter, should -he enter, his first visit must be to the Chief of Police; and -twenty-four hours—no more—must be the limit of his stay in the city -whose pompano and crayfish and Creoles and roses and Ramos gin fizzes he -loved. - -The evening before, he had stepped off the river packet _Lady Lee_, now -to be seen lying alongside the New Orleans landing together with a -hundred other craft. His twenty-four hours would expire this evening. - -Certainly he had not meant to find himself in New Orleans. He had come -aboard the _Lady Lee_ at St. Louis, his finances low, his hopes high, -his erstwhile elegant garments in their present precarious state. He had -planned, following the game of stud poker in which he immediately -immersed himself, to come ashore at Memphis or, at the latest, Natchez, -with his finances raised to the high level of his hopes. Unfortunately -his was an honest and over-eager game. His sole possession, beside the -little slim malacca cane (itself of small tangible value) was a -singularly clear blue-white diamond ring which he never wore. It was a -relic of luckier days before his broadcloth had become shiny, his linen -frayed, his boots split. He had clung to it, as he had to the cane, -through almost incredible hazards. His feeling about it was neither -sentimental nor superstitious. The tenuous streak of canniness in him -told him that, possessed of a clear white diamond, one can hold up one’s -head and one’s hopes, no matter what the state of coat, linen, boots, -and hat. It had never belonged, fiction-fashion, to his sainted (if any) -mother, nor was it an old Ravenal heirloom. It was a relic of winnings -in luckier days and represented, he knew, potential hundreds. In the -trip that lasted, unexpectedly, from St. Louis to New Orleans, he had -won and lost that ring six times. When the _Lady Lee_ had nosed her way -into the Memphis landing, and again at Natchez, it had been out of his -possession. He had stayed on board, perforce. Half an hour before coming -into New Orleans he had had it again, and had kept it. The game of stud -poker had lasted days, and he rose from it the richer by exactly nothing -at all. - -He had glanced out of the _Lady Lee’s_ saloon window, his eyes bloodshot -from sleeplessness, his nerves jangling, his hands twitching, his face -drawn; but that face shaven, those hands immaculate. Gaylord Ravenal, in -luck or out, had the habits and instincts of a gentleman. - -“Good God!” he exclaimed now, “this looks like—it is New Orleans!” It -was N’Yawlins as he said it. - -“What did you think it was?” growled one of the players, who had -temporarily owned the diamond several times during the journey down -river. “What did you think it was? Shanghai?” - -“I wish it was,” said Gaylord Ravenal. Somewhat dazedly he walked down -the _Lady Lee’s_ gangplank and retorted testily to a beady-eyed -giant-footed gentleman who immediately spoke to him in a low and not -unfriendly tone, “Give me time, can’t you! I haven’t been twenty-four -hours stepping from the gangplank to this wharf, have I? Well, then!” - -“No offence, Gay,” said the gentleman, his eyes still searching the -other passengers as they filed across the narrow gangplank. “Just -thought I’d remind you, case of trouble. You know how Vallon is.” - -Vallon had said, briefly, later, “That’s all right, Gay. But by this -time to-morrow evening——” He had eyed Ravenal’s raiment with a -comprehending eye. “Cigar?” The weed he proffered was slim, pale, and -frayed as the man who stood before him. Gaylord Ravenal’s jangling -nerves ached for the solace of tobacco; but he viewed this palpably -second-hand gift with a glance of disdain that was a triumph of the -spirit over the flesh. Certainly no man handicapped by his present -sartorial and social deficiencies was justified in raising a quizzical -right eyebrow in the manner employed by Ravenal. - -“What did you call it?” said he now. - -Vallon looked at it. He was not a quick-witted gentleman. “Cigar.” - -“Optimist.” And strolled out of the chiefs office, swinging the little -malacca cane. - -So then, you now saw him leaning moodily against a wooden case on the -New Orleans plank wharf, distinguished, shabby, dapper, handsome, broke, -and twenty-four. - -It was with some amusement that he had watched the crew of the _Mollie -Able_ bring the flat unwieldy bulk of the _Cotton Blossom_ into the -wharfside in the midst of the confusion of packets, barges, steamboats, -tugs, flats, tramp boats, shanty boats. He had spoken briefly and -casually to Schultzy while that bearer of evil tidings, letter in hand, -waited impatiently on the dock as the _Cotton Blossom_ was shifted to a -landing position farther upstream. He had seen these floating theatres -of the Mississippi and the Ohio many times, but he had never before -engaged one of their actors in conversation. - -“Juvenile lead!” he had exclaimed, unable to hide something of -incredulity in his voice. Schultzy, an anxious eye on the _Mollie -Able’s_ tedious manœuvres, had just made clear to Ravenal his own -position in the _Cotton Blossom_ troupe. Ravenal, surveying the furrowed -brow, the unshaven cheeks, the careless dress, the lack-lustre eye, had -involuntarily allowed to creep into his tone something of the -astonishment he felt. - -Schultzy made a little deprecating gesture with his hands, his -shoulders. “I guess I don’t look like no juvenile lead, and that’s a -fact. But I’m all shot to pieces. Took a drink the size of -this”—indicating perhaps five fingers—“up yonder on Canal Street; -straight whisky. No drinking allowed on the show boat. Well, sir, never -felt it no more’n it had been water. I just got news my wife’s sick in -the hospital.” - -Ravenal made a little perfunctory sound of sympathy. “In New Orleans?” - -“Little Rock, Arkansas. I’m going. It’s a dirty trick, but I’m going.” - -“How do you mean, dirty trick?” Ravenal was mildly interested in this -confiding stranger. - -“Leave the show flat like that. I don’t know what they’ll do. I——” He -saw that the _Cotton Blossom_ was now snugly at ease in her new -position, and that her gangplank had again been lowered. He turned away -abruptly, without a good-bye, went perhaps ten paces, came back five and -called to Ravenal. “You ever acted?” - -“Acted!” - -“On the stage. Acted. Been an actor.” - -Ravenal threw back his handsome head and laughed as he would have -thought, ten minutes ago, he never could laugh again. “Me! An actor! -N—” then, suddenly sober, thoughtful even—“Why, yes. Yes.” And eyeing -Schultzy through half-shut lids he tapped the tip of his shiny shabby -boot with the smart little malacca cane. Schultzy was off again toward -the _Cotton Blossom_. - -If Ravenal was aware of the scrutiny to which he was subjected through -the binoculars, he gave no sign as he lounged elegantly on the wharf -watching the busy waterside scene with an air of indulgent amusement -that would have made the onlooker receive with incredulity the -information that the law was even then snapping at his heels. - -Captain Andy Hawks scampered off the _Cotton Blossom_ and approached -this figure, employing none of the finesse that the situation called -for. - -“I understand you’ve acted on the stage.” - -Gaylord Ravenal elevated the right eyebrow and looked down his -aristocratic nose at the capering little captain. “I am Gaylord Ravenal, -of the Tennessee Ravenals. I failed to catch your name.” - -“Andy Hawks, captain and owner of the Cotton Blossom Floating Palace -Theatre.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the show boat. - -“Ah, yes,” said Ravenal, with polite unenthusiasm. He allowed his -patrician glance to rest idly a moment on the _Cotton Blossom_, lying -squat and dumpy alongside the landing. - -Captain Andy found himself suddenly regretting that he had not had her -painted and overhauled. He clutched his whiskers in embarrassment, and, -under stress of that same emotion, blurted the wrong thing. “I guess -Parthy was mistaken.” The Ravenal eyebrow became interrogatory. Andy -floundered on. “She said that no man with a crack in the shoe——” he -stopped, then, appalled. - -Gaylord Ravenal looked down at the footgear under discussion. He looked -up at the grim and ponderous female figure on the forward deck of the -show boat. Parthy was wearing one of her most uncompromising bonnets and -a gown noticeably bunchy even in that day of unsymmetrical feminine -fashions. Black was not becoming to Mrs. Hawks’ sallow colouring. Lumpy -black was fatal. If anything could have made this figure less attractive -than it actually was, Ravenal’s glance would seem to have done so. -“That—ah—lady?” - -“My wife,” said Andy. Then, mindful of the maxim of the sheep and the -lamb, he went the whole way. “We’ve lost our juvenile lead. Fifteen a -week and found. Chance to see the world. No responsibility. Schultzy -said you said . . . I said . . . Parthy said . . .” Hopelessly -entangled, he stopped. - -“Am I to understand that I am being offered the position -of—ah—juvenile lead on the—” the devastating glance upward—“Cotton -Blossom Floating Palace——” - -“That’s the size of it,” interrupted Andy, briskly. After all, even this -young man’s tone and manner could not quite dispel that crack in the -boot. Andy knew that no one wears a split shoe from choice. - -“No responsibility,” he repeated. “A chance to see life.” - -“I’ve seen it,” in the tone of one who did not care for what he has -beheld. His eyes were on a line with the _Cotton Blossom’s_ deck. His -gaze suddenly became concentrated. A tall slim figure in white had just -appeared on the upper deck, forward—the bit of deck that looked for all -the world like a nautical veranda. It led off Magnolia’s bedroom. The -slim white figure was Magnolia. Preparatory to going ashore she was -taking a look at this romantic city which she always had loved, and -which she, in company with Andy or Doc, had roamed a dozen times since -her first early childhood trip on the _Creole Belle_. - -Her dress was bunchy, too, as the mode demanded. But where it was not -bunchy it was very tight. And its bunchiness thus only served to -emphasize the slimness of the snug areas. Her black hair was drawn -smoothly away from the temples and into a waterfall at the back. Her -long fine head and throat rose exquisitely above the little pleated -frill that finished the neckline of her gown. She carried her absurd -beribboned and beflowered high-crowned hat in her hand. A graceful, -pliant, slim young figure in white, surveying the pandemonium that was -the New Orleans levee. Columns of black rose from a hundred steamer -stacks. Freight barrels and boxes went hurtling through the air, or were -shoved or carried across the plank wharf to the accompaniment of -shouting and sweating and swearing. Negroes everywhere. Band boxes, -carpet bags, babies, drays, carriages, wheelbarrows, carts. Beyond the -levee rose the old salt warehouses. Beyond these lay Canal Street. -Magnolia was going into town with her father and her mother. Andy had -promised her supper at Antoine’s and an evening at the old French -theatre. She knew scarcely ten words of French. Andy, if he had known it -in his childhood, had quite forgotten it now. Parthy looked upon it as -the language of sin and the yellow back paper novels. But all three -found enjoyment in the grace and colour and brilliance of the -performance and the audience—both of a sort to be found nowhere else in -the whole country. Andy’s enjoyment was tinged and heightened by a vague -nostalgia; Magnolia’s was that of one artist for the work of another; -Parthy’s was the enjoyment of suspicion. She always hoped the play’s -high scenes were going to be more risqué than they actually were. - -From her vantage point Magnolia stood glancing alertly about her, -enjoying the babel that was the New Orleans plank wharves. She now -espied and recognized the familiarly capering little figure below with -its right hand scratching the mutton-chop whiskers this side and that. -She was impatient to be starting for their jaunt ashore. She waved at -him with the hand that held the hat. The upraised arm served to enhance -the delicate curve of the pliant young figure in its sheath of white. - -Andy, catching sight of her, waved in return. - -“Is that,” inquired Gaylord Ravenal, “a member of your company?” - -Andy’s face softened and glowed. “That? That’s my daughter Magnolia.” - -“Magnolia. Magnol—— Does she—is she a——” - -“I should smile she is! She’s our ingénue lead, Magnolia is. Plays -opposite the juvenile lead. But if you’ve been a trouper you know that, -I guess.” A sudden suspicion darted through him. “Say, young man—what’s -your name?—oh, yes, Ravenal. Well, Ravenal, you a quick study? That’s -what I got to know, first off. Because we leave New Orleans to-night to -play the bayous. Bayou Teche to-morrow night in Tempest and -Sunshine. . . . You a quick study?” - -“Lightning,” said Gaylord Ravenal. - -Five minutes later, bowing over her hand, he did not know whether to -curse the crack in his shoe for shaming him before her, or to bless it -for having been the cause of his being where he was. - -That he and Magnolia should become lovers was as inevitable as the -cosmic course. Certainly some force greater than human must have been at -work on it, for it overcame even Parthy’s opposition. Everything -conspired to bring the two together, including their being kept forcibly -apart. Himself a picturesque, mysterious, and romantic figure, Gaylord -Ravenal, immediately after joining the _Cotton Blossom_ troupe, became -the centre of a series of dramatic episodes any one of which would have -made him glamorous in Magnolia’s eyes, even though he had not already -assumed for her the glory of a Galahad. - -She had never before met a man of Ravenal’s stamp. In this dingy motley -company he moved aloof, remote, yet irresistibly attracting all of -them—except Parthy. She, too, must have felt drawn to this charming and -magnetic man, but she fought the attraction with all the strength of her -powerful and vindictive nature. Sensing that here lay his bitterest -opposition, Ravenal deliberately set about exercising his charm to win -Parthy to friendliness. For the first time in his life he received -rebuff so bristling, so unmistakable, as to cause him temporarily to -doubt his own gifts. - -Women had always adored Gaylord Ravenal. He was not a villain. He was, -in fact, rather gentle, and more than a little weak. His method, coupled -with strong personal attractiveness, was simple in the extreme. He made -love to all women and demanded nothing of them. Swept off their feet, -they waited, trembling deliciously, for the final attack. At its failure -to materialize they looked up, wondering, to see his handsome face made -more handsome by a certain wistful sadness. At that their hearts melted -within them. That which they had meant to defend they now offered. For -the rest, his was a paradoxical nature. A courtliness of manner, -contradicted by a bluff boyishness. A certain shy boldness. He was not -an especially intelligent man. He had no need to be. His upturned glance -at a dining-room waitress bent over him was in no way different from -that which he directed straight at Parthy now; or at the daughter of a -prosperous Southern lawyer, or at that daughter’s vaguely uneasy mama. -It wasn’t deliberate evil in him or lack of fastidiousness. He was -helpless to do otherwise. - -Certainly he had never meant to remain a member of this motley troupe, -drifting up and down the rivers. He had not, for that matter, meant to -fall in love with Magnolia, much less marry her. Propinquity and -opposition, either of which usually is sufficient to fan the flame, -together caused the final conflagration. For weeks after he came on -board, he literally never spoke to Magnolia alone. Parthy attended to -that. He saw her not only daily but almost hourly. He considered himself -lucky to be deft enough to say, “Lovely day, isn’t it, Miss Magn——” -before Mrs. Hawks swept her offspring out of earshot. Parthy was wise -enough to see that this handsome, graceful, insidious young stranger -would appear desirable and romantic in the eyes of women a hundredfold -more sophisticated than the childlike and unawakened Magnolia. She took -refuge in the knowledge that this dangerous male was the most -impermanent of additions to the _Cotton Blossom_ troupe. His connection -with them would end on Schultzy’s return. - -Gaylord Ravenal was, in the meantime, a vastly amused and prodigiously -busy young man. To learn the juvenile leads in the plays that made up -the _Cotton Blossom_ troupe’s repertoire was no light matter. Not only -must he memorize lines, business, and cues of the regular bills—Uncle -Tom’s Cabin, East Lynne, Tempest and Sunshine, Lady Audley’s Secret, The -Parson’s Bride, The Gambler, and others—but he must be ready to go on -in the concert after-piece, whatever it might be—sometimes A Dollar for -a Kiss, sometimes Red Hot Coffee. The company rehearsed day and night; -during the day they rehearsed that night’s play; after the performance -they rehearsed next night’s bill. With some astonishment the _Cotton -Blossom_ troupe realized, at the end of two weeks, that Gaylord Ravenal -was acting as director. It had come about naturally and inevitably. -Ravenal had a definite theatre sense—a feeling for tempo, rhythm, line, -grouping, inflection, characterization—any, or all, of these. The -atmosphere had freshness for him; he was interested; he wished to -impress Andy and Parthy and Magnolia; he considered the whole business a -gay adventure; and an amusing interlude. For a month they played the -bayous and plantations of Louisiana, leaving behind them a whole -countryside whose planters, villagers, Negroes had been startled out of -their Southern lethargy. These had known show boats and show-boat -performances all their lives. They had been visited by this or that -raffish, dingy, slap-dash, or decent and painstaking troupe. The _Cotton -Blossom_ company had the reputation for being the last-named variety, -and always were patronized accordingly. The plays seldom varied. The -performance was, usually, less than mediocre. They were, then, quite -unprepared for the entertainment given them by the two handsome, -passionate, and dramatic young people who now were cast as ingénue and -juvenile lead of the Cotton Blossom Floating Palace Theatre company. -Here was Gaylord Ravenal, fresh, young, personable, aristocratic, -romantic of aspect. Here was Magnolia, slim, girlish, ardent, electric, -lovely. Their make-believe adventures as they lived them on the stage -became real; their dangers and misfortunes set the natives to trembling; -their love-making was a fragrant and exquisite thing. News of this -troupe seeped through from plantation to plantation, from bayou to -bayou, from settlement to settlement, in some mysterious underground -way. The _Cotton Blossom_ did a record-breaking business in a region -that had never been markedly profitable. Andy was jubilant, Parthy -apprehensive, Magnolia starry-eyed, tremulous, glowing. Her lips seemed -to take on a riper curve. Her skin was, somehow, softly radiant as -though lighted by an inner glow, as Julie’s amber colouring, in the -years gone by, had seemed to deepen into golden brilliance. Her eyes -were enormous, luminous. The gangling, hobbledehoy, sallow girl of -seventeen was a woman of eighteen, lovely, and in love. - -Back again in New Orleans there was a letter from Schultzy, a pathetic -scrawl; illiterate; loyal. Elly was out of the hospital, but weak and -helpless. He had a job, temporarily, whose nature he did not indicate. -(“Porter in a Little Rock saloon, I’ll be bound,” ventured Parthy, -shrewdly, “rubbing up the brass and the cuspidors.”) He had met a man -who ran a rag-front carnival company. He could use them for one -attraction called The Old Plantation; or, The South Before the War. They -were booked through the Middle West. In a few weeks, if Elly was -stronger . . . - -He said nothing about money. He said nothing of their possible return to -the _Cotton Blossom_. That, Andy knew, was because of Elly. Unknown to -Parthy, he sent Schultzy two hundred dollars. Schultzy never returned to -the rivers. It was, after all, oddly enough, Elly who, many many years -later, completed the circle which brought her again to the show boat. - -Together, Andy, Parthy, and Doc went into consultation. They must keep -Ravenal. But Ravenal obviously was not of the stuff of show-boat actors. -He had made it plain, when first he came aboard, that he was the most -impermanent of troupers; that his connection with the _Cotton Blossom_ -would continue, at the latest, only until Schultzy’s return. He meant to -leave them, not at New Orleans, as they had at first feared, but at -Natchez, on the up trip. - -“Don’t tell him Schultzy ain’t coming back,” Doc offered, brilliantly. - -“Have to know it some time,” was Andy’s obvious reply. - -“Person’d think,” said Parthy, “he was the only juvenile lead left in -the world. Matter of fact, I can’t see where he’s such great shakes of -an actor. Rolls those eyes of his a good deal, and talks deep-voiced, -but he’s got hands white’s a woman’s and fusses with his nails. I’ll -wager if you ask around in New Orleans you’ll find something queer, for -all he talks so high about being a Ravenal of Tennessee and his folks -governors in the old days, and slabs about ’em in the church, and what -not. Shifty, that’s what he is. Mark my words.” - -“Best juvenile lead ever played the rivers. And I never heard that -having clean finger nails hurt an actor any.” - -“Oh, it isn’t just clean finger nails,” snapped Parthy. “It’s -everything.” - -“Wouldn’t hold that against him, either,” roared Doc. The two men then -infuriated the humourless Mrs. Hawks by indulging in a great deal of -guffawing and knee-slapping. - -“That’s right, Hawks. Laugh at your own wife. And you, too, Doc.” - -“You ain’t my wife,” retorted Doc, with the privilege of sixty-odd. And -roared again. - -The gossamer thread that leashed Parthy’s temper dissolved now. “I can’t -bear the sight of him. Palavering and soft-soaping. Thinks he can get -round a woman my age. Well, I’m worth a dozen of him when it comes to -smart.” She leaned closer to Andy, her face actually drawn with fear and -a sort of jealousy. “He looks at Magnolia, I tell you.” - -“A fool if he didn’t.” - -“Andy Hawks, you mean to tell me you’d sit there and see your own -daughter married to a worthless tramp of a wharf rat, or worse, that -hadn’t a shirt to his back when you picked him up!” - -“Oh, God A’mighty, woman, can’t a man look at a girl without having to -marry her!” - -“_Having_ to marry her, Captain Hawks! _Having_——Well, what can a body -expect when her own husband talks like that, and before strangers, too. -Having——!” - -Doc rubbed his leathery chin a trifle ruefully. “Stretching a point, -Mrs. Hawks, ma’am, calling me a stranger, ain’t you?” - -“All right. Keep him with the show, you two. Who warned you about that -yellow-skinned Julie! And what happened! If sheriffs is what you want, -I’ll wager you could get them fast enough if you spoke his name in -certain parts of this country. Wait till we get back to New Orleans. I -intend to do some asking around, and so does Frank.” - -“What’s Frank got to do with it?” - -But at this final exhibition of male obtuseness Parthy flounced out of -the conference. - -On their return from the bayous the _Cotton Blossom_ lay idle a day at -the New Orleans landing. Early on the morning of their arrival Gaylord -Ravenal went ashore. On his stepping off the gangplank he spoke briefly -to that same gimlet-eyed gentleman who was still loitering on the wharf. -To the observer, the greeting between them seemed amiable enough. - -“Back again, Gay!” he of the keen gaze had exclaimed. “Seems like you -can’t keep away from the scene of the——” - -“Oh, go to hell,” said Ravenal. - -He returned to the _Cotton Blossom_ at three o’clock. At his appearance -the idler who had accosted him (and who was still mysteriously lolling -at the waterside) shut his eyes and then opened them quickly as though -to dispel a vision. - -“Gripes, Ravenal! Robbed a bank?” - -From the tip of his shining shoes to the top of his pale gray hat, -Ravenal was sartorial perfection, nothing less. The boots were -hand-made, slim, aristocratic. The cloth of his clothes was patently out -of England, and tailored for no casual purchaser, but for Ravenal’s -figure alone. The trousers tapered elegantly to the instep. The collar -was moulded expertly so that it hugged the neck. The linen was of the -finest and whitest, and cunning needlecraft had gone into the -embroidering of the austere monogram that almost escaped showing in one -corner of the handkerchief that peeped above his left breast pocket. The -malacca stick seemed to take on a new lustre and richness now that it -found itself once more in fitting company. With the earnings of his -first two weeks on the _Cotton Blossom_ enclosed as evidence of good -faith, and future payment assured, Gaylord Ravenal had sent by mail from -the Louisiana bayous to Plumbridge, the only English tailor in New -Orleans, the order which had resulted in his present splendour. - -He now paused a moment to relieve himself of that which had long annoyed -him in the beady-eyed one. “Listen to me, Flat Foot. The _Cotton -Blossom_ dropped anchor at seven o’clock this morning at the New Orleans -dock. I came ashore at nine. It is now three. I am free to stay on shore -or not, as I like, until nine to-morrow morning. Until then, if I hear -any more of your offensive conversation, I shall have to punish you.” - -Flat Foot, thus objurgated, stared at Ravenal with an expression in -which amazement and admiration fought for supremacy. “By God, Ravenal, -with any luck at all, that gall of yours ought to get you a million some -day.” - -“I wouldn’t be bothered with any sum so vulgar.” From an inside pocket -he drew a perfecto, long, dark, sappy. “Have a smoke.” He drew out -another. “And give this to Vallon when you go back to report. Tell him I -wanted him to know the flavour of a decent cigar for once in his life.” - -As he crossed the gangplank he encountered Mrs. Hawks and Frank, the -lumbering heavy, evidently shore-bound together. He stepped aside with a -courtliness that the Ravenals of Tennessee could not have excelled in -the days of swords, satins, and periwigs. - -Mrs. Hawks was, after all, a woman; and no woman could look unmoved upon -the figure of cool elegance that now stood before her. “Sakes alive!” -she said, inadequately. Frank, whose costumes, ashore or afloat, always -were négligée to the point of causing the beholder some actual -nervousness, attempted to sneer without the aid of make-up and made a -failure of it. - -Ravenal now addressed Mrs. Hawks. “You are not staying long ashore, I -hope?” - -“And why not?” inquired Mrs. Hawks, with her usual delicacy. - -“I had hoped that perhaps you and Captain Hawks and Miss Magnolia might -do me the honour of dining with me ashore and going to the theatre -afterward. I know a little restaurant where——” - -“Likely,” retorted Parthy, by way of polite refusal; and moved -majestically down the gangplank, followed by the gratified heavy. - -Ravenal continued thoughtfully on his way. Captain Andy was in the box -office just off the little forward deck that served as an entrance to -the show boat. With him was Magnolia—Magnolia minus her mother’s -protecting wings. After all, even Parthy had not the power to be in more -than one place at a time. At this moment she was deep in conversation -with Flat Foot on the wharf. - -Magnolia was evidently dressed for a festive occasion. The skirt of her -light écru silk dress was a polonaise draped over a cream-white surah -silk, and the front of the tight bodice-basque was of the same -cream-white stuff. Her round hat of Milan straw, with its modishly high -crown, had an artful brim that shaded her fine eyes, and this brim was -faced with deep rose velvet, and a bow of deep rose flared high against -the crown. The black of her hair was all the blacker for this vivid -colour. An écru parasol and long suède gloves completed the costume. She -might have stepped out of _Harper’s Bazaar_—in fact, she had. The dress -was a faithful copy of a costume which she had considered particularly -fetching as she pored over the pages of that book of fashion. - -Andy was busy at his desk. Ranged in rows on that desk were canvas -sacks, plump, squat; canvas sacks limp, lop-sided; canvas sacks which, -when lifted and set down again, gave forth a pleasant clinking sound. -Piled high in front of these were neat packets of green-backs, ones and -ones and ones, in bundles of fifty, each bound with a tidy belt of white -paper pinned about its middle. Forming a kind of Chinese wall around -these were stacked half dollars, quarters, dimes, and nickels, with now -and then a campanile of silver dollars. In the midst of this Andy -resembled an amiable and highly solvent gnome stepped out of a Grimm’s -fairy tale. The bayou trip had been a record-breaking one in point of -profit. - -“. . . And fifty’s six hundred and fifty,” Andy was crooning happily, as -he jotted figures down on a sheet of yellow lined paper, “. . . and -fifty’s seven hundred, and twenty-five’s seven hundred twenty-five and -twenty-five’s . . .” - -“Oh, Papa!” Magnolia exclaimed impatiently, and turned toward the little -window through which one saw New Orleans lying so invitingly in the -protecting arms of the levee. “It’s almost four, and you haven’t even -changed your clothes, and you keep counting that old money, and Mama’s -gone on some horrid business with that sneaky Frank. I know it’s horrid -because she looked so pleased. And you promised me. We won’t see New -Orleans again for a whole year. You said you’d get a carriage and two -horses and we’d drive out to Lake Pontchartrain, and have dinner, and -drive back, and go to the theatre, and now it’s almost four and you -haven’t even changed your clothes and you keep counting that old money, -and Mama’s——” After all, in certain ways, Magnolia the ingénue lead -had not changed much from that child who had promptly had hysterics to -gain her own ends that day in Thebes many years before. - -“Minute,” Andy muttered, absently. “Can’t leave this money laying around -like buttons, can I? Germania National’s letting me in the side door as -a special favour after hours, as ’tis, just so’s I can deposit. . . . -And fifty’s eight-fifty, and fifty’s nine . . .” - -“I don’t _care_!” cried Magnolia, and stamped her foot. “It’s downright -mean of you, Papa. You promised. And I’m all dressed. And you haven’t -even changed your——” - -“Oh, God A’mighty, Nollie, you ain’t going to turn out an unreasonable -woman like your ma, are you! Here I sit, slaving away——” - -“Oh! How beautiful you look!” exclaimed Magnolia now, to Andy’s -bewilderment. He looked up at her. Her gaze was directed over his head -at someone standing in the doorway. Andy creaked hastily around in the -ancient swivel chair. Ravenal, of course, in the doorway. Andy pursed -his lips in the sky-rocket whistle, starting high and ending low, -expressive of surprise and admiration. - -“How beautiful you look!” said Magnolia again; and clasped her hands -like a child. - -“And you, Miss Magnolia,” said Ravenal; and advanced into the cubby-hole -that was the office, and took one of Magnolia’s surprised hands -delicately in his, and bent over it, and kissed it. Magnolia was an -excellent enough actress, and sufficiently the daughter of the gallant -and Gallic Andy, to acknowledge this salute with a little gracious -inclination of the head, and no apparent surprise whatever. Andy himself -showed nothing of astonishment at the sight of this suave and elegant -figure bent over his daughter’s hand. He looked rather pleased than -otherwise. But suddenly then the look on his face changed to one of -alarm. He jumped to his feet. He scratched the mutton-chop whiskers, -sure evidence of perturbation. - -“Look here, Ravenal! That ain’t a sign you’re leaving, is it? Those -clothes, and now kissing Nollie’s hand. God A’mighty, Ravenal, you ain’t -leaving us!” - -Ravenal flicked an imaginary bit of dust from the cuff of his flawless -sleeve. “These are my ordinary clothes, Captain Hawks, sir. I mean to -say, I usually am attired as you now see me. When first we met I was in -temporary difficulties. The sort of thing that can happen to any -gentleman.” - -“Certainly can,” Andy agreed, heartily and hastily. “Sure can. Well, you -gave me a turn. I thought you come in to give me notice. And while we’re -on it, you’re foolish to quit at Natchez like you said, Ravenal. I don’t -know what you been doing, but you’re cut out for a show-boat actor, and -that’s the truth. Stick with us and I’ll raise you to twenty—” as -Ravenal shook his head—“twenty-five—” again the shake of the -head—“thirty! And, God A’mighty, they ain’t a juvenile lead on the -rivers ever got anywheres near that.” - -Ravenal held up one white shapely hand. “Let’s not talk money now, -Captain. Though if you would care to advance me a fifty, I . . . Thanks -. . . I was going to say I came in to ask if you and Mrs. Hawks and Miss -Magnolia here would do me the honour to dine with me ashore this -evening, and go to the theatre. I know a little French restaurant——” - -“Papa!” She swooped down upon little Andy then, enveloping him in her -ruffles, in her surah silk, her rose velvet, her perfume. Her arms were -about his neck. Her fresh young cheek pressed the top of his grizzled -head. Her eyes were enormous—and they looked into Ravenal’s eyes. -“Papa!” - -But years of contact with the prim Parthy had taught him caution. “Your -ma——” he began, feebly. - -Magnolia deserted him, flew to Ravenal, clutched his arm. Her lovely -eyes held tears. Involuntarily his free hand covered her hand that clung -so appealingly to his sleeve. “He promised me. And now, because he’s got -all that money to count because Doc was delayed at Baton Rouge and -didn’t meet us here like he expected he would this afternoon and Mama’s -gone ashore and we were to drive to Lake Pontchartrain and have dinner -and he hasn’t even changed his clothes and it’s almost four -o’clock—probably is four by now—and he keeps counting that old -money——” - -“Magnolia!” shouted Andy in a French frenzy, clutching the whiskers as -though to raise himself by them from the floor. - -Magnolia must have been enjoying the situation. Here were two men, both -of whom adored her, and she them. She therefore set about testing their -love. Her expression became tragic—but not so tragic as to mar her -delightful appearance. To the one who loved her most deeply and -unselfishly she said: - -“You don’t care anything about me or my happiness. It’s all this old -boat, and business, and money. Haven’t I worked, night after night, year -in, year out! And now, when I have a chance to enjoy myself—it isn’t as -if you hadn’t promised me——” - -“We’re going, I tell you, Nollie. But your ma isn’t even here. And how -did I know Doc was going to be stuck at Baton Rouge! We got plenty of -time to have dinner ashore and go to the theatre, but we’ll have to give -up the drive to Pontchartrain——” - -A heartbroken wail from Magnolia. Her great dark eyes turned in appeal -to Ravenal. “It’s the drive I like better than anything in the world. -And horses. I’m crazy about horses, and I don’t get a chance to -drive—oh, well—” at an objection from Andy—“sometimes; but what kind -of horses do they have in those little towns! And here you can get a -splendid pair, all shiny, and their nostrils working, and a victoria and -lovely long tails and a clanky harness and fawn cushions and the lake -and soft-shell crabs——” She was becoming incoherent, but remained as -lovely as ever, and grew more appealing by the moment. - -Ravenal resisted a mad urge to take her in his arms. He addressed -himself earnestly to the agonized Andy. “If you will trust me, Captain -Hawks, I have a plan which I have just thought of. I know New Orleans -very well and I am—uh—very well known in New Orleans. Miss Magnolia -has set her heart on this little holiday. I know where I can get a -splendid turnout. Chestnuts—very high steppers, but quite safe.” An -unadult squeal of delight from Magnolia. “If we start immediately, we -can enjoy quite a drive—Miss Magnolia and I. If you like, we can take -Mrs. Means with us, or Mrs. Soaper——” - -“No,” from the brazen beauty. - -“—and return in time to meet you and Mrs. Hawks at, say, Antoine’s for -dinner.” - -“Oh, Papa!” cried Magnolia now. “Oh, Papa!” - -“Your ma——” began Andy again, feebly. The stacks and piles still lay -uncounted on the desk. This thing must be settled somehow. He scuttled -to the window, scanned the wharf, the streets that led up from it. “I -don’t know where she’s got to.” He turned from the window to survey the -pair, helplessly. Something about them—the very fitness of their -standing there together, so young, so beautiful, so eager, so alive, so -vibrant—melted the romantic heart within him. Magnolia in her holiday -garb; Ravenal in his tailored perfection. “Oh, well, I don’t see how -it’ll hurt any. Your ma and I will meet you at Antoine’s at, say, -half-past six——” - -They were off. It was as if they had been lifted bodily and blown -together out of the little office, across the gangplank to the landing. -Flat Foot stared after them almost benignly. - -Andy returned to his desk. Resumed his contented crooning. Four o’clock -struck. Half-past four. His pencil beat a rat-a-tat-tat as he jotted -down the splendid figures. A gold mine, this Ravenal. A fine figger of a -boy. Cheap at thirty. Rat-a-tat-tat. And fifty’s one thousand. And -twenty-five’s one thousand twenty-five. And fifty’s—and fifty’s—twelve -twenty-five—gosh a’mighty!—— - -A shriek. A bouncing across the gangplank and into the cubby-hole just -as Andy was rounding, happily, into thirteen hundred. A hand clutching -his shoulder frantically, whirling him bodily out of the creaking swivel -chair. Parthy, hat awry, bosom palpitating, eyes starting, mouth -working. - -“On Canal Street!” she wheezed. It was as though the shriek she had -intended were choked in her throat by the very force of the feeling -behind it, so that it emerged a strangled thing. “Canal Street! The two -of them . . . with my own eyes . . . driving . . . in a . . . in a——” - -She sank into a chair. There seemed to be no pretense about this. Andy, -for once, was alarmed. The tall shambling figure of Frank, the heavy, -passed the little ticket window, blocked the low doorway. He stared, -open-mouthed, at the almost recumbent Parthy. He was breathing heavily -and looked aggrieved. - -“She ran away from me,” he said. “Sees ’em in the crowd, driving, and -tries to run after the carriage on Canal, with everybody thinking she’s -gone loony. Then she runs down here to the landing, me after her. Woman -her age. What d’yah take me for, anyway!” - -But Parthy did not hear him. He did not exist. Her face was ashen. “He’s -a murderer!” she now gasped. - -Andy’s patience, never too long-suffering, snapped under the strain of -the afternoon’s happenings. “What’s wrong with you, woman! Have you gone -clean crazy! Who’s a murderer! Frank? Who’s he murdered? For two cents -I’d murder the both of you, come howling in here when a man’s trying to -run his business _like_ a business and not like a yowling insane -asylum——” - -Parthy stood up, shaking. Her voice was high and quavering. “Listen to -me, you fool. I talked to the man on the docks—the one he was talking -to—and he wouldn’t tell me anything and he said I could ask the chief -of police if I wanted to know about anybody, and I went to the chief of -police, and a perfect gentleman if there ever was one, and he’s killed a -man.” - -“The chief of police! Killed a man! What man!” - -“No!” shrieked Parthy. “Ravenal! Ravenal’s killed a man.” - -“God A’mighty, when?” He started as though to rescue Magnolia. - -“A year ago. A year ago, in this very town.” - -The shock of relief was too much for Andy. He was furious. “They didn’t -hang him for it, did they?” - -“Hang who?” asked Parthy, feebly. - -“Who! Ravenal! They didn’t hang him?” - -“Why, no, they let him go. He said he shot him in self——” - -“He killed a man and they let him go. What does that prove? He’d a right -to. All right. What of it!” - -“What of it! Your own daughter is out driving in an open carriage this -minute with a murderer, that’s what, Andy Hawks. I saw them with my own -eyes. There I was, out trying to protect her from contamination by -finding out . . . and I saw her the minute my back was turned . . . your -doings . . . your own daughter driving in the open streets in an open -carriage with a murderer——” - -“Oh, open murderer be damned!” squeaked Andy in his falsetto of utter -rage. “I killed a man when I was nineteen, Mrs. Hawks, ma’am, and I’ve -been twenty-five years and more as respected a man as there is on the -rivers, and that’s the truth if you want to talk about mur——” - -But Parthenia Ann Hawks, for the first time in her vigorous life, had -fainted. - - - - - X - - -Gaylord Ravenal had not meant to fall in love. Certainly he had not -dreamed of marrying. He was not, he would have told you, a marrying man. -Yet Natchez had come and gone, and here he was, still playing juvenile -leads on the _Cotton Blossom_; still planning, days ahead, for an -opportunity to outwit Mrs. Hawks and see Magnolia alone. He was -thoroughly and devastatingly in love. Alternately he pranced and -cringed. To-day he would leave this dingy scow. What was he, Gaylord -Ravenal, doing aboard a show boat, play-acting for a miserable thirty -dollars a week! He who had won (and lost) a thousand a night at poker or -faro. To-morrow he was resolved to give up gambling for ever; to make -himself worthy of this lovely creature; to make himself indispensable to -Andy; to find the weak chink in Parthy’s armour. - -He had met all sorts of women in his twenty-four years. He had loved -some of them, and many of them had loved him. He had never met a woman -like Magnolia. She was a paradoxical product of the life she had led. -The contact with the curious and unconventional characters that made up -the _Cotton Blossom_ troupe; the sights and sounds of river life, -sordid, romantic, homely, Rabelaisian, tragic, humorous; the tolerant -and meaty wisdom imbibed from her sprightly little father; the spirit of -_laissez faire_ that pervaded the whole atmosphere about her, had given -her a flavour, a mellowness, a camaraderie found usually only in women -twice her age and a hundredfold more experienced. Weaving in and out of -this was an engaging primness directly traceable to Parthy. She had, -too, a certain dignity that was, perhaps, the result of years of being -deferred to as the daughter of a river captain. Sometimes she looked at -Ravenal with the wide-eyed gaze of a child. At such times he wished that -he might leap into the Mississippi (though muddy) and wash himself clean -of his sins as did the pilgrims in the River Jordan. - -On that day following Parthy’s excursion ashore at New Orleans there had -been between her and Captain Andy a struggle, brief and bitter, from -which Andy had emerged battered but victorious. - -“That murdering gambler goes or I go,” Parthy had announced, rashly. It -was one of those pronunciamentos that can only bring embarrassment to -one who utters it. - -“He stays.” Andy was iron for once. - -He stayed. So did Parthy, of course. - -You saw the two—Parthy and Ravenal—eyeing each other, backs to the -wall, waiting for a chance to lunge and thrust. - -_Cotton Blossom_ business was booming. News of the show boat’s ingénue -and juvenile lead filtered up and down the rivers. During the more -romantic scenes of this or that play Parthy invariably stationed herself -in the wings and glowered and made muttering sounds to which the two on -stage—Magnolia starry-eyed as the heroine, Ravenal ardent and -passionate as the lover—were oblivious. It was their only opportunity -to express to each other what they actually felt. It probably was, too, -the most public and convincing love-making that ever graced the stage of -this or any other theatre. - -Ravenal made himself useful in many ways. He took in hand, for example, -the _Cotton Blossom’s_ battered scenery. It was customary on all show -boats to use both sides of a set. One canvas side would represent, -perhaps, a drawing room. Its reverse would show the greens and browns of -leaves and tree trunks in a forest scene. Both economy and lack of stage -space were responsible for this. Painted by a clumsy and unimaginative -hand, each leaf daubed as a leaf, each inch of wainscoting drawn to -scale, the effect of any _Cotton Blossom_ set, when viewed from the -other side of the footlights, was unconvincing even to rural and -inexperienced eyes. Ravenal set to work with paint and brush and evolved -two sets of double scenery which brought forth shrieks of ridicule and -protest from the company grouped about the stage. - -“It isn’t supposed to look like a forest,” Ravenal explained, slapping -on the green paint with a lavish hand. “It’s supposed to give the effect -of a forest. The audience isn’t going to sit on the stage, is it? Well, -then! Here—this is to be a gate. Well, there’s no use trying to paint a -flat thing with slats that nobody will ever believe looks like a gate. -I’ll just do this . . . and this . . .” - -“It does!” cried Magnolia from the middle of the house where she had -stationed herself, head held critically on one side. “It does make you -think there’s a gate there, without its actually being . . . Look, Papa! -. . . And the trees. All those lumpy green spots we used to have somehow -never looked like leaves.” - -All unconsciously Ravenal was using in that day, and in that crude -milieu, a method which was to make a certain Bobby Jones famous in the -New York theatre of a quarter of a century later. - -“Where did you learn to——” some one of the troupe would marvel; -Magnolia, perhaps, or Mis’ Means, or Ralph. - -“Paris,” Ravenal would reply, briefly. Yet he had never spoken of Paris. - -He often referred thus casually to a mysterious past. - -“Paris fiddlesticks!” rapped out Parthy, promptly. “No more Paris than -he’s a Ravenal of Tennessee, or whatever rascally highfalutin story he’s -made up for himself.” - -Whereupon, when they were playing Tennessee, weeks later, he strolled -one day with Magnolia and Andy into the old vine-covered church of the -village, its churchyard fragrant and mysterious with magnolia and ilex; -its doorstep worn, its pillars sagging. And there, in a glass case, -together with a tattered leather-bound Bible a century and a half old, -you saw a time-yellowed document. The black of the ink strokes had, -perhaps, taken on a tinge of gray, but the handwriting, clear and -legible, met the eye. - - Will of Jean Baptista Ravenal. - - I, Jean Baptista Ravenal, of this Province, being through the - mercy of Almighty God of sound mind and memory do make, appoint, - declare and ordain this and this only to be my last Will and - Testament. It is my will that my sons have their estates - delivered to them as they severally arrive at the age of twenty - and one years, the eldest being Samuel, the second Jean, the - third Gaylord. - - I will that my slaves be kept to work on my lands that my estate - be managed to the best advantage so as my sons may have as - liberal an education as the profits thereof will afford. Let - them be taught to read and write and be introduced into the - practical part of Arithmetic, not too hastily hurrying them to - Latin and Grammar. To my sons, when they arrive at age I - recommend the pursuit and study of some profession or business - (I would wish one to ye Law, the other to Merchandise). - -“The other?” cried Magnolia softly then, looking up very bright-eyed and -flushed from the case over which she had been bending. “But the third? -Gaylord? It doesn’t say——” - -“The black sheep. My great-grandfather. There always was a Gaylord. And -he always was the black sheep. My grandfather, Gaylord Ravenal and my -father Gaylord Ravenal, and——” he bowed. - -“Black too, are you?” said Andy then, drily. - -“As pitch.” - -Magnolia bent again to the book, her brow thoughtful, her lips forming -the words and uttering them softly as she deciphered the quaint script. - - I give and bequeath unto my son Samuel the lands called Ashwood, - which are situated, lying and being on the South Side of the - Cumberland River, together with my other land on the North side - of said River. . . . - - I give and bequeath unto my son Jean, to him and his heirs and - assigns for ever a tract of land containing seven hundred and - forty acres lying on Stumpy Sound . . . also another tract - containing one thousand acres . . . - - I give and bequeath to my son Samuel four hundred and fifty - acres lying above William Lowrie’s plantation on the main branch - of Old Town Creek . . . - -Magnolia stood erect. Indignation blazed in her fine eyes. “But, -Gaylord!” she said. - -“Yes!” Certainly she had never before called him that. - -“I mean this Gaylord. I mean the one who came after Samuel and Jean. Why -isn’t—why didn’t——” - -“Naughty boy,” said Ravenal, with his charming smile. - -She actually yearned toward him then. He could not have said anything -more calculated to bind his enchantment for her. They swayed toward each -other over the top of the little glass-encased relic. Andy coughed -hastily. They swayed gently apart. They were as though mesmerized. - -“Folks out here in the churchyard?” inquired Andy, briskly, to break the -spell. “Ravenal kin?” - -“Acres of ’em,” Gaylord assured him, cheerfully. “Son of . . . and -daughter of . . . and beloved father of. . . . For that matter, there’s -one just beside you.” - -Andy side-stepped hastily, with a little exclamation. He cast a somewhat -fearful glance at the spot toward which Ravenal so carelessly pointed. A -neat gray stone slab set in the wall. Andy peered at the lettering it -bore; stooped a little. “Here—you read it, Nollie. You’ve got young -eyes.” - -Her fresh young cheek so near the cold gray slab, she read in her lovely -flexible voice: - - Here lies the body of M^{rs}. Suzanne Ravenal, wife of Jean - Baptista Ravenal Esq^{r}., one of his Majesty’s Council and - Surveyor General of the Lands of this Province, who departed - this life Oct^{r} 19^{t} 1765. Aged 37 Years. After labouring - ten of them under the severest Bodily afflictions brought on by - Change of Climate, and tho’ she went to her native land received - no relief but returned and bore them with uncommon Resolution - and Resignation to the last. - -Magnolia rose, slowly, from the petals of her flounced skirt spread -about her as she had stooped to read. “Poor darling!” Her eyes were soft -with pity. Again the two seemed to sway a little toward each other, as -though blown by a gust of passion. And this time little Captain Andy -turned his back and clattered down the aisle. When they emerged again -into the sunshine they found him, a pixie figure, leaning pensively -against the great black trunk of a live oak. He was smoking a pipe -somewhat apologetically, as though he hoped the recumbent Ravenals would -not find it objectionable. - -“I guess,” he remarked, as Magnolia and Ravenal came up to him, “I’ll -have to bring your ma over. She’s partial to history, her having been a -schoolma’am, and all.” - -Like the stage sets he so cleverly devised for the show boat, Gaylord -Ravenal had a gift for painting about himself the scenery of romance. -These settings, too, did not bear the test of too close scrutiny. But in -a favourable light, and viewed from a distance, they were charmingly -effective and convincing. - -His sense of the dramatic did not confine itself to the stage. He was -the juvenile lead, on or off. Audiences adored him. Mid-western village -housewives, good mothers and helpmates for years, were, for days after -seeing him as the heroic figure of some gore-and-glory drama, -mysteriously silent and irritably waspish by turn. Disfavour was writ -large on their faces as they viewed their good commonplace dull husbands -across the midday table set with steaming vegetables and meat. - -“Why’n’t you shave once in a while middle of the week,” they would snap, -“’stead of coming to the table looking like a gorilla?” - -Mild surprise on the part of the husband. “I shaved Sat’dy, like -always.” - -“Lookit your hands!” - -“Hands? . . . Say, Bella, what in time’s got into you, anyway?” - -“Nothing.” A relapse into moody silence on the part of Bella. - -Mrs. Hawks fought a good fight, but what chance had her maternal -jealousy against youth and love and romance? For a week she would pour -poison into Magnolia’s unwilling ear. Only making a fool of you . . . -probably walk off and leave the show any day . . . common gambler . . . -look at his eyes . . . murderer and you know it . . . rather see you in -your grave. . . . - -Then, in one brief moment, Ravenal, by some act of courage or grace or -sheer deviltry, would show Parthy that all her pains were for nothing. - -That night, for example, when they were playing Kentucky Sue. Ravenal’s -part was what is known as a blue-shirt lead—the rough brave woodsman, -with the uncouth speech and the heart of gold. Magnolia, naturally, was -Sue. They were playing Gains Landing, always a tough town, often good -for a fight. It was a capacity audience and a surprisingly well-behaved -and attentive. Midway in the play’s progress a drawling drunken voice -from the middle of the house began a taunting and ridiculous chant whose -burden was, “Is _’at_ so!” After each thrilling speech; punctuating each -flowery period, “Is _’at_ so!” came the maddening and disrupting -refrain. You had to step carefully at Gains Landing. The _Cotton -Blossom_ troupe knew that. One word at the wrong moment, and knives -flashed, guns popped. Still, this could not go on. - -“Don’t mind him,” Magnolia whispered fearfully to Ravenal. “He’s drunk. -He’ll stop. Don’t pay any attention.” - -The scene was theirs. They were approaching the big moment in the play -when the brave Kentuckian renounces his love that Kentucky Sue may be -happy with her villainous bridegroom-to-be (Frank, of course). Show-boat -audiences up and down the rivers had known that play for years; had -committed the speech word for word, through long familiarity. “Sue,” it -ran, “ef he loves yuh and you love him, go with him. Ef he h’ain’t good -to yuh, come back where there’s honest hearts under homespun shirts. -Back to Kaintucky and home!” - -Thus the speech ran. But as they approached it the blurred and mocking -voice from the middle of the house kept up its drawling skepticism. “Is -_’at_ so! Is _’at_ so!” - -“Damned drunken lout!” said Ravenal under his breath, looking -unutterable love meanwhile at the languishing Kentucky Sue. - -“Oh, dear!” said Magnolia, feeling Ravenal’s muscles tightening under -the blue shirt sleeves; seeing the telltale white ridge of mounting -anger under the grease paint of his jaw line. “Do be careful.” - -Ravenal stepped out of his part. He came down to the footlights. The -house, restless and irritable, suddenly became quiet. He looked out over -the faces of the audience. “See here, pardner, there’s others here want -to hear this, even if you don’t.” - -The voice subsided. There was a little desultory applause from the -audience and some cries of, “That’s right! Make him shut up.” They -refused to manhandle one of their own, but they ached to see someone -else do it. - -The play went on. The voice was silent. The time approached for the big -speech of renunciation. It was here. “Sue, ef he loves yuh and you love -him, go with him. Ef he——” - -“Is _’at_ so!” drawled the amused voice, with an element of surprise in -it now. “Is _’at_ so!” - -Ravenal cast Kentucky Sue from him. “Well, if you will have it,” he -threatened, grimly. He sprang over the footlights, down to the piano -top, to the keyboard, to the piano stool, all in four swift strides, was -up the aisle, had plucked the limp and sprawling figure out of his seat -by the collar, clutched him then firmly by this collar hold and the seat -of his pants, and was up the aisle again to the doorway, out of the -door, across the gangplank, and into the darkness. He was down the aisle -then in a moment, spatting his hands briskly as he came; was up on the -piano stool, on to the piano keyboard, on the piano top, over the -footlights, back in position. There he paused a moment, breathing fast. -Nothing had been said. There had actually been no sound other than his -footsteps and the discordant jangle of protest that the piano keyboard -had emitted when he had stepped on its fingers. Now a little startled -expression came into Ravenal’s face. - -“Let’s see,” he said, aloud. “Where was I——” - -And as one man the audience chanted, happily, “Sue, ef he loves yuh and -you love him——” - -What weapon has a Parthenia against a man like that? And what chance a -Frank? - -Drama leaped to him. There was, less than a week later, the incident of -the minister. He happened to be a rather dirty little minister in a -forlorn little Kentucky river town. He ran a second-hand store on the -side, was new to the region, and all unaware of the popularity and -good-will enjoyed by the members of the _Cotton Blossom_ troupe. To him -an actor was a burning brand. Doc had placarded the little town with -dodgers and handbills. There was one, especially effective even in that -day of crude photography, showing Magnolia in the angelic part of the -ingénue lead in Tempest and Sunshine. These might be seen displayed in -the windows of such ramshackle stores as the town’s river-front street -boasted. Gaylord Ravenal, strolling disdainfully up into the sordid -village that was little more than a welter of mud and flies and mules -and Negroes, stopped aghast as his eye chanced to fall upon the words -scrawled beneath a picture of Magnolia amidst the dusty disorderly -mélange of the ministerial second-hand window. There was the likeness of -the woman he loved looking, starry-eyed, out upon the passer-by. And -beneath it, in the black fanatic penmanship of the itinerant parson: - - A LOST SOUL - -In his fine English clothes, swinging the slim malacca cane, Gaylord -Ravenal, very narrow-eyed, entered the fusty shop and called to its -owner to come forward. From the cobwebby gloom of the rear reaches -emerged the merchant parson, a tall, shambling large-knuckled figure of -the anaconda variety. You thought of Uriah Heep and of Ichabod Crane, -experiencing meanwhile a sensation of distaste. - -Ravenal, very elegant, very cool, very quiet, pointed with the tip of -his cane. “Take that picture out of the window. Tear it up. Apologize.” - -“I won’t do anything of the kind,” retorted the holy man. “You’re a -this-and-that, and a such-and-such, and a so-and-so, and she’s another, -and the whole boatload of you ought to be sunk in the river you -contaminate.” - -“Take off your coat,” said Ravenal, divesting himself neatly of his own -faultless garment as he spoke. - -A yellow flame of fear leaped into the man’s eyes. He edged toward the -door. With a quick step Ravenal blocked his way. “Take it off before I -rip it off. Or fight with your coat on.” - -“You touch a man of God and I’ll put the law on you. The sheriff’s -office is just next door. I’ll have you——” - -Ravenal whirled him round, seized the collar of his grimy coat, peeled -it dexterously off, revealing what was, perhaps, as ’maculate a shirt as -ever defiled the human form. The Ravenal lip curled in disgust. - -“If cleanliness is next to godliness,” he remarked, swiftly turning back -his own snowy cuffs meanwhile, “you’ll be shovelling coal in hell.” And -swung. The minister was taller and heavier than this slight and -dandified figure. But Ravenal had an adrenal advantage, being stimulated -by the fury of his anger. The godly one lay, a soiled heap, among his -soiled wares. The usual demands of the victor. - -“Take that thing out of the window! . . . Apologize to me! . . . -Apologize publicly for defaming a lady!” - -The man crept groaning to the window, plucked the picture, with its -offensive caption, from amongst the miscellany there, handed it to -Ravenal in response to a gesture from him. “Now then, I think you’re -pretty badly bruised, but I doubt that anything’s broken. I’m going next -door to the sheriff. You will write a public apology in letters -corresponding to these and place it in your filthy window. I’ll be -back.” - -He resumed his coat, picked up the malacca cane, blithely sought out the -sheriff, displayed the sign, heard that gallant Kentuckian’s most -Southern expression of regard for Captain Andy Hawks, his wife and -gifted daughter, together with a promise to see to it that the written -apology remained in the varmint’s window throughout the day and until -the departure of the _Cotton Blossom_. Ravenal then went his elegant and -unruffled way up the sunny sleepy street. - -By noon the story was known throughout the village, up and down the -river for a distance of ten miles each way, and into the back-country, -all in some mysterious word-of-mouth way peculiar to isolated districts. -Ravenal, returning to the boat, was met by news of his own exploit. -Business, which had been booming for this month or more, grew to -phenomenal proportions. Ravenal became a sort of legendary figure on the -rivers. Magnolia went to her mother. “I am never allowed to talk to him. -I won’t stand it. You treat him like a criminal.” - -“What else is he?” - -“He’s the——” A long emotional speech, ringing with words such as hero, -gentleman, wonderful, honourable, nobility, glorious—a speech such as -Schultzy, in his show-boat days as director, would have designated as a -so-and-so-and-so-and-so-and-so-and-so. - -Ravenal went to Captain Andy. I am treated as an outcast. I’m a Ravenal. -Nothing but the most honourable conduct. A leper. Never permitted to -speak to your daughter. Humiliation. Prefer to discontinue connection -which can only be distasteful to the Captain and Mrs. Hawks, in view of -your conduct. Leaving the _Cotton Blossom_ at Cairo. - -In a panic Captain Andy scampered to his lady and declared for a more -lenient chaperonage. - -“Willing to sacrifice your own daughter, are you, for the sake of a -picking up a few more dollars here and there with this miserable -upstart!” - -“Sacrificing her, is it, to tell her she can speak civilly to as -handsome a young feller and good-mannered as I ever set eyes on, or you -either!” - -“Young squirt, that’s what he is.” - -“I was a girl like Nollie I’d run off with him, by God, and that’s the -truth. She had any spirit left in her after you’ve devilled her these -eighteen years past, she’d do it.” - -“That’s right! Put ideas into her head! How do you know who he is?” - -“He’s a Rav——” - -“He says he is.” - -“Didn’t he show me the church——” - -“Oh, Hawks, you’re a zany. I could show you gravestones. I could say my -name was Bonaparte and show you Napoleon’s tomb, but that wouldn’t make -him my grandfather, would it!” - -After all, there was wisdom in what she said. She may even have been -right, as she so often was in her shrewish intuition. Certainly they -never learned more of this scion of the Ravenal family than the meagre -information gleaned from the chronicles of the village church and -graveyard. - -Grudgingly, protestingly, she allowed the two to converse genteelly -between the hours of five and six, after dinner. But no oriental -princess was ever more heavily chaperoned than was Magnolia during these -prim meetings. For a month, then, they met on the port side of the upper -deck, forward. Their chairs were spaced well apart. On the starboard -side, twenty-five feet away, sat Parthy in her chair, grim, watchful; -radiating opposition. - -Magnolia, feeling the gimlet eye boring her spine, would sit bolt -upright, her long nervous fingers tightly interwoven, her ankles neatly -crossed, the pleats and flounces of her skirts spread sedately enough -yet seeming to vibrate with an electric force that gave them the effect -of standing upright, a-quiver, like a kitten’s fur when she is agitated. - -He sat, one arm negligently over the back of his chair, facing the girl. -His knees were crossed. He seemed at ease, relaxed. Yet a slim foot in -its well-made boot swung gently to and fro. And when Parthy made one of -her sudden moves, as was her jerky habit, or when she coughed raspingly -by way of emphasizing her presence, he could be felt, rather than seen, -to tighten in all his nerves and muscles, and the idly swinging foot -took a clonic leap. - -The words they spoke with their lips and the words they spoke with their -eyes were absurdly at variance. - -“Have you really been in Paris, Mr. Ravenal! How I should love to see -it!” (How handsome you are, sitting there like that. I really don’t care -anything about Paris. I only care about you.) - -“No doubt you will, some day, Miss Magnolia.” (You darling! How I should -like to take you there. How I should like to take you in my arms.) - -“Oh, I’ve never even seen Chicago. Only these river towns.” (I love the -way your hair grows away from your temples in that clean line. I want to -put my finger on it, and stroke it. My dear.) - -“A sordid kind of city. Crude. Though it has some pleasant aspects. New -York——” (What do I care if that old tabby is sitting there! What’s to -prevent me from getting up and kissing you a long long while on your -lovely pomegranate mouth.) - -Lowering, inflexible, sat Parthy. “She’ll soon enough tire of that sort -of popinjay talk,” she told herself. She saw the bland and almost -vacuous expression on the countenance of the young man, and being -ignorant of the fact that he was famous from St. Louis to Chicago for -his perfect poker face, was equally ignorant of the tides that were -seething and roaring within him now. - -They were prisoners on this boat; together, yet miles apart. Guarded, -watched. They had their scenes together on the stage. These were only -aggravations. The rather high planes of Magnolia’s cheek-bones began to -show a trifle too flat. Ravenal, as he walked along the grass-grown -dusty streets of this or that little river town, switched viciously at -weed and flower stalks with the slim malacca cane. - -They hit upon a pathetic little scheme whereby they might occasionally, -if lucky, steal the ecstasy of a good-night kiss. After the performance -he would stroll carelessly out to the stern where stood the settling -barrel. Ostensibly he was taking a bedtime drink of water. Magnolia was, -if possible, to meet him there for a brief and perilous moment. It was -rarely accomplished. The signal to him was the slamming of the screen -door. But often the screen door slammed as he stood there, a tense -quivering figure in the velvet dark of the Southern night, and it was -Frank, or Mrs. Soaper, or Mis’ Means, or puny Mr. Means, coughing his -bronchial wheeze. Crack! went the screen door. Disappointment. Often he -sloshed down whole gallons of river water before she came—if she came -at all. - -He had managed to save almost a hundred dollars. He was restless, -irritable. Except for a mild pinochle game now and then with the men of -the company, he had not touched a card in weeks. If he could get into a -real game, somehow; manage a sweepstakes. Chicago. St. Louis, even. -These little rotten river towns. No chance here. If he could with luck -get together enough to take her away with him. Away from the old -hell-cat, and this tub, and these damned eternal rivers. God, but he was -sick of them! - -They were playing the Ohio River—Paducah, Kentucky. He found himself -seated at mid-afternoon round a table in the back room of a waterfront -saloon. What time is it? Five. Plenty of time. Just for that raise you -five. A few hundred dollars would do it. Six o’clock. Seven. -Seven-thirty. Eight. Half-past—Who said half-past! Ralph in the -doorway. Can’t be! Been looking everywhere for you. This’s a fine way -. . . Come on outa here you. . . . Christ! . . . Ten dollars in his -pocket. The curtain up at eight. Out, the shouts of the men echoing in -his ears. Down to the landing. A frantic company, Andy clawing at his -whiskers. Magnolia in tears, Parthy grim but triumphant, Frank made up -to go on in Ravenal’s part. - -He dashed before the curtain, raised his shaking hand to quiet the -cat-calling angry audience. - -“Ladies and gentlemen, I ask your patience. There has been an -unfortunate but unavoidable delay. The curtain will rise in exactly five -minutes. In the name of the management I wish to offer you all -apologies. We hope, by our performance, to make up for the inconvenience -you have suffered. I thank you.” A wave of his hand. - -The band. - -Parthy in the wings. “Well, Captain Hawks, I guess this settles it. -Maybe you’ll listen to your wife, after this. In a saloon—that’s where -he was—gambling. If Ralph hadn’t found him—a pretty kettle of fish. -Years building up a reputation on the rivers and then along comes a -soft-soaping murdering gambler . . .” - -Ravenal had got into his costume with the celerity of a fireman, and -together he and Magnolia were giving a performance that was notable for -its tempo and a certain vibratory quality. The drama that unrolled -itself before the Paducah gaze was as nothing compared to the one that -was being secretly enacted. - -Between the lines of her part she whispered between immovable lips: “Oh, -Gay, why did you do it?” - -A wait, perhaps, of ten minutes before the business of the play brought -him back within whispering distance of her. - -“Money” (very difficult to whisper without moving the lips. It really -emerged, “Uh-ney,” but she understood). “For you. Marry you. Take you -away.” - -All this while the lines of the play went on. When they stood close -together it was fairly easy. - -Magnolia (in the play): What! Have all your friends deserted you! -(Mama’ll make Andy send you away.) - -Ravenal: No, but friendship is too cold a passion to stir my heart now. -(Will you come with me?) - -Magnolia: Oh, give me a friend in preference to a sweetheart. (But how -can I?) - -Ravenal: My dear Miss Brown—Miss Lucy—— (Marry me). - -Magnolia: Oh, please don’t call me Miss Brown. (When?) - -Ravenal: Lucy! (Where do we play to-morrow? Marry me there.) - -Magnolia: Defender of the fatherless! (Metropolis. I’m frightened.) - -Ravenal: Will you be a poor man’s bride? (Darling!) - -For fear of arousing suspicion, she did not dare put on her best dress -in which to be married. One’s best dress does not escape the eye of a -Parthy at ten o’clock in the morning, when the landing is Metropolis. -With a sigh Magnolia donned her second best—the reseda sateen, basqued, -its overskirt caught up coquettishly at the side. She determined on her -Milan hat trimmed with the grosgrain ribbon and pink roses. After all, -Parthy or no Parthy, if one has a hat with pink roses, the time to wear -it is at one’s wedding, or never. - -Ravenal vanished beyond the river bank immediately after breakfast next -day; a meal which he had eaten in haste and in silence. He did not, the -general opinion ran, look as crushed as his misdemeanour warranted. He -had, after all, been guilty of the crime of crimes in the theatre, be it -a Texas tent show or an all-star production on Broadway; he had held up -the performance. For once the _Cotton Blossom_ troupe felt that Mrs. -Hawks’ bristling attitude was justified. All through the breakfast hour -the stern ribbon bow on her breakfast cap had quivered like a -seismographic needle registering the degree of her inward upheaval. - -“I think,” said Magnolia, drinking her coffee in very small sips, and -eating nothing, “I’ll just go to town and match the ribbon on my -grosgrain striped silk——” - -“You’ll do nothing of the kind, miss, and so I tell you.” - -“But, Mama, why? You’d think I was a child instead of a——” - -“You are, and no more. I can’t go with you. So you’ll stop at home.” - -“But Mis’ Means is going with me. I promised her I’d go. She wants to -get some ointment for Mr. Means’ chest. And a yard of elastic. And half -a dozen oranges. . . . Papa, don’t you think it’s unreasonable to make -me suffer just because everybody’s in a bad temper this morning? I’m -sure I haven’t done anything. I’m sure I——” - -Captain Andy clawed his whiskers in a frenzy. “Don’t come to me with -your yards of elastic and your oranges. God A’mighty!” He rushed off, a -distraught little figure, as well he might be after a wretched night -during which Mrs. Hawks had out-caudled Mrs. Caudle. When finally he had -dropped off to sleep to the sound of the monotonously nagging voice, it -was to dream of murderous gamblers abducting Magnolia who always turned -out to be Parthy. - -In her second best sateen and the Milan with the pink roses Magnolia -went off to town at a pace that rather inconvenienced the short-breathed -Mis’ Means. - -“What’s your hurry!” wheezed that lady, puffing up the steep cinder path -to the levee. - -“We’re late.” - -“Late! Late for what? Nothing to do all day till four, far’s I know.” - -“Oh, I just meant—uh—I mean we started kind of late——” her voice -trailed off, lamely. - -Fifteen minutes later Mis’ Means stood in indecision before a counter -crawling with unwound bolts of elastic that twined all about her like -garter snakes. The little general store smelled of old apples and broom -straw and kerosene and bacon and potatoes and burlap and mice. Sixteen -minutes later she turned to ask Magnolia’s advice. White elastic half an -inch wide? Black elastic three-quarters of an inch wide? Magnolia had -vanished from her side. Mis’ Means peered through the dimness of the -fusty little shop. Magnolia! White elastic in one hand, black in the -other, Mis’ Means scurried to the door. Magnolia had gone. - -Magnolia had gone to be married in her second best dress and her hat -with the pink roses. She flew down the street. Mis’ Means certainly -could have achieved no such gait; much less could she have bettered it -to the extent of overtaking Magnolia. Magnolia made such speed that when -her waiting bridegroom, leaning against the white picket fence in front -of the minister’s house next the church, espied her and came swiftly to -meet her, she was so breathless a bride that he could make nothing out -of her panted—“Elastic . . . Mis’ Means . . . ran away . . .” - -She leaned against the picket fence to catch her breath, a lovely -flushed figure, and not a little frightened. And though it was early -April with Easter just gone, there was a dogwood in bridal bloom in the -minister’s front yard, and a magnolia as well. And along the inside of -the picket fence tulips and jonquils lifted their radiant heads. She -looked at Gaylord Ravenal then and smiled her wide and gorgeous smile. -“Let’s go,” she said, “and be married. I’ve caught my breath.” - -“All right,” said Ravenal. Then he took from his pocket the diamond ring -that was much too large for her. “Let’s be engaged first, while we go up -the path.” And slipped it on her finger. - -“Why, Gay! It’s a diamond! Look what the sun does to it! Gay!” - -“That’s nothing compared to what the sun does to you,” he said; and -leaned toward her. - -“Right at noon, in the minister’s front yard!” - -“I know. But I’ve had only those few moments in the dark by the settling -barrel—it’s been terrible.” - -The minister’s wife opened the door. She looked at the two. - -“I saw you from the parlour window. We were wondering—I thought maybe -you’d like to be married in the church. The Easter decorations are still -up. It looks lovely, all palms and lilies and smilax, too, from down -South, sent up. The altar’s banked with it. Mr. Seldon’s gone there.” - -“Oh, I’d love to be married in church. Oh, Gay, I’d love to be married -in church.” - -The minister’s wife smoothed the front of her dress with one hand, and -the back of her hair with the other, and, having made these preparations -for the rôle of bridal attendant, conducted them to the little -flower-banked church next door. - -Magnolia never did remember very clearly the brief ceremony that -followed. There were Easter lilies—whole rows of them—and palms -and smilax, as the minister’s wife had said. And the sun shone, -picture-book fashion, through the crude yellows and blues and -scarlets of the windows. And there was the Reverend Something-or-other -Seldon, saying solemn words. But these things, strangely enough, seemed -unimportant. Two little pig-tailed girls, passing by from school, had -seen them enter the church and had tiptoed in, scenting a wedding. Now -they were up in the choir loft, tittering hysterically. Magnolia could -hear them above the Reverend Seldon’s intonings. In sickness and in -health—tee-hee-hee—for richer, for poorer—tee-hee-hee—for better, -for worse—tee-hee-hee. - -They were kneeling. Ravenal was wearing his elegantly sharp-pointed -shoes. As he knelt his heels began to describe an arc—small at first, -then wider and wider as he trembled more and more, until, at the end, -they were all but striking the floor from side to side. Outwardly -Magnolia was the bride of tradition, calm and pale. - -. . . pronounce you man and wife. - -Ravenal had a ten-dollar bill—that last ten-dollar bill—all neatly -folded in his waistcoat pocket. This he now transferred to the Reverend -Seldon’s somewhat surprised palm. - -“And,” the minister’s wife was saying, “while it isn’t much—we’re -church mice, you see—you’re welcome to it, and we’d be happy to have -you take your wedding dinner with us. Veal loaf, I’m afraid, and butter -beets——” - -So Magnolia Ravenal was married in church, as proper as could be. And -had her wedding dinner with the minister vis-à-vis. And when she came -out of the church, the two little giggling girls, rather bold and rather -frightened, but romantically stirred, pelted her with flowers. Pelted -may be rather an exaggeration, because one threw a jonquil at her, and -one a tulip, and both missed her. But it helped, enormously. They went -to the minister’s house and ate veal loaf and buttered beets and bread -pudding, or ambrosia or whatever it was. And so they lived h—— and so -they lived . . . ever after. - - - - - XI - - -Even after she had seen the Atlantic in a January hurricane, Kim Ravenal -always insisted that the one body of water capable of striking terror to -her was the Mississippi River. Surely she should have known. She had -literally been born on that turbid torrent. All through her childhood -her mother, Magnolia Ravenal, had told her tales of its vagaries, its -cruelties, its moods; of the towns along its banks; of the people in -those towns; of the boats that moved upon it and the fantastic figures -that went up and down in those boats. Her grandfather, Captain Andy -Hawks, had lost his life in the treacherous swift current of its -channel; her grandmother, Parthenia Ann Hawks was, at eighty, a living -legend of the Mississippi; the Flying Dutchman of the rivers, except -that the boat touched many ports. One heard strange tales about Hawks’ -widow. She had gone on with the business after his tragic death. She was -the richest show-boat owner on the rivers. She ran the boat like a -female seminary. If an actor uttered so much as a damn, he was instantly -dismissed from the troupe. Couples in the company had to show a marriage -certificate. Every bill—even such innocuous old-timers as East Lynne -and The Gambler’s Daughter and Tempest and Sunshine—were subject to a -purifying process before the stern-visaged female owner of the new -_Cotton Blossom_ would sanction their performance on her show boat. - -Kim herself remembered many things about the Mississippi, though after -her very early childhood she did not see it for many years; and her -mother rarely spoke of it. She even shook her head when Kim would ask -her for the hundredth time to tell her the story of how she escaped -being named Mississippi. - -“Tell about the time the river got so high, and all kinds of things -floated on it—animals and furniture and houses, even—and you were so -scared, and I was born, and you wanted to call me Mississippi, but you -were too sleepy or something to say it. And the place was near Kentucky -and Illinois and Missouri, all at once, so they made up a name from the -letters K and I and M, just till you could think of a real name. And you -never did. And it stayed Kim. . . . People laugh when I tell them my -name’s Kim. Other girls are named Ellen and Mary and Elizabeth. . . . -Tell me about that time on the Mississippi. And the Cotton Blossom -Floating Palace Theatre.” - -“But you know all about it. You’ve just told me.” - -“I like to hear you tell it.” - -“Your father doesn’t like to have me talk so much about the rivers and -the show boat.” - -“Why not?” - -“He wasn’t very happy on them. I wasn’t, either, after Grandpa -Hawks——” - -Kim knew that, too. She had heard her father say, “God’s sake, Nola, -don’t fill the kid’s head full of that stuff about the rivers and the -show boat. The way you tell it, it sounds romantic and idle and -picturesque.” - -“Well, wasn’t——?” - -“No. It was rotten and sordid and dull. Flies on the food and filthy -water to drink and yokels to play to. And that old harridan——” - -“Gay!” - -He would come over to her, kiss her tenderly, contritely. “Sorry, -darling.” - -Kim knew that her mother had a strange deep feeling about the rivers. -The ugly wide muddy ruthless rushing rivers of the Middle West. - -Kim Ravenal’s earliest river memories were bizarre and startling -flashes. One of these was of her mother seated in a straight-backed -chair on the upper deck of the _Cotton Blossom_, sewing spangles all -over a high-busted corset. It was a white webbed corset with a -pinched-in waist and high full bosom and flaring hips. This humdrum -garment Magnolia Ravenal was covering with shining silver spangles, one -overlapping the other so that the whole made a glittering basque. She -took quick sure stitches that jerked the fantastic garment in her lap, -and when she did this the sun caught the brilliant heap aslant and -turned it into a blaze of gold and orange and ice-blue and silver. - -Kim was enchanted. Her mother was a fairy princess. It was nothing to -her that the spangle-covered basque, modestly eked out with tulle and -worn with astonishingly long skirts for a bareback rider, was to serve -as Magnolia’s costume in The Circus Clown’s Daughter. - -Kim’s grandmother had scolded a good deal about that costume. But then, -she had scolded a good deal about everything. It was years before Kim -realized that all grandmothers were not like that. At three she thought -that scolding and grandmothers went together, like sulphur and molasses. -The same was true of fun and grandfathers, only they went together like -ice cream and cake. You called your grandmother grandma. You called your -grandfather Andy, or, if you felt very roguish, Cap’n. When you called -him that, he cackled and squealed, which was his way of laughing, and he -clawed his delightful whiskers this side and that. Kim would laugh then, -too, and look at him knowingly from under her long lashes. She had large -eyes, deep-set like her mother’s and her mother’s wide mobile mouth. For -the rest, she was much like her father—a Ravenal, he said. His -fastidious ways (highfalutin, her grandmother called them); his slim -hands and feet; his somewhat drawling speech, indirect though strangely -melting glance, calculatedly impulsive and winning manner. - -Another childhood memory was that of a confused and terrible morning. -Asleep in her small bed in the room with her father and mother, she had -been wakened by a bump, followed by a lurch, a scream, shouts, bells, -clamour. Wrapped in her comforter, hastily snatched up from her bed by -her mother, she was carried to the deck in her mother’s arms. Gray dawn. -A misty morning with fog hanging an impenetrable curtain over the river, -the shore. The child was sleepy, bewildered. It was all one to her—the -confusion, the shouting, the fog, the bells. Close in her mother’s arms, -she did not in the least understand what had happened when the confusion -became pandemonium; the shouts rose to screams. Her grandfather’s high -squeaky voice that had been heard above the din—“La’berd lead there! -Sta’berd lead! Snatch her! _SNATCH HER!_” was heard no more. Something -more had happened. Someone was in the water, hidden by the fog, whirled -in the swift treacherous current. Kim was thrown on her bed like a -bundle of rags, all rolled in her blanket. She was left there, alone. -She had cried a little, from fright and bewilderment, but had soon -fallen asleep again. When she woke up her mother was bending over her, -so wild-eyed, so frightening with her black hair streaming about her -face and her face swollen and mottled with weeping, that Kim began to -cry again in sheer terror. Her mother had snatched her to her. Curiously -enough the words Magnolia Ravenal now whispered in a ghastly kind of -agony were the very words she had whispered after the agony of Kim’s -birth—though the child could not know that. - -“The river!” Magnolia said, over and over. Gaylord Ravenal came to her, -flung an arm about her shoulder, but she shook him off wildly. “The -river! The river!” - -Kim never saw her grandfather again. Because of the look it brought to -her mother’s face, she soon learned not to say, “Where’s Andy?” or—the -roguish question that had always made him appear, squealing with -delight: “Where’s Cap’n?” - -Baby though she was, the years—three or four—just preceding her -grandfather’s tragic death were indelibly stamped on the infant’s mind. -He had adored her; made much of her. Andy, dead, was actually a more -vital figure than many another alive. - -It had been a startling but nevertheless actual fact that Parthenia Ann -Hawks had not wanted her daughter Magnolia to have a child. Parthy’s -strange psychology had entered into this, of course—a pathological -twist. Of this she was quite unaware. - -“How’re you going to play ingénue lead, I’d like to know, if you—when -you—while you——” She simply could not utter the word “pregnant” or -say, “while you are carrying your child,” or even the simpering evasion -of her type and class—“in the family way.” - -Magnolia laughed a little at that. “I’ll play as long as I can. Toward -the end I’ll play ruffly parts. Then some night, probably between the -second and third acts—though they may have to hold the curtain for five -minutes or so—I’ll excuse myself——” - -Mrs. Hawks declared that she had never heard anything so indelicate in -her life. “Besides, a show boat’s no place to bring up a child.” - -“You brought me up on one.” - -“Yes,” said Mrs. Hawks, grimly. Her tone added, “And now look at you!” - -Even before Kim’s birth the antagonism between Parthy and her son-in-law -deepened to actual hatred. She treated him like a criminal; regarded -Magnolia’s quite normal condition as a reproach to him. - -“Look here, Magnolia, I can’t stand this, you know. I’m so sick of this -old mud-scow and everything that goes with it.” - -“Gay! Everything!” - -“You know what I mean. Let’s get out of it. I’m no actor. I don’t belong -here. If I hadn’t happened to see you when you stepped out on deck that -day at New Orleans——” - -“Are you sorry?” - -“Darling! It’s the only luck I’ve ever had that lasted.” - -She looked thoughtfully down at the clear colourful brilliance of the -diamond on her third finger. Always too large for her, it now hung so -loosely on her thin hand that she had been obliged to wind it with a -great pad of thread to keep it from dropping off, though hers were the -large-knuckled fingers of the generous and resourceful nature. It was to -see much of life, that ring. - -She longed to say to him, “Where do you belong, Gay? Who are you? Don’t -tell me you’re a Ravenal. That isn’t a profession, is it? You can’t live -on that.” - -But she knew it was useless. There was a strange deep streak of the -secretive in him; baffling, mystifying. Questioned, he would say -nothing. It was not a moody silence, or a resentful one. He simply would -not speak. She had learned not to ask. - -“We can’t go away now, Gay dear. I can’t go. You don’t want to go -without me, do you? You wouldn’t leave me! Maybe next winter, after the -boat’s put up, we can go to St. Louis, or even New Orleans—that would -be nice, wouldn’t it? The winter in New Orleans.” - -One of his silences. - -He never had any money—that is, he never had it for long. It vanished. -He would have one hundred dollars. He would go ashore at some sizable -town and return with five hundred—a thousand. “Got into a little game -with some of the boys,” he would explain, cheerfully. And give her three -hundred of it, four hundred, five. “Buy yourself a dress, Nola. -Something rich, with a hat to match. You’re too pretty to wear those -homemade things you’re always messing with.” - -Some woman wisdom in her told her to put by a portion of these sums. She -got into the habit of tucking away ten dollars, twenty, fifty. At times -she reproached herself for this; called it disloyal, sneaking, -underhand. When she heard him say, as he frequently did, “I’m strapped. -If I had fifty dollars I could turn a trick that would make five hundred -out of it. You haven’t got fifty, have you, Nola? No, of course not.” - -She wanted then to give him every cent of her tiny hoard. It was the -tenuous strain of her mother in her, doubtless—the pale thread of the -Parthy in her make-up—that caused her to listen to an inner voice. -“Don’t do it,” whispered the voice, nudging her, “keep it. You’ll need -it badly by and by.” - -It did not take many months for her to discover that her husband was a -gambler by profession—one of those smooth and plausible gentry with -whom years of river life had made her familiar. It was, after all, not -so much a discovery as a forced admission. She knew, but refused to -admit that she knew. Certainly no one could have been long in ignorance -with Mrs. Hawks in possession of the facts. - -Ten days after Magnolia’s marriage to Ravenal (and what a ten days those -had been! Parthy alone crowded into them a lifetime of reproach), Mrs. -Hawks came to her husband, triumph in her mien, portent in her voice: - -“Well, Hawks, I hope you’re satisfied now.” This was another of Parthy’s -favourite locutions. The implication was that the unfortunate whom she -addressed had howled heaven-high his demands for hideous misfortune and -would not be content until horror had piled upon horror. “I hope you’re -satisfied now, Hawks. Your son-in-law is a gambler, and no more. A -common barroom gambler, without a cent to his trousers longer’n it takes -to transfer his money from his pocket to the table. That’s what your -only daughter has married. Understand, I’m not saying he gambles, and -that’s all. I say he’s a gambler by calling. That’s the way he made his -living before he came aboard this boat. I wish he had died before he -ever set foot on the _Cotton Blossom_ gangplank, and so I tell you, -Hawks. A smooth-tongued, oily, good-for-nothing; no better than the scum -Elly ran off with.” - -“Now, Parthy, what’s done’s done. Why’n’t you try to make the best of -things once in a while, instead of the worst? Magnolia’s happy with -him.” - -“She ain’t lived her life out with him yet. Mark my words. He’s got a -roving eye for a petticoat.” - -“Funny thing, Parthy. Your father was a man, and so’s your husband, and -your son-in-law’s another. Yet seems you never did get the hang of a -man’s ways.” - -Andy liked Ravenal. There was about the fellow a grace, an ease, a -certain elegance that appealed to the æsthetic in the little Gallic -captain. When the two men talked together sometimes, after dinner, it -was amiably, in low tones, with an air of leisure and relaxation. Two -gentlemen enjoying each other’s company. There existed between the two a -sound respect and liking. - -Certainly Ravenal’s vogue on the rivers was tremendous. Andy paid him as -juvenile lead a salary that was unheard of in show-boat records. But he -accounted him worth it. Shortly after Kim’s birth, Andy spoke of giving -Ravenal a share in the _Cotton Blossom_. But this Mrs. Hawks fought with -such actual ferocity that Andy temporarily at least relinquished the -idea. - -Magnolia had learned to dread the idle winter months. During this annual -period of the _Cotton Blossom’s_ hibernation the Hawks family had, -before Magnolia’s marriage, gone back to the house near the river at -Thebes. Sometimes Andy had urged Parthy to spend these winter months in -the South, evading the harsh Illinois climate for a part of the time at -least in New Orleans, or one of the towns of southern Mississippi where -one might have roses instead of holly for Christmas. He sometimes envied -black Jo and Queenie their period of absence from the boat. In spite of -the disreputable state in which they annually returned to the _Cotton -Blossom_ in the early spring, they always looked as if they had spent -the intervening months seated in the dappled shade, under a vine, with -the drone of insects in the air, and the heavy scent of white-petalled -blossoms; eating fruit that dripped juice between their fingers; -sleeping, slack-jawed and heavily content, through the heat of the -Southern mid-afternoon; supping greasily and plentifully on fried -catfish and corn bread; watching the moon come up to the accompaniment -of Jo’s coaxing banjo. - -“We ought to lazy around more, winters,” Andy said to his energetic -wife. She was, perhaps, setting the Thebes house to rights after their -long absence; thwacking pillows, pounding carpets, sloshing pails, -scouring tables, hanging fresh curtains, flapping drapes, banging bureau -drawers. A towel wrapped about her head, turban-wise, her skirts well -pinned up, she would throw a frenzy of energy into her already -exaggerated housewifeliness until Andy, stepping fearfully out of the -way of mop and broom and pail, would seek waterfront cronies for solace. - -“Lazy! I’ve enough of lazying on that boat of yours month in month out -all summer long. No South for me, thank you. Eight months of flies and -niggers and dirty mud-tracking loafers is enough for me, Captain Hawks. -I’m thankful to get back for a few weeks where I can live like a decent -white woman.” Thwack! Thump! Bang! - -After one trial lasting but a few days, the Thebes house was found by -Magnolia to be impossible for Gaylord Ravenal. That first winter after -their marriage they spent in various towns and cities. Memphis for a -short time; a rather hurried departure; St. Louis; Chicago. That brief -glimpse of Chicago terrified her, but she would not admit it. After all, -she told herself, as the astounding roar and din and jangle and clatter -of State Street and Wabash Avenue beat at her ears, this city was only -an urban Mississippi. The cobblestones were the river bed. The high grim -buildings the river banks. The men, women, horses, trucks, drays, -carriages, street cars that surged through those streets; creating new -channels where some obstacle blocked their progress; felling whole -sections of stone and brick and wood and sweeping over that section, -obliterating all trace of its former existence; lifting other huge -blocks and sweeping them bodily downstream to deposit them in a new -spot; making a boulevard out of what had been a mud swamp—all this, -Magnolia thought, was only the Mississippi in another form and -environment; ruthless, relentless, Gargantuan, terrible. One might think -to know its currents and channels ever so well, but once caught -unprepared in the maelstrom, one would be sucked down and devoured as -Captain Andy Hawks had been in that other turbid hungry flood. - -“You’ll get used to it,” Ravenal told his bride, a trifle patronizingly, -as one who had this monster tamed and fawning. “Don’t be frightened. -It’s mostly noise.” - -“I’m not frightened, really. It’s just the kind of noise that I’m not -used to. The rivers, you know, all these years—so quiet. At night and -in the morning.” - -That winter she lived the life of a gambler’s wife. Streak o’ lean, -streak o’ fat. Turtle soup and terrapin at the Palmer House to-day. Ham -and eggs in some obscure eating house to-morrow. They rose at noon. They -never retired until the morning hours. Gay seemed to know a great many -people, but to his wife he presented few of these. - -“Business acquaintance,” he would say. “You wouldn’t care for him.” - -Hers had been a fantastic enough life on the show boat. But always there -had been about it an orderliness, a routine, due, perhaps, to the -presence of the martinet, Parthenia Ann Hawks. Indolent as the days -appeared on the rivers, they still bore a methodical aspect. Breakfast -at nine. Rehearsal. Parade. Dinner at four. Make-up. Curtain. Wardrobe -to mend or refurbish; parts to study; new songs to learn for the -concert. But this new existence seemed to have no plot or plan. Ravenal -was a being for the most part unlike the lover and husband of _Cotton -Blossom_ days. Expansive and secretive by turn; now high-spirited, now -depressed; frequently absent-minded. His manner toward her was always -tender, courteous, thoughtful. He loved her as deeply as he was capable -of loving. She knew that. She had to tell herself all this one evening -when she sat in their hotel room, dressed and waiting for him to take -her to dinner and to the theatre. They were going to McVicker’s Theatre, -the handsome new auditorium that had risen out of the ashes of the old -(to quote the owner’s florid announcement). Ravenal was startled to -learn how little Magnolia knew of the great names of the stage. He had -told her something of the history of McVicker’s, in an expansive burst -of pride in Chicago. He seemed to have a definite feeling about this -great uncouth giant of a city. - -“When you go to McVicker’s,” Ravenal said, “you are in the theatre where -Booth has played, and Sothern, and Lotta, and Kean, and Mrs. Siddons.” - -“Who,” asked Magnolia, “are they?” - -He was so much in love that he found this ignorance of her own calling -actually delightful. He laughed, of course, but kissed her when she -pouted a little, and explained to her what these names meant, investing -them with all the glamour and romance that the theatre—the theatre of -sophistication, that is—had for him; for he had the gambler’s love of -the play. It must have been something of that which had held him so long -to the _Cotton Blossom_. Perhaps, after all, his infatuation for -Magnolia alone could not have done it. - -And now she was going to McVicker’s. And she had on her dress with the -open-throated basque, which she considered rather daring, though now -that she was a married woman it was all right. She was dressed long -before the time when she might expect him back. She had put out fresh -linen for him. He was most fastidious about his dress. Accustomed to the -sloppy deshabille of the show boat’s male troupers, this sartorial -niceness in Ravenal had impressed her from the first. - -She regarded herself in the mirror now. She knew she was not beautiful. -She affected, in fact, to despise her looks; bemoaned her high forehead -and prominent cheek-bones, her large-knuckled fingers, her slenderness, -her wide mouth. Yet she did not quite believe these things she said -about herself; loved to hear Ravenal say she was beautiful. As she -looked at her reflection now in the long gilt-framed mirror of the heavy -sombre walnut bedroom, she found herself secretly agreeing with him. -This was the first year of her marriage. She was pregnant. It was -December. The child was expected in April. There was nothing distorted -about her figure or her face. As is infrequently the case, her condition -had given her an almost uncanny radiance of aspect. Her usually pallid -skin showed a delicious glow of rosy colouring; her eyes were enormous -and strangely luminous; tiny blue veins were faintly, exquisitely etched -against the cream tint of her temples; her rather angular slimness was -replaced by a delicate roundness; she bore herself well, her shoulders -back, her head high. A happy woman, beloved, and in love. - -Six o’clock. A little late, but he would be here at any moment now. -Half-past six. She was opening the door every five minutes to peer up -the red-carpeted corridor. Seven. Impatience had given way to fear, fear -to terror, terror to certain agony. He was dead. He had been killed. She -knew by now that he frequented the well-known resorts of the city, that -he played cards in them. “Just for pastime,” he told her. “Game of cards -to while away the afternoon. What’s the harm in that? Now, Nola! Don’t -look like your mother. Please!” - -She knew about them. Red plush and gilt, mahogany and mirrors. Food and -drink. River-front saloons and river-front life had long ago taught her -not to be squeamish. She was not a foolish woman, nor an intolerant. She -was, in fact, in many ways wise beyond her years. But this was 1888. The -papers had been full of the shooting of Simeon Peake, the gambler, in -Jeff Hankins’ place over on Clark Street. The bullet had been meant for -someone else—a well-known newspaper publisher, in fact. But a woman, -hysterical, crazed, revengeful, had fired it. It had gone astray. -Ravenal had known Simeon Peake. The shooting had been a shock to him. It -had, indeed, thrown him so much off his guard that he had talked to -Magnolia about it for relief. Peake had had a young daughter Selina. She -was left practically penniless. - -Now the memory of this affair came rushing back to her. She was frantic. -Half-past seven. It was too late, now, for the dinner they had planned -for the gala evening—dinner at the Wellington Hotel, down in the white -marble café. The Wellington was just across the street from McVicker’s. -It would make everything simple and easy; no rush, no hurrying over that -last delightful sweet sip of coffee. - -Eight o’clock. He had been killed. She no longer merely opened the door -to peer into the corridor. She left the room door open and paced from -room to hall, from hall to room, wildly; down the corridor. Finally, in -desperation, down to the hotel lobby into which she had never stepped in -the evening without her husband. There were two clerks at the office -desk. One was an ancient man, flabby and wattled, as much a part of the -hotel as the stones that paved the lobby. He had soft wisps of sparse -white hair that seemed to float just above his head instead of being -attached to it; and little tufts of beard, like bits of cotton stuck on -his cheeks. He looked like an old baby. The other was a glittering young -man; his hair glittered, his eyes, his teeth, his nails, his -shirt-front, his cuffs. Both these men knew Ravenal; had greeted him on -their arrival; had bowed impressively to her. The young man had looked -flattering things; the old man had pursed his soft withered lips. - -Magnolia glanced from one to the other. There were people at the clerks’ -desk, leaning against the marble slab. She waited, nervous, uncertain. -She would speak to the old man. She did not want, somehow, to appeal to -the glittering one. But he saw her, smiled, left the man to whom he was -talking, came toward her. Quickly she touched the sleeve of the old -man—leaned forward over the marble to do it—jerked his sleeve, really, -so that he glanced up at her testily. - -“I—I want—may I speak to you?” - -“A moment, madam. I shall be free in a moment.” - -The sparkler leaned toward her. “What can I do for you, Mrs. Ravenal?” - -“I just wanted to speak to this gentleman——” - -“But I can assist you, I’m sure, as well as——” - -She glanced at him and he was a row of teeth, all white and even, ready -to bite. She shook her head miserably; glanced appealingly at the old -man. The sparkler’s eyebrows came up. He gave the effect of stepping -back, courteously, without actually doing so. Now that the old clerk -faced her, questioningly, she almost regretted her choice. - -She blushed, stammered; her voice was little more than a whisper. “I -. . . my husband . . . have been . . . he hasn’t returned . . . worried -. . . killed or . . . theatre . . .” - -The old baby cupped one hand behind his ear. “What say?” - -Her beautiful eyes, in their agony, begged the sparkler now to forgive -her for having been rude. She needed him. She could not shout this. He -stepped forward, but the teeth were hidden. After all, a chief clerk is -a chief clerk. Miraculously, he had heard the whisper. - -“You say your husband——?” - -She nodded. She was terribly afraid that she was going to cry. She -opened her eyes very wide and tried not to blink. If she so much as -moved her lids she knew the mist that was making everything swim in a -rainbow haze would crystallize into tears. - -“He is terribly late. I—I’ve been so worried. We were going to the—to -McVicker’s—and dinner—and now it’s after seven——” - -“After eight,” wheezed cotton whiskers, peering at the clock on the -wall. - -“—after eight,” she echoed, wretchedly. There! She had winked. Two -great drops plumped themselves down on the silk bosom of her bodice with -the open-throated neck line. It seemed to her that she heard them -splash. - -“H’m!” cackled the old man. - -The glittering one leaned toward her. She was enveloped in a waft of -perfume. “Now, now, Mrs. Ravenal! There’s absolutely nothing to worry -about. Your husband has been delayed. That’s all. Unavoidably delayed.” - -She snatched at this. “Do you think—? Are you sure? But he always is -back by six, at the latest. Always. And we were going to dinner—and -Mc——” - -“You brides!” smiled the young man. He actually patted her hand, then. -Just a touch. “Now you just have a bite of dinner, like a sensible -little woman.” - -“Oh, I couldn’t eat a bite! I couldn’t!” - -“A cup of tea. Let me send up a cup of tea.” - -The old one made a sucking sound with tongue and teeth, rubbed his chin, -and proffered his suggestion in a voice that seemed to Magnolia to echo -and reëcho through the hotel lobby. “Why’n’t you send a messenger around -for him, madam?” - -“Messenger? Around? Where?” - -Sparkler made a little gesture—a tactful gesture. “Perhaps he’s having -a little game of—uh—cards; and you know how time flies. I’ve done the -same thing myself. Look up at the clock and first thing you know it’s -eight. Now if I were you, Mrs. Ravenal——” - -She knew, then. There was something so sure about this young man; and so -pitying. And suddenly she, too, was sure. She recalled in a flash that -time when they were playing Paducah, and he had not come. They had held -the curtain until after eight. Ralph had searched for him. He had been -playing poker in a waterfront saloon. Send around for him! Not she. The -words of a popular sentimental song of the day went through her mind, -absurdly. - - Father, dear father, come home with me now. - The clock in the steeple strikes one. - -She drew herself up, now. The actress. She even managed a smile, as even -and sparkling and toothy as the sparkler’s own. “Of course. I’m very -silly. Thank you so . . . I’ll just have a bit of supper in my -room. . . .” She turned away with a little gracious bow. The eyes very -wide again. - -“H’m!” The old man. Translated it meant, “Little idiot!” - -She took off the dress with the two dark spots on the silk of the -basque. She put away his linen and his shiny shoes. She took up some -sewing. But the mist interfered with that. She threw herself on the bed. -An agony of tears. That was better. Ten o’clock. She fell asleep, the -gas lights burning. At a little before midnight he came in. She awoke -with a little cry. Queerly enough, the first thing she noticed was that -he had not his cane—the richly mottled malacca stick that he always -carried. She heard herself saying, ridiculously, half awake, half -asleep, “Where’s your cane?” - -His surprise at this matter-of-fact reception made his expression almost -ludicrous. “Cane! Oh, that’s so. Why I left it. Must have left it.” - -In the years that followed she learned what the absence of the malacca -stick meant. It had come to be a symbol in every pawnshop on Clark -Street. Its appearance was bond for a sum a hundred times its actual -value. Gaylord Ravenal always paid his debts. - -She finished undressing, in silence. Her face was red and swollen. She -looked young and helpless and almost ugly. He was uncomfortable and -self-reproachful. “I’m sorry, Nola. I was detained. We’ll go to the -theatre to-morrow night.” - -She almost hated him then. Being, after all, a normal woman, there -followed a normal scene—tears, reproaches, accusations, threats, -pleadings, forgiveness. Then: - -“Uh—Nola, will you let me take your ring—just for a day or two?” - -“Ring?” But she knew. - -“You’ll have it back. This is Wednesday. You’ll have it by Saturday. I -swear it.” - -The clear white diamond had begun its travels with the malacca stick. - -He had spoken the truth when he said that he had been unavoidably -detained. - -She had meant not to sleep. She had felt sure that she would not sleep. -But she was young and healthy and exhausted from emotion. She slept. As -she lay there by his side she thought, before she slept, that life was -very terrible—but fascinating. Even got from this a glow of discovery. -She felt old and experienced and married and tragic. She thought of her -mother. She was much, much older and more married, she decided, than her -mother ever had been. - -They returned to Thebes in February. Magnolia longed to be near her -father. She even felt a pang of loneliness for her mother. The little -white cottage near the river, at Thebes, looked like a toy house. Her -bedroom was doll-size. The town was a miniature village, like a child’s -Christmas set. Her mother’s bonnet was a bit of grotesquerie. Her -father’s face was etched with lines that she did not remember having -seen there when she left. The home-cooked food, prepared by Parthy’s -expert hands, was delicious beyond belief. She was a traveller returned -from a far place. - -Captain Andy had ordered a new boat. He talked of nothing else. The old -_Cotton Blossom_, bought from Pegram years before, was to be discarded. -The new boat was to be lighted by some newfangled gas arrangement -instead of the old kerosene lamps. Carbide or some such thing Andy said -it was. There were to be special footlights, new scenery, improved -dressing and sleeping rooms. She was being built at the St. Louis -shipyards. - -“She’s a daisy!” squeaked Andy, capering. He had just returned from a -trip to the place of the _Cotton Blossom’s_ imminent birth. Of the two -impending accouchements—that which was to bring forth a grandchild and -that which was to produce a new show boat—it was difficult to say which -caused him keenest anticipation. Perhaps, secretly, it was the boat, -much as he loved Magnolia. He was, first, the river man; second, the -showman; third, the father. - -“Like to know what you want a new boat for!” Parthy scolded. “Take all -the money you’ve earned these years past with the old tub and throw it -away on a new one.” - -“Old one ain’t good enough.” - -“Good enough for the riff-raff we get on it.” - -“Now, Parthy, you know’s well’s I do you couldn’t be shooed off the -rivers now you’ve got used to ’em. Any other way of living’d seem stale -to you.” - -“I’m a woman loves her home and asks for nothing better.” - -“Bet you wouldn’t stay ashore, permanent, if you had the chance.” - -He won the wager, though he had to die to do it. - -The new _Cotton Blossom_ and the new grandchild had a trial by flood on -their entrance into life. The Mississippi, savage mother that she was, -gave them both a baptism that threatened for a time to make their -entrance into and their exit from the world a simultaneous act. But -both, after some perilous hours, were piloted to safety; the one by old -Windy, who swore that this was his last year on the rivers; the other by -a fat midwife and a frightened young doctor. Through storm and flood was -heard the voice of Parthenia Ann Hawks, the scold, berating Captain -Hawks her husband, and Magnolia Ravenal her daughter, as though they, -and not the elements, were responsible for the predicament in which they -now found themselves. - -There followed four years of war and peace. The strife was internal. It -raged between Parthy and her son-in-law. The conflict of the two was a -chemical thing. Combustion followed inevitably upon their meeting. The -biting acid of Mrs. Hawks’ discernment cut relentlessly through the -outer layers of the young man’s charm and grace and melting manner and -revealed the alloy. Ravenal’s nature recoiled at sight of a woman who -employed none of the arts of her sex and despised and penetrated those -of the opposite sex. She had no vanity, no coquetry, no reticences, no -respect for the reticence of others; treated compliment as insult, met -flattery with contempt. - -A hundred times during those four years he threatened to leave the -_Cotton Blossom_, yet he was held to his wife Magnolia and to the child -Kim by too many tender ties. His revolt usually took the form of a -gambling spree ashore during which he often lost every dollar he had -saved throughout weeks of enforced economy. There was no opportunity to -spend money legitimately in the straggling hamlets to whose landings the -_Cotton Blossom_ was so often fastened. Then, too, the easy indolence of -the life was beginning to claim him—its effortlessness, its freedom -from responsibility. Perhaps a new part to learn at the beginning of the -season—that was all. River audiences liked the old plays. Came to see -them again and again. It was Ravenal who always made the little speech -in front of the curtain. Wish to thank you one and all . . . always glad -to come back to the old . . . to-morrow night that thrilling -comedy-drama entitled . . . each and every one . . . concert after the -show . . . - -Never had the _Cotton Blossom_ troupe so revelled in home-baked cakes, -pies, cookies; home-brewed wine; fruits of tree and vine. The female -population of the river towns from the Great Lakes to the Gulf beheld in -him the lover of their secret dreams and laid at his feet burnt -offerings and shewbread. Ravenal, it was said by the _Cotton Blossom_ -troupe, could charm the gold out of their teeth. - -Perhaps, with the passing of the years, he might have grown quite -content with this life. Sometimes the little captain, when the two men -were conversing quietly apart, dropped a word about the future. - -“When I’m gone—you and Magnolia—the boat’ll be yours, of course.” - -Ravenal would laugh. Little Captain Andy looked so very much alive, his -bright brown eyes glancing here and there, missing nothing on land or -shore, his brown paw scratching the whiskers that showed so little of -gray, his nimble legs scampering from texas to gangplank, never still -for more than a minute. - -“No need to worry about that for another fifty years,” Ravenal assured -him. - -The end had in it, perhaps, a touch of the ludicrous, as had almost -everything the little capering captain did. The _Cotton Blossom_, headed -upstream on the Mississippi, bound for St. Louis, had struck a snag in -Cahokia Bend, three miles from the city. It was barely dawn, and a dense -fog swathed the river. The old _Cotton Blossom_ probably would have sunk -midstream. The new boat stood the shock bravely. In the midst of the -pandemonium that followed the high shrill falsetto of the little -captain’s voice could be heard giving commands which he, most of all, -knew he had no right to give. The pilot only was to be obeyed under such -conditions. The crew understood this, as did the pilot. It was, in fact, -a legend that more than once in a crisis Captain Andy on the upper deck -had screamed his orders in a kind of dramatic frenzy of satisfaction, -interspersing these with picturesque and vivid oaths during which he had -capered and bounced his way right off the deck and into the river, from -which damp station he had continued to screech his orders and -profanities in cheerful unconcern until fished aboard again. Exactly -this happened. High above the clamour rose the voice of Andy. His little -figure whirled like that of a dervish. Up, down, fore, aft—suddenly he -was overboard unseen in the dimness, in the fog, in the savage swift -current of the Mississippi, wrapped in the coils of the old yellow -serpent, tighter, tighter, deeper, deeper, until his struggles ceased. -She had him at last. - -“The river,” Magnolia had said, over and over, “The river. The river.” - - - - - XII - - -“Thebes?” echoed Parthenia Ann Hawks, widow. The stiff crêpe of her -weeds seemed to bristle. “I’ll do nothing of the kind, miss! If you and -that fine husband of yours think to rid yourself of me _that_ way——” - -“But, Mama, we’re not trying to rid ourselves of you. How can you think -of such things! You’ve always said you hated the boat. Always. And now -that Papa—now that you needn’t stay with the show any longer, I thought -you’d want to go back to Thebes to live.” - -“Indeed! And what’s to become of the _Cotton Blossom_, tell me that, -Maggie Hawks!” - -“I don’t know,” confessed Magnolia, miserably. “I don’t—know. That’s -what I think we ought to talk about.” The _Cotton Blossom_, after her -tragic encounter with the hidden snag in the Mississippi, was in for -repairs. The damage to the show boat had been greater than they had -thought. The snag had, after all, inflicted a jagged wound. So, too, had -it torn and wounded something deep and hidden in Magnolia’s soul. -Suddenly she had a horror of the great river whose treacherous secret -fangs had struck so poisonously. The sight of the yellow turbid flood -sickened her; yet held her hypnotized. Now she thought that she must run -from it, with her husband and her child, to safety. Now she knew that -she never could be content away from it. She wanted to flee. She longed -to stay. This, if ever, was her chance. But the river had Captain Andy. -Somewhere in its secret coils he lay. She could not leave him. On the -rivers the three great mysteries—Love and Birth and Death—had been -revealed to her. All that she had known of happiness and tragedy and -tranquillity and adventure and romance and fulfilment was bound up in -the rivers. Their willow-fringed banks framed her world. The motley -figures that went up and down upon them or that dwelt on their shores -were her people. She knew them; was of them. The Mississippi had her as -surely as it had little Andy Hawks. - -“Well, we’re talking about it, ain’t we?” Mrs. Hawks now demanded. - -“I mean—the repairs are going to be quite expensive. She’ll be laid up -for a month or more, right in the season. Now’s the time to decide -whether we’re going to try to run her ourselves just as if Papa were -still——” - -“I can see you’ve been talking things over pretty hard and fast with -Ravenal. Well, I’ll tell you what we’re going to do, miss. We’re going -to run her ourselves—leastways, I am.” - -“But, Mama!” - -“Your pa left no will. Hawks all over. I’ve as much say-so as you have. -More. I’m his widow. You won’t see me willing to throw away the -good-will of a business that it’s taken years to build up. The boat’s -insurance’ll take care of the repairs. Your pa’s life insurance is paid -up, and quite a decent sum—for him. I saw to that. You’ll get your -share, I’ll get mine. The boat goes on like it always has. No Thebes for -me. You’ll go on playing ingénue leads; Ravenal juvenile. Kim——” - -“No!” cried Magnolia much as Parthy had, years before. “Not Kim.” - -“Why not?” - -There was about the Widow Hawks a terrifying and invincible energy. Her -black habiliments of woe billowed about her like the sable wings of a -destroying angel. With Captain Andy gone, she would appoint herself -commander of the Cotton Blossom Floating Palace Theatre. Magnolia knew -that. Who, knowing Parthy, could imagine it otherwise? She would appoint -herself commander of their lives. Magnolia was no weakling. She was a -woman of mettle. But no mettle could withstand the sledge-hammer blows -of Parthy Ann Hawks’ iron. - -It was impossible that such an arrangement could hold. From the first -Ravenal rejected it. But Magnolia’s pleadings for at least a trial won -him over, but grudgingly. - -“It won’t work, Nola, I tell you. We’ll be at each other’s throats. -She’s got all kinds of plans. I can see them whirling around in her -eye.” - -“But you will try to be patient, won’t you, Gay? For my sake and Kim’s?” - -But they had not been out a week before mutiny struck the _Cotton -Blossom_. The first to go was Windy. Once his great feet were set toward -the gangplank there was no stopping him. He was over seventy now, but he -looked not an hour older than when he had come aboard the _Cotton -Blossom_ almost fifteen years before. To the irate widow he spoke -briefly but with finality. - -“You’re Hawks’ widow. That’s why I said I’d take her same’s if Andy was -alive. I thought Nollie’s husband would boss this boat, but seems you’re -running it. Well, ma’am, I ain’t no petticoat-pilot. I’m off the end of -this trip down. Young Tanner’ll come aboard there and pilot you.” - -“Tanner! Who’s he? How d’you know I want him? I’m running this boat.” - -“You better take him, Mrs. Hawks, ma’am. He’s young, and not set in his -ways, and likely won’t mind your nagging. I’m too old. Lost my taste for -the rivers, anyway, since Cap went. Lost my nerve, too, seems -like. . . . Well, ma’am, I’m going.” - -And he went. - -Changes came then, tripping on each other’s heels. Mis’ Means stayed, -and little weak-chested Mr. Means. Frank had gone after Magnolia’s -marriage. Ralph left. - -Parthy met these difficulties and defeats with magnificent generalship. -She seemed actually to thrive on them. Do this. Do that. Ravenal’s right -eyebrow was cocked in a perpetual circumflex of disdain. One could feel -the impact of opposition whenever the two came together. Every fibre of -Ravenal’s silent secretive nature was taut in rejection of this -managerial mother-in-law. Every nerve and muscle of that energetic -female’s frame tingled with enmity toward this suave soft-spoken -contemptuous husband of her daughter. - -Finally, “Choose,” said Gaylord Ravenal, “between your mother and me.” - -Magnolia chose. Her decision met with such terrific opposition from -Parthy as would have shaken any woman less determined and less in love. - -“Where you going with that fine husband of yours? Tell me that!” - -“I don’t know.” - -“I’ll warrant you don’t. No more does he. Why’re you going? You’ve got a -good home on the boat.” - -“Kim . . . school . . .” - -“Fiddlesticks!” - -Magnolia took the plunge. “We’re not—I’m not—Gay’s not happy any more -on the rivers.” - -“You’ll be a sight unhappier on land before you’re through, make no -mistake about that, young lady. Where’ll you go? Chicago, h’m? What’ll -you do there? Starve, and worse. I know. Many’s the time you’ll wish -yourself back here.” - -Magnolia, nervous, apprehensive, torn, now burst into sudden rebellion -against the iron hand that had gripped her all these years. - -“How do you know? How can you be so sure? And even if you are right, -what of it? You’re always trying to keep people from doing the things -they want to do. You’re always wanting people to live cautiously. You -fought to keep Papa from buying the _Cotton Blossom_ in the first place, -and made his life a hell. And now you won’t leave it. You didn’t want me -to act. You didn’t want me to marry Gay. You didn’t want me to have Kim. -Maybe you were right. Maybe I shouldn’t have done any of those things. -But how do you know? You can’t twist people’s lives around like that, -even if you twist them right. Because how do you know that even when -you’re right you mayn’t be wrong? If Papa had listened to you, we’d be -living in Thebes. He’d be alive, probably. I’d be married to the -butcher, maybe. You can’t do it. Even God lets people have their own -way, though they have to fall down and break their necks to find out -they were wrong. . . . You can’t do it . . . and you’re glad when it -turns out badly . . .” - -She was growing incoherent. - -Back of Parthy’s opposition to their going was a deep relief of which -even she was unaware, and whose existence she would have denied had she -been informed of it. Her business talent, so long dormant, was leaping -into life. Her energy was cataclysmic. One would almost have said she -was happy. She discharged actors, crew; engaged actors, crew. Ordered -supplies. Spoke of shifting to an entirely new territory the following -year—perhaps to the rivers of North Carolina and Maryland. She actually -did this, though not until much later. Magnolia, years afterward reading -her mother’s terse and maddening letters, would be seized with a -nostalgia not for the writer but for the lovely-sounding places of which -she wrote—though they probably were as barren and unpicturesque as the -river towns of the Mississippi and Ohio and Big Sandy and Kanawha. -“We’re playing the town of Bath, on the Pamlico River,” Parthy’s letter -would say. Or, “We had a good week at Queenstown, on the Sassafras.” - -Magnolia, looking out into the gray Chicago streets, slippery with black -ice, thick with the Lake Michigan fog, would repeat the names over to -herself. Bath on the Pamlico. Queenstown on the Sassafras. - -Mrs. Hawks, at parting, was all for Magnolia’s retaining her financial -share in the _Cotton Blossom_, the money accruing therefrom to be paid -at regular intervals. In this she was right. She knew Ravenal. In her -hard and managing way she loved her daughter; wished to insure her best -interests. But Magnolia and Ravenal preferred to sell their share -outright if she would buy. Ravenal would probably invest it in some -business, Magnolia said. - -“Yes—monkey business,” retorted Mrs. Hawks. Then added, earnestly, “Now -mind, don’t you come snivelling to me when it’s gone and you and your -child haven’t a penny to bless yourselves with. For that’s what it’ll -come to in the end. Mark my words. I don’t say I wouldn’t be happy to -see you and Kim back. But not him. When he’s run through every penny of -your money, he needn’t look to me for more. You can come back to the -boat; you and Kim. I’ll look for you. But him! Never!” - -The two women faced each other, and they were no longer mother and -daughter but two forces opposing each other with all the strength that -lay in the deep and powerful nature of both. - -Magnolia made one of those fine speeches. “I wouldn’t come to you for -help—not if I were starving to death, and Kim too.” - -“Oh, there’s worse things than starving to death.” - -“I wouldn’t come to you no matter what.” - -“You will, just the same. I’d take my oath on that.” - -“I never will.” - -Secretly she was filled with terror at leaving the rivers; for the -rivers, and the little inaccessible river towns, and the indolent and -naïve people of those towns whose very presence in them confessed them -failures, had with the years taken on in Magnolia’s eyes the friendly -aspect of the accustomed. Here was comfort assured; here were friends; -here the ease that goes with familiarity. Even her mother’s bristling -generalship had in it a protective quality. The very show boat was a -second mother, shielding her from the problems and cares that beset the -land-dweller. The _Cotton Blossom_ had been a little world in itself on -which life was a thing detached, dream-like, narcotic. - -As Magnolia Ravenal, with her husband and her child, turned from this -existence of ease to the outside world of which she already had had one -bitter taste, she was beset by hordes of fears and doubts. Yet opposing -these, and all but vanquishing them, was the strong love of -adventure—the eager curiosity about the unknown—which had always -characterized her and her dead father, the little captain, and caused -them both to triumph, thus far, over the clutching cautious admonitions -of Parthenia Ann Hawks. - -Fright and anticipation; nostalgia and curiosity; a soaring sense of -freedom at leaving her mother’s too-protective wing; a pang of -compunction that she should feel this unfilial surge of relief. - -They were going. You saw the three of them scrambling up the steep river -bank to the levee (perhaps for the last time, Magnolia thought with a -great pang. And within herself a voice cried no! no!) Ravenal slim, -cool, contained; Magnolia whiter than usual, and frankly tearful; the -child Kim waving an insouciant farewell with both small fists. They -carried no bundles, no parcels, no valises. Ravenal disdained to carry -parcels; he did not permit those of his party to carry them. Two Negroes -in tattered and faded blue overalls made much of the luggage, stowing it -inefficiently under the seats and over the floor of the livery rig which -had been hired to take the three to the nearest railway station, a good -twelve miles distant. - -The _Cotton Blossom_ troupe was grouped on the forward deck to see them -off. The _Cotton Blossom_ lay, smug, safe, plump, at the water’s edge. A -passing side-wheeler, flopping ponderously downstream, sent little -flirty waves across the calm waters to her, and set her to palpitating -coyly. Good-bye! Good-bye! Write, now. Mis’ Means’ face distorted in a -ridiculous pucker of woe. Ravenal in the front seat with the driver. -Magnolia and Kim in the back seat with the luggage protruding at -uncomfortable angles all about them. Parthenia Ann Hawks, the better to -see them, had stationed herself on the little protruding upper deck, -forward—the deck that resembled a balcony much like that on the old -_Cotton Blossom_. The livery nags started with a lurch up the dusty -village street. They clattered across the bridge toward the upper road. -Magnolia turned for a last glimpse through her tears. There stood -Parthenia Ann Hawks, silhouetted against sky and water, a massive and -almost menacing figure in her robes of black—tall, erect, indomitable. -Her face was set. The keen eyes gazed, unblinking, across the sunlit -waters. One arm was raised in a gesture of farewell. Ruthless, -unconquerable, headstrong, untamed, terrible. - -“She’s like the River,” Magnolia thought, through her grief, in a sudden -flash of vision. “She’s the one, after all, who’s like the Mississippi.” - -A bend in the upper road. A clump of sycamores. The river, the show -boat, the silent black-robed figure were lost to view. - - - - - XIII - - -The most casual onlooker could gauge the fluctuations of the Ravenal -fortunes by any one of three signs. There was Magnolia Ravenal’s -sealskin sacque; there was Magnolia Ravenal’s diamond ring; there was -Gaylord Ravenal’s malacca cane. Any or all of these had a way of -vanishing and reappearing in a manner that would have been baffling to -one not an habitué of South Clark Street, Chicago. Of the three, the -malacca stick, though of almost no tangible value, disappeared first and -oftenest, for it came to be recognized as an I O U by every reputable -Clark Street pawnbroker. Deep in a losing game of faro at Jeff Hankins’ -or Mike McDonald’s, Ravenal would summon a Negro boy to him. He would -hand him the little ivory-topped cane. “Here—take this down to Abe -Lipman’s, corner Clark and Monroe. Tell him I want two hundred dollars. -Hurry.” Or: “Run over to Goldsmith’s with this. Tell him a hundred.” - -The black boy would understand. In ten minutes he would return minus the -stick and bearing a wilted sheaf of ten-dollar bills. If Ravenal’s luck -turned, the cane was redeemed. If it still stayed stubborn, the diamond -ring must go; that failing, then the sealskin sacque. Ravenal, contrary -to the custom of his confrères, wore no jewellery; possessed none. There -were certain sinister aspects of these outward signs, as when, for -example, the reigning sealskin sacque was known to skip an entire -winter. - -Perhaps none of these three symbols was as significant a betrayal of the -Ravenal finances as was Gay Ravenal’s choice of a breakfasting place. He -almost never breakfasted at home. This was a reversion to one of the -habits of his bachelor days; was, doubtless, a tardy rebellion, too, -against the years spent under Mrs. Hawks’ harsh régime. He always had -hated those _Cotton Blossom_ nine o’clock family breakfasts ominously -presided over by Parthy in cap and curl papers. - -Since their coming to Chicago Gay liked to breakfast between eleven and -twelve, and certainly never rose before ten. If the Ravenal luck was -high, the meal was eaten in leisurely luxury at Billy Boyle’s Chop House -between Clark and Dearborn streets. This was most agreeable, for at -Billy Boyle’s, during the noon hour, you encountered Chicago’s sporting -blood—political overlords, gamblers, jockeys, actors, reporters—these -last mere nobodies—lean and somewhat morose young fellows vaguely known -as George Ade, Brand Whitlock, John McCutcheon, Pete Dunne. Here the -news and gossip of the day went round. Here you saw the Prince Albert -coat, the silk hat, the rattling cuffs, the glittering collar, the -diamond stud of the professional gamester. Old Carter Harrison, Mayor of -Chicago, would drop in daily, a good twenty-five-cent cigar waggling -between his lips as he greeted this friend and that. In came the brokers -from the Board of Trade across the way. Smoke-blue air. The rich heavy -smell of thick steaks cut from prime Western beef. Massive glasses of -beer through which shone the pale amber of light brew, or the seal-brown -of dark. The scent of strong black coffee. Rye bread pungent with -caraway. Little crisp round breakfast rolls sprinkled with poppy-seed. - -Calories, high blood pressure, vegetable luncheons, golf, were words not -yet included in the American everyday vocabulary. Fried potatoes were -still considered a breakfast dish, and a meatless meal was a snack. - -Here it was, then, that Gay Ravenal, slim, pale, quiet, elegant, liked -best to begin his day; listening charmingly and attentively to the talk -that swirled about him—talk of yesterday’s lucky winners in Gamblers’ -Alley, at Prince Varnell’s place, or Jeff Hankins’ or Mike McDonald’s; -of the Washington Park race track entries; of the new blonde girl at -Hetty Chilson’s; of politics in their simplest terms. Occasionally he -took part in this talk, but like most professional gamblers, his was not -the conversational gift. He was given credit for the astuteness he did -not possess merely on the strength of his cool evasive glance, his habit -of listening and saying little, and his bland poker face. - -“Ravenal doesn’t say much but there’s damned little he misses. Watch him -an hour straight and you can’t make out from his face whether he’s -cleaning up a thousand or losing his shirt.” An enviable Clark Street -reputation. - -Still, this availed him nothing when funds were low. At such times he -eschewed Billy Boyle’s and breakfasted meagrely instead at the Cockeyed -Bakery just east of Clark. That famous refuge for the temporarily -insolvent was so named because of the optical peculiarity of the lady -who owned it and who dispensed its coffee and sinkers. This refreshment -cost ten cents. The coffee was hot, strong, revivifying; the sinkers -crisp and fresh. Every Clark Street gambler was, at one time or another, -through the vagaries of Lady Luck, to be found moodily munching the -plain fare that made up the limited menu to be had at the Cockeyed -Bakery. For that matter lacking even the modest sum required for this -sustenance, he knew that there he would be allowed to “throw up a tab” -until luck should turn. - -Many a morning Gaylord Ravenal, dapper, nonchalant, sartorially -exquisite, fared forth at eleven with but fifty cents in the pocket of -his excellently tailored pants. Usually, on these occasions, the malacca -stick was significantly absent. Of the fifty cents, ten went for the -glassy shoeshine; twenty-five for a boutonnière; ten for coffee and -sinkers at the Cockeyed Bakery. The remaining five cents stayed in his -pocket as a sop to the superstition that no coin breeds no more coins. -Stopping first to look in a moment at Weeping Willy Mangler’s, or at -Reilly’s pool room for a glance at the racing chart, or to hear a bit of -the talk missed through his enforced absence from Boyle’s, he would end -at Hankins’ or McDonald’s, there to woo fortune with nothing at all to -offer as oblation. But affairs did not reach this pass until after the -first year. - -It was incredible that Magnolia Ravenal could so soon have adapted -herself to the life in which she now moved. Yet it was explicable, -perhaps, when one took into consideration her inclusive nature. She was -interested, alert, eager—and still in love with Gaylord Ravenal. Her -life on the rivers had accustomed her to all that was bizarre in -humanity. Queenie and Jo had been as much a part of her existence as -Elly and Schultzy. The housewives in the little towns, the Negroes -lounging on the wharves, the gamblers in the river-front saloons, the -miners of the coal belt, the Northern fruit-pickers, the boatmen, the -Southern poor whites, the Louisiana aristocracy, all had passed in -fantastic parade before her ambient eyes. And she, too, had marched in a -parade, a figure as gorgeous, as colourful as the rest. - -Now, in this new life, she accepted everything, enjoyed everything with -a naïveté that was, perhaps, her greatest charm. It was, doubtless, the -thing that held the roving Ravenal to her. Nothing shocked her; this was -her singularly pure and open mind. She brought to this new life an -interest and a curiosity as fresh as that which had characterized the -little girl who had so eagerly and companionably sat with Mr. Pepper, -the pilot, in the bright cosy glass-enclosed pilot house atop the old -_Creole Belle_ on that first enchanting trip down the Mississippi to New -Orleans. - -To him she had said, “What’s around that bend? . . . Now what’s coming? -. . . How deep is it here? . . . What used to be there? . . . What -island is that?” - -Mr. Pepper, the pilot, had answered her questions amply and with a -feeling of satisfaction to himself as he beheld her childish hunger for -knowledge being appeased. - -Now she said to her husband with equal eagerness: “Who is that stout -woman with the pretty yellow-haired girl? What queer eyes they have! -. . . What does it mean when it says odds are two to one? . . . Why do -they call him Bath House John? . . . Who is that large woman in the -victoria, with the lovely sunshade? How rich her dress is, yet it’s -plain. Why don’t you introduce me to——Oh! That! Hetty Chilson! Oh! -. . . Why do they call him Bad Jimmy Connerton? . . . But why do they -call it the Levee? It’s really Clark Street, and no water anywhere near, -so why do they call it the Levee? . . . What’s a percentage game? . . . -Hieronymus! What a funny word! . . . Mike McDonald? That! Why, he looks -like a farmer, doesn’t he? A farmer in his Sunday-best black clothes -that don’t fit him. The Boss of the Gamblers. Why do they call his place -‘The Store’? . . . Oh, Gay darling, I wish you wouldn’t. . . . Now don’t -frown like that. I just mean I—when I think of Kim, I get scared -because, how about Kim—I mean when she grows up? . . . Why are they -called owl cars? . . . But I don’t understand why Lipman lets you have -money just for a cane that isn’t worth more than ten or twenty . . . How -do pawnbrokers . . . Mont Tennes—what a queer name! . . . Al Hankins? -Oh, you’re joking now. Really killed by having a folding bed close up on -him! Oh, I’ll never again sleep in a . . . Boiler Avenue? . . . Hooley’s -Theatre? . . . Cinquevalli? . . . Fanny Davenport? . . . Derby Day? -. . . Weber and Fields? . . . Sauterne? . . . Rector’s? . . .” - -Quite another world about which to be curious—a world as sordid and -colourful and crude and passionate and cruel and rich and varied as that -other had been. - -It had taken Ravenal little more than a year to dissipate the tidy -fortune which had been Magnolia’s share of Captain Andy’s estate, -including the _Cotton Blossom_ interest. He had, of course, meant to -double the sum—to multiply it many times so that the plump thousands -should increase to tens—to hundreds of thousands. Once you had money—a -really respectable amount of it—it was simple enough to manipulate that -money so as to make it magically produce more and more money. - -They had made straight for Chicago, at that period the gamblers’ -paradise. When Ravenal announced this step, a little look of panic had -come into Magnolia’s eyes. She was reluctant to demur at his plans. It -was the thing her mother always had done when her father had proposed a -new move. Always Captain Andy’s enthusiasm had suffered the cold douche -of Parthy’s disapproval. At the prospect of Chicago, the old haunts, -congenial companions, the restaurants, the theatres, the races, Ravenal -had been more elated than she had ever seen him. He had become almost -loquacious. He could even be charming to Mrs. Hawks, now that he was so -nearly free of her. That iron woman had regarded him as her enemy to the -last and, in making over to Magnolia the goodish sum of money which was -due her, had uttered dire predictions, all of which promptly came true. - -That first year in Chicago was a picture so kaleidoscopic, so -extravagant, so ridiculous that even the child Kim retained in her -memory’s eye something of its colour and pageantry. This father and -mother in their twenties seemed really little older than their child. -Certainly there was something pathetically childish in their evident -belief that they could at once spend their money and keep it intact. -Just a fur coat—what was that! Bonnets. A smart high yellow trap. -Horses. The races. Suppers. A nursemaid for Kim. Magnolia knew nothing -of money. She never had had any. On the _Cotton Blossom_ money was a -commodity of which one had little need. - -On coming to Chicago they had gone directly to the Sherman House. -Compared with this, that first visit to Chicago before Kim’s birth had -been a mere picnic jaunt. Ravenal was proud of his young wife and of his -quiet, grave big-eyed child; of the nursemaid in a smart uniform; of the -pair of English hackneys which he sometimes allowed Magnolia to drive, -to her exquisite delight. Magnolia had her first real evening dress, cut -décolleté; tasted champagne; went to the races at the Washington Park -race track; sat in a box at Hooley’s; was horrified at witnessing the -hootchie-kootchie dance on the Midway Plaisance at the World’s Fair. - -The first fur coat was worthy of note. The wives of the well-to-do wore -sealskin sacques as proof of their husband’s prosperity. Magnolia -descended to these later. But the pelts which warmed her during that -first winter of Chicago lake blasts and numbing cold had been cunningly -matched in Paris, and French fingers had fashioned them into a wrap. - -Ravenal had selected it for her, of course. He always accompanied her on -her shopping trips. He liked to loll elegantly at ease like a pasha -while the keen-eyed saleswomen brought out this gown and that for his -expert inspection. To these alert ladies it was plain to see that -Magnolia knew little enough about chic attire. The gentleman, though—he -knew what was what. Magnolia had been aghast at the cost of that first -fur coat, but then, how should she know of such things? Between them, -she and Parthy had made most of the costumes she had worn in her _Cotton -Blossom_ days, both for stage and private use. The new coat was a black -astrakhan jacket; the fur lay in large smooth waves known as baby lamb. -Magnolia said it made her feel like a cannibal to wear a thing like -that. The salesladies did not smile at this, but that was all right -because Magnolia had not intended that they should. The revers and cuffs -were of Russian sable, dark and rich and deep; and it had large -mutton-leg sleeves—large enough to contain her dress sleeves -comfortably, with a little expert aid in the way of stuffing. “Stuff my -sleeves in,” was one of the directions always given a gentleman when he -assisted a lady with her wrap. - -This royal garment had cost——“Oh, Gay!” Magnolia had protested, in a -low shocked voice (but not so low that the sharp-eared saleswomen failed -to hear it)—“Oh, Gay! I honestly don’t think we ought——” - -“Mrs. Potter Palmer,” spoke up the chief saleswoman in a voice at once -sharp and suave, “has a coat identically similar. They are the only two -of the kind in the whole country. To tell you the truth, I think the -sable skins on this garment of madam’s are just a little finer than Mrs. -Palmer’s. Though perhaps it’s just that madam sets it off better, being -so young and all.” - -He liked her to wear, nestling in the rich depths of the sable revers, a -bunch of violets. For the theatre she had one of those new winged -bonnets, representing a butterfly, cunningly contrived of mousseline de -soie wired and brilliantly spangled so that it quivered and trembled -with the movements of her head and sparkled enchantingly. Kim adored the -smell of the violet-scented creature who kissed her good-night and swept -out, glittering. The impression must have gone deep, deep into the -childish mind, for twenty years later she still retained a sort of -story-book mental picture of this black-haired creamy mother who would -come in late of a winter afternoon laughing and bright-eyed after a -drive up Grand Boulevard in the sleigh behind the swift English -hackneys. This vision would seem to fill the warm room with a delightful -mixture of violets, and fur, and cold fresh air and velvet and spangles -and love and laughter. Kim would plunge her face deep into the soft -scented bosom. - -“Oh, Gay, do see how she loves the violets! You won’t mind if I take -them off and put them here in this glass so she—— No, you mustn’t buy -me any fresh ones. Please! I wish she didn’t look quite so much like me -. . . her mouth . . . but it’s going to be a great wide one, like -mine. . . . Oh, Bernhardt! Who wants her little girl to look like -Bernhardt! Besides, Kim isn’t going to be an actress.” - -At the end of a year or so of this the money was gone—simply gone. Of -course, it hadn’t been only the hackneys, and the races, and the trap, -and the furs, and the suppers and the theatres and dresses and Gay’s -fine garments and the nurse and the hotel. For, as Ravenal explained, -the hackneys hadn’t even been pure-blooded, which would have brought -them up to one thousand each. He had never been really happy about them, -because of a slight blot on their family escutcheon which had brought -them down to a mere six hundred apiece. This flaw was apparent, surely, -to no one who was not an accredited judge at a horse show. Yet when -Ravenal and Magnolia on Derby Day joined the gay stream of tallyhos, -wagonettes, coaches, phaetons, tandems, cocking carts, and dog-carts -sweeping up Michigan Avenue and Grand Boulevard toward the Washington -Park race track he was likely to fall into one of his moody silences and -to flick the hackneys with little contemptuous cuts of the long lithe -whip in a way that only they—and Magnolia—understood. On such -occasions he called them nags. - -“Ah! That off nag broke again. That’s because they’re not -thoroughbreds.” - -“But, Gay, you’re hurting their mouths, sawing like that.” - -“Please, Nola. This isn’t a Mississippi barge I’m driving.” - -She learned many things that first year, and saw so much that part of -what she saw was mercifully soon forgotten. You said Darby Day, very -English. You pretended not to mind when your husband went down to speak -to Hetty Chilson and her girls in their box. For that matter, you -pretended not to see Hetty Chilson and her girls at all, though they had -driven out in a sort of private procession of victorias, landaus, -broughams, and were by far the best-dressed women at the races. They -actually set the styles, Gay had told her. Hetty Chilson’s girls wore -rich, quiet, almost sedate clothes; and no paint on their faces. They -seemed an accepted part of the world in which Gaylord Ravenal moved. -Even in the rough life of the rivers, Magnolia had always understood -that women of Hetty Chilson’s calling simply did not exist in the public -sense. They were not of the substance of everyday life, but were -shadows, sinister, menacing, evil. But with this new life of Magnolia’s -came the startling knowledge that these ladies played an important part -in the social and political life of this huge sprawling Mid-western -city. This stout, blonde, rather handsome woman who carried herself with -an air of prosperous assurance; whose shrewd keen glance and hearty -laugh rather attracted you—this one was Hetty Chilson. The horsewomen -you saw riding in the Lincoln Park bridle path, handsomely habited in -black close-fitting riding clothes, were, likely as not, Hetty Chilson’s -girls. She was actually a power in her way. When strangers were shown -places of interest in Chicago—the Potter Palmer castle on Lake Shore -Drive, the Art Museum, the Stockyards, the Auditorium Hotel, the great -mansions of Phil Armour and his son on Michigan Avenue, with the garden -embracing an entire city block—Hetty Chilson’s place, too, was pointed -out (with a lowering of the voice, of course, and a little leer, and -perhaps an elbow dug into the ribs). A substantial brick house on Clark -Street, near Polk, with two lions, carved in stone, absurdly guarding -its profane portals. - -“Hetty Chilson’s place,” Gay explained to his wide-eyed young wife, “is -like a club. You’re likely to find every prominent politician in Chicago -there, smoking and having a sociable drink. And half the political plots -that you read about in the newspapers later are hatched at Hetty’s. -She’s as smart as they make ’em. Bought a farm, fifteen acres, out at -Ninetieth and State, for her father and mother. And she’s got a country -place out on the Kankakee River, near Momence—about sixty miles south -of here—that’s known to have one of the finest libraries in the -country. Cervantes—Balzac—rare editions. Stable full of horses—rose -garden——” - -“But, Gay dear!” - -You saw Hetty driving down State Street during the shopping hour in her -Kimball-made Victoria, an equipage such as royalty might have used, its -ebony body fashioned by master craftsmen, its enamel as rich and deep -and shining as a piano top. Her ample skirts would be spread upon the -plum-coloured cushions. If it was summer the lace ruffles of her -sunshade would plume gently in the breeze. In winter her mink coat -swathed her full firm figure. One of her girls sat beside her, -faultlessly dressed, pale, unvivacious. Two men in livery on the box. -Harness that shone with polished metal and jingled splendidly. Two slim, -quivering, high-stepping chestnuts. Queen of her world—Chicago’s -underworld. - -“But, Gay dear!” - -“Well, how about France!” - -“France?” - -“How about the women you used to read about—learned about them in your -history books, for that matter, at school? Pompadour and Maintenon and -Du Barry! Didn’t they mix up in the politics of their day—and weren’t -they recognized? Courtesans, every one of them. You think just because -they wore white wigs and flowered silk hoops and patches——” - -A little unaccustomed flush surged over Magnolia’s pallor—the deep, -almost painful red of indignation. She was an inexperienced woman, but -she was no fool. These last few months had taught her many things. Also -the teachings of her school-teacher mother had not, after all, been -quite forgotten, it appeared. - -“She’s a common woman of the town, Gaylord Ravenal. All the wigs and -patches and silks in the world wouldn’t make her anything else. She’s no -more a Du Barry than your Hinky Dink is a—uh—Mazarin.” - -It was as though he took a sort of perverse pleasure in thus startling -her. It wasn’t that she was shocked in the prim sense of the word. She -was bewildered and a little frightened. At such times the austere form -and the grim visage of Parthenia Ann Hawks would rise up before her -puzzled eyes. What would Parthy have said of these unsavoury figures now -passing in parade before Magnolia’s confused vision—Hetty Chilson, Doc -Haggerty, Mike McDonald, “Prince” Varnell, Effie Hankins? Uneasy though -she was, Magnolia could manage to smile at the thought of her mother’s -verbal destruction of this raffish crew. There were no half tones in -Parthy’s vocabulary. A hussy was a hussy; a rake a rake. But her father, -she thought, would have been interested in all this, and more than a -little amused. His bright brown eyes would have missed nothing; the -little nimble figure would have scampered inquisitively up and down the -narrow and somewhat sinister lane that lay between Washington and -Madison streets, known as Gamblers’ Alley; he would have taken a turn at -faro; appraised the Levee ladies at their worth: visited Sam T. Jack’s -Burlesque Show over on Madison, and Kohl & Middleton’s Museum, probably, -and Hooley’s Theatre certainly. Nothing in Chicago’s Levee life would -have escaped little Captain Andy, and nothing would have changed him. - -“See it all, Nollie,” he had said to her in the old _Cotton Blossom_ -days, when Parthy would object to their taking this or that jaunt ashore -between shows. “Don’t you believe ’em when they say that what you don’t -know won’t hurt you. Biggest lie ever was. See it all and go your own -way and nothing’ll hurt you. If what you see ain’t pretty, what’s the -odds! See it anyway. Then next time you don’t have to look.” - -Magnolia, gazing about her, decided that she was seeing it all. - -The bulk of the money had gone at faro. The suckers played roulette, -stud poker, hazard, the bird-cage, chuck-a-luck (the old army game). But -your gambler played faro. Faro was Gaylord Ravenal’s game, and he played -at Hankins’—not at George Hankins’ where they catered to the cheap -trade who played percentage games—but at Jeff Hankins’ or Mike -McDonald’s where were found the highest stakes in Chicago. Faro was not -a game with Ravenal—it was for him at once his profession, his science, -his drug, his drink, his mistress. He had, unhappily, as was so often -the case with your confirmed gambler, no other vice. He rarely drank, -and then abstemiously; smoked little and then a mild cigar, ate -sparingly and fastidiously; eschewed even the diamond ring and -shirt-stud of his kind. - -The two did not, of course, watch the money go, or despair because it -would soon be gone. There seemed to be plenty of it. There always would -be enough. Next week they would invest it securely. Ravenal had inside -tips on the market. He had heard of a Good Thing. This was not the right -time, but They would let him know when the magic moment was at hand. In -the meantime there was faro. And there were the luxurious hotel rooms -with their soft thick carpets, and their big comfortable beds; ice water -tinkling at the door in answer to your ring; special dishes to tempt the -taste of Mr. Ravenal and his lady. The sharp-eyed gentleman in evening -clothes who stood near the little ticket box as you entered the theatre -said, “Good-evening, Mr. Ravenal,” when they went to Hooley’s or -McVicker’s or the Grand Opera House, or Kohl and Castle’s. The heads of -departments in Mandel’s or Carson Pirie’s or even Marshall Field’s said, -“I have something rather special to show you, Mrs. Ravenal. I thought of -you the minute it came in.” - -Sometimes it seemed to Magnolia that the _Cotton Blossom_ had been only -a phantom ship—the rivers a dream—a legend. - -It was all very pleasant and luxurious and strange. And Magnolia tried -not to mind the clang of Clark Street by day and by night. The hideous -cacophony of noise invaded their hotel apartment and filled its every -corner. She wondered why the street-car motormen jangled their warning -bells so persistently. Did they do it as an antidote to relieve their -own jangled nerves? _Pay_-pes! MO’nin’ _pay_-pes! Crack! Crack! -Crackcrackcrack! The shooting gallery across the street. Someone passing -the bedroom door, walking heavily and clanking the metal disk of his -room key. The sound of voices, laughter, from the street, and the -unceasing shuffle of footsteps on stone. Whee-e-e-e-e! Whoop-a! -Ye-e-eow! A drunkard. She knew about that, too. Part of her recently -acquired knowledge. Ravenal had told her about Big Steve Rowan, the -three-hundred-pound policeman, who, partly because of his goatee and -moustache, and partly because of his expert manipulation of his official -weapon, was called the Jack of Clubs. - -“You’ll never see Big Steve arrest a drunk at night,” Gay had explained -to her, laughing. “No, sir! Nor any other Clark Street cop if he can -help it. If they arrest a man they have to appear against him next -morning at the nine o’clock police court. That means getting up early. -So if he’s able to navigate at all, they pass him on down the street -from corner to corner until they get him headed west somewhere, or north -across the bridge. Great system.” - -All this was amusing and colourful, perhaps, but scarcely conducive to -tranquillity and repose. Often Magnolia, lying awake by the side of the -sleeping man, or lying awake awaiting his late return, would close her -stinging eyelids the better to visualize and sense the deep velvet -silence of the rivers of her girlhood—the black velvet nights, quiet, -quiet. The lisping cluck-suck of the water against the hull. - -Clang! MO’nin’ _pay_-pes! Crack! E-e-eee-yow! - -And then, suddenly, one day: “But, Gay dear, how do you mean you haven’t -one hundred dollars? It’s for that bronze-green velvet that you like so -much, though I always think it makes me look sallow. You did urge me to -get it, you know, dear. And now this is the third time they’ve sent the -bill. So if you’ll give me the money—or write a check, if you’d -rather.” - -“I tell you I haven’t got it, Nola.” - -“Oh, well, to-morrow’ll do. But please be sure to-morrow, because I -hate——” - -“I can’t be any surer to-morrow than I am to-day. I haven’t got a -hundred dollars in the world. And that’s a fact.” - -Even after he had finished explaining, she did not understand; could not -believe it; continued to stare at him with those great dark startled -eyes. - -Bad luck. At what? Faro. But, Gay—thousands! Well, thousands don’t last -for ever. Took a flyer. Flyer? Yes. A tip on the market. Market? The -stock market. Stock? Oh, you wouldn’t understand. But all of it, Gay? -Well, some of it lost at faro. Where? Hankins’. How much? What does it -matter?—it’s gone. But, Gay, how much at faro? Oh, a few thousands. -Five? Y-y-yes. Yes, five. More than that? Well, nearer ten, probably. - -She noticed then that the malacca cane was gone. She slipped her diamond -ring off her finger. Gave it to him. With the years, that became an -automatic gesture. - -Thus the change in their mode of living did not come about gradually. -They were wafted, with Cinderella-like celerity, from the coach-and-four -to the kitchen ashes. They left the plush and ice water and fresh linen -and rich food and luxurious service of the Sherman House for a grubby -little family hotel that was really a sort of actors’ boarding house, on -the north side, just across the Clark Street bridge, on Ontario Street. -It was, Ravenal said, within convenient walking distance of places. - -“What places?” Magnolia asked. But she knew. A ten minutes’ saunter -brought you to Gamblers’ Alley. In the next fifteen years there was -never a morning when Gaylord Ravenal failed to prove this interesting -geographical fact. - - - - - XIV - - -The Ravenal reverses, if they were noticed at all in Gamblers’ Alley, -went politely unremarked. - -There was a curious and definite code of honour among the frequenters of -Chicago’s Levee. You paid your gambling debts. You never revealed your -own financial status by way of conversation. You talked little. You -maintained a certain physical, sartorial, and social standard in the -face of all reverses. There were, of course, always unmistakable signs -to be read even at the most passing glance. You drew your conclusions; -made no comment. If you were seen to breakfast for days—a week—two -weeks—at the Cockeyed Bakery, you were greeted by your confrères with -the same suavity that would have been accorded you had you been standing -treat at Billy Boyle’s or the Palmer House. Your shoe might be cracked, -but it must shine. Your linen might be frayed, but it must be clean. -Your cheeks were perhaps a trifle hollow, but they must be shaven and -smell pleasantly of bay rum. You might dine at Burkey and Milan’s (Full -Meal 15c.) with ravenous preliminary onslaughts upon the -bread-and-butter and piccalilli. But you consumed, delicately and -fastidiously, just so much and no more of the bountiful and rich repast -spread out for your taking at Jeff Hankins’ or at Mike McDonald’s. -Though your suit was shabby, it must bear the mark of that tailor to the -well-dressed sporting man—Billy McLean. If you were too impecunious for -Hetty Chilson’s you disdained the window-tapping dives on Boiler Avenue -and lower Clark Street and State; the sinister and foul shanties of Big -Maud and her ilk. You bathed, shaved, dressed, ate, smoked with the same -exotic care when you were broke as when luck was running your way. Your -cigar was a mild one (also part of the code), and this mild one usually -a dead one as you played. And no one is too broke for one cigar a day. -Twelve o’clock—noon—found you awake. Twelve o’clock—midnight—found -you awake. Somewhere between those hours you slept the deep sweet sleep -of the abstemious. You were, in short, a gambler—and a gentleman. - -Thus, when the Ravenals moved, perforce, from the comfort of the Sherman -to the threadbare shabbiness of the Ontario Street boarding house, there -was nothing in Gaylord Ravenal’s appearance to tell the tale. If his -cronies knew of his financial straits, they said nothing. Magnolia had -no women friends. During the year or more of their residence in Chicago -she had been richly content with Kim and Gay. The child had a prim and -winning gravity that gave her a curiously grown-up air. - -“Do you know, Gay,” Magnolia frequently said, “Kim sometimes makes me -feel so gawky and foolish and young. When she looks at me after I’ve -been amused about something, or am enthusiastic or excited or—you -know—anyway, she looks at me out of those big eyes of hers, very -solemn, and I feel—— Oh, Gay, you don’t think she resembles—that -is—do you think she is much like Mama?” - -“God forbid!” ejaculated Ravenal, piously. - -Kim had been Magnolia’s delight during the late morning hours and the -early afternoon. In company with the stolid nurse, they had fared forth -in search of such amusement as the city provided for a child brought up -amidst the unnatural surroundings of this one. The child had grown -accustomed to seeing her nurse stand finger on lips, eyes commanding -silence, before the closed door of her parents’ room at ten in the -morning—at eleven, even—and she got it into her baby head that this -attitude, then, was the proper and normal one in which to approach the -closed door of that hushed chamber. Late one morning Magnolia, in -nightgown and silken wrapper, had opened this door suddenly to find the -child stationed there, silent, grave-eyed, admonitory, while in one -corner, against the door case, reposed the favourite doll of her -collection—a lymphatic blonde whose eyes had met with some unfortunate -interior mishap which gave them a dying-calf look. This sprawling and -inert lady was being shushed in a threatening and dramatic manner by the -sternly maternal Kim. There was, at sight of this, that which brought -the quick sting of tears to Magnolia’s eyes. She gathered the child up -in her arms, kissed her passionately, held her close, brought her to -Ravenal as he lay yawning. - -“Gay, look at her! She was standing by the door telling her doll not to -make any noise. She’s only a baby. We don’t pay enough attention to her. -Do you think I neglect her? Standing there by the door! And it’s nearly -noon. Oh, Gay, we oughtn’t to be living here. We ought to be living in a -house—a little house where it’s quiet and peaceful and she can play.” - -“Lovely,” said Gay. “Thebes, for example. Now don’t get dramatic, Nola, -for God’s sake. I thought we’d finished with that.” - -With the change in their fortunes the English nurse had vanished with -the rest. She had gone, together with the hackneys, the high smart -yellow cart, the violets, the green velvets, the box seats at the -theatre, the champagne. She, or her counterpart, never returned, but -many of the lost luxuries did, from time to time. There were better days -to come, and worse. Their real fortune gone, there now was something -almost humdrum and methodical about the regularity of their ups and -downs. There rarely was an intermediate state. It was feast or famine, -always. They actually settled down to the life of a professional gambler -and his family. Ravenal would have a run of luck at faro. Presto! Rooms -at the Palmer House. A box at the races. The theatre. Supper at Rector’s -after the theatre. Hello, Gay! Evening, Mrs. Ravenal. Somebody’s looking -mighty lovely to-night. A new sealskin sacque. Her diamond ring on her -finger. Two new suits of clothes for Ravenal, made by Billy McLean. A -little dinner for Gay’s friends at Cardinal Bemis’s famous place on -Michigan Avenue. You couldn’t fool the Cardinal. - -He would ask suavely, “What kind of a dinner, Mr. Ravenal?” - -If Gay replied, “Oh—uh—a cocktail and a little red wine,” Cardinal -Bemis knew that luck was only so-so, and that the dinner was to be good, -but plainish. But if, in reply to the tactful question, Gay said, -magnificently, “A cocktail, Cardinal; claret, sauterne, champagne, and -liqueurs,” Bemis knew that Ravenal had had a real run of luck and -prepared the canvasbacks boiled in champagne; or there were squabs or -plover, with all sorts of delicacies, and the famous frozen watermelon -that had been plugged, filled with champagne, put on ice for a day, and -served in such chunks of scarlet fragrance as made the nectar and -ambrosia of the gods seem poor, flavourless fare indeed. - -Magnolia, when luck was high, tried to put a little money by as she had -instinctively been prompted to do during those first months of their -marriage, when they still were on the _Cotton Blossom_. But she rarely -had money of her own. Gay, when he had ready cash, was generous—but not -with the handing over of the actual coin itself. - -“Buy yourself some decent clothes, Nola; and the kid. Tell them to send -me the bill. That thing you’re wearing is a terrible sight. It seems to -me you haven’t worn anything else for months.” Which was true enough. -There was something fantastic about the magnificence with which he -ignored the reason for her not having worn anything else for months. It -had been, certainly, her one decent garment during the lean period just -passed, and she had cleaned and darned and refurbished to keep it so. -Her experience in sewing during the old _Cotton Blossom_ days stood her -in good stead now. - -There were times when even the Ontario Street hotel took on the aspect -of unattainable luxury. That meant rock bottom. Then it was that the -Ravenals took a room at three dollars a week in a frowzy rooming house -on Ohio or Indiana or Erie; the Bloomsbury of Chicago. There you saw -unshaven men, their coat collars turned up in artless attempt to conceal -the absence of linen, sallying forth, pail in hand, at ten or eleven in -the morning in search of the matutinal milk and rolls to accompany the -coffee that was even now cooking over the gas jet. Morning was a musty -jade on these streets; nothing fresh and dewy and sparkling about her. -The ladies of the neighbourhood lolled huge, unwieldy, flaccid, in -wrappers. In the afternoon you saw them amazingly transformed into plump -and pinkly powdered persons, snugly corseted, high-heeled, rustling in -silk petticoats, giving out a heady scent. They were friendly voluble -ladies who beamed on the pale slim Magnolia, and said, “Won’t you smile -for me just a little bit? H’m?” to the sedate and solemn-eyed Kim. - -Magnolia, too, boiled coffee and eggs over the gas jet in these lean -times. Gravely she counted out the two nickels that would bring her and -Kim home from Lincoln Park on the street car. Lincoln Park was an -oasis—a life-giving breathing spot to the mother and child. They -sallied forth in the afternoon; left the gas jet, the three-dollar room, -the musty halls, the stout females behind them. There was the zoo; there -was the lake; there was the grass. If the lake was their choice it led -inevitably to tales of the rivers. It was in this way that the -background of her mother’s life was first etched upon Kim’s mind. The -sight of the water always filled Magnolia with a nostalgia so acute as -to amount to an actual physical pain. - -The childish treble would repeat the words as the two sat on a park -bench facing the great blue sea that was Lake Michigan. - -“You remember the boat, don’t you, Kim?” - -“Do I?” Kim’s diction was curiously adult, due, doubtless, to the fact -that she had known almost no children. - -“Of course you do, darling. Don’t you remember the river, and Grandma -and Grandpa——” - -“Cap’n!” - -“Yes! I knew you remembered. And all the little darkies on the landing. -And the band. And the steam organ. You used to put your hands over your -ears and run and hide, because it frightened you. And Jo and Queenie.” - -“Tell me about it.” - -And Magnolia would assuage her own longing by telling and retelling the -things she liked to remember. The stories, with the years, became a -saga. Figures appeared, vanished, reappeared. The rivers wound through -the whole. Elly, Schultzy, Julie, Steve; the man in the box with the -gun; the old _Creole Belle_ and Magnolia’s first trip on the -Mississippi; Mr. Pepper and the pilot house; all these became familiar -and yet legendary figures and incidents to the child. They were her -Three Bears, her Bo-peep, her Red Riding Hood, her Cinderella. Magnolia -must have painted these stories with the colour of life itself, for the -child never wearied of them. - -“Tell me the one about the time you were a little girl and Gra’ma locked -you in the bedroom because she didn’t want you to see the show and you -climbed out of the window in your nightie . . .” - -Kim Ravenal was probably the only white child north of the Mason and -Dixon line who was sung to sleep to the tune of those plaintive, wistful -Negro plantation songs which later were to come into such vogue as -spirituals. They were the songs that Magnolia had learned from black Jo -and from Queenie, the erstwhile rulers of the _Cotton Blossom_ galley. -Swing Low Sweet Chariot, she sang. O, Wasn’t Dat a Wide River! And, of -course, All God’s Chillun Got Wings. Kim loved them. When she happened -to be ill with some childhood ailment, they soothed her. Magnolia sang -these songs, always, as she had learned to sing them in unconscious -imitation of the soft husky Negro voice of her teacher. Through the -years of Kim’s early childhood, Magnolia’s voice might have been heard -thus wherever the shifting Ravenal fortunes had tossed the three, -whether the red-plush luxury of the Sherman House, the respectable -dulness of the family hotel, or the sordid fustiness of the cheap -rooming house. Once, when they were living at the Sherman, Magnolia, -seated in a rocking chair with Kim in her arms, had stopped suddenly in -her song at a curious sound in the corridor. She had gone swiftly to the -door, had opened it, and had been unable to stifle a little shriek of -surprise and terror mingled. There stood a knot of black faces, teeth -gleaming, eyes rolling. Attracted by the songs so rarely heard in the -North, the Sherman House bell boys and waiters had eagerly gathered -outside the closed door in what was, perhaps, as flattering and sincere -a compliment as ever a singer received. - -Never did child know such ups and downs as did this daughter of the -Chicago gambler and the show-boat actress. She came to take quite for -granted sudden and complete changes that would have disorganized any one -more conventionally bred. One week she would find herself living in -grubby quarters where the clammy fetid ghost of cabbage lurked always in -the halls; the next would be a gay panorama of whisking waiters, new -lace petticoats, drives along the lake front, ice cream for dessert, -front seats at the matinée. The theatre bulked large in the life of the -Ravenals. Magnolia loved it without being possessed of much -discrimination with regard to it. Farce, comedy, melodrama—the whole -gamut as outlined by Polonius—all held her interested, enthralled. -Ravenal was much more critical than she. You saw him smoking in the -lobby, bored, dégagé. It might be the opening of the rebuilt Lincoln -Theatre on Clark near Division, with Gustave Frohman’s company playing -The Charity Ball. - -“Oh, Gay, isn’t it exciting!” - -“I don’t think much of it. Cheap-looking theatre, too, isn’t it? They -might better have left it alone after it burned down.” - -Kim’s introduction to the metropolitan theatre was when she was taken, a -mere baby, to see the spectacle America at the Auditorium. Before she -was ten she had seen everyone from Julia Marlowe to Anna Held; from -Bernhardt to Lillian Russell. Gravely she beheld the antics of the -Rogers Brothers. As gravely saw Klaw and Erlanger’s company in Foxey -Quiller. - -“It isn’t that she doesn’t see the joke,” Magnolia confided to Ravenal, -almost worriedly. “She actually doesn’t seem to approve. Of course, I -suppose I ought to be glad that she prefers the more serious things, but -I wish she wouldn’t seem quite so grown-up at ten. By the time she’s -twenty she’ll probably be spanking me and putting me to bed.” - -Certainly Magnolia was young enough for two. She was the sort of -theatre-goer who clutches the hand of her neighbour when stirred. When -Ravenal was absent Kim learned to sustain her mother at such emotional -moments. They two frequently attended the theatre together. Their -precarious mode of living cut them off from sustained human friendships. -But the theatre was always there to stimulate them, to amuse them, to -make them forget or remember. There were long afternoons to be filled, -and many evenings as Ravenal became more and more deeply involved in the -intricacies of Chicago’s night world. - -There was, curiously enough, a pendulum-like regularity about his -irregular life. His comings and goings could be depended on almost as -though he were a clerk or a humdrum bookkeeper. Though his fortunes -changed with bewildering rapidity, his habits remained the same. Indeed, -he felt these changes much less than did Magnolia and Kim. No matter -what their habitation—cheap rooming house or expensive hotel—he left -at about the same hour each morning, took the same leisurely course -toward town, returned richer or poorer—but unruffled—well after -midnight. On his off nights he and Magnolia went to the theatre. -Curiously, they seemed always to have enough money for that. - -Usually they dwelt somewhere north, just the other side of the Chicago -River, at that time a foul-smelling and viscid stream, with no drainage -canal to deodorize it. Ravenal, in lean times, emerging from his dingy -hotel or rooming house on Ontario or Ohio, was as dapper, as suave, as -elegant as that younger Ravenal had been who, leaning against the -packing case on the wharf at New Orleans, had managed to triumph over -the handicap of a cracked boot. He would stand a moment, much as he had -stood that southern spring morning, coolly surveying the world about -him. That his viewpoint was the dingy front stoop of a run-down Chicago -rooming house and his view the sordid street that held it, apparently -disturbed his equanimity not at all. On rising he had observed exactly -the same niceties that would have been his had he enjoyed the services -of a hotel valet. He bathed, shaved, dressed meticulously. Magnolia had -early learned that the slatternly morning habits which she had taken for -granted in the _Cotton Blossom_ wives—Julie, Mis’ Means, Mrs. Soaper, -even the rather fastidious Elly—would be found inexcusable in the wife -of Ravenal. The sternly utilitarian undergarments of Parthy’s choosing -had soon enough been done away with, to be replaced with a froth of lace -and tucks and embroidery and batiste. The laundering of these was a -pretty problem when faro’s frown decreed Ohio Street. - -Ravenal was spared these worrisome details. Once out of the dingy -boarding house, he could take his day in his two hands and turn it over, -like a bright, fresh-minted coin. Each day was a new start. How could -you know that you would not break the bank! It had been done on a -dollar. - -Down the street Ravenal would stroll past the ship chandlers’ and -commission houses south of Ontario, to the swinging bridge that spanned -the slimy river. There he would slacken his already leisurely pace, or -even pause a moment, perhaps, to glance at the steamers tied up at the -docks. There was an occasional sailboat. A three-masted schooner, _The -Finney_, a grain boat, was in from up North. Over to Clark and Lake. You -could sniff in the air the pleasant scent of coffee. That was Reid & -Murdock’s big warehouse a little to the east. He sometimes went a block -out of his way just to sniff this delicious odour. A glittering -shoeshine at the Sherman House or the Tremont. - -“Good-morning, George.” - -“Mawnin’ Mist’ Ravenal! Mawnin’! Papah, suh?” - -“Ah—n-n-no. No. H’m!” His fifty cents, budgeted, did not include the -dispensing of those extra pennies for the _Times-Herald_, the -_Inter-Ocean_, or the _Tribune_. They could be seen at McDonald’s for -nothing. A fine Chicago morning. The lake mist had lifted. That was one -of the advantages of never rising early. Into the Cockeyed Bakery for -breakfast. To-morrow it would be Boyle’s. Surely his bad luck would -break to-day. He felt it. Had felt it the moment he opened his eyes. - -“Terrapin and champagne to-morrow, Nola. Feel it in my bones. I woke up -with my palm itching, and passed a hunchback at Clark and Randolph last -night.” - -“Why don’t you let me give you your coffee and toast here this morning, -Gay dear? It’ll only take a minute. And it’s so much better than the -coffee you get at the—uh—downtown.” - -Ravenal, after surveying his necktie critically in the mirror of the -crazy little bureau, would shrug himself into his well-made coat. “You -know I never eat in a room in which I have slept.” - -Past the Court House; corner of Washington reached. Cut flowers in the -glass case outside the basement florist’s. A tapping on the glass with a -coin, or a rapping on the pavement with his stick—if the malacca stick -was in evidence. “Heh, Joe!” - -Joe clattering up the wooden steps. - -“Here you are, sir. All ready for you. Just came in fresh.” A white -carnation. Ravenal would sniff the spicy bloom, snap the brittle stem, -thrust it through the buttonhole of his lapel. - -A fine figure of a man from his boots to his hat. Young, handsome, -well-dressed, leisurely. Joe, the Greek florist, pocketing his quarter, -would reflect gloomily on luck—his own and that of others. - -Ravenal might drop in a moment at Weeping Willy Mangler’s, thence to -Reilly’s pool room near Madison, for a look at the racing odds. But no -matter how low his finances, he scorned the cheaper gambling rooms that -catered to the clerks and the working men. There was a great difference -between Jeff Hankins’ place and that of his brother, George. At George’s -place, and others of that class, barkers stood outside. “Game upstairs, -gentlemen! Game upstairs! Come in and try your luck! Ten cents can make -you a millionaire.” - -At George Hankins’ the faro checks actually were ten cents. You saw -there labouring men with their tin dinner pails, their boots -lime-spattered, their garments reeking of cheap pipe tobacco. There, -too, you found stud poker, roulette, hazard—percentage games. None of -these for Ravenal. He played a gentleman’s game, broke or flush. - -This game he found at Mike McDonald’s “The Store.” Here he was at home. -Here were excitement, luxury, companionship. Here he was Gaylord -Ravenal. Fortune lurked just around the corner. At McDonald’s his credit -always was good for enough to start the play. On the first floor was the -saloon, with its rich walnut panelling, its great mirrors, its tables of -teakwood and ivory inlay, its paintings of lolling ladies. Chicago’s -saloons and gambling resorts vied with each other in rich and massive -decoration. None of your soap-scrawled mirrors and fancy bottle -structures for these. “Prince” Varnell’s place had, for years, been -famous for its magnificent built-in mantel of Mexican onyx, its great -marble statue of the death of Cleopatra, its enormous Sèvres vases. - -The second floor was Ravenal’s goal. He did not even glance at the -whirling of the elaborately inlaid roulette wheels. He nodded to the -dealers and his greeting was deferentially returned. It was said that -most of these men had come of fine old Southern families. They dressed -the part. But McDonald himself looked like a farmer. His black clothes, -though well made, never seemed to fit him. His black string tie never -varied. Thin, short, gray-haired, Mike McDonald the Boss of the gamblers -would have passed anywhere for a kindly rustic. - -“Playing to-day, Mr. Ravenal?” - -“Why, yes. Yes, I thought I’d play a while.” - -“Anything we can do to make you comfortable?” - -“Well—uh—yes——” - -McDonald would raise a benevolent though authoritative hand. His finger -would summon a menial. “Dave, take care of Mr. Ravenal.” - -Ravenal joined the others then, a gentleman gambler among gentleman -gamblers. A group smartly dressed like himself, well groomed, quiet, -almost elegant. Most of them wore jewellery—a diamond scarf pin, a -diamond ring, sometimes even a diamond stud, though this was frowned on -by players of Ravenal’s class. A dead cigar in the mouth of each. Little -fine lines etched about their eyes. They addressed each other as “sir.” -Thank you, sir. . . . Yours I believe, sir. . . . They were quiet, -quiet. Yet there was an electric vibration in the air above and about -the faro table. Only the dealer seemed remote, detached, unmoved. An -hour passed; two, three, four, five. The Negro waiters in very white -starched aprons moved deferentially from group to group. One would have -said that no favouritism was being shown, but they knew the piker from -the plunger. Soft-voiced, coaxing: “Something to drink, suh? A little -whisky, suh? Cigar? Might be you’d relish a little chicken white meat -and a bottle of wine?” - -Ravenal would glance up abstractedly. “Time is it?” - -“Pushin’ six o’clock, suh.” - -Ravenal might interrupt his game to eat something, but this was not his -rule. He ate usually after he had finished his play for the day. It was -understood that he and others of his stamp were the guests of McDonald -or of Hankins. Twenty-five-cent cigars were to be had for the taking. -Drinks of every description. Hot food of the choicest sort and of almost -any variety could be ordered and eaten as though this were one’s own -house, and the servants at one’s command. Hot soups and broths. Steaks. -Chops. Hot birds. You could eat this at a little white-spread table -alone, or with your companions, or you could have it brought to you as -you played. On long tables in the adjoining room were spread the cold -viands—roast chickens, tongue, sausages, cheese, joints of roast beef, -salads. Everything about the place gave to its habitués the illusion of -plenty, of ease, of luxury. Soft red carpets; great prism-hung -chandeliers; the clink of ice; the scent of sappy cigars and rich food; -the soft slap-slap of the cards; the low voices of the dealers. It was -all friendly, relaxed, soothing. Yet when the dealer opened the little -drawer that was so cleverly concealed under his side of the table—the -money drawer with its orderly stacks of yellow-backs, and green-backs -and gold and silver—you saw, if your glance was quick and sharp enough, -the gleam of still another metal: the glittering, sinister blue-gray of -steel. - -A hundred superstitions swayed their play. Luck was a creature to be -wooed, flattered, coaxed, feared. No jungle voodoo worshipper ever lent -himself to simpler or more childish practices and beliefs than did these -hard-faced men. - -Sometimes Ravenal left the faro table penniless or even deeper in Mike -McDonald’s debt. His face at such times was not more impassive than the -bucolic host’s own. “Better luck next time, Mr. Ravenal.” - -“She’s due to turn to-morrow, Mike. Watch out for me to-morrow. I’ll -probably clean you.” - -And if not to-morrow, to-morrow. Luck must turn, sooner or later. There! -Five hundred! A thousand! Five thousand! Did you hear about Ravenal? -Yes, he had a wonderful run. It happened in an hour. He walked out with -ten thousand. More, some say. - -On these nights Ravenal would stroll coolly home as on losing nights. Up -Clark Street, the money in neat rolls in his pocket. There were almost -no street robberies in those simpler Chicago days. If you were, like -Ravenal, a well-dressed sporting looking man, strolling up Clark Street -at midnight or thereabouts, you were likely to be stopped for the price -of a meal. You gave it as a matter of course, unwrapping a bill, -perhaps, from the roll you carried in your pocket. - -They might be living in modest comfort at the Revere House on Clark and -Austin. They might be living in decent discomfort at the little -theatrical boarding house on Ontario. They might be huddled in actual -discomfort in the sordid room of the Ohio Street rooming house. Be that -as it may, Ravenal would take high-handed possession, but in a way so -blithe, so gay, so charming that no one could have withstood him, least -of all his wife who, though she knew him and understood him as well as -any one could understand this secretive and baffling nature, frequently -despised him, often hated him, still was in love with him and always -would be. - -The child would be asleep in her corner, but Magnolia would be wide -awake, reading or sewing or simply sitting there waiting. She never -reproached him for the hours he kept. Though they quarrelled frequently -it was never about this. Sometimes, as she sat there, half dozing, her -mind would go back to the rivers and gently float there. An hour—two -hours—would slip by. Now the curtain would be going down on the last -act. Now the crowd staying for the after-piece and concert would be -moving down to occupy the seats nearer the stage. A song number by the -ingénue, finishing with a clog or a soft-shoe dance. The comic tramp. -The character team in a patter act, with a song. The after-piece now; -probably Red Hot Coffee, or some similar stand-by. Now the crowd was -leaving. The band struck up its last number. Up the river bank scrambled -the last straggler. You never threw me my line at all. There I was like -a stuck pig. Well, how did I know you was going to leave out that -business with the door. Why’n’t you tell me? Say, Ed, will you go over -my song with me a minute? You know, that place where it goes TUM-ty-ty -TUM-ty-ty TUM-TUM-TUM and then I vamp. It kind of went sour to-night, -seemed to me. A bit of supper. Coffee cooked over a spirit lamp. Lumps -of yellow cheese, a bite of ham. Relaxation after strain. A daubing with -cold cream. A sloshing of water. Quieter. More quiet. Quiet. Darkness. -Security. No sound but that of the river flowing by. Sometimes if she -dozed she was wakened by the familiar hoot of a steamer whistle—some -big lake boat, perhaps, bound for Michigan or Minnesota; or a river -barge or tug on the Chicago River near by. She would start up, -bewildered, scarcely knowing whether she had heard this hoarse blast or -whether it was only, after all, part of her dream about the river and -the _Cotton Blossom_. - -Ravenal coming swiftly up the stairs. Ravenal’s quick light tread in the -hall. - -“Come on, Nola! We’re leaving this rat’s nest.” - -“Gay, dear! Not now. You don’t mean to-night.” - -“Now! It’ll only take a minute. I’ll wake up the slavey. She’ll help.” - -“No! No! I’d rather do it myself. Oh, Gay, Kim’s asleep. Can’t we wait -until morning?” - -But somehow the fantastic procedure appealed tremendously to her love of -the unexpected. Packing up and moving on. The irresponsible gaiety of -it. The gas turned high. Out tumbled the contents of bureau drawers and -boxes and trunks. Finery saved from just such another lucky day. Froth -and foam of lace and silk strewn incongruously about this murky little -chamber with its frayed carpet and stained walls and crazy chairs. They -spoke in half whispers so as not to wake the child. They were themselves -like two children, eager, excited, laughing. - -“Where are we going, Gay?” - -“Sherman. Or how would you like to try the Auditorium for a change? -Rooms looking out over the lake.” - -“Gay!” Her hands clasped as she knelt in front of a trunk. - -“Next week we’ll run down to West Baden. Do us good. During the day we -can walk and drive or ride. You ought to learn to ride, Nola. In the -evening we can take a whirl at Sam Maddock’s layout.” - -“Oh, don’t play there—not much, I mean. Let’s try to keep what we have -for a little while.” - -“After all, we may as well give Sam a chance to pay our expenses. -Remember the last time we were down I won a thousand at roulette -alone—and roulette isn’t my game.” - -He awoke the landlady and paid his bill in the middle of the night. She -did not resent being thus disturbed. Women rarely resented Gaylord -Ravenal’s lack of consideration. They were off in a hack fetched by -Ravenal from the near-by cab stand. It was no novelty for Kim to fall -asleep in the dingy discomfort of a north side rooming house and to wake -up amidst the bright luxuriousness of a hotel suite, without ever having -been conscious of the events which had wrought this change. Instead of -milk out of the bottle and an egg cooked over the gas jet, there was a -shining breakfast tray bearing mysterious round-domed dishes whose -covers you whipped off to disclose what not of savoury delights! Crisp -curls of bacon, parsley-decked; eggs baked and actually bubbling in a -brown crockery container; hot golden buttered toast. And her mother -calling gaily in from the next room, “Drink your milk with your -breakfast, Kim darling! Don’t gulp it all down in one swallow at the -end.” - -It was easy enough for Kim to believe in those fairy tales that had to -do with kindly sprites who worked miracles overnight. A whole staff of -such good creatures seemed pretty regularly occupied with the Ravenal -affairs. - -Once a month there came a letter from Mrs. Hawks. No more and no less. -That indomitable woman was making a great success of her business. Her -letters bristled with complaint, but between the lines Magnolia could -read satisfaction and even a certain grim happiness. She was boss of her -world, such as it was. Her word was final. The modern business woman had -not yet begun her almost universal battle against the male in his own -field. She was considered unique. Tales of her prowess became river -lore. Parthy Ann Hawks, owner and manager of the Cotton Blossom Floating -Palace Theatre, strong, erect, massive, her eyebrows black above her -keen cold eyes, her abundant hair scarcely touched with gray, was now a -well-known and important figure on the rivers. She ran her boat like a -pirate captain. He who displeased her walked the plank. It was said that -the more religious rivermen who hailed from the Louisiana parishes -always crossed themselves fearfully at her approach and considered a -meeting with the _Cotton Blossom_ a bad omen. The towering black-garbed -form standing like a ship’s figurehead, grim and portentous, as the boat -swept downstream, had been known to give a really devout Catholic -captain a severe and instantaneous case of chills and fever. - -Her letters to Magnolia were characteristic: - - Well, Maggie, I hope you and the child are in good health. Often - and often I think land knows what kind of a bringing up she is - getting with the life you are leading. I can imagine. Well, you - made your own bed and now you can lie in it. I have no doubt - that he has run through every penny of your money that your poor - father worked so hard to get as I predicted he would. I suppose - you heard all about French’s _New Sensation_. French has the - worst luck it does seem. She sank six weeks ago at Medley’s just - above New Madrid. The fault of the pilot it was. Carelessness if - ever I heard it. He got caught in the down draft of a gravel bar - and snagged her they say. I think of your poor pa and how he met - his end. It took two weeks to raise her though she was only in - six feet of water. On top of that his other boat the _Golden - Rod_ you remember went down about four weeks ago in the Illinois - near Hardin. A total loss. Did you ever hear of such luck. - Business is pretty good. I can’t complain. But I have to be - right on hand every minute or they would steal me blind and - that’s the truth. I have got a new heavy. No great shakes as an - actor but handy enough and a pretty good black face in the - concert and they seem to like him. We had a pretty rough - audience all through the coal country but whenever it looked - like a fight starting I’d come out in front and stand there a - minute and say if anybody started anything I would have the boat - run out into the middle of the river and sink her. That I’d - never had a fight on my boat and wasn’t going to begin any such - low life shenanigans now. - -(Magnolia got a swift mental picture of this menacing, black-garbed -figure standing before the gay crude curtain, the footlights throwing -grim shadows on her stern face. That implacable woman was capable of -cowering even a tough coal-belt audience bent on a fight.) - - Crops are pretty good so business is according. I put up grape - jelly last week. A terrible job but I can’t abide this store - stuff made of gelatine or something and no real grapes in it. - Well I suppose you are too stylish for the _Cotton Blossom_ by - now and Kim never hears of it. I got the picture you sent. I - think she looks kind of peaked. Up all hours of the night I - suppose and no proper food. What kind of an education is she - getting? You wrote about how you were going to send her to a - convent school. I never heard of such a thing. Well I will close - as goodness knows I have enough to do besides writing letters - where they are probably not wanted. Still I like to know how you - and the child are doing and all. - - Your mother, - Parthenia Ann Hawks. - -These epistles always filled Magnolia with an emotion that was a -poisonous mixture of rage and tenderness and nostalgia. She knew that -her mother, in her harsh way, loved her, loved her grandchild, often -longed to see both of them. Parthy’s perverse and inhibited nature would -not permit her to confess this. She would help them with money, Magnolia -knew, if they needed help. But first she must know the grisly -satisfaction of having them say so. This Magnolia would not do, though -there were many times when her need was great. There was Kim, no longer -a baby. This feverish and irregular life could not go on for her. -Magnolia’s letters to her mother, especially in lean times, were -triumphs of lying pride. Sentimental Tommy’s mother, writing boastfully -home about her black silks and her gold chain, was never more -stiff-necked than she. - -Gay is more than good to me. . . . I have only to wish for a thing . . . -Everyone says Kim is unusually tall and bright for her age. . . . He -speaks of a trip to Europe next year . . . new fur coat . . . never an -unkind word . . . very happy . . . - -Still, if Magnolia was clever at reading between the lines of her -mother’s bald letters, so, too, was Parthenia at hers. In fact, Parthy -took many a random shot that struck home, as when once she wrote, -tartly, “Fur coat one day and none the next I’ll be bound.” - - - - - XV - - -The problem of Kim’s education, of Kim’s future, was more and more -insistently borne in upon her. She wanted money—money of her own with -which to provide security for the child. Ravenal’s improvident method -was that of Paddy and the leaky roof. When luck was high and he was -showering her and Kim with luxuries, he would say, “But, good God, -haven’t you got everything you want? There’s no satisfying you any more, -Nola.” - -When he had nothing he would throw out his hands, palms upward, in a -gesture of despair. “I haven’t got it, I tell you. I give you everything -I can think of when I am flush. And now, when I’m broke, you nag me.” - -“But, Gay, that’s just it. Everything one day and nothing the next. -Couldn’t we live like other people, in between? Enough, and none of this -horrible worrying about to-morrow. I can’t bear it.” - -“You should have married a plumber.” - -She found herself casting about in her mind for ways in which she could -earn money of her own. She took stock of her talents: a slim array. -There was her experience on the show-boat stage. She could play the -piano a little. She could strum the banjo (relic of Jo’s and Queenie’s -days in the old _Cotton Blossom_ low-raftered kitchen). She had an -untrained, true, and rather moving voice of mediocre quality. - -Timidly, with a little nervous spot of red showing in either cheek, she -broached this to Ravenal one fine afternoon when they were driving out -to the Sunnyside Hotel for dinner. Gaylord had had a run of luck the -week before. Two sleek handsome chestnuts seemed barely to flick the -road with their hoofs as they flew along. The smart high cart glittered -with yellow varnish. None of your cheap livery rigs for Ravenal. -Magnolia was exhilarated, happy. Above all else she loved to drive into -the country or the suburbs behind a swift pair of horses. Ravenal was -charming; pleased with himself; with his handsome, well-dressed young -wife; with the cart, the horses, the weather, the prospect of one of Old -Man Dowling’s excellent dinners. They sped through Lincoln Park. Their -destination was a two-hours’ drive north, outside the city limits: a -favourite rendezvous for Chicago’s sporting world. At Dowling’s one had -supper at a dollar a head—and such a supper! The beefsteak could be cut -with a fork. Old Man Dowling bred his own fine fat cattle. Old Lady -Dowling raised the plump broilers that followed the beefsteak. There was -green corn grown in the Dowling garden; fresh-plucked tomatoes, young -onions. There was homemade ice cream. There was a huge chocolate cake, -each slice a gigantic edifice alternating layers of black and white. - -“Can’t I drive a while, Gay dear?” - -“They’re pretty frisky. You’d better wait till we get out a ways, where -there aren’t so many rigs.” The fine cool late summer day had brought -out all manner of vehicles. “By that time the nags’ll have some of the -skittishness worked out of them, too.” - -“But I like to have them when they’re skittish. Papa always used to let -me take them.” - -“Yes—well, these aren’t canal-boat mules, you know. Why can’t you be -content just to sit back and enjoy the drive? You’re getting to be like -one of those bloomer girls they joke about. You’ll be wanting to wear -the family pants next.” - -“I am enjoying it, only——” - -“Only don’t be like your mother, Nola.” - -She lapsed into silence. During one of their many sojourns at the -Ontario Street hotel she had struck up a passing acquaintance with a -large, over-friendly blonde actress with green-gold hair and the -tightest of black bodices stretched over an imposing shelf of bosom. -This one had surveyed the Ravenal ménage with a shrewd and kindly though -slightly bleary eye, and had given Magnolia some sound advice. - -“Why’n’t you go out more, dearie?” she had asked one evening when she -herself was arrayed for festivity in such a bewilderment of flounces, -bugles, jets, plumes, bracelets, and chains as to give the effect of a -lighted Christmas tree in the narrow dim hallway. She had encountered -Magnolia in the corridor and Nola had returned the woman’s gusty -greeting with a shy and faintly wistful smile. “Out more, evenin’s. -Young thing like you. I notice you’re home with the little girl most the -time. I guess you think that run, run is about all I do.” - -Magnolia resented this somewhat. But she reflected instantly this was a -friendly and well-meaning creature. She reminded her faintly of Elly, -somehow; Elly as she might be now, perhaps; blowsy, over-blown, -middle-aged. “Oh, I go out a great deal,” she said, politely. - -“Husband home?” demanded the woman, bluntly. She was engaged in the -apparently hopeless task of pulling a black kid glove over her massive -arm. - -Magnolia’s fine eyebrows came up in a look of hauteur that she -unconsciously had borrowed from Ravenal. “Mr. Ravenal is out.” And -started on toward her room. - -The woman caught her hand. “Now don’t get huffy, dear. I’m a older woman -than you and I’ve seen a good deal. You stay home with the kid and your -husband goes out, and will he like you any better for it? Nit! Now leave -me tell you when he asks you to go out somewheres with him you go, want -to or not, because if you don’t there’s those that will, and pretty soon -he’ll quit asking you.” - -She had waddled stiffly down the hallway then, in her absurdly -high-heeled slippers, leaving a miasma of perfume in the passage. -Magnolia had been furious, then amused, then thoughtful, then grateful. -In the last few years she had met or seen the wives of professional -gamblers. It was strange: they were all quiet, rather sad-faced women, -home-loving and usually accompanied by a well-dressed and serious child. -Much like herself and Kim, she thought. Sometimes she met them on Ohio -Street. She thought she could recognize the wife of a gambler by the -look in her face. - -Frequently she saw them coming hurriedly out of one of the many -pawnshops on North Clark, near the river. The windows of these shops -fascinated her. They held, often, such intimate, revealing, and mutely -appealing things—a doll, a wedding ring, a cornet, a meerschaum pipe, a -Masonic emblem, a Bible, a piece of lace, a pair of gold-rimmed -spectacles. - -She thought of these things now as she sat so straight and smartly -dressed beside Ravenal in the high-yellow cart. She stole a glance at -him. The colour was high in his cheeks. His box-cut covert coat with the -big pearl buttons was a dashingly becoming garment. In the buttonhole -bloomed a great pompon of a chrysanthemum. He looked very handsome. -Magnolia’s head came up spiritedly. - -“I don’t want to wear the pants. But I would like to have some say-so -about things. There’s Kim. She isn’t getting the right kind of -schooling. Half the time she goes to private schools and half the time -to public and half the time to no school at all—oh, well, I know there -aren’t three halves, but anyway . . . and it isn’t fair. It’s because -half the time we’ve got money and half the time we haven’t any.” - -“Oh, God, here we are, driving out for pleasure——” - -“But, Gay dear, you’ve got to think of those things. And so I thought—I -wondered—Gay, I’d like to earn some money of my own.” - -Ravenal cut the chestnuts sharply with his whip. - -“Pooh!” thought Magnolia. “He can’t scare me that way. How like a -man—to take it out on the horses just because he’s angry.” She slipped -her hand through his arm. - -“Don’t! Don’t jerk my arm like that. You’ll have them running away in a -minute.” - -“I should think they would, after the way you slashed them. Sometimes I -think you don’t care about horses—as horses—any more than you do -about——” She stopped, aghast. She had almost said, “than you do about -me as a wife.” A long breath. Then, “Gay darling, I’d like to go back on -the stage. I’d like to act again. Here, I mean. In Chicago.” - -She was braced for a storm and could have weathered it. But his shouts -of laughter startled and bewildered her and the sensitive chestnuts as -well. At this final affront they bolted, and for the next fifteen -minutes Magnolia clutched the little iron rod at the end of the seat -with one hand and clung to her hat with the other as the outraged horses -stretched their length down the rutty country road, eyes flaming, -nostrils distended, hoofs clattering, the light high cart rocking and -leaping behind them. Ravenal’s slender weight was braced against the -footboard. The veins in his wrists shone blue against dead white. With a -tearing sound his right sleeve ripped from his coat. Little beads of -moisture stood out about his mouth and chin. Magnolia, white-lipped, -tense, and terribly frightened, magnificently uttered no sound. If she -had been one of your screamers there probably would have been a sad end. -Slowly, gradually, the chestnuts slowed a trifle, slackened, resumed a -normal pace, stood panting as Ravenal drew up at the side of the road. -They actually essayed to nibble innocently at some sprigs of grass -growing by the roadside while Ravenal wiped his face and neck and hands, -slowly, with his fine perfumed linen handkerchief. He took off his black -derby hat and mopped his forehead and the headband of his hat’s splendid -white satin lining. He fell to swearing, softly, this being the form in -which the male, relieved after fright, tries to deny that he has been -frightened. - -He turned to look at her, his eyes narrow. She turned to look at him, -her great eyes wide. She leaned toward him a little, her hand over her -heart. And then, suddenly, they both began to laugh, so that the -chestnuts pricked up their ears again and Ravenal grabbed the reins. -They laughed because they were young, and had been terribly frightened, -and were now a little hysterical following the strain. And because they -loved each other, so that their fear of injury and possible death had -been for each a double horror. - -“That’s what happens when you talk about going on the stage,” said -Ravenal. “Even the horses run at the thought. I hope this will be a -lesson to you.” He gathered up the reins. - -“A person would think I’d never been an actress and knew nothing of the -stage.” - -“You don’t think that catch-as-catch-can performance was acting, do you? -Or that hole in the wall a stage! Or that old tub a theatre! Or those -plays——Good God! Do you remember . . . ‘Sue, if he loves yuh, go with -him. Ef he ain’t good to yuh——’” - -“But I do!” cried Magnolia. “I do think so. I loved it. Everybody in the -company was acting because they liked it. They’d rather do it than -anything in the world. Maybe we weren’t very good but the audiences -thought we were; and they cried in the places where they were supposed -to cry, and laughed when they should have laughed, and believed it all, -and were happy, and if that isn’t the theatre then what is?” - -“Chicago isn’t a river dump; and Chicago audiences aren’t rubes. You’ve -seen Modjeska and Mansfield and Bernhardt and Jefferson and Ada Rehan -since then. Surely you know the difference.” - -“That’s the funny part of it. I don’t, much. Oh, I don’t mean they -haven’t got genius. And they’ve been beautifully directed. And the -scenery and costumes and all. But—I don’t know—they do exactly the -same things—do them better, but the same things that Schultzy told us -to do—and the audiences laugh at the same things and cry at the same -things—and they go trouping around the country, on land instead of -water, but trouping just the same. They play heroes and heroines in -plays all about love and adventure; and the audiences go out blinking -with the same kind of look on their faces that the river-town audiences -used to have, as though somebody had just waked them up.” - -“Don’t be silly, darling. . . . Ah, here we are!” - -And here they were. They had arrived in ample time, so that Magnolia -chatted shyly and Ravenal chatted charmingly with Pa and Ma Dowling; and -Magnolia was reminded of Thebes as she examined the shells and paper -roses and china figurines in the parlour. The dinner was excellent, -abundant, appetizing. Scarcely were they seated at the long table near -the window when there was heard a great fanfare and hullabaloo outside. -Up the winding driveway swept a tallyho, and out of it spilled a party -of Chicago bloods in fawn covert coats and derby hats and ascot ties and -shiny pointed shoes; and they gallantly assisted the very fashionable -ladies who descended the perilous steps with much shrill squealing and -shrieking and maidenly clutching at skirts, which clutchings failed -satisfactorily of their purpose. Some of the young men carried banjos -and mandolins. The four horses jangled their metal-trimmed harness and -curveted magnificently. Up the steps swarmed the gay young men and the -shrill young women. On closer sight Magnolia noticed that some of these -were not, after all, so young. - -“Good God!” Ravenal had exclaimed; and had frowned portentously. - -“Do you know them, Gay?” - -“It’s Bliss Chapin’s gang. He’s giving a party. He’s going to be married -day after to-morrow. They’re making a night of it.” - -“Really! How lovely! Which one’s the girl he’s to marry? Point her out.” - -And for the second time Ravenal said, “Don’t be silly, darling.” - -They entered the big dining room on a wave of sound and colour. They -swarmed the table. They snatched up bits of bread and pickles and -celery, and munched them before they were seated. They caught sight of -Ravenal. - -“Gay! Well, I’m damned! Gay, you old Foxey Quiller, so that’s why you -wouldn’t come out! Heh, Blanche, look! Here’s Gay, the bad boy. Look -who’s here!” - -“I thought you were going out to Cramp’s place,” Gay said, sullenly, in -a low voice, to one of the men. - -He chose the wrong confidant, the gentleman being neither reticent nor -ebriate. He raised his voice to a shout. “That’s a good ’un! Listen! -Foxey Gay thought we were going out to Cramp’s place, so what does he -do? He brings his lady here. Heh, Blanche, d’you hear that? Now you know -why he couldn’t come.” He bent upon Magnolia a look of melting -admiration. “And can you blame him? All together! NO!” - -“You go to hell,” said the lady named Blanche from the far end of the -table, though without anger; rather in the manner of one who is ready -with a choice bit of repartee. Indeed it must have been so considered, -for at its utterance Mr. Bliss Chapin’s pre-nuptial group uttered shouts -of approbation. - -“Shut up, you jackass,” said Ravenal then, sotto voce. - -And “Oho!” bellowed the teaser. “Little Gay’s afraid he’ll get in -trouble with his lady friend.” - -Gay’s lady friend now disproved for all time her gentleman friend’s -recent accusation that she knew nothing about the art of acting. She -raised her head and gazed upon the roistering crew about the long table. -Her face was very white, her dark eyes were enormous; she was smiling. - -“Won’t you introduce me to your friends, Gay?” she said, in her clear -and lovely voice. - -“Don’t be a fool,” whispered Ravenal, at her side. - -The host, Bliss Chapin, stood up rather red-faced and fumbling with his -napkin. He was not sober, but his manner was formal—deferential, even. -“Mrs.—uh—Rav’nal—I—uh—charmed. I rem’ber seeing you—someone -pointed you out in a box at th—th—th—” he gave it up and decided to -run the two words together—“ththeatre. Chapin’s my name. Bliss Chapin. -Call me Bliss. Ever’body calls me Bliss. Uh—” he decided to do the -honours. He indicated each guest with a graceful though vague wave of -the hand. “’S Tantine . . . Fifi . . . Gerty . . . Vi’let . . . Blanche -. . . Mignon. Lovely girls. Lovely. But—we’ll let that pass. Uh . . . -Georgie Skiff. . . . Tom Haggerty . . . Billy Little—Li’l’ Billee we -call him. Pretty cute, huh? . . . Know what I mean? . . . Dave Lansing -. . . Jerry Darling—that’s his actu-al name. Can you ’mazhine what the -girls can do with name like that! Boys ’n girls, this’s Mrs. Gaylord -Ravenal, wife of the well-known faro expert. An’ a lucky dog he is, too. -No offense, I hope. Jus’ my rough way. I’m going to be married to-morr’. -An’thing goes ’sevening.” - -Prolonged applause and shouting. A twanging of mandolins and banjos. - -“Speech!” shouted the man who had first called attention to Magnolia. -“Speech by Mrs. Ravenal!” - -They took it up shrilly, hoarsely, the Fifis, the Violets, the Billys, -the Gertys, the Jerrys. Speech! Speech! - -Ravenal got to his feet. “We’ve got to go,” he began. “Sorry——” - -“Sit down! Throw him out! Foxey Gay! Shut up, Gay!” - -Ravenal turned to Magnolia. “We’ll have to get out of this,” he said. He -put a hand on her arm. His hand was trembling. She turned her head -slowly and looked up at him, her eyes blank, the smile still on her -face. “Oh, no,” she said, and shook her head. “Oh, no. I like it here, -Gay dear.” - -“Speech!” yelled the Tantines, the Mignons, the Daves, beating on their -plates with their spoons. - -Magnolia brought one hand up to her throat in a little involuntary -gesture that betokened breathlessness. There was nothing else to -indicate how her heart was hammering. “I—I can’t make a speech,” she -began in her lovely voice. - -“Speech! Speech!” - -She looked at Ravenal. She felt a little sorry for him. - -“But I’ll sing you a song if you’ll lend me a banjo, someone.” - -She took the first of a half-dozen instruments thrust toward her. - -“Magnolia!” - -“Do sit down, Gay dear, and stop fidgeting about so. It’s all right. I’m -glad to entertain your friends.” She still wore the little set smile. -“I’m going to sing a song I learned from the Negroes when I was a little -girl and lived on a show boat on the Mississippi River.” She bent her -head above the banjo and began to thumb it softly. Then she threw her -head back slightly. One foot tapped emphasis to the music’s cadence. Her -lids came down over her eyes—closed down over them. She swayed a -little, gently. It was an unconscious imitation of old Jo’s attitude. -“It’s called Deep River. It doesn’t mean—anything. It’s just a song the -niggers used to——” She began to sing, softly. “Deep——river——” - -When she had finished there was polite applause. - -“I think it’s real sweet,” announced the one they called Violet. And -began to snivel, unbecomingly. - -Mr. Tom Haggerty now voiced the puzzlement which had been clouding his -normally cheerful countenance. - -“You call that a coon song and maybe it is. I don’t dispute you, mind. -But I never heard any song like _that_ called a coon song, and I heard a -good many coon songs in my day. I Want Them Presents Back, and A Hot -Time, and Mistah Johnson, Turn Me Loose.” - -“Sing another,” they said, still more politely. “Maybe something not -quite so sad. You’ll have us thinking we’re at prayer meeting next. -First thing you know Violet here will start to repent her sins.” - -So she sang All God’s Chillun Got Wings. They wagged their heads and -tapped their feet to that. I got a wings. You got a wings. All o’ God’s -chillun got a wings. When I get to heab’n I’m goin’ to put on my wings, -I’m goin’ to fly all ovah God’s heab’n . . . heab’n . . . - -Well, that, they agreed, was better. That was more like it. The -red-faced cut-up rose on imaginary wings to show how he, too, was going -to fly all over God’s heab’n. The forthright Blanche refused to be drawn -into the polite acclaim. “If you ask me,” she announced, moodily, “I -think they’re rotten.” “I like somepin’ a little more lively, myself,” -said the girl they called Fifi. “Do you know What! Marry Dat Gal! I -heard May Irwin sing it. She was grand.” - -“No,” said Magnolia. “That’s the only kind of song I know, really.” She -stood up. “I think we must be going now.” She looked across the table, -her great dark eyes fixed on the red-faced bridegroom. “I hope you will -be very happy.” - -“A toast to the Ravenals! To Gaylord Ravenal and Mrs. Ravenal!” She -acknowledged that too, charmingly. Ravenal bowed stiffly and glowered -and for the second time that day wiped his forehead and chin and wrists -with his fine linen handkerchief. - -The chestnuts were brought round. Bliss Chapin’s crew crowded out to the -veranda off the dining room. Magnolia stepped lightly up to the seat -beside Ravenal in the high dog-cart. It was dusk. A sudden sharpness had -come into the evening air as always, toward autumn, in that Lake -Michigan region. Magnolia shivered a little and drew about her the -little absurd flounced shoulder cape so recently purchased. The crowd on -the veranda had caught the last tune and were strumming it now on their -banjos and mandolins. The kindly light behind them threw their foolish -faces into shadow. You heard their voices, plaintive, even sweet: the -raucous note fled for the moment. Fifi’s voice and Jerry’s; Gerty’s -voice and little Billee’s. I got a wings. You got a wings. All God’s -chillun got a wings. When I get to heab’n I’m goin’ to put on my wings, -I’m goin’ to fly . . . - -Magnolia turned to wave to them as the chestnuts made the final curve in -the driveway and stretched eagerly toward home. - -Silence between the two for a long half hour. Then Ravenal, almost -humbly: “Well—I suppose I’m in for it, Nola. Shoot!” - -But she had been thinking, “I must take things in hand now. I have been -like a foolish young girl when I’m really quite an old married woman. I -suppose being bossed by Mama so much did that. I must take Kim in hand -now. What a fool I’ve been. ‘Don’t be silly, darling.’ He was right. I -have been——” Aloud she said, only half conscious that he had spoken, -“What did you say?” - -“You know very well what I said. I suppose I’m in for one of your -mother’s curtain lectures. Go on. Shoot and get it over.” - -“Don’t be silly, darling,” said Magnolia, a trifle maliciously. “What a -lovely starlight night it is! . . .” She laughed a little. “Do you know, -those dough-faced Fifis and Tantines and Mignons were just like the Ohio -and Illinois farm girls, dressed up. The ignorant girls who used to come -to see the show. I’ll bet that when they were on the farm, barefooted, -poor things, they were Annie and Jenny and Tillie and Emma right -enough.” - - - - - XVI - - -“And this,” said Sister Cecilia, “is the chapel.” She took still another -key from the great bunch on her key chain and unlocked the big gloomy -double doors. It was incredible that doors and floors and wainscotings -so shining with varnish could still diffuse such an atmosphere of gloom. -She entered ahead of them with the air of a cicerone. It seemed to -Magnolia that the corridors were tunnels of murk. It was like a prison. -Magnolia took advantage of this moment to draw closer still to Kim. She -whispered hurriedly in her ear: - -“Kim darling, you don’t need to stay. If you don’t like it we’ll slip -away and you needn’t come back. It’s so gloomy.” - -“But I do like it,” said Kim in her clear, decisive voice. “It’s so -shiny and clean and quiet.” In spite of her lovely Ravenal features, -which still retained something of their infantile curves, she looked at -that moment startlingly like her grandmother, Parthenia Ann Hawks. They -followed Sister Cecilia into the chapel. Magnolia shivered a little. - -In giving Kim a convent education it was not in Magnolia’s mind to -prepare her for those Sunday theatrical page interviews beginning, “I -was brought up by the dear Sisters in the Convent.” For that matter, the -theatre as having any part in Kim’s future never once entered Magnolia’s -mind. Why this should have been true it is difficult to say, considering -the child’s background, together with the fact that she was seeing -_Camille_ and _Ben Hur_, and the Rogers Brothers in Central Park at an -age when other little girls were barely permitted to go to cocoa parties -in white muslin and blue sashes where they might, if they were lucky, -see the funny man take the rabbit out of the hat. - -The non-sectarian girls’ schools of good standing looked askance at -would-be entrants whose parentage was as socially questionable, not to -say bizarre, as that represented by Ravenal mère and père. The daughter -of a professional gambler and an ex-show-boat actress would have -received short shrift at the hands of the head mistress of Miss Dignam’s -School for Girls at Somethingorother-on-the-Hudson. The convent school, -then, opened its gloomy portals to as motley a collection of _jeunes -filles_ as could be imagined under one roof. In the prim dim corridors -and cubicles of St. Agatha’s on Wabash Avenue, south, you might see a -score of girlish pupils who, in spite of the demure face, the sleek -braids, the severe uniform, the modest manner, the prunes-and-prism -expression, still resembled in a startling degree this or that vivacious -lady whose name was associated with the notorious Everleigh Club, or -with the music halls and museums thriving along Clark Street or Madison -or Dearborn. Visiting day at St. Agatha’s saw an impressive line of -smart broughams outside the great solemn brick building; and the ladies -who emerged therefrom, while invariably dressed in garments of sombre -colour and restrained cut, still produced the effect of being attired in -what is known as fast black. They gave forth a heady musky scent. And -the mould of their features, even when transformed by the expression -that crept over them as they gazed upon those girlish faces so markedly -resembling their own, had a look as though the potter had used a heavy -thumb. - -The convent had been Magnolia’s idea. Ravenal had laughed when she -broached the subject to him. “She’ll be well fed and housed and -generally cared for there,” he agreed. “And she’ll learn French and -embroidery and deportment and maybe some arithmetic, if she’s lucky. But -every t—uh—every shady lady on Clark Street sends her daughter there.” - -“She’s got to go somewhere, Gay. This pillar-to-post life we’re leading -is terrible for a child.” - -“What about your own life when you were a child? I suppose you led a -prissy existence.” - -“It was routine compared to Kim’s. When I went to bed in my little room -on the _Cotton Blossom_ I at least woke up in it next morning. Kim goes -to sleep on north Clark and wakes up on Michigan Avenue. She never sees -a child her own age. She knows more bell boys and chambermaids and -waiters than a travelling man. She thinks a dollar bill is something to -buy candy with and that when a stocking has a hole in it you throw it -away. She can’t do the simplest problem in arithmetic, and yesterday I -found her leaning over the second-floor rotunda rail spitting on the -heads of people in the——” - -“Did she hit anybody?” - -“It isn’t funny, Gay.” - -“It is, too. I’ve always wanted to do it.” - -“Well, so have I—but, anyway, it won’t be funny five years from now.” - -St. Agatha’s occupied half of one of Chicago’s huge square blocks. Its -great flight of front steps was flush with the street, but at the back -was a garden discreetly protected by a thick brick wall fully ten feet -high and belligerently spiked. St. Agatha herself and a whole host of -attendant cherubim looked critically down upon Magnolia and Kim as they -ascended the long broad flight of steps that led to the elaborately (and -lumpily) carved front door. Of the two Magnolia was the more terrified. -The windows glittered so sharply. The stairs were so clean. The bell, as -they rang it, seemed to echo so hollowly through endless unseen halls -and halls and halls. The hand that opened the door had been preceded by -no sound of human footsteps. The door had loomed before them seemingly -as immovable as the building itself. There was the effect of black magic -in its sudden and noiseless opening. The great entrance hall waited -still and dim. The black-robed figure before them was vaguely surmounted -by a round white face that had the look of being no face at all but a -flat circular surface on which features had been clumsily daubed. - -“I came to see about placing my little girl in school.” - -The flat surface broke up surprisingly into a smile. She was no longer a -mysterious and sombre figure but a middle-aged person, kindly, but not -especially bright. “This way.” - -This way led to a small and shiny office presided over by another flat -circular surface. This, in turn, gave way to a large and almost -startlingly sunny room, one flight up, where sat at a desk a black-robed -figure different from the rest. A large pink face. Penetrating shrewd -blue eyes behind gold-rimmed spectacles. A voice that was deep without -resonance. A woman with the look of the ruler. Parthy, practically, in -the garb of a Mother Superior. - -“Oh, my goodness!” thought Magnolia, in a panic. She held Kim’s cool -little hand tight in her own agitated fingers. Of the two, she was -incalculably the younger. The classrooms. The sewing room. Sister This. -Sister That. The garden. Little hard benches. Prim gravel paths. Holy -figures in stone brooding down upon the well-kept flower beds. Saints -and angels and apostles. When all those glittering windows were dark, -and the black-robed figures within lay in slumber, their hands (surely) -crossed on their barren breasts and the flat circular surfaces reposed -exactly in the centre of the hard pillows, and the moonlight flooded -this cloistered garden spot with the same wanton witchery that enveloped -a Sicilian bower, did these pious stone images turn suddenly into fauns -and nymphs and dryads, Magnolia wondered, wickedly. - -Aloud: “I see . . . I see . . . Oh, the refectory . . . I see. . . . -Prayers . . . seven o’clock . . dark blue dresses . . . every Thursday -from two to five . . . and sewing and music and painting as well. . . .” - -And this was the chapel. I see. And this was her bedroom to be shared -with another pupil. But she has always had her own. It is the rule. I -see. I’ll let you know. It’s Kim. I know it is, but that’s her name, -really. It’s—she was born in Kentucky and Illinois and Missouri—that -is—yes, it does sound—no, I don’t think she’d like to have you call -her anything else, she’s so used—I’ll let you know, may I? I’d like to -talk it over with her to see if she thinks she’d be happy . . . - -In the garden, in various classrooms, in the corridors, and on the -stairs they had encountered girls from ten to sixteen or even eighteen -years of age, and they were all dressed exactly alike, and they had all -flashed a quick prim look at the visitors from beneath demure lids. -Magnolia had sensed a curious undercurrent of plot, of mischief. Hidden -secret thoughts scurried up the bare varnished halls, lurked grinning in -the stairway niches. - -They were back in the big sunny second-floor room after their tour of -inspection. The pink-faced Parthy person was regarding them with level -brows. Magnolia was clinging more tightly than ever to Kim’s hand. It -was as though the child were supporting her, not she the child. - -“But I know now whether I like it or not,” Kim had spoken up, -astonishingly. “I like it.” - -Magnolia was horrified to find that she had almost cried, “Oh, no! No, -Kim!” aloud. She said, instead, “Are you sure, darling? You needn’t stay -unless you want to. Mother just brought you to see if you might like -it.” - -“I do,” repeated Kim, patiently, as one speaks to an irritating child. - -Magnolia was conscious of a sinking sense of disappointment. She -had hoped, perversely enough, that Kim would stamp her feet, throw -herself screaming on the floor, and demand to be carried out of the -bare clean orderly place back to the delightful welter of Clark -Street. She could not overcome the feeling that in thus bestowing -upon Kim a ladylike education and background she was depriving her -of something rich and precious and colourful. She thought of her own -childhood. She shut her eyes so as to see more clearly the pictures -passing in her mind. Deep rivers. Wide rivers. Willows by the water’s -edge trailing gray-green. Dogwood in fairy bloom. Darkies on the -landing. Plinketty-plunk-plunk-plunk, plinketty-plunk-plunk-plunk. -Cotton bales. Sweating black bodies. Sue, ef he loves yuh, go with him. -To-morrow night, ladies and gentlemen, that magnificent comedy-drama, -Honest Hearts and Willing Hands. The band, red-coated, its brass -screaming defiance at the noonday sun. - -The steely blue eyes in the pink face surrounded by the white wimple and -the black coif seemed to be boring into her own eyes. “If you yourself -would rather not have her here with us we would prefer not to take her.” - -“Oh, but I would! I do!” Magnolia cried hastily. - -So it was arranged. Next week. Monday. Half a dozen woollen this. Half a -dozen cotton that. - -Descending the great broad flight of outside steps Magnolia said, like a -child, “From now until Monday we’ll do things, shall we? Fun. What would -you like to do?” - -“Oh, a matinée on Saturday——” began Kim eagerly. Magnolia was -enormously relieved. She had been afraid that this brief glimpse into -the more spiritual life might already have had a chastening effect upon -the cosmopolitan Kim. - -Thus the child was removed from the pernicious atmosphere of the Chicago -Levee just when the Levee itself began to feel the chastening hand of -reform. Suddenly, overnight, Chicago went civic. For a quarter of a -century she had been a strident, ample-bosomed, loud-mouthed Rabelaisian -giantess in red satin and diamonds, who kept open house day and night -and welcomed all comers. There were food and drink and cheer. Her great -muscular arms embraced ranchers from Montana and farmers from Indiana -and bankers from New York. At Bath House John’s Workingmen’s Exchange -you got a tub of beer for a nickel; the stubble-faced bums lined the -curb outside his ceaselessly swinging door on Clark Street. The visiting -ranchers and farmers and bankers were told to go over to the Palmer -House and see the real silver dollars sunk in the tiled floor of that -hostelry’s barroom. The garrulous Coughlin, known as The Bath, and the -silent little Hinky Dink Mike Kenna were Chicago’s First Ward aldermen -and her favourite naughty sons. The roulette wheels in Gamblers’ Alley -spun merrily by day and by night. The Mayor of the city called a genial, -“Hope you’re all winning, boys!” as he dropped in for a sociable drink -and a look at the play; or even to take a hand. “What’ll you have?” was -Chicago’s greeting, and “Don’t care if I do,” her catch phrase. Hetty -Chilson was the recognized leader of her sinister world, and that this -world happened to be prefaced by the qualifying word, “under” made -little difference in Chicago’s eyes. Pawnshops, saloons, dives, and -gambling houses lined Clark Street from Twelfth to the river, and dotted -the near-by streets for blocks around. The wind-burned ranchmen in -bearskin coats and sombreros at Polk and Clark were as common a sight as -the suave white-fingered gentry in Prince Alberts and diamonds at Clark -and Madison. It was all one to Chicago. “Game upstairs, gentlemen! Game -upstairs!” - -New York, eyeing her Western cousin through disapproving lorgnettes, -said, “What a crude and vulgar person!” - -“Me!” blustered Chicago, dabbing futilely at the food and wine spots on -her broad satin bosom. “Me! I’ll learn you I’m a lady.” - -The names of University of Chicago professors (Economics Department) -began to appear on the lists of aldermanic candidates. Earnest young men -and women with notebooks and fountain pens knocked at barred doors, -stated that they were occupied in compiling a Survey, and asked intimate -questions. Down came whole blocks of rats’ nests on Clark and Dearborn, -with the rats scuttling frantically to cover. Up went office buildings -that actually sneered down upon the Masonic Temple’s boasted height. -Brisk gentlemen in eyeglasses and sack suits whisked in and out of these -chaste edifices. The clicking sound to be heard on Clark Street was no -longer that of the roulette wheel but of the stock market ticker and the -Western Union transmitter. - -It was rumoured that they were going to close Jeff Hankins’. They were -going to close Mike McDonald’s. They were going to banish the Washington -Park race track. - -“They can’t do it,” declared Gaylord Ravenal. - -“Oh, can’t we!” sneered the reformers. Snick-snack, went the bars on -Hankins’ doors and on Mike McDonald’s. It actually began to be difficult -to find an open game. It began to be well-nigh impossible. It came to -such a pass that you had to know the signal knock. You had to submit to -a silent scrutiny from unseen eyes peering through a slit somewhere -behind a bland closed door. The Prince Alberts grew shiny. The fine -linen showed frayed edges. The diamonds reposed unredeemed for longer -and longer periods at Lipman’s or Goldsmith’s. The Ravenal ring and the -succession of sealskin sacques seemed permanently to have passed out of -the Ravenal possession. The malacca stick, on the other hand, was now a -fixture. It had lost its magic. It was no longer a symbol of security. -The day was past when its appearance at Lipman’s or Goldsmith’s meant an -I O U for whatever sum Gay Ravenal’s messenger might demand. There -actually were mornings when even the Cockeyed Bakery represented luxury. -As for breakfast at Billy Boyle’s! An event. - -The Ravenals’ past experience in Chicago seemed, in comparison with -their present precarious position, a secure and even humdrum existence. -Ohio and Ontario streets knew them for longer and longer periods. Now -when Magnolia looked into the motley assemblage of objects in the more -obscure pawnshop windows, she was likely to avert her eyes quickly at -recognition of some object not only intimate but familiar. Magnolia -thought of Kim, safe, secure, comfortable, in the convent on Wabash -Avenue. - -“I must have felt this thing coming,” she said to Ravenal. “Felt it in -my bones. She’s out of all this. It makes me happy just to think of it; -to think of her there.” - -“How’re you going to keep her there?” demanded Ravenal, gloomily. “I’m -strapped. You might as well know it, if you don’t already. I’ve had the -damnedest run of luck.” - -Magnolia’s eyes grew wide with horror. “Keep her there! Gay! We’ve got -to. I wouldn’t have her knocking around here with us. Gay, can’t you do -something? Something real, I mean. Some kind of work like other—I mean, -you’re so wonderful. Aren’t there things—positions—you know—with -banks or—uh—those offices where they buy stocks and sell them and make -money in wheat and—wheat and things?” Lamely. - -Ravenal kissed her. “What a darling you are, Nola. A darling simpleton.” - -It was a curious and rather terrible thing, this love bond between them. -All that Parthy had grimly predicted had come to pass. Magnolia knew him -for what he was. Often she hated him. Often he hated her. Often he hated -her because she shamed him with her gaiety, her loyalty, her courage, -her tenderness. He was not true to her. She knew this now. He knew she -knew this. She was a one-man woman. Frequently they quarrelled -hideously. Tied to you. . . . Tied! God knows I’d be happier without -you. You’ve never brought me anything but misery. . . . Always finding -fault. . . . Put on those fine lady airs with me. What’d I take you out -of! . . . An honest living, anyway. Look people in the face. -Accusations. Bitterness. Longing. Passion. The long periods of living in -sordid surroundings made impossible most of the finer reticences. -Garments washed out in the basin. Food cooked over the gas jet. One -room. One bed. Badly balanced meals. Reproaches. Tears. Sneers. -Laughter. Understanding. Reconciliation. - -They loved each other. Over and above and through and beneath it all, -thick and thin, warp and woof, they loved each other. - -It was when their fortunes were at lowest ebb; when the convent tuition -had now been two terms unpaid; when the rent on the Ontario Street -lodgings was overdue; when even Ravenal, handsome and morose, was forced -to content himself with the coffee and rolls of the bedroom breakfast; -when a stroll up Clark Street meant meeting a dozen McLean suits as -shabby as his own—it was at this unpropitious time that Parthenia Ann -Hawks was seized with the idea of visiting her daughter, her son-in-law, -and her grandchild in Chicago. Her letters always came to the Sherman -House—had been called for there through these years though the -fluctuations of fortune had carried the Ravenals away from the hotel and -back again with a tide-like regularity. Twice Magnolia had taken Kim to -see her grim grandmamma at Thebes when the _Cotton Blossom_ was in for -repairs during the winter season. These visits had always been timed -when the Ravenal tide was high. Magnolia and Kim had come back to Thebes -on the crest of a wave foaming with silks and laces and plumes and furs. -The visits could not, however, be said to have been a success. Magnolia -always came prepared to be the fond and dutiful daughter. Invariably she -left seething between humorous rage and angry laughter. - -“It wasn’t anything she actually did,” she would explain afterward, -ruefully, to Ravenal. “It’s just that she treats me with such -disrespect.” She pondered this a moment. “I honestly think Mama’s the -vainest woman I have ever met.” - -Strangely enough, Kim and her grandmother did not get on very -satisfactorily, either. It dawned on Magnolia that the two were much -alike. Their methods were different, but the result was the same. Each -was possessed of an iron determination; boundless vitality; enormous -resistance; canny foresight; definite ambition. Parthy was the -blustering sort; Kim the quietly stubborn. When the two met in -opposition they stood braced, horn to horn, like bulls. - -On both occasions these visits had terminated abruptly in less than a -week. The bare, wind-swept little town, winter-locked, had seemed -unspeakably dreary to Magnolia. In the chill parlour of the cottage -there was a wooden portrait of her father done in crayon. It was an -enlargement which Parthy had had done from a small photograph of Andy in -his blue coat and visored cap and baggy wrinkled pants. An atrocious -thing, but the artist, clumsy though he was, had somehow happened to -catch the alert and fun-loving brightness of the keen brown eyes. The -mutton-chop whiskers looked like tufts of dirty cotton; the cheeks were -pink as a chorus girl’s. But the eyes were Andy’s. Magnolia wandered -into the parlour to stand before this picture, looking up at it with a -smile. She wandered, too, down to the river to gaze at the sluggish -yellow flood thick now with ice, but as enthralling as ever to her. She -stood on the river bank in her rich furs, a lonely, wind-swept figure, -gazing down the river, down the river, and her eyes that had grown so -weary with looking always at great gray buildings and grim gray streets -and swarming gray crowds now lost their look of strain, of unrepose, as -they beheld in the far still distance the lazy Southern wharves, the -sleepy Southern bayous—Cairo, Memphis, Vicksburg, Natchez, New -Orleans—Queenie, Jo, Elly, Schultzy, Andy, Julie, Steve. - -She took Kim eagerly to the water’s edge—gave her the river with a -sweep of her arm. Kim did not like it. - -“Is that the river?” she asked. - -“Why, yes, darling. Don’t you remember! The river!” - -“The river you told me about?” - -“Of course!” - -“It’s all dirty and ugly. You said it was beautiful.” - -“Oh, Kim, isn’t it?” - -“No.” - -She showed her the picture of Captain Andy. - -“Grampa?” - -“Yes.” - -“Cap’n?” - -“Yes, dear. He used to laugh so when you called him that when you were a -little baby. Look at his eyes, Kim. Aren’t they nice? He’s laughing.” - -“He’s funny-looking,” said Kim. - -Parthy asked blunt questions. “Sherman House? What do you go living in a -hotel for all these years, with the way they charge for food and all! -You and that husband of yours must have money to throw away. Why don’t -you live in a house, with your own things, like civilized people?” - -“Gay likes hotels.” - -“Shiftless way to live. It must cost a mint of money.” - -“It does,” agreed Magnolia, amiably. - -“Like to know where you get it, that’s what.” - -“Gay is very successful.” - -A snort as maddening as it was expressive from Parthy. The widow Hawks -did not hesitate to catechize the child in the temporary absence of her -mother. From these sessions Parthy must have gained some knowledge of -the Ohio and Ontario street interludes, for she emerged from them with a -look of grim satisfaction. - -And now Parthenia Ann Hawks was coming to Chicago. She had never seen -it. The letter announced her arrival as two weeks distant. The show-boat -season was at an end. She would stay at the Sherman House where they -were, if it wasn’t too expensive. They were not to pay. She wouldn’t be -beholden to any one. She might stay a week, she might stay two weeks or -longer, if she liked it. She wanted to see the Stockyards, the Grand -Opera House, the Masonic Temple, Marshall Field’s, Lincoln Park, and the -Chicago River. - -“My God!” said Gaylord Ravenal, almost piously. “My GOD!” - -Stricken, they looked at each other. Stared. It was a thing beyond -laughter. Every inch of space about them spelled failure. Just such -failure as had been predicted for them by the woman who was now coming, -and whose coming would prove to her the triumph of that prediction. They -were living in a huddle of discomfort on Ontario Street. Magnolia, on -her visits to Kim at the convent, was hard put to it to manage the -little surprise gift planned to bring to the girl’s face the flashing -look of gay expectancy. A Henrici cake elaborately iced, to share with -her intimates; a book; a pair of matinée tickets as a special treat; -flowers for the Mother Superior; chocolates. Now the Christmas holidays -were approaching. Kim would expect to spend them with her parents. But -where? They would not bring her to this sordid lodging. And somehow, -before the new term began, the unpaid tuition fee must be got together. -Still, the Ravenals had faced such problems as these before now. They -could have met them, they assured each other, as they always had. Luck -always turned when things looked blackest. Life did that to tease you. -But this was different. Gaylord Ravenal’s world was crumbling. And -Parthy! Parthy! Here was a situation fraught with what of horror! Here -was humiliation. Here was acknowledged defeat. - -“Borrow,” suggested Magnolia. - -“On what security?” - -“I don’t mean that kind of—I don’t mean businesslike borrowing. I mean -borrowing from friends. Friends. All these men——” - -“Men! What men?” - -“The men at the—at the places.” She had always pretended that she did -not actually know he came by his livelihood as he did. She never said, -“Gamblers’ Alley.” She refused to admit that daily he had disappeared -within the narrow slit of lane that was really a Clark Street alley; -that he had spent the hours there watching bits of pasteboard for a -living. “The men you have known so many years.” - -Grimly: “They’ve all been trying to borrow of me.” - -“But Mike McDonald. Hankins. Varnell.” She cast pretense aside now. -“Thousands. They’ve had thousands of dollars. All the money we brought -with us to Chicago. Won’t they give some of it back?” - -This he found engaging rather than irritating, as well he might have. He -shouted with laughter as he always did at a fresh proof of her almost -incredible naïveté. At times such as these he invariably would be -impelled to caress her much as one laughs at a child and then fondles it -delightedly after it has surprised one with an unexpected and charming -trick. He would kiss the back of her neck and then her wide, flexible -mouth, and she would push him away, bewildered and annoyed that this -should be his reaction to what she had meant so seriously. - -“Nola, you’re priceless! You’re a darling. There’s no one like you.” He -went off again into a shout of laughter. “Give it back! McDonald, h’m? -There’s an idea for you.” - -“How can you act like that when you know how serious it is!” - -“Serious! Why, damn it, it’s desperate. I tell you I’ll never have her -come here and see us living like this. We’ll get out, first. . . . Say, -Nola, what’s to prevent us getting out, anyway? Chicago’s no good any -more. Why not get out of this! I’m sick of this town.” - -“We haven’t any money to get out with, for one reason. And Kim’s at -school and she’s going to stay there. She’s going to stay there if I -have to——” - -“Have to what?” - -“Ask Mama for the money.” She said this mischievously, troubled though -she was. Out he flew into a rage. - -“I’ll see her in—— I’ve been in deeper holes than this and managed to -crawl out.” He sat a moment in silence, staring with unseeing eyes at -the shabby sticks of furniture that emphasized the room’s dreariness. -Magnolia, seated as quietly opposite him, sewing on a petticoat for Kim, -suddenly let her hands sink in her lap. She realized, with a sort of -fright, that he was as completely outside the room as though his body -had been wafted magically through the window. And for him she, too, had -vanished. He was deep in thought. The mask was off. She sat looking at -him. She saw, clearly, the man her mother had so bitterly fought her -marrying. The face of this man now in his late thirties was singularly -unlined. Perhaps that was what you missed in it. The skin and hair and -eyes, the set of the shoulders, the lead of the hand from the wrist, -bespoke a virile man. But vigour—vigorous—no, he was not that. This -was a fencer, not a fighter. But he had fought for her, years ago. The -shambling preacher in the little river town whose name she had -forgotten. That simple ignorant soul who preached hell fire and thought -that play actors were damned. He had not expected to be knocked down in -his own musty little shop. Not much of a victory, that. Gay had opposed -that iron woman, her mother. But the soft life since then. Red plush, -rich food, Clark Street. Weak. What was it? No lines about the mouth. -Why was it weak? Why was it weak now if it had not been twelve years -ago? A handsome man. Hard. But you couldn’t be hard and weak at the same -time, could you? What was he thinking of so intently? His face was so -exposed, so defenceless, as sometimes when she awoke in the early -morning and looked at him, asleep. Almost ashamed to look at his face, -so naked was it of the customary daytime covering. - -Now resolve suddenly tightened it. He stood up. He adjusted the smart -and shabby hat at an angle that defied its shabbiness. He reached for -the malacca stick. It was nine o’clock in the evening. They had had a -frugal and unappetizing meal at a little near-by lunch room. Ravenal had -eaten nothing. He had, for the most part, stared at the dishes with a -detached and slightly amused air as though they had been served him by -mistake and soon would be apologetically reclaimed by the slovenly -waitress who had placed them before him. - -She had never been one to say, “Where are you going?” Yet now her face -was so moving in its appeal that he answered its unspoken question. - -“Cheer up, old girl! I know somebody.” - -“Who? Who, Gay?” - -“Somebody I’ve done favours for. She owes me a good turn.” He was -thinking aloud. - -“She?” - -“Never mind.” - -“She, Gay?” - -“Did I say—now never mind, Nola. I’ll do the worrying.” - -He was off. - -She had become accustomed, through these years, to taking money without -question when there was money; to doing without, uncomplainingly, when -there was none. They had had to scheme before now, and scurry this way -and that, seeking a way out of a tight corner. They had had to borrow as -they had often lent. It had all been part of the Clark Street life—the -gay, wasteful, lax, improvident sporting life of a crude new Mid-west -city. But that life was vanishing now. That city was vanishing with it. -In its place a newer, harder, more sophisticated metropolis was rearing -its ambitious head. - -Magnolia, inured to money crises, realized that the situation to-night -was different. This was not a crisis. It was an impasse. - -“Let’s get out of here,” Gay had said. There was no way out. -The men from whom he had borrowed in the past were themselves -as harried as he. The sources from which he had gained his -precarious livelihood were drying up; had almost ceased to exist, -except furtively. I know somebody. Somebody who would like to do -me a favour. Somebody—who—would—like—— A horrid suspicion darted -through her mind, released from the subconscious. Appalled at its -ugliness, she tried to send it back to its hiding place. It would -not go. It stayed there before her mind’s eye, grinning, evil, -unspeakably repulsive. She took up her sewing again. She endeavoured -to fix her mind on Kim. Kim asleep in the cold calm quiet of the great -walled convent on South Wabash. French and embroidery and deportment -and china painting and wimples and black wings and long dark shining -halls and round white faces and slim white tapers and statues of the -saints that turned into fauns and why was that not surprising? A -clatter. One of the saints had dropped her rosary on the bare shining -floor. It wasn’t a rosary. It was an anchor ringing against the metal -stanchion of the _Cotton Blossom_. - -Magnolia awoke. Her sewing scissors had fallen from her lap. Her face -felt stiff and drawn. She hugged herself a little, and shivered, and -looked about her. Her little gold watch on the dresser—no, of course -not. That was gone. She folded her sewing. It was late, she knew. She -was accustomed to being up until twelve, one, two. But this was later. -Something told her that this was later. The black hush of the city -outside. The feel of the room in which she sat. The sinister quiet of -the very walls about her. The cheap clock on the shelf had stopped. The -hands said twenty minutes after two. Twenty-one minutes after, she told -herself in a foolish triumph of precision. - -She took down her fine long black hair. Brushed it. Plaited it. One of -the lacy nightgowns so absurd in the sordid shabbiness of the -rooming-house bedroom; so alien to the coarse gray sheets. She had no -other kind. She went to bed. She fell asleep. - -It was just before dawn when he returned. The black of the window panes -showed the promise of gray. His step had an unaccustomed sound. He -fumbled for the gas jet. His very presence was strange in the dark. The -light flared blue, but she knew; she knew even before it illumined his -face that bore queer slack lines she had never before seen there. For -the first time in their life together Gaylord Ravenal was drunk. - -She sat up; reached for her wrapper at the foot of the bed and bunched -it about her shivering shoulders. He was immensely serious and -dignified. He swayed a little. The slack look on his face. That was all. - -“I’ll do the worrying,” he said, as though continuing the conversation -that had held them at nine o’clock. He placed the malacca stick -carefully in its corner. He removed his coat, keeping his hat on. The -effect was startlingly rowdy, perhaps because he had always so -meticulously observed the niceties. Standing thus, weaving back and -forth ever so slightly, he pulled from his left vest pocket, where it -fitted much too snugly, a plump bill-folder. Custom probably cautioned -him to retain this, merely widening its open side to reveal the sheaf of -notes within. But his condition, and all that had gone to bring it -about, caused him to forego his cunning. With a vague, but successful, -gesture, and a little lurch as he stood, he tossed the leather folder to -the counterpane. “Coun’ it!” he commanded, very distinctly. “Ten one -hun’er’ dollar bills and ten one hun’er’ dollar bills makes twen’y one -hun’er’ dollar bills an’ anybody says it doesn’ is a liar. Two thousan’ -dollars. Would you kin’ly count ’em, Mrs. Rav’nal? I believe”—with -businesslike dignity—“I b’lieve you’ll find that correc’.” - -Magnolia Ravenal in her nightgown with her wrapper hunched about her -shoulders sat staring at the little leather booklet on the bed. Its -gaping mouth mocked her. She did not touch it. - -“Two thousand dollars?” she said. - -“I b’lieve you’ll fin’ tha’s correc’.” He seemed to be growing less -distinct. - -“Where did you get this, Gay?” - -“Never min’. I’ll do th’ worrying.” - -He unbuttoned his vest with some difficulty. Yawned prodigiously, like -one who has earned his rest after a good day’s work. - -She looked at him. She was like a drawing in French ink—her face so -white, her eyes so enormous, her hair so black. - -“You got this from Hetty Chilson.” - -His collar came off with a crack-snap. He held it in the hand that -pointed toward the money. He seemed offended at something. Not angry, -but hurt. “How can you say that, M’nolia! I got one thousan’ from good -ol’ Het and not cen’ more. Wha’ do I do then! Marsh up to Sheedy’s and -win a thousan’ more at roulette. Ha! That’s a great joke on Sheedy -because, look, roulette isn’ my game. Nev’ has been. Faro’s my game. -Tha’s a gen’leman’s game, faro. One thousan’ Hetty, and marsh ri’ up -. . . roulette . . . win . . . ’nother . . . Thous. . .” He lurched to -the bed. - -He was asleep at once, heavily, deeply, beside her on the bed, his fine -long head lolling off the pillow. She knelt in her place and tried to -lift the inert figure to a more comfortable position; succeeded, -finally, after some tugging. She drew the lumpy coverlet over him. Then -she sat as before, hunched in her nightgown and the wrapper, staring at -the open wallet with its many leaves. It was dawn now. The room was gray -with it. She ought to turn out the gas. She arose. She picked up the -wallet. Before extinguishing the light she counted out ten -one-hundred-dollar bills from the sheaf within the wallet. One thousand -dollars. Her fingers touched the bills gingerly, fastidiously, and a -little wrinkle of disgust curled her lip. She placed the bills on the -dresser. She folded the leather holder and tucked it, with its remaining -contents, under his pillow. He did not waken. She turned out the light -then, and coming back to the bedside drew on the slippers that lay on -the floor. She got her shirtwaist—a fresh white one with a Gibson -tuck—from the drawer, and her skirt and jacket from the hooks covered -over with a protecting length of calico against the wall. She heated a -little water, and washed; combed and dressed her hair; put on her -clothes, laid her hat on the dresser. Then she sat in the one -comfortable chair that the room afforded—a crazy and decayed armchair -done in dingy red plush, relic of some past grandeur—and waited. She -even slept a little there in the sagging old chair, with the morning -light glaring pitilessly in upon her face. When she awoke it must have -been nearly noon. A dour day, but she had grown accustomed to the -half-lights of the Chicago fogs. She glanced sharply at him. He had not -moved. He had not stirred. He looked, somehow, young, helpless, -innocent, pathetic. She busied herself in making a cup of coffee as -quietly as might be. This might rouse him, but it would make little -difference. She knew what she had to do. She drank the hot revivifying -liquid in great gulps. Then she put on her jacket, pinned on her hat, -took up the bills and placed them neatly in her handbag. She glanced at -herself in the mirror. - -“My, you’re plain!” she thought, meaninglessly. She went down the dim -stairway. The fusty landlady was flapping a gray rag in the outer -doorway as her contribution to the grime of the street. - -“What’s taking you out so bright and early, Mis’ Ravenal? Business or -pleasure?” She liked her little joke. - -“Business,” said Magnolia. - - - - - XVII - - -The knell had sounded for the red brick house with the lions guarding -its portals. The Chicago soot hung like a pall over it. The front steps -sagged. Even the stone lions had a mangy look. The lemon-water sunshine -of a Chicago winter day despoiled the dwelling of any sinister exterior -aspect. That light, filtering through the lake mist, gave to the -house-front the look of a pock-marked, wrinkled, and evil old hag who -squats in the market place with her face to the sun and thinks of her -purple past and does not regret it. It was half-past one. Magnolia -Ravenal had figured this out nicely. That part of Clark Street would be -astir by now. As she approached the house on Clark, near Polk, her -courage had momentarily failed her, and she had passed it, hurriedly. -She had walked a block south, wretchedly. But the feel of the bills in -her bag gave her new resolve. She opened the handbag to look at them, -turned and walked swiftly back to the house. She rang the bell this -time, firmly, demandingly; stood looking down at its clean-scrubbed -doorstep and tried to ignore the prickling sensation that ran up and -down her spine and the weak and trembling feeling in her legs. The -people passing by could see her. She was knocking at Hetty Chilson’s -notorious door, and the people passing by could see her: Magnolia -Ravenal. Well, what of it! Don’t be silly. She rang again. - -The door was opened by a Negro in a clean starched white house coat. -Magnolia did not know why the sight of this rather sad-eyed looking -black man should have reassured her; but it did. She knew exactly what -she wanted to say. - -“My name is Mrs. Ravenal. I want to speak to Hetty Chilson.” - -“Mis’ Chilson is busy, ma’am,” he said, as though repeating a lesson. -Still, something about the pale, well-dressed, earnest woman evidently -impressed him. Of late, when he opened the door there had been frequent -surprises for him in the shape of similar earnest and well-dressed young -women who, when you refused them admittance, flashed an official-looking -badge, whipped out notebook and pencil and insisted pleasantly but -firmly that he make quite sure Miss Chilson was not in. “You-all one -them Suhveys?” - -Uncomprehending, she shook her head. He made as though to shut the door, -gently. Magnolia had not spent years in the South for nothing. “Don’t -you shut that door on me! I want to see Hetty Chilson.” - -The man recognized the tone of white authority. “Wha’ you want?” - -Magnolia recovered herself. After all, this was not the front door of a -home, but of a House. “Tell her Mrs. Gaylord Ravenal wants to speak to -her. Tell her that I have one thousand dollars that belongs to her, and -I want to give it to her.” Foolishly she opened her bag and he saw the -neat sheaf of bills. His eyes popped a little. - -“Yes’m. Ah tell huh. Step in, ma’am.” - -Magnolia entered Hetty Chilson’s house. She was frightened. The -trembling had taken hold of her knees again. But she clutched the -handbag and looked about her, frankly curious. A dim hallway, richly -carpeted, its walls covered with a red satin brocade. There were deep -soft cushioned chairs, and others of carved wood, high-backed. A lighted -lamp on the stairway newel post cast a rosy glow over the whole. Huge -Sèvres vases stood in the stained-glass window niches. It was an -entrance hall such as might have been seen in the Prairie Avenue or -Michigan Avenue house of a new rich Chicago packer. The place was quiet. -Now and then you heard a door shut. There was the scent of coffee in the -air. No footfall on the soft carpet, even though the tread were heavy. -Hetty Chilson descended the stairs, a massive, imposing figure in a -black-and-white patterned foulard dress. She gave the effect of activity -hampered by some physical impediment. Her descent was one of impatient -deliberateness. One hand clung to the railing. She appeared a stout, -middle-aged, well-to-do householder summoned from some domestic task -abovestairs. She had aged much in the last ten years. Magnolia, -startled, realized that the distortion of her stout figure was due to a -tumour. - -“How do you do?” said Hetty Chilson. Her keen eyes searched her -visitor’s face. The Negro hovered near by in the dim hallway. “Are you -Mrs. Ravenal?” - -“Yes.” - -“What is it, please?” - -Magnolia felt like a schoolgirl interrogated by a stern but -well-intentioned preceptress. Her cheeks were burning as she opened her -handbag, took out the sheaf of hundred-dollar bills, tendered them to -this woman. “The money,” she stammered, “the money you gave my—you gave -my husband. Here it is.” - -Hetty Chilson looked at the bills. “I didn’t give it to him. I loaned it -to him. He said he’d pay it back and I believe he will. Ravenal’s got -the name for being square.” - -Magnolia touched Hetty Chilson’s hand with the folded bills; pressed -them on her so that the hand opened automatically to take them. “We -don’t want it.” - -“Don’t want it! Well, what’d he come asking me for it for, then? I’m no -bank that you can take money out and put money in.” - -“I’m sorry. He didn’t know. I can’t—we don’t—I can’t take it.” - -Hetty Chilson looked down at the bills. Her eyeglasses hung on the -bodice of her dress, near the right shoulder, attached to a patent gold -chain. This she pulled out now with a businesslike gesture and adjusted -the eyeglasses to her nose. “Oh, you’re that kind, huh?” She counted the -bills once and then again; folded them. “Does your husband know about -this?” Magnolia did not answer. She looked dignified and felt foolish. -The very matter-of-factness of this world-hardened woman made this thing -Magnolia had done seem overdramatic and silly. Hetty Chilson glanced -over her shoulder to where the white-coated Negro stood. “Mose, tell -Jule I want her. Tell her to bring her receipt book and a pen.” Mose ran -up the soft-carpeted stairs. You heard a deferential rap at an upper -door; voices. Hetty turned again to Magnolia. “You’ll want a receipt for -this. Anyway, you’ll have that to show him when he kicks up a fuss.” She -moved ponderously to the foot of the stairway; waited a moment there, -looking up. Magnolia’s eyes followed her gaze. Mose had vanished, -evidently, down some rear passage and stairway, for he again appeared -mysteriously at the back of the lower hall though he had not descended -the stairway up which he had gone a moment before. Down this stair came -a straight slim gray-haired figure. Genteel, was the word that popped -into Magnolia’s mind. A genteel figure in decent black silk, plain and -good. It rustled discreetly. A white fine turnover collar finished it at -the throat. Narrow cuffs at the wrist. It was difficult to see her face -in the dim light. She paused a moment in the glow of the hall lamp as -Hetty Chilson instructed her. A white face—no, not white—ivory. Like -something dead. White hair still faintly streaked with black. In this -clearer light the woman seemed almost gaunt. The eyes were incredibly -black in that ivory face; like dull coals, Magnolia thought, staring at -her, fascinated. Something in her memory stirred at sight of this woman -in the garb of a companion-secretary and with a face like burned-out -ashes. Perhaps she had seen her with Hetty Chilson at the theatre or the -races. She could not remember. - -“Make out a receipt for one thousand dollars received from Mrs. Gaylord -Ravenal. R-a-v-e-n-a-l. Yes, that’s right. Here; I’ll sign it.” Hetty -Chilson penned her name swiftly as the woman held the book for her. She -turned to Magnolia. “Excuse me,” she said. “I have to be at the bank at -two. Jule, give this receipt to Mrs. Ravenal. Come up as soon as you’re -through.” - -With a kind of ponderous dignity this strange and terrible woman -ascended her infamous stairway. Magnolia stood, watching her. Her plump, -well-shaped hand clung to the railing. An old woman, her sins heavy upon -her. She had somehow made Magnolia feel a fool. - -The companion tore the slip of paper from the booklet, advanced to -Magnolia and held it out to her. “One thousand dollars,” she said. Her -voice was deep and rich and strange. “Mrs. Gaylord Ravenal. Correct?” -Magnolia put out her hand, blindly. Unaccountably she was trembling -again. The slip of paper dropped from her hand. The woman uttered a -little exclamation of apology. They both stooped to pick it up as the -paper fluttered to the floor. They bumped awkwardly, actually laughed a -little, ruefully, and straightening, looked at each other, smiling. And -as Magnolia smiled, shyly, she saw the smile on the face of the woman -freeze into a terrible contortion of horror. Horror stamped itself on -her every feature. Her eyes were wild and enormous with it; her mouth -gaped with it. So the two stood staring at each other for one hideous -moment. Then the woman turned, blindly, and vanished up the stairs like -a black ghost. Magnolia stood staring after her. Then, with a little -cry, she made as though to follow her up the stairway. Strangely she -cried, “Julie! Julie, wait for me!” Mose, the Negro, came swiftly -forward. “This way out, miss,” he said, deferentially. He held the -street door open. Magnolia passed through it, down the steps of the -brick house with the lions couchant, into the midday brightness of Clark -Street. Suddenly she was crying, who so rarely wept. South Clark Street -paid little attention to her, inured as it was to queer sights. And if a -passer-by had stopped and said, “What is it? Can I help you?” she would -have been at a loss to reply. Certainly she could not have said, “I -think I have just seen the ghost of a woman I knew when I was a little -girl—a woman I first saw when I was swinging on the gate of our house -at Thebes, and she went by in a long-tailed flounced black dress and a -lace veil tied around her hat. And I last saw her—oh, I can’t be sure. -I can’t be sure. It might not——” - -Clark Street, even if it had understood (which is impossible), would not -have been interested. And presently, as she walked along, she composed -herself. She dabbed at her face with her handkerchief and pulled down -her neat veil. She had still another task to perform. But the day seemed -already so old. She was not sleepy, but her mind felt thick and slow. -The events of the past night and of the morning did not stand out -clearly. It was as if they had happened long ago. Perhaps she should eat -something. She had had only that cup of coffee; had eaten almost nothing -the night before. - -She had a little silver in her purse. She counted it -as it lay next to the carefully folded thousand-dollar -receipt signed in Hetty Chilson’s firm businesslike hand. -Twenty-five—thirty-five—forty—fifty—seventy-three cents. Ample. -She stopped at a lunch room on Harrison, near Wabash; ate a -sandwich and drank two cups of coffee. She felt much better. -On leaving she caught a glimpse of herself in a wall mirror—a -haggard woman with a skin blotched from tears, and a shiny nose -and with little untidy wisps of hair showing beneath her hat. -Her shoes—she remembered having heard or read somewhere that -neat shoes were the first requisite for an applicant seeking -work. Furtively and childishly she rubbed the toe of either -shoe on the back of each stocking. She decided to go to one of -the department-store rest rooms for women and there repair her -toilette. Field’s was the nicest; the Boston store the nearest. -She went up State Street to Field’s. The white marble mirrored -room was full of women. It was warm and bright and smelled -pleasantly of powder and soap and perfume. Magnolia took off her -hat, bathed her face, tidied her hair, powdered. Now she felt -less alien to these others about her—these comfortable chattering -shopping women; wives of husbands who worked in offices, who -worked in shops, who worked in factories. She wondered about -them. She was standing before a mirror adjusting her veil, and a -woman was standing beside her, peering into the same glass, each -seemingly oblivious of the other. “I wonder,” Magnolia thought, -fancifully, “what she would say if I were to turn to her and tell -her that I used to be a show-boat actress, and that my father was -drowned in the Mississippi, and my mother, at sixty, runs a show -boat all alone, and that my husband is a gambler and we have no -money, and that I have just come from the most notorious brothel -in Chicago, where I returned a thousand dollars my husband had -got there, and that I’m on my way to try to get work in a variety -theatre.” She was smiling a little at this absurd thought. The -other woman saw the smile, met it with a frozen stare of utter -respectability, and walked away. - -There were few theatrical booking offices in Chicago and these were of -doubtful reputation. Magnolia knew nothing of their location, though she -thought, vaguely, that they probably would be somewhere in the vicinity -of Clark, Madison, Randolph. She was wise enough in the ways of the -theatre to realize that these shoddy agencies could do little for her. -She had heard Ravenal speak of the variety houses and museums on State -Street and Clark and Madison. The word “vaudeville” was just coming into -use. In company with her husband she had even visited Kohl & Middleton’s -Museum—that smoke-filled comfortable shabby variety house on Clark, -where the admission was ten cents. It had been during that first Chicago -trip, before Kim’s birth. Women seldom were seen in the audience, but -Ravenal, for some reason, had wanted her to get a glimpse of this form -of theatrical entertainment. Here Weber and Fields had played for -fifteen dollars a week. Here you saw the funny Irishman, Eddie Foy; and -May Howard had sung and danced. - -“They’ll probably build big expensive theatres some day for variety -shows,” Ravenal had predicted. - -The performance was, Magnolia thought, much like that given as the -concert after the evening’s bill on the _Cotton Blossom_. “A whole -evening of that?” she said. Years later the Masonic Temple Roof was -opened for vaudeville. - -“There!” Ravenal had triumphantly exclaimed. “What did I tell you! Some -of those people get three and four hundred a week, and even more.” Here -the juggling Agoust family threw plates and lighted lamps and tables and -chairs and ended by keeping aloft a whole dinner service and parlour -suite, with lamps, soup tureens, and plush chairs passing each other -affably in midair without mishap. Jessie Bartlett Davis sang, -sentimentally, Tuh-rue LOVE, That’s The Simple Charm That Opens Every -Woman’s Heart. - -At the other end of the scale were the all-night restaurants with a -stage at the rear where the waiters did an occasional song and dance, or -where some amateur tried to prove his talent. Between these were two or -three variety shows of decent enough reputation though frequented by the -sporting world of Chicago. Chief of these was Jopper’s Varieties, a -basement theatre on Wabash supposed to be copied after the Criterion in -London. There was a restaurant on the ground floor. A flight of marble -steps led down to the underground auditorium. Here new acts were -sometimes tried out. Lillian Russell, it was said, had got her first -hearing at Jopper’s. For some reason, Magnolia had her mind fixed on -this place. She made straight for it, probably as unbusinesslike a -performer as ever presented herself for a hearing. It was now well on -toward mid-afternoon. Already the early December dusk was gathering, -aided by the Chicago smoke and the lake fog. Her fright at Hetty -Chilson’s door was as nothing compared to the sickening fear that filled -her now. She was physically and nervously exhausted. The false energy of -the morning had vanished. She tried to goad herself into fresh courage -by thoughts of Kim at the convent; of Parthy’s impending visitation. As -she approached the place on Wabash she resolved not to pass it, weakly. -If she passed it but once she never would have the bravery to turn and -go in. She and Ravenal had driven by many times on their way to the -South Side races. It was in this block. It was four doors away. It was -here. She wheeled stiffly, like a soldier, and went in. The restaurant -was dark and deserted. One dim light showed at the far end. The -tablecloths were white patches in the grayness. But a yellow path of -light flowed up the stairway that led to the basement, and she heard the -sound of a piano. She descended the swimming marble steps, aware of the -most alarming sensation in her legs—rather, of no sensation in them. It -was as though no solid structure of bone and flesh and muscle lay in the -region between her faltering feet and her pounding heart. - -There was a red-carpeted foyer; a little ticket window; the doors of the -auditorium stood open. She put out a hand, blindly, to steady herself -against the door jamb. She looked into the theatre; the badly lighted -empty theatre, with its rows and rows of vacant seats; its stage at the -far end, the curtain half raised, the set a crudely painted interior. As -she looked there came over her—flowed over her like balm—a feeling of -security, of peace, of home-coming. Here were accustomed surroundings. -Here were the very sights and smells and sounds she knew best. Those men -with their hats on the backs of their heads and their cigars waggling -comfortably and their feet on the chair in front of them might have been -Schultzy, Frank, Ralph, Pa Means. Evidently a song was being tried out -in rehearsal. The man at the piano was hammering it and speaking the -words in a voice as hoarse and unmusical as a boat whistle coming -through the fog. It was a coon song full of mah babys and choo-choos and -Alabam’s. - -Magnolia waited quietly until he had come to a full stop. - -A thin pale young man in a striped shirt and a surprising gray derby who -had been sitting with his wooden kitchen chair tipped up against the -proscenium now brought his chair down on all fours. - -“You was with Haverly’s, you say?” - -“I cer’nly was. Ask Jim. Ask Sam. Ask anybody.” - -“Well, go back to ’em is what I say. If you ever was more than a singin’ -waiter then I’m new to the show business.” He took his coat from where -it lay on top of the piano. “That’s all for to-day, ain’t it, Jo?” He -addressed a large huddle whose thick shoulders and round head could just -be seen above the back of a second-row centre seat. The fat huddle rose -and stretched and yawned, and grunted an affirmative. - -Magnolia came swiftly down the aisle. She looked up at the thin young -man; he stared at her across the footlight gutter. - -“Will you let me try some songs?” she said. - -“Who’re you?” demanded the young man. - -“My name is Magnolia Ravenal.” - -“Never heard of it. What do you do?” - -“I sing. I sing Negro songs with a banjo.” - -“All right,” said the thin young man, resignedly. “Get out your banjo -and sing us one.” - -“I haven’t got one.” - -“Haven’t got one what?” - -“One—a banjo.” - -“Well, you said you—didn’ you just say you sung nigger songs with a -banjo!” - -“I haven’t got it with me. Isn’t there one?” Actually, until this -moment, she had not given the banjo a thought. She looked about her in -the orchestra pit. - -“Well, for God’s sakes!” said the gray derby. - -The hoarse-voiced singer who had just met with rebuff and who was -shrugging himself into a shabby overcoat now showed himself a knight. He -took an instrument case from the piano top. “Here,” he said. “Take mine, -sister.” - -Magnolia looked to left, to right. “There.” The fat man in the second -row jerked a thumb toward the right stage box back of which was the -stage door. Magnolia passed swiftly up the aisle; was on the stage. She -was quite at ease, relaxed, at home. She seated herself in one of the -deal chairs; crossed her knees. - -“Take your hat off,” commanded the pasty young man. - -She removed her veil and hat. A sallow big-eyed young woman, too thin, -in a well-made suit and a modish rather crumpled shirtwaist and nothing -of the look of the stage about her. She thumbed the instrument again. -She remembered something dimly, dimly, far, far back; far back and yet -very recent; this morning. “Don’t smile too often. But if you ever want -anything . . .” - -She smiled. The thin young man did not appear overwhelmed. She threw -back her head then as Jo had taught her, half closed her eyes, tapped -time with the right foot, smartly. Imitative in this, she managed, too, -to get into her voice that soft and husky Negro quality which for years -she had heard on river boats, bayous, landings. I got a wings. You got a -wings. All God’s chillun got a wings. - -“Sing another,” said the old young man. She sang the one she had always -liked best. - - “Go down, Moses, - ’Way down in Egypt land, - Tell ole Pharaoh, - To let my people go.” - -Husky, mournful, melodious voice. Tapping foot. Rolling eye. - -Silence. - -“What kind of a coon song do you call that?” inquired the gray derby. - -“Why, it’s a Negro melody—they sing them in the South.” - -“Sounds like a church hymn to me.” He paused. His pale shrewd eyes -searched her face. “You a nigger?” - -The unaccustomed red surged into Magnolia’s cheeks, dyed her forehead, -her throat, painfully. “No, I’m not a—nigger.” - -“Well, you cer’nly sing like one. Voice and—I don’t know—way you sing. -Ain’t that right, Jo?” - -“Cer’nly is,” agreed Jo. - -The young man appeared a trifle embarrassed, which made him look all the -younger. Years later, in New York, Kim was to know him as one of the -most powerful theatrical producers of his day. And he was to say to Kim, -“Ravenal, h’m? Why, say, I knew your mother when she was better-looking -than you’ll ever be. And smart! Say, she tried to sell me a coon song -turn down in Jopper’s in the old days, long before your time. I thought -they were hymns and wouldn’t touch them. Seems they’re hot stuff now. -Spirituals, they call them. You hear ’em in every show on Broadway. ’S -fact! Got to go to church to get away from ’em. Well, live and learn’s -what I say.” - -It was through this shrewd, tough, stage-wise boy that Magnolia had her -chance. He did not understand or like her Negro folk songs then, but he -did recognize the quality she possessed. And it was due to this -precociousness in him that Magnolia, a little more than a year later, -was singing American coon songs in the Masonic Roof bill, her name on -the programme with those of Cissie Loftus and Marshall Wilder and the -Four Cohans. - -But now she stood up, the scarlet receding from her face, leaving it -paler than before. Silently she handed the husky singer his banjo; tried -to murmur a word of thanks; choked. She put on her hat, adjusted her -veil. - -“Here, wait a minute, sister. No offense. I’ve seen ’em lighter’n you. -Your voice sounds like a—ain’t that the truth, Jo?” Actually -distressed, he appealed again to his unloquacious ally in the third row. - -“Sure does,” agreed Jo. - -The unfortunate hoarse-voiced man who had loaned her the banjo now -departed. He seemed to bear no rancour. Magnolia, seeing this, tried -again to smile on the theory that, if he could be game, then so, too, -could she. And this time, it was the real Magnolia Ravenal smile of -which the newspapers made much in the years to come. The ravishing -Ravenal smile, they said (someone having considered that alliterative -phrase rather neat). - -Seeing it now the young showman exclaimed, without too much elegance, -“Lookit that, Jo!” Then, to Magnolia: “Listen, sister. You won’t get far -with those. Your songs are too much like church tunes, see? They’re for -a funeral, not a theaytre. And that’s a fact. But I like the way you got -of singing them. How about singing me a real coon song? You know. Hello, -Mah Baby! or something like that.” - -“I don’t know any. These are the only songs I know.” - -“Well, for——! Listen. You learn some real coon songs and come back, -see, in a week. Here. Try these over at home, see.” He selected some -song sheets from the accommodating piano top. She took them, numbly. - -She was again in the cold moist winter street. Quite dark now. She -walked over to State Street and took a northbound car. The door of their -room on the third floor was locked, and when she had opened it she felt -that the room was empty. Not empty merely; deserted. Before she had -lighted the gas jet she had an icy feeling of desolation, of impending -and piled-up tragedy at the close of a day that already toppled with it. -Her gaze went straight to the dresser. - -An envelope was there. Her name on it in Ravenal’s neat delicate hand. -Magnolia. Darling, I am going away for a few weeks . . . return when -your mother is gone . . . or send for you . . . six hundred dollars for -you on shelf under clock . . . Kim . . . convent . . . enough . . . -weeks . . . darling . . . love . . . best . . . always . . . - -She never saw him again. - -She must have been a little light-headed by this time, for certainly no -deserted wife in her right senses would have followed the course that -Magnolia Ravenal now took. She read the note again, her lips forming -some of the words aloud. She walked to the little painted shelf over the -wash stand. Six hundred. That was right. Six hundred. Perhaps this -really belonged to that woman, too. She couldn’t go there again. Even if -it did, she couldn’t go there again. - -She left the room, the gas flaring. She hurried down Clark Street, going -a few blocks south. Into one of the pawnshops. That was nothing new. The -man actually greeted her by name. “Good-evening, Mrs. Ravenal. And what -can I do for you?” - -“A banjo.” - -“What?” - -“I want to buy a banjo.” - -She bargained for it, shrewdly. When she tendered a hundred-dollar bill -in payment the man’s face fell. - -“Oh, now, Mrs. Ravenal, I gave you that special price because you——” - -“I’ll go somewhere else.” - -She got it. Hurried back with it. Into her room again. She had not even -locked the door. Five of the six one-hundred-dollar bills lay as she had -tossed them on the dresser. A little crazy, certainly. Years, years -afterward she actually could relate the fantastic demoniac events of -this day that had begun at four in the morning and ended almost twenty -hours later. It made a very good story, dramatic, humorous, tragic. -Kim’s crowd thought it was wonderful. - -She took off her veil and hat and jacket. Her black hair lay in loose -limp ugly loops about her face. She opened one of the sheets of -music—Whose Black Baby Are You?—and propped it up against the centre -section of the old-fashioned dresser. She crossed her knees. Cradled the -banjo. One foot tapped the time rhythmically. An hour. Two hours. - -A knock at the door. The landlady, twelve hours fustier than she had -been that morning. “It ain’t me, Mis’ Ravenal, but Downstairs says she -can’t sleep for the noise. She’s that sickly one. She says she pounded -but you didn’t——” - -“I’ll stop. I didn’t hear her. I’m sorry.” - -“For me you could go on all night.” The landlady leaned bulkily and -sociably against the door. “I’m crazy about music. I never knew you was -musical.” - -“Oh, yes,” said Magnolia. “Very.” - - - - - XVIII - - -“I was educated,” began Kim Ravenal, studying her reflection in the -mirror, and deftly placing a dab of rouge on either ear lobe, “in -Chicago, by the dear Sisters there in St. Agatha’s Convent.” - -She then had the grace to snigger, knowing well what the young -second-assistant dramatic critic would say to that. She was being -interviewed in her dressing room at the Booth between the second and -third acts of Needles and Pins. She had opened in this English comedy in -October. Now it was April. Her play before this had run a year. Her play -before that had run two years. Her play—well, there was nothing new to -be said in an interview with Kim Ravenal, no matter how young or how -dramatic the interviewer. There was, therefore, a touch of mischievous -malice in this trite statement of hers. She knew what the bright young -man would say in protest. - -He said it. He said: “Oh, now, Pete’s sake, Miss Ravenal! Quit kidding.” - -“But I was. I can’t help it. I was! Ask my mother. Ask my husband. Ask -anybody. Educated by the dear Sisters in the con——” - -“Oh, I know it! So does everybody else who reads the papers. And you -know as well as I do that that educated-in-a-convent stuff is -rubber-stamp. It ceased to be readable publicity when Mrs. Siddons was a -gal. Now be reasonable. Kaufman wants a bright piece about you for the -Sunday page.” - -“All right. You ask intelligent questions and I’ll answer them.” Kim -then leaned forward to peer intently at her own reflection in the -dressing-room mirror with its brilliant border of amber lights. She -reached for the rabbit’s foot and applied to her cheeks that nervous and -redundant film of rouge which means that the next curtain is four -minutes away. - -He was a very cagey New York second-assistant dramatic critic, who did -not confine his talents to second-assistant dramatic criticism. The -pages of _Vanity Fair_ and _The New Yorker_ (locally known as the Fly -Papers) frequently accepted first (assistant dramatic) aid from his pen. -And, naturally, he had written one of those expressionistic plays so -daringly different that three intrepid managers had decided not to put -it on after all. Embittered, the second-assistant dramatic critic -threatened sardonically to get a production through the ruse of taking -up residence in Prague or Budapest, changing his name to Capek or Vajda, -and sending his manuscript back to New York as a foreign play for them -to fight over. - -Though she had now known New York for many years, there were phases of -its theatrical life that still puzzled Kim’s mother, Magnolia Ravenal; -and this was one of them. “The critics all seem to write plays,” she -complained. “It makes the life of a successful actress like Kim so -complicated. And the actors and actresses all lecture on the Trend of -the Modern Drama at League Luncheons given at the Astor. I went to one -once, with Kim. Blue voile ladies from Englewood. In my day critics -criticized and actors acted.” - -Her suave and gifted son-in-law, Kenneth Cameron, himself a producer of -plays of the more precious pattern (The Road to Sunrise, 1921; Jock o’ -Dreams, 1924), teased her gently about this attitude of intolerance. -“Why, Nola! And you a famous stage mama! You ought to know that even Kim -occasionally has to do things for publicity.” - -“In my _Cotton Blossom_ days we were more subtle. The band marched down -Main Street and played on the corner and Papa gave out handbills. That -was our publicity. I didn’t have to turn handsprings up the levee.” - -There was little that the public did not know about Kim Ravenal. There -was nothing that the cagey young assistant critic did not know. He now -assumed a tone of deep bitterness. - -“All right, my fine lady. I’ll go back and write a pattern piece. -Started in stock in Chicago. Went to New York National Theatre School. -Star pupil and Teacher’s Pet while there. Got a bit in—uh—Mufti, -wasn’t it?—and walked away with the play just like the aspiring young -actress in a bum short story. Born on a show boat in Kentucky and -Illinois and Missouri simultaneously—say, explain that to me some time, -will you?—hence name of Kim. Also mother was a show-boat actress and -later famous singer of coon—— Say, where is your mother these days, -anyway? Gosh, I think she’s grand! I’m stuck on her. She’s the burning -passion of my youth. No kidding. I don’t know. She’s got that kind of -haunted hungry et-up look, like Bernhardt or Duse or one of them. You’ve -got a little of it, yourself.” - -“Oh, sir!” murmured Kim, gratefully. - -“Cultivate it, is my advice. And when she smiles! . . . Boy! I work like -a dawg to get her to smile whenever I see her. She thinks I’m one of -those cut-ups. I’m really a professional suicide at heart, but I’d -wiggle my ears if it would win one of those slow, dazzling——” - -“Listen! Who—or whom—are you interviewing, young man? Me or my mama?” - -“She around?” - -“No. She’s at the Shaw opening with Ken.” - -“Well, then, you’ll do.” - -“Just for that I think I’ll turn elegant on you and not grant any more -interviews. Maude Adams never did. Look at Mrs. Fiske! And Duse. Anyway, -interviews always sound so dumb when they appear in print. Dignified -silence is the thing. Mystery. Everybody knows too much about the stage, -nowadays.” - -“Believe me, _I_ do!” said the young second-assistant dramatic critic, -in a tone of intense acerbity. - -A neat little triple tap at the dressing-room door. “Curtain already!” -exclaimed Kim in a kind of panic. You would have thought this was her -first stage summons. Another hasty application with the rabbit’s foot. - -A mulatto girl in black silk so crisp, and white batiste cap and apron -so correct that she might have doubled as stage and practical maid, now -opened the door outside which she had been discreetly stationed. -“Curtain, Blanche?” - -“Half a minute more, Miss Ravenal. Telegram.” She handed a yellow -envelope to Kim. - -As Kim read it there settled over her face the rigidity of shock, so -plain that the second-assistant dramatic critic almost was guilty of, -“No bad news, I hope?” But as though he had said it Kim Ravenal handed -him the slip of paper. - -“They’ve misspelled it,” she said, irrelevantly. “It ought to be -Parthenia.” - -He read: - - Mrs. Parthna A. Hawks died suddenly eight o’clock before evening - show Cotton Blossom playing Cold Spring Tennessee advise - sympathy company. - - Chas. K. Barnato. - -“Hawks?” - -“My grandmother.” - -“I’m sorry.” Lamely. “Is there anything——” - -“I haven’t seen her in years. She was very old—over eighty. I can’t -quite realize. She was famous on the rivers. A sort of legendary figure. -She owned and managed the _Cotton Blossom_. There was a curious kind of -feud between her and Mother and my father. She was really a pretty -terrible—I wonder—Mother——” - -“Curtain, Miss Ravenal!” - -She went swiftly toward the door. - -“Can I do anything? Fetch your mother from the theatre?” - -“She’ll be back here with Ken after the play. Half an hour. No use——” - -He followed her as she went swiftly toward the door from which she made -her third-act entrance. “I don’t want to be offensive, Miss Ravenal. But -if there’s a story in this—your grandmother, I mean—eighty, you -know——” - -Over her shoulder, in a whisper, “There is. See Ken.” She stood a -moment; seemed to set her whole figure; relaxed it then; vanished. You -heard her lovely but synthetic voice as the American wife of the English -husband in the opening lines of the third act: - -“I’m so sick of soggy British breakfast. Devilled kidneys! Ugh! Who but -the English could face food so visceral at nine A. M.!” - -She was thinking as she played the third act for the three hundredth -time that she must tuck the telegram under a cold cream jar or back of -her mirror as soon as she returned to her dressing room. What if -Magnolia should take it into her head to leave the Shaw play early and -find it there on her dressing table! She must tell her gently. Magnolia -never had learned to take telegrams calmly. They always threw her into a -panic. Ever since that one about Gaylord Ravenal’s death in San -Francisco. Gaylord Ravenal. A lovely name. What a tin-horn sport he must -have been. Charming though, probably. - -Curtain. Bows. Curtain. Bows. Curtain. Bows. Curtain. - -She was back in her dressing room, had removed her make-up, was almost -dressed when Ken returned with her mother. She had made desperate haste, -aided expertly by her maid. - -The two entered laughing, talking, bickering good-naturedly. Kim heard -her husband’s jejune plangent voice outside her dressing-room door. - -“I’m going to tell your daughter on you, Nola! Yes, I am.” - -“I don’t care. He started it.” - -Kim looked round at them. Why need they be so horribly high-spirited -just to-night? It was like comedy relief in a clumsily written play, put -in to make the tragedy seem deeper. Still, this news was hardly tragic. -Yet her mother might—— - -For years, now, Kim Ravenal had shielded her mother; protected her; -spoiled her, Magnolia said, almost resentfully. - -She stood now with her son-in-law in the cruel glare of the -dressing-room lights. Her face was animated, almost flushed. Her fine -head rose splendidly from the furred frame of her luxurious coat collar. -Her breast and throat were firm and creamy above the square-cut -décolletage of her black gown. Her brows looked the blacker and more -startling for the wing of white that crossed the black of her straight -thick hair. There was about this woman past middle age a breath-taking -vitality. Her distinguished young son-in-law appeared rather anæmic in -contrast. - -“How was the play?” Kim asked, possibly in the hope of changing their -ebullient mood. - -“Nice production,” said Cameron. “Lunt was flawless. Fontanne’s turned -just a shade cute on us. She’d better stop that. Shaw, revived, tastes a -little mouldy. Westley yelled. Simonson’s sets were—uh—meticulous I -think the word is. . . . And I want to inform you, my dear Mrs. C., that -your mama has been a very naughty girl.” - -This would never do, thought Kim, her mind on the yellow envelope. She -put an arm about her mother. “Kiss me and I’ll forgive you,” she said. - -“You don’t know what she’s done.” - -“Whatever it is——” - -“Woollcott started it, anyway,” protested Magnolia Ravenal, lighting her -cigarette. “I should think a man who’s dramatic critic of the New York -_World_ would have more consideration for the dignity of his——” - -Cameron took up the story. “Our seats turned out to be next to his. Nola -sat between us. You know how she always clutches somebody’s hand during -the emotional scenes.” - -“The last time I went to the theatre with Woollcott he said he’d slap my -hands hard if I ever again——” put in Magnolia. But Cameron once more -interrupted. - -“Then in the second act she clutched him instead of me and he slapped -her hand——” - -“And pinched——” - -“And Nola gave him a sharp dig in the stomach, I’m afraid, with her -elbow, and there was quite a commotion. Mothers-in-law are a terrible -responsibility.” - -“Mother _dear_! A first night of a Shaw revival at the National!” - -“He started it. And anyway, you’ve brought me up wrong.” - -There was about her suddenly a curious effect of weariness. It was as -though, until now, she had been acting, and had discarded her rôle. She -stood up. “Ken, if you’ll get me a taxi I’ll run along home. I’m tired. -You two are going to the Swopes’, aren’t you? That means three o’clock.” - -“I’m not going,” said Kim. “Wait a minute, Ken.” She came over to -Magnolia. “Mother, I just got a telegram.” - -“Mama?” She uttered the word as though she were a little girl. - -“Yes.” - -“Where is it?” - -Kim indicated it. “There, Ken. Get it for me, will you? Under the -make-up tray.” - -“Dead?” Magnolia had not unfolded the yellow slip. - -“Yes.” - -She read it. She looked up. The last shadow had vanished of that mood in -which she had entered ten minutes earlier. She looked, suddenly, sallow -and sixty. “Let me see. Tennessee. Trains.” - -“But not to-night, Mother!” - -“Yes. Ken, there’s something to St. Louis—Memphis—I’m sure. And then -from there to-morrow morning.” - -“Ken will go with you.” - -“No!” sharply. “No!” - -She had her way in the end; left that night, and alone, over Kim’s -protests and Ken’s. “If I need you, Ken dear, I’ll telegraph. All those -people in the troupe, you know. Some of them have been with her for ten -years—fifteen.” - -All sorts of trains before you reached this remote little town. Little -dusty red-plush trains with sociable brakemen and passengers whose -clothes and bearing now seemed almost grotesque to the eyes that once -had looked upon them without criticism. A long, hard, trying journey. -Little towns at which you left this train and waited long hours for the -next. Cinder-strewn junctions whose stations were little better than -sheds. - -Mile after mile the years had receded as New York was left behind. The -sandy soil of the South. Little straggling villages. Unpainted -weather-stained cabins, black as the faces that peered from their -doorways. When Magnolia Ravenal caught the first gleam of April dogwood -flashing white in the forest depths as the train bumbled by, her heart -gave a great leap. In a curious and dream-like way the years of her life -with Ravenal in Chicago, the years following Ravenal’s desertion of her -there, the years of Magnolia’s sudden success in New York seemed to fade -into unreality; they became unimportant fragmentary interludes. This was -her life. She had never left it. They would be there—Julie, and Steve, -and Windy, and Doc, and Parthy, and Andy, and Schultzy—somehow, they -would be there. They were real. The others were dream people: Mike -McDonald, Hankins, Hetty Chilson, all that raffish Chicago crew; the New -York group—Kim’s gay, fly, brittle brilliant crowd with which Magnolia -had always assumed an ease she did not feel. - -She decided, sensibly, that she was tired, a little dazed, even. She had -slept scarcely at all the night before. Perhaps this news of her -mother’s death had been, after all, more of a shock than she thought. -She would not pretend to be grief-stricken. The breach between her and -the indomitable old woman had been a thing of many years’ standing, and -it had grown wider and wider with the years following that day when, -descending upon her daughter in Chicago, Mrs. Hawks had learned that the -handsome dashing Gaylord Ravenal had flown. She had been unable to -resist her triumphant, “What did I tell you!” It had been the last -straw. - -She had wondered, vaguely, what sort of conveyance she might hire to -carry her to Cold Spring, for she knew no railroad passed through this -little river town. But when she descended from the train at this, the -last stage but one in her wearisome journey, there was a little group at -the red brick station to meet her. A man came toward her (he turned out -to be the Chas. K. Barnato of the telegram). He was the general manager -and press agent. Doc’s old job, modernized. “How did you know me?” she -had asked, and was startled when he replied: - -“You look like your ma.” Then, before she could recover from this: “But -Elly told me it was you.” - -A rather amazing old lady came toward her. She looked like the ancient -ruins of a bisque doll. Her cheeks were pink, her eyes bright, her skin -parchment, her hat incredible. - -“Don’t you remember me, Nollie?” she said. And pouted her withered old -lips. Then, as Magnolia stared, bewildered, she had chirped like an -annoyed cockatoo, “Elly Chipley—Lenore La Verne.” - -“But it isn’t possible!” Magnolia had cried. - -This had appeared to annoy Miss Chipley afresh. “Why not, I’d like to -know! I’ve been back with the _Cotton Blossom_ the last ten years. Your -ma advertised in the _Billboard_ for a general utility team. My husband -answered the ad, giving his name——” - -“Not——?” - -“Schultzy? Oh, no, dearie. I buried poor Schultzy in Douglas, Wyoming, -twenty-two years ago. Yes, indeed. Clyde!” She wheeled briskly. “Clyde!” -The man came forward. He was, perhaps, fifty. Surely twenty years -younger than the erstwhile ingénue lead. A sheepish, grizzled man whose -mouth looked as if a drawstring had been pulled out of it, leaving it -limp and sprawling. “Meet my husband, Mr. Clyde Mellhop. This is Nollie. -Mrs. Ravenal, it is, ain’t it? Seems funny, you being married and got a -famous daughter and all. Last time I saw you you was just a skinny -little girl, dark-complected—— Well, your ma was hoity-toity with me -when she seen it was me was the other half of the Mellhop General -Utility Team. Wasn’t going to let me stay, would you believe it! Well, -she was glad enough to have me, in the end.” - -This, Magnolia realized, must be stopped. She met the understanding look -of the man Barnato. He nodded. “I guess you must be pretty tuckered out, -Mrs. Ravenal. Now, if you’ll just step over to the car there.” He -indicated an important-looking closed car that stood at the far end of -the station platform. - -Gratefully Magnolia moved toward it. She was a little impressed with its -appearance. “Your car! That was thoughtful of you. I was wondering how -I’d get——” - -“No, ma’am. That ain’t mine. I got a little car of my own, but this is -your ma’s—that is—well, it’s yours, now, I reckon.” He helped her into -the back seat with Elly. He seated himself before the wheel, with -Mellhop beside him. He turned to her, solemnly. “I suppose you’d like to -go right over to see your—to view the remains. She’s—they’re at -Breitweiler’s Undertaking Parlours. I kind of tended to everything, like -your son-in-law’s telegram said. I hope everything will suit you. Of -course, if you’d like to go over to the hotel first. I took a room for -you—best they had. It’s real comfortable. To-morrow morning we take -her—we go to Thebes on the ten-fifteen——” - -“The hotel!” cried Magnolia. “But I want to sleep on the boat to-night. -I want to go back to the boat.” - -“It’s a good three-quarters of an hour run from here, even in this car.” - -“I know it. But I want to stay on the boat to-night.” - -“It’s for you to say, ma’am.” - -The main business street of the little town was bustling and -prosperous-looking. Where, in her childhood river-town days the farm -wagons and buggies had stood hitched at the curb, she now saw rows of -automobiles parked, side by side. Five-and-Ten-Cent Stores. Motion -Pictures. Piggly-Wiggly. Popular magazines in the drug-store window. She -had thought that everything would be the same. - -Breitweiler’s Undertaking Parlours. Quite a little throng outside; and -within an actual crowd, close-packed. They made way respectfully for -Barnato and his party. “What is it?” whispered Magnolia. “What are all -these people here for? What has happened?” - -“Your ma was quite a famous person in these parts, Mrs. Ravenal. Up and -down the rivers and around she was quite a character. I’ve saved the -pieces for you in the paper.” - -“You don’t mean these people—all these people have come here to -see——” - -“Yes, ma’am. In state. I hope you don’t object, ma’am. I wouldn’t want -to feel I’d done something you wouldn’t like.” - -She felt a little faint. “I’d like them to go away now.” - -Parthenia Ann Hawks in her best black silk. Her strong black eyebrows -punctuated the implacable old face with a kind of surprised resentment. -She had not succumbed to the Conqueror without a battle. Magnolia, -gazing down upon the stern waxen features, the competent hands crossed -in unwilling submission upon her breast, could read the message of -revolt that was stamped, even in death, upon that strong and terrible -brow. Here! I’m mistress of this craft. You can’t do this to me! I’m -Parthenia Ann Hawks! Death? Fiddlesticks and nonsense! For others, -perhaps. But not for me. - -Presently they were driving swiftly out along the smooth asphalt road -toward Cold Spring. Elly Chipley was telling her tale with relish, -palpably for the hundredth time. - -“. . . seven o’clock in the evening or maybe a few minutes past and her -standing in front of the looking-glass in her room doing her hair. Clyde -and me, we had the room next to hers, for’ard, the last few years, on -account I used to do for her, little ways. Not that she was feeble or -like that. But she needed somebody younger to do for her, now and -then”—with the bridling self-consciousness of a girlish seventy, as -compared to Parthy’s eighty and over. “Well, I was in the next room, and -just thinking I’d better be making up for the evening show when I hear a -funny sound, and then a voice I didn’t hardly recognize sort of squeaks, -‘Elly! A stroke!’ And then a crash.” - -Magnolia was surprised to find herself weeping: not for grief; in almost -unwilling admiration of this powerful mind and will that had recognized -the Enemy even as he stole up on her and struck the blow from behind. - -“There, there!” cooed Elly Chipley, pleased that her recital had at last -moved this handsome silent woman to proper tears. “There, there!” She -patted her hand. “Look, Nollie dear. There’s the boat. Seems funny not -to see her lighted up for the show this time of night.” - -Magnolia peered through the dusk, a kind of dread in her heart. Would -this, too, be changed beyond recognition? A great white long craft -docked at the water’s edge. Larger, yes. But much the same. In the gloom -she could just make out the enormous letters painted in black against -the white upper deck. - - COTTON BLOSSOM FLOATING PALACE THEATRE - Parthenia Ann Hawks, Prop. - -And there was the River. It was high with the April rains and the snows -that nourished it from all the hundreds of miles of its vast domain—the -Mississippi Basin. - -Vaguely she heard Barnato—“Just started out and promised to be the -biggest paying season we had for years. Yessir! Crops what they were -last fall, and the country so prosperous. . . . Course, we don’t aim to -bother you with such details now. . . . Troupe wondering—ain’t no -more’n natural—what’s to become of ’em now. . . . Finest show boat on -the rivers. . . . Our own electric power plant. . . . Ice machine. . . . -Seats fifteen hundred, easy. . . .” - -And there was the River. Broad, yellow, turbulent. Magnolia was -trembling. Down the embankment, across the gangplank, to the lower -forward deck that was like a comfortable front porch. The bright -semi-circle of the little ticket window. A little group of Negro -loungers and dock-hands making way respectfully, gently for the white -folks. The sound of a banjo tinkling somewhere ashore, or perhaps on an -old side-wheeler docked a short distance downstream. A playbill in the -lobby. She stared at it. Tempest and Sunshine. The letters began to go -oddly askew. A voice, far away—“Look out! She’s going to faint!” - -A tremendous effort. “No, I’m not. I’m—all right. I don’t think I’ve -eaten anything since early morning.” - -She was up in the bedroom. Dimity curtains at the windows, fresh and -crisp. Clean. Shining. Orderly. Quiet. “Now you just get into bed. A -hot-water bag. We’ll fix you a tray and a good cup of tea. To-morrow -morning you’ll be feeling fine again. We got to get an early start.” - -She ate, gratefully. Anything I can do for you now, Nollie? No, nothing, -thanks. Well, I’m kind of beat, myself. It’s been a day, I can tell you. -Good-night. Good-night. Now I’ll leave my door open, so’s if you call -me—— - -Nine o’clock. Ten. The hoarse hoot of a boat whistle. The clank of -anchor chains. Swish. Swash. Fainter. Cluck-suck against the hull. -Quieter. More quiet. Quiet. Black velvet. The River. Home. - - - - - XIX - - -Kim Ravenal’s tenth letter to her mother was the decisive one. It -arrived late in May, when the Cotton Blossom Floating Palace Theatre was -playing Lulu, Mississippi. From where the show boat lay just below the -landing there was little enough to indicate that a town was situated -near by. Lulu, Mississippi, in May, was humid and drowsy and dusty and -fly-ridden. The Negroes lolled in the shade of their cabins and loafed -at the water’s edge. Thick-petalled white flowers amidst glossy dark -green foliage filled the air with a drugging sweetness, and -scarlet-petalled flowers stuck their wicked yellow tongues out at the -passer-by. - -Magnolia, on the _Cotton Blossom_ upper deck that was like a cosy -veranda, sat half in the shade and half in the sun and let the moist -heat envelop her. The little nervous lines that New York had etched -about her eyes and mouth seemed to vanish magically under the languorous -touch of the saturant Southern air. She was again like the lovely creamy -blossom for which she had been named; a little drooping, perhaps; a -little faded; but Magnolia. - -Elly Chipley, setting to rights her privileged bedroom on the boat’s -port side, came to the screen door in cotton morning frock and boudoir -cap. The frock was a gay gingham of girlish cut, its colour a delicate -pink. The cap was a trifle of lace and ribbon. From this frame her -withered life-scarred old mask looked out, almost fascinating in its -grotesquerie. - -“Beats me how you can sit out there in the heat like a lizard or a cat -or something and not get a stroke. Will, too, one these fine days.” - -Magnolia, glancing up from the perusal of her letter, stretched her arms -above her head luxuriously. “I love it.” - -Elly Chipley’s sharp old eyes snapped at the typewritten sheets of the -letter in Magnolia’s hand. “Heard from your daughter again, did you?” - -“Yes.” - -“I never seen anybody such a hand at writing letters. You got one about -every stand since you started with the boat, seems. I was saying to -Clyde only yesterday, I says, what’s she find to write about!” - -This, Magnolia knew, was not a mere figure of speech. In some mysterious -way the knowledge had seeped through the _Cotton Blossom_ company that -in these frequent letters between mother and daughter a battle was being -waged. They sensed, too, that in the outcome of this battle lay their -own future. - -The erstwhile ingénue now assumed an elaborate carelessness of manner -which, to the doubting onlooker, would forever have decided the question -of her dramatic ability. “What’s she got to say, h’m? What——” here she -giggled in shrill falsetto appreciation of her own wit—“what news on -the Rialto?” - -Magnolia glanced down again at the letter. “I think Kim may come down -for a few days to visit us, in June. With her husband.” - -The ribbons of Elly’s cap trembled. The little withered well-kept hand -in which she still took such pride went to her lips that were working -nervously. “You don’t say! Well, that’ll be nice.” After which triumph -of simulated casualness you heard her incautious steps clattering down -the stairs and up the aisle to the lesser dressing rooms and bedrooms at -the rear of the stage. - -Magnolia picked up the letter again. Kim hated to write letters. The -number that she had written her mother in the past month testified her -perturbation. - - Nola darling, you’ve just gone gaga, that’s all. What do you - mean by staying down there in that wretched malarial heat! Now - listen to me. We close June first. They plan to open in Boston - in September, then Philadelphia, Chicago. My contract, of - course, doesn’t call for the road. Cruger offered me an increase - and a house percentage if I’d go when the road season opens, but - you know how I hate touring. You’re the trouper of this family. - Besides, I wouldn’t leave Andy. He misses you as much as Ken and - I do. If he could talk, he would demand his grandmother’s - immediate presence. If you aren’t in New York by June third I - shall come and get you. I mean this. Ken and I sail on the - _Olympic_ June tenth. There’s a play in London that Cruger wants - me to see for next season. You know. Casualty. We’ll go to - Paris, Vienna, Budapest, and back August first. Come along or - stay in the country with Andy. Nate Fried says he’ll settle up - your business affairs if that’s what’s bothering you. What is - there to do except sell the old tub or give it away or - something, and take the next train for New York? Your bookings - say Lazare, Mississippi, June fourth, fifth and sixth. Nate - looked it up and reports it’s twenty miles from a railroad. Now, - Nola, that’s just too mad. Come on home. - - Kim. - -The hand that held the letter dropped to her lap again. Magnolia lay -relaxed in the low deck chair and surveyed through half-closed lids the -turgid, swift-flowing stream that led on to Louisiana and the sea. Above -the clay banks that rose from the river lay the scrubby little -settlement shimmering in the noonday heat. A mule team toiled along the -river road drawing a decrepit cart on whose sagging seat a Negro sat -slumped, the rope lines slack in his listless hands, his body swaying -with the motion of the vehicle. From the cook’s galley, aft, came the -yee-yah-yah-yah of Negro laughter. Then a sudden crash of piano, drum, -horn, and cymbals. The band was rehearsing. The porcine squeal and bleat -and grunt of the saxophone. Mississippi Blues they were playing. Ort -Hanley, of the Character Team, sang it in the concert after the show. I -got the blues. I said the blues. I got the M-i-s-, I said the s-i-s, I -said the s-i-pp-i, Mississippi, I got them Miss-is-_sippi_ -_blu_-hoo-hoos. - -The heat and the music and the laughter and the squeak of the mule cart -up the road blended and made a colourful background against which the -woman in the chair viewed the procession of the last twenty-five years. - -It had turned out well enough. She had gone on, blindly, and it had -turned out well enough. Kim. Kim was different. Nothing blind about Kim. -She had emerged from the cloistral calm of the Chicago convent with her -competent mind quite made up. I am going to be an actress. Oh, no, Kim! -Not you! But Kim had gone about it as she went about everything. -Clear-headed. Thoughtful. Deliberate. But actresses were not made in -this way, Magnolia argued. Oh, yes, they were. Five years in stock on -Chicago’s North Side. A tiny part in musical comedy. Kim decided that -she knew nothing. She would go to the National Theatre School of Acting -in New York and start all over again. Magnolia’s vaudeville days were -drawing to an end. A middle-aged woman, still able to hold her audience, -still possessing a haunting kind of melancholy beauty. But more than -this was needed to hold one’s head above the roaring tide of ragtime -jazz-time youngsters surging now toward the footlights. She had known -what it was to be a headliner, but she had never commanded the fantastic -figures of the more spectacular acts. She had been thrifty, though, and -canny. She easily saw Kim through the National Theatre School. The idea -of Kim in a school of acting struck her as being absurd, though Kim -gravely explained to her its uses. Finally she took a tiny apartment in -New York so that she and Kim might have a home together. Kim worked -slavishly, ferociously. The idea of the school did not amuse Magnolia as -much as it had at first. - -Fencing lessons. Gymnastic dancing. Interpretive dancing. Singing -lessons. Voice placing. French lessons. - -“Are you studying to be an acrobat or a singer or a dancer? I can’t make -it out.” - -“Now, Nola, don’t be an old-fashioned frumpy darling. Spend a day at the -school and you’ll know what I’m getting at.” - -The dancing class. A big bright bare room. A phonograph. Ten girls -bare-legged, barefooted, dressed in wisps. A sturdy, bare-legged woman -teacher in a hard-worked green chiffon wisp. They stood in a circle, -perhaps five feet apart, and jumped on one foot and swung the other leg -behind them, and kept this up, alternating right leg and left, for ten -minutes. It looked ridiculously simple. Magnolia tried it when she got -home and found she couldn’t do it at all. Bar work. Make a straight line -of that leg. Back! Back! Stretch! Stretch! Stretch! Some of it was too -precious. The girls in line formation and the green chiffon person -facing them, saying, idiotically, and suiting actions to words: - -“Reach down into the valley! Gather handfuls of mist. Up, up, facing the -sun! Oh, how lovely!” - -The Voice class. The Instructor, wearing a hat with an imposing façade -and clanking with plaques of arts-and-crafts jewellery, resembled, as -she sat at her table fronting the seated semi-circle of young men and -women, the chairman of a woman’s club during the business session of a -committee meeting. - -Her voice was “placed.” Magnolia, listening and beholding, would not -have been surprised to see her remove her voice, an entity, from her -throat and hold it up for inspection. It was a thing so artificial, so -studied, so manufactured. She articulated carefully and with great -elegance. - -“I don’t need to go into the wide-open throat to-day. We will start with -the jaw exercises. Down! To the side! Side! Rotate!” - -With immense gravity and earnestness twelve young men and women took -hold of their respective jaws and pulled these down; from side to side; -around. They showed no embarrassment. - -“Now then! The sound of _b_. Bub-ub-ub-ub. _They bribed Bob with a bib._ -Sound of _t_. _It isn’t a bit hot._ Sound of _d_. _Dad did the deed._ -Sound of _n_. _None of the nine nuns came at noon._” - -Singly and en masse they disposed of Bob and Dad and the nine nuns. -Pharynx resonance. Say, “Clear and free, Miss Ravenal.” Miss Ravenal -said clear-and-free, distinctly. No, no, no! Not clear-and-free, but -clear—and free. Do you see what I mean? Good. Now take it again. Miss -Ravenal took it again. Clear—and free. _That’s_ better. - -Now then. Words that differ in the _wh_ sound. Mr. Karel, let us hear -your list. Mr. Karel obliges. Whether-weather, when-wen, whinny-winnow, -whither-wither; why do you spell it with a y? - -Miss Rogers, _l_ sounds. Miss Rogers, enormously solemn (fated for Lady -Macbeth at the lightest)—level, loyal, lull, lily, lentil, love, lust, -liberty, boil, coral—— - -Now then! The nerve vitalizing breath! We’ll all stand. Hold the breath. -Stretch out arms. Arms in—and IN—AND IN—out—in—head up—mouth -open—— - -Shades of Modjeska, Duse, Rachel, Mrs. Siddons, Bernhardt! Was this the -way an actress was made! - -“You wait and see,” said Kim, grimly. Dancing, singing, fencing, voice, -French. One year. Two. Three. Magnolia had waited, and she had seen. - -Kim had had none of those preliminary hardships and terrors and -temptations, then, that are supposed to beset the path of the attractive -young woman who would travel the road to theatrical achievement. Her -success actually had been instantaneous and sustained. She had been -given the part of the daughter of a worldly mother in a new piece by -Ford Salter and had taken the play away from the star who did the -mother. Her performance had been clear-cut, modern, deft, convincing. -She was fresh, but finished. - -She was intelligent, successful, workmanlike, intuitive, vigorous, -adaptable. She was almost the first of this new crop of intelligent, -successful, deft, workmanlike, intuitive, vigorous, adaptable young -women of the theatre. There was about her—or them—nothing of genius, -of greatness, of the divine fire. But the dramatic critics of the -younger school who were too late to have seen past genius in its heyday -and for whom the theatrical genius of their day was yet to come, viewed -her performance and waxed hysterical, mistaking talent and intelligence -and hard work and ambition for something more rare. It became the thing -to proclaim each smart young woman the Duse of her day if she had a -decent feeling for stage tempo, could sustain a character throughout -three acts, speak the English language intelligibly, cross a stage or -sit in a chair naturally. By the time Kim had been five years out of the -National Theatre School there were Duses by the dozen, and a Broadway -Bernhardt was born at least once a season. - -These gave, invariably, what is known as a fine performance. As you -stood in the lobby between the acts, smoking your cigarette, you said, -“She’s giving a fine performance.” - -“A fine performance!” Magnolia echoed one evening, rather irritably, -after she and Kim had returned from the opening of a play in which one -of Kim’s friends was featured. “But she doesn’t act. Everything she did -and everything she said was right. And I was as carried out of myself as -though I were listening to a clock strike. When I go to the theatre I -want to care. In the old days maybe they didn’t know so much about tempo -and rhythm, but in the audience strong men wept and women fainted——” - -“Now listen, Nola darling. One of your old-day gals would last about -four seconds on Broadway. I’ve heard about Clara Morris and Mrs. -Siddons, and Modjeska, and Bernhardt all my life. If the sentimental old -dears were to come back in an all-star revival to-day the intelligent -modern theatre-going audience would walk out on them.” - -The new-school actresses went in for the smarter teas, eschewed -cocktails, visited the art exhibits, had their portraits painted in the -new manner, never were seen at night clubs, were glimpsed coming out of -Scribner’s with a thick volume of modern biography, used practically no -make-up when in mufti, kept their names out of the New York telephone -directory, wore flat-heeled shoes and woollen stockings while walking -briskly in Central Park, went to Symphony Concerts; were, in short, -figures as glamorous and romantic as a pint of milk. Everything they did -on the stage was right. Intelligent, well thought out, and right. -Watching them, you knew it was right—tempo, tone, mood, character. -Right. As right as an engineering blueprint. Your pulses, as you sat in -the theatre, were normal. - -Usually, their third season, you saw them unwisely lunching too often at -the Algonquin Round Table and wise-cracking with the critics there. The -fourth they took a bit in that new English comedy just until O’Neill -should have finished the play he was doing for them. The fifth they -married that little Whatshisname. The sixth they said, mysteriously, -that they were Writing. - -Kim kept away from the Algonquin, did not attend first nights with -Woollcott or Broun, had a full-page Steichen picture in _Vanity Fair_, -and married Kenneth Cameron. She went out rarely. Sunday night dinners, -sometimes; or she had people in (ham _à la_ Queenie part of the cold -buffet). Her list of Sunday night guests or engagements read like a -roster of the New York Telephone Company’s Exchanges. Stuyvesant, -Beekman, Bleeker, Murray, Rhinelander, Vanderbilt, Jerome, Wadsworth, -Tremont. She learned to say, “It’s just one of those things——” She -finished an unfinished sentence with, “I _mean_——!” and a throwing up -of the open palms. - -Kenneth Cameron. Her marriage with Kenneth Cameron was successful and -happy and very nice. Separate bedrooms and those lovely -négligées—velvet with Venetian sleeves and square neckline. Excellent -friends. Nothing sordid. Personal liberty and privacy of thought and -action—those were the things that made for happiness in marriage. -Magnolia wondered, sometimes, but certainly it was not for her to -venture opinion. Her own marriage had been no such glittering example of -perfection. Yet she wondered, seeing this well-ordered and respectful -union, if Kim was not, after all, missing something. Wasn’t marriage, -like life, unstimulating and unprofitable and somewhat empty when too -well ordered and protected and guarded? Wasn’t it finer, more splendid, -more nourishing, when it was, like life itself, a mixture of the sordid -and the magnificent; of mud and stars; of earth and flowers; of love and -hate and laughter and tears and ugliness and beauty and hurt? She was -wrong, of course. Ken’s manner toward Kim was polite, tender, -thoughtful. Kim’s manner toward Ken was polite, tender, thoughtful. Are -you free next Thursday, dear? The Paynes are having those Russians. It -might be rather interesting. . . . Sorry. Ken’s voice. Soft, light. It -was the—well, Magnolia never acknowledged this, even to herself, but it -was what she called the male interior decorator’s voice. You heard it a -good deal at teas, and at the Algonquin, and in the lobby between the -acts on first nights and in those fascinating shops on Madison Avenue -where furniture and old glass and brasses and pictures were shown you by -slim young men with delicate hands. I _mean_——! It’s just one of those -things. - -There was no Mississippi in Kim. Kim was like the Illinois River of -Magnolia’s childhood days. Kim’s life flowed tranquilly between gentle -green-clad shores, orderly, well regulated, dependable. - -“For the land’s sakes, Magnolia Hawks, you sitting out there yet! Here -it’s after three and nearly dinner time!” Elly Chipley at the screen -door. “And in the blazing sun, too. You need somebody to look after you -worse than your ma did.” - -Elly was justified, for Magnolia had a headache that night. - -Kim and Ken arrived unexpectedly together on June second, clattering up -to the boat landing in a scarecrow Ford driven by a stout Negro in khaki -pants, puttees, and an army shirt. - -Kim was breathless, but exhilarated. “He says he drove in France in ’17, -and I believe it. Good God! Every bolt, screw, bar, nut, curtain, and -door in the thing rattled and flapped and opened and fell in and fell -out. I’ve been working like a Swiss bell-ringer trying to keep things -together there in the back seat. Nola darling, what do you mean by -staying down in this miserable hole all these weeks! Ken, dear, take -another aspirin and a pinch of bicarb and lie down a minute. . . . Ken’s -got a headache from the heat and the awful trip. . . . We’re going back -to-night, and we sail on the tenth, and, Nola darling, for heaven’s sake -. . .” - -They had a talk. The customary four o’clock dinner was delayed until -nearly five because of it. They sat in Magnolia’s green-shaded bedroom -with its frilled white bedspread and dimity curtains—rather, Kim and -Magnolia sat and Ken sprawled his lean length on the bed, looking a -little yellow and haggard, what with the heat and the headache. And in -the cook’s galley, and on the stage, and in the little dressing rooms -that looked out on the river, and on deck, and in the box office, the -company and crew of the Cotton Blossom Floating Palace Theatre lounged -and waited, played pinochle and waited, sewed and napped and read and -wondered and waited. - -“You can’t mean it, Nola darling. Flopping up and down these muddy -wretched rivers in this heat! You could be out at the Bay with Andy. Or -in London with Ken and me—Ken, dear, isn’t it any better?—or even in -New York, in the lovely airy apartment, it’s cooler than——” - -Magnolia sat forward. - -“Listen, Kim. I love it. The rivers. And the people. And the show boat. -And the life. I don’t know why. It’s bred in me, I suppose. Yes, I do -know why. Your grandpa died when you were too little to remember him, -really. Or you’d know why. Now, if you two are set on going back on the -night train, you’ll have to listen to me for a minute. I went over -things with the lawyer and the banker in Thebes when we took Mama back -there. Your grandmother left a fortune. I don’t mean a few thousand -dollars. She left half a million, made out of this boat in the last -twenty-five years. I’m giving it to you, Kim, and Ken.” - -Refusal, of course. Protest. Consideration. Acquiescence. Agreement. -Acceptance. Ken was sitting up now, pallidly. Kim was lyric. “Half a -million! Mother! Ken! It means the plays I want, and Ken to produce -them. It means that I can establish a real American theatre in New York. -I can do the plays I’ve been longing to do—Ibsen and Hauptmann, and -Werfel, and Schnitzler, and Molnar, and Chekhov, and Shakespeare even. -Ken! We’ll call it the American Theatre!” - -“The American Theatre,” Magnolia repeated after her, thoughtfully. And -smiled then. “The American Theatre.” She looked a trifle uncomfortable, -as one who has heard a good joke, and has no one with whom to share it. - -A loud-tongued bell clanged and reverberated through the show boat’s -length. Dinner. - -Kim and Ken pretended not to notice the heat and flies and the molten -state of the butter. They met everyone from the captain to the cook; -from the ingénue lead to the drum. - -“Well, Miss Ravenal, this is an—or Mrs. Cameron, I suppose I should -say—an honour. We know all about you, even if you don’t know about us.” -Not one of them had ever seen her. - -A little tour of the show boat after dinner. Ken, still pale, but -refreshed by tea, was moved to exclamations of admiration. Look at that, -Kim! Ingenious. Oh, say, we must stay over and see a performance. I’d no -idea! And these combination dressing rooms and bedrooms, eh? Well, I’ll -be damned! - -Elly Chipley was making up in her special dressing room, infinitesimal -in size, just off the stage. Her part for to-night was that of a grande -dame in black silk-and-lace cap and fichu. The play was The Planter’s -Daughter. She had been rather sniffy in her attitude toward the -distinguished visitors. They couldn’t patronize _her_. She applied the -rouge to her withered cheeks in little pettish dabs, and leaned -critically forward to scrutinize her old mask of a face. What did she -see there? Kim wondered, watching her, fascinated. - -“Mother tells me you played Juliet, years ago. How marvellous!” - -Elly Chipley tossed her head skittishly. “Yes, indeed! Played Juliet, -and was known as the Western Favourite. I wasn’t always on a show boat, -I promise you.” - -“What a thrill—to play Juliet when you were so young! Usually we have -to wait until we’re fifty. Tell me, dear Miss La Verne”—elaborately -polite, and determined to mollify this old harridan—“tell me, who was -your Romeo?” - -And then Life laughed at Elly Chipley (Lenore La Verne on the bills) and -at Kim Ravenal, and the institution known as the Stage. For Elly Chipley -tapped her cheek thoughtfully with her powder puff, and blinked her old -eyes, and screwed up her tremulous old mouth, and pondered, and finally -shook her head. “My Romeo? Let me see. Let—me—see. Who _was_ my -Romeo?” - -They must go now. Oh, Nola darling, half a million! It’s too fantastic. -Mother, I can’t bear to leave you down in this God-forsaken hole. Flies -and Negroes and mud and all this yellow terrible river that you love -more than me. Stand up there—high up—where we can see you as long as -possible. - -The usual crowd was drifting down to the landing as the show-boat lights -began to glow. Twilight was coming on. On the landing, up the river -bank, sauntering down the road, came the Negroes, and the hangers-on, -the farm-hands, the river folk, the curious, the idle, the -amusement-hungry. Snatches of song. Feet shuffling upon the wharf -boards. A banjo twanging. - -They were being taken back to the nearest railroad connection, but not -in the Ford that had brought them. They sat luxuriously in the car that -had been Parthy’s and that was Magnolia’s now. - -“Mother, dearest, you’ll be back in New York in October or November at -the latest, won’t you? Promise me. When the boat closes? You will!” - -Kim was weeping. The car started smoothly. She turned for a last glimpse -through her tears. “Oh, Ken, do you think I ought to leave her like -this?” - -“She’ll be all right, dear. Look at her! Jove!” - -There stood Magnolia Ravenal on the upper deck of the Cotton Blossom -Floating Palace Theatre, silhouetted against sunset sky and water—tall, -erect, indomitable. Her mouth was smiling but her great eyes were wide -and sombre. They gazed, unwinking, across the sunlit waters. One arm was -raised in a gesture of farewell. - -“Isn’t she splendid, Ken!” cried Kim, through her tears. “There’s -something about her that’s eternal and unconquerable—like the River.” - -A bend in the upper road. A clump of sycamores. The river, the show -boat, the straight silent figure were lost to view. - - THE END - - - - - There’s More to Follow! - - More stories of the sort you like; more, probably, by the author - of this one; more than 500 titles all told by writers of - world-wide reputation, in the Authors’ Alphabetical List which - you will find on the _reverse side_ of the wrapper of this book. - Look it over before you lay it aside. There are books here you - are sure to want—some, possibly, that you have _always_ wanted. - - It is a _selected_ list; every book in it has achieved a certain - measure of _success_. - - The Grosset & Dunlap list is not only the greatest Index of Good - Fiction available, it represents in addition a generally - accepted Standard of Value. It will pay you to - - Look on the Other Side of the Wrapper! - - _In case the wrapper is lost write to the publishers for a - complete catalog_ - - - - - - STORIES OF RARE CHARM BY - GENE STRATTON-PORTER - - May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap’s list. - - - -THE KEEPER OF THE BEES - -A gripping human novel everyone in your family will want to read. - - -THE WHITE FLAG - -How a young girl, singlehanded, fought against the power of the -Morelands who held the town of Ashwater in their grip. - - -HER FATHER’S DAUGHTER - -The story of such a healthy, level-headed, balanced young woman that -it’s a delightful experience to know her. - - -A DAUGHTER OF THE LAND - -In which Kate Bates fights for her freedom against long odds, renouncing -the easy path of luxury. - - -FRECKLES - -A story of love in the limberlost that leaves a warm feeling about the -heart. - - -A GIRL OF THE LIMBERLOST - -The sheer beauty of a girl’s soul and the rich beauties of the -out-of-doors are in the pages of this book. - - -THE HARVESTER - -The romance of a strong man and of Nature’s fields and woods. - - -LADDIE - -Full of the charm of this author’s “wild woods magic.” - - -AT THE FOOT OF THE RAINBOW - -A story of friendship and love out-of-doors. - - -MICHAEL O’HALLORAN - -A wholesome, humorous, tender love story. - - -THE SONG OF THE CARDINAL - -The love idyl of the Cardinal and his mate, told with rare delicacy and -humor. - - - GROSSET & DUNLAP, _Publishers_, NEW YORK - - - - - - - MARGARET PEDLER’S NOVELS - - May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap’s list. - - - -TO-MORROW’S TANGLE - -The game of love is fraught with danger. To win in the finest sense, it -must be played fairly. - - -RED ASHES - -A gripping story of a doctor who failed in a crucial operation—and had -only himself to blame. Could the woman he loved forgive him? - - -THE BARBARIAN LOVER - -A love story based on the creed that the only important things between -birth and death are the courage to face life and the love to sweeten it. - - -THE MOON OUT OF REACH - -Nan Davenant’s problem is one that many a girl has faced—her own -happiness or her father’s bond. - - -THE HOUSE OF DREAMS-COME-TRUE - -How a man and a woman fulfilled a Gypsy’s strange prophecy. - - -THE HERMIT OF FAR END - -How love made its way into a walled-in house and a walled-in heart. - - -THE LAMP OF FATE - -The story of a woman who tried to take all and give nothing. - - -THE SPLENDID FOLLY - -Do you believe that husbands and wives should have no secrets from each -other? - - -THE VISION OF DESIRE - -An absorbing romance written with all that sense of feminine tenderness -that has given the novels of Margaret Pedler their universal appeal. - - -WAVES OF DESTINY - -Each of these stories has the sharp impact of an emotional crisis—the -compressed quality of one of Margaret Pedler’s widely popular novels. - - - GROSSET & DUNLAP, _Publishers_, NEW YORK - - - - - - - THE NOVELS OF TEMPLE BAILEY - - May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap’s list. - - - -THE BLUE WINDOW - -The heroine, Hildegarde, finds herself transplanted from the middle -western farm to the gay social whirl of the East. She is almost swept -off her feet, but in the end she proves true blue. - - -PEACOCK FEATHERS - -The eternal conflict between wealth and love. Jerry, the idealist who is -poor, loves Mimi, a beautiful, spoiled society girl. - - -THE DIM LANTERN - -The romance of little Jane Barnes who is loved by two men. - - -THE GAY COCKADE - -Unusual short stories where Miss Bailey shows her keen knowledge of -character and environment, and how romance comes to different people. - - -THE TRUMPETER SWAN - -Randy Paine comes back from France to the monotony of everyday affairs. -But the girl he loves shows him the beauty in the common place. - - -THE TIN SOLDIER - -A man who wishes to serve his country, but is bound by a tie he cannot -in honor break—that’s Derry. A girl who loves him, shares his -humiliation and helps him to win—that’s Jean. Their love is the story. - - -MISTRESS ANNE - -A girl in Maryland teaches school, and believes that work is worthy -service. Two men come to the little community; one is weak, the other -strong, and both need Anne. - - -CONTRARY MARY - -An old-fashioned love story that is nevertheless modern. - - -GLORY OF YOUTH - -A novel that deals with a question, old and yet ever new—how far should -an engagement of marriage bind two persons who discover they no longer -love. - - - GROSSET & DUNLAP, _Publishers_, NEW YORK - - - - - - - THE NOVELS OF - GRACE LIVINGSTON HILL - - May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap’s list. - - - =BEST MAN, THE= - =CITY OF FIRE, THE= - =CLOUDY JEWEL= - =DAWN OF THE MORNING= - =ENCHANTED BARN, THE= - =EXIT BETTY= - =FINDING OF JASPER HOLT, THE= - =GIRL FROM MONTANA, THE= - =LO, MICHAEL!= - =MAN OF THE DESERT, THE= - =MARCIA SCHUYLER= - =MIRANDA= - =MYSTERY OF MARY, THE= - =NOT UNDER THE LAW= - =OBSESSION OF VICTORIA GRACEN, THE= - =PHOEBE DEANE= - =RE-CREATIONS= - =RED SIGNAL, THE= - =SEARCH, THE= - =STORY OF A WHIM, THE= - =TOMORROW ABOUT THIS TIME= - =TRYST, THE= - =VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS, A= - =WITNESS, THE= - - - GROSSET & DUNLAP, _Publishers_, NEW YORK - - - - - - - BOOTH TARKINGTON’S NOVELS - - May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap’s list. - - - =THE MIDLANDER= - =THE FASCINATING STRANGER= - =GENTLE JULIA= - =ALICE ADAMS= - =RAMSEY MILHOLLAND= - =THE GUEST OF QUESNAY= - =THE TWO VAN REVELS= - =THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS= - =MONSIEUR BEAUCAIRE= - =SEVENTEEN= - =PENROD= - =PENROD AND SAM= - =THE TURMOIL= - =THE GENTLEMAN FROM INDIANA= - =THE FLIRT= - - - GROSSET & DUNLAP, _Publishers_, NEW YORK - - - - - - - DETECTIVE STORIES BY J. S. FLETCHER - - May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap’s list. - - - =THE SECRET OF THE BARBICAN= - =THE ANNEXATION SOCIETY= - =THE WOLVES AND THE LAMB= - =GREEN INK= - =THE KING versus WARGRAVE= - =THE LOST MR. LINTHWAITE= - =THE MILL OF MANY WINDOWS= - =THE HEAVEN-KISSED HILL= - =THE MIDDLE TEMPLE MURDER= - =RAVENSDENE COURT= - =THE RAYNER-SLADE AMALGAMATION= - =THE SAFETY PIN= - =THE SECRET WAY= - =THE VALLEY OF HEADSTRONG MEN= - - - _Ask for Complete free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction_ - - GROSSET & DUNLAP, _Publishers_, NEW YORK - - - - - - - RAFAEL SABATINI’S NOVELS - - May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap’s list. - - -Jesi, a diminutive city of the Italian Marches, was the birthplace of -Rafael Sabatini, and here he spent his early youth. The city is -glamorous with those centuries the author makes live again in his novels -with all their violence and beauty. - -Mr. Sabatini first went to school in Switzerland and from there to Lycee -of Oporto, Portugal, and like Joseph Conrad, he has never attended an -English school. But English is hardly an adopted language for him, as he -learned it from his mother, an English woman who married the -Maestro-Cavaliere Vincenzo Sabatini. - -Today Rafael Sabatini is regarded as “The Alexandre Dumas of Modern -Fiction.” - - -MISTRESS WILDING - -A romance of the days of Monmouth’s rebellion. The action is rapid, its -style is spirited, and its plot is convincing. - - -FORTUNE’S FOOL - -All who enjoyed the lurid lights of the French Revolution with -Scaramouche, or the brilliant buccaneering days of Peter Blood, or the -adventures of the Sea-Hawk, the corsair, will now welcome with delight a -turn in Restoration London with the always masterful Col. Randall -Holles. - - -BARDELYS THE MAGNIFICENT - -An absorbing story of love and adventure in France of the early -seventeenth century. - - -THE SNARE - -It is a story in which fact and fiction are delightfully blended and one -that is entertaining in high degree from first to last. - - -CAPTAIN BLOOD - -The story has glamor and beauty, and it is told with an easy confidence. -As for Blood himself, he is a superman, compounded of a sardonic humor, -cold nerves; and hot temper. Both the story and the man are -masterpieces. A great figure, a great epoch, a great story. - - -THE SEA-HAWK - -“The Sea-Hawk” is a book of fierce bright color and amazing adventure -through which stalks one of the truly great and masterful figures of -romance. - - -SCARAMOUCHE - -Never will the reader forget the sardonic Scaramouche, who fights -equally well with tongue and rapier, who was “born with the gilt of -laughter and a sense that the world was mad.” - - - GROSSET & DUNLAP, _Publishers_, NEW YORK - - - - - - TRANSCRIBER NOTES - -Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple -spellings occur, majority use has been employed. - -Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors -occur. - -[The end of _Show Boat_, by Edna Ferber.] - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHOWBOAT *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part -of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm -concept and trademark. 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margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; } - div.lgp p.line0 { text-indent:-3em; margin:0 auto 0 3em; } - .pindent { margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; text-indent:1.5em; } - .noindent { margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; text-indent:0; } - .hang { padding-left:1.5em; text-indent:-1.5em; } - .literal-container { text-align:center; margin:0 0; } - .literal { display:inline-block; text-align:left; } - </style> - <style type="text/css"> - h1 { font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold; text-align:center; - page-break-before: always; } - .poetry-container { font-size:.9em; - margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; - margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; } - div.blockquote { margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; } - .pindent {margin-top: 0.3em; margin-bottom: 0em;} - .dropcap { font-size: 280%; margin:.1em 0.0em 0 0; - line-height:.8em; } - .sc { font-variant:small-caps; font-size:120%; } - .lead-in { font-size: 150%; } - hr.pbk { width:50%; } - body { margin-left:8%; margin-right:10%; max-width:40em;} - </style> - </head> - <body> -<p style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Showboat, by Edna Ferber</p> -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online -at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you -are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this eBook. -</div> - -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Showboat</p> -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Edna Ferber</p> -<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: January 7, 2022 [eBook #67123]</p> -<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</p> - <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; text-align:left'>Produced by: Al Haines PM, Cindy Beyer, and the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net.</p> -<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHOWBOAT ***</div> -<div class='figcenter'> -<img src='images/cover.jpg' alt='' id='iid-0000' style='width:350px;height:auto;'/> -</div> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<div class='lgc' style=''> <!-- rend=';bold;' --> -<p class='line' style='margin-top:1em;font-size:2em;font-weight:bold;'><span class='gesp'>SHOW BOAT</span></p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line' style='font-weight:bold;'>BY</p> -<p class='line' style='margin-top:.3em;font-size:1.2em;font-weight:bold;'><span class='gesp'>EDNA FERBER</span></p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line' style='margin-bottom:.3em;font-size:.8em;font-weight:bold;'>AUTHOR OF</p> -<p class='line' style='font-weight:bold;'>“SO BIG,” <span class='sc'>Etc.</span></p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<div class='figcenter'> -<img src='images/title.jpg' alt='' id='iid-0001' style='width:200px;height:auto;'/> -</div> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line' style='margin-bottom:.2em;font-size:1.2em;font-weight:bold;'><span class='gesp'>GROSSET & DUNLAP</span></p> -<p class='line' style='font-weight:bold;'>PUBLISHERS NEW YORK</p> -</div> <!-- end rend --> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<div class='literal-container' style='margin-top:2em;margin-bottom:10em;'><div class='literal'> <!-- rend=';fs:.7em;' --> -<p class='line' style='font-size:.7em;'>COPYRIGHT, 1926, BY EDNA FERBER.</p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:.7em;'>ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED IN</p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:.7em;'>THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY</p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:.7em;'>LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.</p> -</div></div> <!-- end rend --> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<div class='lgc' style='margin-top:2em;margin-bottom:10em;'> <!-- rend=';bold;fs:1.2em;' --> -<p class='line' style='font-size:1.2em;font-weight:bold;'>To</p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:1.2em;font-weight:bold;'>Winthrop Ames</p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:1.2em;font-weight:bold;'>Who First Said Show Boat</p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:1.2em;font-weight:bold;'>to Me</p> -</div> <!-- end rend --> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-top:2em;margin-bottom:1em;font-size:1.2em;font-weight:bold;'>INTRODUCTION</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='sc'>Show Boat</span>” is neither history nor biography, but -fiction. This statement is made in the hope that it -will forestall such protest as may be registered by -demon statisticians against certain liberties taken with -characters, places, and events. In the Chicago portion -of the book, for example, a character occasionally -appears some three or four years after the actual date -of his death. Now and then a restaurant or gambling -resort is described as running full blast at a time when -it had vanished at the frown of civic virtue. This, -then, was done, not through negligence in research, but -because, in the attempt to give a picture of the time, -it was necessary slightly to condense a period of fifteen -or twenty years.</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:right;margin-right:1em;'>E. F.</p> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-top:2em;font-size:1.8em;font-weight:bold;'><span class='gesp'>SHOW BOAT</span></p> - -<div><h1 class='nobreak'>I</h1></div> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='lead-in'><span class='dropcap'>B</span>izarre</span> as was the name she bore, Kim Ravenal -always said she was thankful it had been no -worse. She knew whereof she spoke, for it was -literally by a breath that she had escaped being called -Mississippi.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Imagine Mississippi Ravenal!” she often said, in -later years. “They’d have cut it to Missy, I suppose, -or even Sippy, if you can bear to think of anything so -horrible. And then I’d have had to change my name -or give up the stage altogether. Because who’d go to -see—seriously, I mean—an actress named Sippy? It -sounds half-witted, for some reason. Kim’s bad -enough, God knows.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And as Kim Ravenal you doubtless are familiar with -her. It is no secret that the absurd monosyllable which -comprises her given name is made up of the first letters -of three states—Kentucky, Illinois, and Missouri—in -all of which she was, incredibly enough, born—if she -can be said to have been born in any state at all. Her -mother insists that she wasn’t. If you were an habitué -of old South Clark Street in Chicago’s naughty ’90s you -may even remember her mother, Magnolia Ravenal, -as Nola Ravenal, soubrette—though Nola Ravenal -never achieved the doubtful distinction of cigarette -pictures. In a day when the stage measured feminine -pulchritude in terms of hips, thighs, and calves, she was -considered much too thin for beauty, let alone for -tights.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It had been this Magnolia Ravenal’s respiratory lack -that had saved the new-born girl from being cursed -through life with a name boasting more quadruple -vowels and consonants than any other in the language. -She had meant to call the child Mississippi after the -tawny untamed river on which she had spent so much -of her girlhood, and which had stirred and fascinated -her always. Her accouchement had been an ordeal -even more terrifying than is ordinarily the case, for Kim -Ravenal had actually been born on the raging turgid -bosom of the Mississippi River itself, when that rampageous -stream was flooding its banks and inundating -towns for miles around, at five o’clock of a storm-racked -April morning in 1889. It was at a point just below -Cairo, Illinois; that region known as Little Egypt, -where the yellow waters of the Mississippi and the olive-green -waters of the Ohio so disdainfully meet and refuse, -with bull-necked pride, to mingle.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>From her cabin window on the second deck of the -Cotton Blossom Floating Palace Theatre, Magnolia -Ravenal could have seen the misty shores of three -states—if any earthly shores had interested her at the -moment. Just here was Illinois, to whose crumbling -clay banks the show boat was so perilously pinioned. -Beyond, almost hidden by the rain veil, was Missouri; -and there, Kentucky. But Magnolia Ravenal lay with -her eyes shut because the effort of lifting her lids was -beyond her. Seeing her, you would have said that if -any shores filled her vision at the moment they were -heavenly ones, and those dangerously near. So white, -so limp, so spent was she that her face on the pillow was -startlingly like one of the waxen blossoms whose name -she bore. Her slimness made almost no outline beneath -the bedclothes. The coverlet was drawn up to -her chin. There was only the white flower on the -pillow, its petals closed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Outside, the redundant rain added its unwelcome -measure to the swollen and angry stream. In the -ghostly gray dawn the grotesque wreckage of flood-time -floated and whirled and jiggled by, seeming to bob a -mad obeisance as it passed the show boat which, in its -turn, made stately bows from its moorings. There -drifted past, in fantastic parade, great trees, uprooted -and clutching at the water with stiff dead arms; logs, -catapulted with terrific force; animal carcasses dreadful -in their passivity; chicken coops; rafts; a piano, its -ivory mouth fixed in a death grin; a two-room cabin, -upright, and moving in a minuet of stately and ponderous -swoops and advances and chassés; fence rails; an -armchair whose white crocheted antimacassar stared -in prim disapproval at the wild antics of its fellow -voyagers; a live sheep, bleating as it came, but soon -still; a bed with its covers, by some freak of suction, -still snugly tucked in as when its erstwhile occupant had -fled from it in fright—all these, and more, contributed -to the weird terror of the morning. The Mississippi -itself was a tawny tiger, roused, furious, bloodthirsty, -lashing out with its great tail, tearing with its cruel -claws, and burying its fangs deep in the shore to swallow -at a gulp land, houses, trees, cattle—humans, even; -and roaring, snarling, howling hideously as it did so.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Inside Magnolia Ravenal’s cabin all was snug and -warm and bright. A wood fire snapped and crackled -cosily in the little pot-bellied iron stove. Over it bent -a veritable Sairey Gamp stirring something hot and -savoury in a saucepan. She stirred noisily, and talked -as she stirred, and glanced from time to time at the -mute white figure in the bed. Her own bulky figure -was made more ponderous by layer on layer of ill-assorted -garments of the kind donned from time to time -as night wears on by one who, having been aroused -hastily and in emergency, has arrived scantily clad. A -gray flannel nightgown probably formed the basis of -this costume, for its grizzled cuffs could just be seen -emerging from the man’s coat whose sleeves she wore -turned back from the wrists for comfort and convenience. -This coat was of box-cut, double-breasted, -blue with brass buttons and gold braid, of the sort that -river captains wear. It gave her a racy and nautical -look absurdly at variance with her bulk and occupation. -Peeping beneath and above and around this, the baffled -eye could just glimpse oddments and elegancies such -as a red flannel dressing gown; a flower-besprigged -challis sacque whose frill of doubtful lace made the -captain’s coat even more incongruous; a brown cashmere -skirt, very bustled and bunchy; a pair of scuffed -tan kid bedroom slippers (men’s) of the sort known as -romeos. This lady’s back hair was twisted into a knob -strictly utilitarian; her front hair bristled with the wired -ends of kid curlers assumed, doubtless, the evening -before the hasty summons. Her face and head were -long and horse-like, at variance with her bulk. This, -you sensed immediately, was a person possessed of -enormous energy, determination, and the gift of making -exquisitely uncomfortable any one who happened to -be within hearing radius. She was the sort who rattles -anything that can be rattled; slams anything that can -be slammed; bumps anything that can be bumped. Her -name, by some miracle of fitness, was Parthenia Ann -Hawks; wife of Andy Hawks, captain and owner of -the Cotton Blossom Floating Palace Theatre; and -mother of this Magnolia Ravenal who, having just been -delivered of a daughter, lay supine in her bed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Now, as Mrs. Hawks stirred the mess over which she -was bending, her spoon regularly scraped the bottom -of the pan with a rasping sound that would have tortured -any nerves but her own iron-encased set. She -removed the spoon, freeing it of clinging drops by rapping -it smartly and metallically against the rim of the -basin. Magnolia Ravenal’s eyelids fluttered ever so -slightly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now then!” spake Parthy Ann Hawks, briskly, in -that commanding tone against which even the most -spiritless instinctively rebelled, “Now then, young -lady, want it or not, you’ll eat some of this broth, good -and hot and stren’th’ning, and maybe you won’t look -so much like a wet dish rag.” Pan in one hand, spoon -in the other, she advanced toward the bed with a tread -that jarred the furniture and set the dainty dimity -window curtains to fluttering. She brought up against -the side of the bed with a bump. A shadow of pain -flitted across the white face on the pillow. The eyes -still were closed. As the smell of the hot liquid reached -her nostrils, the lips of the girl on the bed curled in distaste. -“Here, I’ll just spoon it right up to you out of -the pan, so’s it’ll be good and hot. Open your mouth! -Open your eyes! I say open—— Well, for land’s -sakes, how do you expect a body to do anything for you -if you——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>With a motion shocking in its swift unexpectedness -Magnolia Ravenal’s hand emerged from beneath the -coverlet, dashed aside the spoon with its steaming contents, -and sent it clattering to the floor. Then her -hand stole beneath the coverlet again and with a little -relaxed sigh of satisfaction she lay passive as before. -She had not opened her eyes. She was smiling ever -so slightly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s right! Act like a wildcat just because I try -to get you to sup up a little soup that Jo’s been hours -cooking, and two pounds of good mutton in it if there’s -an ounce, besides vegetables and barley, and your pa -practically risked his life getting the meat down at Cairo -and the water going up by the foot every hour. No, -you’re not satisfied to get us caught here in the flood, -and how we’ll ever get out alive or dead, God knows, -and me and everybody on the boat up all night long with -your goings on so you’d think nobody’d ever had a baby -before. Time I had you there wasn’t a whimper out of -me. Not a whimper. I’d have died, first. I never -saw anything as indelicate as the way you carried on, -and your own husband in the room.” Here Magnolia -conveyed with a flutter of the lids that this had not -been an immaculate conception. “Well, if you could -see yourself now. A drowned rat isn’t the word. Now -you take this broth, my fine lady, or we’ll see who’s——” -She paused in this dramatic threat to blow a cooling -breath on a generous spoonful of the steaming liquid, -to sup it up with audible appreciation, and to take -another. She smacked her lips. “Now then, no more -of your monkey-shines, Maggie Hawks!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>No one but her mother had ever called Magnolia -Ravenal Maggie Hawks. It was unthinkable that a -name so harsh and unlovely could be applied to this -fragile person. Having picked up the rejected spoon -and wiped it on the lace ruffle of the challis sacque, that -terrible termagant grasped it firmly against surprise in -her right hand and, saucepan in left, now advanced a -second time toward the bed. You saw the flower on -the pillow frosted by an icy mask of utter unyieldingness; -you caught a word that sounded like shenanigans -from the woman bending over the bed, when the cabin -door opened and two twittering females entered attired -in garments strangely akin to the haphazard costume -worn by Mrs. Hawks. The foremost of these moved in -a manner so bustling as to be unmistakably official. -She was at once ponderous, playful, and menacing—this -last attribute due, perhaps, to the rather splendid -dark moustache which stamped her upper lip. In her -arms she carried a swaddled bundle under one flannel -flap of which the second female kept peering and uttering -strange clucking sounds and words that resembled -izzer and yesseris.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Fine a gal’s I ever see!” exclaimed the bustling one. -She approached the bed with the bundle. “Mis’ Means -says the same and so”—she glanced contemptuously -over her shoulder at a pale and haggard young man, -bearded but boyish, who followed close behind them—“does -the doctor.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She paused before the word doctor so that the title, -when finally it was uttered, carried with it a poisonous -derision. This mysterious sally earned a little snigger -from Mis’ Means and a baleful snort from Mrs. Hawks. -Flushed with success, the lady with the swaddled bundle -(unmistakably a midwife and, like all her craft, royally -accustomed to homage and applause) waxed more -malicious. “Fact is, he says only a minute ago, he -never brought a finer baby that he can remember.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At this the sniggers and snorts became unmistakable -guffaws. The wan young man became a flushed young -man. He fumbled awkwardly with the professionally -massive watch chain that so unnecessarily guarded his -cheap nickel blob of a watch. He glanced at the flower-like -face on the pillow. Its aloofness, its remoteness -from the three frowzy females that hovered about it, -seemed to lend him a momentary dignity and courage. -He thrust his hands behind the tails of his Prince Albert -coat and strode toward the bed. A wave of the hand, -a slight shove with the shoulder, dismissed the three as -nuisances. “One moment, my good woman. . . . -<span class='it'>If</span> you please, Mrs. Hawks. . . . Kindly don’t -jiggle . . .”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The midwife stepped aside with the bundle. Mrs. -Hawks fell back a step, the ineffectual spoon and saucepan -in her hands. Mis’ Means ceased to cluck and to -lean on the bed’s footboard. From a capacious inner -coat pocket he produced a stethoscope, applied it, -listened, straightened. From the waistcoat pocket came -the timepiece, telltale of his youth and impecuniosity. -He extracted his patient’s limp wrist from beneath the -coverlet and held it in his own strong spatulate fingers—the -fingers of the son of a farmer.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“H’m! Fine!” he exclaimed. “Splendid!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>An unmistakable sniff from the midwife. The boy’s -florid manner dropped from him. He cringed a little. -The sensitive hand he still held in his great grasp seemed -to feel this change in him, though Magnolia Ravenal -had not opened her eyes even at the entrance of the -three. Her wrist slid itself out of his hold and down -until her fingers met his and pressed them lightly, -reassuringly. The youth looked down, startled. Magnolia -Ravenal, white-lipped, was smiling her wide gay -gorgeous smile that melted the very vitals of you. It -was a smile at once poignant and brilliant. It showed -her gums a little, and softened the planes of her high -cheek-bones, and subdued the angles of the too-prominent -jaw. A comradely smile, an understanding and -warming one. Strange that this woman on the bed, so -lately torn and racked with the agonies of childbirth, -should be the one to encourage the man whose clumsy -ministrations had so nearly cost her her life. That -she could smile at all was sheer triumph of the spirit -over the flesh. And that she could smile in sympathy -for and encouragement of this bungling inexpert young -medico was incredible. But that was Magnolia Ravenal. -Properly directed and managed, her smile, in -later years, could have won her a fortune. But direction -and management were as futile when applied to her as -to the great untamed Mississippi that even now was -flouting man-built barriers; laughing at levees that -said so far and no farther; jeering at jetties that said do -thus-and-so; for that matter, roaring this very moment -in derision of Magnolia Ravenal herself, and her puny -pangs and her mortal plans; and her father Captain -Andy Hawks, and her mother Parthenia Ann Hawks, -and her husband Gaylord Ravenal, and the whole -troupe of the show boat, and the Cotton Blossom Floating -Palace Theatre itself, now bobbing about like a cork -on the yellow flood that tugged and sucked and tore at -its moorings.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Two tantrums of nature had been responsible for the -present precarious position of the show boat and its -occupants. The Mississippi had furnished one; Magnolia -Ravenal the other. Or perhaps it might be fairer -to fix the blame, not on nature, but on human stupidity -that had failed to take into account its vagaries.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Certainly Captain Andy Hawks should have known -better, after thirty-five years of experience on keelboats, -steamboats, packets, and show boats up and down the -great Mississippi and her tributaries (the Indians might -call this stream the Father of Waters but your riverman -respectfully used the feminine pronoun). The brand-new -show boat had done it. Built in the St. Louis -shipyards, the new <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> was to have been -ready for him by February. But February had come -and gone, and March as well. He had meant to be in -New Orleans by this time, with his fine new show boat -and his troupe and his band of musicians in their fresh -glittering red-and-gold uniforms, and the marvellous -steam calliope that could be heard for miles up and down -the bayous and plantations. Starting at St. Louis, he -had planned a swift trip downstream, playing just -enough towns on the way to make expenses. Then, -beginning with Bayou Teche and pushed by the sturdy -steamer <span class='it'>Mollie Able</span>, they would proceed grandly upstream, -calliope screaming, flags flying, band tooting, -to play every little town and landing and plantation -from New Orleans to Baton Rouge, from Baton Rouge -to Vicksburg; to Memphis, to Cairo, to St. Louis, up -and up to Minnesota itself; then over to the coal towns -on the Monongahela River and the Kanawha, and down -again to New Orleans, following the crops as they -ripened—the corn belt, the cotton belt, the sugar cane; -north when the wheat yellowed, following with the sun -the ripening of the peas, the tomatoes, the crabs, the -peaches, the apples; and as the farmer garnered his -golden crops so would shrewd Captain Andy Hawks -gather his harvest of gold.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was April before the new <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> was -finished and ready to take to the rivers. Late though -it was, when Captain Andy Hawks beheld her, glittering -from texas to keel in white paint with green trimmings, -and with Cotton Blossom Floating Palace -Theatre done in letters two feet high on her upper deck, -he was vain enough, or foolhardy enough, or both, to -resolve to stand by his original plan. A little nervous -fussy man, Andy Hawks, with a horrible habit of clawing -and scratching from side to side, when aroused or -when deep in thought, at the little mutton-chop whiskers -that sprang out like twin brushes just below his -leather-visored white canvas cap, always a trifle too -large for his head, so that it settled down over his ears. -A capering figure, in light linen pants very wrinkled and -baggy, and a blue coat, double-breasted; with a darting -manner, bright brown eyes, and a trick of talking very -fast as he clawed the mutton-chop whiskers first this -side, then that, with one brown hairy little hand. There -was about him something grotesque, something simian. -He beheld the new <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> as a bridegroom -gazes upon a bride, and frenziedly clawing his whiskers -he made his unwise decision.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She won’t high-water this year till June.” He was -speaking of that tawny tigress, the Mississippi; and -certainly no one knew her moods better than he. “Not -much snow last winter, north; and no rain to speak of, -yet. Yessir, we’ll just blow down to New Orleans ahead -of French’s <span class='it'>Sensation</span>”—his bitterest rival in the show-boat -business—“and start to work the bayous. Show -him a clean pair of heels up and down the river.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So they had started. And because the tigress lay -smooth and unruffled now, with only the currents playing -gently below the surface like muscles beneath the -golden yellow skin, they fancied she would remain complaisant -until they had had their way. That was the -first mistake.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The second was as unreasoning. Magnolia Ravenal’s -child was going to be a boy. Ma Hawks and the wise -married women of the troupe knew the signs. She felt -thus-and-so. She had such-and-such sensations. She -was carrying the child high. Boys always were slower -in being born than girls. Besides, this was a first child, -and the first child always is late. They got together, -in mysterious female conclave, and counted on the -fingers of their two hands—August, September, October, -November, December—why, the end of April, -the soonest. They’d be safe in New Orleans by then, -with the best of doctors for Magnolia, and she on land -while one of the other women in the company played -her parts until she was strong again—a matter of two or -three weeks at most.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>No sooner had they started than the rains began. -No early April showers, these, but torrents that blotted -out the river banks on either side and sent the clay -tumbling in great cave-ins, down to the water, jaundicing -it afresh where already it seethed an ochreous mass. -Day after day, night after night, the rains came down, -melting the Northern ice and snow, filtering through the -land of the Mississippi basin and finding its way, whether -trickle, rivulet, creek, stream, or river, to the great -hungry mother, Mississippi. And she grew swollen, -and tossed and flung her huge limbs about and shrieked -in labour even as Magnolia Ravenal was so soon to do.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Eager for entertainment as the dwellers were along -the little Illinois and Missouri towns, after a long winter -of dull routine on farm and in store and schoolhouse, -they came sparsely to the show boat. Posters had told -them of her coming, and the news filtered to the back-country. -Town and village thrilled to the sound of the -steam calliope as the Cotton Blossom Floating Palace -Theatre, propelled by the square-cut clucking old -steamer, <span class='it'>Mollie Able</span>, swept grandly down the river to -the landing. But the back-country roads were impassable -bogs by now, and growing worse with every -hour of rain. Wagon wheels sank to the hubs in mud. -There were crude signs, stuck on poles, reading, “No -bottom here.” The dodgers posted on walls and fences -in the towns were rain-soaked and bleary. And as for -the Cotton Blossom Floating Palace Theatre Ten -Piece Band (which numbered six)—how could it risk -ruin of its smart new red coats, gold-braided and gold-buttoned, -by marching up the water-logged streets of -these little towns whose occupants only stared wistfully -out through storm-blurred windows? It was dreary -even at night, when the show boat glowed invitingly -with the blaze of a hundred oil lamps that lighted the -auditorium seating six hundred (One Thousand Seats! -A Luxurious Floating Theatre within an Unrivalled -Floating Palace!). Usually the flaming oil-flares on -their tall poles stuck in the steep clay banks that led -down to the show boat at the water’s edge made a path -of fiery splendour. Now they hissed and spluttered -dismally, almost extinguished by the deluge. Even -when the bill was St. Elmo or East Lynne, those tried -and trusty winners, the announcement of which always -packed the show boat’s auditorium to the very last seat -in the balcony reserved for Negroes, there was now only -a damp handful of shuffle-footed men and giggling girls -and a few children in the cheaper rear seats. The -Mississippi Valley dwellers, wise with the terrible wisdom -born of much suffering under the dominance of this -voracious and untamed monster, so ruthless when -roused, were preparing against catastrophe should these -days of rain continue.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Captain Andy Hawks clawed his mutton-chop whiskers, -this side and that, and scanned the skies, and -searched the yellowing swollen stream with his bright -brown eyes. “We’ll make for Cairo,” he said. “Full -steam ahead. I don’t like the looks of her—the big -yella snake.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But full steam ahead was impossible for long in a snag-infested -river, as Andy Hawks well knew; and in a river -whose treacherous channel shifted almost daily in -normal times, and hourly in flood-time. Cautiously -they made for Cairo. Cape Girardeau, Gray’s Point, -Commerce—then, suddenly, near evening, the false sun -shone for a brief hour. At once everyone took heart. -The rains, they assured each other, were over. The -spring freshet would subside twice as quickly as it had -risen. Fittingly enough, the play billed for that evening -was Tempest and Sunshine, always a favourite. -Magnolia Ravenal cheerfully laced herself into the cruel -steel-stiffened high-busted corset of the period, and -donned the golden curls and the prim ruffles of the part. -A goodish crowd scrambled and slipped and slid down -the rain-soaked clay bank, torch-illumined, to the show -boat, their boots leaving a trail of mud and water up and -down the aisles of the theatre and between the seats. It -was a restless audience, and hard to hold. There had -been an angry sunset, and threatening clouds to the -northwest. The crowd shuffled its feet, coughed, -stirred constantly. There was in the air something -electric, menacing, heavy. Suddenly, during the last -act, the north wind sprang up with a whistling sound, -and the little choppy hard waves could be heard slapping -against the boat’s flat sides. She began to rock, -too, and pitch, flat though she was and securely moored -to the river bank. Lightning, a fusillade of thunder, -and then the rain again, heavy, like drops of molten -lead, and driven by the north wind. The crowd -scrambled up the perilous clay banks, slipping, falling, -cursing, laughing, frightened. To this day it is told -that the river rose seven feet in twenty-four hours. -Captain Andy Hawks, still clawing his whiskers, still -bent on making for Cairo, cast off and ordered the gangplank -in as the last scurrying villager clawed his way -up the slimy incline whose heights the river was scaling -inch by inch.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The Ohio’s the place,” he insisted, his voice high and -squeaky with excitement. “High water at Cincinnati, -St. Louis, Evansville, or even Paducah don’t have to -mean high-water on the Ohio. It’s the old yella serpent -making all this kick-up. But the Ohio’s the river gives -Cairo the real trouble. Yessir! And she don’t flood -till June. We’ll make for the Ohio and stay on her till -this comes to a stand, anyway.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then followed the bedlam of putting off. Yells, -hoarse shouts, bells ringing, wheels churning the water -to foam. Lively now! Cramp her down! Snatch -her! <span class='sc'>Snatch</span> her!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Faintly, above the storm, you heard the cracked -falsetto of little Captain Andy Hawks, a pilot for years, -squeaking to himself in his nervousness the orders that -river etiquette forbade his actually giving that ruler, -that ultimate sovereign, the pilot, old Mark Hooper, -whose real name was no more Mark than Twain’s had -been: relic of his leadsmen days, with the cry of, “Mark -three! Mark three! Half twain! Quarter twain! -M-A-R-K twain!” gruffly shouted along the hurricane -deck.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was told, on the rivers, that little Andy Hawks had -been known, under excitement, to walk off the deck into -the river and to bob afloat there until rescued, still spluttering -and shrieking orders in a profane falsetto.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Down the river they went, floating easily over bars -that in normal times stood six feet out of the water; -clattering through chutes; shaving the shores. Thunder, -lightning, rain, chaos outside. Within, the orderly -routine of bedtime on the show boat. Mis’ Means, the -female half of the character team, heating over a tiny -spirit flame a spoonful of goose grease which she would -later rub on her husband’s meagre cough-racked chest; -Maudie Rainger, of the general business team, sipping -her bedtime cup of coffee; Bert Forbush, utility man, in -shirt sleeves, check pants, and carpet slippers, playing a -sleep-inducing game of canfield—all this on the stage, -bare now of scenery and turned into a haphazard and -impromptu lounging room for the members of this floating -theatrical company. Mrs. Hawks, in her fine new -cabin on the second deck, off the gallery, was putting her -sparse hair in crimpers as she would do if this were the -night before Judgment Day. Flood, storm, danger—all -part of river show-boat life. Ordinarily, it is true, -they did not proceed down river until daybreak. After -the performance, the show boat and its steamer would -stay snug and still alongside the wharf of this little town -or that. By midnight, company and crew would have -fallen asleep to the sound of the water slap-slapping -gently against the boat’s sides.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>To-night there probably would be little sleep for some -of the company, what with the storm, the motion, the -unwonted stir, and the noise that came from the sturdy -<span class='it'>Mollie Able</span>, bracing her cautious bulk against the flood’s -swift urging; and certainly none for Captain Andy -Hawks, for pilot Mark Hooper and the crew of the -<span class='it'>Mollie Able</span>. But that, too, was all part of the life.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Midnight had found Gaylord Ravenal, in nightshirt -and dressing gown, a handsome and distraught figure, -pounding on the door of his mother-in-law’s cabin. -From the cabin he had just left came harrowing sounds—whimpers, -and little groans, and great moans, like -an animal in agony. Magnolia Ravenal was not one -of your silent sufferers. She was too dramatic for that. -Manœuvred magically by the expert Hooper, they -managed to make a perilous landing just above Cairo. -The region was scoured for a doctor, without success, -for accident had followed on flood. Captain Andy had -tracked down a stout and reluctant midwife who consented -only after an enormous bribe to make the perilous -trip to the levee, clambering ponderously down the -slippery bank with many groanings and forebodings, -and being sustained, both in bulk and spirit, by the -agile and vivacious little captain much as a tiny fussy -river tug guides a gigantic and unwieldy ocean liner. -He was almost frantically distraught, for between Andy -Hawks and his daughter Magnolia Ravenal was that -strong bond of affection and mutual understanding that -always exists between the henpecked husband and the -harassed offspring of a shrew such as Parthy Ann -Hawks.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When, an hour later, Gaylord Ravenal, rain-soaked -and mud-spattered, arrived with a white-faced young -doctor’s assistant whose first obstetrical call this was, -he found the fat midwife already in charge and inclined -to elbow about any young medical upstart who might -presume to dictate to a female of her experience.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was a sordid and ravaging confinement which, at -its climax, teetered for one dreadful moment between -tragedy and broad comedy. For at the crisis, just before -dawn, the fat midwife, busy with ministrations, -had said to the perspiring young doctor, “D’you think -it’s time to snuff her?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bewildered, and not daring to show his ignorance, he -had replied, judicially, “Uh—not just yet. No, not -just yet.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Again the woman had said, ten minutes later, “Time -to snuff her, I’d say.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, perhaps it is.” He watched her, fearfully, -wondering what she might mean; cursing his own lack -of knowledge. To his horror and amazement, before he -could stop her, she had stuffed a great pinch of strong -snuff up either nostril of Magnolia Ravenal’s delicate -nose. And thus Kim Ravenal was born into the world -on the gust of a series of convulsive a-CHOOs!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“God almighty, woman!” cried the young medico, -in a frenzy. “You’ve killed her.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Run along, do!” retorted the fat midwife, testily, -for she was tired by now, and hungry, and wanted her -coffee badly. “H’m! It’s a gal. And they had their -minds all made up to a boy. Never knew it to fail.” -She turned to Magnolia’s mother, a ponderous and -unwieldy figure at the foot of the bed. “Well, now, -Mis’—Hawks, ain’t it?—that’s right—Hawks. Well, -now, Mis’ Hawks, we’ll get this young lady washed up -and then I’d thank you for a pot of coffee and some -breakfast. I’m partial to a meat breakfast.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>All this had been a full hour ago. Magnolia Ravenal -still lay inert, unheeding. She had not even looked at -her child. Her mother now uttered bitter complaint -to the others in the room.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Won’t touch a drop of this good nourishing broth. -Knocked the spoon right out of my hand, would you -believe it! for all she lays there looking so gone. Well! -I’m going to open her mouth and pour it down.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The young doctor raised a protesting palm. “No, -no, I wouldn’t do that.” He bent over the white face -on the pillow. “Just a spoonful,” he coaxed, softly. -“Just a swallow?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She did not vouchsafe him another smile. He -glanced at the irate woman with the saucepan; at the -two attendant vestals. “Isn’t there somebody——?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The men of the company and the crew were out, he -well knew, with pike poles in hand, working to keep the -drifting objects clear of the boats. Gaylord Ravenal -would be with them. He had been in and out a score -of times through the night, his handsome young face -(too handsome, the awkward young doctor had privately -decided) twisted with horror and pity and self-reproach. -He had noticed, too, that the girl’s cries had -abated not a whit when the husband was there. But -when he took her writhing fingers, and put one hand on -her wet forehead, and said, in a voice that broke with -agony, “Oh, Nola! Nola! Don’t. I didn’t know it -was like . . . Not like this. . . . Magnolia -. . .”—she had said, through clenched teeth and -white lips, surprisingly enough, with a knowledge -handed down to her through centuries of women writhing -in childbirth, “It’s all right, Gay. . . . Always -. . . like this . . . damn it. . . . Don’t -you worry. . . . It’s . . . all . . .” And -the harassed young doctor had then seen for the first -time the wonder of Magnolia Ravenal’s poignant smile.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So now when he said, shyly, “Isn’t there somebody -else——” he was thinking that if the young and handsome -husband could be spared for but a moment from -his pike pole it would be better to chance a drifting log -sent crashing against the side of the boat by the flood -than that this white still figure on the bed should be -allowed to grow one whit whiter or more still.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Somebody else’s fiddlesticks!” exploded Mrs. -Hawks, inelegantly. They were all terribly rude to -him, poor lad, except the one who might have felt justified -in being so. “If her own mother can’t——” She -had reheated the broth on the little iron stove, and now -made a third advance, armed with spoon and saucepan. -The midwife had put the swaddled bundle on the pillow -so that it lay just beside Magnolia Ravenal’s arm. It -was she who now interrupted Mrs. Hawks, and abetted -her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How in time d’you expect to nurse,” she demanded, -“if you don’t eat!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia Ravenal didn’t know and, seemingly, didn’t -care.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A crisis was imminent. It was the moment for drama. -And it was furnished, obligingly enough, by the opening -of the door to admit the two whom Magnolia Ravenal -loved in all the world. There came first the handsome, -haggard Gaylord Ravenal, actually managing, in some -incredible way, to appear elegant, well-dressed, dapper, -at a time, under circumstances, and in a costume which -would have rendered most men unsightly, if not repulsive. -But his gifts were many, and not the least -of them was the trick of appearing sartorially and tonsorially -flawless when dishevelment and a stubble were -inevitable in any other male. Close behind him -trotted Andy Hawks, just as he had been twenty-four -hours before—wrinkled linen pants, double-breasted -blue coat, oversize visored cap, mutton-chop whiskers -and all. Together he and Ma Hawks, in her blue -brass-buttoned coat that was a twin of his, managed to -give the gathering quite a military aspect. Certainly -Mrs. Hawks’ manner was martial enough at the moment. -She raised her voice now in complaint.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Won’t touch her broth. Ain’t half as sick as she lets -on or she wouldn’t be so stubborn. Wouldn’t have the -strength to be, ’s what I say.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Gaylord Ravenal took from her the saucepan and the -spoon. The saucepan he returned to the stove. He -espied a cup on the washstand; with a glance at Captain -Andy he pointed silently to this. Andy Hawks emptied -its contents into the slop jar, rinsed it carefully, and half -filled it with the steaming hot broth. The two men -approached the bedside. There was about both a -clumsy and touching but magically effective tenderness. -Gay Ravenal slipped his left arm under the girl’s -head with its hair all spread so dank and wild on the -pillow. Captain Andy Hawks leaned forward, cup in -hand, holding it close to her mouth. With his right -hand, delicately, Gay Ravenal brought the first hot -revivifying spoonful to her mouth and let it trickle -slowly, drop by drop, through her lips. He spoke to -her as he did this, but softly, softly, so that the others -could not hear the words. Only the cadence of his -voice, and that was a caress. Another spoonful, and -another, and another. He lowered her again to the -pillow, his arm still under her head. A faint tinge of -palest pink showed under the waxen skin. She opened -her eyes; looked up at him. She adored him. Her -pain-dulled eyes even then said so. Her lips moved. -He bent closer. She was smiling almost mischievously.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Fooled them.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What’s she say?” rasped Mrs. Hawks, fearfully, for -she loved the girl.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Over his shoulder he repeated the two words she had -whispered.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh,” said Parthy Ann Hawks, and laughed. “She -means fooled ’em because it’s a girl instead of a boy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But at that Magnolia Ravenal shook her head ever so -slightly, and looked up at him again and held up one -slim forefinger and turned her eyes toward the corners -with a listening look. And in obedience he held up his -hand then, a warning for silence, though he was as -mystified as they. And in the stillness of the room you -heard the roar and howl and crash of the great river -whose flood had caught them and shaken them and -brought Magnolia Ravenal to bed ahead of her time. -And now he knew what she meant. She wasn’t thinking -of the child that lay against her arms. Her lips -moved again. He bent closer. And what she said -was:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The River.”</p> - -<div><h1>II</h1></div> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='lead-in'><span class='dropcap'>S</span>urely</span> no little girl had ever had a more fantastic -little girlhood than this Magnolia Ravenal -who had been Magnolia Hawks. By the time -she was eight she had fallen into and been fished out of -practically every river in the Mississippi Basin from the -Gulf of Mexico to Minnesota. The ordinary routine of -her life, in childhood, had been made up of doing those -things that usually are strictly forbidden the average -child. She swam muddy streams; stayed up until midnight; -read the lurid yellow-backed novels found in the -cabins of the women of the company; went to school but -rarely; caught catfish; drank river water out of the river -itself; roamed the streets of strange towns alone; learned -to strut and shuffle and buck-and-wing from the Negroes -whose black faces dotted the boards of the Southern -wharves as thickly as grace notes sprinkle a bar of lively -music. And all this despite constant watchfulness, -nagging, and admonition from her spinster-like mother; -for Parthy Ann Hawks, matron though she was, still -was one of those women who, confined as favourite wife -in the harem of a lascivious Turk, would have remained -a spinster at heart and in manner. And though she -lived on her husband’s show boat season after season, -and tried to rule it from pilot house to cook’s galley, she -was always an incongruous figure in the gay, careless -vagabond life of this band of floating players. The very -fact of her presence on the boat was a paradox. Life, -for Parthy Ann Hawks, was meant to be made up of -crisp white dimity curtains at kitchen windows; of bi-weekly -bread bakings; of Sunday morning service and -Wednesday night prayer meeting; of small gossip rolled -evilly under the tongue. The male biped, to her, was a -two-footed animal who tracked up a clean kitchen floor -just after it was scoured and smoked a pipe in defiance -of decency. Yet here she was—and had been for ten -years—leading an existence which would have made -that of the Stratford strollers seem orderly and prim by -comparison.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She had been a Massachusetts school teacher, living -with a henpecked fisherman father, and keeping house -expertly for him with one hand while she taught school -with the other. The villagers held her up as an example -of all the feminine virtues, but the young males -of the village were to be seen walking home from church -with this or that plump twitterer who might be a notoriously -bad cook but who had an undeniable way of -tying a blue sash about a tempting waist. Parthenia -Ann, prayer book clasped in mitted hands, walked -sedately home with her father. The vivacious little -Andy Hawks, drifting up into Massachusetts one -summer, on a visit to fishermen kin, had encountered -the father, and, through him, the daughter. He had -eaten her light flaky biscuit, her golden-brown fries; -her ruddy jell; her succulent pickles; her juicy pies. He -had stood in her kitchen doorway, shyly yet boldly -watching her as she moved briskly from table to stove, -from stove to pantry. The sleeves of her crisp print -dress were rolled to the elbow, and if those elbows were -not dimpled they were undeniably expert in batter-beating, -dough-kneading, pan-scouring. Her sallow -cheeks were usually a little flushed with the heat of the -kitchen and the energy of her movements, and, perhaps, -with the consciousness of the unaccustomed masculine -eye so warmly turned upon her. She looked her bustling -best, and to little impulsive warm-hearted Andy she -represented all he had ever known and dreamed, in his -roving life, of order, womanliness, comfort. She was -some years older than he. The intolerance with which -women of Parthenia Ann’s type regard all men was -heightened by this fact to something resembling contempt. -Even before their marriage, she bossed him -about much as she did her old father, but while she -nagged she also fed them toothsome viands, and the -balm of bland, well-cooked food counteracted the acid -of her words. Then, too, Nature, the old witch-wanton, -had set the yeast to working in the flabby -dough of Parthy Ann’s organism. Andy told her that -his real name was André and that he was descended, -through his mother, from a long line of Basque fisher -folk who had lived in the vicinity of St. Jean-de-Luz, -Basses-Pyrénées. It probably was true, and certainly -accounted for his swarthy skin, his bright brown eyes, -his impulsiveness, his vivacious manner. The first -time he kissed this tall, raw-boned New England woman -he was startled at the robustness with which she met -and returned the caress. They were married and went -to Illinois to live in the little town of Thebes, on the -Mississippi. In the village from which she had married -it was said that, after she left, her old father, naturally -neat and trained through years of nagging to super-neatness, -indulged in an orgy of disorder that lasted -days. As other men turn to strong drink in time of -exuberance or relief from strain, so the tidy old septuagenarian -strewed the kitchen with dirty dishes and -scummy pots and pans; slept for a week in an unmade -bed; padded in stocking feet; chewed tobacco and spat -where he pleased; smoked the lace curtains brown; -was even reported by a spying neighbour to have been -seen seated at the reedy old cottage organ whose palsied -pipes had always quavered to hymn tunes, picking out -with one gnarled forefinger the chorus of a bawdy song. -He lived one free, blissful year and died of his own cooking.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As pilot, river captain, and finally, as they thrived, -owner and captain of a steamer accommodating both -passengers and freight, Captain Andy was seldom in a -position to be guilty of tracking the white-scoured -kitchen floor or discolouring with pipe smoke the stiff -folds of the window curtains. The prim little Illinois -cottage saw him but rarely during the season when river -navigation was at its height. For many months in the -year Parthy Ann Hawks was free to lead the spinsterish -existence for which nature had so evidently planned her. -Her window panes glittered, her linen was immaculate, -her floors unsullied. When Captain Andy came home -there was constant friction between them. Sometimes -her gay, capering little husband used to look at this -woman as at a stranger. Perhaps his nervous habit of -clawing at his mutton-chop whiskers had started as a -gesture of puzzlement or despair.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The child Magnolia was not born until seven years -after their marriage. That Parthy Ann Hawks could -produce actual offspring was a miracle to give one renewed -faith in certain disputed incidents recorded in the -New Testament. The child was all Andy—manner, -temperament, colouring. Between father and daughter -there sprang up such a bond of love and understanding -as to make their relation a perfect thing, and so sturdy -as successfully to defy even the destructive forces bent -upon it by Mrs. Hawks. Now the little captain came -home whenever it was physically possible, sacrificing -time, sleep, money—everything but the safety of his -boat and its passengers—for a glimpse of the child’s -piquant face, her gay vivacious manner, her smile that -wrung you even then.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was years before Captain Andy could persuade his -wife to take a river trip with him on his steamer down to -New Orleans and back again, bringing the child. It -was, of course, only a ruse for having the girl with him. -River captains’ wives were not popular on the steamers -their husbands commanded. And Parthy Ann, from -that first trip, proved a terror. It was due only to tireless -threats, pleadings, blandishments, and actual bribes -on the part of Andy that his crew did not mutiny daily. -Half an hour after embarking on that first trip, Parthy -Ann poked her head into the cook’s galley and told him -the place was a disgrace. The cook was a woolly-headed -black with a rolling protuberant eye and the -quick temper of his calling.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Furthermore, though a capable craftsman, and in -good standing on the river boats, he had come aboard -drunk, according to time-honoured custom; not drunk -to the point of being quarrelsome or incompetent, but -entertaining delusions of grandeur, varied by ominous -spells of sullen silence. In another twelve hours, and -for the remainder of the trip, he would be sober and -himself. Captain Andy knew this, understood him, was -satisfied with him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Now one of his minions was seated on an upturned -pail just outside the door, peeling a great boiler full of -potatoes with almost magic celerity and very little -economy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Parthy Ann’s gimlet eye noted the plump peelings -as they fell in long spirals under the sharp blade. She -lost no time.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, I declare! Of all the shameful waste I ever -clapped my eyes on, that’s the worst.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The black at the stove turned to face her, startled -and uncomprehending. Visitors were not welcome in -the cook’s galley. He surveyed without enthusiasm -the lean figure with the long finger pointing accusingly -at a quite innocent pan of potato parings.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Wha’ that you say, missy?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t you missy me!” snapped Parthy Ann Hawks. -“And what I said was that I never saw such criminal -waste as those potato parings. An inch thick if they’re -a speck, and no decent cook would allow it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A simple, ignorant soul, the black man, and a somewhat -savage; as mighty in his small domain as Captain -Andy in his larger one. All about him now were his -helpers, black men like himself, with rolling eyes and -great lips all too ready to gash into grins if this hard-visaged -female intruder were to worst him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yo-all passenger on this boat, missy?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Parthy Ann surveyed disdainfully the galley’s interior, -cluttered with the disorder attendant on the -preparation of the noonday meal.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Passenger! H’mph! No, I’m not. And passenger -or no passenger, a filthier hole I never saw in my -born days. I’ll let you know that I shall make it my -business to report this state of things to the Captain. -Good food going to waste——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A red light seemed to leap then from the big Negro’s -eyeballs. His lips parted in a kind of savage and mirthless -grin, so that you saw his great square gleaming teeth -and the blue gums above them. Quick as a panther he -reached down with one great black paw into the pan -of parings, straightened, and threw the mass, wet and -slimy as it was, full at her. The spirals clung and curled -about her—on her shoulders, around her neck, in the -folds of her gown, on her head, Medusa-like.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They’s something for you take to the Captain to -show him, missy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He turned sombrely back to his stove. The other -blacks were little less grave than he. They sensed -something sinister in the fury with which this garbage-hung -figure ran screaming to the upper deck. The -scene above decks must have been a harrowing one.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They put him off at Memphis and shipped another -cook there, and the big Negro, thoroughly sobered now, -went quite meekly down the gangplank and up the -levee, his carpet bag in hand. In fact, it was said that, -when he had learned it was the Captain’s wife whom -he had treated thus, he had turned a sort of ashen gray -and had tried to jump overboard and swim ashore. -The gay little Captain Andy was a prime favourite with -his crew. Shamefaced though the Negro was, there -appeared something akin to pity in the look he turned on -Captain Andy as he was put ashore. If that was true, -then the look on the little captain’s face as he regarded -the miscreant was certainly born of an inward and badly -concealed admiration. It was said, too, but never -verified, that something round and gold and gleaming -was seen to pass from the Captain’s hairy little brown -hand to the big black paw.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For the remainder of the trip Mrs. Hawks constituted -herself a sort of nightmarish housekeeper, prowling from -corridor to cabins, from dining saloon to pantry. She -made life wretched for the pert yellow wenches who -performed the cabin chamber-work. She pounced -upon them when they gathered in little whispering -groups, gossiping. Thin-lipped and baleful of eye, she -withered the very words they were about to utter to a -waiter or deck-hand, so that the flowers of coquetry -became ashes on their tongues. She regarded the -female passengers with suspicion and the males with -contempt. This was the latter ’70s, and gambling was as -much a part of river-boat life as eating and drinking. -Professional gamblers often infested the boats. It was -no uncommon sight to see a poker game that had started -in the saloon in the early evening still in progress when -sunrise reddened the river. It was the day of the -flowing moustache, the broad-brimmed hat, the open-faced -collar, and the diamond stud. It constituted -masculine America’s last feeble flicker of the picturesque -before he sank for ever into the drab ashes of uniformity. -A Southern gentleman, particularly, clad thus, took on -a dashing and dangerous aspect. The rakish angle -of the hat with its curling brim, the flowing ends of the -string tie, the movement of the slender virile fingers -as they stroked the moustache, all were things to thrill -the feminine beholder. Even that frigid female, -Parthenia Ann Hawks, must have known a little flutter -of the senses as she beheld these romantic and—according -to her standards—dissolute passengers seated, -silent, wary, pale, about the gaming table. But in her -stern code, that which thrilled was wicked. She -belonged to the tribe of the Knitting Women; of the -Salem Witch Burners; of all fanatics who count nature -as an enemy to be suppressed; and in whose veins the -wine of life runs vinegar. If the deep seepage of Parthy -Ann’s mind could have been brought to the surface, -it would have analyzed chemically thus: “I find these -men beautiful, stirring, desirable. But that is an -abomination. I must not admit to myself that I am -affected thus. Therefore I think and I say that they -are disgusting, ridiculous, contemptible.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her attitude was somewhat complicated by the fact -that, as wife of the steamer’s captain, she was treated -with a courtly deference on the part of these very -gentlemen whom she affected to despise; and with a -gracious cordiality by their ladies. The Southern men, -especially, gave an actual effect of plumes on their -wide-brimmed soft hats as they bowed and addressed -her in their soft drawling vernacular.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, ma’am, and how are you enjoying your trip -on your good husband’s magnificent boat?” It sounded -much richer and more flattering as they actually said it. -“. . . Yo’ trip on yo’ good husband’s ma-a-a-yg-nif’cent -. . .” They gave one the feeling that they -were really garbed in satin, sword, red heels, lace ruffles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Parthenia Ann, whose stays always seemed, somehow, -to support her form more stiffly than did those of any -other female, would regard her inquirers with a cold and -fishy eye.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The boat’s well enough, I suppose. But what with -the carousing by night and the waste by day, a Christian -soul can hardly look on at it without feeling that some -dreadful punishment will overtake us all before we arrive -at the end of our journey.” From her tone you -would almost have gathered that she hoped it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He of the broad-brimmed hat, and his bustled, -basqued alpaca lady, would perhaps exchange a glance -not altogether amused. Collisions, explosions, snag-founderings -were all too common in the river traffic of -the day to risk this deliberate calling down of wrath.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Moving away, the soft-tongued Southern voices -would be found to be as effective in vituperation as in -flattery. “Pole cat!” he of the phantom plumes would -say, aside, to his lady.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Fortunately, Parthy Ann’s dour misgivings did not -materialize. The trip downstream proved a delightful -one, and as tranquil as might be with Mrs. Hawks on -board. Captain Andy’s steamer, though by no means -as large as some of the so-called floating palaces that -plied the Mississippi, was known for the excellence of its -table, the comfort of its appointments, and the affability -of its crew. So now the passengers endured the irritation -of Mrs. Hawks’ presence under the balm of -appetizing food and good-natured service. The crew -suffered her nagging for the sake of the little captain, -whom they liked and respected; and for his wages, -which were generous.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Though Parthenia Ann Hawks regarded the great -river—if, indeed, she noticed it at all—merely as a -moist highway down which one travelled with ease to -New Orleans; untouched by its mystery, unmoved by its -majesty, unsubdued by its sinister power, she must -still, in spite of herself, have come, however faintly and -remotely, under the spell of its enchantment. For -this trip proved, for her, to be the first of many, and led, -finally, to her spending seven months out of the twelve, -not only on the Mississippi, but on the Ohio, the Missouri, -the Kanawha, the Big Sandy. Indeed, her liking -for the river life, together with her zeal for reforming it, -became so marked that in time river travellers began to -show a preference for steamers other than Captain -Andy’s, excellently though they fared thereon.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Perhaps the attitude of the lady passengers toward -the little captain and the manner of the little captain as -he addressed the lady passengers did much to feed the -flame of Parthy Ann’s belligerence. Until the coming -of Andy Hawks she had found favour in no man’s eyes. -Cut in the very pattern of spinsterhood, she must -actually have had moments of surprise and even incredulity -at finding herself a wife and mother. The -art of coquetry was unknown to her; because the soft -blandishments of love had early been denied her she -now repudiated them as sinful; did her hair in a knob; -eschewed flounces; assumed a severe demeanour; and -would have been the last to understand that any one of -these repressions was a confession. All about her—and -Captain Andy—on the steamship were captivating -females, full of winning wiles; wives of Southern planters; -cream-skinned Creoles from New Orleans, indolent, -heavy-lidded, bewitching; or women folk of prosperous -Illinois or Iowa merchants, lawyers, or manufacturers -making a pleasure jaunt of the Southern business trip -with husband or father.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And, “Oh, Captain Hawks!” they said; and, “Oh, -Captain Andy! Do come here like a nice man and tell -us what it means when that little bell rings so fast? -. . . And why do they call it the hurricane deck? -. . . Oh, Captain Hawks, is that a serpent tattooed -on the back of your hand! I declare it is! Look, -Emmaline! Emmaline, look! This naughty Captain -Andy has a serpent . . .”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Captain Andy’s social deportment toward women was -made up of that most devastating of combinations, a -deferential manner together with an audacious tongue. -A tapering white finger, daringly tracing a rosy nail -over the blue coils of the tattooed serpent, would find -itself gently imprisoned beneath the hard little brown -paw that was Andy’s free hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“After this,” the little captain would say, thoughtfully, -“it won’t be long before that particular tattoo will -be entirely worn away. Yes, ma’am! No more serpent.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But why?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Erosion, ma’am.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“E—but I don’t understand. I’m so stupid. I——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Meltingly, the wicked little monkey, “I’ll be so often -kissing the spot your lovely finger has traced, ma’am.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh-h-h-h!” A smart tap of rebuke with her palm-leaf -fan. “You <span class='it'>are</span> a saucy thing. Emmaline, did you -hear what this wicked captain said!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Much of the freedom that Magnolia enjoyed on this -first trip she owed to her mother’s quivering preoccupation -with these vivacious ladies.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>If the enchantment of the river had been insidious -enough to lure even Mrs. Hawks, certainly the child -Magnolia fell completely under its magic spell. From -that first trip on the Mississippi she was captive in its -coils. Twenty times daily, during that leisurely journey -from St. Louis to New Orleans, Mrs. Hawks dragged her -child, squirming and protesting, from the pilot house -perched atop the steamer or from the engine room in its -bowels. Refurbished, the grime removed from face and -hands, dressed in a clean pinafore, she was thumped on -one of the red-plush fauteuils of the gaudy saloon. -Magnolia’s hair was almost black and without a vestige -of natural curl. This last was a great cross to Mrs. -Hawks, who spent hours wetting and twining the long -dank strands about her forefinger with a fine-toothed -comb in an unconvincing attempt to make a swan out of -her duckling. The rebellious little figure stood clamped -between her mother’s relentless knees. Captured -thus, and made fresh, her restless feet in their clean -white stockings and little strapped black slippers -sticking straight out before her, her starched skirts -stiffly spread, she was told to conduct herself as a young -lady of her years and high position should.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Listen to the conversation of the ladies and gentlemen -about you,” Mrs. Hawks counselled her, severely, -“instead of to the low talk of those greasy engineers and -pilots you’re always running off to. I declare I don’t -know what your father is thinking of, to allow it. -. . . Or read your book. . . . Then where is it? -Where is the book I bought you especially to read on -this trip? You haven’t opened it, I’ll be bound. -. . . Go get it and come back directly.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A prissy tale about a female Rollo so prim that Magnolia -was sure she turned her toes out even in her sleep. -When she returned with a book (if she returned at all) it -was likely to be of a quite different sort—a blood-curdling -tale of the old days of river banditry—a story, perhaps, -of the rapacious and brutal Murrel and his following of -ten hundred cut-throats sworn to do his evil will; and -compared to whom Jesse James was a philanthropist. -The book would have been loaned her by one of the -crew. She adored these bloody tales and devoured -them with the avidity that she always showed for any -theme that smacked of the river. It was snatched -away soon enough when it came under her mother’s -watchful eye.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia loathed the red plush and gilt saloon except -at night, when its gilding and mirrors took on a false -glitter and richness from the kerosene lamps that filled -wall brackets and chandeliers. Then it was that the -lady passengers, their daytime alpacas and serges -replaced by silks, sat genteelly conversing, reading, or -embroidering. Then, if ever, the gentlemen twirled -their mustachios most fiercely so that the diamond on -the third finger of the right hand sparkled entrancingly. -Magnolia derived a sensory satisfaction from the scene. -The rich red of the carpet fed her, and the yellow glow of -the lamps. In her best cashmere dress of brown with -the polonaise cut up the front and around the bottom -in deep turrets she sat alertly watching the elaborate -posturings of the silken ladies and the broadcloth -gentlemen.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Sometimes one of the ladies sang to the hoarse accompaniment -of the ship’s piano, whose tones always -sounded as though the Mississippi River mist had -lodged permanently in its chords. The Southern ladies -rendered tinkling and sentimental ballads. The Mid-western -wives were wont to deliver themselves of songs -of a somewhat sterner stuff. There was one song in -particular, sung by a plain and falsetto lady hailing -from Iowa, that aroused in Magnolia a savage (though -quite reasoning) loathing. It was entitled Waste Not, -Want Not; Or: You Never Miss The Water Till The -Well Runs Dry. Not being a psychologist, Magnolia -did not know why, during the rendition of the first -verse and the chorus, she always longed to tear her best -dress into ribbons and throw a barrel of flour and a -dozen hams into the river. The song ran:</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>            When a child I lived at Lincoln,</p> -<p class='line0'>            With my parents at the farm,</p> -<p class='line0'>            The lessons that my mother taught,</p> -<p class='line0'>            To me were quite a charm.</p> -<p class='line0'>            She would often take me on her knee,</p> -<p class='line0'>            When tired of childish play,</p> -<p class='line0'>            And as she press’d me to her breast,</p> -<p class='line0'>            I’ve heard my mother say:</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -</div> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Chorus: Waste not, want not, is a maxim I would teach——</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>Escape to the decks or the pilot house was impossible -of accomplishment by night. She extracted what -savour she could from the situation. This, at least, -was better than being sent off to bed. All her disorderly -life Magnolia went to bed only when all else failed. -Then, too, once in her tiny cabin she could pose and -swoop before the inadequate mirror in pitiless imitation -of the arch alpacas and silks of the red plush saloon; -tapping an imaginary masculine shoulder with a phantom -fan; laughing in an elegant falsetto; grimacing -animatedly as she squeaked, “Deah, yes!” and “Deah, -no!” moistening a forelock of her straight black hair -with a generous dressing of saliva wherewith to paste -flat to her forehead the modish spit-curl that graced the -feminine adult coiffure.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But during the day she and her father often contrived -to elude the maternal duenna. With her hand in that -of the little captain, she roamed the boat from stem to -stern, from bunkers to pilot house. Down in the engine -room she delightedly heard the sweating engineer -denounce the pilot, decks above him, as a goddam -Pittsburgh brass pounder because that monarch, to -achieve a difficult landing, had to ring more bells than -the engineer below thought necessary to an expert. -But best of all Magnolia loved the bright, gay, glass-enclosed -pilot house high above the rest of the boat and -reached by the ultimate flight of steep narrow stairs. -From this vantage point you saw the turbulent flood of -the Mississippi, a vast yellow expanse, spread before you -and all around you; for ever rushing ahead of you, no -matter how fast you travelled; sometimes whirling -about in its own tracks to turn and taunt you with your -unwieldy ponderosity; then leaping on again. Sometimes -the waters widened like a sea so that one could -not discern the dim shadow of the farther shore; again -they narrowed, snake-like, crawling so craftily that the -side-wheeler boomed through the chutes with the willows -brushing the decks. You never knew what lay -ahead of you—that is, Magnolia never knew. That -was part of the fascination of it. The river curved and -twisted and turned and doubled. Mystery always lay -just around the corner of the next bend. But her -father knew. And Mr. Pepper, the chief pilot, always -knew. You couldn’t believe that it was possible for -any human brain to remember the things that Captain -Andy and Mr. Pepper knew about that treacherous, -shifting, baffling river. Magnolia delighted to test -them. She played a game with Mr. Pepper and with -her father, thus:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What’s next?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Kinney’s woodpile.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now what?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ealer’s Bend.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What’ll be there, when we come round that corner?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Patrie’s Plantation.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What’s around that bend?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“An old cottonwood with one limb hanging down, -struck by lightning.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What’s coming now?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A stump sticking out of the water at Higgin’s Point.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They always were right. It was magic. It was incredible. -They knew, too, the depth of the water. -They could point out a spot and say, “That used to be -an island—Buckle’s Island.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But it’s water! It couldn’t be an island. It’s -water. We’re—why, we’re riding on it now.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mr. Pepper would persist, unmoved. “Used to be -an island.” Or, pointing again, “Two years ago I took -her right down through there where that point lays.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But it’s dry land. You’re just fooling, aren’t you, -Mr. Pepper? Because you couldn’t take a boat on dry -land. It’s got things growing on it! Little trees, even. -So how could you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Water there two years ago—good eleven foot.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Small wonder Magnolia was early impressed with -this writhing monster that, with a single lash of its -tail, could wipe a solid island from the face of the earth, -or with a convulsion of its huge tawny body spew up a -tract of land where only water had been.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mr. Pepper had respect for his river. “Yessir, -the Mississippi and this here Nile, over in Egypt, they’re -a couple of old demons. I ain’t seen the Nile River, -myself. Don’t expect to. This old river’s enough for -one man to meet up with in his life. Like marrying. -Get to learn one woman’s ways real good, you know -about all there is to women and you got about all you -can do one lifetime.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Not at all the salty old graybeard pilot of fiction, -this Mr. Pepper. A youth of twenty-four, nerveless, -taciturn, gentle, profane, charming. His clear brown -eyes, gazing unblinkingly out upon the river, had tiny -golden flecks in them, as though something of the river -itself had taken possession of him, and become part of -him. Born fifty years later, he would have been the -steel stuff of which aviation aces are made.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Sometimes, in deep water, Mr. Pepper actually permitted -Magnolia to turn the great pilot wheel that -measured twice as high as she. He stood beside her, of -course; or her father, if he chanced to be present, stood -behind her. It was thrilling, too, when her father took -the wheel in an exciting place—where the water was -very shoal, perhaps; or where the steamer found a stiff -current pushing behind her, and the tricky dusk coming -on. At first it puzzled Magnolia that her father, -omnipotent in all other parts of the <span class='it'>Creole Belle</span>, should -defer to this stripling; should actually be obliged, on -his own steamer, to ask permission of the pilot to take -the wheel. They were both beautifully formal and -polite about it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What say to my taking her a little spell, Mr. Pepper?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not at all, Captain Hawks. Not at all, sir,” Mr. -Pepper would reply, cordially if ambiguously. His -gesture as he stepped aside and relinquished the wheel -was that of one craftsman who recognizes and respects -the ability of another. Andy Hawks had been a crack -Mississippi River pilot in his day. And then to watch -Captain Andy skinning the wheel—climbing it round -and round, hands and feet, and looking for all the world -like a talented little monkey.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia even learned to distinguish the bells by -tone. There was the Go Ahead, soprano-voiced. Mr. -Pepper called it the Jingle. He explained to Magnolia:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“When I give the engineer the Jingle, why, he knows -I mean for him to give her all she’s got.” Strangely -enough, the child, accustomed to the sex of boats and -with an uncannily quick comprehension of river jargon, -understood him, nodded her head so briskly that the -hand-made curls jerked up and down like bell-ropes. -“Sometimes it’s called the Soprano. Then the Centre -Bell—the Stopping Bell—that’s middle tone. About -alto. This here, that’s the Astern Bell—the backup -bell. That’s bass. The Boom-Boom, you call it. -Here’s how you can remember them: The Jingle, the -Alto, and the Boom-Boom.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A charming medium through which to know the river, -Mr. Pepper. An enchanting place from which to view -the river, that pilot house. Magnolia loved its shining -orderliness, disorderly little creature that she was. The -wilderness of water and woodland outside made its -glass-enclosed cosiness seem the snugger. Oilcloth on -the floor. You opened the drawer of the little table -and there lay Mr. Pepper’s pistol, glittering and -sinister; and Mr. Pepper’s Pilot Rules. Magnolia -lingered over the title printed on the brick-coloured -paper binding:</p> - -<div class='lgc' style='margin-top:1em;margin-bottom:1em;'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<p class='line'>PILOT RULES</p> -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:.8em;'>FOR THE</p> -<p class='line'>RIVERS WHOSE WATERS FLOW INTO THE GULF OF</p> -<p class='line'>MEXICO AND THEIR TRIBUTARIES</p> -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:.8em;'>AND FOR</p> -<p class='line'>THE RED RIVER OF THE NORTH</p> -</div> <!-- end rend --> - -<p class='noindent'>The Red River of the North! There was something in -the words that thrilled her; sent little delicious prickles -up and down her spine.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There was a bright brass cuspidor. The expertness -with which Mr. Pepper and, for that matter, Captain -Hawks himself, aimed for the centre of this glittering -receptacle and sustained a one-hundred-per-cent. -record was as fascinating as any other feature of this -delightful place. Visitors were rarely allowed up there. -Passengers might peer wistfully through the glass enclosure -from the steps below, but there they were confronted -by a stern and forbidding sign which read: -No Visitors Allowed. Magnolia felt very superior and -slightly contemptuous as she looked down from her -vantage point upon these unfortunates below. Sometimes, -during mid-watch, a very black texas-tender in a -very white starched apron would appear with coffee -and cakes or ices for Mr. Pepper. Magnolia would have -an ice, too, shaving it very fine to make it last; licking -the spoon luxuriously with little lightning flicks of her -tongue and letting the frozen sweet slide, a slow delicious -trickle, down her grateful throat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Have another cake, Miss Magnolia,” Mr. Pepper -would urge her. “A pink one, I’d recommend, this -time.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t hardly think my mother——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mr. Pepper, himself, surprisingly enough, the father -of twins, was sure her mother would have no objection; -would, if present, probably encourage the suggestion. -Magnolia bit quickly into the pink cake. A wild sense -of freedom flooded her. She felt like the river, rushing -headlong on her way.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>To be snatched from this ecstatic state was agony. -The shadow of the austere and disapproving maternal -figure loomed always just around the corner. At any -moment it might become reality. The knowledge that -this was so made Magnolia’s first taste of Mississippi -River life all the more delicious.</p> - -<div><h1>III</h1></div> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='lead-in'><span class='dropcap'>G</span>rim</span> force though she was, it would be absurd to -fix upon Parthy Ann Hawks as the sole engine -whose relentless functioning cut down the -profits of Captain Andy’s steamboat enterprise. That -other metal monster, the railroad, with its swift-turning -wheels and its growing network of lines, was weaving -the doom of river traffic. The Prince Albert coats -and the alpaca basques were choosing a speedier, if less -romantic, way to travel from Natchez to Memphis, -or from Cairo to Vicksburg. Illinois, Minnesota, and -Iowa business men were favouring a less hazardous -means of transporting their merchandise. Farmers -were freighting their crops by land instead of water. -The river steamboat was fast becoming an anachronism. -The jig, Captain Andy saw, was up. Yet the -river was inextricably interwoven with his life—was his -life, actually. He knew no other background, was -happy in no other surroundings, had learned no other -trade. These streams, large and small of the North, the -Mid-west, the South, with their harsh yet musical -Indian names—Kaskaskia, Cahokia, Yazoo, Monongahela, -Kanawha—he knew in every season: their -currents, depths, landings, banks, perils. The French -strain in him on the distaff side did not save him from -pronouncing the foreign names of Southern rivers as -murderously as did the other rivermen. La Fourche -was the Foosh. Bayou Teche was Bayo Tash. As -for names such as Plaquemine, Paincourteville, and -Thibodaux—they emerged mutilated beyond recognition, -with entire syllables lopped off, and flat vowels -protruding everywhere. Anything else would have -been considered affected.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Captain Andy thought only in terms of waterways. -Despite the prim little house in Thebes, home, to Andy, -was a boat. Towns and cities were to him mere sources -of supplies and passengers, set along the river banks -for the convenience of steamboats. He knew every -plank in every river-landing from St. Paul to Baton -Rouge. As the sky is revealed, a printed page, to the -astronomer, so Andy Hawks knew and interpreted every -reef, sand bar, current, and eddy in the rivers that -drained the great Mississippi Basin. And of these he -knew best of all the Mississippi herself. He loved her, -feared her, respected her. Now her courtiers and lovers -were deserting her, one by one, for an iron-throated, -great-footed, brazen-voiced hussy. Andy, among the -few, remained true.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>To leave the river—to engage, perforce, in some -landlubberly pursuit was to him unthinkable. On the -rivers he was a man of consequence. As a captain and -pilot of knowledge and experience his opinion was deferred -to. Once permanently ashore, penduluming prosaically -between the precise little household and some -dull town job, he would degenerate and wither until -inevitably he who now was Captain Andy Hawks, -owner and master of the steamboat <span class='it'>Creole Belle</span>, would -be known merely as the husband of Parthy Ann Hawks, -that Mistress of the Lace Curtains, Priestess of the -Parlour Carpet, and Keeper of the Kitchen Floor. All -this he did not definitely put into words; but he sensed -it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He cast about in his alert mind, and made his plans -craftily, and put them warily, for he knew the force of -Parthenia’s opposition.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I see here where old Ollie Pegram’s fixing to sell -his show boat.” He was seated in the kitchen, smoking -his pipe and reading the local newspaper. “<span class='it'>Cotton -Blossom</span>, she’s called.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Parthy Ann was not one to simulate interest where -she felt none. Bustling between stove and pantry she -only half heard him. “Well, what of it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Captain Andy rattled the sheet he was holding, -turned a page leisurely, meanwhile idly swinging one -leg, as he sat with knees crossed. Each movement was -calculated to give the effect of casualness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Made a fortune in the show-boat business, Ollie has. -Ain’t a town on the river doesn’t wait for the <span class='it'>Cotton -Blossom</span>. Yessir. Anybody buys that outfit is walking -into money.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Scallywags.” Thus, succinctly, Parthenia thought -to dismiss the subject while voicing her opinion of -water thespians.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Scallywags nothing! Some of the finest men on the -river in the show-boat business. Look at Pegram! -Look at Finnegan! Look at Hosey Watts!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was Mrs. Hawks’ habit to express contempt by -reference to a ten-foot pole, this being an imaginary -implement of disdain and a weapon of defence which was -her Excalibur. She now announced that not only -would she decline to look at the above-named gentlemen, -but that she could not be induced to touch any of -them with a ten-foot pole. She concluded with the -repetitious “Scallywags!” and evidently considered the -subject closed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Two days later, the first pang of suspicion darted -through her when Andy renewed the topic with an -assumption of nonchalance that failed to deceive her -this time. It was plain to this astute woman that he -had been thinking concentratedly about show boats -since their last brief conversation. It was at supper. -Andy should have enjoyed his home-cooked meals more -than he actually did. They always were hot, punctual, -palatable. Parthenia had kept her cooking hand. -Yet he often ate abstractedly and unappreciatively. -Perhaps he missed the ceremony, the animation, the -sociability that marked the meal hours in the dining -saloon of the <span class='it'>Creole Belle</span>. The Latin in him, and -the unconsciously theatrical in him, loved the mental -picture of himself in his blue coat with brass buttons -and gold braid, seated at the head of the long table -while the alpacas twittered, “Do you think so, Captain -Hawks?” and the Prince Alberts deferred to him with, -“What’s your opinion, sir?” and the soft-spoken black -stewards in crackling white jackets bent over him with -steaming platters and tureens.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Parthenia did not hold with conversation at meal -time. Andy and Magnolia usually carried on such talk -as occurred at table. Strangely enough, there was in -his tone toward the child none of the usual patronizing -attitude of the adult. No what-did-you-learn-at-school; -no have-you-been-a-good-girl-to-day. They -conversed like two somewhat rowdy grown-ups, constantly -chafed by the reprovals of the prim Parthenia. -It was a habit of Andy seldom to remain seated in his -chair throughout a meal. Perhaps this was due to the -fact that he frequently was called away from table while -in command of his steamer. At home his jumpiness -was a source of great irritation to Mrs. Hawks. Her -contributions to the conversation varied little.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Pity’s sake, Hawks, sit still! That’s the third -time you’ve been up and down, and supper not five -minutes on the table. . . . Eat your potato, -Magnolia, or not a bite of cup cake do you get. . . . -That’s a fine story to be telling a child, I must say, Andy -Hawks. . . . Can’t you talk of anything but a lot -of good-for-nothing drunken river roustabouts! . . . -Drink your milk, Maggie. . . . Oh, stop fidgeting, -Hawks! . . . Don’t cut away all the fat like that, -Magnolia. No wonder you’re so skinny I’m ashamed -of you and the neighbours think you don’t get enough to -eat.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Like a swarm of maddening mosquitoes, these admonitions -buzzed through and above and around the -conversation of the man and the child.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>To-night Andy’s talk dwelt on a dramatic incident -that had been told him that day by the pilot of the show -boat <span class='it'>New Sensation</span>, lately burned to the water’s edge. -He went on vivaciously, his bright brown eyes sparkling -with interest and animation. Now and then, he -jumped up from the table the better to illustrate a -situation. Magnolia was following his every word and -gesture with spellbound attention. She never had been -permitted to see a show-boat performance. When one -of these gay water travellers came prancing down the -river, band playing, calliope tooting, flags flying, -towboat puffing, bringing up with a final flare and -flourish at the landing, there to tie up for two or three -days, or even, sometimes, for a week, Magnolia was -admonished not to go near it. Other children of the -town might swarm over it by day, enchanted by its -mystery, enthralled by its red-coated musicians when -the band marched up the main street; might even, at -night, witness the performance of a play and actually -stay for the song-and-dance numbers which comprised -the “concert” held after the play, and for which an -additional charge of fifteen cents was made.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia hungered for a glimpse of these forbidden -delights. The little white house at Thebes commanded -a view up the river toward Cape Girardeau. At night -from her bedroom window she could see the lights shining -golden yellow through the boat’s many windows, -was fired with excitement at sight of the kerosene flares -stuck in the river bank to light the way of the lucky, -could actually hear the beat and blare of the band. -Again and again, in her very early childhood, the -spring nights when the show boats were headed downstream -and the autumn nights when they were returning -up river were stamped indelibly on her mind as she -knelt in her nightgown at the little window of the dark -room that faced the river with its dazzling and forbidden -spectacle. Her bare feet would be as icy as her -cheeks were hot. Her ears were straining to catch the -jaunty strains of the music, and her eyes tried to discern -the faces that passed under the weird glow of the torch -flares. Usually she did not hear the approaching -tread of discovery until the metallic, “Magnolia Hawks, -get into your bed this very minute!” smote cruelly on -her entranced ears. Sometimes she glimpsed men -and women of the show-boat troupe on Front Street -or Third Street, idling or shopping. Occasionally you -saw them driving in a rig hired from Deffler’s Livery -Stable. They were known to the townspeople as Show -Folks, and the term carried with it the sting of opprobrium. -You could mark them by something different -in their dress, in their faces, in the way they walked. -The women were not always young. Magnolia noticed -that often they were actually older than her mother -(Parthy was then about thirty-nine). Yet they looked -lively and somehow youthful, though their faces bore -wrinkles. There was about them a certain care-free -gaiety, a jauntiness. They looked, Magnolia decided, -as if they had just come from some interesting place and -were going to another even more interesting. This was -rather shrewd of her. She had sensed that the dulness -of village and farm life, the look that routine, drudgery, -and boredom stamp indelibly on the countenance of the -farm woman or the village housewife, were absent in -these animated and often odd faces. Once she had -encountered a little group of three—two women and a -man—strolling along the narrow plank sidewalk near -the Hawks house. They were eating fruit out of a bag, -sociably, and spitting out the seeds, and laughing and -chatting and dawdling. One of the women was young -and very pretty, and her dress, Magnolia thought, was -the loveliest she had ever seen. Its skirt of navy blue -was kilted in the back, and there were puffs up each side -edged with passementerie. On her head, at a saucy -angle, was a chip bonnet of blue, trimmed with beaded -lace, and ribbon, and adorable pink roses. The other -woman was much older. There were queer deep lines -in her face—not wrinkles, though Magnolia could not -know this, but the scars left when the gashes of experience -have healed. Her eyes were deep, and dark, -and dead. She was carelessly dressed, and the box-pleated -tail of her flounced black gown trailed in the -street, so that it was filmed with a gray coating of dust. -The veil wound round her bonnet hung down her back, -imparting a Spanish and mysterious look. The man, -too, though young and tall and not bad-looking, wore an -unkempt look. His garments were ill assorted. His -collar boasted no cravat. But all three had a charming -air of insouciance as they strolled up the tree-shaded -village street, laughing and chatting and munching -and spitting out cherry stones with a little childish -ballooning of the cheeks. Magnolia hung on the Hawks -fence gate and stared. The older woman caught her -eye and smiled, and immediately Magnolia decided -that she liked her better than she did the pretty, young -one, so after a moment’s grave inspection she smiled -in return her sudden, brilliant wide smile.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Look at that child,” said the older woman. “All of -a sudden she’s beautiful.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The other two surveyed her idly. Magnolia’s smile -had vanished now. They saw a scrawny sallow little -girl, big-eyed, whose jaw conformation was too plainly -marked, whose forehead was too high and broad, and -whose black hair deceived no one into believing that its -dank curls were other than tortured.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’re crazy, Julie,” remarked the pretty girl, without -heat; and looked away, uninterested.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But between Magnolia and the older woman a filament -of live liking had leaped. “Hello, little girl,” -said the older woman.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia continued to stare, gravely; said nothing.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Won’t you say hello to me?” the woman persisted; -and smiled again. And again Magnolia returned her -smile. “There!” the woman exclaimed, in triumph. -“What did I tell you!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Cat’s got her tongue,” the sloppy young man remarked -as his contribution to the conversation.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, come on,” said the pretty girl; and popped -another cherry into her mouth.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But the woman persisted. She addressed Magnolia -gravely. “When you grow up, don’t smile too often; -but smile whenever you want anything very much, or -like any one, or want them to like you. But I guess -maybe you’ll learn that without my telling you. . . . -Listen, won’t you say hello to me? H’m?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia melted. “I’m not allowed,” she explained.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not——? Why not? Pity’s sake!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Because you’re show-boat folks. My mama won’t -let me talk to show-boat folks.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Damned little brat,” said the pretty girl, and spat -out a cherry stone. The man laughed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>With a lightning gesture the older woman took off -her hat, stuffed it under the man’s arm, twisted her -abundant hair into a knob off her face, pulled down her -mouth and made a narrow line of her lips, brought -her elbows sharply to her side, her hands clasped, her -shoulders suddenly pinched.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Your mama looks like this,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why, how did you know!” cried Magnolia, amazed. -The three burst into sudden loud laughter. And at -that Parthy Hawks appeared at the door, bristling, -protective.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Maggie Hawks, come into the house this minute!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The laughter of the three then was redoubled. The -quiet little village street rang with it as they continued -their leisurely care-free ramble up the sun-dappled leafy -path.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Now her father, at supper, had a tale to tell of these -forbidden fascinators. The story had been told him -that afternoon by Hard Harry Swager, river pilot, just -in at the landing after a thrilling experience.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Seems they were playing at China Grove, on the -Chappelia. Yessir. Well, this girl—La Verne, her -name was, or something—anyway, she was on the stage -singing, he says. It was the concert, after the show. -She comes off and the next thing you know there’s a -little blaze in the flies. Next minute she was afire and -no saving her.” To one less initiated it might have been -difficult to differentiate in his use of the pronoun, third -person, feminine. Sometimes he referred to the girl, -sometimes to the boat. “Thirty years old if she’s a day -and burns like greased paper. Went up in ten minutes. -Hard Harry goes running to the pilot house to get his -clothes. Time he reaches the boiler deck, fire has cut -off the gangway. He tries to lower himself twelve -feet from the boiler deck to the main, and falls and -breaks his leg. By that time they were cutting the towboat -away from the <span class='it'>Sensation</span> to save her. Did save her, -too, finally. But the <span class='it'>Sensation</span> don’t last long’s it takes -to tell it. Well, there he was, and what did they have -to do but send four miles inland for a doctor, and when -he comes, the skunk, guess what?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What!” cries Magnolia not merely to be obliging in -this dramatic crisis, but because she is frantic to know. -Captain Andy is on his feet by this time, fork in hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“When the doc comes he takes a look around, and -there they all are in any kind of clothes they could grab -or had on. So he says he won’t set the leg unless he’s -paid in advance, twenty-five dollars. ‘Oh, you won’t, -won’t you!’ says Hard Harry, laying there with his -broken leg. And draws. ‘You’ll set it or I’ll shoot -yours off so you won’t ever walk again, you son of a -bitch!’ ”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Captain Andy Hawks!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He has acted it out. The fork is his gun. Magnolia -is breathless. Now both gaze, stricken, at Mrs. Hawks. -Their horror is not occasioned by the word spoken but -by the interruption.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Go on!” shouts Magnolia; and bounces up and -down in her chair. “Go <span class='it'>on</span>!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But the first fine histrionic flavour has been poisoned -by that interruption. Andy takes his seat at table. -He resumes the eating of his pork steak and potatoes, but -listlessly. Perhaps he is a little ashamed of the extent -to which he has been carried away by his own recital. -“Slipped out,” he mumbled.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, I should say as much!” Parthy retorted, -ambiguously. “What kind of language can a body -expect, you hanging around show-boat riff-raff.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia would not be cheated of her dénouement. -“But did he? Did he shoot it off, or did he fix it, or -what? What did he do?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He set it, all right. They gave him his twenty-five -and told him to get the h—— out of there, and he -got. But they had to get the boat out—the towboat -they’d saved—and no pilot but Hard Harry. So next -day they put him on the hurricane deck, under a -tarpaulin because the rain was pouring the way it does -down there worse than any place in the world, just -about. And with two men steering, he brings the boat -to Baton Rouge seventy-five miles through bayou and -Mississippi. Yessir.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia breathed again.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And who’s this,” demanded Mrs. Hawks, “was -telling you all this fol-de-rol, did you say?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Swager himself. Harry. Hard Harry Swager, -they call him.” (You could see the ten-foot pole leap -of itself into Mrs. Hawks’ hand as her fingers drummed -the tablecloth.) “I was talking to him to-day. Here -of late he’s been with the <span class='it'>New Sensation</span>. He piloted -the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> for years till Pegram decided to quit. -Well, sir! He says five hundred people a night on the -show boat was nothing, and eight hundred on Saturday -nights in towns with a good back-country. Let me tell -you right here and now that runs into money. Say a -quarter of ’em’s fifty centers, a half thirty-five, and the -rest twenty-five. The niggers all twenty-five up in the -gallery, course. Naught . . . five times five’s -. . . five and carry the two . . . five times -two’s ten carry the one . . . five . . .”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Parthy was no fool. She sensed that here threatened -a situation demanding measures even more than ordinarily -firm.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I may not know much”—another form of locution -often favoured by her. The tone in which it was spoken -utterly belied the words; the tone told you that not -only did she know much, but all. “I may not know -much, but this I do know. You’ve got something better -to do with your time than loafing down at the landing -like a river rat with that scamp Swager. Hard Harry! -He comes honestly enough by that name, I’ll be bound, -if he never came honestly by anything else in his life. -And before the child, too. Show boats! And language!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What’s wrong with show boats?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Everything, and more, too. A lot of loose-living -worthless scallywags, men <span class='it'>and</span> women. Scum, that’s -what. Trollops!” Parthy could use a good old Anglo-Saxon -word herself, on occasion.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Captain Andy made frantic foray among the whiskers. -He clawed like a furious little monkey—always -the sign of mental disturbance in him. “No more scum -than your own husband, Mrs. Hawks, ma’am. I used -to be with a show-boat troupe myself.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Pilot, yes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Pilot be damned.” He was up now and capering -like a Quilp. “Actor, Mrs. Hawks, and pretty good I -was, too, time I was seventeen or eighteen. You ought -to’ve seen me in the after-piece. Red Hot Coffee it -was called. I played the nigger. Doubled in brass, -too. I pounded the bass drum in the band, and it was -bigger than me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia was enchanted. She sprang up, flew round -to him. “Were you really? An actor? You never -told me. Mama, did you know? Did you know Papa -was an actor on a show boat?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Parthy Ann rose in her wrath. Always taller than -her husband, she seemed now to tower above him. He -defied her, a terrier facing a mastiff.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What kind of talk is this, Andy Hawks! If you’re -making up tales to tease me before the child I’m surprised -at you, that thought nothing you could do would -ever surprise me again.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s the truth. The <span class='it'>Sunny South</span>, she was called. -Captain Jake Bofinger, owner. Married ten times, old -Jake was. A pretty rough lot we were in those days, -let me tell you. I remember time we——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not another word, Captain Hawks. And let me -tell you it’s a good thing for you that you kept it from -me all these years. I’d never have married you if I’d -known. A show-boat actor!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, yes, you would, Parthy. And glad of the -chance.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Words. Bickering. Recriminations. Finally, “I’ll -thank you not to mention show boats again in front of -the child. You with your La Vernes and your Hard -Harrys and your concerts and broken legs and fires and -ten wives and language and what not! I don’t want to -be dirtied by it, nor the child. . . . Run out and -play, Magnolia. . . . And let this be the last of -show-boat talk in this house.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Andy breathed deep, clung with both hands to his -whiskers, and took the plunge. “It’s far from being -the last of it, Parthy. I’ve bought the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> -from Pegram.”</p> - -<div><h1>IV</h1></div> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='lead-in'><span class='dropcap'>M</span>any</span> quarrels had marked their married life, -but this one assumed serious proportions. It -was a truly sinister note in the pageant of mismating -that passed constantly before Magnolia’s uncomprehending -eyes in childhood. Parthenia had -opposed him often, and certainly always when a new -venture or plan held something of the element of unconventionality. -But now the Puritan in her ran -rampant. He would disgrace her before the community. -He was ruining the life of his child. She would return -to her native New England. He would not see Magnolia -again. He had explained to her—rather, it had -come out piecemeal—that his new project would necessitate -his absence from home for months at a time. He -would be away, surely, from April until November. If -Parthy and the child would live with him on the show -boat part of that time—summers—easy life—lots to -see—learn the country——</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The storm broke, raged, beat about his head, battered -his diminutive frame. He clutched his whiskers and -hung on for dear life. In the end he won.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>All that Parthy ever had in her life of colour, of romance, -of change, he brought her. But for him she -would still be ploughing through the drifts or mud of -the New England road on her way to and from the -frigid little schoolhouse. But for him she would still -be living her barren spinster life with her salty old -father in the grim coast town whence she had come. -She was to trail through the vine-hung bayous of -Louisiana; float down the generous rivers of the Carolinas, -of Tennessee, of Mississippi, with the silver-green -weeping willows misting the water’s edge. She was to -hear the mellow plaintive voices of Negroes singing on -the levees and in cabin doorways as the boat swept by. -She would taste exotic fruits; see stirring sights; meet -the fantastic figures that passed up and down the rivers -like shadows drifting in and out of a weird dream. Yet -always she was to resent loveliness; fight the influence -of each new experience; combat the lure of each new -face. Tight-lipped, belligerent, she met beauty and -adventure and defied them to work a change in her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For three days, then, following Andy’s stupendous -announcement, Parthenia threatened to leave him, -though certainly, in an age that looked upon the marriage -tie as well-nigh indissoluble by any agent other -than death, she could not have meant it, straight-laced -as she was. For another three days she refused to -speak to him, conveying her communications to him -through a third person who was, perforce, Magnolia. -“Tell your father thus-and-so.” This in his very -presence. “Ask your father this-and-that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Experience had taught Magnolia not to be bewildered -by these tactics; she was even amused, as at a game. -But finally the game wearied her; or perhaps, child -though she was, an instinctive sympathy between her -and her father made her aware of the pain twisting the -face of the man. Suddenly she stamped her foot, -issued her edict. “I won’t tell him another single word -for you. It’s silly. I thought it was kind of fun, but -it isn’t. It’s silly for a great big grown-up person like -you that’s a million years old.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Andy was absent from home all day long, and often -late into the night. The <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> was being -overhauled from keel to pilot house. She was lying just -below the landing; painters and carpenters were making -her shipshape. Andy trotted up and down the town -and the river bank, talking, gesticulating, capering -excitedly. There were numberless supplies to be -ordered; a troupe to be assembled. He was never without -a slip of paper on which he figured constantly. His -pockets and the lining of his cap bristled with these -paper scraps.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>One week following their quarrel Parthy Ann began -to evidence interest in these negotiations. She demanded -details. How much had he paid for that old -mass of kindling wood? (meaning, of course, the <span class='it'>Cotton -Blossom</span>). How many would its theatre seat? What -did the troupe number? What was their route? How -many deck-hands? One cook or two? Interspersed -with these questions were grumblings and dire predictions -anent money thrown away; poverty in old age; -the advisability of a keeper being appointed for people -whose minds had palpably given way. Still, her curiosity -was obviously intense.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Tell you what,” suggested Andy with what he -fancied to be infinite craft. “Get your hat on come on -down and take a look at her.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Never,” said Parthenia; and untied her kitchen -apron.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, then, let Magnolia go down and see her. She -likes boats, don’t you, Nola? Same’s her pa.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“H’m! Likely I’d let her go,” sniffed Parthy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Andy tried another tack. “Don’t you want to come -and see where your papa’s going to live all the months -and months he’ll be away from you and ma?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At which Magnolia, with splendid dramatic sense, -began to cry wildly and inconsolably. Parthy remained -grim. Yet she must have been immediately -disturbed, for Magnolia wept so seldom as to be considered -a queer child on this count, among many others.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hush your noise,” commanded Parthy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Great sobs racked Magnolia. Andy crudely followed -up his advantage. “I guess you’ll forget how your papa -looks time he gets back.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia, perfectly aware of the implausibility of any -such prediction, now hurled herself at her father, -wrapped her arms about him, and howled, jerking back -her head, beating a tattoo with her heels, interspersing -the howls with piteous supplications not to be left behind. -She wanted to see the show boat; and, with the -delightful memory of the <span class='it'>Creole Belle</span> trip fresh in her -mind, she wanted to travel on the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> as -she had never wanted anything in her life. Her eyes -were staring and distended; her fingers clutched; her -body writhed; her moans were heart-breaking. She -gave a magnificent performance.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Andy tried to comfort her. The howls increased. -Parthy tried stern measures. Hysteria. The two -united then, and alarm brought pleadings, and pleadings -promises, and finally the three sat intertwined, Andy’s -arm about Magnolia and Parthenia; Parthenia’s arm -embracing Andy and Magnolia; Magnolia clinging to -both.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Come get your hair combed. Mama’ll change your -dress. Now stop that crying.” Magnolia had been -shaken by a final series of racking sobs, real enough now -that the mechanics had been started. Her lower lip -quivered at intervals as the wet comb chased the strands -of straight black hair around Mrs. Hawks’ expert forefinger. -When finally she appeared in starched muslin -petticoats and second best plaid serge, there followed -behind her Parthy Ann herself bonneted and cloaked -for the street. The thing was done. The wife of a -showman. The Puritan in her shivered, but her curiosity -was triumphant even over this. They marched -down Oak Street to the river-landing, the child skipping -and capering in her excitement. There was, too, something -of elation in Andy’s walk. If it had not been for -the grim figure at his side and the restraining hand on his -arm, it is not unlikely that the two—father and child—would -have skipped and capered together down to the -water’s edge. Mrs. Hawks’ tread and mien were those -of a matronly Christian martyr on her way to the lions. -As they went the parents talked of unimportant things -to which Magnolia properly paid no heed, having had -her way. . . . Gone most of the time. . . . It -wouldn’t hurt her any, I tell you. . . . Learn more -in a week than she would in a year out of books. . . . -But they <span class='it'>ain’t</span>, I tell you. Decent folks as you’d ever -want to see. Married couples, most of ’em. . . . -What do you think I’m running? A bawdy-boat? . . . -Oh, language be damned! . . . Now, Parthy, -you’ve got this far, don’t start all over again. . . . -There she is! Ain’t she pretty! Look, Magnolia! -That’s where you’re going to live. . . . Oh, all -right, all right! I was just talking . . .</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> lay moored to great stobs. -Long, and wide and plump and comfortable she looked, -like a rambling house that had taken perversely to the -nautical life and now lay at ease on the river’s broad -breast. She had had two coats of white paint with green -trimmings; and not the least of these green trimmings -comprised letters, a foot high, that smote Parthy’s anguished -eye, causing her to groan, and Magnolia’s delighted -gaze, causing her to squeal. There it was in all -the finality of painter’s print:</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-top:1em;margin-bottom:1em;font-size:.8em;font-weight:bold;'>CAPT. ANDY HAWKS COTTON BLOSSOM FLOATING PALACE THEATRE</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Parthy gathered her dolman more tightly about her, -as though smitten by a chill. The clay banks of the -levee were strewn with cinders and ashes for a foothold. -The steep sides of a river bank down which they would -scramble and up which they would clamber were to be -the home path for these three in the years to come.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>An awninged upper deck, like a cosy veranda, gave the -great flatboat a curiously homelike look. On the main -deck, too, the gangplank ended in a forward deck which -was like a comfortable front porch. Pillars, adorned -with scroll-work, supported this. And there, its mouth -open in a half-oval of welcome, was the ticket window -through which could be seen the little box office with -its desk and chair and its wall rack for tickets. There -actually were tickets stuck in this, purple and red and -blue. Parthy shut her eyes as at a leprous sight. A -wide doorway led into the entrance hall. There again -double doors opened to reveal a stairway.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Balcony stairs,” Andy explained, “and upper boxes. -Seat hundred and fifty to two hundred, easy. Niggers -mostly, upstairs, of course.” Parthy shuddered. An -aisle to the right, an aisle to the left of this stairway, and -there was the auditorium of the theatre itself, with its -rows of seats and its orchestra pit; its stage, its boxes, -its painted curtain raised part way so that you saw only -the lower half of the Venetian water scene it depicted; -the legs of gondoliers in wooden attitudes; faded blue -lagoon; palace steps. Magnolia knew a pang of disappointment. -True, the boxes bore shiny brass railings -and boasted red plush upholstered seats.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I thought it would be all light and glittery and -like a fairy tale,” she protested.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“At night,” Andy assured her. He had her warm -wriggling little fingers in his. “At night. That’s -when it’s like a fairy tale. When the lamps are lighted; -and all the people; and the band playing.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Where’s the kitchen?” demanded Mrs. Hawks.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Andy leaped nimbly down into the orchestra pit, -stooped, opened a little door under the stage, and -beckoned. Ponderously Parthy followed. Magnolia -scampered after. Dining room and cook’s galley were -under the stage. Great cross-beams hung so low that -even Andy was forced to stoop a little to avoid battering -his head against them. Magnolia could touch them -quite easily with her finger-tips. In time it came to -seem quite natural to see the company and crew of the -<span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> entering the dining room at meal time -humbly bent as though in a preliminary attitude of -grace before meat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There were two long tables, each accommodating -perhaps ten; and at the head of the room a smaller table -for six.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“This is our table,” Andy announced, boldly, as he -indicated the third. Parthy snorted; but it seemed to -the sensitive Andy that in this snort there was just a -shade less resentment than there might have been. -Between dining room and kitchen an opening, the size -of a window frame, had been cut in the wall, and the -base of this was a broad shelf for convenience in conveying -hot dishes from stove to table. As the three passed -from dining room to kitchen, Andy tossed over his -shoulder further information for the possible approval of -the bristling Parthy. “Jo and Queenie—she cooks -and he waits and washes up and one thing another—they -promised to be back April first, sure. Been with -the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span>, those two have, ten years and more. -Painters been cluttering up here, and what not. And -will you look at the way the kitchen looks, spite of ’em. -Slick’s a whistle. Look at that stove!” Crafty Andy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Parthenia Ann Hawks looked at the stove. And -what a stove it was! Broad-bosomed, ample, vast, like -a huge fertile black mammal whose breast would suckle -numberless eager sprawling bubbling pots and pans. -It shone richly. Gazing upon this generous expanse -you felt that from its source could emerge nothing -that was not savoury, nourishing, satisfying. Above it, -and around the walls, on hooks, hung rows of pans and -kettles of every size and shape, all neatly suspended by -their pigtails. Here was the wherewithal for boundless -cooking. You pictured whole hams, sizzling; fowls -neatly trussed in rows; platoons of brown loaves; hampers -of green vegetables; vast plateaus of pies. Crockery, -thick, white, coarse, was piled, plate on plate, -platter on platter, behind the neat doors of the pantry. -A supplementary and redundant kerosene stove stood -obligingly in the corner.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Little hot snack at night, after the show,” Andy -explained. “Coffee or an egg, maybe, and no lighting -the big wood burner.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There crept slowly, slowly over Parthy’s face a look -of speculation, and this in turn was replaced by an -expression that was, paradoxically, at once eager and -dreamy. As though aware of this she tried with words -to belie her look. “All this cooking for a crowd. Take -a mint of money, that’s what it will.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Make a mint,” Andy retorted, blithely. A black -cat, sleek, lithe, at ease, paced slowly across the floor, -stood a moment surveying the two with wary yellow -eyes, then sidled toward Parthy and rubbed his arched -back against her skirts. “Mouser,” said Andy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Scat!” cried Parthy; but her tone was half-hearted, -and she did not move away. In her eyes gleamed -the unholy light of the housewife who beholds for the -first time the domain of her dreams. Jo and Queenie -to boss. Wholesale marketing. Do this. Do that. -Perhaps Andy, in his zeal, had even overdone the thing -a little. Suddenly, “Where’s that child! Where’s—— Oh, -my goodness, Hawks!” Visions of Magnolia having -fallen into the river. She was, later, always to have -visions of Magnolia having fallen into rivers so that -Magnolia sometimes fell into them out of sheer perversity -as other children, cautioned to remain in the -yard, wilfully run away from home.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Andy darted out of the kitchen, through the little -rabbit-hutch door. Mrs. Hawks gathered up her -voluminous skirts and flew after; scrambled across the -orchestra pit, turned at the sound of a voice, Magnolia’s, -and yet not Magnolia’s, coming from that portion of the -stage exposed below the half-raised curtain. In tones -at once throaty, mincing, and falsely elegant—that -arrogant voice which is childhood’s unconscious imitation -of pretence in its elders—Magnolia was reciting -nothing in particular, and bringing great gusto to the -rendition. The words were palpably made up as she -went along—“Oh, do you rully think so! . . . My -little girl is very naughty . . . we are rich, oh -dear me yes, ice cream every day for breakfast, dinner, -and supper. . . .” She wore her mother’s dolman -which that lady had unclasped and left hanging over one -of the brass railings of a box. From somewhere she had -rummaged a bonnet whose jet aigrette quivered with the -earnestness of its wearer’s artistic effort. The dolman -trailed in the dust of the floor. Magnolia’s right hand -was held in a graceful position, the little finger elegantly -crooked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Maggie Hawks, will you come down out of there this -instant!” Parthy whirled on Andy. “There! That’s -what it comes to, minute she sets foot on this sink of -iniquity. Play acting!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Andy clawed his whiskers, chuckling. He stepped to -the proscenium and held out his arms for the child and -she stood looking down at him, flushed, smiling, radiant. -“You’re about as good as your pa was, Nola. And -that’s no compliment.” He swung her to the floor, a -whirl of dolman, short starched skirt and bonnet askew. -Then, as Parthy snatched the dolman from her and -glared at the bonnet, he saw that he must create again a -favourable impression—contrive a new diversion—or -his recent gain was lost. A born showman, Andy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Where’d you get that bonnet, Magnolia?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“In there.” She pointed to one of a row of doors -facing them at the rear of the stage. “In one of those -little bedrooms—cabins—what are they, Papa?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Dressing rooms, Nola, and bedrooms, too. Want to -see them, Parthy?” He opened a little door leading -from the right-hand box to the stage, crossed the stage -followed by the reluctant Parthenia, threw open one of -the doors at the back. There was revealed a tiny cabin -holding a single bed, a diminutive dresser, and washstand. -Handy rows of shelves were fastened to the -wall above the bed. Dimity curtains hung at the window. -The window itself framed a view of river and -shore. A crudely coloured calendar hung on the wall, -and some photographs and newspaper clippings, time-yellowed. -There was about the little chamber a cosiness, -a snugness, and, paradoxically enough, a sense of -space. That was the open window, doubtless, with its -vista of water and sky giving the effect of freedom.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Dressing rooms during the performance,” Andy -explained, “and bedrooms the rest of the time. That’s -the way we work it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mrs. Hawks, with a single glance, encompassed the -tiny room and rejected it. “Expect me to live in a -cubby-hole like that!” It was, unconsciously, her first -admission.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia, behind her mother’s skirts, was peering, -wide-eyed, into the room. “Why, I <span class='it'>love</span> it! Why, I’d -love to live in it. Why, look, there’s a little bed, and a -dresser, and a——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Andy interrupted hastily. “Course I don’t expect -you to live in a cubby-hole, Parthy. No, nor the child, -neither. Just you step along with me. Now don’t say -anything; and stop your grumbling till you see. Put -that bonnet back, Nola, where you got it. That’s wardrobe. -Which room’d you get it out of?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Across the stage, then, up the aisle to the stairway -that led to the balcony, Andy leading, Mrs. Hawks -following funereally, Magnolia playing a zigzag game -between the rows of seats yet managing mysteriously to -arrive at the foot of the stairs just as they did. The -balcony reached, Magnolia had to be rescued from the -death that in Mrs. Hawks’ opinion inevitably would -result from her leaning over the railing to gaze enthralled -on the auditorium and stage below. “Hawks, will you -look at that child! I declare, if I ever get her off this -boat alive I’ll never set foot on it again.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But her tone somehow lacked conviction. And when -she beheld those two upper bedrooms forward, leading -off the balcony—those two square roomy bedrooms, as -large, actually, as her bedroom in the cottage, she was -lost. The kitchen had scored. But the bedrooms won. -They were connected by a little washroom. Each had -two windows. Each held bed, dresser, rocker, stove. -Bedraggled dimity curtains hung at the windows. -Matting covered the floors. Parthy did an astonishing—though -characteristic—thing. She walked to the -dresser, passed a practised forefinger over its surface, -examined the finger critically, and uttered that universal -tongue-and-tooth sound indicating disapproval. “An -inch thick,” she then said. “A sight of cleaning this -boat will take, I can tell you. Not a curtain in the -place but’ll have to come down and washed and starched -and ironed.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Instinct or a superhuman wisdom cautioned Andy to -say nothing. From the next room came a shout of joy. -“Is this my room? It’s got a chair that rocks and a -stove with a res’vore and I can see my whole self in the -looking-glass, it’s so big. Is this my room? Is it? -Mama!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Parthy passed into the next room. “We’ll see. -We’ll see. We’ll see.” Andy followed after, almost -a-tiptoe; afraid to break the spell with a sudden sound.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But is it? I want to know. Papa, make her tell me. -Look! The window here is a little door. It’s a door -and I can go right out on the upstairs porch. And -there’s the whole river.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I should say as much, and a fine way to fall and -drown without anybody being the wiser.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But the child was beside herself with excitement and -suspense. She could endure it no longer; flew to her -stern parent and actually shook that adamantine figure -in its dolman and bonnet. “Is it? Is it? Is it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We’ll see.” A look, then, of almost comic despair -flashed between father and child—a curiously adult -look for one of Magnolia’s years. It said: “What a -woman this is! Can we stand it? I can only if you -can.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Andy tried suggestion. “Could paint this furniture -any colour Nola says——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Blue,” put in Magnolia, promptly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“—and new curtains, maybe, with ribbons to match——” -He had, among other unexpected traits, a keen -eye for colour and line; a love for fabrics.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Parthy said nothing. Her lips were compressed. -The look that passed between Andy and Magnolia now -was pure despair, with no humour to relieve it. So they -went disconsolately out of the door; crossed the balcony, -clumped down the stairs, like mutes at a funeral. At -the foot of the stairs they heard voices from without—women’s -voices, high and clear—and laughter. The -sounds came from the little porch-like deck forward. -Parthy swooped through the door; had scarcely time to -gaze upon two sprightly females in gay plumage before -both fell upon her lawful husband Captain Andy Hawks -and embraced him. And the young pretty one kissed -him on his left-hand mutton-chop whisker. And the -older plain one kissed him on the right-hand mutton-chop -whisker. And, “Oh, dear Captain Hawks!” they -cried. “Aren’t you surprised to see us! And happy! -Do say you’re happy. We drove over from Cairo -specially to see you and the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span>. Doc’s -with us.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Andy flung an obliging arm about the waist of each -and gave each armful a little squeeze. “Happy ain’t -the word.” And indeed it scarcely seemed to cover -the situation; for there stood Parthy viewing the three -entwined, and as she stood she seemed to grow visibly -taller, broader, more ominous, like a menacing cloud. -Andy’s expression was a protean thing in which bravado -and apprehension battled.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia had recognized them at once as the pretty -young woman in the rose-trimmed hat and the dark -woman who had told her not to smile too often that -day when, in company with the sloppy young man, they -had passed the Hawks house, laughing and chatting and -spitting cherry stones idly and comfortably into the -dust of the village street. So she now took a step -forward from behind her mother’s voluminous skirts -and made a little tentative gesture with one hand -toward the older woman. And that lively female at -once said, “Why, bless me! Look, Elly! It’s the -little girl!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Elly looked. “What little girl?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The little girl with the smile.” And at that, quite -without premeditation, and to her own surprise, Magnolia -ran to her and put her hand in hers and looked -up into her strange ravaged face and smiled. “There!” -exclaimed the woman, exactly as she had done that first -time.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Maggie Hawks!” came the voice.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And, “Oh, my God!” exclaimed the one called Elly, -“it’s the——” sensed something dangerous in the air, -laughed, and stopped short.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Andy extricated himself from his physical entanglements -and attempted to do likewise with the social -snarl that now held them all.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Meet my wife Mrs. Hawks. Parthy, this is Julie -Dozier, female half of our general business team and one -of the finest actresses on the river besides being as nice -a little lady as you’d meet in a month of Sundays. . . . -This here little beauty is Elly Chipley—Lenore La -Verne on the bills. Our ingénue lead and a favourite -from Duluth to New Orleans. . . . Where’s Doc?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At which, with true dramatic instinct, Doc appeared -scrambling down the cinder path toward the boat; -leaped across the gangplank, poised on one toe, spread -his arms and carolled, “Tra-da!” A hard-visaged man -of about fifty-five, yet with kindness, too, written there; -the deep-furrowed, sad-eyed ageless face of the circus -shillaber and showman.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Girls say you drove over. Must be flush with your -spondulicks, Doc. . . . Parthy, meet Doc. He’s -got another name, I guess, but nobody’s ever used it. -Doc’s enough for anybody on the river. Doc goes -ahead of the show and bills us and does the dirty work, -don’t you, Doc?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s about the size of it,” agreed Doc, and sped -sadly and accurately a comet of brown juice from his -lips over the boat’s side into the river. “Pleased to -make your acquaintance.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Andy indicated Magnolia. “Here’s my girl Magnolia -you’ve heard me talk about.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, well! Lookit them eyes! They oughtn’t to -go bad in the show business, little later.” A sound -from Parthy who until now had stood a graven image, a -portent. Doc turned to her, soft-spoken, courteous. -“Fixin’ to take a little ride with us for good luck I hope, -ma’am, our first trip out with Cap here?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mrs. Hawks glanced then at the arresting face of -Julie Dozier, female half of our general business team -and one of the finest actresses on the river. Mrs. -Hawks looked at Elly Chipley (Lenore La Verne on the -bills), the little beauty and favourite from Duluth to -New Orleans. She breathed deep.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. I am.” And with those three monosyllables -Parthenia Ann Hawks renounced the ties of land, of -conventionality; forsook the staid orderliness of the -little white-painted cottage at Thebes; shut her ears -to the scandalized gossip of her sedate neighbours; -yielded grimly to the urge of the river and became at -last its unwilling mistress.</p> - -<div><h1>V</h1></div> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='lead-in'><span class='dropcap'>W</span>hen April</span> came, and the dogwood flashed its -spectral white in the woods, the show boat -started. It was the most leisurely and dream-like -of journeys. In all the hurried harried country -that still was intent on repairing the ravages of a Civil -War, they alone seemed to be leading an enchanted -existence, suspended on another plane. Miles—hundreds—thousands -of miles of willow-fringed streams -flowing aquamarine in the sunlight, olive-green in the -shade. Wild honeysuckle clambering over black tree -trunks. Mules. Negroes. Bare unpainted cabins the -colour of the sandy soil itself. Sleepy little villages -blinking drowsily down upon a river which was some -almost forgotten offspring spawned years before by the -Mississippi. The nearest railroad perhaps twenty-five -miles distant.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They floated down the rivers. They floated down -the rivers. Sometimes they were broad majestic -streams rolling turbulently to the sea, and draining -a continent. Sometimes they were shallow narrow -streams little more than creeks, through which the -<span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> picked her way as cautiously as a timid -girl picking her way among stepping stones. Behind -them, pushing them maternally along like a fat puffing -duck with her silly little gosling, was the steamboat -<span class='it'>Mollie Able</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>To the people dwelling in the towns, plantations, and -hamlets along the many tributaries of the Mississippi -and Ohio, the show boat was no longer a novelty. It -had been a familiar and welcome sight since 1817 when -the first crude barge of that type had drifted down the -Cumberland River. But familiarity with these craft -had failed to dispel their glamour. To the farmers and -villagers of the Mid-west; and to the small planters—black -and white—of the South, the show boat meant -music, romance, gaiety. It visited towns whose leafy -crypts had never echoed the shrill hoot of an engine -whistle. It penetrated settlements whose backwoods -dwellers had never witnessed a theatrical performance -in all their lives—simple childlike credulous people to -whom the make-believe villainies, heroics, loves, adventures -of the drama were so real as sometimes to -cause the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> troupe actual embarrassment. -Often quality folk came to the show boat. The perfume -and silks and broadcloth of the Big House took -frequent possession of the lower boxes and the front -seats.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>That first summer was, to Magnolia, a dream of pure -delight. Nothing could mar it except that haunting -spectre of autumn when she would have to return to -Thebes and to the ordinary routine of a little girl in a -second best pinafore that was donned for school in the -morning and thriftily replaced by a less important pinafore -on her return from school in the late afternoon. -But throughout those summer months Magnolia was a -fairy princess. She was Cinderella at the ball. She -shut her mind to the horrid certainty that the clock -would inevitably strike twelve.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Year by year, as the spell of the river grew stronger -and the easy indolence of the life took firmer hold, Mrs. -Hawks and the child spent longer and longer periods on -the show boat; less and less time in the humdrum security -of the cottage ashore. Usually the boat started -in April. But sometimes, when the season was mild, it -was March. Mrs. Hawks would announce with a good -deal of firmness that Magnolia must finish the school -term, which ended in June. Later she and the child -would join the boat wherever it happened to be showing -at the time.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Couple of months missed won’t hurt her,” Captain -Andy would argue, loath as always to be separated from -his daughter. “May’s the grandest month on the -rivers—and April. Everything coming out fresh. -Outdoors all day. Do her good.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I may not know much, but this I do know, Andy -Hawks: No child of mine is going to grow up an ignoramus -just because her father has nothing better to do -than go galumphing around the country with a lot of -riff-raff.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But in the end, when the show boat started its -leisurely journey, there was Mrs. Hawks hanging fresh -dimity curtains; bickering with Queenie; preventing, by -her acid presence, the possibility of a too-saccharine -existence for the members of the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> troupe. -In her old capacity as school teacher, Parthy undertook -the task of carrying on Magnolia’s education during -these truant spring months. It was an acrimonious and -painful business ending, almost invariably, in temper, -tears, disobedience, upbraidings. Unconsciously Andy -Hawks had done much for the youth of New England -when he ended Parthy’s public teaching career.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Nine times seven, I said. . . . No, it isn’t! -Just because fifty-six was the right answer last time it -isn’t right every time. That was seven times eight and -I’ll thank you to look at the book and not out of the -window. I declare, Maggie Hawks, sometimes I think -you’re downright simple.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia’s under lip would come out. Her brow was -lowering. She somehow always looked her plainest and -sallowest during these sessions with her mother. “I -don’t care what nine times seven is. Elly doesn’t know, -either. I asked her and she said she never had nine of -anything, much less nine times seven of anything; and -Elly’s the most beautiful person in the world, except -Julie sometimes—and me when I smile. And my name -isn’t Maggie Hawks, either.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’d like to know what it is if it isn’t. And if you -talk to me like that again, young lady, I’ll smack you -just as sure as I’m sitting here.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s Magnolia—Magnolia—uh—something beautiful—I -don’t know what. But not Hawks. Magnolia—uh——” -a gesture with her right hand meant to convey -some idea of the exquisiteness of her real name.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mrs. Hawks clapped a maternal hand to her daughter’s -somewhat bulging brow, decided that she was -feverish, needed a physic, and promptly administered -one.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As for geography, if Magnolia did not learn it, she -lived it. She came to know her country by travelling -up and down its waterways. She learned its people by -meeting them, of all sorts and conditions. She learned -folkways; river lore; Negro songs; bird calls; pilot rules; -profanity; the art of stage make-up; all the parts in the -<span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> troupe’s repertoire including East Lynne, -Lady Audley’s Secret, Tempest and Sunshine, Spanish -Gipsy, Madcap Margery, and Uncle Tom’s Cabin.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There probably was much that was sordid about the -life. But to the imaginative and volatile little girl of -ten or thereabouts it was a combination playhouse, -make-believe theatre, and picnic jaunt. Hers were -days of enchantment—or would have been were it not -for the practical Parthy who, iron woman that she was, -saw to it that the child was properly fed, well clothed, -and sufficiently refreshed by sleep. But Parthy’s interests -now were too manifold and diverse to permit of -her accustomed concentration on Magnolia. She had -an entire boatload of people to boss—two boatloads, in -fact, for she did not hesitate to investigate and criticize -the manners and morals of the crew that manned the -towboat <span class='it'>Mollie Able</span>. A man was never safe from her -as he sat smoking his after-dinner pipe and spitting -contemplatively into the river. It came about that -Magnolia’s life was infinitely more free afloat than it -had ever been on land.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Up and down the rivers the story went that the -<span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> was the sternest-disciplined, best-managed, -and most generously provisioned boat in the -business. And it was notorious that a sign back-stage -and in each dressing room read: “No lady of the company -allowed on deck in a wrapper.” It also was known -that drunkenness on the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> was punished -by instant dismissal; that Mrs. Captain Andy Hawks -was a holy terror; that the platters of fried chicken on -Sunday were inexhaustible. All of this was true.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia’s existence became a weird mixture of lawlessness -and order; of humdrum and fantasy. She -slipped into the life as though she had been born to it. -Parthy alone kept her from being utterly spoiled by the -members of the troupe.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mrs. Hawks’ stern tread never adjusted itself to the -leisurely rhythm of the show boat’s tempo. This was -obvious even to Magnolia. The very first week of their -initial trip she had heard her mother say briskly to -Julie, “What time is it?” Mrs. Hawks was marching -from one end of the boat to the other, intent on some -fell domestic errand of her own. Julie, seated in a low -chair on deck, sewing and gazing out upon the yellow -turbulence of the Mississippi, had replied in her deep -indolent voice, without glancing up, “What does it -matter?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The four words epitomized the divinely care-free -existence of the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> show-boat troupe.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Sometimes they played a new town every night. -Sometimes, in regions that were populous and that -boasted a good back-country, they remained a week. -In such towns, as the boat returned year after year until -it became a recognized institution, there grew up between -the show-boat troupe and the townspeople a sort -of friendly intimacy. They were warmly greeted on -their arrival; sped regretfully on their departure. They -almost never travelled at night. Usually they went to -bed with the sound of the water slap-slapping gently -against the boat’s flat sides, and proceeded down river -at daybreak. This meant that constant warfare raged -between the steamboat crew of the <span class='it'>Mollie Able</span> and the -show-boat troupe of the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span>. The steamer -crew, its work done, retired early, for it must be up and -about at daybreak. It breakfasted at four-thirty or -five. The actors never were abed before midnight or -one o’clock and rose for a nine o’clock breakfast. They -complained that the steamer crew, with its bells, -whistles, hoarse shouts, hammerings, puffings, and -general to-do attendant upon casting off and getting -under way, robbed them of their morning sleep. The -crew grumbled and cursed as it tried to get a night’s -rest in spite of the noise of the band, the departing audience, -the midnight sociability of the players who, still -at high tension after their night’s work, could not yet -retire meekly to bed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Lot of damn scenery chewers,” growled the crew, -turning in sleep.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Filthy roustabouts,” retorted the troupers, disturbed -at dawn. “Yell because they can’t talk like -human beings.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They rarely mingled, except such members of the -crew as played in the band; and never exchanged civilities. -This state of affairs lent spice to an existence that -might otherwise have proved too placid for comfort. -The bickering acted as a safety valve.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It all was, perhaps, the worst possible environment -for a skinny, high-strung, and sensitive little girl who -was one-quarter French. But Magnolia thrived on it. -She had the solid and lumpy Puritanism of Parthy’s -presence to counteract the leaven of her volatile father. -This saved her from being utterly consumed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The life was at once indolent and busy. Captain -Andy, scurrying hither and thither, into the town, up -the river bank, rushing down the aisle at rehearsal to -squeak a false direction to the hard-working company, -driving off into the country to return in triumph laden -with farm produce, was fond of saying, “We’re just like -one big happy family.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Captain Andy knew and liked good food (the Frenchman -in him). They ate the best that the countryside -afforded—not a great deal of meat in the height of summer -when they were, perhaps, playing the hot humid -Southern river towns, but plenty of vegetables and -fruit—great melons bought from the patch with the sun -still hot on their rounded bulging sides, and then chilled -to dripping deliciousness before eating; luscious yams; -country butter and cream. They all drank the water -dipped out of the river on which they happened to be -floating. They quaffed great dippersful of the Mississippi, -the Ohio, and even the turbid Missouri, and -seemed none the worse for it. At the stern was the -settling barrel. Here the river water, dipped up in -buckets, was left to settle before drinking. At the -bottom of this receptacle, after it was three-quarters -empty, one might find a rich layer of Mississippi silt -intermingled with plummy odds and ends of every -description including, sometimes, a sizable catfish.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In everything but actual rehearsing and playing, -Magnolia lived the life of the company. The boat was -their home. They ate, slept, worked, played on it. -The company must be prompt at meal time, at rehearsals, -and at the evening performances. There all responsibility -ended for them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Breakfast was at nine; and under Parthy’s stern -régime this meant nine. They were a motley lot as they -assembled. In that bizarre setting the homely, everyday -garb of the men and women took on a grotesque -aspect. It was as though they were dressed for a part. -As they appeared in the dining room, singly, in couples, -or in groups, with a cheerful or a dour greeting, depending -on the morning mood of each, an onlooker could -think only of the home life of the Vincent Crummleses. -Having seen Elly the night before as Miss Lenore La -Verne in the golden curls, short skirts, and wide-eyed -innocence of Bessie, the backwoodsman’s daughter, -who turned out, in the last act, to be none other than the -Lady Clarice Trelawney, carelessly mislaid at birth, her -appearance at breakfast was likely to have something -of the shock of disillusionment. The baby stare of her -great blue eyes was due to near-sightedness to correct -which she wore silver-rimmed spectacles when not -under the public gaze. Her breakfast jacket, though -frilly, was not of the freshest, and her kid curlers were -not entirely hidden by a silk-and-lace cap. Elly was, -despite these grotesqueries, undeniably and triumphantly -pretty, and thus arrayed gave the effect of a -little girl mischievously tricked out in her grandmother’s -wardrobe. Her husband, known as Schultzy in private -and Harold Westbrook on the bills, acted as director of -the company. He was what is known in actor’s parlance -as a raver, and his method of acting was designated -in the show-boat world as spitting scenery. A -somewhat furtive young man in very tight pants and -high collar always a trifle too large. He was a cuff-shooter, -and those cuffs were secured and embellished -with great square shiny chunks of quartz-like stuff -which he frequently breathed upon heavily and then -rubbed with his handkerchief. Schultzy played juvenile -leads opposite his wife’s ingénue rôles; had a real -flair for the theatre.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Sometimes they were in mid-river when the breakfast -bell sounded; sometimes tied to a landing. The view -might be plantation, woods, or small town—it was all -one to the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> company, intent on coffee and -bacon. Long before white-aproned Jo, breakfast bell -in hand, emerged head first from the little doorway -beneath the stage back of the orchestra pit, like an -amiable black python from its lair, Mrs. Hawks was on -the scene, squinting critically into cream jugs, attacking -flies as though they were dragons, infuriating Queenie -with the remark that the biscuits seemed soggy this -morning. Five minutes after the bell was brandished, -Jo had placed the breakfast on the table, hot: oatmeal, -steaming pots of coffee, platters of fried eggs with ham -or bacon, stacks of toast, biscuits fresh from the oven. -If you were prompt you got a hot breakfast; tardy, you -took it cold.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Parthy, whose breakfast cap, designed to hide her -curl papers, always gave the effect, somehow, of a -martial helmet, invariably was first at the small table -that stood at the head of the room farthest from the -little doorway. So she must have sat at her schoolhouse -desk during those New England winters, awaiting -the tardy morning arrival of reluctant and chilblained -urchins. Magnolia was one of those children whom -breakfast does not interest. Left to her own devices, -she would have ignored the meal altogether. She -usually entered late, her black hair still wet from the -comb, her eyes wide with her eagerness to impart the -day’s first bit of nautical news.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Doc says there’s a family going down river on a -bumboat, and they’ve got a teensy baby no bigger than -a——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Drink your milk.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“—doll and he says it must have been born on the -boat and he bets it’s not more than a week old. Oh, -I hope they’ll tie up somewhere near——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Eat your toast with your egg.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do I have to eat my egg?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>If Magnolia was late, Andy was always later. He ate -quickly and abstractedly. As he swallowed his coffee -you could almost see his agile mind darting here and -there, so that you wondered how his electric little body -resisted following it as a lesser force follows a greater—up -into the pilot house, down in the engine room, into -the town, leaping ahead to the next landing; dickering -with storekeepers for supplies. He was always the first -to finish and was off at a quick trot, clawing the mutton-chop -whiskers as he went.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Early or late, Julie and Steve came in together, Steve’s -great height ludicrously bent to avoid the low rafters -of the dining room. Julie and Steve were the character -team—Julie usually cast as adventuress, older sister, -foil for Elly, the ingénue. Julie was a natural and -intuitive actress, probably the best in the company. -Sometimes she watched Elly’s unintelligent work, heard -her slovenly speech and her silly inflections, and a little -contemptuous look would come into her face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Steve played villains and could never have kept the -job, even in that uncritical group, had it not been for -Julie. He was very big and very fair, and almost -entirely lacking in dramatic sense. A quiet gentle -giant, he always seemed almost grotesquely miscast, his -blondeur and his trusting faithful blue eyes belying the -sable hirsuteness of villainy. Julie coached him -patiently, tirelessly. The result was fairly satisfactory. -But a nuance, an inflection, was beyond him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Who has a better right!” his line would be, perhaps. -Schultzy, directing at rehearsal, would endeavour -fruitlessly to convey to him its correct reading. After -rehearsal, Julie could be heard going over the line again -and again.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Who has a better <span class='it'>right</span>!” Steve would thunder, -dramatically.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, dear. The accent is on ‘better.’ Like this: -‘Who has a <span class='it'>better</span> right!’ ”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Steve’s blue eyes would be very earnest, his face red -with effort. “Oh, I see. Come down hard on -‘better,’ huh? ‘Who has a better <span class='it'>right</span>!’ ”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was useless.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The two were very much in love. The others in the -company sometimes teased them about this, but not -often. Julie and Steve did not respond to this badinage -gracefully. There existed between the two a relation -that made the outsider almost uncomfortable. When -they looked at each other, there vibrated between them -a current that sent a little shiver through the beholder. -Julie’s eyes were deep-set and really black, and there -was about them a curious indefinable quality. Magnolia -liked to look into their soft and mournful depths. -Her own eyes were dark, but not like Julie’s. Perhaps -it was the whites of Julie’s eyes that were different.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia had once seen them kiss. She had come -upon them quietly and unexpectedly, on deck, in the -dusk. Certainly she had never witnessed a like passage -of love between her parents; and even her recent familiarity -with stage romance had not prepared her for it. -It was long before the day of the motion picture fade-out. -Olga Nethersole’s famous osculation was yet to -shock a Puritan America. Steve had held Julie a long -long minute, wordlessly. Her slimness had seemed to -melt into him. Julie’s eyes were closed. She was -quite limp as he tipped her upright. She stood thus a -moment, swaying, her eyes still shut. When she opened -them they were clouded, misty, as were his. The two -then beheld a staring and fascinated little girl quite -palpably unable to move from the spot. Julie had -laughed a little low laugh. She had not flushed, exactly. -Her sallow colouring had taken on a tone at once deeper -and clearer and brighter, like amber underlaid with -gold. Her eyes had widened until they were enormous -in her thin dark glowing face. It was as though a lamp -had been lighted somewhere behind them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What makes you look like that?” Magnolia had -demanded, being a forthright young person.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Like what?” Julie had asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Like you do. All—all shiny.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Love,” Julie had answered, quite simply. Magnolia -had not in the least understood; but she remembered. -And years later she did understand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Besides Elly, the ingénue, Schultzy, juvenile lead, -Julie and Steve, character team, there were Mr. and -Mrs. Means, general business team, Frank, the heavy, -and Ralph, general utility man. Elly and Schultzy sat -at table with the Hawkses, the mark of favour customary -to their lofty theatrical eminence. The others of -the company, together with Doc, and three of the band -members, sat at the long table in the centre of the -room. Mrs. Means played haughty dowagers, old -Kentucky crones, widows, mothers, and middle-aged -females. Mr. Means did bankers, Scrooges, old hunters -and trappers, comics, and the like.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At the table nearest the door and the kitchen sat -the captain and crew of the <span class='it'>Mollie Able</span>. There were -no morning newspapers to read between sips of coffee; -no mail to open. They were all men and women of experience. -They had knocked about the world. In their -faces was a lived look, together with an expression that -had in it a curiously childlike quality. Captain Andy -was not far wrong in his boast that they were like one -big family—a close and jealous family needing no outside -stimulus for its amusement. They were extraordinarily -able to amuse themselves. Their talk was -racy, piquant, pungent. The women were, for the most -part, made of sterner stuff than the men—that is, among -the actors. That the men had chosen this drifting, care-free, -protected life, and were satisfied with it, proved -that. Certainly Julie was a force stronger than Steve; -Elly made a slave of Schultzy; Mrs. Means was a sternly -maternal wife to her weak-chested and drily humorous -little husband.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Usually they lingered over their coffee. Jo, padding -in from the kitchen, would bring on a hot potful.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Julie had a marmoset which she had come by in -New Orleans, where it had been brought from equatorial -waters by some swarthy earringed sailor. This she -frequently carried to the table with her, tucked under -her arm, its tiny dark head with the tragic mask of a -face peering out from beneath her elbow. To Mrs. -Hawks’ intense disgust, Julie fed the tiny creature out -of her own dish. In her cabin its bed was an old sealskin -muff from whose depths its mournful dark eyes -looked appealingly out from a face that was like nothing -so much as that of an old old baby.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I declare,” Parthy would protest, almost daily, “it -fairly turns a body’s stomach to see her eating out of the -same dish with that dirty little rat.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why, Mama! it isn’t a rat any such thing! It’s a -monkey and you know it. Julie says maybe Schultzy -can get one for me in New Orleans if I promise to be -very very careful of it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’d like to see her try,” grimly putting an end to -that dream.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The women took care of their own cabins. The -detail of this occupied them until mid-morning. Often -there was a rehearsal at ten that lasted an hour or more. -Schultzy announced it at breakfast.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As they swept up a river, or floated down, their -approach to the town was announced by the shrill iron-throated -calliope, pride of Captain Andy’s heart. Its -blatant voice heralded the coming of the show boat long -before the boat itself could be seen from the river bank. -It had solid brass keys and could plainly be heard for -five miles. George, who played the calliope, was also -the pianist. He was known, like all calliope players, as -the Whistler. Magnolia delighted in watching him at -the instrument. He wore a slicker and a slicker hat and -heavy gloves to protect his hands, for the steam of the -whistles turned to hot raindrops and showered his hands -and his head and shoulders as he played. As they -neared the landing, the band, perched atop the show -boat, forward, alternated with the calliope. From the -town, hurrying down the streets, through the woods, -dotting the levee and the landing, came eager figures, -black and white. Almost invariably some magic-footed -Negro, overcome by the music, could be seen on the -wharf executing the complicated and rhythmic steps of -a double shuffle, his rags flapping grotesquely about him, -his mouth a gash of white. By nine o’clock in the -morning every human being within a radius of five miles -knew that the Cotton Blossom Floating Palace Theatre -had docked at the waterfront.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>By half-past eleven the band, augmented by two or -three men of the company who doubled in brass, must -be ready for the morning concert on the main street -corner. Often, queerly enough, the town at which they -made their landing was no longer there. The Mississippi, -in prankish mood, had dumped millions of tons of -silt in front of the street that faced the river. Year by -year, perhaps, this had gone on, until now that which -had been a river town was an inland town, with a mile -of woodland and sandy road between its main street and -the waterfront. The old serpent now stretched its -sluggish yellow coils in another channel.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>By eleven o’clock the band would have donned its -scarlet coats with the magnificent gold braid and brass -buttons. The nether part of these costumes always -irritated Magnolia. Her colour-loving eye turned -away from them, offended. For while the upper costume -was splendidly martial, the lower part was composed -merely of such everyday pants as the band members -might be wearing at the time of the concert hour, -and were a rude shock to the ravished eye as it travelled -from the gay flame and gold of the jacket and the dashing -impudence of the cap. Especially in the drum -major did this offend her. He was called the baton -spinner and wore, instead of the scarlet cap of the other -band members, an imposing (though a slightly mangy) -fur shako, very black and shaggy and fierce-looking, -and with a strap under the chin. Pete, the bass drummer, -worked in the engine room. Usually, at the last -minute, he washed up hastily, grabbed his drum, -buttoned on his coat, and was dazzlingly transformed -from a sooty crow into a scarlet tanager.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Up the levee they scrambled—two cornets, a clarinet, -a tuba, an alto (called a peck horn. Magnolia loved its -ump-a ump-a ta-ta-ta-ta, ump-a ump-a ta-ta-ta-ta), a -snare drummer who was always called a “sticks,” and -the bass drum, known as the bull.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When the landing was a waterfront town, the band -concert was a pleasant enough interval in the day’s light -duties. But when a mile or more of dusty road lay -between the show boat and the main street it became a -real chore. Carrying their heavy instruments, their -scarlet coats open, their caps in their hands, they would -trudge, tired, hot, and sweating, the long dusty road -that led through the woods. When the road became a -clearing and they emerged abruptly into the town, they -would button their coats, mop their hot faces, adjust -cap or shako, stiffen their drooping shoulders. Their -gait would change from one of plodding weariness to a -sprightly strut. Their pepper-and-salt, or brown, or -black trousered legs would move with rhythmic precision -in time to the music. From tired, sticky, wilted -plodders, they would be transformed into heroic and -romantic figures. Up came the chest of the baton -spinner. His left hand rested elegantly on his hip, his -head and shoulders were held stiffly, arrogantly; his -right hand twirled the glittering baton until it dazzled -the eyes like a second noonday sun. Hotel waitresses, -their hearts beating high, scurried to the windows: -children rushed pell-mell from the school yard into the -street; clerks in their black sateen aprons and straw -sleevelets stood in the shop doorways; housewives left -their pots a-boil as they lingered a wistful moment on -the front porch, shading their eyes with a work-seamed -hand; loafers spilled out of the saloons and stood agape -and blinking. And as the music blared and soared, the -lethargic little town was transformed for an hour into a -gay and lively scene. Even the old white fly-bitten -nags in the streets stepped with a jerky liveliness in their -spring-halted gait, and a gleam came into their lack-lustre -eyes as they pricked up their ears to the sound. -Seeking out the busiest corner of the dull little main -street, the band would take their stand, bleating and -blaring, the sun playing magnificently on the polished -brass of their instruments.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Although he never started with them, at this point -Captain Andy always turned up, having overtaken them -in some mysterious way. Perhaps he swung from tree -to tree through the woods. There he was in his blue -coat, his wrinkled baggy linen pants, his white canvas -cap with the leather visor; fussy, nervous, animated, -bright-eyed, clawing the mutton-chop whiskers from -side to side. Under his arm he carried a sheaf of playbills -announcing the programmes and extolling the -talents of the players. After the band had played two -lively numbers, he would make his speech, couched in -the absurd grandiloquence of the showman. He talked -well. He made his audience laugh, bizarre yet strangely -appealing little figure that he was. “Most magnificent -company of players every assembled on the rivers . . . -unrivalled scenery and costumes . . . Miss Lenore -La Verne . . . dazzling array of talent . . . -fresh from triumphs in the East . . . concert -after the show . . . singing and dancing . . . -bring the children . . . come one, come all. . . . -<span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> troupe just one big happy family. . . .”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The band would strike up again. Captain Andy -would whisk through the crowd with uncanny swiftness -distributing his playbills, greeting an acquaintance met -on previous trips, chucking a child under the chin, extolling -the brilliance and gaiety of the performance -scheduled for that evening. At the end of a half hour -the band would turn and march playing down the -street. In the dispersing crowd could be discerned -Andy’s agile little figure darting, stooping, swooping as -he thriftily collected again the playbills that, once perused, -had been dropped in the dust by careless spectators.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Dinner was at four, a hearty meal. Before dinner, -and after, the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> troupe was free to spend -its time as it would. The women read or sewed. There -were always new costumes to be contrived, or old ones -to mend and refurbish. The black-hearted adventuress -of that morning’s rehearsal sat neatly darning a pair of -her husband’s socks. There was always the near-by -town to visit; a spool of thread to be purchased, a stamp, -a sack of peppermint drops, a bit of muslin, a toothbrush. -The indolence of the life was such that they -rarely took any premeditated exercise. Sometimes -they strolled in the woods at springtime when the first -tender yellow-green hazed the forest vistas. They -fished, though the catch was usually catfish. On hot -days the more adventuresome of them swam. The -river was their front yard, grown as accustomed as a -stretch of lawn. They were extraordinarily able to -amuse themselves. Hardly one that did not play -piano, violin, flute, banjo, mandolin.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>By six o’clock a stir—a little electric unrest—an -undercurrent of excitement could be sensed aboard the -show boat. They came sauntering back from the woods, -the town, the levee. They drifted down the aisles and -in and out of their dressing rooms. Years of trouping -failed to still in them the quickened pulse that always -came with the approach of the evening’s performance.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Down in the orchestra pit the band was tuning up. -They would play atop the show boat on the forward -deck before the show, alternating with the calliope, as -in the morning. The daytime lethargy had vanished. -On the stage the men of the company were setting the -scene. Hoarse shouts. Lift ’er up there! No—down -a little. H’ist her up. Back! Closer! Dressing-room -doors opened and shut. Calls from one room to -another. Twilight came on. Doc began to light the -auditorium kerosene lamps whose metal reflectors sent -back their yellow glow. Outside the kerosene search-light, -cunningly rigged on top of the <span class='it'>Mollie Able’s</span> pilot -house, threw its broad beam up the river bank to the -levee.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Of all the hours in the day this was the one most beloved -of Magnolia’s heart. She enjoyed the stir, the -colour, the music, the people. Anything might happen -on board the Cotton Blossom Floating Palace Theatre -between the night hours of seven and eleven. And -then it was that she was banished to bed. There was a -nightly struggle in which, during the first months of -their life on the rivers, Mrs. Hawks almost always won. -Infrequently, by hook or crook, Magnolia managed to -evade the stern parental eye.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Let me just stay up for the first act—where Elly -shoots him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not a minute.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Let me stay till the curtain goes up, then.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You march yourself off to bed, young lady, or no -trip to the pirate’s cave to-morrow with Doc, and so I -tell you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Doc’s knowledge of the gruesome history of river -banditry and piracy provided Magnolia with many a -goose-skinned hour of delicious terror. Together they -went excursioning ashore in search of the blood-curdling -all the way from Little Egypt to the bayous of Louisiana.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Lying there in her bed, then, wide-eyed, tense, Magnolia -would strain her ears to catch the words of the -play’s dialogue as it came faintly up to her through the -locked door that opened on the balcony; the almost -incredibly naïve lines of a hackneyed play that still -held its audience because of its full measure of fundamental -human emotions. Hate, love, revenge, despair, -hope, joy, terror.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I will bring you to your knees yet, my proud beauty!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Never. I would rather die than accept help from -your blood-stained hand.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Once Parthy, warned by some maternal instinct, stole -softly to Magnolia’s room to find the prisoner flown. -She had managed to undo the special lock with which -Mrs. Hawks had thought to make impossible her little -daughter’s access to the upper veranda deck just off her -room. Magnolia had crept around the perilously narrow -ledge enclosed by a low railing just below the upper -deck and was there found, a shawl over her nightgown, -knitted bed-slippers on her feet, peering in at the upper -windows together with adventuresome and indigent -urchins of the town who had managed somehow to -scramble to this uncertain foothold.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>After fitting punishment, the ban was gradually -removed; or perhaps Mrs. Hawks realized the futility -of trying to bring up a show-boat child according -to Massachusetts small-town standards. With natural -human perversity, thereafter, Magnolia frequently betook -herself quietly to bed of her own accord the while -the band blared below, guns were fired, love lost, -villains foiled, beauty endangered, and blood spilled. -Curiously enough, she never tired of watching these -simple blood-and-thunder dramas. Automatically she -learned every part in every play in the Cotton Blossom’s -repertoire, so that by the time she was thirteen -she could have leaped on the stage at a moment’s -notice to play anything from Simon Legree to Lena -Rivers.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But best of all she liked to watch the audience assembling. -Unconsciously the child’s mind beheld the -moving living drama of a nation’s peasantry. It was -such an audience as could be got together in no other -kind of theatre in all the world. Farmers, labourers, -Negroes; housewives, children, yokels, lovers; roustabouts, -dock wallopers, backwoodsmen, rivermen, -gamblers. The coal-mining regions furnished the -roughest audiences. The actors rather dreaded the -coal towns of West Virginia or Pennsylvania. They -knew that when they played the Monongahela River or -the Kanawha there were likely to be more brawls and -bloodshed off the stage than on.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>By half-past six the levee and landing were already -dotted with the curious, the loafers, the impecunious, -the barefoot urchins who had gathered to snatch such -crumbs as could be gathered without pay. They fed -richly on the colour, the crowds, the music, the glimpses -they caught of another world through the show boat’s -glowing windows.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Up the river bank from the boat landing to the top of -the bluff flared kerosene torches suspended on long -spikes stuck in the ground. Magnolia knew they were -only kerosene torches, but their orange and scarlet -flames never failed to excite her. There was something -barbaric and splendid about them against the dusk of -the sky and woods beyond, the sinister mystery of the -river below. Something savage and elemental stirred -in her at sight of them; a momentary reversion to tribal -days, though she could not know that. She did know -that she liked the fantastic dancing shadows cast by -their vivid tongues on the figures that now teetered and -slid and scrambled down the steep clay bank to the boat -landing. They made a weird spectacle of the commonplace. -The whites of the Negroes’ eyes gleamed whiter. -The lights turned their cheeks to copper and bronze and -polished ebony. The swarthy coal miners and their -shawled and sallow wives, the farmers of the corn and -wheat lands, the backwoods poor whites, the cotton -pickers of Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, the small-town -merchants, the shambling loafers, the lovers two -by two were magically transformed into witches, giants, -princesses, crones, gnomes, Nubians, genii.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At the little ticket window sat Doc, the astute, or -Captain Andy. Later Mrs. Hawks was found to possess -a grim genius for handling ticket-seeking crowds -and the intricacies of ticket rack and small coins. Those -dimes, quarters, and half dollars poured so willingly into -the half-oval of the ticket window’s open mouth found -their way there, often enough, through a trail of pain -and sweat and blood. It was all one to Parthy. Black -faces. White faces. Hands gnarled. Hands calloused. -Men in jeans. Women in calico. Babies. Children. -Gimme a ticket. I only got fifteen. How much for -her here? Many of them had never seen a theatre or a -play. It was a strangely quiet crowd, usually. Little -of laughter, of shouting. They came to the show boat -timid, wide-eyed, wondering, like children. Two men -of the steamboat crew or two of the musicians acted as -ushers. After the first act was over they had often -to assure these simple folk that the play was not yet -ended. “This is just a recess. You come back to your -seat in a couple of minutes. No, it isn’t over. There’s -lots more to the show.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>After the play there was the concert. Doc, Andy, -and the ushers passed up and down between the acts -selling tickets for this. They required an additional -fifteen cents. Every member of the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> -troupe must be able to sing, dance, play some musical -instrument or give a monologue—in some way contribute -to the half hour of entertainment following the -regular performance.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Now the band struck up. The kerosene lamps on the -walls were turned low. The scuffling, shuffling, coughing -audience became quiet, quiet. There was in that -stillness something of fright. Seamed faces. Furrowed -faces. Drab. Bitter. Sodden. Childlike. Weary. -Sometimes, startlingly clear-cut in that half light, could -be glimpsed a profile of some gaunt Southern labourer, -or backwoodsman; and it was the profile of a portrait -seen in some gallery or in the illustration of a book of -history. A nose high-bred, aquiline; a sensitive, haughty -mouth; eyes deep-set, arrogant. Spanish, French, -English? The blood of a Stuart, a Plantagenet? Some -royal rogue or adventurer of many many years ago -whose seed, perhaps, this was.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The curtain rose. The music ceased jerkily, in mid-bar. -They became little children listening to a fairy -tale. A glorious world of unreality opened before their -eyes. Things happened. They knew that in life things -did not happen thus. But here they saw, believed, and -were happy. Innocence wore golden curls. Wickedness -wore black. Love triumphed, right conquered, -virtue was rewarded, evil punished.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They forgot the cotton fields, the wheatfields, the cornfields. -They forgot the coal mines, the potato patch, -the stable, the barn, the shed. They forgot the labour -under the pitiless blaze of the noonday sun; the bitter -marrow-numbing chill of winter; the blistered skin; the -frozen road; wind, snow, rain, flood. The women -forgot for an hour their washtubs, their kitchen stoves, -childbirth pains, drudgery, worry, disappointment. -Here were blood, lust, love, passion. Here were -warmth, enchantment, laughter, music. It was Anodyne. -It was Lethe. It was Escape. It was the -Theatre.</p> - -<div><h1>VI</h1></div> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='lead-in'><span class='dropcap'>I</span>t</span> was the theatre, perhaps, as the theatre was -meant to be. A place in which one saw one’s -dreams come true. A place in which one could live -a vicarious life of splendour and achievement; winning -in love, foiling the evildoer; a place in which one could -weep unashamed, laugh aloud, give way to emotions -long pent-up. When the show was over, and they had -clambered up the steep bank, and the music of the band -had ceased, and there was left only the dying glow of -the kerosene flares, you saw them stumble a little and -blink, dazedly, like one rudely awakened to reality -from a lovely dream.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>By eleven the torches had been gathered in. The -show-boat lights were dimmed. Troupers as they were, -no member of the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> company could go -meekly off to sleep once the work day was over. They -still were at high tension. So they discussed for the -thousandth time the performance that they had given a -thousand times. They dissected the audience.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, they were sitting on their hands to-night, all -right. Seemed they never would warm up.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I got a big laugh on that new business with the -pillow. Did you notice?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Notice! Yeh, the next time you introduce any new -business you got a right to leave me know beforehand. -I went right up. If Schultzy hadn’t thrown me my -line where’d I been!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I never thought of it till that minute, so help me! -I just noticed the pillow on the sofa and that minute it -came to me it’d be a good piece of business to grab it up -like it was a baby in my arms. I didn’t expect any -such laugh as I got on it. I didn’t go to throw you off.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>From Schultzy, in the rôle of director: “Next time -you get one of those inspirations you try it out at rehearsal -first.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“God, they was a million babies to-night. Cap, I -guess you must of threw a little something extra into -your spiel about come and bring the children. They -sure took you seriously and brought ’em, all right. I’d -just soon play for a orphan asylum and be done with it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Julie was cooking a pot of coffee over a little spirit -lamp. They used the stage as a common gathering -place. Bare of scenery now, in readiness for next -night’s set, it was their living room. Stark and shadowy -as it was, there was about it an air of coziness, of -domesticity. Mrs. Means, ponderous in dressing gown -and slippers, was heating some oily mess for use in the -nightly ministrations on her frail little husband’s delicate -chest. Usually Andy, Parthy, Elly, and Schultzy, -as the <span class='it'>haute monde</span>, together with the occasional addition -of the <span class='it'>Mollie Able’s</span> captain and pilot, supped -together at a table below-stage in the dining room, -where Jo and Queenie had set out a cold collation—cheese, -ham, bread, a pie left from dinner. Parthy -cooked the coffee on the kerosene stove. On stage -the women of the company hung their costumes carefully -away in the tiny cubicles provided for such purpose -just outside the dressing-room doors. The men smoked -a sedative pipe. The lights of the little town on the -river bank had long been extinguished. Even the -saloons on the waterfront showed only an occasional -glow. Sometimes George at the piano tried out a -new song for Elly or Schultzy or Ralph, in preparation -for to-morrow night’s concert. The tinkle of the piano, -the sound of the singer’s voice drifted across the river. -Up in the little town in a drab cottage near the waterfront -a restless soul would turn in his sleep and start -up at the sound and listen between waking and sleeping; -wondering about these strange people singing on their -boat at midnight; envying them their fantastic vagabond -life.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A peaceful enough existence in its routine, yet a -curiously crowded and colourful one for a child. She -saw town after town whose waterfront street was a solid -block of saloons, one next the other, open day and -night. Her childhood impressions were formed of -stories, happenings, accidents, events born of the rivers. -Towns and cities and people came to be associated in -her mind with this or that bizarre bit of river life. The -junction of the Ohio and Big Sandy rivers always was -remembered by Magnolia as the place where the Black -Diamond Saloon was opened on the day the <span class='it'>Cotton -Blossom</span> played Catlettsburg. Catlettsburg, typical -waterfront town of the times, was like a knot that drew -together the two rivers. Ohio, West Virginia, and -Kentucky met just there. And at the junction of the -rivers there was opened with high and appropriate -ceremonies the Black Diamond Saloon, owned by those -picturesque two, Big Wayne Damron and Little Wayne -Damron. From the deck of the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> Magnolia -saw the crowd waiting for the opening of the -Black Diamond doors—free drinks, free lunch, river -town hospitality. And then Big Wayne opened the -doors, and the crowd surged back while their giant -host, holding the key aloft in his hand, walked down -to the river bank, held the key high for a moment, -then hurled it far into the yellow waters of the Big -Sandy. The Black Diamond Saloon was open for business.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The shifting colourful life of the rivers unfolded before -her ambient eyes. She saw and learned and remembered. -Rough sights, brutal sights; sights of -beauty and colour; deeds of bravery; dirty deeds. -Through the wheat lands, the corn country, the fruit -belt, the cotton, the timber region. The river life -flowed and changed like the river itself. Shanty boats. -Bumboats. Side-wheelers. Stern-wheelers. Fussy -packets, self-important. Races ending often in death -and disaster. Coal barges. A fleet of rafts, log-laden. -The timber rafts, drifting down to Louisville, were -steered with great sweeps. As they swept down the -Ohio, the timbermen sang their chantey, their great -shoulders and strong muscular torsos bending, straightening -to the rhythm of the rowing song. Magnolia -had learned the words from Doc, and when she espied -the oarsmen from the deck of the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> she -joined in the song and rocked with their motion out of -sheer dramatic love of it:</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>“The river is up,</p> -<p class='line0'>The channel is deep,</p> -<p class='line0'>The wind blows steady and strong.</p> -<p class='line0'>Oh, Dinah’s got the hoe cake on,</p> -<p class='line0'>So row your boat along.</p> -<p class='line0'>Down the river,</p> -<p class='line0'>Down the river,</p> -<p class='line0'>Down the O-hi-o.</p> -<p class='line0'>Down the river,</p> -<p class='line0'>Down the river,</p> -<p class='line0'>Down the O-</p> -<p class='line0'>            hi-</p> -<p class='line0'>              O!”</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>Three tremendous pulls accompanied those last three -long-drawn syllables. Magnolia found it most invigorating. -Doc had told her, too, that the Ohio had -got its name from the time when the Indians, standing -on one shore and wishing to cross to the other, would -cup their hands and send out the call to the opposite -bank, loud and high and clear, “O-<span class='it'>HE</span>-O!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you think it’s true?” Magnolia would say; for -Mrs. Hawks had got into the way of calling Doc’s -stories stuff-and-nonsense. All those tales, it would -seem, to which Magnolia most thrilled, turned out, -according to Parthy, to be stuff-and-nonsense. So -then, “Do you think it’s true?” she would demand, -fearfully.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Think it! Why, pshaw! I know it’s true. Sure -as shootin’.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was noteworthy and characteristic of Magnolia -that she liked best the rampant rivers. The Illinois, -which had possessed such fascination for Tonti, for -Joliet, for Marquette—for countless <span class='it'>coureurs du bois</span> -who had frequented this trail to the southwest—left -her cold. Its clear water, its gentle current, its fretless -channel, its green hillsides, its tidy bordering grain -fields, bored her. From Doc and from her father she -learned a haphazard and picturesque chronicle of its -history, and that of like rivers—a tale of voyageurs and -trappers, of flatboat and keelboat men, of rafters in the -great logging days, of shanty boaters, water gipsies, -steamboats. She listened, and remembered, but was -unmoved. When the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> floated down the -tranquil bosom of the Illinois Magnolia read a book. -She drank its limpid waters and missed the mud-tang -to be found in a draught of the Mississippi.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If I was going to be a river,” she announced, “I -wouldn’t want to be the Illinois, or like those. I’d -want to be the Mississippi.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How’s that?” asked Captain Andy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Because the Illinois, it’s always the same. But -the Mississippi is always different. It’s like a person -that you never know what they’re going to do next, -and that makes them interesting.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Doc was oftenest her cicerone and playmate ashore. -His knowledge of the countryside, the rivers, the dwellers -along the shore and in the back-country, was almost -godlike in its omniscience. At his tongue’s end were -tales of buccaneers, of pirates, of adventurers. He -told her of the bloodthirsty and rapacious Murrel who, -not content with robbing and killing his victims, ripped -them open, disembowelled them, and threw them into -the river.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, my!” Magnolia would exclaim, inadequately; -and peer with some distaste into the water rushing -past the boat’s flat sides. “How did he look? Like -Steve when he plays Legree?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not by a jugful, he didn’t. Dressed up like a -parson, and used to travel from town to town, giving -sermons. He had a slick tongue, and while the congregation -inside was all stirred up getting their souls saved, -Murrel’s gang outside would steal their horses.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stories of slaves stolen, sold, restolen, resold, and -murdered. Murrel’s attempted capture of New Orleans -by rousing the blacks to insurrection against the -whites. Tales of Crenshaw, the vulture; of Mason, -terror of the Natchez road. On excursions ashore, -Doc showed her pirates’ caves, abandoned graveyards, -ancient robber retreats along the river banks or in the -woods. They visited Sam Grity’s soap kettle, a great -iron pot half hidden in a rocky unused field, in which -Grity used to cache his stolen plunder. She never again -saw an old soap kettle sitting plumply in some Southern -kitchen doorway, its sides covered with a handsome -black velvet coat of soot, that she did not shiver deliciously. -Strong fare for a child at an age when other -little girls were reading the Dotty Dimple Series and -Little Prudy books.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Doc enjoyed these sanguinary chronicles in the telling -as much as Magnolia in the listening. His lined and -leathery face would take on the changing expressions -suitable to the tenor of the tale. Cunning, cruelty, -greed, chased each other across his mobile countenance. -Doc had been a show-boat actor himself at some time -back in his kaleidoscopic career. So together he and -Magnolia and his ancient barrel-bellied black-and-white -terrier Catchem roamed the woods and towns and hills -and fields and churchyards from Cairo to the Gulf.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Sometimes, in the spring, she went with Julie, the -indolent. Elly almost never walked and often did not -leave the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> for days together. Elly was -extremely neat and fastidious about her person. She -was for ever heating kettles and pans of water for bathing, -for washing stockings and handkerchiefs. She had -a knack with the needle and could devise a quite plausible -third-act ball gown out of a length of satin, some -limp tulle, and a yard or two of tinsel. She never read. -Her industry irked Julie as Julie’s indolence irritated -her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Elly was something of a shrew (Schultzy had learned -to his sorrow that your blue-eyed blondes are not always -doves). “Pity’s sake, Julie, how you can sit -there doing nothing, staring out at that everlasting -river’s more than I can see. I should think you’d go -plumb crazy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What would you have me do?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do! Mend the hole in your stocking, for one thing.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I should say as much,” Mrs. Hawks would agree, -if she chanced to be present. She had no love for Elly; -but her own passion for industry and order could not -but cause her to approve a like trait in another.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Julie would glance down disinterestedly at her long -slim foot in its shabby shoe. “Is there a hole in my -stocking?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You know perfectly well there is, Julie Dozier. -You must have seen it the size of a half dollar when -you put it on this morning. It was there yesterday, -same’s to-day.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Julie smiled charmingly. “I know. I declare to -goodness I hoped it wouldn’t be. When I woke up this -morning I thought maybe the good fairies would have -darned it up neat’s a pin while I slept.” Julie’s voice -was as indolent as Julie herself. She spoke with a -Southern drawl. Her I was Ah. Ah declah to goodness—or -approximately that.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia would smile in appreciation of Julie’s -gentle raillery. She adored Julie. She thought Elly, -with her fair skin and china-blue eyes, as beautiful as -a princess in a fairy tale, as was natural in a child of -her sallow colouring and straight black hair. But the -two were antipathetic. Elly, in ill-tempered moments, -had been known to speak of Magnolia as “that brat,” -though her vanity was fed by the child’s admiration of -her beauty. But she never allowed her to dress up in -her discarded stage finery, as Julie often did. Elly -openly considered herself a gifted actress whose talent -and beauty were, thanks to her shiftless husband, -pearls cast before the river-town swinery. Pretty -though she was, she found small favour in the eyes of -men of the company and crew. Strangely enough, it -was Julie who drew them, quite without intent on her -part. There was something about her life-scarred face, -her mournful eyes, her languor, her effortlessness, her -very carelessness of dress that seemed to fascinate and -hold them. Steve’s jealousy of her was notorious. It -was common boat talk, too, that Pete, the engineer of -the <span class='it'>Mollie Able</span>, who played the bull drum in the band, -was openly enamoured of her and had tried to steal her -from Steve. He followed Julie into town if she so much -as stepped ashore. He was found lurking in corners -of the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> decks; loitering about the -stage where he had no business to be. He even sent -her presents of imitation jewellery and gaudy handkerchiefs -and work boxes, which she promptly presented to -Queenie, first urging that mass of ebon royalty to bedeck -herself with her new gifts when dishing up the -dinner. In that close community the news of the disposal -of these favours soon reached Pete’s sooty ears. -There had even been a brawl between Steve and Pete—one -of those sudden tempestuous battles, animal-like -in its fierceness and brutality. An oath in the darkness; -voices low, ominous; the thud of feet; the impact of -bone against flesh; deep sob-like breathing; a high weird -cry of pain, terror, rage. Pete was overboard and -floundering in the swift current of the Mississippi. -Powerful swimmer though he was, they had some trouble -in fishing him out. It was well that the <span class='it'>Cotton -Blossom</span> and the <span class='it'>Mollie Able</span> were lying at anchor. -Bruised and dripping, Pete had repaired to the engine -room to dry, and to nurse his wounds, swearing in terms -ridiculously like those frequently heard in the second -act of a <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> play that he would get his revenge -on the two of them. He had never, since then, -openly molested Julie, but his threats, mutterings, and -innuendoes continued. Steve had forbidden his wife -to leave the show boat unaccompanied. So it was that -when spring came round, and the dogwood gleaming -white among the black trunks of the pines and firs was -like a bride and her shining attendants in a great -cathedral, Julie would tie one of her floppy careless -hats under her chin and, together with Magnolia, range -the forests for wild flowers. They would wander inland -until they found trees other than the willows, the live -oaks, and the elms that lined the river banks. They -would come upon wild honeysuckle, opalescent pink. -In autumn they went nutting, returning with sackfuls -of hickory and hazel nuts—anything but the black -walnut which any show-boat dweller knows will cause a -storm if brought aboard. Sometimes they experienced -the shock of gay surprise that follows the sudden sight -of gentian, a flash of that rarest of flower colours, blue; -almost poignant in its beauty. It always made Magnolia -catch her breath a little.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Julie’s flounces trailing in the dust, the two would -start out sedately enough, though to the accompaniment -of a chorus of admonition and criticism.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>From Mrs. Hawks: “Now keep your hat pulled down -over your eyes so’s you won’t get all sunburned, Magnolia. -Black enough as ’tis. Don’t run and get all -overheated. Don’t eat any berries or anything you -find in the woods, now. . . . Back by four o’clock -the latest . . . poison ivy . . . snakes . . . -lost . . . gipsies. . . .”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>From Elly, trimming her rosy nails in the cool shade -of the front deck: “Julie, your placket’s gaping. And -tuck your hair in. No, there, on the side.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So they made their way up the bank, across the little -town, and into the woods. Once out of sight of the -boat the two turned and looked back. Then, without -a word, each would snatch her hat from her head; and -they would look at each other, and Julie would smile -her wide slow smile, and Magnolia’s dark plain pointed -little face would flash into sudden beauty. From some -part of her person where it doubtless was needed Julie -would extract a pin and with it fasten up the tail of -her skirt. Having thus hoisted the red flag of rebellion, -they would plunge into the woods to emerge hot, sticky, -bramble-torn, stained, flower-laden, and late. They -met Parthy’s upbraidings and Steve’s reproaches with -cheerful unconcern.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Often Magnolia went to town with her father, or -drove with him or Doc into the back-country. Andy -did much of the marketing for the boat’s food, frequently -hampered, supplemented, or interfered with -by Parthy’s less openhanded methods. He loved good -food, considered it important to happiness, liked to -order it and talk about it; was himself an excellent cook, -like most boatmen, and had been known to spend a -pleasant half hour reading the cook book. The butchers, -grocers, and general store keepers of the river -towns knew Andy, understood his fussy ways, liked -him. He bought shrewdly but generously, without -haggling; and often presented a store acquaintance of -long standing with a pair of tickets for the night’s performance. -When he and Magnolia had time to range -the countryside in a livery rig, Andy would select the -smartest and most glittering buggy and the liveliest -nag to be had. Being a poor driver and jerky, with no -knowledge of a horse’s nerves and mouth, the ride was -likely to be exhilarating to the point of danger. The -animal always was returned to the stable in a lather, -the vehicle spattered with mud-flecks to the hood. -Certainly, it was due to Andy more than Parthy that -the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> was reputed the best-fed show boat -on the rivers. He was always bringing home in triumph -a great juicy ham, a side of beef. He liked to forage -the season’s first and best: a bushel of downy peaches, -fresh-picked; watermelons; little honey-sweet seckel -pears; a dozen plump broilers; new corn; a great yellow -cheese ripe for cutting.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He would plump his purchases down on the kitchen -table while Queenie surveyed his booty, hands on ample -hips. She never resented his suggestions, though -Parthy’s offended her. Capering, Andy would poke a -forefinger into a pullet’s fat sides. “Rub ’em over with -a little garlic, Queenie, to flavour ’em up. Plenty of -butter and strips of bacon. Cover ’em over till they’re -tender and then give ’em a quick brown the last twenty -minutes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Queenie, knowing all this, still did not resent his -direction. “That shif’less no-’count Jo knew ’bout -cookin’ like you do, Cap’n Andy, Ah’d git to rest mah -feet now an’ again, Ah sure would.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia liked to loiter in the big, low-raftered kitchen. -It was a place of pleasant smells and sights and -sounds. It was here that she learned Negro spirituals -from Jo and cooking from Queenie, both of which accomplishments -stood her in good stead in later years. -Queenie had, for example, a way of stuffing a ham for -baking. It was a fascinating process to behold, and -one that took hours. Spices—bay, thyme, onion, clove, -mustard, allspice, pepper—chopped and mixed and -stirred together. A sharp-pointed knife plunged deep -into the juicy ham. The incision stuffed with the -spicy mixture. Another plunge with the knife. Another -filling. Again and again and again until the -great ham had grown to twice its size. Then a heavy -clean white cloth, needle and coarse thread. Sewed up -tight and plump in its jacket the ham was immersed in a -pot of water and boiled. Out when tender, the jacket -removed; into the oven with it. Basting and basting -from Queenie’s long-handled spoon. The long sharp -knife again for cutting, and then the slices, juicy and -scented, with the stuffing of spices making a mosaic -pattern against the pink of the meat. Many years -later Kim Ravenal, the actress, would serve at the -famous little Sunday night suppers that she and her -husband Kenneth Cameron were so fond of giving a -dish that she called ham <span class='it'>à la</span> Queenie.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How does your cook do it!” her friends would say—Ethel -Barrymore or Kit Cornell or Frank Crowninshield -or Charley Towne or Woollcott. “I’ll bet it -isn’t real at all. It’s painted on the platter.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is not! It’s a practical ham, stuffed with all -kinds of devilment. The recipe is my mother’s. She -got it from an old Southern cook named Queenie.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Listen, Kim. You’re among friends. Your dear -public is not present. You don’t have to pretend any -old Southern aristocracy Virginia belle mammy stuff -with <span class='it'>us</span>.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Pretend, you great oaf! I was born on a show -boat on the Mississippi, and proud of it. Everybody -knows that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mrs. Hawks, bustling into the show-boat kitchen -with her unerring gift for scenting an atmosphere of -mellow enjoyment, and dissipating it, would find Magnolia -perched on a chair, both elbows on the table, her -palms propping her chin as she regarded with round-eyed -fascination Queenie’s magic manipulations. Or -perhaps Jo, the charming and shiftless, would be singing -for her one of the Negro plantation songs, wistful -with longing and pain; the folk songs of a wronged race, -later to come into a blaze of popularity as spirituals.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For some nautical reason, a broad beam, about six -inches high and correspondingly wide, stretched across -the kitchen floor from side to side, dividing the room. -Through long use Jo and Queenie had become accustomed -to stepping over this obstruction, Queenie ponderously, -Jo with an effortless swing of his lank legs. -On this Magnolia used to sit, her arms hugging her -knees, her great eyes in the little sallow pointed face -fixed attentively on Jo. The kitchen was very clean -and shining and stuffy. Jo’s legs were crossed, one foot -in its great low shapeless shoe hooked in the chair rung, -his banjo cradled in his lap. The once white parchment -face of the instrument was now almost as black -as Jo’s, what with much strumming by work-stained -fingers.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Which one, Miss Magnolia?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I Got Shoes,” Magnolia would answer, promptly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Jo would throw back his head, his sombre eyes half -shut:</p> - -<div class='figcenter'> -<img src='images/music.png' alt='' id='iid-0002' style='width:95%;height:auto;'/> -</div> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<div class='stanza-inner'> -<p class='line0' style='text-align:center;'>[Lyrics]</p> -<p class='line0'>  I got a shoes, you got a shoes.</p> -<p class='line0'>All of God’s chil-dren got a shoes;</p> -<p class='line0'>  When I get to Heav-en goin’ to put on my shoes.</p> -<p class='line0'>Goin’ to walk all over God’s Heav’n.</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -</div> -</div> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>  Heav’n, Heav’n,</p> -<p class='line0'>Ev-’ry bod-y talk-in’ ’bout heav’n ain’t go-in’ there;</p> -<p class='line0'>  Heav’n, Heav’n,</p> -<p class='line0'>Goin’ to shout all over God’s Heav’n.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>The longing of a footsore, ragged, driven race expressed -in the tragically childlike terms of shoes, white -robes, wings, and the wise and simple insight into -hypocrisy: “Ev’rybody talkin ’bout Heav’n ain’t goin’ -there. . . .”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now which one?” His fingers still picking the -strings, ready at a word to slip into the opening chords -of the next song.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Go Down, Moses.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She liked this one—at once the most majestic and -supplicating of all the Negro folk songs—because it -always made her cry a little. Sometimes Queenie, -busy at the stove or the kitchen table, joined in with -her high rich camp-meeting voice. Jo’s voice was a -reedy tenor, but soft and husky with the indescribable -Negro vocal quality. Magnolia soon knew the tune -and the words of every song in Jo’s repertoire. Unconsciously, -being an excellent mimic, she sang as Jo -and Queenie sang, her head thrown slightly back, her -eyes rolling or half closed, one foot beating rhythmic -time to the music’s cadence. Her voice was true, though -mediocre; but she got into this the hoarsely sweet Negro -overtone—purple velvet muffling a flute.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Between Jo and Queenie flourished a fighting affection, -deep, true, and lasting. There was some doubt as -to the actual legal existence of their marriage, but the -union was sound and normal enough. At each season’s -close they left the show boat the richer by three hundred -dollars, clean new calico for Queenie, and proper jeans -for Jo. Shoes on their feet. Hats on their heads. -Bundles in their arms. Each spring they returned -penniless, in rags, and slightly liquored. They had -had a magnificent time. They did not drink again -while the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> kitchen was their home. But -the next winter the programme repeated itself. Captain -Andy liked and trusted them. They were as faithful -to him as their childlike vagaries would permit.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So, filled with the healthy ecstasy of song, the Negro -man and woman and the white child would sit in deep -contentment in the show-boat kitchen. The sound of a -door slammed. Quick heavy footsteps. Three sets of -nerves went taut. Parthy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Maggie Hawks, have you practised to-day?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Some.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How much?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, half an hour—more.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“When?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“ ’Smorning.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I didn’t hear you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The sulky lower lip out. The high forehead wrinkled -by a frown. Song flown. Peace gone.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I did so. Jo, didn’t you hear me practising?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah suah did, Miss Magnolia.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You march right out of here, young lady, and practise -another half hour. Do you think your father’s -made of money, that I can throw fifty-cent pieces away -on George for nothing? Now you do your exercises -fifteen minutes and the Maiden’s Prayer fifteen. . . . -Idea!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia marched. Out of earshot Parthy expressed -her opinion of nigger songs. “I declare I don’t know -where you get your low ways from! White people -aren’t good enough for you, I suppose, that you’ve got -to run with blacks in the kitchen. Now you sit yourself -down on that stool.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia was actually having music lessons. George, -the Whistler and piano player, was her teacher, receiving -fifty cents an hour for weekly instruction. Driven by -her stern parent, she practised an hour daily on the -tinny old piano in the orchestra pit, a rebellious, skinny, -pathetic little figure strumming painstakingly away in -the great emptiness of the show-boat auditorium. She -must needs choose her time for practice when a rehearsal -of the night’s play was not in progress on the stage or -when the band was not struggling with the music of a -new song and dance number. Incredibly enough, she -actually learned something of the mechanics of music, -if not of its technique. She had an excellent rhythm -sense, and this was aided by none other than Jo, whose -feeling for time and beat and measure and pitch was -flawless. Queenie lumped his song gift in with his -general shiftlessness. Born fifty years later he might -have known brief fame in some midnight revue or Club -Alabam’ on Broadway. Certainly Magnolia unwittingly -learned more of real music from black Jo and many -another Negro wharf minstrel than she did from hours -of the heavy-handed and unlyrical George.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>That Mrs. Hawks could introduce into the indolent -tenor of show-boat life anything so methodical and humdrum -as five-finger exercises done an hour daily was -triumphant proof of her indomitable driving force. -Life had miscast her in the rôle of wife and mother. -She was born to be a Madam Chairman. Committees, -Votes, Movements, Drives, Platforms, Gavels, Reports -all showed in her stars. Cheated of these, she had to be -content with such outlet of her enormous energies as -the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> afforded. Parthy had never heard -the word Feminist, and wouldn’t have recognized it if -she had. One spoke at that time not of Women’s -Rights but of Women’s Wrongs. On these Parthenia -often waxed tartly eloquent. Her housekeeping fervour -was the natural result of her lack of a more impersonal -safety valve. The <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> shone like a Methodist -Sunday household. Only Julie and Windy, the -<span class='it'>Mollie Able</span> pilot, defied her. She actually indulged -in those most domestic of rites, canning and preserving, -on board the boat. Donning an all-enveloping gingham -apron, she would set frenziedly to work on two bushels -of peaches or seckel pears; baskets of tomatoes; pecks -of apples. Pickled pears, peach marmalade, grape -jell in jars and pots and glasses filled shelves and cupboards. -Queenie found a great deal of satisfaction in the -fact that occasionally, owing to some culinary accident -or to the unusual motion of the flat-bottomed <span class='it'>Cotton -Blossom</span> in the rough waters of an open bay, one of these -jars was found smashed on the floor, its rich purple or -amber contents mingling with splinters of glass. No -one—not even Parthy—ever dared connect Queenie -with these quite explicable mishaps.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Parthy was an expert needlewoman. She often -assisted Julie or Elly or Mis’ Means with their costumes. -To see her stern implacable face bent over a heap of -frivolous stuffs while her industrious fingers swiftly sent -the needle flashing through unvarying seams was to -receive the shock that comes of beholding the incongruous. -The enormity of it penetrated even her blunt -sensibilities.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If anybody’d ever told me that I’d live to see the -day when I’d be sewing on costumes for show folks!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Run along, Parthy. You like it,” Andy would say.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But she never would admit that. “Like it or lump -it, what can I do! Married you for better or worse, -didn’t I!” Her tone leaving no doubt as to the path -down which that act had led her. Actually she was -having a rich, care-free, and varied life such as she -had never dreamed of and of which she secretly was -enamoured.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Dwellers in this or that river town loitering down at -the landing to see what manner of sin and loose-living -went on in and about this show boat with its painted -women and play-acting men would be startled to hear -sounds and sniff smells which were identical with those -which might be issuing that very moment from their -own smug and godly dwellings ashore. From out the -open doors of the Cotton Blossom Floating Palace -Theatre came the unmistakable and humdrum sounds -of scales and five-finger exercises done painfully and -unwillingly by rebellious childish hands. Ta-ta-ta—<span class='it'>TA</span>—ta-ta-ta. -From below decks there floated up the -mouth-watering savour of tomato ketchup, of boiling -vinegar and spices, or the perfumed aroma of luscious -fruits seething in sugary kettles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Smells for all the world like somebody was doing -up sweet pickles.” One village matron to another.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, I suppose they got to eat like other folks.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ta-ta-ta—<span class='it'>TA</span>—ta-ta-ta.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was inevitable, however, that the ease and indolence -of the life, as well as the daily contact with odd and -unconventional characters must leave some imprint on -even so adamantine an exterior as Parthy’s. Little by -little her school-teacherly diction dropped from her. -Slowly her vowels began to slur, her aren’ts became -ain’ts, her crisp new England utterance took on something -of the slovenly Southern drawl, her consonants -were missing from the end of a word here and there. -True, she still bustled and nagged, managed and -scolded, drove and reproached. She still had the power -to make Andy jump with nervousness. Whether consciously -or unconsciously, the influence of this virago -was more definitely felt than that of any other one of -the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom’s</span> company and crew. Of these only -Julie Dozier, and Windy, the pilot (so called because he -almost never talked) actually triumphed over Mrs. -Hawks. Julie’s was a negative victory. She never -voluntarily spoke to Parthy and had the power to aggravate -that lady to the point of frenzy by remaining -limp, supine, and idle when Parthy thought she should -be most active; by raising her right eyebrow quizzically -in response to a more than usually energetic tirade; by -the habitual disorder of the tiny room which she shared -with Steve; by the flagrant carelessness and untidiness -of her own gaunt graceful person.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I declare, Hawks, what you keep that slatternly -yellow cat around this boat for beats me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Best actress in the whole caboodle, that’s why.” -Something fine in little Captain Andy had seen and -recognized the flame that might have glorified Julie -had it not instead consumed her. “That girl had the -right backing she’d make her mark, and not in any show -boat, either. I’ve been to New York. I’ve seen ’em -down at Wallack’s and Daly’s and around.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A slut, that’s what she is. I had my way she’d -leave this boat bag and baggage.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, this is one time you won’t have your way, -Mrs. Hawks, ma’am.” She had not yet killed the spirit -in Andy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mark my words, you’ll live to regret it. The way -she looks out of those black eyes of hers! Gives me the -creeps.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What would you have the girl look out of,” retorted -Andy, not very brilliantly. “Her ears?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Julie could not but know of this antagonism toward -her. Some perverse streak in her otherwise rich and -gentle make-up caused her to find a sinister pleasure in -arousing it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Windy’s victory was more definitely dramatic, though -his defensive method against Parthy’s attacks resembled -in sardonic quiet and poise Julie’s own. Windy was accounted -one of the most expert pilots on the Mississippi. -He knew every coil and sinew and stripe of the yellow -serpent. River men used his name as a synonym for -magic with the pilot’s wheel. Starless night or misty -day; shoal water or deep, it was all one to Windy. -Though Andy’s senior by more than fifteen years, the -two had been friends for twenty. Captain Andy had -enormous respect for his steersmanship; was impressed -by his taciturnity (being himself so talkative and vivacious); -enjoyed talking with him in the bright quiet -security of the pilot house. He was absolute czar of -the <span class='it'>Mollie Able</span> and the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span>, as befitted his -high accomplishments. No one ever dreamed of opposing -him except Parthy. He was slovenly of person, -careless of habit. These shortcomings Parthy undertook -to correct early in her show-boat career. She met -with defeat so prompt, so complete, so crushing as to -cause her for ever after to leave him unmolested.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Windy had muddy boots. They were, it seemed, -congenitally so. He would go ashore in mid-afternoon -of a hot August day when farmers for miles around had -been praying for rain these weeks past and return in a -downpour with half the muck and clay of the countryside -clinging to his number eleven black square-toed -elastic-side boots. A tall, emaciated drooping old man, -Windy; with long gnarled muscular hands whose enlarged -knuckles and leathery palms were the result of -almost half a century at the wheel. His pants were -always grease-stained; his black string tie and gray -shirt spattered with tobacco juice; his brown jersey -frayed and ragged. Across his front he wore a fine -anchor watch chain, or “log” chain, as it was called. -And gleaming behind the long flowing tobacco-splotched -gray beard that reached almost to his waist could be -glimpsed a milkily pink pearl stud like a star behind a -dirty cloud-bank. The jewel had been come by, doubtless, -in payment of some waterfront saloon gambling -debt. Surely its exquisite curves had once glowed -upon fine and perfumed linen.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was against this taciturn and omnipotent conqueror -of the rivers that Parthy raised the flag of battle.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Traipsin’ up and down this boat and the <span class='it'>Mollie Able</span>, -spitting his filthy tobacco and leaving mud tracks like an -elephant that’s been in a bog. If I’ve had those steps -leading up to the pilot house scrubbed once, I’ve had ’em -scrubbed ten times this week, and now look at them! I -won’t have it, and so I tell you. Why can’t he go up -the side of the boat the way a pilot is supposed to do! -What’s that side ladder for, I’d like to know! He’s -supposed to go up it; not the steps.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now, Parthy, you can’t run a boat the way you -would a kitchen back in Thebes. Windy’s no hired -man. He’s the best pilot on the rivers, and I’m lucky -to have him. A hundred jobs better than this ready to -jump at him if he so much as crooks a finger. He’s -pulled this tub through good many tight places where -any other pilot’d landed us high and dry on a sand bar. -And don’t you forget it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He’s a dirty old man. And I won’t have it. -Muddying up my clean . . .”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Parthy was not one of your scolds who takes her -grievances out in mere words. With her, to threaten -was to act. That very morning, just before the <span class='it'>Cotton -Blossom</span> was making a late departure from Greenville, -where they had played the night before, to Sunnisie -Side Landing, twelve miles below, this formidable -woman, armed with hammer and nails, took advantage -of Windy’s temporary absence below decks to nail down -the hatch above the steps leading to the pilot house. -She was the kind of woman who can drive a nail straight. -She drove ten of them, long and firm and deep. A -pity that no one saw her. It was a sight worth seeing, -this accomplished and indomitable virago in curl -papers, driving nails with a sure and steady stroke.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Below stairs Windy, coming aboard from an early -morning look around, knocked the ashes out of his pipe, -sank his great yellow fangs into a generous wedge of -Honest Scrap, and prepared to climb the stairs to the -<span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> pilot house, there to manipulate wheel -and cord that would convey his orders to Pete in the -engine room.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Up the stairs, leaving a mud spoor behind. One -hand raised to lift the hatch; wondering, meanwhile, -to find it closed. A mighty heave; a pounding with -the great fist; another heave, then, with the powerful -old shoulder.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Nailed,” said Windy aloud to himself, mildly. -Then, still mildly, “The old hell-cat.” He spat, then, -on the hatchway steps and clumped leisurely down -again. He leaned over the boat rail, looking benignly -down at the crowd of idlers gathered at the wharf to -watch the show boat cast off. Then he crossed the -deck again to where a capacious and carpet-seated easy -chair held out its inviting arms. Into this he sank -with a grunt of relaxation. From his pocket he took -the pipe so recently relinquished, filled it, tamped it, -lighted it. From another pocket he took a month-old -copy of the New Orleans <span class='it'>Times-Democrat</span>, turned to the -column marked Shipping News, and settled down, apparently, -for a long quiet day with literature.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Up came the anchor. In came the hawser. Chains -clanked. The sound of the gangplank drawn up. -The hoarse shouts from land and water that always -attend the departure of a river boat. “Throw her over -there! Lift ’er! Heh, Pete! Gimme hand here! -Little to the left. Other side! Hold on! Easy!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The faces of the crowd ashore turned expectantly -toward the boat. Everything shipshape. Pete in the -engine room. Captain Andy scampering for the texas. -Silence. No bells. No steam. No hoarse shouts of -command. God A’mighty, where’s Windy? Windy! -Windy!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Windy lowers his shielding newspaper and mildly -regards the capering captain and bewildered crew and -startled company. He is wearing his silver-rimmed -reading spectacles slightly askew on his biblical-looking -hooked nose. Andy rushes up to him, all the Basque -in him bubbling. “God’s sake, Windy, what’s . . . -why don’t you take her! We’re going.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Windy chewed rhythmically for a moment, spat a long -brown jet of juice, wiped his hairy mouth with the back -of one gnarled hand. “We ain’t going, Cap’n Hawks, -because she can’t go till I give her the go-ahead. And I -ain’t give her the go-ahead. I’m the pilot of this here -boat.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But why? What the . . . Wh——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The hatch is nailed down above the steps leading -to the pilot house, Cap’n Andy. Till that hatchway’s -open, I don’t climb up to no pilot house. And till I -climb up to the pilot house, she don’t get no go-ahead. -And till I give her the go-ahead, she don’t go, not if we -stay here alongside this landing till the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> -rots.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He looked around benignly and resumed his reading -of the New Orleans <span class='it'>Times-Democrat</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Profanity, frowned upon under Parthy’s régime, now -welled up in Andy and burst from him in spangled -geysers. Words seethed to the surface and exploded -like fireworks. Twenty-five years of river life had -equipped him with a vocabulary rich, varied, purple. -He neglected neither the heavens above nor the earth -beneath. Revolt and rage shook his wiry little frame. -Years of henpecking, years of natural gaiety suppressed, -years of mincing when he wished to stride, years of -silence when he wished to sing, now were wiped away -by the stream of undiluted rage that burst from Captain -Andy Hawks. It was a torrent, a flood, a Mississippi -of profanity in which hells and damns were mere drops -in the mighty roaring mass.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Out with your crowbars there. Pry up that hatch! -I’m captain of this boat, by God, and anybody, man or -woman, who nails down that hatch again without my -orders gets put off this boat wherever we are, and so I -say.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Did Parthenia Ann Hawks shrink and cower and pale -under the blinding glare of this pyrotechnic profanity? -Not that indomitable woman. The picture of outraged -virtue in curl papers, she stood her ground like a Roman -matron. She had even, when the flood broke, sent -Magnolia indoors with a gesture meant to convey protection -from the pollution of this verbal stream.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, Captain Hawks, a fine example you have set -for your company and crew I must say.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>You</span> must say! You——! Let me tell you, Mrs. -Hawks, ma’am, the less you say the better. And I -repeat, anybody touches that hatchway again——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Touch it!” echoed Parthy in icy disdain. “I -wouldn’t touch it, nor the pilot house, nor the pilot -either, if you’ll excuse my saying so, with a ten-foot -pole.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And swept away with as much dignity as a <span class='it'>Cotton -Blossom</span> early morning costume would permit. Her -head bloody but unbowed.</p> - -<div><h1>VII</h1></div> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='lead-in'><span class='dropcap'>J</span>ulie</span> was gone. Steve was gone. Tragedy had -stalked into Magnolia’s life; had cast its sable -mantle over the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span>. Pete had kept -his promise and revenge had been his. But the taste of -triumph had not, after all, been sweet in his mouth. -There was little of the peace of satisfaction in his sooty -face stuck out of the engine-room door. The arm -that beat the ball drum in the band was now a listless -member, so that a hollow mournful thump issued from -that which should have given forth a rousing boom.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The day the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> was due to play Lemoyne, -Mississippi, Julie Dozier took sick. In show-boat -troupes, as well as in every other theatrical company -in the world, it is an unwritten law that an actor must -never be too sick to play. He may be sick. Before -the performance he may be too sick to stand; immediately -after the performance he may collapse. He may, -if necessary, die on the stage and the curtain will then -be lowered. But no real trouper while conscious will -ever confess himself too sick to go on when the overture -ends and the lights go down.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Julie knew this. She had played show boats for -years, up and down the rivers of the Middle West and -the South. She had a large and loyal following. -Lemoyne was a good town, situated on the river, prosperous, -sizable.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Julie lay on her bed in her darkened room, refusing -all offers of aid. She did not want food. She did not -want cold compresses on her head. She did not want -hot compresses on her head. She wanted to be left -alone—with Steve. Together the two stayed in the -darkened room, and when some member of the company -came to the door with offers of aid or comfort, -there came into their faces a look that was strangely -like one of fear, followed immediately by a look of relief.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Queenie sent Jo to the door with soup, her panacea -for all ailments, whether of the flesh or the spirit. Julie -made a show of eating it, but when Jo had clumped -across the stage and down to his kitchen Julie motioned -to Steve. He threw the contents of the bowl out of -the window into the yellow waters of the Mississippi.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Doc appeared at Julie’s door for the tenth time -though it was only mid-morning. “Think you can play -all right, to-night, though, don’t you, Julie?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In the semi-darkness of her shaded room Julie’s eyes -glowed suddenly wide and luminous. She sat up in bed, -pushing her hair back from her forehead with a gesture -so wild as to startle the old trouper.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No!” she cried, in a sort of terror. “No! I can’t -play to-night. Don’t ask me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Blank astonishment made Doc’s face almost ludicrous. -For an actress to announce ten hours before -the time set for the curtain’s rising that she would not -be able to go on that evening—an actress who had not -suffered decapitation or an amputation—was a thing -unheard of in Doc’s experience.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“God a’mighty, Julie! If you’re sick as all that, -you’d better see a doctor. Steve, what say?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The great blond giant seated at the side of Julie’s -bed did not look round at his questioner. His eyes -were on Julie’s face. “Julie’s funny that way. She’s -set against doctors. Won’t have one, that’s all. Don’t -coax her. It’ll only make her worse.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Inured as he was to the vagaries of woman, this apparently -was too much for Doc. Schultzy appeared -in the doorway; peered into the dimness of the little -room.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Funny thing. I guess you must have an admirer -in this town, Jule. Somebody’s stole your picture, -frame and all, out of the layout in the lobby there. -First I thought it might be that crazy Pete, used to -be so stuck on you. . . . Now, now, Steve! Keep -your shirt on! Keep your shirt on! . . . I asked -him, straight, but he was surprised all right. He ain’t -good enough actor to fool me. He didn’t do it. Must -be some town rube all right, Julie, got stuck on your -shape or something. I put up another one.” He -stood a moment, thoughtfully. Elly came up behind -him, hatted and gloved.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m going up to town, Julie. Can I fetch you something? -An orange, maybe? Or something from the -drug store?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Julie’s head on the pillow moved a negative. “She -says no, thanks,” Steve answered for her, shortly. It -was as though both laboured under a strain. The -three in the doorway sensed it. Elly shrugged her -shoulders, though whether from pique or indifference -it was hard to say. Doc still stood puzzled, bewildered. -Schultzy half turned away. “S’long’s you’re all right -by to-night,” he said cheerfully.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Says she won’t be,” Doc put in, lowering his voice.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Won’t be!” repeated Schultzy, almost shrilly. -“Why, she ain’t <span class='it'>sick</span>, is she! I mean, sick!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Schultzy sent his voice shrilling from Julie’s little -bedroom doorway across the bare stage, up the aisles of -the empty auditorium, so that it penetrated the box -office at the far end of the boat, where Andy, at the -ticket window, was just about to be relieved by Parthy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Heh, Cap! Cap! Come here. Julie’s sick. Julie’s -too sick to go on. Says she’s too sick to . . .”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Here,” said Andy, summarily, to Parthy; and left -her in charge of business. Down the aisle with the -light quick step that was almost a scamper; up the -stage at a bound. “Best advance sale we’ve had since -we started out. We never played this town before. -License was too high. But here it is, not eleven o’clock, -and half the house gone already.” He peered into the -darkened room.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>From its soft fur nest in the old sealskin muff the -marmoset poked its tragic mask and whimpered like -a sick baby. This morning there was a strange resemblance -between the pinched and pathetic face on the -pillow and that of the little sombre-eyed monkey.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>By now there was quite a little crowd about Julie’s -door. Mis’ Means had joined them and could be heard -murmuring about mustard plasters and a good hot -something or other. Andy entered the little room with -the freedom of an old friend. He looked sharply down -at the face on the pillow. The keen eyes plunged deep -into the tortured eyes that stared piteously up at him. -Something he saw there caused him to reach out with -one brown paw, none too immaculate, and pat that -other slim brown hand clutching the coverlet so tensely. -“Why, Jule, what’s—— Say, s’pose you folks clear -out and let me and Jule and Steve here talk things over -quiet. Nobody ain’t going to get well with this mob -scene you’re putting on. Scat!” Andy could distinguish -between mental and physical anguish.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They shifted—Doc, Elly, Schultzy, Mis’ Means, -Catchem the torpid. Another moment and they would -have moved reluctantly away. But Parthy, torn between -her duty at the ticket window and her feminine -curiosity as to the cause of the commotion at Julie’s -door became, suddenly, all woman. Besides—demon -statistician that she was—she suddenly had remembered -a curious coincidence in connection with this sudden -illness of Julie’s. She slammed down the ticket window, -banged the box-office door, sailed down the aisle. As -she approached Doc was saying for the dozenth time:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Person’s too sick to play, they’re sick enough to -have a doctor’s what I say. Playing Xenia to-morrow. -Good a stand’s we got. Prolly won’t be able to open -there, neither, if you’re sick’s all that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll be able to play to-morrow!” cried Julie, in a -high strained voice. “I’ll be able to play to-morrow. -To-morrow I’ll be all right.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How do you know?” demanded Doc.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Steve turned on him in sudden desperation. “She’ll -be all right, I tell you. She’ll be all right as soon as she -gets out of this town.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s a funny thing,” exclaimed Parthy. She -swept through the little crowd at the door, seeming -to mow them down with the energy of her progress. -“That’s a funny thing.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What?” demanded Steve, his tone belligerent. -“What’s funny?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Captain Andy raised a placating palm. “Now, -Parthy, now, Parthy. Sh-sh!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t shush <span class='it'>me</span>, Hawks. I know what I’m talking -about. It came over me just this minute. Julie took -sick at this very town of Lemoyne time we came down -river last year. Soon as you and Doc decided we -wouldn’t open here because the license was too high she -got well all of a sudden, just like that!” She snapped -a thumb and forefinger.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Silence, thick, uncomfortable, heavy with foreboding, -settled down upon the little group in the doorway.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Nothing so funny about that,” said Captain Andy, -stoutly; and threw a sharp glance at the face on the -pillow. “This hot sticky climate down here after the -cold up north is liable to get anybody to feeling queer. -None too chipper myself, far’s that goes. Affects some -people that way.” He scratched frenziedly at the -mutton-chop whiskers, this side and that.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, I may not know <span class='it'>much</span>——” began Parthy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Down the aisle skimmed Magnolia, shouting as she -came, her child’s voice high and sharp with excitement. -“Mom! Mom! Look. What do you think! Julie’s -picture’s been stolen again right out of the front of the -lobby. Julie, they’ve taken your picture again. Somebody -took one and Schultzy put another in and now -it’s been stolen too.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was delighted with her news; radiant with it. -Her face fell a little at the sight of the figure on the bed, -the serious group about the doorway that received her -news with much gravity. She flew to the bed then, all -contrition. “Oh, Julie darling, I’m so sorry you’re -sick.” Julie turned her face away from the child, -toward the wall.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Captain Andy, simulating fury, capered a threatening -step toward the doorway crowd now increased by the -deprecating figure of Mr. Means and Ralph’s tall -shambling bulk. “Will you folks clear out of here or -will I have to use force! A body’d think a girl didn’t -have the right to feel sick. Doc, you get down and -’tend to that ticket window, or Parthy. If we can’t -show to-night we got to leave ’em know. Ralph, you -write out a sign and get it pasted up at the post office. -. . . Sure you won’t be feeling better by night -time, are you, Julie?” He looked doubtfully down at -the girl on the bed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>With a sudden lithe movement Julie flung herself into -Steve’s arms, clung to him, weeping. “No!” she cried, -her voice high, hysterical. “No! No! No! Leave -me alone, can’t you! Leave me alone!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Sure,” Andy motioned, then, fiercely to the company. -“Sure we’ll leave you alone, Julie.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Tragedy, having stalked her victim surely, relentlessly, -all the morning, now was about to close in -upon her. She had sent emissary after emissary down -the show-boat aisle, and each had helped to deepen the -look of terror in Julie’s eyes. Now sounded the slow -shambling heavy tread of Windy the pilot, bearded, -sombre, ominous as the figure of fate itself. The little -group turned toward him automatically, almost absurdly, -like a badly directed mob scene in one of their -own improbable plays.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He clumped up the little flight of steps that led from -the lower left-hand box to the stage. Clump, clump, -clump. Irresistibly Parthy’s eyes peered sharply in -pursuit of the muddy tracks that followed each step. -She snorted indignantly. Across the stage, his beard -waggling up and down as his jaws worked slowly, -rhythmically on a wedge of Honest Scrap. As he approached -Julie’s doorway he took off his cap and rubbed -his pate with his palm, sure sign of great mental perturbation -in this monumental old leviathan. The -yellow skin of his knobby bald dome-like head shone -gold in the rays of the late morning sun that came in -through the high windows at the side of the stage.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He stood a moment, chewing, and peering mildly -into the dimness of the bedroom, Sphinx-like, it seemed -that he never would speak. He stood, champing. The -<span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> troupe waited. They had not played -melodrama for years without being able to sense it -when they saw it. He spoke. “Seems that skunk -Pete’s up to something.” They waited. The long -tobacco-stained beard moved up and down, up and -down. “Skinned out half an hour back streaking -toward town like possessed. He yanked that picture -of Julie out of the hall there. Seen him. I see good -deal goes on around here.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Steve sprang to his feet with a great ripping river -oath. “I’ll kill him this time, the ——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Seen you take that first picture out, Steve.” The -deep red that had darkened Steve’s face and swelled -the veins on his great neck receded now, leaving his -china-blue eyes staring out of a white and stricken face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I never did! I never did!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Julie sat up, clutching her wrapper at the throat. -She laughed shrilly. “What would he want to steal -my picture for! His own wife’s picture. Likely!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So nobody in this town’d see it, Julie,” said Windy, -mildly. “Listen. Fifty years piloting on the rivers -you got to have pretty good eyesight. Mine’s as good -to-day as it was time I was twenty. I just stepped -down from the texas to warn you I see Pete coming -along the levee with Ike Keener. Ike’s the sheriff. -He’ll be in here now any minute.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Let him,” Andy said, stoutly. “Our license is -paid. Sheriff’s as welcome around this boat as anybody. -Let him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But no one heard him; no one heeded him. A strange -and terrible thing was happening. Julie had sprung -from her bed. In her white nightgown and her wrapper, -her long black hair all tumbled and wild about her face, -a stricken and hunted thing, she clung to Steve, and he -to her. There came a pounding at the door that led -into the show-boat auditorium from the fore deck. -Steve’s eyes seemed suddenly to sink far back in his -head. His cheek-bones showed gaunt and sharp as -Julie’s own. His jaw was set so that a livid ridge stood -out on either side like bars of white-hot steel. He -loosened Julie’s hold almost roughly. From his pocket -he whipped a great clasp-knife and opened its flashing -blade. Julie did not scream, but the other women did, -shriek on shriek. Captain Andy sprang for him, a -mouse attacking a mastodon. Steve shook him off with -a fling of his powerful shoulders.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m not going to hurt her, you fool. Leave me -be. I know what I’m doing.” The pounding came -again, louder and more insistent. “Somebody go down -and let him in—but keep him there a minute.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>No one stirred. The pounding ceased. The doors -opened. The boots of Ike Keener, the sheriff, clattered -down the aisle of the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Stop those women screeching,” Steve shouted. -Then, to Julie, “It won’t hurt much, darling.” With -incredible swiftness he seized Julie’s hand in his left -one and ran the keen glittering blade of his knife firmly -across the tip of her forefinger. A scarlet line followed -it. He bent his blond head, pressed his lips to the -wound, sucked it greedily. With a little moan Julie -fell back on the bed. Steve snapped the blade into its -socket, thrust the knife into his pocket. The boots of -Sheriff Ike Keener were clattering across the stage now. -The white faces clustered in the doorway—the stricken, -bewildered, horrified faces—turned from the two within -the room to the one approaching it. They made way -for this one silently. Even Parthy was dumb. Magnolia -clung to her, wide-eyed, uncomprehending, sensing -tragedy though she had never before encountered it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The lapel of his coat flung back, Ike Keener confronted -the little cowed group on the stage. A star -shone on his left breast. The scene was like a rehearsal -of a <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> thriller.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Who’s captain of this here boat?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Andy, his fingers clutching his whiskers, stepped forward. -“I am. What’s wanted with him? Hawks is -my name—Captain Andy Hawks, twenty years on the -rivers.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He looked the sheriff of melodrama, did Ike Keener—boots, -black moustaches, wide-brimmed black hat, flowing -tie, high boots, and all. Steve himself, made up -for the part, couldn’t have done it better. “Well, -Cap, kind of unpleasant, but I understand there’s a -miscegenation case on board.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What?” whispered Magnolia. “What’s that? What -does he mean, Mom?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hush!” hissed Parthy, and jerked the child’s arm.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How’s that?” asked Andy, but he knew.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Miscegenation. Case of a Negro woman married -to a white man. Criminal offense in this state, as -you well know.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No such thing,” shouted Andy. “No such thing on -board this boat.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Sheriff Ike Keener produced a piece of paper. “Name -of the white man is Steve Baker. Name of the negress”—he -squinted again at the slip of paper—“name -of the negress is Julie Dozier.” He looked around at -the group. “Which one’s them?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, my God!” screamed Elly. “Oh, my God! -Oh, my God!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Shut up,” said Schultzy, roughly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Steve stepped to the window and threw up the shade, -letting the morning light into the crowded disorderly -little cubicle. On the bed lay Julie, her eyes enormous -in her sallow pinched face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m Steve Baker. This is my wife.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Sheriff Ike Keener tucked the paper in his pocket. -“You two better dress and come along with me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Julie stood up. She looked an old woman. The -marmoset whimpered and whined in his fur nest. She -put out a hand, automatically, and plucked it from -the muff and held it in the warm hollow of her breast. -Her great black eyes stared at the sheriff like the wide-open -unseeing eyes of a sleep walker.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Steve Baker grinned—rather, his lips drew back from -his teeth in a horrid semblance of mirth. He threw a -jovial arm about Julie’s shrinking shoulder. For once -she had no need to coach him in his part. He looked -Ike Keener in the eye. “You wouldn’t call a man a -white man that’s got Negro blood in him, would you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, I wouldn’t; not in Mississippi. One drop of -nigger blood makes you a nigger in these parts.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, I got more than a drop of—nigger blood in -me, and that’s a fact. You can’t make miscegenation -out of that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You ready to swear to that in a court of law?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll swear to it any place. I’ll swear it now.” Steve -took a step forward, one hand outstretched. “I’ll -do more than that. Look at all these folks here. -There ain’t one of them but can swear I got Negro -blood in me this minute. That’s how white I am.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Sheriff Ike Keener swept the crowd with his eye. -Perhaps what he saw in their faces failed to convince -him. “Well, I seen fairer men than you was niggers. -Still, you better tell that——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mild, benevolent, patriarchal, the figure of old Windy -stepped out from among the rest. “Guess you’ve -known me, Ike, better part of twenty-five years. I -was keelboatin’ time you was runnin’ around, a barefoot -on the landin’. Now I’m tellin’ you—me, Windy -McKlain—that that white man there’s got nigger blood -in him. I’ll take my oath to that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Having thus delivered himself of what was, perhaps, -the second longest speech in his career, he clumped -off again, across the stage, down the stairs, up the aisle, -looking, even in that bizarre environment, like something -out of Genesis.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Sheriff Ike Keener was frankly puzzled. “If it was -anybody else but Windy—but I got this straight from—from -somebody ought to know.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“From who?” shouted Andy, all indignation. “From -a sooty-faced scab of a bull-drumming engineer named -Pete. And why? Because he’s been stuck on Julie -here I don’t know how long, and she wouldn’t have -anything to do with him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Is that right?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, it is,” Steve put in, quickly. “He was after -my wife. Anybody in the company’ll bear me out. -He wouldn’t leave her alone, though she hated the sight -of him, and Cap here give him a talking—didn’t you, -Cap? So finally, when he wouldn’t quit, then there -was nothing for it but lick him, and I licked him good, -and soused him in the river to get his dirty face clean. -He crawls out swearing he’ll get me for it. Now you -know.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Keener now addressed himself to Julie for the first -time. “He says—this Pete—that you was born here -in Lemoyne, and that your pop was white and your -mammy black. That right?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Julie moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. -“Yes,” she said. “That’s—right.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A sudden commotion in the group that had been so -still. Elly’s voice, shrill with hysteria. “I will! I’ll -tell right out. The wench! The lying black——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Suddenly stifled, as though a hand had been clapped -none too gently across her mouth. Incoherent blubberings; -a scuffle. Schultzy had picked Elly up like a sack -of meal, one hand still firmly held over her mouth; had -carried her into her room and slammed the door.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What’s she say?” inquired Keener.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Again Andy stepped into the breach. “That’s our -ingénue lead. She’s kind of high strung. You see, -she’s been friends with this—with Julie Dozier, here—without -knowing about her—about her blood, and like -that. Kind of give her a shock, I guess. Natural.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was plain that Sheriff Ike Keener was on the point -of departure, puzzled though convinced. He took off -his broad-brimmed hat, scratched his head, replaced -the hat at an angle that spelled bewilderment. His -eye, as he turned away, fell on the majestic figure of -Parthenia Ann Hawks, and on Magnolia cowering, wide-eyed, -in the folds of her mother’s ample skirts.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You look like a respectable woman, ma’am.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Imposing enough at all times, Parthy now grew -visibly taller. Cold sparks flew from her eyes. “I -am.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That your little girl?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Andy did the honours. “My wife, Sheriff. My -little girl, Magnolia. What do you say to the Sheriff, -Magnolia?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Thus urged, Magnolia spoke that which had been -seething within her. “You’re bad!” she shouted, her -face twisted with the effort to control her tears. “You’re -a bad mean man, that’s what! You called Julie names -and made her look all funny. You’re a——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The maternal hand stifled her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If I was you, ma’am, I wouldn’t bring up no child -on a boat like this. No, nor stay on it, neither. Fine -place to rear a child!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Whereupon, surprisingly enough, Parthy turned defensive. -“My child’s as well brought up as your own, -and probably better, and so I tell you. And I’ll thank -you to keep your advice to yourself, Mr. Sheriff.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Parthy! Parthy!” from the alarmed Andy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Sheriff Ike Keener was a man of parts. “Well, -women folks are all alike. I’ll be going. I kind of smell -a nigger in the woodpile here in more ways than one. -But I’ll take your word for it.” He looked Captain -Andy sternly in the eye. “Only let me tell you this, -Captain Hawks. You better not try to give your show -in this town to-night. We got some public-spirited -folks here in Lemoyne and this fix you’re in has kind -of leaked around. You go to work and try to give -your show with this mixed blood you got here and first -thing you know you’ll be riding out of town on something -don’t sit so easy as a boat.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His broad-brimmed hat at an angle of authority, his -coat tails flirting as he strode, he marched up the aisle -then and out.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The little huddling group seemed visibly to collapse. -It was as though an unseen hand had removed a sustaining -iron support from the spine of each. Magnolia -would have flown to Julie, but Parthy jerked her back. -Whispering then; glance of disdain.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, Julie, m’girl,” began Andy Hawks, kindly. -Julie turned to him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We’re going,” she said, quietly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The door of Elly’s room burst open. Elly, a rumpled, -distraught, unlovely figure, appeared in Julie’s doorway, -Schultzy trying in vain to placate her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You get out of here!” She turned in a frenzy to -Andy. “She gets out of here with that white trash she -calls her husband or I go, and so I warn you. She’s -black! She’s black! God, I was a fool not to see it -all the time. Look at her, the nasty yellow——” A -stream of abuse, vile, obscene, born of the dregs of -river talk heard through the years, now welled to Elly’s -lips, distorting them horribly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Come away from here,” Parthy said, through set -lips, to Magnolia. And bore the child, protesting, up -the aisle and into the security of her own room forward.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I want to stay with Julie! I want to stay with -Julie!” wailed Magnolia, overwrought, as the inexorable -hand dragged her up the stairs.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In her tiny disordered room Julie was binding up her -wild hair with a swift twist. She barely glanced at -Elly. “Shut that woman up,” she said, quietly. “Tell -her I’m going.” She began to open boxes and drawers.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Steve approached Andy, low-voiced. “Cap, take us -down as far as Xenia, will you, for God’s sake! Don’t -make us get off here.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Down as far as Xenia you go,” shouted Captain -Andy at the top of his voice, “and anybody in this company -don’t like it they’re free to git, bag and baggage, -now. We’ll pull out of here now. Xenia by afternoon -at four, latest. And you two want to stay the night on -board you’re welcome. I’m master of this boat, by -God!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They left, these two, when the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> docked -at Xenia in the late afternoon. Andy shook hands with -them, gravely; and Windy clumped down from the -pilot house to perform the same solemn ceremony. -You sensed unseen peering eyes at every door and -window of the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> and the <span class='it'>Mollie Able</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How you fixed for money?” Andy demanded, -bluntly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We’re fixed all right,” Julie replied, quietly. Of -the two of them she was the more composed. “We’ve -been saving. You took too good care of us on the -<span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span>. No call to spend our money.” The -glance from her dark shadow-encircled eyes was one of -utter gratefulness. She took up the lighter pieces of -luggage. Steve was weighed down with the others—bulging -boxes and carpet bags and bundles—their clothing -and their show-boat wardrobe and their pitifully -few trinkets and personal belongings. A pin cushion, -very lumpy, that Magnolia had made for her at Christmas -a year ago. Photographs of the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span>. -A book of pressed wild flowers. Old newspaper clippings.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Julie lingered. Steve crossed the gangplank, turned, -beckoned with his head. Julie lingered. An unspoken -question in her eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Andy flushed and scratched the mutton-chop whiskers -this side and that. “Well, you know how she is, -Julie. She don’t mean no harm. But she didn’t let -on to Magnolia just what time you were going. Told -her to-morrow, likely. Women folks are funny, that -way. She don’t mean no harm.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s all right,” said Julie; picked up the valises, -was at Steve’s side. Together the two toiled painfully -up the steep river bank, Steve turning to aid her as best -he could. They reached the top of the levee. They -stood a moment, breathless; then turned and trudged -down the dusty Southern country road, the setting sun -in their faces. Julie’s slight figure was bent under the -weight of the burden she carried. You saw Steve’s -fine blond head turned toward her, tender, concerned, -encouraging.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Suddenly from the upper deck that fronted Magnolia’s -room and Parthy’s came the sound of screams, a -scuffle, a smart slap, feet clattering pell-mell down the -narrow wooden balcony stairs. A wild little figure in a -torn white frock, its face scratched and tear-stained, -its great eyes ablaze in the white face, flew past Andy, -across the gangplank, up the levee, down the road. -Behind her, belated and panting, came Parthy. Her -hand on her heart, her bosom heaving, she leaned -against the inadequate support offered by Andy’s right -arm, threatening momentarily to topple him, by her -own dead weight, into the river.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“To think that I should live to see the day when—my -own child—she slapped me—her mother! I saw them -out of the window, so I told her to straighten her bureau -drawers—a sight! All of a sudden she heard that -woman’s voice, low as it was, and she to the window. -When she saw her going she makes for the door. I -caught her on the steps, but she was like a wildcat, -and raised her hand against me—her own mother—and -tore away, with me holding this in my hand.” She -held out a fragment of torn white stuff. “Raised her -hand against her own——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Andy grinned. “Good for her.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What say, Andy Hawks!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Andy refused to answer. His gaze followed the -flying little figure silhouetted against the evening sky at -the top of the high river bank. The slim sagging figure -of the woman and the broad-shouldered figure of the -man trudged down the road ahead. The child’s voice -could be heard high and clear, with a note of hysteria in -it. “Julie! Julie! Wait for me! I want to say good-bye! -Julie!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The slender woman in the black dress turned and -made as though to start back and then, with a kind of -crazy fear in her pace, began to run away from the pursuing -little figure—away from something that she had -not the courage to face. And when she saw this Magnolia -ran on yet a little while, faltering, and then she -stopped and buried her head in her hands and sobbed. -The woman glanced over her shoulder, fearfully. And -at what she saw she dropped her bags and bundles in -the road and started back toward her, running fleetly -in spite of her long ruffled awkward skirts; and she held -out her arms long before they were able to reach her. -And when finally they came together, the woman -dropped on her knees in the dust of the road and gathered -the weeping child to her and held her close, so that -as you saw them sharply outlined against the sunset the -black of the woman’s dress and the white of the child’s -frock were as one.</p> - -<div><h1>VIII</h1></div> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='lead-in'><span class='dropcap'>M</span>agnolia,</span> at fifteen, was a gangling gawky -child whose eyes were too big for her face and -whose legs were too long for her skirts. She -looked, in fact, all legs, eyes, and elbows. It was a -constant race between her knees and her skirt hems. -Parthy was for ever lengthening frocks. Frequently -Magnolia, looking down at herself, was surprised, like -Alice in Wonderland after she had eaten the magic -currant cake, to discover how far away from her head -her feet were. Being possessed of a natural creamy -pallor which her mother mistook for lack of red corpuscles, -she was dosed into chronic biliousness on cod -liver oil, cream, eggs, and butter, all of which she loathed. -Then suddenly, at sixteen, legs, elbows, and eyes assumed -their natural proportions. Overnight, seemingly, she -emerged from adolescence a rather amazing looking -young creature with a high broad forehead, a wide -mobile mouth, great dark liquid eyes, and a most lovely -speaking voice which nobody noticed. Her dress was -transformed, with Cinderella-like celerity, from the -pinafore to the bustle variety. She was not a beauty. -She was, in fact, considered rather plain by the unnoticing. -Being hipless and almost boyishly flat of -bust in a day when the female form was a thing not only -of curves but of loops, she was driven by her mother -into wearing all sorts of pads and ruffled corset covers -and contrivances which somehow failed to conceal the -slimness of the frame beneath. She was, even at sixteen, -what might be termed distinguished-looking. -Merely by standing tall, pale, dark-haired, next to Elly, -that plump and pretty ingénue was transformed into a -dumpy and rather dough-faced blonde in whose countenance -selfishness and dissatisfaction were beginning -to etch telltale lines.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She had been now almost seven years on the show -boat. These seven years had spread a tapestry of life -and colour before her eyes. Broad rivers flowing to the -sea. Little towns perched high on the river banks or -cowering flat and fearful, at the mercy of the waters -that often crept like hungry and devouring monsters, -stealthily over the levee and into the valley below. -Singing Negroes. Fighting whites. Spawning Negroes. -A life fantastic, bizarre, peaceful, rowdy, prim, -eventful, calm. On the rivers anything might happen -and everything did. She saw convict chain gangs -working on the roads. Grisly nightmarish figures of -striped horror, manacled leg to leg. At night you -heard them singing plantation songs in the fitful glare -of their camp fires in the woods; simple songs full of -hope. Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel? they sang. -Swing Low Sweet Chariot, Comin’ for to Carry Me -Home. In the Louisiana bayou country she saw the -Negroes perform that weird religious rite known as a -ring shout, semi-savage, hysterical, mesmerizing.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Iowa, Illinois, and Missouri small-town housewives -came to be Magnolia’s friends, and even Parthy’s. The -coming of the show boat was the one flash of blazing -colour in the drab routine of their existence. To them -Schultzy was the John Drew of the rivers, Elly the -Lillian Russell. You saw them scudding down the -placid tree-shaded streets in their morning ginghams -and calicoes, their bits of silver clasped in their work-seamed -hands, or knotted into the corner of a handkerchief. -Fifty cents for two seats at to-night’s show.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How are you, Mis’ Hawks? . . . And the little -girl? . . . My! Look at the way she’s shot up in -a year’s time! Well, you can’t call her little girl any -more. . . . I brought you a glass of my homemade -damson preserve. I take cup of sugar to cup of -juice. Real rich, but it is good if I do say so. . . . -I told Will I was coming to the show every night you -were here, and he could like it or lump it. I been -saving out of the housekeeping money.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They brought vast chocolate cakes; batches of cookies; -jugs of home-brewed grape wine; loaves of fresh bread; -jars of strained honey; stiff tight bunches of garden -flowers. Offerings on the shrine of Art.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Periodically Parthy threatened to give up this roving -life and take Magnolia with her. She held this as a -weapon over Andy’s head when he crossed her will, or -displeased her. Immediately boarding schools, convents, -and seminaries yawned for Magnolia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Perhaps Parthy was right. “What kind of a life is -this for a child!” she demanded. And later, “A fine -kind of a way for a young lady to be living—slopping -up and down these rivers, seeing nothing but loafers -and gamblers and niggers and worse. What about her -Future?” Future, as she pronounced it, was spelled -with a capital F and was a thin disguise for the word -husband.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Future’ll take care of itself,” Andy assured her, -blithely.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If that isn’t just like a man!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was inevitable that Magnolia should, sooner or -later, find herself through force of circumstance treading -the boards as an actress in the Cotton Blossom Floating -Theatre company. Not only that, she found herself -playing ingénue leads. She had been thrown in as a -stop-gap following Elly’s defection, and had become, -quite without previous planning, a permanent member -of the troupe. Strangely enough, she developed an -enormous following, though she lacked that saccharine -quality which river towns had come to expect in their -show-boat ingénues. True, her long legs were a little -lanky beneath the short skirts of the woodman’s pure -daughter, but what she lacked in one extremity she -made up in another. They got full measure when they -looked at her eyes, and her voice made the small-town -housewives weep. Yet when their husbands nudged -them, saying, “What you sniffling about?” they could -only reply, “I don’t know.” And no more did they.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Elly was twenty-eight when she deserted Schultzy -for a gambler from Mobile. For three years she had -been restless, fault-finding, dissatisfied. Each autumn -she would announce to Captain Andy her intention to -forsake the rivers and bestow her talents ashore. During -the winter she would try to get an engagement -through the Chicago booking offices contrary to the -custom of show-boat actors whose habit it was to hibernate -in the winter on the savings of a long and economical -summer. But the Chicago field was sparse and -uncertain. She never had the courage or the imagination -to go as far as New York. April would find her -back on the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span>. Between her and Schultzy -the bickerings and the quarrels became more and more -frequent. She openly defied Schultzy as he directed -rehearsals. She refused to follow his suggestions -though he had a real sense of direction. Everything -she knew he had taught her. She invariably misread a -line and had to be coached in it, word by word; inflection; -business; everything.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Yet now, when Schultzy said, “No! Listen. You -been kidnapped and smuggled on board this rich fella’s -yacht, see. And he thinks he’s got you in his power. -He goes to grab you. You’re here, see. Then you -point toward the door back of him, see, like you saw -something there scared the life out of you. He turns -around and you grab the gun off the table, see, and cover -him, and there’s your big speech. <span class='it'>So</span> and so and <span class='it'>so</span> and -so and <span class='it'>so</span> and so and <span class='it'>so</span> and so——” the <span class='it'>ad lib.</span> directions -that have held since the day of Shakespeare.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Elly would deliberately defy him. Others in the -company—new members—began to take their cue from -her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She complained about her wardrobe; refused to -interest herself in it, though she had been an indefatigable -needlewoman. Now, instead of sewing, you saw -her looking moodily out across the river, her hands idle, -her brows black. An unintelligent and unresourceful -woman turned moody and thoughtful must come to -mischief, for within herself she finds no solace.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At Mobile, then, she was gone. It was, they all -knew, the black-moustached gambler who had been -following the show boat down the river since they played -Paducah, Kentucky. Elly had had dozens of admirers -in her show-boat career; had received much attention -from Southern gallants, gamblers, loafers, adventurers—all -the romantic beaux of the river towns of the ’80s. -Her attitude toward them had been puritanical to the -point of sniffiness, though she had enjoyed their homage -and always displayed any amorous missives or gifts that -came her way.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>True to the melodramatic tradition of her environment, -she left a note for Schultzy, written in a flourishing -Spencerian hand that made up, in part, for the -spelling. She was gone. He need not try to follow her -or find her or bring her back. She was going to star -at the head of her own company and play Camille and -even Juliet. He had promised her. She was good and -sick and tired of this everlasting flopping up and down -the rivers. She wouldn’t go back to it, no matter what. -Her successor could have her wardrobe. They had -bookings through Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, and Kansas. -She might even get to New York. (Incredibly enough, -she did actually play Juliet through the Mid-west, to -audiences of the bewildered yokelry.) She was sorry -to leave Cap in the lurch like this. And she would -close, and begged to remain his loving Wife (this inked -out but still decipherable)—begged to remain, his truly, -Elly Chipley. Just below this signature the added one -of Lenore La Verne, done in tremendous sable downstrokes -and shaded curlecues, especially about the L’s.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was a crushing blow for Schultzy, who loved her. -Stricken, he thought only of her happiness. “She can’t -get along without me,” he groaned. Then, in a stunned -way, “Juliet!” There was nothing of bitterness or -rancour in his tone; only a dumb despairing wonder. -“Juliet! And she couldn’t play Little Eva without -making her out a slut.” He pondered this a moment. -“She’s got it into her head she’s Bernhardt, or something. . . . -Well, she’ll come back.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you mean to say you’d take her back!” Parthy -demanded.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why, sure,” Schultzy replied, simply. “She never -packed a trunk in her life, or anything. I done all -those things for her. Some ways she’s a child. I guess -that’s how she kept me so tight. She needed me all the -time. . . . Well, she’ll come back.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Captain Andy sent to Chicago for an ingénue lead. -It was then, pending her arrival, that Magnolia stepped -into the breach—the step being made, incidentally, over -what was practically Parthy’s dead body. For at -Magnolia’s calm announcement that she knew every -line of the part and all the business, her mother stormed, -had hysterics, and finally took to her bed (until nearly -time for the rise of the curtain). The bill that night -was The Parson’s Bride. Show-boat companies to this -day still tell the story of what happened during that -performance on the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They had two rehearsals, one in the morning, another -that lasted throughout the afternoon. Of the company, -Magnolia was the calmest. Captain Andy seemed to -swing, by invisible pulleys, from the orchestra pit below -to Parthy’s chamber above. One moment he would -be sprawled in the kerosene footlights, his eyes deep in -wrinkles of delight, his little brown paws scratching -the mutton-chop whiskers in a frenzy of excitement.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s right. That’s the stuff! Elly never give -it half the——’Scuse me, Schultzy—I didn’t go for to -hurt your feelings, but by golly, Nollie! I wouldn’t -of believed you had it in you, not if your own mother -told——” Then, self-reminded, he would cast a -fearful glance over his shoulder, that shoulder would -droop, he would extricate himself from the welter of -footlights and music racks and prompt books in which -he squatted, and scamper up the aisle. The dim outline -of a female head in curl papers certainly could not -have been seen peering over the top of the balcony rail -as he fancied, for when he had clattered up the balcony -stairs and had gently turned the knob of the bedroom -door, there lay the curl-papered head on the pillow of the -big bed, and from it issued hollow groans, and plastered -over one cheek of it was a large moist white cloth -soaked in some pungent and nostril-pricking stuff. -The eyes were closed. The whole figure was shaken -by shivers. Mortal agony, you would have said (had -you not known Parthy), had this stricken and monumental -creature in its horrid clutches.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In a whisper—“Parthy!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A groan, hollow, heartrending, mortuary.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He entered, shut the door softly, tiptoed over to the -bed, laid a comforting brown paw on the shivering -shoulder. The shoulder became convulsive, the shivers -swelled to heaves. “Now, now, Parthy! What you -taking on so for? God A’mighty, person’d think she’d -done something to shame you instead of make you -mighty proud. If you’d see her! Why, say, she’s a -born actress.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The groans now became a wail. The eyes unclosed. -The figure raised itself to a sitting posture. The sopping -rag rolled limply off. Parthy rocked herself to and fro. -“My own daughter! An actress! That I should have -lived to see this day! . . . Rather have . . . -in her grave . . . why I ever allowed her to set -foot on this filthy scow . . .”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now, Parthy, you’re just working yourself up. -Matter of fact, that time Mis’ Means turned her ankle -and we thought she couldn’t step on it, you was all for -going on in her part, and I bet if Sophy Means hadn’t -tied up her foot and gone on like a soldier she is, we’d -of had you acting that night. You was rarin’ to. I -watched you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Me! Acting on the stage! Not that I couldn’t -play better than any Sophy Means, and that’s no -compliment. A poor stick if I couldn’t.” But her -defence lacked conviction. Andy had surprised a -secret ambition in this iron-armoured bosom.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now, come on! Cheer up! Ought to be proud -your own daughter stepping in and saving us money -like this. We’d of closed. Had to. God knows when -that new baggage’ll get here, if she gets here at all. -What do you think of that Chipley! Way I’ve treated -that girl, if she’d been my own daughter—well! . . . -How’d you like a nice little sip of whisky, Parthy? -Then you come on down give Nollie a hand with her -costumes. Chipley’s stuff comes up on her like ballet -skirts.—Now, now, now! I didn’t say she——Oh, my -God!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Parthy had gone off again into hysterics. “My own -daughter! My little girl!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The time for severe measures had come. Andy had -not dealt with actresses for years without learning something -of the weapons with which to fight hysteria.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“All right. I’ll give you something to screech for. -The boys paraded this noon with a banner six feet long -and red letters a foot high announcing the Appearance -Extraordinaire of Magnolia the Mysterious Comedy -Tragedienne in The Parson’s Bride. I made a special -spiel on the corner. We got the biggest advance sale -we had this season. Yessir! Doc’s downstairs raking -it in with both hands and you had the least bit of gumption -in you, instead of laying here whining and carrying -on, you’d——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What’s the advance?” spake up Parthy, the box-office -expert.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Three hundred; and not anywheres near four -o’clock.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>With one movement Parthy had flung aside the -bedclothes and stepped out of bed revealing, rather inexplicably, -a complete lower costume including shoes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Andy was off, down the stairs, up the aisle, into the -orchestra pit just in time to hear Magnolia say, -“Schultzy, <span class='it'>please</span>! Don’t throw me the line like that, -I know it. I didn’t stop because I was stuck.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What’d you stop for, then, and look like you’d seen -spooks!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I stopped a-purpose. She sees her husband that she -hates and that she thought was dead for years come -sneaking in, and she wouldn’t start right in to talk. -She’d just stand there, kind of frozen and stiff, staring -at him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“All right, if you know so much about directing, go -ahead and di——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She ran to him, threw her arms about him, hugged -him, all contrition. “Oh, Schultzy, don’t be mad. I -didn’t go to boss. I just wanted to act it like I felt. -And I’m awfully sorry about Elly and everything. I’ll -do as you say, only I just can’t help thinking, Schultzy -dear, that she’d stand there, staring kind of silly, almost.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’re right. I guess my mind ain’t on my work. -I ought to know how right you are. I got that letter -Elly left for me, I just stood there gawping with my -mouth open, and never said a word for I don’t know how -long——Oh, my God!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There, there, Schultzy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>By a tremendous effort (the mechanics of which were -not entirely concealed) Schultzy, the man, gave way to -Harold Westbrook, the artist.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’re right, Magnolia. That’ll get ’em. You -standing there like that, stunned and pale.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How’ll I get pale, Schultzy?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’ll feel pale inside and the audience’ll think -you are.” (The whole art of acting unconsciously -expressed by Schultzy.) “Then Frank here has his -sneery speech—<span class='it'>so</span> and so and <span class='it'>so</span> and so and <span class='it'>so</span> and so—and -thought you’d marry the parson, huh? And then -you open up with your big scene—<span class='it'>so</span> and so and <span class='it'>so</span> and -so and <span class='it'>so</span> and so——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Outwardly calm, Magnolia took only a cup of coffee -at dinner, and Parthy, for once, did not press her to eat. -That mournful matron, though still occasionally shaken -by a convulsive shudder, managed her usual heartening -repast and actually spent the time from four to seven -lengthening Elly’s frocks for Magnolia and taking them -in to fit the girl’s slight frame.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Schultzy made her up, and rather overdid it so that, -as the deserted wife and school teacher and, later, as -the Parson’s prospective bride, she looked a pass -between a healthy Camille and Cleopatra just before -she applied the asp. In fact, in their effort to bridge -the gap left by Elly’s sudden flight, the entire company -overdid everything and thus brought about the cataclysmic -moment which is theatrical show-boat history.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia, so sure of her lines during rehearsal, -forgot them a score of times during the performance -and, had it not been for Schultzy, who threw them to her -unerringly and swiftly, would have made a dismal failure -of this, her first stage appearance. They were -playing Vidallia, always a good show-boat town. The -house was filled from the balcony boxes to the last row -downstairs near the door, from which point very little -could be seen and practically nothing heard. Something -of the undercurrent of excitement which pervaded -the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> troupe seemed to seep through the -audience; or perhaps even an audience so unsophisticated -as this could not but sense the unusual in this -performance. Every one of the troupe—Schultzy, -Mis’ Means, Mr. Means, Frank, Ralph, the Soapers -(Character Team that had succeeded Julie and Steve)—all -were trembling for Magnolia. And because they -were fearful for her they threw themselves frantically -into their parts. Magnolia, taking her cue (literally as -well as figuratively) from them, did likewise. As -ingénue lead, her part was that of a young school mistress -earning her livelihood in a little town. Deserted -some years before by her worthless husband, she learns -now of his death. The town parson has long been in -love with her, and she with him. Now they can marry. -The wedding gown is finished. The guests are invited.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>This is her last day as school teacher. She is alone -in the empty schoolroom. Farewell, dear pupils. -Farewell, dear schoolroom, blackboard, erasers, water-bucket, -desk, etc. She picks up her key. But what -is this evil face in the doorway! Who is this drunken, -leering tramp, grisly in rags, repulsive—— My God! -You! My husband!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>(Never was villain so black and diabolical as Frank. -Never was heroine so lovely and frail and trembling and -helpless and white—as per Schultzy’s directions. As -for Schultzy himself, the heroic parson, very heavily -made up and pure yet brave withal, it was a poor stick -of a maiden who wouldn’t have contrived to get into -some sort of distressing circumstance just for the joy -of being got out of it by this godly yet godlike young -cleric.)</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Frank, then: “I reckon you thought I was dead. -Well, I’m about the livest corpse you ever saw.” A -diabolical laugh. “Too damn bad you won’t be able -to wear that new wedding dress.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Pleadings, agony, despair.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Now his true villainy comes out. A thousand dollars, -then, and quick, or you don’t walk down the aisle to the -music of no wedding march.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I haven’t got it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No! Where’s the money you been saving all these -years?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I haven’t a thousand dollars. I swear it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“So!” Seizes her. Drags her across the room. -Screams. His hand stifles them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Unfortunately, in their very desire to help Magnolia, -they all exaggerated their villainy, their heroism, their -business. Being a trifle uncertain of her lines, Magnolia, -too, sought to cover her deficiencies by stressing -her emotional scenes. When terror was required her -face was distorted with it. Her screams of fright -were real screams of mortal fear. Her writhings would -have wrung pity from a fiend. Frank bared his teeth, -chortled like a maniac. He wound his fingers in her -long black hair and rather justified her outcry. In -contrast, Schultzy’s nobility and purity stood out as -crudely and unmistakably as white against black. -Nuances were not for show-boat audiences.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So then, screams, protestations, snarls, ha-ha’s, -pleadings, agony, cruelty, anguish.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Something—intuition—or perhaps a sound from the -left upper box made Frank, the villain, glance up. -There, leaning over the box rail, his face a mask of -hatred, his eyes glinting, sat a huge hairy backwoodsman. -And in his hand glittered the barrel of a businesslike -gun. He was taking careful aim. Drama had -come late into the life of this literal mind. He had, -in the course of a quick-shooting rough-and-tumble -career, often seen the brutal male mishandling beauty -in distress. His code was simple. One second more -and he would act on it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Frank’s hand released his struggling victim. Gentleness -and love overspread his features, dispelling their -villainy. To Magnolia’s staring and open-mouthed -amazement he made a gesture of abnegation. “Well, -Marge, I ain’t got nothin’ more to say if you and the -parson want to get married.” After which astounding -utterance he slunk rapidly off, leaving the field to what -was perhaps the most abject huddle of heroism that -every graced a show-boat stage.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The curtain came down. The audience, intuitively -glancing toward the upper box, ducked, screamed, or -swore. The band struck up. The backwoodsman, -a little bewildered but still truculent, subsided somewhat. -A trifle mystified, but labouring under the -impression that this was, perhaps, the ordinary routine -of the theatre, the audience heard Schultzy, in front -of the curtain, explaining that the villain was taken -suddenly ill; that the concert would now be given free -of charge; that each and every man, woman, and child -was invited to retain his seat. The backwoodsman, -rather sheepish now, took a huge bite of Honest Scrap -and looked about him belligerently. Out came Mr. -Means to do his comic Chinaman. Order reigned on -one side of the footlights at least, though behind the -heaving Venetian lagoon was a company saved from -collapse only by a quite human uncertainty as to -whether tears or laughter would best express their state -of mind.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The new ingénue lead, scheduled to meet the <span class='it'>Cotton -Blossom</span> at Natchez, failed to appear. Magnolia, -following her trial by firearms, had played the absent -Elly’s parts for a week. There seemed to be no good -reason why she should not continue to do so at least -until Captain Andy could engage an ingénue who would -join the troupe at New Orleans.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A year passed. Magnolia was a fixture in the company. -Now, as she, in company with Parthy or Mis’ -Means or Mrs. Soaper, appeared on the front street -of this or that little river town, she was stared at and -commented on. Round-eyed little girls, swinging on -the front gate, gazed at her much as she had gazed, not -so many years before, at Elly and Julie as they had -sauntered down the shady path of her own street in -Thebes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She loved the life. She worked hard. She cherished -the admiration and applause. She took her work -seriously. Certainly she did not consider herself an -apostle of art. She had no illusions about herself as -an actress. But she did thrive on the warm electric -current that flowed from those river audiences made up -of miners, farmers, Negroes, housewives, harvesters, -backwoodsmen, villagers, over the footlights, to her. -A naïve people, they accepted their theatre without -question, like children. That which they saw they -believed. They hissed the villain, applauded the -heroine, wept over the plight of the wronged. The -plays were as naïve as the audience. In them, onrushing -engines were cheated of their victims; mill -wheels were stopped in the nick of time; heroes, bound -hand and foot and left to be crushed under iron wheels, -were rescued by the switchman’s ubiquitous daughter. -Sheriffs popped up unexpectedly in hidden caves. The -sound of horses’ hoofs could always be heard when -virtue was about to be ravished. They were the minstrels -of the rivers, these players, telling in terms of -blood, love, and adventure the crude saga of a new -country.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Frank, the Heavy, promptly fell in love with Magnolia. -Parthy, quick to mark the sheep’s eyes he cast -in the direction of the ingénue lead, watched him with a -tigress glare, and though he lived on the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span>, -as did Magnolia; saw her all day, daily; probably was -seldom more than a hundred feet removed from her, he -never spoke to her alone and certainly never was able -to touch her except in the very public glare of the -footlights with some hundreds of pairs of eyes turned -on the two by the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> audiences. He -lounged disconsolately after her, a large and somewhat -splay-footed fellow whose head was too small for his -shoulders, giving him the look of an inverted exclamation -point.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His unrequited and unexpressed passion for Magnolia -would have bothered that young lady and her parents -very little were it not for the fact that his emotions -began to influence his art. In his scenes on the stage -with her he became more and more uncertain of his lines. -Not only that, his attitude and tone as villain of the -piece took on a tender note most mystifying to the -audience, accustomed to seeing villainy black, with no -half tones. When he should have been hurling Magnolia -into the mill stream or tying her brutally to the -track, or lashing her with a horsewhip or snarling at her -like a wolf, he became a cooing dove. His blows were -caresses. His baleful glare became a simper of adoration.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you intend to speak to that sheep, or shall I?” -demanded Parthy of her husband.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll do it,” Andy assured her, hurriedly. “Leave -him be till we get to New Orleans. Then, if anything -busts, why, I can always get some kind of a fill-in there.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They had been playing the Louisiana parishes—little -Catholic settlements between New Orleans and Baton -Rouge, their inhabitants a mixture of French and -Creole. Frank had wandered disconsolately through -the miniature cathedral which each little parish boasted -and, returning, had spoken darkly of abandoning the -stage for the Church.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>New Orleans meant mail for the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> -troupe. With that mail came trouble. Schultzy, -white but determined, approached Captain Andy, letter -in hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I got to go, Cap. She needs me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Go!” squeaked Andy. His squeak was equivalent -to a bellow in a man of ordinary stature. “Go where? -What d’you mean, she?” But he knew.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Out popped Parthy, scenting trouble.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Schultzy held out a letter written on cheap paper, -lined, and smelling faintly of antiseptic. “She’s in the -hospital at Little Rock. Says she’s had an operation. -He’s left her, the skunk. She ain’t got a cent.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll take my oath on that,” Parthy put in, pungently.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You can’t go and leave me flat now, Schultzy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I got to go, I tell you. Frank can play leads till -you get somebody, or till I get back. Old Means can -play utility at a pinch, and Doc can do general business.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Frank,” announced Parthy, with terrible distinctness, -“will play no leads in this company, and so I tell -you, Hawks.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Who says he’s going to! A fine-looking lead he’d -make, with that pin-head of his, and those elephant’s -hoofs. . . . Now looka here, Schultzy. You been -a trouper long enough to know you can’t leave a show in -the ditch like this. No real show-boat actor’d do it, -and you know it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Sure I know it. I wouldn’t do it for myself, no -matter what. But it’s her. I wrote her a letter, time -she left. I got her bookings. I said if the time comes -you need me, leave me know, and I’ll come. And she -needs me, and she left me know, and I’m coming.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How about us!” demanded Parthy. “Leaving us -in the lurch like that, first Elly and now you after all -these years. A fine pair, the two of you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now, Parthy!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, I’ve no patience with you, Hawks. Always -letting people get the best of you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I told you,” Schultzy began again, almost tearfully, -“it’s for her, not me. She’s sick. You can pick -up somebody here in New Orleans. I bet there’s a -dozen better actors than me laying around the docks -this minute. I got to talking to a fellow while ago, -down on the wharf. The place was all jammed up with -freight, and I was waiting to get by so’s I could come -aboard. I said I was an actor on the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span>, -and he said he’d acted and that was a life he’d -like.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,” snapped Parthy. “I suppose he would. -What does he think this is! A bumboat! Plenty of -wharf rats in New Orleans’d like nothing better——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Schultzy pointed to where a slim figure leaned -indolently against a huge packing case—one of hundreds -of idlers dotting the great New Orleans plank -landing.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Andy adjusted the pair of ancient binoculars through -which he recently had been scanning the wharf and the -city beyond the levee. He surveyed the graceful -lounging figure.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’d go ashore and talk to him, I was you,” advised -Schultzy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Andy put down the glasses and stared at Schultzy in -amazement. “Him! Why, I couldn’t go up and talk -to him about acting on no show boat. He’s a gentleman.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Here,” said Parthy, abruptly, her curiosity piqued. -She in turn trained the glasses on the object of the discussion. -Her survey was brief but ample. “He may be -a gentleman. But nobody feels a gentleman with a -crack in his shoe, and he’s got one. I can’t say I like -the looks of him, specially. But with Schultzy playing -us this dirty trick—well, that’s what it amounts to, -and there’s no sense trying to prettify it—we can’t be -choosers. I’d just step down talk to him if I was you, -Hawks.”</p> - -<div><h1>IX</h1></div> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='lead-in'><span class='dropcap'>T</span>his,</span> then, turned out to be Magnolia’s first -glimpse of Gaylord Ravenal—an idle elegant -figure in garments whose modish cut and fine -material served, at a distance, to conceal their shabbiness. -Leaning moodily against a tall packing case -dumped on the wharf by some freighter, he gazed -about him and tapped indolently the tip of his shining -(and cracked) boot with an exquisite little ivory-topped -malacca cane. There was about him an air of distinction, -an atmosphere of richness. On closer proximity -you saw that the broadcloth was shiny, the fine -linen of the shirt-front and cuffs the least bit frayed, -the slim boots undeniably split, the hat (a delicate gray -and set a little on one side) soiled as a pale gray hat -must never be. From the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> deck you -saw him as the son, perhaps, of some rich Louisiana -planter, idling a moment at the water’s edge. Waiting, -doubtless, for one of the big river packets—the floating -palaces of the Mississippi—to bear him luxuriously -away up the river to his plantation landing.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The truth was that Gaylord Ravenal was what the -river gamblers called broke. Stony, he would have -told you. No one had a better right to use the term -than he. Of his two possessions, save the sorry clothes -he had on, one was the little malacca cane. And though -he might part with cuff links, shirt studs and, if necessary, -shirt itself, he would always cling to that little -malacca cane, emblem of good fortune, his mascot. -It had turned on him temporarily. Yet his was the -gambler’s superstitious nature. To-morrow the cane -would bring him luck.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Not only was Gaylord Ravenal broke; he had just -politely notified the Chief of Police of New Orleans that -he was in town. The call was not entirely one of social -obligation. It had a certain statutory side as well.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In the first place, Chief of Police Vallon, in a sudden -political spasm of virtue, endeavouring to clear New -Orleans of professional gamblers, had given them all -twenty-four hours’ shrift. In the second place, this -particular visitor would have come under the head of -New Orleans undesirables on his own private account, -even though his profession had been that of philanthropist. -Gaylord Ravenal had one year-old notch to -his gun.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It had not been murder in cold blood or in rage, -but a shot fired in self-defence just the fraction of a -second before the other man could turn the trick. The -evidence proved this, and Ravenal’s final vindication -followed. But New Orleans gathered her civic skirts -about her and pointed a finger of dismissal toward the -door. Hereafter, should he enter, his first visit must be -to the Chief of Police; and twenty-four hours—no more—must -be the limit of his stay in the city whose pompano -and crayfish and Creoles and roses and Ramos gin -fizzes he loved.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The evening before, he had stepped off the river -packet <span class='it'>Lady Lee</span>, now to be seen lying alongside the -New Orleans landing together with a hundred other -craft. His twenty-four hours would expire this -evening.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Certainly he had not meant to find himself in New -Orleans. He had come aboard the <span class='it'>Lady Lee</span> at St. -Louis, his finances low, his hopes high, his erstwhile -elegant garments in their present precarious state. He -had planned, following the game of stud poker in which -he immediately immersed himself, to come ashore at -Memphis or, at the latest, Natchez, with his finances -raised to the high level of his hopes. Unfortunately his -was an honest and over-eager game. His sole possession, -beside the little slim malacca cane (itself of small -tangible value) was a singularly clear blue-white diamond -ring which he never wore. It was a relic of -luckier days before his broadcloth had become shiny, -his linen frayed, his boots split. He had clung to it, -as he had to the cane, through almost incredible hazards. -His feeling about it was neither sentimental nor -superstitious. The tenuous streak of canniness in him -told him that, possessed of a clear white diamond, one -can hold up one’s head and one’s hopes, no matter -what the state of coat, linen, boots, and hat. It had -never belonged, fiction-fashion, to his sainted (if any) -mother, nor was it an old Ravenal heirloom. It was a -relic of winnings in luckier days and represented, he -knew, potential hundreds. In the trip that lasted, -unexpectedly, from St. Louis to New Orleans, he had -won and lost that ring six times. When the <span class='it'>Lady Lee</span> -had nosed her way into the Memphis landing, and again -at Natchez, it had been out of his possession. He had -stayed on board, perforce. Half an hour before coming -into New Orleans he had had it again, and had kept it. -The game of stud poker had lasted days, and he rose -from it the richer by exactly nothing at all.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had glanced out of the <span class='it'>Lady Lee’s</span> saloon window, -his eyes bloodshot from sleeplessness, his nerves jangling, -his hands twitching, his face drawn; but that face -shaven, those hands immaculate. Gaylord Ravenal, in -luck or out, had the habits and instincts of a gentleman.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good God!” he exclaimed now, “this looks like—it -is New Orleans!” It was N’Yawlins as he said it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What did you think it was?” growled one of the -players, who had temporarily owned the diamond -several times during the journey down river. “What -did you think it was? Shanghai?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I wish it was,” said Gaylord Ravenal. Somewhat -dazedly he walked down the <span class='it'>Lady Lee’s</span> gangplank and -retorted testily to a beady-eyed giant-footed gentleman -who immediately spoke to him in a low and not unfriendly -tone, “Give me time, can’t you! I haven’t -been twenty-four hours stepping from the gangplank to -this wharf, have I? Well, then!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No offence, Gay,” said the gentleman, his eyes -still searching the other passengers as they filed across -the narrow gangplank. “Just thought I’d remind you, -case of trouble. You know how Vallon is.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Vallon had said, briefly, later, “That’s all right, Gay. -But by this time to-morrow evening——” He had -eyed Ravenal’s raiment with a comprehending eye. -“Cigar?” The weed he proffered was slim, pale, and -frayed as the man who stood before him. Gaylord -Ravenal’s jangling nerves ached for the solace of tobacco; -but he viewed this palpably second-hand gift -with a glance of disdain that was a triumph of the spirit -over the flesh. Certainly no man handicapped by his -present sartorial and social deficiencies was justified -in raising a quizzical right eyebrow in the manner -employed by Ravenal.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What did you call it?” said he now.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Vallon looked at it. He was not a quick-witted -gentleman. “Cigar.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Optimist.” And strolled out of the chiefs office, -swinging the little malacca cane.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So then, you now saw him leaning moodily against a -wooden case on the New Orleans plank wharf, distinguished, -shabby, dapper, handsome, broke, and twenty-four.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was with some amusement that he had watched the -crew of the <span class='it'>Mollie Able</span> bring the flat unwieldy bulk of -the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> into the wharfside in the midst of the -confusion of packets, barges, steamboats, tugs, flats, -tramp boats, shanty boats. He had spoken briefly and -casually to Schultzy while that bearer of evil tidings, -letter in hand, waited impatiently on the dock as the -<span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> was shifted to a landing position farther -upstream. He had seen these floating theatres of the -Mississippi and the Ohio many times, but he had never -before engaged one of their actors in conversation.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Juvenile lead!” he had exclaimed, unable to hide -something of incredulity in his voice. Schultzy, an -anxious eye on the <span class='it'>Mollie Able’s</span> tedious manœuvres, -had just made clear to Ravenal his own position in the -<span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> troupe. Ravenal, surveying the furrowed -brow, the unshaven cheeks, the careless dress, -the lack-lustre eye, had involuntarily allowed to creep -into his tone something of the astonishment he felt.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Schultzy made a little deprecating gesture with his -hands, his shoulders. “I guess I don’t look like no -juvenile lead, and that’s a fact. But I’m all shot to -pieces. Took a drink the size of this”—indicating -perhaps five fingers—“up yonder on Canal Street; -straight whisky. No drinking allowed on the show boat. -Well, sir, never felt it no more’n it had been water. I -just got news my wife’s sick in the hospital.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ravenal made a little perfunctory sound of sympathy. -“In New Orleans?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Little Rock, Arkansas. I’m going. It’s a dirty -trick, but I’m going.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How do you mean, dirty trick?” Ravenal was mildly -interested in this confiding stranger.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Leave the show flat like that. I don’t know what -they’ll do. I——” He saw that the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> -was now snugly at ease in her new position, and that her -gangplank had again been lowered. He turned away -abruptly, without a good-bye, went perhaps ten paces, -came back five and called to Ravenal. “You ever -acted?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Acted!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“On the stage. Acted. Been an actor.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ravenal threw back his handsome head and laughed -as he would have thought, ten minutes ago, he never -could laugh again. “Me! An actor! N—” then, -suddenly sober, thoughtful even—“Why, yes. Yes.” -And eyeing Schultzy through half-shut lids he tapped -the tip of his shiny shabby boot with the smart little -malacca cane. Schultzy was off again toward the -<span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>If Ravenal was aware of the scrutiny to which he was -subjected through the binoculars, he gave no sign as he -lounged elegantly on the wharf watching the busy -waterside scene with an air of indulgent amusement -that would have made the onlooker receive with incredulity -the information that the law was even then -snapping at his heels.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Captain Andy Hawks scampered off the <span class='it'>Cotton -Blossom</span> and approached this figure, employing none of -the finesse that the situation called for.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I understand you’ve acted on the stage.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Gaylord Ravenal elevated the right eyebrow and -looked down his aristocratic nose at the capering little -captain. “I am Gaylord Ravenal, of the Tennessee -Ravenals. I failed to catch your name.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Andy Hawks, captain and owner of the Cotton -Blossom Floating Palace Theatre.” He jerked a thumb -over his shoulder at the show boat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah, yes,” said Ravenal, with polite unenthusiasm. -He allowed his patrician glance to rest idly a moment on -the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span>, lying squat and dumpy alongside -the landing.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Captain Andy found himself suddenly regretting -that he had not had her painted and overhauled. He -clutched his whiskers in embarrassment, and, under -stress of that same emotion, blurted the wrong thing. -“I guess Parthy was mistaken.” The Ravenal eyebrow -became interrogatory. Andy floundered on. -“She said that no man with a crack in the shoe——” -he stopped, then, appalled.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Gaylord Ravenal looked down at the footgear under -discussion. He looked up at the grim and ponderous -female figure on the forward deck of the show boat. -Parthy was wearing one of her most uncompromising -bonnets and a gown noticeably bunchy even in that -day of unsymmetrical feminine fashions. Black was -not becoming to Mrs. Hawks’ sallow colouring. Lumpy -black was fatal. If anything could have made this figure -less attractive than it actually was, Ravenal’s glance -would seem to have done so. “That—ah—lady?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My wife,” said Andy. Then, mindful of the maxim -of the sheep and the lamb, he went the whole way. -“We’ve lost our juvenile lead. Fifteen a week and -found. Chance to see the world. No responsibility. -Schultzy said you said . . . I said . . . Parthy -said . . .” Hopelessly entangled, he stopped.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Am I to understand that I am being offered the -position of—ah—juvenile lead on the—” the devastating -glance upward—“Cotton Blossom Floating -Palace——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s the size of it,” interrupted Andy, briskly. -After all, even this young man’s tone and manner could -not quite dispel that crack in the boot. Andy knew -that no one wears a split shoe from choice.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No responsibility,” he repeated. “A chance to -see life.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ve seen it,” in the tone of one who did not care -for what he has beheld. His eyes were on a line with -the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom’s</span> deck. His gaze suddenly became -concentrated. A tall slim figure in white had just -appeared on the upper deck, forward—the bit of deck -that looked for all the world like a nautical veranda. -It led off Magnolia’s bedroom. The slim white figure -was Magnolia. Preparatory to going ashore she was -taking a look at this romantic city which she always had -loved, and which she, in company with Andy or Doc, -had roamed a dozen times since her first early childhood -trip on the <span class='it'>Creole Belle</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her dress was bunchy, too, as the mode demanded. -But where it was not bunchy it was very tight. And its -bunchiness thus only served to emphasize the slimness -of the snug areas. Her black hair was drawn smoothly -away from the temples and into a waterfall at the back. -Her long fine head and throat rose exquisitely above the -little pleated frill that finished the neckline of her gown. -She carried her absurd beribboned and beflowered high-crowned -hat in her hand. A graceful, pliant, slim -young figure in white, surveying the pandemonium that -was the New Orleans levee. Columns of black rose from -a hundred steamer stacks. Freight barrels and boxes -went hurtling through the air, or were shoved or carried -across the plank wharf to the accompaniment of shouting -and sweating and swearing. Negroes everywhere. -Band boxes, carpet bags, babies, drays, carriages, -wheelbarrows, carts. Beyond the levee rose the old -salt warehouses. Beyond these lay Canal Street. -Magnolia was going into town with her father and her -mother. Andy had promised her supper at Antoine’s -and an evening at the old French theatre. She knew -scarcely ten words of French. Andy, if he had known -it in his childhood, had quite forgotten it now. Parthy -looked upon it as the language of sin and the yellow -back paper novels. But all three found enjoyment -in the grace and colour and brilliance of the performance -and the audience—both of a sort to be found nowhere -else in the whole country. Andy’s enjoyment was -tinged and heightened by a vague nostalgia; Magnolia’s -was that of one artist for the work of another; Parthy’s -was the enjoyment of suspicion. She always hoped -the play’s high scenes were going to be more risqué -than they actually were.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>From her vantage point Magnolia stood glancing -alertly about her, enjoying the babel that was the New -Orleans plank wharves. She now espied and recognized -the familiarly capering little figure below with its right -hand scratching the mutton-chop whiskers this side -and that. She was impatient to be starting for their -jaunt ashore. She waved at him with the hand that -held the hat. The upraised arm served to enhance -the delicate curve of the pliant young figure in its sheath -of white.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Andy, catching sight of her, waved in return.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Is that,” inquired Gaylord Ravenal, “a member of -your company?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Andy’s face softened and glowed. “That? That’s -my daughter Magnolia.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Magnolia. Magnol—— Does she—is she a——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I should smile she is! She’s our ingénue lead, -Magnolia is. Plays opposite the juvenile lead. But if -you’ve been a trouper you know that, I guess.” A sudden -suspicion darted through him. “Say, young man—what’s -your name?—oh, yes, Ravenal. Well, Ravenal, -you a quick study? That’s what I got to know, -first off. Because we leave New Orleans to-night to -play the bayous. Bayou Teche to-morrow night in -Tempest and Sunshine. . . . You a quick study?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Lightning,” said Gaylord Ravenal.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Five minutes later, bowing over her hand, he did not -know whether to curse the crack in his shoe for shaming -him before her, or to bless it for having been the cause -of his being where he was.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>That he and Magnolia should become lovers was as -inevitable as the cosmic course. Certainly some force -greater than human must have been at work on it, for -it overcame even Parthy’s opposition. Everything -conspired to bring the two together, including their -being kept forcibly apart. Himself a picturesque, -mysterious, and romantic figure, Gaylord Ravenal, -immediately after joining the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> troupe, -became the centre of a series of dramatic episodes any -one of which would have made him glamorous in -Magnolia’s eyes, even though he had not already -assumed for her the glory of a Galahad.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She had never before met a man of Ravenal’s stamp. -In this dingy motley company he moved aloof, remote, -yet irresistibly attracting all of them—except Parthy. -She, too, must have felt drawn to this charming and -magnetic man, but she fought the attraction with all -the strength of her powerful and vindictive nature. -Sensing that here lay his bitterest opposition, Ravenal -deliberately set about exercising his charm to win -Parthy to friendliness. For the first time in his life he -received rebuff so bristling, so unmistakable, as to cause -him temporarily to doubt his own gifts.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Women had always adored Gaylord Ravenal. He -was not a villain. He was, in fact, rather gentle, and -more than a little weak. His method, coupled with -strong personal attractiveness, was simple in the extreme. -He made love to all women and demanded -nothing of them. Swept off their feet, they waited, -trembling deliciously, for the final attack. At its -failure to materialize they looked up, wondering, to see -his handsome face made more handsome by a certain -wistful sadness. At that their hearts melted within -them. That which they had meant to defend they now -offered. For the rest, his was a paradoxical nature. -A courtliness of manner, contradicted by a bluff boyishness. -A certain shy boldness. He was not an especially -intelligent man. He had no need to be. His upturned -glance at a dining-room waitress bent over him was in -no way different from that which he directed straight at -Parthy now; or at the daughter of a prosperous Southern -lawyer, or at that daughter’s vaguely uneasy mama. -It wasn’t deliberate evil in him or lack of fastidiousness. -He was helpless to do otherwise.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Certainly he had never meant to remain a member of -this motley troupe, drifting up and down the rivers. -He had not, for that matter, meant to fall in love with -Magnolia, much less marry her. Propinquity and opposition, -either of which usually is sufficient to fan -the flame, together caused the final conflagration. For -weeks after he came on board, he literally never spoke -to Magnolia alone. Parthy attended to that. He saw -her not only daily but almost hourly. He considered -himself lucky to be deft enough to say, “Lovely day, -isn’t it, Miss Magn——” before Mrs. Hawks swept her -offspring out of earshot. Parthy was wise enough to see -that this handsome, graceful, insidious young stranger -would appear desirable and romantic in the eyes of -women a hundredfold more sophisticated than the -childlike and unawakened Magnolia. She took refuge -in the knowledge that this dangerous male was the most -impermanent of additions to the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> troupe. -His connection with them would end on Schultzy’s -return.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Gaylord Ravenal was, in the meantime, a vastly -amused and prodigiously busy young man. To learn -the juvenile leads in the plays that made up the <span class='it'>Cotton -Blossom</span> troupe’s repertoire was no light matter. Not -only must he memorize lines, business, and cues of the -regular bills—Uncle Tom’s Cabin, East Lynne, Tempest -and Sunshine, Lady Audley’s Secret, The Parson’s -Bride, The Gambler, and others—but he must be ready -to go on in the concert after-piece, whatever it might be—sometimes -A Dollar for a Kiss, sometimes Red Hot -Coffee. The company rehearsed day and night; during -the day they rehearsed that night’s play; after the -performance they rehearsed next night’s bill. With -some astonishment the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> troupe realized, -at the end of two weeks, that Gaylord Ravenal was -acting as director. It had come about naturally and -inevitably. Ravenal had a definite theatre sense—a -feeling for tempo, rhythm, line, grouping, inflection, -characterization—any, or all, of these. The atmosphere -had freshness for him; he was interested; he -wished to impress Andy and Parthy and Magnolia; he -considered the whole business a gay adventure; and -an amusing interlude. For a month they played the -bayous and plantations of Louisiana, leaving behind -them a whole countryside whose planters, villagers, -Negroes had been startled out of their Southern lethargy. -These had known show boats and show-boat -performances all their lives. They had been visited by -this or that raffish, dingy, slap-dash, or decent and -painstaking troupe. The <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> company had -the reputation for being the last-named variety, and -always were patronized accordingly. The plays seldom -varied. The performance was, usually, less than -mediocre. They were, then, quite unprepared for the -entertainment given them by the two handsome, -passionate, and dramatic young people who now were -cast as ingénue and juvenile lead of the Cotton Blossom -Floating Palace Theatre company. Here was Gaylord -Ravenal, fresh, young, personable, aristocratic, romantic -of aspect. Here was Magnolia, slim, girlish, -ardent, electric, lovely. Their make-believe adventures -as they lived them on the stage became real; their -dangers and misfortunes set the natives to trembling; -their love-making was a fragrant and exquisite thing. -News of this troupe seeped through from plantation to -plantation, from bayou to bayou, from settlement to -settlement, in some mysterious underground way. -The <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> did a record-breaking business in -a region that had never been markedly profitable. -Andy was jubilant, Parthy apprehensive, Magnolia -starry-eyed, tremulous, glowing. Her lips seemed to -take on a riper curve. Her skin was, somehow, softly -radiant as though lighted by an inner glow, as Julie’s -amber colouring, in the years gone by, had seemed to -deepen into golden brilliance. Her eyes were enormous, -luminous. The gangling, hobbledehoy, sallow girl of -seventeen was a woman of eighteen, lovely, and in love.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Back again in New Orleans there was a letter from -Schultzy, a pathetic scrawl; illiterate; loyal. Elly was -out of the hospital, but weak and helpless. He had a -job, temporarily, whose nature he did not indicate. -(“Porter in a Little Rock saloon, I’ll be bound,” ventured -Parthy, shrewdly, “rubbing up the brass and the -cuspidors.”) He had met a man who ran a rag-front -carnival company. He could use them for one attraction -called The Old Plantation; or, The South Before -the War. They were booked through the Middle -West. In a few weeks, if Elly was stronger . . .</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He said nothing about money. He said nothing of -their possible return to the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span>. That, -Andy knew, was because of Elly. Unknown to Parthy, -he sent Schultzy two hundred dollars. Schultzy never -returned to the rivers. It was, after all, oddly enough, -Elly who, many many years later, completed the circle -which brought her again to the show boat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Together, Andy, Parthy, and Doc went into consultation. -They must keep Ravenal. But Ravenal obviously -was not of the stuff of show-boat actors. He -had made it plain, when first he came aboard, that he -was the most impermanent of troupers; that his connection -with the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> would continue, at -the latest, only until Schultzy’s return. He meant to -leave them, not at New Orleans, as they had at first -feared, but at Natchez, on the up trip.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t tell him Schultzy ain’t coming back,” Doc -offered, brilliantly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Have to know it some time,” was Andy’s obvious -reply.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Person’d think,” said Parthy, “he was the only -juvenile lead left in the world. Matter of fact, I can’t -see where he’s such great shakes of an actor. Rolls -those eyes of his a good deal, and talks deep-voiced, but -he’s got hands white’s a woman’s and fusses with his -nails. I’ll wager if you ask around in New Orleans -you’ll find something queer, for all he talks so high about -being a Ravenal of Tennessee and his folks governors in -the old days, and slabs about ’em in the church, and -what not. Shifty, that’s what he is. Mark my words.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Best juvenile lead ever played the rivers. And I -never heard that having clean finger nails hurt an actor -any.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, it isn’t just clean finger nails,” snapped Parthy. -“It’s everything.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Wouldn’t hold that against him, either,” roared -Doc. The two men then infuriated the humourless -Mrs. Hawks by indulging in a great deal of guffawing -and knee-slapping.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s right, Hawks. Laugh at your own wife. -And you, too, Doc.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You ain’t my wife,” retorted Doc, with the privilege -of sixty-odd. And roared again.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The gossamer thread that leashed Parthy’s temper -dissolved now. “I can’t bear the sight of him. Palavering -and soft-soaping. Thinks he can get round a -woman my age. Well, I’m worth a dozen of him when -it comes to smart.” She leaned closer to Andy, her -face actually drawn with fear and a sort of jealousy. -“He looks at Magnolia, I tell you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A fool if he didn’t.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Andy Hawks, you mean to tell me you’d sit there -and see your own daughter married to a worthless tramp -of a wharf rat, or worse, that hadn’t a shirt to his back -when you picked him up!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, God A’mighty, woman, can’t a man look at a -girl without having to marry her!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“<span class='it'>Having</span> to marry her, Captain Hawks! <span class='it'>Having</span>——Well, -what can a body expect when her own husband -talks like that, and before strangers, too. Having——!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Doc rubbed his leathery chin a trifle ruefully. -“Stretching a point, Mrs. Hawks, ma’am, calling me a -stranger, ain’t you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“All right. Keep him with the show, you two. -Who warned you about that yellow-skinned Julie! -And what happened! If sheriffs is what you want, I’ll -wager you could get them fast enough if you spoke his -name in certain parts of this country. Wait till we get -back to New Orleans. I intend to do some asking -around, and so does Frank.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What’s Frank got to do with it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But at this final exhibition of male obtuseness Parthy -flounced out of the conference.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>On their return from the bayous the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> -lay idle a day at the New Orleans landing. Early on -the morning of their arrival Gaylord Ravenal went -ashore. On his stepping off the gangplank he spoke -briefly to that same gimlet-eyed gentleman who was -still loitering on the wharf. To the observer, the -greeting between them seemed amiable enough.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Back again, Gay!” he of the keen gaze had exclaimed. -“Seems like you can’t keep away from the -scene of the——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, go to hell,” said Ravenal.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He returned to the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> at three o’clock. -At his appearance the idler who had accosted him (and -who was still mysteriously lolling at the waterside) -shut his eyes and then opened them quickly as though -to dispel a vision.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Gripes, Ravenal! Robbed a bank?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>From the tip of his shining shoes to the top of his pale -gray hat, Ravenal was sartorial perfection, nothing -less. The boots were hand-made, slim, aristocratic. -The cloth of his clothes was patently out of England, -and tailored for no casual purchaser, but for Ravenal’s -figure alone. The trousers tapered elegantly to the instep. -The collar was moulded expertly so that it hugged -the neck. The linen was of the finest and whitest, -and cunning needlecraft had gone into the embroidering -of the austere monogram that almost escaped showing -in one corner of the handkerchief that peeped above his -left breast pocket. The malacca stick seemed to take -on a new lustre and richness now that it found itself -once more in fitting company. With the earnings of -his first two weeks on the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> enclosed as -evidence of good faith, and future payment assured, -Gaylord Ravenal had sent by mail from the Louisiana -bayous to Plumbridge, the only English tailor in New -Orleans, the order which had resulted in his present -splendour.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He now paused a moment to relieve himself of that -which had long annoyed him in the beady-eyed one. -“Listen to me, Flat Foot. The <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> dropped -anchor at seven o’clock this morning at the New Orleans -dock. I came ashore at nine. It is now three. -I am free to stay on shore or not, as I like, until nine -to-morrow morning. Until then, if I hear any more -of your offensive conversation, I shall have to punish -you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Flat Foot, thus objurgated, stared at Ravenal with -an expression in which amazement and admiration -fought for supremacy. “By God, Ravenal, with any -luck at all, that gall of yours ought to get you a million -some day.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I wouldn’t be bothered with any sum so vulgar.” -From an inside pocket he drew a perfecto, long, dark, -sappy. “Have a smoke.” He drew out another. -“And give this to Vallon when you go back to report. -Tell him I wanted him to know the flavour of a decent -cigar for once in his life.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As he crossed the gangplank he encountered -Mrs. Hawks and Frank, the lumbering heavy, evidently -shore-bound together. He stepped aside with a courtliness -that the Ravenals of Tennessee could not have excelled -in the days of swords, satins, and periwigs.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mrs. Hawks was, after all, a woman; and no woman -could look unmoved upon the figure of cool elegance that -now stood before her. “Sakes alive!” she said, inadequately. -Frank, whose costumes, ashore or afloat, always -were négligée to the point of causing the beholder -some actual nervousness, attempted to sneer without -the aid of make-up and made a failure of it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ravenal now addressed Mrs. Hawks. “You are not -staying long ashore, I hope?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And why not?” inquired Mrs. Hawks, with her -usual delicacy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I had hoped that perhaps you and Captain Hawks -and Miss Magnolia might do me the honour of dining -with me ashore and going to the theatre afterward. I -know a little restaurant where——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Likely,” retorted Parthy, by way of polite refusal; -and moved majestically down the gangplank, followed -by the gratified heavy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ravenal continued thoughtfully on his way. Captain -Andy was in the box office just off the little forward deck -that served as an entrance to the show boat. With him -was Magnolia—Magnolia minus her mother’s protecting -wings. After all, even Parthy had not the power to -be in more than one place at a time. At this moment -she was deep in conversation with Flat Foot on the -wharf.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia was evidently dressed for a festive occasion. -The skirt of her light écru silk dress was a polonaise -draped over a cream-white surah silk, and the front of -the tight bodice-basque was of the same cream-white -stuff. Her round hat of Milan straw, with its modishly -high crown, had an artful brim that shaded her fine -eyes, and this brim was faced with deep rose velvet, and -a bow of deep rose flared high against the crown. The -black of her hair was all the blacker for this vivid colour. -An écru parasol and long suède gloves completed the -costume. She might have stepped out of <span class='it'>Harper’s -Bazaar</span>—in fact, she had. The dress was a faithful -copy of a costume which she had considered particularly -fetching as she pored over the pages of that book of -fashion.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Andy was busy at his desk. Ranged in rows on that -desk were canvas sacks, plump, squat; canvas sacks -limp, lop-sided; canvas sacks which, when lifted and -set down again, gave forth a pleasant clinking sound. -Piled high in front of these were neat packets of green-backs, -ones and ones and ones, in bundles of fifty, each -bound with a tidy belt of white paper pinned about its -middle. Forming a kind of Chinese wall around these -were stacked half dollars, quarters, dimes, and nickels, -with now and then a campanile of silver dollars. In -the midst of this Andy resembled an amiable and highly -solvent gnome stepped out of a Grimm’s fairy tale. The -bayou trip had been a record-breaking one in point of -profit.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“. . . And fifty’s six hundred and fifty,” Andy -was crooning happily, as he jotted figures down on a -sheet of yellow lined paper, “. . . and fifty’s seven -hundred, and twenty-five’s seven hundred twenty-five -and twenty-five’s . . .”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, Papa!” Magnolia exclaimed impatiently, and -turned toward the little window through which one -saw New Orleans lying so invitingly in the protecting -arms of the levee. “It’s almost four, and you haven’t -even changed your clothes, and you keep counting that -old money, and Mama’s gone on some horrid business -with that sneaky Frank. I know it’s horrid because she -looked so pleased. And you promised me. We won’t -see New Orleans again for a whole year. You said you’d -get a carriage and two horses and we’d drive out to Lake -Pontchartrain, and have dinner, and drive back, and -go to the theatre, and now it’s almost four and you -haven’t even changed your clothes and you keep counting -that old money, and Mama’s——” After all, in -certain ways, Magnolia the ingénue lead had not -changed much from that child who had promptly had -hysterics to gain her own ends that day in Thebes many -years before.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Minute,” Andy muttered, absently. “Can’t leave -this money laying around like buttons, can I? Germania -National’s letting me in the side door as a special -favour after hours, as ’tis, just so’s I can deposit. . . . -And fifty’s eight-fifty, and fifty’s nine . . .”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t <span class='it'>care</span>!” cried Magnolia, and stamped her foot. -“It’s downright mean of you, Papa. You promised. -And I’m all dressed. And you haven’t even changed -your——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, God A’mighty, Nollie, you ain’t going to turn -out an unreasonable woman like your ma, are you! -Here I sit, slaving away——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh! How beautiful you look!” exclaimed Magnolia -now, to Andy’s bewilderment. He looked up at her. -Her gaze was directed over his head at someone standing -in the doorway. Andy creaked hastily around in the -ancient swivel chair. Ravenal, of course, in the doorway. -Andy pursed his lips in the sky-rocket whistle, -starting high and ending low, expressive of surprise and -admiration.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How beautiful you look!” said Magnolia again; and -clasped her hands like a child.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And you, Miss Magnolia,” said Ravenal; and advanced -into the cubby-hole that was the office, and took -one of Magnolia’s surprised hands delicately in his, and -bent over it, and kissed it. Magnolia was an excellent -enough actress, and sufficiently the daughter of the -gallant and Gallic Andy, to acknowledge this salute -with a little gracious inclination of the head, and no -apparent surprise whatever. Andy himself showed nothing -of astonishment at the sight of this suave and elegant -figure bent over his daughter’s hand. He looked -rather pleased than otherwise. But suddenly then the -look on his face changed to one of alarm. He jumped -to his feet. He scratched the mutton-chop whiskers, -sure evidence of perturbation.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Look here, Ravenal! That ain’t a sign you’re -leaving, is it? Those clothes, and now kissing Nollie’s -hand. God A’mighty, Ravenal, you ain’t leaving us!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ravenal flicked an imaginary bit of dust from the -cuff of his flawless sleeve. “These are my ordinary -clothes, Captain Hawks, sir. I mean to say, I usually -am attired as you now see me. When first we met I was -in temporary difficulties. The sort of thing that can -happen to any gentleman.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Certainly can,” Andy agreed, heartily and hastily. -“Sure can. Well, you gave me a turn. I thought you -come in to give me notice. And while we’re on it, you’re -foolish to quit at Natchez like you said, Ravenal. I -don’t know what you been doing, but you’re cut out for -a show-boat actor, and that’s the truth. Stick with us -and I’ll raise you to twenty—” as Ravenal shook his -head—“twenty-five—” again the shake of the head—“thirty! -And, God A’mighty, they ain’t a juvenile -lead on the rivers ever got anywheres near that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ravenal held up one white shapely hand. “Let’s not -talk money now, Captain. Though if you would care -to advance me a fifty, I . . . Thanks . . . I -was going to say I came in to ask if you and Mrs. Hawks -and Miss Magnolia here would do me the honour to -dine with me ashore this evening, and go to the theatre. -I know a little French restaurant——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Papa!” She swooped down upon little Andy then, -enveloping him in her ruffles, in her surah silk, her rose -velvet, her perfume. Her arms were about his neck. -Her fresh young cheek pressed the top of his grizzled -head. Her eyes were enormous—and they looked into -Ravenal’s eyes. “Papa!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But years of contact with the prim Parthy had taught -him caution. “Your ma——” he began, feebly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia deserted him, flew to Ravenal, clutched his -arm. Her lovely eyes held tears. Involuntarily his -free hand covered her hand that clung so appealingly to -his sleeve. “He promised me. And now, because -he’s got all that money to count because Doc was delayed -at Baton Rouge and didn’t meet us here like he -expected he would this afternoon and Mama’s gone -ashore and we were to drive to Lake Pontchartrain and -have dinner and he hasn’t even changed his clothes and -it’s almost four o’clock—probably is four by now—and -he keeps counting that old money——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Magnolia!” shouted Andy in a French frenzy, -clutching the whiskers as though to raise himself by -them from the floor.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia must have been enjoying the situation. -Here were two men, both of whom adored her, and she -them. She therefore set about testing their love. Her -expression became tragic—but not so tragic as to mar -her delightful appearance. To the one who loved her -most deeply and unselfishly she said:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You don’t care anything about me or my happiness. -It’s all this old boat, and business, and money. Haven’t -I worked, night after night, year in, year out! And -now, when I have a chance to enjoy myself—it isn’t as -if you hadn’t promised me——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We’re going, I tell you, Nollie. But your ma isn’t -even here. And how did I know Doc was going to be -stuck at Baton Rouge! We got plenty of time to have -dinner ashore and go to the theatre, but we’ll have to -give up the drive to Pontchartrain——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A heartbroken wail from Magnolia. Her great dark -eyes turned in appeal to Ravenal. “It’s the drive I -like better than anything in the world. And horses. -I’m crazy about horses, and I don’t get a chance to drive—oh, -well—” at an objection from Andy—“sometimes; -but what kind of horses do they have in those little -towns! And here you can get a splendid pair, all shiny, -and their nostrils working, and a victoria and lovely -long tails and a clanky harness and fawn cushions and -the lake and soft-shell crabs——” She was becoming -incoherent, but remained as lovely as ever, and grew -more appealing by the moment.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ravenal resisted a mad urge to take her in his arms. -He addressed himself earnestly to the agonized Andy. -“If you will trust me, Captain Hawks, I have a plan -which I have just thought of. I know New Orleans -very well and I am—uh—very well known in New -Orleans. Miss Magnolia has set her heart on this little -holiday. I know where I can get a splendid turnout. -Chestnuts—very high steppers, but quite safe.” An -unadult squeal of delight from Magnolia. “If we start -immediately, we can enjoy quite a drive—Miss Magnolia -and I. If you like, we can take Mrs. Means with -us, or Mrs. Soaper——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No,” from the brazen beauty.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“—and return in time to meet you and Mrs. Hawks -at, say, Antoine’s for dinner.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, Papa!” cried Magnolia now. “Oh, Papa!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Your ma——” began Andy again, feebly. The -stacks and piles still lay uncounted on the desk. This -thing must be settled somehow. He scuttled to the -window, scanned the wharf, the streets that led up from -it. “I don’t know where she’s got to.” He turned -from the window to survey the pair, helplessly. Something -about them—the very fitness of their standing -there together, so young, so beautiful, so eager, so alive, -so vibrant—melted the romantic heart within him. -Magnolia in her holiday garb; Ravenal in his tailored -perfection. “Oh, well, I don’t see how it’ll hurt any. -Your ma and I will meet you at Antoine’s at, say, half-past -six——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They were off. It was as if they had been lifted -bodily and blown together out of the little office, across -the gangplank to the landing. Flat Foot stared after -them almost benignly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Andy returned to his desk. Resumed his contented -crooning. Four o’clock struck. Half-past four. His -pencil beat a rat-a-tat-tat as he jotted down the splendid -figures. A gold mine, this Ravenal. A fine -figger of a boy. Cheap at thirty. Rat-a-tat-tat. And -fifty’s one thousand. And twenty-five’s one thousand -twenty-five. And fifty’s—and fifty’s—twelve -twenty-five—gosh a’mighty!——</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A shriek. A bouncing across the gangplank and into -the cubby-hole just as Andy was rounding, happily, -into thirteen hundred. A hand clutching his shoulder -frantically, whirling him bodily out of the creaking swivel -chair. Parthy, hat awry, bosom palpitating, eyes -starting, mouth working.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“On Canal Street!” she wheezed. It was as though -the shriek she had intended were choked in her throat -by the very force of the feeling behind it, so that it -emerged a strangled thing. “Canal Street! The two -of them . . . with my own eyes . . . driving -. . . in a . . . in a——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She sank into a chair. There seemed to be no pretense -about this. Andy, for once, was alarmed. The -tall shambling figure of Frank, the heavy, passed the -little ticket window, blocked the low doorway. He -stared, open-mouthed, at the almost recumbent Parthy. -He was breathing heavily and looked aggrieved.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She ran away from me,” he said. “Sees ’em in the -crowd, driving, and tries to run after the carriage on -Canal, with everybody thinking she’s gone loony. -Then she runs down here to the landing, me after her. -Woman her age. What d’yah take me for, anyway!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Parthy did not hear him. He did not exist. Her -face was ashen. “He’s a murderer!” she now gasped.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Andy’s patience, never too long-suffering, snapped -under the strain of the afternoon’s happenings. “What’s -wrong with you, woman! Have you gone clean crazy! -Who’s a murderer! Frank? Who’s he murdered? -For two cents I’d murder the both of you, come howling -in here when a man’s trying to run his business <span class='it'>like</span> -a business and not like a yowling insane asylum——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Parthy stood up, shaking. Her voice was high and -quavering. “Listen to me, you fool. I talked to the -man on the docks—the one he was talking to—and he -wouldn’t tell me anything and he said I could ask the -chief of police if I wanted to know about anybody, and -I went to the chief of police, and a perfect gentleman if -there ever was one, and he’s killed a man.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The chief of police! Killed a man! What man!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No!” shrieked Parthy. “Ravenal! Ravenal’s -killed a man.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“God A’mighty, when?” He started as though to -rescue Magnolia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A year ago. A year ago, in this very town.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The shock of relief was too much for Andy. He was -furious. “They didn’t hang him for it, did they?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hang who?” asked Parthy, feebly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Who! Ravenal! They didn’t hang him?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why, no, they let him go. He said he shot him in -self——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He killed a man and they let him go. What does -that prove? He’d a right to. All right. What of it!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What of it! Your own daughter is out driving in -an open carriage this minute with a murderer, that’s -what, Andy Hawks. I saw them with my own eyes. -There I was, out trying to protect her from contamination -by finding out . . . and I saw her the minute -my back was turned . . . your doings . . . -your own daughter driving in the open streets in an open -carriage with a murderer——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, open murderer be damned!” squeaked Andy in -his falsetto of utter rage. “I killed a man when I was -nineteen, Mrs. Hawks, ma’am, and I’ve been twenty-five -years and more as respected a man as there is on the -rivers, and that’s the truth if you want to talk about -mur——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But Parthenia Ann Hawks, for the first time in her -vigorous life, had fainted.</p> - -<div><h1>X</h1></div> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='lead-in'><span class='dropcap'>G</span>aylord Ravenal</span> had not meant to fall in -love. Certainly he had not dreamed of marrying. -He was not, he would have told you, a -marrying man. Yet Natchez had come and gone, and -here he was, still playing juvenile leads on the <span class='it'>Cotton -Blossom</span>; still planning, days ahead, for an opportunity -to outwit Mrs. Hawks and see Magnolia alone. He was -thoroughly and devastatingly in love. Alternately he -pranced and cringed. To-day he would leave this -dingy scow. What was he, Gaylord Ravenal, doing -aboard a show boat, play-acting for a miserable thirty -dollars a week! He who had won (and lost) a thousand -a night at poker or faro. To-morrow he was resolved -to give up gambling for ever; to make himself worthy of -this lovely creature; to make himself indispensable to -Andy; to find the weak chink in Parthy’s armour.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had met all sorts of women in his twenty-four -years. He had loved some of them, and many of them -had loved him. He had never met a woman like Magnolia. -She was a paradoxical product of the life she had -led. The contact with the curious and unconventional -characters that made up the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> troupe; the -sights and sounds of river life, sordid, romantic, homely, -Rabelaisian, tragic, humorous; the tolerant and meaty -wisdom imbibed from her sprightly little father; the -spirit of <span class='it'>laissez faire</span> that pervaded the whole atmosphere -about her, had given her a flavour, a mellowness, a -camaraderie found usually only in women twice her age -and a hundredfold more experienced. Weaving in and -out of this was an engaging primness directly traceable -to Parthy. She had, too, a certain dignity that was, -perhaps, the result of years of being deferred to as the -daughter of a river captain. Sometimes she looked at -Ravenal with the wide-eyed gaze of a child. At such -times he wished that he might leap into the Mississippi -(though muddy) and wash himself clean of his sins as -did the pilgrims in the River Jordan.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>On that day following Parthy’s excursion ashore at -New Orleans there had been between her and Captain -Andy a struggle, brief and bitter, from which Andy had -emerged battered but victorious.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That murdering gambler goes or I go,” Parthy had -announced, rashly. It was one of those pronunciamentos -that can only bring embarrassment to one who -utters it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He stays.” Andy was iron for once.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He stayed. So did Parthy, of course.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>You saw the two—Parthy and Ravenal—eyeing each -other, backs to the wall, waiting for a chance to lunge -and thrust.</p> - -<p class='pindent'><span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> business was booming. News of the -show boat’s ingénue and juvenile lead filtered up and -down the rivers. During the more romantic scenes of -this or that play Parthy invariably stationed herself -in the wings and glowered and made muttering sounds to -which the two on stage—Magnolia starry-eyed as the -heroine, Ravenal ardent and passionate as the lover—were -oblivious. It was their only opportunity to express -to each other what they actually felt. It probably -was, too, the most public and convincing love-making -that ever graced the stage of this or any other -theatre.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ravenal made himself useful in many ways. He took -in hand, for example, the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom’s</span> battered -scenery. It was customary on all show boats to use -both sides of a set. One canvas side would represent, -perhaps, a drawing room. Its reverse would show the -greens and browns of leaves and tree trunks in a forest -scene. Both economy and lack of stage space were responsible -for this. Painted by a clumsy and unimaginative -hand, each leaf daubed as a leaf, each inch of -wainscoting drawn to scale, the effect of any <span class='it'>Cotton -Blossom</span> set, when viewed from the other side of the -footlights, was unconvincing even to rural and inexperienced -eyes. Ravenal set to work with paint and -brush and evolved two sets of double scenery which -brought forth shrieks of ridicule and protest from the -company grouped about the stage.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It isn’t supposed to look like a forest,” Ravenal -explained, slapping on the green paint with a lavish -hand. “It’s supposed to give the effect of a forest. -The audience isn’t going to sit on the stage, is it? Well, -then! Here—this is to be a gate. Well, there’s no use -trying to paint a flat thing with slats that nobody will -ever believe looks like a gate. I’ll just do this . . . -and this . . .”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It does!” cried Magnolia from the middle of the -house where she had stationed herself, head held critically -on one side. “It does make you think there’s a -gate there, without its actually being . . . Look, -Papa! . . . And the trees. All those lumpy green -spots we used to have somehow never looked like leaves.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>All unconsciously Ravenal was using in that day, and -in that crude milieu, a method which was to make a -certain Bobby Jones famous in the New York theatre of -a quarter of a century later.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Where did you learn to——” some one of the troupe -would marvel; Magnolia, perhaps, or Mis’ Means, or -Ralph.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Paris,” Ravenal would reply, briefly. Yet he had -never spoken of Paris.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He often referred thus casually to a mysterious past.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Paris fiddlesticks!” rapped out Parthy, promptly. -“No more Paris than he’s a Ravenal of Tennessee, or -whatever rascally highfalutin story he’s made up for -himself.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Whereupon, when they were playing Tennessee, weeks -later, he strolled one day with Magnolia and Andy into -the old vine-covered church of the village, its churchyard -fragrant and mysterious with magnolia and ilex; -its doorstep worn, its pillars sagging. And there, in a -glass case, together with a tattered leather-bound -Bible a century and a half old, you saw a time-yellowed -document. The black of the ink strokes had, perhaps, -taken on a tinge of gray, but the handwriting, clear and -legible, met the eye.</p> - -<div class='blockquoter9'> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-bottom:1em;font-size:.8em;'><span class='sc'>Will of Jean Baptista Ravenal.</span></p> - -<p class='pindent'>I, Jean Baptista Ravenal, of this Province, being through -the mercy of Almighty God of sound mind and memory do -make, appoint, declare and ordain this and this only to be my -last Will and Testament. It is my will that my sons have their -estates delivered to them as they severally arrive at the age of twenty -and one years, the eldest being Samuel, the second Jean, the third -Gaylord.</p> - -<p class='line'> </p> - -<p class='pindent'>I will that my slaves be kept to work on my lands that my estate -be managed to the best advantage so as my sons may have as liberal -an education as the profits thereof will afford. Let them be taught -to read and write and be introduced into the practical part of -Arithmetic, not too hastily hurrying them to Latin and Grammar. -To my sons, when they arrive at age I recommend the pursuit and -study of some profession or business (I would wish one to ye Law, -the other to Merchandise).</p> - -</div> - -<p class='pindent'>“The other?” cried Magnolia softly then, looking up -very bright-eyed and flushed from the case over which -she had been bending. “But the third? Gaylord? -It doesn’t say——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The black sheep. My great-grandfather. There -always was a Gaylord. And he always was the black -sheep. My grandfather, Gaylord Ravenal and my -father Gaylord Ravenal, and——” he bowed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Black too, are you?” said Andy then, drily.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“As pitch.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia bent again to the book, her brow thoughtful, -her lips forming the words and uttering them softly as -she deciphered the quaint script.</p> - -<div class='blockquoter9'> - -<p class='pindent'>I give and bequeath unto my son Samuel the lands called Ashwood, -which are situated, lying and being on the South Side of the -Cumberland River, together with my other land on the North side -of said River. . . .</p> - -<p class='pindent'>I give and bequeath unto my son Jean, to him and his heirs and -assigns for ever a tract of land containing seven hundred and forty -acres lying on Stumpy Sound . . . also another tract containing -one thousand acres . . .</p> - -<p class='pindent'>I give and bequeath to my son Samuel four hundred and fifty -acres lying above William Lowrie’s plantation on the main branch -of Old Town Creek . . .</p> - -</div> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia stood erect. Indignation blazed in her -fine eyes. “But, Gaylord!” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes!” Certainly she had never before called him -that.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I mean this Gaylord. I mean the one who came -after Samuel and Jean. Why isn’t—why didn’t——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Naughty boy,” said Ravenal, with his charming -smile.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She actually yearned toward him then. He could -not have said anything more calculated to bind his enchantment -for her. They swayed toward each other -over the top of the little glass-encased relic. Andy -coughed hastily. They swayed gently apart. They -were as though mesmerized.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Folks out here in the churchyard?” inquired Andy, -briskly, to break the spell. “Ravenal kin?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Acres of ’em,” Gaylord assured him, cheerfully. -“Son of . . . and daughter of . . . and beloved -father of. . . . For that matter, there’s one -just beside you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Andy side-stepped hastily, with a little exclamation. -He cast a somewhat fearful glance at the spot toward -which Ravenal so carelessly pointed. A neat gray stone -slab set in the wall. Andy peered at the lettering it -bore; stooped a little. “Here—you read it, Nollie. -You’ve got young eyes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her fresh young cheek so near the cold gray slab, -she read in her lovely flexible voice:</p> - -<div class='blockquoter9'> - -<p class='noindent'>Here lies the body of M<sup>rs</sup>. Suzanne Ravenal, wife of Jean Baptista -Ravenal Esq<sup>r</sup>., one of his Majesty’s Council and Surveyor General -of the Lands of this Province, who departed this life Oct<sup>r</sup> 19<sup>t</sup> 1765. -Aged 37 Years. After labouring ten of them under the severest -Bodily afflictions brought on by Change of Climate, and tho’ she -went to her native land received no relief but returned and bore them -with uncommon Resolution and Resignation to the last.</p> - -</div> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia rose, slowly, from the petals of her flounced -skirt spread about her as she had stooped to read. -“Poor darling!” Her eyes were soft with pity. Again -the two seemed to sway a little toward each other, as -though blown by a gust of passion. And this time little -Captain Andy turned his back and clattered down the -aisle. When they emerged again into the sunshine -they found him, a pixie figure, leaning pensively against -the great black trunk of a live oak. He was smoking a -pipe somewhat apologetically, as though he hoped the -recumbent Ravenals would not find it objectionable.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I guess,” he remarked, as Magnolia and Ravenal -came up to him, “I’ll have to bring your ma over. -She’s partial to history, her having been a schoolma’am, -and all.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Like the stage sets he so cleverly devised for the show -boat, Gaylord Ravenal had a gift for painting about -himself the scenery of romance. These settings, too, -did not bear the test of too close scrutiny. But in a -favourable light, and viewed from a distance, they were -charmingly effective and convincing.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His sense of the dramatic did not confine itself to -the stage. He was the juvenile lead, on or off. Audiences -adored him. Mid-western village housewives, -good mothers and helpmates for years, were, for days -after seeing him as the heroic figure of some gore-and-glory -drama, mysteriously silent and irritably waspish -by turn. Disfavour was writ large on their faces as -they viewed their good commonplace dull husbands -across the midday table set with steaming vegetables -and meat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why’n’t you shave once in a while middle of the -week,” they would snap, “ ’stead of coming to the table -looking like a gorilla?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mild surprise on the part of the husband. “I shaved -Sat’dy, like always.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Lookit your hands!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hands? . . . Say, Bella, what in time’s got -into you, anyway?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Nothing.” A relapse into moody silence on the -part of Bella.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mrs. Hawks fought a good fight, but what chance had -her maternal jealousy against youth and love and romance? -For a week she would pour poison into Magnolia’s -unwilling ear. Only making a fool of you -. . . probably walk off and leave the show any day -. . . common gambler . . . look at his eyes -. . . murderer and you know it . . . rather -see you in your grave. . . .</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Then, in one brief moment, Ravenal, by some act of -courage or grace or sheer deviltry, would show Parthy -that all her pains were for nothing.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>That night, for example, when they were playing -Kentucky Sue. Ravenal’s part was what is known as -a blue-shirt lead—the rough brave woodsman, with -the uncouth speech and the heart of gold. Magnolia, -naturally, was Sue. They were playing Gains Landing, -always a tough town, often good for a fight. It was a -capacity audience and a surprisingly well-behaved and -attentive. Midway in the play’s progress a drawling -drunken voice from the middle of the house began a -taunting and ridiculous chant whose burden was, “Is -<span class='it'>’at</span> so!” After each thrilling speech; punctuating each -flowery period, “Is <span class='it'>’at</span> so!” came the maddening and disrupting -refrain. You had to step carefully at Gains -Landing. The <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> troupe knew that. One -word at the wrong moment, and knives flashed, guns -popped. Still, this could not go on.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t mind him,” Magnolia whispered fearfully to -Ravenal. “He’s drunk. He’ll stop. Don’t pay any -attention.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The scene was theirs. They were approaching the -big moment in the play when the brave Kentuckian renounces -his love that Kentucky Sue may be happy with -her villainous bridegroom-to-be (Frank, of course). -Show-boat audiences up and down the rivers had known -that play for years; had committed the speech word -for word, through long familiarity. “Sue,” it ran, “ef -he loves yuh and you love him, go with him. Ef he -h’ain’t good to yuh, come back where there’s honest -hearts under homespun shirts. Back to Kaintucky and -home!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Thus the speech ran. But as they approached it the -blurred and mocking voice from the middle of the house -kept up its drawling skepticism. “Is <span class='it'>’at</span> so! Is <span class='it'>’at</span> so!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Damned drunken lout!” said Ravenal under his -breath, looking unutterable love meanwhile at the -languishing Kentucky Sue.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, dear!” said Magnolia, feeling Ravenal’s muscles -tightening under the blue shirt sleeves; seeing the -telltale white ridge of mounting anger under the grease -paint of his jaw line. “Do be careful.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ravenal stepped out of his part. He came down to -the footlights. The house, restless and irritable, suddenly -became quiet. He looked out over the faces of -the audience. “See here, pardner, there’s others here -want to hear this, even if you don’t.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The voice subsided. There was a little desultory applause -from the audience and some cries of, “That’s -right! Make him shut up.” They refused to manhandle -one of their own, but they ached to see someone -else do it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The play went on. The voice was silent. The time -approached for the big speech of renunciation. It was -here. “Sue, ef he loves yuh and you love him, go with -him. Ef he——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Is <span class='it'>’at</span> so!” drawled the amused voice, with an element -of surprise in it now. “Is <span class='it'>’at</span> so!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ravenal cast Kentucky Sue from him. “Well, if you -will have it,” he threatened, grimly. He sprang over -the footlights, down to the piano top, to the keyboard, -to the piano stool, all in four swift strides, was up the -aisle, had plucked the limp and sprawling figure out of -his seat by the collar, clutched him then firmly by this -collar hold and the seat of his pants, and was up the -aisle again to the doorway, out of the door, across the -gangplank, and into the darkness. He was down the -aisle then in a moment, spatting his hands briskly as -he came; was up on the piano stool, on to the piano -keyboard, on the piano top, over the footlights, back in -position. There he paused a moment, breathing fast. -Nothing had been said. There had actually been no -sound other than his footsteps and the discordant -jangle of protest that the piano keyboard had emitted -when he had stepped on its fingers. Now a little startled -expression came into Ravenal’s face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Let’s see,” he said, aloud. “Where was I——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And as one man the audience chanted, happily, -“Sue, ef he loves yuh and you love him——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>What weapon has a Parthenia against a man like that? -And what chance a Frank?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Drama leaped to him. There was, less than a week -later, the incident of the minister. He happened to -be a rather dirty little minister in a forlorn little Kentucky -river town. He ran a second-hand store on the -side, was new to the region, and all unaware of the popularity -and good-will enjoyed by the members of the -<span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> troupe. To him an actor was a burning -brand. Doc had placarded the little town with dodgers -and handbills. There was one, especially effective even -in that day of crude photography, showing Magnolia in -the angelic part of the ingénue lead in Tempest and -Sunshine. These might be seen displayed in the windows -of such ramshackle stores as the town’s river-front -street boasted. Gaylord Ravenal, strolling disdainfully -up into the sordid village that was little more than a -welter of mud and flies and mules and Negroes, stopped -aghast as his eye chanced to fall upon the words scrawled -beneath a picture of Magnolia amidst the dusty disorderly -mélange of the ministerial second-hand window. -There was the likeness of the woman he loved looking, -starry-eyed, out upon the passer-by. And beneath it, in -the black fanatic penmanship of the itinerant parson:</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-top:1em;margin-bottom:1em;font-size:1.1em;'>A LOST SOUL</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In his fine English clothes, swinging the slim malacca -cane, Gaylord Ravenal, very narrow-eyed, entered the -fusty shop and called to its owner to come forward. -From the cobwebby gloom of the rear reaches emerged -the merchant parson, a tall, shambling large-knuckled -figure of the anaconda variety. You thought of Uriah -Heep and of Ichabod Crane, experiencing meanwhile a -sensation of distaste.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ravenal, very elegant, very cool, very quiet, pointed -with the tip of his cane. “Take that picture out of the -window. Tear it up. Apologize.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I won’t do anything of the kind,” retorted the holy -man. “You’re a this-and-that, and a such-and-such, -and a so-and-so, and she’s another, and the whole boatload -of you ought to be sunk in the river you contaminate.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Take off your coat,” said Ravenal, divesting himself -neatly of his own faultless garment as he spoke.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A yellow flame of fear leaped into the man’s eyes. -He edged toward the door. With a quick step Ravenal -blocked his way. “Take it off before I rip it off. Or -fight with your coat on.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You touch a man of God and I’ll put the law on -you. The sheriff’s office is just next door. I’ll have -you——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ravenal whirled him round, seized the collar of his -grimy coat, peeled it dexterously off, revealing what -was, perhaps, as ’maculate a shirt as ever defiled the -human form. The Ravenal lip curled in disgust.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“If cleanliness is next to godliness,” he remarked, -swiftly turning back his own snowy cuffs meanwhile, -“you’ll be shovelling coal in hell.” And swung. The -minister was taller and heavier than this slight and dandified -figure. But Ravenal had an adrenal advantage, -being stimulated by the fury of his anger. The godly -one lay, a soiled heap, among his soiled wares. The -usual demands of the victor.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Take that thing out of the window! . . . -Apologize to me! . . . Apologize publicly for defaming -a lady!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The man crept groaning to the window, plucked the -picture, with its offensive caption, from amongst the -miscellany there, handed it to Ravenal in response to a -gesture from him. “Now then, I think you’re pretty -badly bruised, but I doubt that anything’s broken. -I’m going next door to the sheriff. You will write a -public apology in letters corresponding to these and -place it in your filthy window. I’ll be back.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He resumed his coat, picked up the malacca cane, -blithely sought out the sheriff, displayed the sign, heard -that gallant Kentuckian’s most Southern expression of -regard for Captain Andy Hawks, his wife and gifted -daughter, together with a promise to see to it that the -written apology remained in the varmint’s window -throughout the day and until the departure of the <span class='it'>Cotton -Blossom</span>. Ravenal then went his elegant and unruffled -way up the sunny sleepy street.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>By noon the story was known throughout the village, -up and down the river for a distance of ten miles each -way, and into the back-country, all in some mysterious -word-of-mouth way peculiar to isolated districts. -Ravenal, returning to the boat, was met by news of his -own exploit. Business, which had been booming for -this month or more, grew to phenomenal proportions. -Ravenal became a sort of legendary figure on the rivers. -Magnolia went to her mother. “I am never allowed to -talk to him. I won’t stand it. You treat him like a -criminal.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What else is he?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He’s the——” A long emotional speech, ringing -with words such as hero, gentleman, wonderful, honourable, -nobility, glorious—a speech such as Schultzy, in -his show-boat days as director, would have designated -as a so-and-so-and-so-and-so-and-so-and-so.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ravenal went to Captain Andy. I am treated as an -outcast. I’m a Ravenal. Nothing but the most honourable -conduct. A leper. Never permitted to speak to -your daughter. Humiliation. Prefer to discontinue -connection which can only be distasteful to the Captain -and Mrs. Hawks, in view of your conduct. Leaving -the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> at Cairo.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In a panic Captain Andy scampered to his lady and -declared for a more lenient chaperonage.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Willing to sacrifice your own daughter, are you, for -the sake of a picking up a few more dollars here and -there with this miserable upstart!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Sacrificing her, is it, to tell her she can speak civilly -to as handsome a young feller and good-mannered as I -ever set eyes on, or you either!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Young squirt, that’s what he is.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I was a girl like Nollie I’d run off with him, by God, -and that’s the truth. She had any spirit left in her -after you’ve devilled her these eighteen years past, she’d -do it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s right! Put ideas into her head! How do -you know who he is?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He’s a Rav——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He says he is.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Didn’t he show me the church——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, Hawks, you’re a zany. I could show you gravestones. -I could say my name was Bonaparte and show -you Napoleon’s tomb, but that wouldn’t make him my -grandfather, would it!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>After all, there was wisdom in what she said. She -may even have been right, as she so often was in her -shrewish intuition. Certainly they never learned more -of this scion of the Ravenal family than the meagre information -gleaned from the chronicles of the village -church and graveyard.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Grudgingly, protestingly, she allowed the two to converse -genteelly between the hours of five and six, after -dinner. But no oriental princess was ever more heavily -chaperoned than was Magnolia during these prim meetings. -For a month, then, they met on the port side of -the upper deck, forward. Their chairs were spaced well -apart. On the starboard side, twenty-five feet away, -sat Parthy in her chair, grim, watchful; radiating opposition.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia, feeling the gimlet eye boring her spine, -would sit bolt upright, her long nervous fingers tightly -interwoven, her ankles neatly crossed, the pleats and -flounces of her skirts spread sedately enough yet seeming -to vibrate with an electric force that gave them the -effect of standing upright, a-quiver, like a kitten’s fur -when she is agitated.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He sat, one arm negligently over the back of his chair, -facing the girl. His knees were crossed. He seemed at -ease, relaxed. Yet a slim foot in its well-made boot -swung gently to and fro. And when Parthy made one -of her sudden moves, as was her jerky habit, or when she -coughed raspingly by way of emphasizing her presence, -he could be felt, rather than seen, to tighten in all his -nerves and muscles, and the idly swinging foot took a -clonic leap.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The words they spoke with their lips and the words -they spoke with their eyes were absurdly at variance.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Have you really been in Paris, Mr. Ravenal! How -I should love to see it!” (How handsome you are, -sitting there like that. I really don’t care anything -about Paris. I only care about you.)</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No doubt you will, some day, Miss Magnolia.” -(You darling! How I should like to take you there. -How I should like to take you in my arms.)</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, I’ve never even seen Chicago. Only these -river towns.” (I love the way your hair grows away -from your temples in that clean line. I want to put my -finger on it, and stroke it. My dear.)</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A sordid kind of city. Crude. Though it has some -pleasant aspects. New York——” (What do I care -if that old tabby is sitting there! What’s to prevent me -from getting up and kissing you a long long while on -your lovely pomegranate mouth.)</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Lowering, inflexible, sat Parthy. “She’ll soon enough -tire of that sort of popinjay talk,” she told herself. She -saw the bland and almost vacuous expression on the -countenance of the young man, and being ignorant of -the fact that he was famous from St. Louis to Chicago -for his perfect poker face, was equally ignorant of the -tides that were seething and roaring within him now.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They were prisoners on this boat; together, yet miles -apart. Guarded, watched. They had their scenes together -on the stage. These were only aggravations. -The rather high planes of Magnolia’s cheek-bones began -to show a trifle too flat. Ravenal, as he walked along -the grass-grown dusty streets of this or that little river -town, switched viciously at weed and flower stalks with -the slim malacca cane.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They hit upon a pathetic little scheme whereby they -might occasionally, if lucky, steal the ecstasy of a good-night -kiss. After the performance he would stroll carelessly -out to the stern where stood the settling barrel. -Ostensibly he was taking a bedtime drink of water. -Magnolia was, if possible, to meet him there for a brief -and perilous moment. It was rarely accomplished. -The signal to him was the slamming of the screen door. -But often the screen door slammed as he stood there, a -tense quivering figure in the velvet dark of the Southern -night, and it was Frank, or Mrs. Soaper, or Mis’ Means, -or puny Mr. Means, coughing his bronchial wheeze. -Crack! went the screen door. Disappointment. Often -he sloshed down whole gallons of river water before she -came—if she came at all.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had managed to save almost a hundred dollars. -He was restless, irritable. Except for a mild pinochle -game now and then with the men of the company, he -had not touched a card in weeks. If he could get into -a real game, somehow; manage a sweepstakes. Chicago. -St. Louis, even. These little rotten river towns. -No chance here. If he could with luck get together -enough to take her away with him. Away from the -old hell-cat, and this tub, and these damned eternal -rivers. God, but he was sick of them!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They were playing the Ohio River—Paducah, Kentucky. -He found himself seated at mid-afternoon -round a table in the back room of a waterfront saloon. -What time is it? Five. Plenty of time. Just for that -raise you five. A few hundred dollars would do it. -Six o’clock. Seven. Seven-thirty. Eight. Half-past—Who -said half-past! Ralph in the doorway. Can’t -be! Been looking everywhere for you. This’s a fine -way . . . Come on outa here you. . . . Christ! -. . . Ten dollars in his pocket. The curtain up at -eight. Out, the shouts of the men echoing in his ears. -Down to the landing. A frantic company, Andy clawing -at his whiskers. Magnolia in tears, Parthy grim -but triumphant, Frank made up to go on in Ravenal’s -part.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He dashed before the curtain, raised his shaking hand -to quiet the cat-calling angry audience.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ladies and gentlemen, I ask your patience. There -has been an unfortunate but unavoidable delay. The -curtain will rise in exactly five minutes. In the name -of the management I wish to offer you all apologies. -We hope, by our performance, to make up for the inconvenience -you have suffered. I thank you.” A -wave of his hand.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The band.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Parthy in the wings. “Well, Captain Hawks, I -guess this settles it. Maybe you’ll listen to your wife, -after this. In a saloon—that’s where he was—gambling. -If Ralph hadn’t found him—a pretty kettle of fish. -Years building up a reputation on the rivers and then -along comes a soft-soaping murdering gambler . . .”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ravenal had got into his costume with the celerity of -a fireman, and together he and Magnolia were giving a -performance that was notable for its tempo and a certain -vibratory quality. The drama that unrolled itself before -the Paducah gaze was as nothing compared to the -one that was being secretly enacted.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Between the lines of her part she whispered between -immovable lips: “Oh, Gay, why did you do it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A wait, perhaps, of ten minutes before the business -of the play brought him back within whispering distance -of her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Money” (very difficult to whisper without moving -the lips. It really emerged, “Uh-ney,” but she understood). -“For you. Marry you. Take you away.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>All this while the lines of the play went on. When -they stood close together it was fairly easy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia (in the play): What! Have all your friends -deserted you! (Mama’ll make Andy send you away.)</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ravenal: No, but friendship is too cold a passion to -stir my heart now. (Will you come with me?)</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia: Oh, give me a friend in preference to a -sweetheart. (But how can I?)</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ravenal: My dear Miss Brown—Miss Lucy—— -(Marry me).</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia: Oh, please don’t call me Miss Brown. -(When?)</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ravenal: Lucy! (Where do we play to-morrow? -Marry me there.)</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia: Defender of the fatherless! (Metropolis. -I’m frightened.)</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ravenal: Will you be a poor man’s bride? (Darling!)</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For fear of arousing suspicion, she did not dare put on -her best dress in which to be married. One’s best dress -does not escape the eye of a Parthy at ten o’clock in the -morning, when the landing is Metropolis. With a sigh -Magnolia donned her second best—the reseda sateen, -basqued, its overskirt caught up coquettishly at the -side. She determined on her Milan hat trimmed with -the grosgrain ribbon and pink roses. After all, Parthy -or no Parthy, if one has a hat with pink roses, the time -to wear it is at one’s wedding, or never.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ravenal vanished beyond the river bank immediately -after breakfast next day; a meal which he had eaten in -haste and in silence. He did not, the general opinion -ran, look as crushed as his misdemeanour warranted. -He had, after all, been guilty of the crime of crimes in -the theatre, be it a Texas tent show or an all-star production -on Broadway; he had held up the performance. -For once the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> troupe felt that Mrs. -Hawks’ bristling attitude was justified. All through -the breakfast hour the stern ribbon bow on her breakfast -cap had quivered like a seismographic needle registering -the degree of her inward upheaval.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I think,” said Magnolia, drinking her coffee in very -small sips, and eating nothing, “I’ll just go to town and -match the ribbon on my grosgrain striped silk——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’ll do nothing of the kind, miss, and so I tell -you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But, Mama, why? You’d think I was a child instead -of a——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You are, and no more. I can’t go with you. So -you’ll stop at home.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But Mis’ Means is going with me. I promised her -I’d go. She wants to get some ointment for Mr. Means’ -chest. And a yard of elastic. And half a dozen -oranges. . . . Papa, don’t you think it’s unreasonable -to make me suffer just because everybody’s in a bad -temper this morning? I’m sure I haven’t done anything. -I’m sure I——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Captain Andy clawed his whiskers in a frenzy. -“Don’t come to me with your yards of elastic and your -oranges. God A’mighty!” He rushed off, a distraught -little figure, as well he might be after a wretched night -during which Mrs. Hawks had out-caudled Mrs. Caudle. -When finally he had dropped off to sleep to the -sound of the monotonously nagging voice, it was to -dream of murderous gamblers abducting Magnolia who -always turned out to be Parthy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In her second best sateen and the Milan with the -pink roses Magnolia went off to town at a pace that -rather inconvenienced the short-breathed Mis’ Means.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What’s your hurry!” wheezed that lady, puffing up -the steep cinder path to the levee.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We’re late.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Late! Late for what? Nothing to do all day till -four, far’s I know.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, I just meant—uh—I mean we started kind of -late——” her voice trailed off, lamely.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Fifteen minutes later Mis’ Means stood in indecision -before a counter crawling with unwound bolts of elastic -that twined all about her like garter snakes. The little -general store smelled of old apples and broom straw and -kerosene and bacon and potatoes and burlap and mice. -Sixteen minutes later she turned to ask Magnolia’s advice. -White elastic half an inch wide? Black elastic -three-quarters of an inch wide? Magnolia had vanished -from her side. Mis’ Means peered through the dimness -of the fusty little shop. Magnolia! White elastic in -one hand, black in the other, Mis’ Means scurried to the -door. Magnolia had gone.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia had gone to be married in her second best -dress and her hat with the pink roses. She flew down -the street. Mis’ Means certainly could have achieved -no such gait; much less could she have bettered it to the -extent of overtaking Magnolia. Magnolia made such -speed that when her waiting bridegroom, leaning against -the white picket fence in front of the minister’s house -next the church, espied her and came swiftly to meet -her, she was so breathless a bride that he could make -nothing out of her panted—“Elastic . . . Mis’ -Means . . . ran away . . .”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She leaned against the picket fence to catch her -breath, a lovely flushed figure, and not a little frightened. -And though it was early April with Easter just gone, -there was a dogwood in bridal bloom in the minister’s -front yard, and a magnolia as well. And along the inside -of the picket fence tulips and jonquils lifted their -radiant heads. She looked at Gaylord Ravenal then -and smiled her wide and gorgeous smile. “Let’s go,” -she said, “and be married. I’ve caught my breath.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“All right,” said Ravenal. Then he took from his -pocket the diamond ring that was much too large for -her. “Let’s be engaged first, while we go up the path.” -And slipped it on her finger.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why, Gay! It’s a diamond! Look what the sun -does to it! Gay!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s nothing compared to what the sun does to -you,” he said; and leaned toward her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Right at noon, in the minister’s front yard!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I know. But I’ve had only those few moments in -the dark by the settling barrel—it’s been terrible.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The minister’s wife opened the door. She looked -at the two.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I saw you from the parlour window. We were -wondering—I thought maybe you’d like to be married -in the church. The Easter decorations are still up. It -looks lovely, all palms and lilies and smilax, too, from -down South, sent up. The altar’s banked with it. -Mr. Seldon’s gone there.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, I’d love to be married in church. Oh, Gay, -I’d love to be married in church.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The minister’s wife smoothed the front of her dress -with one hand, and the back of her hair with the other, -and, having made these preparations for the rôle of -bridal attendant, conducted them to the little flower-banked -church next door.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia never did remember very clearly the brief -ceremony that followed. There were Easter lilies—whole -rows of them—and palms and smilax, as the -minister’s wife had said. And the sun shone, picture-book -fashion, through the crude yellows and blues and -scarlets of the windows. And there was the Reverend -Something-or-other Seldon, saying solemn words. But -these things, strangely enough, seemed unimportant. -Two little pig-tailed girls, passing by from school, had -seen them enter the church and had tiptoed in, scenting -a wedding. Now they were up in the choir loft, tittering -hysterically. Magnolia could hear them above -the Reverend Seldon’s intonings. In sickness and in -health—tee-hee-hee—for richer, for poorer—tee-hee-hee—for -better, for worse—tee-hee-hee.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They were kneeling. Ravenal was wearing his elegantly -sharp-pointed shoes. As he knelt his heels began -to describe an arc—small at first, then wider and wider -as he trembled more and more, until, at the end, they -were all but striking the floor from side to side. Outwardly -Magnolia was the bride of tradition, calm and -pale.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>. . . pronounce you man and wife.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ravenal had a ten-dollar bill—that last ten-dollar -bill—all neatly folded in his waistcoat pocket. This -he now transferred to the Reverend Seldon’s somewhat -surprised palm.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And,” the minister’s wife was saying, “while it -isn’t much—we’re church mice, you see—you’re welcome -to it, and we’d be happy to have you take your -wedding dinner with us. Veal loaf, I’m afraid, and -butter beets——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So Magnolia Ravenal was married in church, as -proper as could be. And had her wedding dinner with -the minister vis-à-vis. And when she came out of the -church, the two little giggling girls, rather bold and -rather frightened, but romantically stirred, pelted her -with flowers. Pelted may be rather an exaggeration, -because one threw a jonquil at her, and one a tulip, and -both missed her. But it helped, enormously. They -went to the minister’s house and ate veal loaf and buttered -beets and bread pudding, or ambrosia or whatever -it was. And so they lived h—— and so they lived -. . . ever after.</p> - -<div><h1>XI</h1></div> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='lead-in'><span class='dropcap'>E</span>ven</span> after she had seen the Atlantic in a January -hurricane, Kim Ravenal always insisted that the -one body of water capable of striking terror to -her was the Mississippi River. Surely she should have -known. She had literally been born on that turbid torrent. -All through her childhood her mother, Magnolia -Ravenal, had told her tales of its vagaries, its cruelties, -its moods; of the towns along its banks; of the people in -those towns; of the boats that moved upon it and the -fantastic figures that went up and down in those boats. -Her grandfather, Captain Andy Hawks, had lost his -life in the treacherous swift current of its channel; her -grandmother, Parthenia Ann Hawks was, at eighty, a -living legend of the Mississippi; the Flying Dutchman -of the rivers, except that the boat touched many ports. -One heard strange tales about Hawks’ widow. She had -gone on with the business after his tragic death. She -was the richest show-boat owner on the rivers. She -ran the boat like a female seminary. If an actor uttered -so much as a damn, he was instantly dismissed -from the troupe. Couples in the company had to show -a marriage certificate. Every bill—even such innocuous -old-timers as East Lynne and The Gambler’s -Daughter and Tempest and Sunshine—were subject to -a purifying process before the stern-visaged female -owner of the new <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> would sanction their -performance on her show boat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Kim herself remembered many things about the Mississippi, -though after her very early childhood she did -not see it for many years; and her mother rarely spoke of -it. She even shook her head when Kim would ask her -for the hundredth time to tell her the story of how she -escaped being named Mississippi.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Tell about the time the river got so high, and all -kinds of things floated on it—animals and furniture and -houses, even—and you were so scared, and I was born, -and you wanted to call me Mississippi, but you were too -sleepy or something to say it. And the place was near -Kentucky and Illinois and Missouri, all at once, so they -made up a name from the letters K and I and M, just -till you could think of a real name. And you never did. -And it stayed Kim. . . . People laugh when I -tell them my name’s Kim. Other girls are named Ellen -and Mary and Elizabeth. . . . Tell me about that -time on the Mississippi. And the Cotton Blossom -Floating Palace Theatre.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But you know all about it. You’ve just told me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I like to hear you tell it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Your father doesn’t like to have me talk so much -about the rivers and the show boat.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why not?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He wasn’t very happy on them. I wasn’t, either, -after Grandpa Hawks——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Kim knew that, too. She had heard her father say, -“God’s sake, Nola, don’t fill the kid’s head full of that -stuff about the rivers and the show boat. The way -you tell it, it sounds romantic and idle and picturesque.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, wasn’t——?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No. It was rotten and sordid and dull. Flies on -the food and filthy water to drink and yokels to play to. -And that old harridan——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Gay!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He would come over to her, kiss her tenderly, contritely. -“Sorry, darling.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Kim knew that her mother had a strange deep feeling -about the rivers. The ugly wide muddy ruthless rushing -rivers of the Middle West.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Kim Ravenal’s earliest river memories were bizarre -and startling flashes. One of these was of her mother -seated in a straight-backed chair on the upper deck of -the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span>, sewing spangles all over a high-busted -corset. It was a white webbed corset with a -pinched-in waist and high full bosom and flaring hips. -This humdrum garment Magnolia Ravenal was covering -with shining silver spangles, one overlapping the other -so that the whole made a glittering basque. She took -quick sure stitches that jerked the fantastic garment in -her lap, and when she did this the sun caught the brilliant -heap aslant and turned it into a blaze of gold and -orange and ice-blue and silver.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Kim was enchanted. Her mother was a fairy princess. -It was nothing to her that the spangle-covered -basque, modestly eked out with tulle and worn with -astonishingly long skirts for a bareback rider, was to serve -as Magnolia’s costume in The Circus Clown’s Daughter.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Kim’s grandmother had scolded a good deal about -that costume. But then, she had scolded a good deal -about everything. It was years before Kim realized -that all grandmothers were not like that. At three she -thought that scolding and grandmothers went together, -like sulphur and molasses. The same was true of fun -and grandfathers, only they went together like ice cream -and cake. You called your grandmother grandma. -You called your grandfather Andy, or, if you felt very -roguish, Cap’n. When you called him that, he cackled -and squealed, which was his way of laughing, and he -clawed his delightful whiskers this side and that. Kim -would laugh then, too, and look at him knowingly from -under her long lashes. She had large eyes, deep-set like -her mother’s and her mother’s wide mobile mouth. For -the rest, she was much like her father—a Ravenal, he -said. His fastidious ways (highfalutin, her grandmother -called them); his slim hands and feet; his somewhat -drawling speech, indirect though strangely melting -glance, calculatedly impulsive and winning manner.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Another childhood memory was that of a confused -and terrible morning. Asleep in her small bed in the -room with her father and mother, she had been wakened -by a bump, followed by a lurch, a scream, shouts, bells, -clamour. Wrapped in her comforter, hastily snatched -up from her bed by her mother, she was carried to the -deck in her mother’s arms. Gray dawn. A misty -morning with fog hanging an impenetrable curtain over -the river, the shore. The child was sleepy, bewildered. -It was all one to her—the confusion, the shouting, the -fog, the bells. Close in her mother’s arms, she did not -in the least understand what had happened when the -confusion became pandemonium; the shouts rose to -screams. Her grandfather’s high squeaky voice that -had been heard above the din—“La’berd lead there! -Sta’berd lead! Snatch her! <span class='it'>SNATCH HER!</span>” was -heard no more. Something more had happened. Someone -was in the water, hidden by the fog, whirled in the -swift treacherous current. Kim was thrown on her -bed like a bundle of rags, all rolled in her blanket. She -was left there, alone. She had cried a little, from fright -and bewilderment, but had soon fallen asleep again. -When she woke up her mother was bending over her, so -wild-eyed, so frightening with her black hair streaming -about her face and her face swollen and mottled with -weeping, that Kim began to cry again in sheer terror. -Her mother had snatched her to her. Curiously enough -the words Magnolia Ravenal now whispered in a ghastly -kind of agony were the very words she had whispered -after the agony of Kim’s birth—though the child could -not know that.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The river!” Magnolia said, over and over. Gaylord -Ravenal came to her, flung an arm about her shoulder, -but she shook him off wildly. “The river! The -river!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Kim never saw her grandfather again. Because of -the look it brought to her mother’s face, she soon -learned not to say, “Where’s Andy?” or—the roguish -question that had always made him appear, squealing -with delight: “Where’s Cap’n?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Baby though she was, the years—three or four—just -preceding her grandfather’s tragic death were indelibly -stamped on the infant’s mind. He had adored her; -made much of her. Andy, dead, was actually a more -vital figure than many another alive.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It had been a startling but nevertheless actual fact that -Parthenia Ann Hawks had not wanted her daughter -Magnolia to have a child. Parthy’s strange psychology -had entered into this, of course—a pathological twist. -Of this she was quite unaware.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How’re you going to play ingénue lead, I’d like to -know, if you—when you—while you——” She simply -could not utter the word “pregnant” or say, “while you -are carrying your child,” or even the simpering evasion -of her type and class—“in the family way.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia laughed a little at that. “I’ll play as long -as I can. Toward the end I’ll play ruffly parts. Then -some night, probably between the second and third -acts—though they may have to hold the curtain for -five minutes or so—I’ll excuse myself——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mrs. Hawks declared that she had never heard anything -so indelicate in her life. “Besides, a show boat’s -no place to bring up a child.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You brought me up on one.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes,” said Mrs. Hawks, grimly. Her tone added, -“And now look at you!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Even before Kim’s birth the antagonism between -Parthy and her son-in-law deepened to actual hatred. -She treated him like a criminal; regarded Magnolia’s -quite normal condition as a reproach to him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Look here, Magnolia, I can’t stand this, you know. -I’m so sick of this old mud-scow and everything that -goes with it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Gay! Everything!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You know what I mean. Let’s get out of it. I’m -no actor. I don’t belong here. If I hadn’t happened -to see you when you stepped out on deck that day at -New Orleans——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Are you sorry?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Darling! It’s the only luck I’ve ever had that -lasted.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She looked thoughtfully down at the clear colourful -brilliance of the diamond on her third finger. Always -too large for her, it now hung so loosely on her thin -hand that she had been obliged to wind it with a great -pad of thread to keep it from dropping off, though hers -were the large-knuckled fingers of the generous and resourceful -nature. It was to see much of life, that ring.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She longed to say to him, “Where do you belong, -Gay? Who are you? Don’t tell me you’re a Ravenal. -That isn’t a profession, is it? You can’t live on that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But she knew it was useless. There was a strange -deep streak of the secretive in him; baffling, mystifying. -Questioned, he would say nothing. It was not a moody -silence, or a resentful one. He simply would not speak. -She had learned not to ask.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We can’t go away now, Gay dear. I can’t go. You -don’t want to go without me, do you? You wouldn’t -leave me! Maybe next winter, after the boat’s put -up, we can go to St. Louis, or even New Orleans—that -would be nice, wouldn’t it? The winter in New -Orleans.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>One of his silences.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He never had any money—that is, he never had it for -long. It vanished. He would have one hundred dollars. -He would go ashore at some sizable town and -return with five hundred—a thousand. “Got into a -little game with some of the boys,” he would explain, -cheerfully. And give her three hundred of it, four hundred, -five. “Buy yourself a dress, Nola. Something -rich, with a hat to match. You’re too pretty to wear -those homemade things you’re always messing with.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Some woman wisdom in her told her to put by a portion -of these sums. She got into the habit of tucking -away ten dollars, twenty, fifty. At times she reproached -herself for this; called it disloyal, sneaking, -underhand. When she heard him say, as he frequently -did, “I’m strapped. If I had fifty dollars I could turn -a trick that would make five hundred out of it. You -haven’t got fifty, have you, Nola? No, of course not.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She wanted then to give him every cent of her tiny -hoard. It was the tenuous strain of her mother in her, -doubtless—the pale thread of the Parthy in her make-up—that -caused her to listen to an inner voice. “Don’t -do it,” whispered the voice, nudging her, “keep it. -You’ll need it badly by and by.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It did not take many months for her to discover that -her husband was a gambler by profession—one of those -smooth and plausible gentry with whom years of river -life had made her familiar. It was, after all, not so -much a discovery as a forced admission. She knew, -but refused to admit that she knew. Certainly no one -could have been long in ignorance with Mrs. Hawks in -possession of the facts.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ten days after Magnolia’s marriage to Ravenal (and -what a ten days those had been! Parthy alone crowded -into them a lifetime of reproach), Mrs. Hawks came to -her husband, triumph in her mien, portent in her voice:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, Hawks, I hope you’re satisfied now.” This -was another of Parthy’s favourite locutions. The implication -was that the unfortunate whom she addressed -had howled heaven-high his demands for hideous misfortune -and would not be content until horror had piled -upon horror. “I hope you’re satisfied now, Hawks. -Your son-in-law is a gambler, and no more. A common -barroom gambler, without a cent to his trousers longer’n -it takes to transfer his money from his pocket to the -table. That’s what your only daughter has married. -Understand, I’m not saying he gambles, and that’s all. -I say he’s a gambler by calling. That’s the way he -made his living before he came aboard this boat. I -wish he had died before he ever set foot on the <span class='it'>Cotton -Blossom</span> gangplank, and so I tell you, Hawks. A -smooth-tongued, oily, good-for-nothing; no better than -the scum Elly ran off with.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now, Parthy, what’s done’s done. Why’n’t you -try to make the best of things once in a while, instead of -the worst? Magnolia’s happy with him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She ain’t lived her life out with him yet. Mark my -words. He’s got a roving eye for a petticoat.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Funny thing, Parthy. Your father was a man, and -so’s your husband, and your son-in-law’s another. -Yet seems you never did get the hang of a man’s ways.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Andy liked Ravenal. There was about the fellow a -grace, an ease, a certain elegance that appealed to the -æsthetic in the little Gallic captain. When the two men -talked together sometimes, after dinner, it was amiably, -in low tones, with an air of leisure and relaxation. Two -gentlemen enjoying each other’s company. There -existed between the two a sound respect and liking.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Certainly Ravenal’s vogue on the rivers was tremendous. -Andy paid him as juvenile lead a salary that was -unheard of in show-boat records. But he accounted -him worth it. Shortly after Kim’s birth, Andy spoke -of giving Ravenal a share in the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span>. But -this Mrs. Hawks fought with such actual ferocity that -Andy temporarily at least relinquished the idea.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia had learned to dread the idle winter -months. During this annual period of the <span class='it'>Cotton -Blossom’s</span> hibernation the Hawks family had, before -Magnolia’s marriage, gone back to the house near -the river at Thebes. Sometimes Andy had urged -Parthy to spend these winter months in the South, -evading the harsh Illinois climate for a part of the -time at least in New Orleans, or one of the towns of -southern Mississippi where one might have roses instead -of holly for Christmas. He sometimes envied -black Jo and Queenie their period of absence from the -boat. In spite of the disreputable state in which they -annually returned to the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> in the early -spring, they always looked as if they had spent -the intervening months seated in the dappled shade, -under a vine, with the drone of insects in the air, and -the heavy scent of white-petalled blossoms; eating fruit -that dripped juice between their fingers; sleeping, -slack-jawed and heavily content, through the heat of the -Southern mid-afternoon; supping greasily and plentifully -on fried catfish and corn bread; watching the moon -come up to the accompaniment of Jo’s coaxing banjo.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We ought to lazy around more, winters,” Andy said -to his energetic wife. She was, perhaps, setting the -Thebes house to rights after their long absence; thwacking -pillows, pounding carpets, sloshing pails, scouring -tables, hanging fresh curtains, flapping drapes, banging -bureau drawers. A towel wrapped about her head, -turban-wise, her skirts well pinned up, she would throw -a frenzy of energy into her already exaggerated housewifeliness -until Andy, stepping fearfully out of the way -of mop and broom and pail, would seek waterfront -cronies for solace.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Lazy! I’ve enough of lazying on that boat of yours -month in month out all summer long. No South for -me, thank you. Eight months of flies and niggers and -dirty mud-tracking loafers is enough for me, Captain -Hawks. I’m thankful to get back for a few weeks where -I can live like a decent white woman.” Thwack! -Thump! Bang!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>After one trial lasting but a few days, the Thebes -house was found by Magnolia to be impossible for Gaylord -Ravenal. That first winter after their marriage -they spent in various towns and cities. Memphis for -a short time; a rather hurried departure; St. Louis; -Chicago. That brief glimpse of Chicago terrified her, -but she would not admit it. After all, she told herself, -as the astounding roar and din and jangle and clatter -of State Street and Wabash Avenue beat at her ears, -this city was only an urban Mississippi. The cobblestones -were the river bed. The high grim buildings -the river banks. The men, women, horses, trucks, -drays, carriages, street cars that surged through those -streets; creating new channels where some obstacle -blocked their progress; felling whole sections of stone -and brick and wood and sweeping over that section, -obliterating all trace of its former existence; lifting other -huge blocks and sweeping them bodily downstream to -deposit them in a new spot; making a boulevard out -of what had been a mud swamp—all this, Magnolia -thought, was only the Mississippi in another form and -environment; ruthless, relentless, Gargantuan, terrible. -One might think to know its currents and channels ever -so well, but once caught unprepared in the maelstrom, -one would be sucked down and devoured as Captain -Andy Hawks had been in that other turbid hungry flood.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’ll get used to it,” Ravenal told his bride, a trifle -patronizingly, as one who had this monster tamed and -fawning. “Don’t be frightened. It’s mostly noise.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m not frightened, really. It’s just the kind of -noise that I’m not used to. The rivers, you know, all -these years—so quiet. At night and in the morning.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>That winter she lived the life of a gambler’s wife. -Streak o’ lean, streak o’ fat. Turtle soup and terrapin -at the Palmer House to-day. Ham and eggs in some -obscure eating house to-morrow. They rose at noon. -They never retired until the morning hours. Gay -seemed to know a great many people, but to his wife he -presented few of these.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Business acquaintance,” he would say. “You -wouldn’t care for him.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hers had been a fantastic enough life on the show -boat. But always there had been about it an orderliness, -a routine, due, perhaps, to the presence of the -martinet, Parthenia Ann Hawks. Indolent as the days -appeared on the rivers, they still bore a methodical -aspect. Breakfast at nine. Rehearsal. Parade. Dinner -at four. Make-up. Curtain. Wardrobe to mend -or refurbish; parts to study; new songs to learn for the -concert. But this new existence seemed to have no -plot or plan. Ravenal was a being for the most part -unlike the lover and husband of <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> days. -Expansive and secretive by turn; now high-spirited, now -depressed; frequently absent-minded. His manner toward -her was always tender, courteous, thoughtful. -He loved her as deeply as he was capable of loving. -She knew that. She had to tell herself all this one -evening when she sat in their hotel room, dressed and -waiting for him to take her to dinner and to the theatre. -They were going to McVicker’s Theatre, the handsome -new auditorium that had risen out of the ashes of the -old (to quote the owner’s florid announcement). -Ravenal was startled to learn how little Magnolia knew -of the great names of the stage. He had told her something -of the history of McVicker’s, in an expansive burst -of pride in Chicago. He seemed to have a definite feeling -about this great uncouth giant of a city.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“When you go to McVicker’s,” Ravenal said, “you -are in the theatre where Booth has played, and Sothern, -and Lotta, and Kean, and Mrs. Siddons.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Who,” asked Magnolia, “are they?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He was so much in love that he found this ignorance -of her own calling actually delightful. He laughed, of -course, but kissed her when she pouted a little, and explained -to her what these names meant, investing them -with all the glamour and romance that the theatre—the -theatre of sophistication, that is—had for him; for -he had the gambler’s love of the play. It must have -been something of that which had held him so long to -the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span>. Perhaps, after all, his infatuation -for Magnolia alone could not have done it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And now she was going to McVicker’s. And she had -on her dress with the open-throated basque, which she -considered rather daring, though now that she was a -married woman it was all right. She was dressed long -before the time when she might expect him back. She -had put out fresh linen for him. He was most fastidious -about his dress. Accustomed to the sloppy deshabille -of the show boat’s male troupers, this sartorial -niceness in Ravenal had impressed her from the first.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She regarded herself in the mirror now. She knew -she was not beautiful. She affected, in fact, to despise -her looks; bemoaned her high forehead and prominent -cheek-bones, her large-knuckled fingers, her slenderness, -her wide mouth. Yet she did not quite believe these -things she said about herself; loved to hear Ravenal say -she was beautiful. As she looked at her reflection now -in the long gilt-framed mirror of the heavy sombre -walnut bedroom, she found herself secretly agreeing with -him. This was the first year of her marriage. She was -pregnant. It was December. The child was expected -in April. There was nothing distorted about her figure -or her face. As is infrequently the case, her condition -had given her an almost uncanny radiance of aspect. -Her usually pallid skin showed a delicious glow of rosy -colouring; her eyes were enormous and strangely -luminous; tiny blue veins were faintly, exquisitely -etched against the cream tint of her temples; her rather -angular slimness was replaced by a delicate roundness; -she bore herself well, her shoulders back, her head high. -A happy woman, beloved, and in love.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Six o’clock. A little late, but he would be here at -any moment now. Half-past six. She was opening the -door every five minutes to peer up the red-carpeted -corridor. Seven. Impatience had given way to fear, -fear to terror, terror to certain agony. He was dead. -He had been killed. She knew by now that he frequented -the well-known resorts of the city, that he -played cards in them. “Just for pastime,” he told her. -“Game of cards to while away the afternoon. What’s -the harm in that? Now, Nola! Don’t look like your -mother. Please!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She knew about them. Red plush and gilt, mahogany -and mirrors. Food and drink. River-front saloons and -river-front life had long ago taught her not to be squeamish. -She was not a foolish woman, nor an intolerant. -She was, in fact, in many ways wise beyond her years. -But this was 1888. The papers had been full of the -shooting of Simeon Peake, the gambler, in Jeff Hankins’ -place over on Clark Street. The bullet had been meant -for someone else—a well-known newspaper publisher, in -fact. But a woman, hysterical, crazed, revengeful, had -fired it. It had gone astray. Ravenal had known -Simeon Peake. The shooting had been a shock to him. -It had, indeed, thrown him so much off his guard that -he had talked to Magnolia about it for relief. Peake -had had a young daughter Selina. She was left practically -penniless.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Now the memory of this affair came rushing back to -her. She was frantic. Half-past seven. It was too -late, now, for the dinner they had planned for the gala -evening—dinner at the Wellington Hotel, down in the -white marble café. The Wellington was just across the -street from McVicker’s. It would make everything -simple and easy; no rush, no hurrying over that last -delightful sweet sip of coffee.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Eight o’clock. He had been killed. She no longer -merely opened the door to peer into the corridor. She -left the room door open and paced from room to hall, -from hall to room, wildly; down the corridor. Finally, -in desperation, down to the hotel lobby into which she -had never stepped in the evening without her husband. -There were two clerks at the office desk. One was an -ancient man, flabby and wattled, as much a part of the -hotel as the stones that paved the lobby. He had soft -wisps of sparse white hair that seemed to float just above -his head instead of being attached to it; and little tufts -of beard, like bits of cotton stuck on his cheeks. He -looked like an old baby. The other was a glittering -young man; his hair glittered, his eyes, his teeth, his -nails, his shirt-front, his cuffs. Both these men knew -Ravenal; had greeted him on their arrival; had bowed -impressively to her. The young man had looked flattering -things; the old man had pursed his soft withered -lips.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia glanced from one to the other. There were -people at the clerks’ desk, leaning against the marble -slab. She waited, nervous, uncertain. She would -speak to the old man. She did not want, somehow, to -appeal to the glittering one. But he saw her, smiled, -left the man to whom he was talking, came toward her. -Quickly she touched the sleeve of the old man—leaned -forward over the marble to do it—jerked his sleeve, -really, so that he glanced up at her testily.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I—I want—may I speak to you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A moment, madam. I shall be free in a moment.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The sparkler leaned toward her. “What can I do -for you, Mrs. Ravenal?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I just wanted to speak to this gentleman——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I can assist you, I’m sure, as well as——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She glanced at him and he was a row of teeth, all -white and even, ready to bite. She shook her head -miserably; glanced appealingly at the old man. The -sparkler’s eyebrows came up. He gave the effect of -stepping back, courteously, without actually doing so. -Now that the old clerk faced her, questioningly, she -almost regretted her choice.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She blushed, stammered; her voice was little more -than a whisper. “I . . . my husband . . . -have been . . . he hasn’t returned . . . worried -. . . killed or . . . theatre . . .”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The old baby cupped one hand behind his ear. -“What say?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her beautiful eyes, in their agony, begged the sparkler -now to forgive her for having been rude. She -needed him. She could not shout this. He stepped -forward, but the teeth were hidden. After all, a chief -clerk is a chief clerk. Miraculously, he had heard the -whisper.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You say your husband——?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She nodded. She was terribly afraid that she was -going to cry. She opened her eyes very wide and tried -not to blink. If she so much as moved her lids she -knew the mist that was making everything swim in a -rainbow haze would crystallize into tears.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He is terribly late. I—I’ve been so worried. We -were going to the—to McVicker’s—and dinner—and -now it’s after seven——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“After eight,” wheezed cotton whiskers, peering at -the clock on the wall.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“—after eight,” she echoed, wretchedly. There! -She had winked. Two great drops plumped themselves -down on the silk bosom of her bodice with the open-throated -neck line. It seemed to her that she heard them -splash.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“H’m!” cackled the old man.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The glittering one leaned toward her. She was enveloped -in a waft of perfume. “Now, now, Mrs. -Ravenal! There’s absolutely nothing to worry about. -Your husband has been delayed. That’s all. Unavoidably -delayed.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She snatched at this. “Do you think—? Are you -sure? But he always is back by six, at the latest. Always. -And we were going to dinner—and Mc——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You brides!” smiled the young man. He actually -patted her hand, then. Just a touch. “Now you just -have a bite of dinner, like a sensible little woman.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, I couldn’t eat a bite! I couldn’t!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A cup of tea. Let me send up a cup of tea.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The old one made a sucking sound with tongue and -teeth, rubbed his chin, and proffered his suggestion in -a voice that seemed to Magnolia to echo and reëcho -through the hotel lobby. “Why’n’t you send a messenger -around for him, madam?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Messenger? Around? Where?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Sparkler made a little gesture—a tactful gesture. -“Perhaps he’s having a little game of—uh—cards; and -you know how time flies. I’ve done the same thing -myself. Look up at the clock and first thing you know -it’s eight. Now if I were you, Mrs. Ravenal——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She knew, then. There was something so sure about -this young man; and so pitying. And suddenly she, too, -was sure. She recalled in a flash that time when they -were playing Paducah, and he had not come. They -had held the curtain until after eight. Ralph had -searched for him. He had been playing poker in a -waterfront saloon. Send around for him! Not she. -The words of a popular sentimental song of the day -went through her mind, absurdly.</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>Father, dear father, come home with me now.</p> -<p class='line0'>The clock in the steeple strikes one.</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>She drew herself up, now. The actress. She even -managed a smile, as even and sparkling and toothy as -the sparkler’s own. “Of course. I’m very silly. -Thank you so . . . I’ll just have a bit of supper in -my room. . . .” She turned away with a little -gracious bow. The eyes very wide again.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“H’m!” The old man. Translated it meant, -“Little idiot!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She took off the dress with the two dark spots on the -silk of the basque. She put away his linen and his -shiny shoes. She took up some sewing. But the mist -interfered with that. She threw herself on the bed. -An agony of tears. That was better. Ten o’clock. -She fell asleep, the gas lights burning. At a little before -midnight he came in. She awoke with a little cry. -Queerly enough, the first thing she noticed was that he -had not his cane—the richly mottled malacca stick -that he always carried. She heard herself saying, -ridiculously, half awake, half asleep, “Where’s your -cane?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His surprise at this matter-of-fact reception made his -expression almost ludicrous. “Cane! Oh, that’s so. -Why I left it. Must have left it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In the years that followed she learned what the absence -of the malacca stick meant. It had come to be a symbol -in every pawnshop on Clark Street. Its appearance -was bond for a sum a hundred times its actual value. -Gaylord Ravenal always paid his debts.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She finished undressing, in silence. Her face was red -and swollen. She looked young and helpless and almost -ugly. He was uncomfortable and self-reproachful. -“I’m sorry, Nola. I was detained. We’ll go to the -theatre to-morrow night.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She almost hated him then. Being, after all, a normal -woman, there followed a normal scene—tears, reproaches, -accusations, threats, pleadings, forgiveness. -Then:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Uh—Nola, will you let me take your ring—just for a -day or two?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ring?” But she knew.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’ll have it back. This is Wednesday. You’ll -have it by Saturday. I swear it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The clear white diamond had begun its travels with -the malacca stick.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He had spoken the truth when he said that he had -been unavoidably detained.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She had meant not to sleep. She had felt sure that -she would not sleep. But she was young and healthy -and exhausted from emotion. She slept. As she lay -there by his side she thought, before she slept, that life -was very terrible—but fascinating. Even got from this -a glow of discovery. She felt old and experienced and -married and tragic. She thought of her mother. She -was much, much older and more married, she decided, -than her mother ever had been.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They returned to Thebes in February. Magnolia -longed to be near her father. She even felt a pang of -loneliness for her mother. The little white cottage near -the river, at Thebes, looked like a toy house. Her bedroom -was doll-size. The town was a miniature village, -like a child’s Christmas set. Her mother’s bonnet was a -bit of grotesquerie. Her father’s face was etched with -lines that she did not remember having seen there when -she left. The home-cooked food, prepared by Parthy’s -expert hands, was delicious beyond belief. She was a -traveller returned from a far place.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Captain Andy had ordered a new boat. He talked -of nothing else. The old <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span>, bought from -Pegram years before, was to be discarded. The new -boat was to be lighted by some newfangled gas arrangement -instead of the old kerosene lamps. Carbide or -some such thing Andy said it was. There were to be -special footlights, new scenery, improved dressing and -sleeping rooms. She was being built at the St. Louis -shipyards.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She’s a daisy!” squeaked Andy, capering. He had -just returned from a trip to the place of the <span class='it'>Cotton -Blossom’s</span> imminent birth. Of the two impending accouchements—that -which was to bring forth a grandchild -and that which was to produce a new show boat—it -was difficult to say which caused him keenest anticipation. -Perhaps, secretly, it was the boat, much as he -loved Magnolia. He was, first, the river man; second, -the showman; third, the father.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Like to know what you want a new boat for!” -Parthy scolded. “Take all the money you’ve earned -these years past with the old tub and throw it away on -a new one.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Old one ain’t good enough.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good enough for the riff-raff we get on it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now, Parthy, you know’s well’s I do you couldn’t be -shooed off the rivers now you’ve got used to ’em. Any -other way of living’d seem stale to you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m a woman loves her home and asks for nothing -better.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Bet you wouldn’t stay ashore, permanent, if you -had the chance.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He won the wager, though he had to die to do it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The new <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> and the new grandchild had -a trial by flood on their entrance into life. The Mississippi, -savage mother that she was, gave them both a -baptism that threatened for a time to make their entrance -into and their exit from the world a simultaneous -act. But both, after some perilous hours, were piloted -to safety; the one by old Windy, who swore that this -was his last year on the rivers; the other by a fat midwife -and a frightened young doctor. Through storm -and flood was heard the voice of Parthenia Ann Hawks, -the scold, berating Captain Hawks her husband, and -Magnolia Ravenal her daughter, as though they, and -not the elements, were responsible for the predicament -in which they now found themselves.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There followed four years of war and peace. The -strife was internal. It raged between Parthy and her -son-in-law. The conflict of the two was a chemical -thing. Combustion followed inevitably upon their -meeting. The biting acid of Mrs. Hawks’ discernment -cut relentlessly through the outer layers of the young -man’s charm and grace and melting manner and revealed -the alloy. Ravenal’s nature recoiled at sight of a -woman who employed none of the arts of her sex and despised -and penetrated those of the opposite sex. She -had no vanity, no coquetry, no reticences, no respect -for the reticence of others; treated compliment as insult, -met flattery with contempt.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A hundred times during those four years he threatened -to leave the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span>, yet he was held to his wife -Magnolia and to the child Kim by too many tender ties. -His revolt usually took the form of a gambling spree -ashore during which he often lost every dollar he had -saved throughout weeks of enforced economy. There -was no opportunity to spend money legitimately in the -straggling hamlets to whose landings the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> -was so often fastened. Then, too, the easy indolence of -the life was beginning to claim him—its effortlessness, -its freedom from responsibility. Perhaps a new part to -learn at the beginning of the season—that was all. -River audiences liked the old plays. Came to see them -again and again. It was Ravenal who always made the -little speech in front of the curtain. Wish to thank you -one and all . . . always glad to come back to the -old . . . to-morrow night that thrilling comedy-drama -entitled . . . each and every one . . . -concert after the show . . .</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Never had the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> troupe so revelled in -home-baked cakes, pies, cookies; home-brewed wine; -fruits of tree and vine. The female population of the -river towns from the Great Lakes to the Gulf beheld in -him the lover of their secret dreams and laid at his feet -burnt offerings and shewbread. Ravenal, it was said -by the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> troupe, could charm the gold out -of their teeth.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Perhaps, with the passing of the years, he might have -grown quite content with this life. Sometimes the little -captain, when the two men were conversing quietly -apart, dropped a word about the future.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“When I’m gone—you and Magnolia—the boat’ll be -yours, of course.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ravenal would laugh. Little Captain Andy looked -so very much alive, his bright brown eyes glancing here -and there, missing nothing on land or shore, his brown -paw scratching the whiskers that showed so little of gray, -his nimble legs scampering from texas to gangplank, -never still for more than a minute.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No need to worry about that for another fifty years,” -Ravenal assured him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The end had in it, perhaps, a touch of the ludicrous, -as had almost everything the little capering captain did. -The <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span>, headed upstream on the Mississippi, -bound for St. Louis, had struck a snag in Cahokia Bend, -three miles from the city. It was barely dawn, and a -dense fog swathed the river. The old <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> -probably would have sunk midstream. The new boat -stood the shock bravely. In the midst of the pandemonium -that followed the high shrill falsetto of the -little captain’s voice could be heard giving commands -which he, most of all, knew he had no right to give. -The pilot only was to be obeyed under such conditions. -The crew understood this, as did the pilot. It was, in -fact, a legend that more than once in a crisis Captain -Andy on the upper deck had screamed his orders in a -kind of dramatic frenzy of satisfaction, interspersing -these with picturesque and vivid oaths during which he -had capered and bounced his way right off the deck and -into the river, from which damp station he had continued -to screech his orders and profanities in cheerful -unconcern until fished aboard again. Exactly this happened. -High above the clamour rose the voice of Andy. -His little figure whirled like that of a dervish. Up, -down, fore, aft—suddenly he was overboard unseen in -the dimness, in the fog, in the savage swift current of the -Mississippi, wrapped in the coils of the old yellow serpent, -tighter, tighter, deeper, deeper, until his struggles -ceased. She had him at last.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The river,” Magnolia had said, over and over, -“The river. The river.”</p> - -<div><h1>XII</h1></div> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='lead-in'><span class='dropcap'>“T</span>hebes?”</span> echoed Parthenia Ann Hawks, widow. -The stiff crêpe of her weeds seemed to bristle. -“I’ll do nothing of the kind, miss! If you and -that fine husband of yours think to rid yourself of me -<span class='it'>that</span> way——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But, Mama, we’re not trying to rid ourselves of you. -How can you think of such things! You’ve always said -you hated the boat. Always. And now that Papa—now -that you needn’t stay with the show any longer, I -thought you’d want to go back to Thebes to live.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Indeed! And what’s to become of the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span>, -tell me that, Maggie Hawks!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t know,” confessed Magnolia, miserably. -“I don’t—know. That’s what I think we ought to talk -about.” The <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span>, after her tragic encounter -with the hidden snag in the Mississippi, was in for repairs. -The damage to the show boat had been greater -than they had thought. The snag had, after all, inflicted -a jagged wound. So, too, had it torn and -wounded something deep and hidden in Magnolia’s soul. -Suddenly she had a horror of the great river whose -treacherous secret fangs had struck so poisonously. -The sight of the yellow turbid flood sickened her; yet -held her hypnotized. Now she thought that she must -run from it, with her husband and her child, to safety. -Now she knew that she never could be content away -from it. She wanted to flee. She longed to stay. -This, if ever, was her chance. But the river had -Captain Andy. Somewhere in its secret coils he lay. -She could not leave him. On the rivers the three great -mysteries—Love and Birth and Death—had been revealed -to her. All that she had known of happiness -and tragedy and tranquillity and adventure and romance -and fulfilment was bound up in the rivers. Their -willow-fringed banks framed her world. The motley -figures that went up and down upon them or that dwelt -on their shores were her people. She knew them; was -of them. The Mississippi had her as surely as it had -little Andy Hawks.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, we’re talking about it, ain’t we?” Mrs. -Hawks now demanded.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I mean—the repairs are going to be quite expensive. -She’ll be laid up for a month or more, right in the season. -Now’s the time to decide whether we’re going to try to -run her ourselves just as if Papa were still——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I can see you’ve been talking things over pretty -hard and fast with Ravenal. Well, I’ll tell you what -we’re going to do, miss. We’re going to run her ourselves—leastways, -I am.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But, Mama!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Your pa left no will. Hawks all over. I’ve as -much say-so as you have. More. I’m his widow. -You won’t see me willing to throw away the good-will of -a business that it’s taken years to build up. The boat’s -insurance’ll take care of the repairs. Your pa’s life -insurance is paid up, and quite a decent sum—for him. -I saw to that. You’ll get your share, I’ll get mine. -The boat goes on like it always has. No Thebes for me. -You’ll go on playing ingénue leads; Ravenal juvenile. -Kim——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No!” cried Magnolia much as Parthy had, years before. -“Not Kim.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why not?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There was about the Widow Hawks a terrifying and -invincible energy. Her black habiliments of woe billowed -about her like the sable wings of a destroying -angel. With Captain Andy gone, she would appoint -herself commander of the Cotton Blossom Floating -Palace Theatre. Magnolia knew that. Who, knowing -Parthy, could imagine it otherwise? She would -appoint herself commander of their lives. Magnolia -was no weakling. She was a woman of mettle. But -no mettle could withstand the sledge-hammer blows of -Parthy Ann Hawks’ iron.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was impossible that such an arrangement could -hold. From the first Ravenal rejected it. But Magnolia’s -pleadings for at least a trial won him over, but -grudgingly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It won’t work, Nola, I tell you. We’ll be at each -other’s throats. She’s got all kinds of plans. I can -see them whirling around in her eye.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But you will try to be patient, won’t you, Gay? -For my sake and Kim’s?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But they had not been out a week before mutiny -struck the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span>. The first to go was Windy. -Once his great feet were set toward the gangplank there -was no stopping him. He was over seventy now, but he -looked not an hour older than when he had come aboard -the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> almost fifteen years before. To the -irate widow he spoke briefly but with finality.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’re Hawks’ widow. That’s why I said I’d take -her same’s if Andy was alive. I thought Nollie’s -husband would boss this boat, but seems you’re running -it. Well, ma’am, I ain’t no petticoat-pilot. I’m off -the end of this trip down. Young Tanner’ll come -aboard there and pilot you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Tanner! Who’s he? How d’you know I want him? -I’m running this boat.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You better take him, Mrs. Hawks, ma’am. He’s -young, and not set in his ways, and likely won’t mind -your nagging. I’m too old. Lost my taste for the -rivers, anyway, since Cap went. Lost my nerve, too, -seems like. . . . Well, ma’am, I’m going.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And he went.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Changes came then, tripping on each other’s heels. -Mis’ Means stayed, and little weak-chested Mr. Means. -Frank had gone after Magnolia’s marriage. Ralph left.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Parthy met these difficulties and defeats with magnificent -generalship. She seemed actually to thrive -on them. Do this. Do that. Ravenal’s right eyebrow -was cocked in a perpetual circumflex of disdain. -One could feel the impact of opposition whenever the -two came together. Every fibre of Ravenal’s silent -secretive nature was taut in rejection of this managerial -mother-in-law. Every nerve and muscle of that energetic -female’s frame tingled with enmity toward this -suave soft-spoken contemptuous husband of her -daughter.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Finally, “Choose,” said Gaylord Ravenal, “between -your mother and me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia chose. Her decision met with such terrific -opposition from Parthy as would have shaken any -woman less determined and less in love.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Where you going with that fine husband of yours? -Tell me that!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t know.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll warrant you don’t. No more does he. Why’re -you going? You’ve got a good home on the boat.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Kim . . . school . . .”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Fiddlesticks!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia took the plunge. “We’re not—I’m not—Gay’s -not happy any more on the rivers.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’ll be a sight unhappier on land before you’re -through, make no mistake about that, young lady. -Where’ll you go? Chicago, h’m? What’ll you do there? -Starve, and worse. I know. Many’s the time you’ll -wish yourself back here.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia, nervous, apprehensive, torn, now burst -into sudden rebellion against the iron hand that had -gripped her all these years.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How do you know? How can you be so sure? And -even if you are right, what of it? You’re always trying -to keep people from doing the things they want to do. -You’re always wanting people to live cautiously. You -fought to keep Papa from buying the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> in -the first place, and made his life a hell. And now you -won’t leave it. You didn’t want me to act. You didn’t -want me to marry Gay. You didn’t want me to have -Kim. Maybe you were right. Maybe I shouldn’t -have done any of those things. But how do you know? -You can’t twist people’s lives around like that, even -if you twist them right. Because how do you know that -even when you’re right you mayn’t be wrong? If Papa -had listened to you, we’d be living in Thebes. He’d -be alive, probably. I’d be married to the butcher, -maybe. You can’t do it. Even God lets people have -their own way, though they have to fall down and break -their necks to find out they were wrong. . . . You -can’t do it . . . and you’re glad when it turns out -badly . . .”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was growing incoherent.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Back of Parthy’s opposition to their going was a -deep relief of which even she was unaware, and whose -existence she would have denied had she been informed -of it. Her business talent, so long dormant, was leaping -into life. Her energy was cataclysmic. One would -almost have said she was happy. She discharged actors, -crew; engaged actors, crew. Ordered supplies. Spoke -of shifting to an entirely new territory the following -year—perhaps to the rivers of North Carolina and -Maryland. She actually did this, though not until -much later. Magnolia, years afterward reading her -mother’s terse and maddening letters, would be seized -with a nostalgia not for the writer but for the lovely-sounding -places of which she wrote—though they -probably were as barren and unpicturesque as the river -towns of the Mississippi and Ohio and Big Sandy and -Kanawha. “We’re playing the town of Bath, on the -Pamlico River,” Parthy’s letter would say. Or, “We -had a good week at Queenstown, on the Sassafras.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia, looking out into the gray Chicago streets, -slippery with black ice, thick with the Lake Michigan -fog, would repeat the names over to herself. Bath on -the Pamlico. Queenstown on the Sassafras.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mrs. Hawks, at parting, was all for Magnolia’s retaining -her financial share in the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span>, the -money accruing therefrom to be paid at regular intervals. -In this she was right. She knew Ravenal. In -her hard and managing way she loved her daughter; -wished to insure her best interests. But Magnolia and -Ravenal preferred to sell their share outright if she -would buy. Ravenal would probably invest it in some -business, Magnolia said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes—monkey business,” retorted Mrs. Hawks. -Then added, earnestly, “Now mind, don’t you come -snivelling to me when it’s gone and you and your child -haven’t a penny to bless yourselves with. For that’s -what it’ll come to in the end. Mark my words. I -don’t say I wouldn’t be happy to see you and Kim back. -But not him. When he’s run through every penny of -your money, he needn’t look to me for more. You can -come back to the boat; you and Kim. I’ll look for you. -But him! Never!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The two women faced each other, and they were no -longer mother and daughter but two forces opposing -each other with all the strength that lay in the deep and -powerful nature of both.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia made one of those fine speeches. “I -wouldn’t come to you for help—not if I were starving to -death, and Kim too.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, there’s worse things than starving to death.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I wouldn’t come to you no matter what.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You will, just the same. I’d take my oath on that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I never will.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Secretly she was filled with terror at leaving the rivers; -for the rivers, and the little inaccessible river towns, -and the indolent and naïve people of those towns whose -very presence in them confessed them failures, had with -the years taken on in Magnolia’s eyes the friendly aspect -of the accustomed. Here was comfort assured; here -were friends; here the ease that goes with familiarity. -Even her mother’s bristling generalship had in it a -protective quality. The very show boat was a second -mother, shielding her from the problems and cares that -beset the land-dweller. The <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> had been -a little world in itself on which life was a thing detached, -dream-like, narcotic.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As Magnolia Ravenal, with her husband and her -child, turned from this existence of ease to the outside -world of which she already had had one bitter taste, she -was beset by hordes of fears and doubts. Yet opposing -these, and all but vanquishing them, was the strong love -of adventure—the eager curiosity about the unknown—which -had always characterized her and her dead father, -the little captain, and caused them both to triumph, -thus far, over the clutching cautious admonitions of -Parthenia Ann Hawks.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Fright and anticipation; nostalgia and curiosity; -a soaring sense of freedom at leaving her mother’s too-protective -wing; a pang of compunction that she should -feel this unfilial surge of relief.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They were going. You saw the three of them scrambling -up the steep river bank to the levee (perhaps for -the last time, Magnolia thought with a great pang. -And within herself a voice cried no! no!) Ravenal -slim, cool, contained; Magnolia whiter than usual, and -frankly tearful; the child Kim waving an insouciant -farewell with both small fists. They carried no bundles, -no parcels, no valises. Ravenal disdained to carry -parcels; he did not permit those of his party to carry -them. Two Negroes in tattered and faded blue overalls -made much of the luggage, stowing it inefficiently under -the seats and over the floor of the livery rig which had -been hired to take the three to the nearest railway -station, a good twelve miles distant.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> troupe was grouped on the forward -deck to see them off. The <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> lay, -smug, safe, plump, at the water’s edge. A passing -side-wheeler, flopping ponderously downstream, sent -little flirty waves across the calm waters to her, and -set her to palpitating coyly. Good-bye! Good-bye! -Write, now. Mis’ Means’ face distorted in a ridiculous -pucker of woe. Ravenal in the front seat with the -driver. Magnolia and Kim in the back seat with the -luggage protruding at uncomfortable angles all about -them. Parthenia Ann Hawks, the better to see them, -had stationed herself on the little protruding upper -deck, forward—the deck that resembled a balcony much -like that on the old <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span>. The livery nags -started with a lurch up the dusty village street. They -clattered across the bridge toward the upper road. -Magnolia turned for a last glimpse through her tears. -There stood Parthenia Ann Hawks, silhouetted against -sky and water, a massive and almost menacing figure -in her robes of black—tall, erect, indomitable. Her -face was set. The keen eyes gazed, unblinking, across -the sunlit waters. One arm was raised in a gesture -of farewell. Ruthless, unconquerable, headstrong, untamed, -terrible.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She’s like the River,” Magnolia thought, through -her grief, in a sudden flash of vision. “She’s the one, -after all, who’s like the Mississippi.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A bend in the upper road. A clump of sycamores. -The river, the show boat, the silent black-robed figure -were lost to view.</p> - -<div><h1>XIII</h1></div> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='lead-in'><span class='dropcap'>T</span>he</span> most casual onlooker could gauge the -fluctuations of the Ravenal fortunes by any one -of three signs. There was Magnolia Ravenal’s -sealskin sacque; there was Magnolia Ravenal’s diamond -ring; there was Gaylord Ravenal’s malacca cane. Any -or all of these had a way of vanishing and reappearing in -a manner that would have been baffling to one not an -habitué of South Clark Street, Chicago. Of the three, -the malacca stick, though of almost no tangible value, -disappeared first and oftenest, for it came to be recognized -as an I O U by every reputable Clark Street pawnbroker. -Deep in a losing game of faro at Jeff Hankins’ -or Mike McDonald’s, Ravenal would summon a Negro -boy to him. He would hand him the little ivory-topped -cane. “Here—take this down to Abe Lipman’s, corner -Clark and Monroe. Tell him I want two hundred -dollars. Hurry.” Or: “Run over to Goldsmith’s with -this. Tell him a hundred.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The black boy would understand. In ten minutes -he would return minus the stick and bearing a wilted -sheaf of ten-dollar bills. If Ravenal’s luck turned, the -cane was redeemed. If it still stayed stubborn, the -diamond ring must go; that failing, then the sealskin -sacque. Ravenal, contrary to the custom of his confrères, -wore no jewellery; possessed none. There were -certain sinister aspects of these outward signs, as when, -for example, the reigning sealskin sacque was known -to skip an entire winter.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Perhaps none of these three symbols was as significant -a betrayal of the Ravenal finances as was Gay -Ravenal’s choice of a breakfasting place. He almost -never breakfasted at home. This was a reversion to -one of the habits of his bachelor days; was, doubtless, -a tardy rebellion, too, against the years spent under -Mrs. Hawks’ harsh régime. He always had hated -those <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> nine o’clock family breakfasts -ominously presided over by Parthy in cap and curl -papers.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Since their coming to Chicago Gay liked to breakfast -between eleven and twelve, and certainly never rose -before ten. If the Ravenal luck was high, the meal was -eaten in leisurely luxury at Billy Boyle’s Chop House -between Clark and Dearborn streets. This was most -agreeable, for at Billy Boyle’s, during the noon hour, -you encountered Chicago’s sporting blood—political -overlords, gamblers, jockeys, actors, reporters—these -last mere nobodies—lean and somewhat morose young -fellows vaguely known as George Ade, Brand Whitlock, -John McCutcheon, Pete Dunne. Here the news and -gossip of the day went round. Here you saw the Prince -Albert coat, the silk hat, the rattling cuffs, the glittering -collar, the diamond stud of the professional gamester. -Old Carter Harrison, Mayor of Chicago, would drop in -daily, a good twenty-five-cent cigar waggling between -his lips as he greeted this friend and that. In came -the brokers from the Board of Trade across the way. -Smoke-blue air. The rich heavy smell of thick steaks -cut from prime Western beef. Massive glasses of beer -through which shone the pale amber of light brew, or -the seal-brown of dark. The scent of strong black -coffee. Rye bread pungent with caraway. Little -crisp round breakfast rolls sprinkled with poppy-seed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Calories, high blood pressure, vegetable luncheons, -golf, were words not yet included in the American -everyday vocabulary. Fried potatoes were still considered -a breakfast dish, and a meatless meal was a -snack.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Here it was, then, that Gay Ravenal, slim, pale, -quiet, elegant, liked best to begin his day; listening -charmingly and attentively to the talk that swirled -about him—talk of yesterday’s lucky winners in Gamblers’ -Alley, at Prince Varnell’s place, or Jeff Hankins’ -or Mike McDonald’s; of the Washington Park race track -entries; of the new blonde girl at Hetty Chilson’s; -of politics in their simplest terms. Occasionally he -took part in this talk, but like most professional gamblers, -his was not the conversational gift. He was given -credit for the astuteness he did not possess merely on -the strength of his cool evasive glance, his habit of -listening and saying little, and his bland poker face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ravenal doesn’t say much but there’s damned little -he misses. Watch him an hour straight and you can’t -make out from his face whether he’s cleaning up a -thousand or losing his shirt.” An enviable Clark -Street reputation.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Still, this availed him nothing when funds were low. -At such times he eschewed Billy Boyle’s and breakfasted -meagrely instead at the Cockeyed Bakery just -east of Clark. That famous refuge for the temporarily -insolvent was so named because of the optical peculiarity -of the lady who owned it and who dispensed its -coffee and sinkers. This refreshment cost ten cents. -The coffee was hot, strong, revivifying; the sinkers -crisp and fresh. Every Clark Street gambler was, -at one time or another, through the vagaries of Lady -Luck, to be found moodily munching the plain fare -that made up the limited menu to be had at the Cockeyed -Bakery. For that matter lacking even the modest -sum required for this sustenance, he knew that -there he would be allowed to “throw up a tab” until -luck should turn.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Many a morning Gaylord Ravenal, dapper, nonchalant, -sartorially exquisite, fared forth at eleven with -but fifty cents in the pocket of his excellently tailored -pants. Usually, on these occasions, the malacca stick -was significantly absent. Of the fifty cents, ten went -for the glassy shoeshine; twenty-five for a boutonnière; -ten for coffee and sinkers at the Cockeyed Bakery. -The remaining five cents stayed in his pocket as a sop -to the superstition that no coin breeds no more coins. -Stopping first to look in a moment at Weeping Willy -Mangler’s, or at Reilly’s pool room for a glance at the -racing chart, or to hear a bit of the talk missed through -his enforced absence from Boyle’s, he would end at -Hankins’ or McDonald’s, there to woo fortune with -nothing at all to offer as oblation. But affairs did not -reach this pass until after the first year.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was incredible that Magnolia Ravenal could so -soon have adapted herself to the life in which she now -moved. Yet it was explicable, perhaps, when one -took into consideration her inclusive nature. She was -interested, alert, eager—and still in love with Gaylord -Ravenal. Her life on the rivers had accustomed her -to all that was bizarre in humanity. Queenie and Jo -had been as much a part of her existence as Elly and -Schultzy. The housewives in the little towns, the -Negroes lounging on the wharves, the gamblers in the -river-front saloons, the miners of the coal belt, the -Northern fruit-pickers, the boatmen, the Southern -poor whites, the Louisiana aristocracy, all had passed -in fantastic parade before her ambient eyes. And she, -too, had marched in a parade, a figure as gorgeous, as -colourful as the rest.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Now, in this new life, she accepted everything, -enjoyed everything with a naïveté that was, perhaps, -her greatest charm. It was, doubtless, the thing that -held the roving Ravenal to her. Nothing shocked her; -this was her singularly pure and open mind. She -brought to this new life an interest and a curiosity as -fresh as that which had characterized the little girl who -had so eagerly and companionably sat with Mr. Pepper, -the pilot, in the bright cosy glass-enclosed pilot house -atop the old <span class='it'>Creole Belle</span> on that first enchanting trip -down the Mississippi to New Orleans.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>To him she had said, “What’s around that bend? -. . . Now what’s coming? . . . How deep is -it here? . . . What used to be there? . . . -What island is that?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mr. Pepper, the pilot, had answered her questions -amply and with a feeling of satisfaction to himself as he -beheld her childish hunger for knowledge being appeased.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Now she said to her husband with equal eagerness: -“Who is that stout woman with the pretty yellow-haired -girl? What queer eyes they have! . . . -What does it mean when it says odds are two to one? -. . . Why do they call him Bath House John? -. . . Who is that large woman in the victoria, with -the lovely sunshade? How rich her dress is, yet it’s -plain. Why don’t you introduce me to——Oh! That! -Hetty Chilson! Oh! . . . Why do they call him -Bad Jimmy Connerton? . . . But why do they -call it the Levee? It’s really Clark Street, and no -water anywhere near, so why do they call it the Levee? -. . . What’s a percentage game? . . . Hieronymus! -What a funny word! . . . Mike -McDonald? That! Why, he looks like a farmer, -doesn’t he? A farmer in his Sunday-best black clothes -that don’t fit him. The Boss of the Gamblers. Why -do they call his place ‘The Store’? . . . Oh, Gay -darling, I wish you wouldn’t. . . . Now don’t -frown like that. I just mean I—when I think of Kim, -I get scared because, how about Kim—I mean when -she grows up? . . . Why are they called owl cars? -. . . But I don’t understand why Lipman lets you -have money just for a cane that isn’t worth more than -ten or twenty . . . How do pawnbrokers . . . -Mont Tennes—what a queer name! . . . Al -Hankins? Oh, you’re joking now. Really killed by -having a folding bed close up on him! Oh, I’ll never -again sleep in a . . . Boiler Avenue? . . . Hooley’s -Theatre? . . . Cinquevalli? . . . Fanny Davenport? -. . . Derby Day? . . . Weber and Fields? . . . Sauterne? -. . . Rector’s? . . .”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Quite another world about which to be curious—a -world as sordid and colourful and crude and passionate -and cruel and rich and varied as that other had -been.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It had taken Ravenal little more than a year to -dissipate the tidy fortune which had been Magnolia’s -share of Captain Andy’s estate, including the <span class='it'>Cotton -Blossom</span> interest. He had, of course, meant to double -the sum—to multiply it many times so that the plump -thousands should increase to tens—to hundreds of -thousands. Once you had money—a really respectable -amount of it—it was simple enough to manipulate that -money so as to make it magically produce more and -more money.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They had made straight for Chicago, at that period -the gamblers’ paradise. When Ravenal announced -this step, a little look of panic had come into Magnolia’s -eyes. She was reluctant to demur at his plans. It was -the thing her mother always had done when her father -had proposed a new move. Always Captain Andy’s -enthusiasm had suffered the cold douche of Parthy’s -disapproval. At the prospect of Chicago, the old -haunts, congenial companions, the restaurants, the -theatres, the races, Ravenal had been more elated than -she had ever seen him. He had become almost loquacious. -He could even be charming to Mrs. Hawks, -now that he was so nearly free of her. That iron woman -had regarded him as her enemy to the last and, in making -over to Magnolia the goodish sum of money which -was due her, had uttered dire predictions, all of which -promptly came true.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>That first year in Chicago was a picture so kaleidoscopic, -so extravagant, so ridiculous that even the child -Kim retained in her memory’s eye something of its -colour and pageantry. This father and mother in their -twenties seemed really little older than their child. -Certainly there was something pathetically childish in -their evident belief that they could at once spend their -money and keep it intact. Just a fur coat—what was -that! Bonnets. A smart high yellow trap. Horses. -The races. Suppers. A nursemaid for Kim. Magnolia -knew nothing of money. She never had had any. -On the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> money was a commodity of which -one had little need.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>On coming to Chicago they had gone directly to the -Sherman House. Compared with this, that first visit -to Chicago before Kim’s birth had been a mere picnic -jaunt. Ravenal was proud of his young wife and of -his quiet, grave big-eyed child; of the nursemaid in a -smart uniform; of the pair of English hackneys which -he sometimes allowed Magnolia to drive, to her exquisite -delight. Magnolia had her first real evening -dress, cut décolleté; tasted champagne; went to the -races at the Washington Park race track; sat in a box -at Hooley’s; was horrified at witnessing the hootchie-kootchie -dance on the Midway Plaisance at the World’s -Fair.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The first fur coat was worthy of note. The wives -of the well-to-do wore sealskin sacques as proof of their -husband’s prosperity. Magnolia descended to these -later. But the pelts which warmed her during that -first winter of Chicago lake blasts and numbing cold -had been cunningly matched in Paris, and French -fingers had fashioned them into a wrap.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ravenal had selected it for her, of course. He always -accompanied her on her shopping trips. He liked to -loll elegantly at ease like a pasha while the keen-eyed -saleswomen brought out this gown and that for his expert -inspection. To these alert ladies it was plain to see -that Magnolia knew little enough about chic attire. -The gentleman, though—he knew what was what. -Magnolia had been aghast at the cost of that first fur -coat, but then, how should she know of such things? -Between them, she and Parthy had made most of the -costumes she had worn in her <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> days, both -for stage and private use. The new coat was a black -astrakhan jacket; the fur lay in large smooth waves -known as baby lamb. Magnolia said it made her feel -like a cannibal to wear a thing like that. The salesladies -did not smile at this, but that was all right because -Magnolia had not intended that they should. The -revers and cuffs were of Russian sable, dark and rich and -deep; and it had large mutton-leg sleeves—large enough -to contain her dress sleeves comfortably, with a little -expert aid in the way of stuffing. “Stuff my sleeves in,” -was one of the directions always given a gentleman -when he assisted a lady with her wrap.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>This royal garment had cost——“Oh, Gay!” Magnolia -had protested, in a low shocked voice (but not so -low that the sharp-eared saleswomen failed to hear it)—“Oh, -Gay! I honestly don’t think we ought——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mrs. Potter Palmer,” spoke up the chief saleswoman -in a voice at once sharp and suave, “has a coat -identically similar. They are the only two of the kind -in the whole country. To tell you the truth, I think -the sable skins on this garment of madam’s are just a -little finer than Mrs. Palmer’s. Though perhaps it’s -just that madam sets it off better, being so young and -all.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He liked her to wear, nestling in the rich depths of -the sable revers, a bunch of violets. For the theatre -she had one of those new winged bonnets, representing -a butterfly, cunningly contrived of mousseline de soie -wired and brilliantly spangled so that it quivered and -trembled with the movements of her head and sparkled -enchantingly. Kim adored the smell of the violet-scented -creature who kissed her good-night and swept -out, glittering. The impression must have gone deep, -deep into the childish mind, for twenty years later she -still retained a sort of story-book mental picture of this -black-haired creamy mother who would come in late -of a winter afternoon laughing and bright-eyed after a -drive up Grand Boulevard in the sleigh behind the -swift English hackneys. This vision would seem to -fill the warm room with a delightful mixture of violets, -and fur, and cold fresh air and velvet and spangles and -love and laughter. Kim would plunge her face deep -into the soft scented bosom.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, Gay, do see how she loves the violets! You -won’t mind if I take them off and put them here in this -glass so she—— No, you mustn’t buy me any fresh ones. -Please! I wish she didn’t look quite so much like me -. . . her mouth . . . but it’s going to be a -great wide one, like mine. . . . Oh, Bernhardt! -Who wants her little girl to look like Bernhardt! Besides, -Kim isn’t going to be an actress.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At the end of a year or so of this the money was gone—simply -gone. Of course, it hadn’t been only the -hackneys, and the races, and the trap, and the furs, and -the suppers and the theatres and dresses and Gay’s fine -garments and the nurse and the hotel. For, as Ravenal -explained, the hackneys hadn’t even been pure-blooded, -which would have brought them up to one thousand -each. He had never been really happy about them, -because of a slight blot on their family escutcheon which -had brought them down to a mere six hundred apiece. -This flaw was apparent, surely, to no one who was not -an accredited judge at a horse show. Yet when Ravenal -and Magnolia on Derby Day joined the gay stream -of tallyhos, wagonettes, coaches, phaetons, tandems, -cocking carts, and dog-carts sweeping up Michigan -Avenue and Grand Boulevard toward the Washington -Park race track he was likely to fall into one of his -moody silences and to flick the hackneys with little -contemptuous cuts of the long lithe whip in a way that -only they—and Magnolia—understood. On such occasions -he called them nags.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah! That off nag broke again. That’s because -they’re not thoroughbreds.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But, Gay, you’re hurting their mouths, sawing like -that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Please, Nola. This isn’t a Mississippi barge I’m -driving.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She learned many things that first year, and saw so -much that part of what she saw was mercifully soon -forgotten. You said Darby Day, very English. You -pretended not to mind when your husband went down to -speak to Hetty Chilson and her girls in their box. For -that matter, you pretended not to see Hetty Chilson and -her girls at all, though they had driven out in a sort of -private procession of victorias, landaus, broughams, -and were by far the best-dressed women at the races. -They actually set the styles, Gay had told her. Hetty -Chilson’s girls wore rich, quiet, almost sedate clothes; -and no paint on their faces. They seemed an accepted -part of the world in which Gaylord Ravenal moved. -Even in the rough life of the rivers, Magnolia had always -understood that women of Hetty Chilson’s calling -simply did not exist in the public sense. They were -not of the substance of everyday life, but were shadows, -sinister, menacing, evil. But with this new life of -Magnolia’s came the startling knowledge that these -ladies played an important part in the social and political -life of this huge sprawling Mid-western city. -This stout, blonde, rather handsome woman who carried -herself with an air of prosperous assurance; whose -shrewd keen glance and hearty laugh rather attracted -you—this one was Hetty Chilson. The horsewomen -you saw riding in the Lincoln Park bridle path, handsomely -habited in black close-fitting riding clothes, -were, likely as not, Hetty Chilson’s girls. She was -actually a power in her way. When strangers were -shown places of interest in Chicago—the Potter Palmer -castle on Lake Shore Drive, the Art Museum, the -Stockyards, the Auditorium Hotel, the great mansions -of Phil Armour and his son on Michigan Avenue, with -the garden embracing an entire city block—Hetty -Chilson’s place, too, was pointed out (with a lowering -of the voice, of course, and a little leer, and perhaps an -elbow dug into the ribs). A substantial brick house on -Clark Street, near Polk, with two lions, carved in stone, -absurdly guarding its profane portals.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hetty Chilson’s place,” Gay explained to his wide-eyed -young wife, “is like a club. You’re likely to find -every prominent politician in Chicago there, smoking -and having a sociable drink. And half the political -plots that you read about in the newspapers later are -hatched at Hetty’s. She’s as smart as they make ’em. -Bought a farm, fifteen acres, out at Ninetieth and -State, for her father and mother. And she’s got a -country place out on the Kankakee River, near Momence—about -sixty miles south of here—that’s known -to have one of the finest libraries in the country. -Cervantes—Balzac—rare editions. Stable full of -horses—rose garden——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But, Gay dear!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>You saw Hetty driving down State Street during the -shopping hour in her Kimball-made Victoria, an equipage -such as royalty might have used, its ebony body -fashioned by master craftsmen, its enamel as rich and -deep and shining as a piano top. Her ample skirts -would be spread upon the plum-coloured cushions. -If it was summer the lace ruffles of her sunshade would -plume gently in the breeze. In winter her mink coat -swathed her full firm figure. One of her girls sat beside -her, faultlessly dressed, pale, unvivacious. Two men -in livery on the box. Harness that shone with polished -metal and jingled splendidly. Two slim, quivering, -high-stepping chestnuts. Queen of her world—Chicago’s -underworld.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But, Gay dear!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, how about France!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“France?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How about the women you used to read about—learned -about them in your history books, for that -matter, at school? Pompadour and Maintenon and -Du Barry! Didn’t they mix up in the politics of their -day—and weren’t they recognized? Courtesans, every -one of them. You think just because they wore white -wigs and flowered silk hoops and patches——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A little unaccustomed flush surged over Magnolia’s -pallor—the deep, almost painful red of indignation. -She was an inexperienced woman, but she was no fool. -These last few months had taught her many things. -Also the teachings of her school-teacher mother had not, -after all, been quite forgotten, it appeared.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She’s a common woman of the town, Gaylord -Ravenal. All the wigs and patches and silks in the -world wouldn’t make her anything else. She’s no more -a Du Barry than your Hinky Dink is a—uh—Mazarin.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was as though he took a sort of perverse pleasure -in thus startling her. It wasn’t that she was shocked in -the prim sense of the word. She was bewildered and a -little frightened. At such times the austere form and -the grim visage of Parthenia Ann Hawks would rise up -before her puzzled eyes. What would Parthy have said -of these unsavoury figures now passing in parade before -Magnolia’s confused vision—Hetty Chilson, Doc Haggerty, -Mike McDonald, “Prince” Varnell, Effie Hankins? -Uneasy though she was, Magnolia could manage -to smile at the thought of her mother’s verbal destruction -of this raffish crew. There were no half tones -in Parthy’s vocabulary. A hussy was a hussy; a rake -a rake. But her father, she thought, would have been -interested in all this, and more than a little amused. -His bright brown eyes would have missed nothing; the -little nimble figure would have scampered inquisitively -up and down the narrow and somewhat sinister lane -that lay between Washington and Madison streets, -known as Gamblers’ Alley; he would have taken a turn -at faro; appraised the Levee ladies at their worth: -visited Sam T. Jack’s Burlesque Show over on Madison, -and Kohl & Middleton’s Museum, probably, and -Hooley’s Theatre certainly. Nothing in Chicago’s -Levee life would have escaped little Captain Andy, and -nothing would have changed him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“See it all, Nollie,” he had said to her in the old -<span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> days, when Parthy would object to their -taking this or that jaunt ashore between shows. “Don’t -you believe ’em when they say that what you don’t -know won’t hurt you. Biggest lie ever was. See it -all and go your own way and nothing’ll hurt you. If -what you see ain’t pretty, what’s the odds! See it -anyway. Then next time you don’t have to look.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia, gazing about her, decided that she was -seeing it all.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The bulk of the money had gone at faro. The suckers -played roulette, stud poker, hazard, the bird-cage, -chuck-a-luck (the old army game). But your gambler -played faro. Faro was Gaylord Ravenal’s game, and -he played at Hankins’—not at George Hankins’ where -they catered to the cheap trade who played percentage -games—but at Jeff Hankins’ or Mike McDonald’s -where were found the highest stakes in Chicago. Faro -was not a game with Ravenal—it was for him at once -his profession, his science, his drug, his drink, his -mistress. He had, unhappily, as was so often the case -with your confirmed gambler, no other vice. He rarely -drank, and then abstemiously; smoked little and then -a mild cigar, ate sparingly and fastidiously; eschewed -even the diamond ring and shirt-stud of his kind.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The two did not, of course, watch the money go, or -despair because it would soon be gone. There seemed -to be plenty of it. There always would be enough. -Next week they would invest it securely. Ravenal had -inside tips on the market. He had heard of a Good -Thing. This was not the right time, but They would -let him know when the magic moment was at hand. -In the meantime there was faro. And there were the -luxurious hotel rooms with their soft thick carpets, and -their big comfortable beds; ice water tinkling at the door -in answer to your ring; special dishes to tempt the taste -of Mr. Ravenal and his lady. The sharp-eyed gentleman -in evening clothes who stood near the little ticket -box as you entered the theatre said, “Good-evening, -Mr. Ravenal,” when they went to Hooley’s or McVicker’s -or the Grand Opera House, or Kohl and Castle’s. -The heads of departments in Mandel’s or Carson Pirie’s -or even Marshall Field’s said, “I have something rather -special to show you, Mrs. Ravenal. I thought of you -the minute it came in.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Sometimes it seemed to Magnolia that the <span class='it'>Cotton -Blossom</span> had been only a phantom ship—the rivers a -dream—a legend.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was all very pleasant and luxurious and strange. -And Magnolia tried not to mind the clang of Clark -Street by day and by night. The hideous cacophony -of noise invaded their hotel apartment and filled its -every corner. She wondered why the street-car motormen -jangled their warning bells so persistently. Did -they do it as an antidote to relieve their own jangled -nerves? <span class='it'>Pay</span>-pes! MO’nin’ <span class='it'>pay</span>-pes! Crack! Crack! -Crackcrackcrack! The shooting gallery across the -street. Someone passing the bedroom door, walking -heavily and clanking the metal disk of his room key. -The sound of voices, laughter, from the street, and the -unceasing shuffle of footsteps on stone. Whee-e-e-e-e! -Whoop-a! Ye-e-eow! A drunkard. She knew about -that, too. Part of her recently acquired knowledge. -Ravenal had told her about Big Steve Rowan, the three-hundred-pound -policeman, who, partly because of his -goatee and moustache, and partly because of his expert -manipulation of his official weapon, was called the -Jack of Clubs.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You’ll never see Big Steve arrest a drunk at night,” -Gay had explained to her, laughing. “No, sir! Nor -any other Clark Street cop if he can help it. If they -arrest a man they have to appear against him next -morning at the nine o’clock police court. That means -getting up early. So if he’s able to navigate at all, -they pass him on down the street from corner to corner -until they get him headed west somewhere, or north -across the bridge. Great system.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>All this was amusing and colourful, perhaps, but -scarcely conducive to tranquillity and repose. Often -Magnolia, lying awake by the side of the sleeping man, -or lying awake awaiting his late return, would close her -stinging eyelids the better to visualize and sense the -deep velvet silence of the rivers of her girlhood—the -black velvet nights, quiet, quiet. The lisping cluck-suck -of the water against the hull.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Clang! MO’nin’ <span class='it'>pay</span>-pes! Crack! E-e-eee-yow!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And then, suddenly, one day: “But, Gay dear, how -do you mean you haven’t one hundred dollars? It’s for -that bronze-green velvet that you like so much, though I -always think it makes me look sallow. You did urge -me to get it, you know, dear. And now this is the third -time they’ve sent the bill. So if you’ll give me the -money—or write a check, if you’d rather.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I tell you I haven’t got it, Nola.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, well, to-morrow’ll do. But please be sure to-morrow, -because I hate——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I can’t be any surer to-morrow than I am to-day. -I haven’t got a hundred dollars in the world. And -that’s a fact.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Even after he had finished explaining, she did not -understand; could not believe it; continued to stare at -him with those great dark startled eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Bad luck. At what? Faro. But, Gay—thousands! -Well, thousands don’t last for ever. Took a flyer. -Flyer? Yes. A tip on the market. Market? The -stock market. Stock? Oh, you wouldn’t understand. -But all of it, Gay? Well, some of it lost at faro. -Where? Hankins’. How much? What does it matter?—it’s -gone. But, Gay, how much at faro? Oh, a few -thousands. Five? Y-y-yes. Yes, five. More than -that? Well, nearer ten, probably.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She noticed then that the malacca cane was gone. -She slipped her diamond ring off her finger. Gave it to -him. With the years, that became an automatic gesture.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Thus the change in their mode of living did not come -about gradually. They were wafted, with Cinderella-like -celerity, from the coach-and-four to the kitchen -ashes. They left the plush and ice water and fresh -linen and rich food and luxurious service of the Sherman -House for a grubby little family hotel that was really a -sort of actors’ boarding house, on the north side, just -across the Clark Street bridge, on Ontario Street. It -was, Ravenal said, within convenient walking distance -of places.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What places?” Magnolia asked. But she knew. -A ten minutes’ saunter brought you to Gamblers’ -Alley. In the next fifteen years there was never a -morning when Gaylord Ravenal failed to prove this -interesting geographical fact.</p> - -<div><h1>XIV</h1></div> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='lead-in'><span class='dropcap'>T</span>he Ravenal</span> reverses, if they were noticed at all -in Gamblers’ Alley, went politely unremarked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There was a curious and definite code of -honour among the frequenters of Chicago’s Levee. -You paid your gambling debts. You never revealed -your own financial status by way of conversation. You -talked little. You maintained a certain physical, sartorial, -and social standard in the face of all reverses. -There were, of course, always unmistakable signs to be -read even at the most passing glance. You drew your -conclusions; made no comment. If you were seen to -breakfast for days—a week—two weeks—at the Cockeyed -Bakery, you were greeted by your confrères with -the same suavity that would have been accorded you -had you been standing treat at Billy Boyle’s or the -Palmer House. Your shoe might be cracked, but it -must shine. Your linen might be frayed, but it must -be clean. Your cheeks were perhaps a trifle hollow, but -they must be shaven and smell pleasantly of bay rum. -You might dine at Burkey and Milan’s (Full Meal 15c.) -with ravenous preliminary onslaughts upon the bread-and-butter -and piccalilli. But you consumed, delicately -and fastidiously, just so much and no more of the -bountiful and rich repast spread out for your taking at -Jeff Hankins’ or at Mike McDonald’s. Though your -suit was shabby, it must bear the mark of that tailor -to the well-dressed sporting man—Billy McLean. If -you were too impecunious for Hetty Chilson’s you disdained -the window-tapping dives on Boiler Avenue and -lower Clark Street and State; the sinister and foul -shanties of Big Maud and her ilk. You bathed, shaved, -dressed, ate, smoked with the same exotic care when -you were broke as when luck was running your way. -Your cigar was a mild one (also part of the code), and -this mild one usually a dead one as you played. And -no one is too broke for one cigar a day. Twelve o’clock—noon—found -you awake. Twelve o’clock—midnight—found -you awake. Somewhere between those -hours you slept the deep sweet sleep of the abstemious. -You were, in short, a gambler—and a gentleman.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Thus, when the Ravenals moved, perforce, from the -comfort of the Sherman to the threadbare shabbiness -of the Ontario Street boarding house, there was nothing -in Gaylord Ravenal’s appearance to tell the tale. If -his cronies knew of his financial straits, they said nothing. -Magnolia had no women friends. During the -year or more of their residence in Chicago she had been -richly content with Kim and Gay. The child had a -prim and winning gravity that gave her a curiously -grown-up air.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you know, Gay,” Magnolia frequently said, -“Kim sometimes makes me feel so gawky and foolish -and young. When she looks at me after I’ve been -amused about something, or am enthusiastic or excited -or—you know—anyway, she looks at me out of those -big eyes of hers, very solemn, and I feel—— Oh, Gay, -you don’t think she resembles—that is—do you think -she is much like Mama?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“God forbid!” ejaculated Ravenal, piously.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Kim had been Magnolia’s delight during the late -morning hours and the early afternoon. In company -with the stolid nurse, they had fared forth in search of -such amusement as the city provided for a child brought -up amidst the unnatural surroundings of this one. The -child had grown accustomed to seeing her nurse stand -finger on lips, eyes commanding silence, before the -closed door of her parents’ room at ten in the morning—at -eleven, even—and she got it into her baby head -that this attitude, then, was the proper and normal one -in which to approach the closed door of that hushed -chamber. Late one morning Magnolia, in nightgown -and silken wrapper, had opened this door suddenly to -find the child stationed there, silent, grave-eyed, admonitory, -while in one corner, against the door case, -reposed the favourite doll of her collection—a lymphatic -blonde whose eyes had met with some unfortunate -interior mishap which gave them a dying-calf -look. This sprawling and inert lady was being shushed -in a threatening and dramatic manner by the sternly -maternal Kim. There was, at sight of this, that which -brought the quick sting of tears to Magnolia’s eyes. -She gathered the child up in her arms, kissed her passionately, -held her close, brought her to Ravenal as he -lay yawning.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Gay, look at her! She was standing by the door -telling her doll not to make any noise. She’s only a -baby. We don’t pay enough attention to her. Do you -think I neglect her? Standing there by the door! And -it’s nearly noon. Oh, Gay, we oughtn’t to be living -here. We ought to be living in a house—a little house -where it’s quiet and peaceful and she can play.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Lovely,” said Gay. “Thebes, for example. Now -don’t get dramatic, Nola, for God’s sake. I thought -we’d finished with that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>With the change in their fortunes the English nurse -had vanished with the rest. She had gone, together -with the hackneys, the high smart yellow cart, the -violets, the green velvets, the box seats at the theatre, -the champagne. She, or her counterpart, never returned, -but many of the lost luxuries did, from time to -time. There were better days to come, and worse. -Their real fortune gone, there now was something almost -humdrum and methodical about the regularity of their -ups and downs. There rarely was an intermediate -state. It was feast or famine, always. They actually -settled down to the life of a professional gambler and -his family. Ravenal would have a run of luck at faro. -Presto! Rooms at the Palmer House. A box at the -races. The theatre. Supper at Rector’s after the -theatre. Hello, Gay! Evening, Mrs. Ravenal. Somebody’s -looking mighty lovely to-night. A new sealskin -sacque. Her diamond ring on her finger. Two new -suits of clothes for Ravenal, made by Billy McLean. A -little dinner for Gay’s friends at Cardinal Bemis’s -famous place on Michigan Avenue. You couldn’t -fool the Cardinal.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He would ask suavely, “What kind of a dinner, Mr. -Ravenal?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>If Gay replied, “Oh—uh—a cocktail and a little red -wine,” Cardinal Bemis knew that luck was only so-so, -and that the dinner was to be good, but plainish. But -if, in reply to the tactful question, Gay said, magnificently, -“A cocktail, Cardinal; claret, sauterne, champagne, -and liqueurs,” Bemis knew that Ravenal had had -a real run of luck and prepared the canvasbacks boiled -in champagne; or there were squabs or plover, with all -sorts of delicacies, and the famous frozen watermelon -that had been plugged, filled with champagne, put on -ice for a day, and served in such chunks of scarlet -fragrance as made the nectar and ambrosia of the gods -seem poor, flavourless fare indeed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia, when luck was high, tried to put a little -money by as she had instinctively been prompted to do -during those first months of their marriage, when they -still were on the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span>. But she rarely had -money of her own. Gay, when he had ready cash, was -generous—but not with the handing over of the actual -coin itself.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Buy yourself some decent clothes, Nola; and the -kid. Tell them to send me the bill. That thing you’re -wearing is a terrible sight. It seems to me you haven’t -worn anything else for months.” Which was true -enough. There was something fantastic about the -magnificence with which he ignored the reason for her -not having worn anything else for months. It had been, -certainly, her one decent garment during the lean period -just passed, and she had cleaned and darned and refurbished -to keep it so. Her experience in sewing during -the old <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> days stood her in good stead now.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There were times when even the Ontario Street hotel -took on the aspect of unattainable luxury. That meant -rock bottom. Then it was that the Ravenals took a -room at three dollars a week in a frowzy rooming -house on Ohio or Indiana or Erie; the Bloomsbury of -Chicago. There you saw unshaven men, their coat -collars turned up in artless attempt to conceal the -absence of linen, sallying forth, pail in hand, at ten or -eleven in the morning in search of the matutinal milk -and rolls to accompany the coffee that was even now -cooking over the gas jet. Morning was a musty jade -on these streets; nothing fresh and dewy and sparkling -about her. The ladies of the neighbourhood lolled -huge, unwieldy, flaccid, in wrappers. In the afternoon -you saw them amazingly transformed into plump and -pinkly powdered persons, snugly corseted, high-heeled, -rustling in silk petticoats, giving out a heady scent. -They were friendly voluble ladies who beamed on the -pale slim Magnolia, and said, “Won’t you smile for me -just a little bit? H’m?” to the sedate and solemn-eyed -Kim.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia, too, boiled coffee and eggs over the gas jet -in these lean times. Gravely she counted out the two -nickels that would bring her and Kim home from -Lincoln Park on the street car. Lincoln Park was an -oasis—a life-giving breathing spot to the mother and -child. They sallied forth in the afternoon; left the gas -jet, the three-dollar room, the musty halls, the stout -females behind them. There was the zoo; there was the -lake; there was the grass. If the lake was their choice -it led inevitably to tales of the rivers. It was in this -way that the background of her mother’s life was first -etched upon Kim’s mind. The sight of the water -always filled Magnolia with a nostalgia so acute as to -amount to an actual physical pain.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The childish treble would repeat the words as the -two sat on a park bench facing the great blue sea that -was Lake Michigan.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You remember the boat, don’t you, Kim?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do I?” Kim’s diction was curiously adult, due, -doubtless, to the fact that she had known almost no -children.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course you do, darling. Don’t you remember -the river, and Grandma and Grandpa——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Cap’n!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes! I knew you remembered. And all the little -darkies on the landing. And the band. And the steam -organ. You used to put your hands over your ears and -run and hide, because it frightened you. And Jo and -Queenie.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Tell me about it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And Magnolia would assuage her own longing by -telling and retelling the things she liked to remember. -The stories, with the years, became a saga. Figures -appeared, vanished, reappeared. The rivers wound -through the whole. Elly, Schultzy, Julie, Steve; the -man in the box with the gun; the old <span class='it'>Creole Belle</span> and -Magnolia’s first trip on the Mississippi; Mr. Pepper and -the pilot house; all these became familiar and yet -legendary figures and incidents to the child. They -were her Three Bears, her Bo-peep, her Red Riding -Hood, her Cinderella. Magnolia must have painted -these stories with the colour of life itself, for the child -never wearied of them.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Tell me the one about the time you were a little -girl and Gra’ma locked you in the bedroom because she -didn’t want you to see the show and you climbed out of -the window in your nightie . . .”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Kim Ravenal was probably the only white child north -of the Mason and Dixon line who was sung to sleep to -the tune of those plaintive, wistful Negro plantation -songs which later were to come into such vogue as -spirituals. They were the songs that Magnolia had -learned from black Jo and from Queenie, the erstwhile -rulers of the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> galley. Swing Low Sweet -Chariot, she sang. O, Wasn’t Dat a Wide River! And, -of course, All God’s Chillun Got Wings. Kim loved -them. When she happened to be ill with some childhood -ailment, they soothed her. Magnolia sang these -songs, always, as she had learned to sing them in unconscious -imitation of the soft husky Negro voice of her -teacher. Through the years of Kim’s early childhood, -Magnolia’s voice might have been heard thus wherever -the shifting Ravenal fortunes had tossed the three, -whether the red-plush luxury of the Sherman House, the -respectable dulness of the family hotel, or the sordid -fustiness of the cheap rooming house. Once, when they -were living at the Sherman, Magnolia, seated in a rocking -chair with Kim in her arms, had stopped suddenly in -her song at a curious sound in the corridor. She had -gone swiftly to the door, had opened it, and had been unable -to stifle a little shriek of surprise and terror -mingled. There stood a knot of black faces, teeth gleaming, -eyes rolling. Attracted by the songs so rarely -heard in the North, the Sherman House bell boys and -waiters had eagerly gathered outside the closed door in -what was, perhaps, as flattering and sincere a compliment -as ever a singer received.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Never did child know such ups and downs as did -this daughter of the Chicago gambler and the show-boat -actress. She came to take quite for granted sudden -and complete changes that would have disorganized -any one more conventionally bred. One week she -would find herself living in grubby quarters where the -clammy fetid ghost of cabbage lurked always in the -halls; the next would be a gay panorama of whisking -waiters, new lace petticoats, drives along the lake front, -ice cream for dessert, front seats at the matinée. The -theatre bulked large in the life of the Ravenals. Magnolia -loved it without being possessed of much discrimination -with regard to it. Farce, comedy, melodrama—the -whole gamut as outlined by Polonius—all held -her interested, enthralled. Ravenal was much more -critical than she. You saw him smoking in the lobby, -bored, dégagé. It might be the opening of the rebuilt -Lincoln Theatre on Clark near Division, with Gustave -Frohman’s company playing The Charity Ball.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, Gay, isn’t it exciting!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t think much of it. Cheap-looking theatre, -too, isn’t it? They might better have left it alone after -it burned down.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Kim’s introduction to the metropolitan theatre was -when she was taken, a mere baby, to see the spectacle -America at the Auditorium. Before she was ten -she had seen everyone from Julia Marlowe to Anna -Held; from Bernhardt to Lillian Russell. Gravely she -beheld the antics of the Rogers Brothers. As gravely -saw Klaw and Erlanger’s company in Foxey Quiller.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It isn’t that she doesn’t see the joke,” Magnolia -confided to Ravenal, almost worriedly. “She actually -doesn’t seem to approve. Of course, I suppose I ought -to be glad that she prefers the more serious things, but -I wish she wouldn’t seem quite so grown-up at ten. By -the time she’s twenty she’ll probably be spanking me -and putting me to bed.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Certainly Magnolia was young enough for two. She -was the sort of theatre-goer who clutches the hand of -her neighbour when stirred. When Ravenal was absent -Kim learned to sustain her mother at such emotional -moments. They two frequently attended the theatre -together. Their precarious mode of living cut them off -from sustained human friendships. But the theatre -was always there to stimulate them, to amuse them, to -make them forget or remember. There were long afternoons -to be filled, and many evenings as Ravenal became -more and more deeply involved in the intricacies of -Chicago’s night world.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There was, curiously enough, a pendulum-like regularity -about his irregular life. His comings and goings -could be depended on almost as though he were a clerk -or a humdrum bookkeeper. Though his fortunes -changed with bewildering rapidity, his habits remained -the same. Indeed, he felt these changes much less than -did Magnolia and Kim. No matter what their habitation—cheap -rooming house or expensive hotel—he left -at about the same hour each morning, took the same -leisurely course toward town, returned richer or poorer—but -unruffled—well after midnight. On his off nights -he and Magnolia went to the theatre. Curiously, they -seemed always to have enough money for that.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Usually they dwelt somewhere north, just the other -side of the Chicago River, at that time a foul-smelling -and viscid stream, with no drainage canal to deodorize -it. Ravenal, in lean times, emerging from his dingy -hotel or rooming house on Ontario or Ohio, was as -dapper, as suave, as elegant as that younger Ravenal -had been who, leaning against the packing case on the -wharf at New Orleans, had managed to triumph over -the handicap of a cracked boot. He would stand a -moment, much as he had stood that southern spring -morning, coolly surveying the world about him. That -his viewpoint was the dingy front stoop of a run-down -Chicago rooming house and his view the sordid street -that held it, apparently disturbed his equanimity not at -all. On rising he had observed exactly the same niceties -that would have been his had he enjoyed the services -of a hotel valet. He bathed, shaved, dressed -meticulously. Magnolia had early learned that the -slatternly morning habits which she had taken for -granted in the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> wives—Julie, Mis’ -Means, Mrs. Soaper, even the rather fastidious Elly—would -be found inexcusable in the wife of Ravenal. -The sternly utilitarian undergarments of Parthy’s -choosing had soon enough been done away with, to be -replaced with a froth of lace and tucks and embroidery -and batiste. The laundering of these was a pretty -problem when faro’s frown decreed Ohio Street.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ravenal was spared these worrisome details. Once -out of the dingy boarding house, he could take his day -in his two hands and turn it over, like a bright, fresh-minted -coin. Each day was a new start. How could -you know that you would not break the bank! It had -been done on a dollar.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Down the street Ravenal would stroll past the ship -chandlers’ and commission houses south of Ontario, to -the swinging bridge that spanned the slimy river. -There he would slacken his already leisurely pace, or -even pause a moment, perhaps, to glance at the steamers -tied up at the docks. There was an occasional sailboat. -A three-masted schooner, <span class='it'>The Finney</span>, a grain boat, was -in from up North. Over to Clark and Lake. You -could sniff in the air the pleasant scent of coffee. That -was Reid & Murdock’s big warehouse a little to the -east. He sometimes went a block out of his way just to -sniff this delicious odour. A glittering shoeshine at the -Sherman House or the Tremont.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good-morning, George.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mawnin’ Mist’ Ravenal! Mawnin’! Papah, suh?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ah—n-n-no. No. H’m!” His fifty cents, budgeted, -did not include the dispensing of those extra -pennies for the <span class='it'>Times-Herald</span>, the <span class='it'>Inter-Ocean</span>, or the -<span class='it'>Tribune</span>. They could be seen at McDonald’s for nothing. -A fine Chicago morning. The lake mist had -lifted. That was one of the advantages of never rising -early. Into the Cockeyed Bakery for breakfast. To-morrow -it would be Boyle’s. Surely his bad luck would -break to-day. He felt it. Had felt it the moment he -opened his eyes.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Terrapin and champagne to-morrow, Nola. Feel it -in my bones. I woke up with my palm itching, and -passed a hunchback at Clark and Randolph last night.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why don’t you let me give you your coffee and -toast here this morning, Gay dear? It’ll only take a -minute. And it’s so much better than the coffee you -get at the—uh—downtown.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ravenal, after surveying his necktie critically in the -mirror of the crazy little bureau, would shrug himself -into his well-made coat. “You know I never eat in a -room in which I have slept.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Past the Court House; corner of Washington reached. -Cut flowers in the glass case outside the basement -florist’s. A tapping on the glass with a coin, or a rapping -on the pavement with his stick—if the malacca -stick was in evidence. “Heh, Joe!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Joe clattering up the wooden steps.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Here you are, sir. All ready for you. Just came -in fresh.” A white carnation. Ravenal would sniff -the spicy bloom, snap the brittle stem, thrust it through -the buttonhole of his lapel.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A fine figure of a man from his boots to his hat. -Young, handsome, well-dressed, leisurely. Joe, the -Greek florist, pocketing his quarter, would reflect -gloomily on luck—his own and that of others.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ravenal might drop in a moment at Weeping Willy -Mangler’s, thence to Reilly’s pool room near Madison, -for a look at the racing odds. But no matter how low -his finances, he scorned the cheaper gambling rooms -that catered to the clerks and the working men. There -was a great difference between Jeff Hankins’ place and -that of his brother, George. At George’s place, and -others of that class, barkers stood outside. “Game -upstairs, gentlemen! Game upstairs! Come in and -try your luck! Ten cents can make you a millionaire.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At George Hankins’ the faro checks actually were -ten cents. You saw there labouring men with their -tin dinner pails, their boots lime-spattered, their garments -reeking of cheap pipe tobacco. There, too, you -found stud poker, roulette, hazard—percentage games. -None of these for Ravenal. He played a gentleman’s -game, broke or flush.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>This game he found at Mike McDonald’s “The -Store.” Here he was at home. Here were excitement, -luxury, companionship. Here he was Gaylord Ravenal. -Fortune lurked just around the corner. At McDonald’s -his credit always was good for enough to start the play. -On the first floor was the saloon, with its rich walnut -panelling, its great mirrors, its tables of teakwood and -ivory inlay, its paintings of lolling ladies. Chicago’s -saloons and gambling resorts vied with each other in -rich and massive decoration. None of your soap-scrawled -mirrors and fancy bottle structures for these. -“Prince” Varnell’s place had, for years, been famous for -its magnificent built-in mantel of Mexican onyx, its -great marble statue of the death of Cleopatra, its enormous -Sèvres vases.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The second floor was Ravenal’s goal. He did not -even glance at the whirling of the elaborately inlaid roulette -wheels. He nodded to the dealers and his greeting -was deferentially returned. It was said that most of -these men had come of fine old Southern families. -They dressed the part. But McDonald himself looked -like a farmer. His black clothes, though well made, -never seemed to fit him. His black string tie never -varied. Thin, short, gray-haired, Mike McDonald the -Boss of the gamblers would have passed anywhere for a -kindly rustic.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Playing to-day, Mr. Ravenal?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why, yes. Yes, I thought I’d play a while.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Anything we can do to make you comfortable?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well—uh—yes——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>McDonald would raise a benevolent though authoritative -hand. His finger would summon a menial. -“Dave, take care of Mr. Ravenal.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ravenal joined the others then, a gentleman gambler -among gentleman gamblers. A group smartly dressed -like himself, well groomed, quiet, almost elegant. Most -of them wore jewellery—a diamond scarf pin, a diamond -ring, sometimes even a diamond stud, though this was -frowned on by players of Ravenal’s class. A dead cigar -in the mouth of each. Little fine lines etched about -their eyes. They addressed each other as “sir.” -Thank you, sir. . . . Yours I believe, sir. . . . -They were quiet, quiet. Yet there was an electric vibration -in the air above and about the faro table. Only -the dealer seemed remote, detached, unmoved. An -hour passed; two, three, four, five. The Negro waiters -in very white starched aprons moved deferentially -from group to group. One would have said that no -favouritism was being shown, but they knew the piker -from the plunger. Soft-voiced, coaxing: “Something -to drink, suh? A little whisky, suh? Cigar? Might -be you’d relish a little chicken white meat and a bottle -of wine?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ravenal would glance up abstractedly. “Time is -it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Pushin’ six o’clock, suh.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ravenal might interrupt his game to eat something, -but this was not his rule. He ate usually after he had -finished his play for the day. It was understood that -he and others of his stamp were the guests of McDonald -or of Hankins. Twenty-five-cent cigars were to be had -for the taking. Drinks of every description. Hot food -of the choicest sort and of almost any variety could be -ordered and eaten as though this were one’s own house, -and the servants at one’s command. Hot soups and -broths. Steaks. Chops. Hot birds. You could eat -this at a little white-spread table alone, or with your -companions, or you could have it brought to you as you -played. On long tables in the adjoining room were -spread the cold viands—roast chickens, tongue, sausages, -cheese, joints of roast beef, salads. Everything about -the place gave to its habitués the illusion of plenty, of -ease, of luxury. Soft red carpets; great prism-hung -chandeliers; the clink of ice; the scent of sappy cigars -and rich food; the soft slap-slap of the cards; the low -voices of the dealers. It was all friendly, relaxed, -soothing. Yet when the dealer opened the little drawer -that was so cleverly concealed under his side of the table—the -money drawer with its orderly stacks of yellow-backs, -and green-backs and gold and silver—you saw, if -your glance was quick and sharp enough, the gleam of -still another metal: the glittering, sinister blue-gray of -steel.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A hundred superstitions swayed their play. Luck -was a creature to be wooed, flattered, coaxed, feared. -No jungle voodoo worshipper ever lent himself to simpler -or more childish practices and beliefs than did these -hard-faced men.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Sometimes Ravenal left the faro table penniless or -even deeper in Mike McDonald’s debt. His face at -such times was not more impassive than the bucolic -host’s own. “Better luck next time, Mr. Ravenal.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She’s due to turn to-morrow, Mike. Watch out -for me to-morrow. I’ll probably clean you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And if not to-morrow, to-morrow. Luck must turn, -sooner or later. There! Five hundred! A thousand! -Five thousand! Did you hear about Ravenal? Yes, -he had a wonderful run. It happened in an hour. He -walked out with ten thousand. More, some say.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>On these nights Ravenal would stroll coolly home as -on losing nights. Up Clark Street, the money in neat -rolls in his pocket. There were almost no street robberies -in those simpler Chicago days. If you were, like -Ravenal, a well-dressed sporting looking man, strolling -up Clark Street at midnight or thereabouts, you were -likely to be stopped for the price of a meal. You gave -it as a matter of course, unwrapping a bill, perhaps, -from the roll you carried in your pocket.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They might be living in modest comfort at the Revere -House on Clark and Austin. They might be living -in decent discomfort at the little theatrical boarding -house on Ontario. They might be huddled in actual -discomfort in the sordid room of the Ohio Street rooming -house. Be that as it may, Ravenal would take high-handed -possession, but in a way so blithe, so gay, so -charming that no one could have withstood him, least -of all his wife who, though she knew him and understood -him as well as any one could understand this secretive -and baffling nature, frequently despised him, -often hated him, still was in love with him and always -would be.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The child would be asleep in her corner, but Magnolia -would be wide awake, reading or sewing or simply sitting -there waiting. She never reproached him for the hours -he kept. Though they quarrelled frequently it was -never about this. Sometimes, as she sat there, half -dozing, her mind would go back to the rivers and gently -float there. An hour—two hours—would slip by. -Now the curtain would be going down on the last act. -Now the crowd staying for the after-piece and concert -would be moving down to occupy the seats nearer the -stage. A song number by the ingénue, finishing with a -clog or a soft-shoe dance. The comic tramp. The -character team in a patter act, with a song. The after-piece -now; probably Red Hot Coffee, or some similar -stand-by. Now the crowd was leaving. The band -struck up its last number. Up the river bank scrambled -the last straggler. You never threw me my line at all. -There I was like a stuck pig. Well, how did I know -you was going to leave out that business with the door. -Why’n’t you tell me? Say, Ed, will you go over my -song with me a minute? You know, that place where it -goes TUM-ty-ty TUM-ty-ty TUM-TUM-TUM and -then I vamp. It kind of went sour to-night, seemed to -me. A bit of supper. Coffee cooked over a spirit lamp. -Lumps of yellow cheese, a bite of ham. Relaxation -after strain. A daubing with cold cream. A sloshing of -water. Quieter. More quiet. Quiet. Darkness. Security. -No sound but that of the river flowing by. -Sometimes if she dozed she was wakened by the familiar -hoot of a steamer whistle—some big lake boat, perhaps, -bound for Michigan or Minnesota; or a river barge or -tug on the Chicago River near by. She would start up, -bewildered, scarcely knowing whether she had heard this -hoarse blast or whether it was only, after all, part of her -dream about the river and the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ravenal coming swiftly up the stairs. Ravenal’s -quick light tread in the hall.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Come on, Nola! We’re leaving this rat’s nest.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Gay, dear! Not now. You don’t mean to-night.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now! It’ll only take a minute. I’ll wake up the -slavey. She’ll help.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No! No! I’d rather do it myself. Oh, Gay, -Kim’s asleep. Can’t we wait until morning?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But somehow the fantastic procedure appealed tremendously -to her love of the unexpected. Packing up -and moving on. The irresponsible gaiety of it. The -gas turned high. Out tumbled the contents of bureau -drawers and boxes and trunks. Finery saved from just -such another lucky day. Froth and foam of lace and -silk strewn incongruously about this murky little -chamber with its frayed carpet and stained walls and -crazy chairs. They spoke in half whispers so as not to -wake the child. They were themselves like two children, -eager, excited, laughing.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Where are we going, Gay?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Sherman. Or how would you like to try the -Auditorium for a change? Rooms looking out over the -lake.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Gay!” Her hands clasped as she knelt in front of -a trunk.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Next week we’ll run down to West Baden. Do us -good. During the day we can walk and drive or ride. -You ought to learn to ride, Nola. In the evening we -can take a whirl at Sam Maddock’s layout.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, don’t play there—not much, I mean. Let’s -try to keep what we have for a little while.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“After all, we may as well give Sam a chance to pay -our expenses. Remember the last time we were down -I won a thousand at roulette alone—and roulette isn’t -my game.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He awoke the landlady and paid his bill in the middle -of the night. She did not resent being thus disturbed. -Women rarely resented Gaylord Ravenal’s lack of consideration. -They were off in a hack fetched by Ravenal -from the near-by cab stand. It was no novelty for Kim -to fall asleep in the dingy discomfort of a north side rooming -house and to wake up amidst the bright luxuriousness -of a hotel suite, without ever having been conscious -of the events which had wrought this change. Instead -of milk out of the bottle and an egg cooked over -the gas jet, there was a shining breakfast tray bearing -mysterious round-domed dishes whose covers you whipped -off to disclose what not of savoury delights! Crisp -curls of bacon, parsley-decked; eggs baked and actually -bubbling in a brown crockery container; hot golden buttered -toast. And her mother calling gaily in from the -next room, “Drink your milk with your breakfast, Kim -darling! Don’t gulp it all down in one swallow at the -end.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was easy enough for Kim to believe in those fairy -tales that had to do with kindly sprites who worked -miracles overnight. A whole staff of such good creatures -seemed pretty regularly occupied with the Ravenal -affairs.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Once a month there came a letter from Mrs. Hawks. -No more and no less. That indomitable woman was -making a great success of her business. Her letters -bristled with complaint, but between the lines Magnolia -could read satisfaction and even a certain grim happiness. -She was boss of her world, such as it was. Her -word was final. The modern business woman had not -yet begun her almost universal battle against the male in -his own field. She was considered unique. Tales of her -prowess became river lore. Parthy Ann Hawks, owner -and manager of the Cotton Blossom Floating Palace -Theatre, strong, erect, massive, her eyebrows black -above her keen cold eyes, her abundant hair scarcely -touched with gray, was now a well-known and important -figure on the rivers. She ran her boat like a pirate -captain. He who displeased her walked the plank. It -was said that the more religious rivermen who hailed -from the Louisiana parishes always crossed themselves -fearfully at her approach and considered a meeting with -the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> a bad omen. The towering black-garbed -form standing like a ship’s figurehead, grim and -portentous, as the boat swept downstream, had been -known to give a really devout Catholic captain a severe -and instantaneous case of chills and fever.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her letters to Magnolia were characteristic:</p> - -<div class='blockquoter9'> - -<p class='pindent'>Well, Maggie, I hope you and the child are in good health. Often -and often I think land knows what kind of a bringing up she is -getting with the life you are leading. I can imagine. Well, you -made your own bed and now you can lie in it. I have no doubt -that he has run through every penny of your money that your -poor father worked so hard to get as I predicted he would. I -suppose you heard all about French’s <span class='it'>New Sensation</span>. French has -the worst luck it does seem. She sank six weeks ago at Medley’s -just above New Madrid. The fault of the pilot it was. Carelessness -if ever I heard it. He got caught in the down draft of a gravel bar -and snagged her they say. I think of your poor pa and how he met his -end. It took two weeks to raise her though she was only in six feet -of water. On top of that his other boat the <span class='it'>Golden Rod</span> you remember -went down about four weeks ago in the Illinois near Hardin. -A total loss. Did you ever hear of such luck. Business is pretty -good. I can’t complain. But I have to be right on hand every -minute or they would steal me blind and that’s the truth. I have -got a new heavy. No great shakes as an actor but handy enough -and a pretty good black face in the concert and they seem to like -him. We had a pretty rough audience all through the coal country -but whenever it looked like a fight starting I’d come out in front and -stand there a minute and say if anybody started anything I would -have the boat run out into the middle of the river and sink her. -That I’d never had a fight on my boat and wasn’t going to begin -any such low life shenanigans now.</p> - -</div> - -<p class='pindent'>(Magnolia got a swift mental picture of this menacing, -black-garbed figure standing before the gay crude -curtain, the footlights throwing grim shadows on her -stern face. That implacable woman was capable of -cowering even a tough coal-belt audience bent on a -fight.)</p> - -<div class='blockquoter9'> - -<p class='noindent'>Crops are pretty good so business is according. I put up grape jelly -last week. A terrible job but I can’t abide this store stuff made of -gelatine or something and no real grapes in it. Well I suppose you -are too stylish for the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> by now and Kim never hears of -it. I got the picture you sent. I think she looks kind of peaked. -Up all hours of the night I suppose and no proper food. What kind -of an education is she getting? You wrote about how you were -going to send her to a convent school. I never heard of such a -thing. Well I will close as goodness knows I have enough to do -besides writing letters where they are probably not wanted. Still -I like to know how you and the child are doing and all.</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:right;margin-right:6em;'>Your mother,</p> -<p class='line' style='text-align:right;margin-right:1em;font-size:.7em;'><span class='sc'>Parthenia Ann Hawks</span>.</p> - -</div> - -<p class='pindent'>These epistles always filled Magnolia with an emotion -that was a poisonous mixture of rage and tenderness -and nostalgia. She knew that her mother, in her harsh -way, loved her, loved her grandchild, often longed to -see both of them. Parthy’s perverse and inhibited nature -would not permit her to confess this. She would -help them with money, Magnolia knew, if they needed -help. But first she must know the grisly satisfaction of -having them say so. This Magnolia would not do, -though there were many times when her need was great. -There was Kim, no longer a baby. This feverish and -irregular life could not go on for her. Magnolia’s -letters to her mother, especially in lean times, were -triumphs of lying pride. Sentimental Tommy’s mother, -writing boastfully home about her black silks and her -gold chain, was never more stiff-necked than she.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Gay is more than good to me. . . . I have only -to wish for a thing . . . Everyone says Kim is -unusually tall and bright for her age. . . . He -speaks of a trip to Europe next year . . . new -fur coat . . . never an unkind word . . . very -happy . . .</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Still, if Magnolia was clever at reading between the -lines of her mother’s bald letters, so, too, was Parthenia -at hers. In fact, Parthy took many a random shot that -struck home, as when once she wrote, tartly, “Fur coat -one day and none the next I’ll be bound.”</p> - -<div><h1>XV</h1></div> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='lead-in'><span class='dropcap'>T</span>he</span> problem of Kim’s education, of Kim’s future, -was more and more insistently borne in upon -her. She wanted money—money of her own -with which to provide security for the child. Ravenal’s -improvident method was that of Paddy and the leaky -roof. When luck was high and he was showering her -and Kim with luxuries, he would say, “But, good God, -haven’t you got everything you want? There’s no -satisfying you any more, Nola.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When he had nothing he would throw out his hands, -palms upward, in a gesture of despair. “I haven’t got -it, I tell you. I give you everything I can think of -when I am flush. And now, when I’m broke, you nag -me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But, Gay, that’s just it. Everything one day and -nothing the next. Couldn’t we live like other people, -in between? Enough, and none of this horrible worrying -about to-morrow. I can’t bear it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You should have married a plumber.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She found herself casting about in her mind for ways -in which she could earn money of her own. She took -stock of her talents: a slim array. There was her experience -on the show-boat stage. She could play the -piano a little. She could strum the banjo (relic of Jo’s -and Queenie’s days in the old <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> low-raftered -kitchen). She had an untrained, true, and -rather moving voice of mediocre quality.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Timidly, with a little nervous spot of red showing -in either cheek, she broached this to Ravenal one fine -afternoon when they were driving out to the Sunnyside -Hotel for dinner. Gaylord had had a run of luck the -week before. Two sleek handsome chestnuts seemed -barely to flick the road with their hoofs as they flew -along. The smart high cart glittered with yellow varnish. -None of your cheap livery rigs for Ravenal. -Magnolia was exhilarated, happy. Above all else she -loved to drive into the country or the suburbs behind a -swift pair of horses. Ravenal was charming; pleased -with himself; with his handsome, well-dressed young -wife; with the cart, the horses, the weather, the prospect -of one of Old Man Dowling’s excellent dinners. They -sped through Lincoln Park. Their destination was a -two-hours’ drive north, outside the city limits: a favourite -rendezvous for Chicago’s sporting world. At -Dowling’s one had supper at a dollar a head—and such -a supper! The beefsteak could be cut with a fork. -Old Man Dowling bred his own fine fat cattle. Old -Lady Dowling raised the plump broilers that followed -the beefsteak. There was green corn grown in the -Dowling garden; fresh-plucked tomatoes, young onions. -There was homemade ice cream. There was a huge -chocolate cake, each slice a gigantic edifice alternating -layers of black and white.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Can’t I drive a while, Gay dear?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They’re pretty frisky. You’d better wait till we -get out a ways, where there aren’t so many rigs.” The -fine cool late summer day had brought out all manner of -vehicles. “By that time the nags’ll have some of the -skittishness worked out of them, too.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I like to have them when they’re skittish. -Papa always used to let me take them.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes—well, these aren’t canal-boat mules, you know. -Why can’t you be content just to sit back and enjoy -the drive? You’re getting to be like one of those -bloomer girls they joke about. You’ll be wanting to -wear the family pants next.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I am enjoying it, only——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Only don’t be like your mother, Nola.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She lapsed into silence. During one of their many -sojourns at the Ontario Street hotel she had struck up -a passing acquaintance with a large, over-friendly blonde -actress with green-gold hair and the tightest of black -bodices stretched over an imposing shelf of bosom. -This one had surveyed the Ravenal ménage with a -shrewd and kindly though slightly bleary eye, and had -given Magnolia some sound advice.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why’n’t you go out more, dearie?” she had asked -one evening when she herself was arrayed for festivity -in such a bewilderment of flounces, bugles, jets, plumes, -bracelets, and chains as to give the effect of a lighted -Christmas tree in the narrow dim hallway. She had -encountered Magnolia in the corridor and Nola had -returned the woman’s gusty greeting with a shy and -faintly wistful smile. “Out more, evenin’s. Young -thing like you. I notice you’re home with the little girl -most the time. I guess you think that run, run is about -all I do.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia resented this somewhat. But she reflected -instantly this was a friendly and well-meaning creature. -She reminded her faintly of Elly, somehow; Elly as she -might be now, perhaps; blowsy, over-blown, middle-aged. -“Oh, I go out a great deal,” she said, politely.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Husband home?” demanded the woman, bluntly. -She was engaged in the apparently hopeless task of pulling -a black kid glove over her massive arm.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia’s fine eyebrows came up in a look of hauteur -that she unconsciously had borrowed from Ravenal. -“Mr. Ravenal is out.” And started on toward her -room.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The woman caught her hand. “Now don’t get -huffy, dear. I’m a older woman than you and I’ve seen -a good deal. You stay home with the kid and your -husband goes out, and will he like you any better for it? -Nit! Now leave me tell you when he asks you to go -out somewheres with him you go, want to or not, because -if you don’t there’s those that will, and pretty -soon he’ll quit asking you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She had waddled stiffly down the hallway then, in -her absurdly high-heeled slippers, leaving a miasma of -perfume in the passage. Magnolia had been furious, -then amused, then thoughtful, then grateful. In the -last few years she had met or seen the wives of professional -gamblers. It was strange: they were all quiet, -rather sad-faced women, home-loving and usually -accompanied by a well-dressed and serious child. -Much like herself and Kim, she thought. Sometimes -she met them on Ohio Street. She thought she could -recognize the wife of a gambler by the look in her face.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Frequently she saw them coming hurriedly out of one -of the many pawnshops on North Clark, near the river. -The windows of these shops fascinated her. They held, -often, such intimate, revealing, and mutely appealing -things—a doll, a wedding ring, a cornet, a meerschaum -pipe, a Masonic emblem, a Bible, a piece of lace, a -pair of gold-rimmed spectacles.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She thought of these things now as she sat so straight -and smartly dressed beside Ravenal in the high-yellow -cart. She stole a glance at him. The colour was high -in his cheeks. His box-cut covert coat with the big -pearl buttons was a dashingly becoming garment. In -the buttonhole bloomed a great pompon of a chrysanthemum. -He looked very handsome. Magnolia’s head -came up spiritedly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t want to wear the pants. But I would like -to have some say-so about things. There’s Kim. She -isn’t getting the right kind of schooling. Half the time -she goes to private schools and half the time to public -and half the time to no school at all—oh, well, I know -there aren’t three halves, but anyway . . . and it isn’t -fair. It’s because half the time we’ve got money and -half the time we haven’t any.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, God, here we are, driving out for pleasure——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But, Gay dear, you’ve got to think of those things. -And so I thought—I wondered—Gay, I’d like to earn -some money of my own.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ravenal cut the chestnuts sharply with his whip.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Pooh!” thought Magnolia. “He can’t scare me -that way. How like a man—to take it out on the -horses just because he’s angry.” She slipped her hand -through his arm.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t! Don’t jerk my arm like that. You’ll have -them running away in a minute.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I should think they would, after the way you -slashed them. Sometimes I think you don’t care about -horses—as horses—any more than you do about——” -She stopped, aghast. She had almost said, “than you -do about me as a wife.” A long breath. Then, “Gay -darling, I’d like to go back on the stage. I’d like to -act again. Here, I mean. In Chicago.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was braced for a storm and could have weathered -it. But his shouts of laughter startled and bewildered -her and the sensitive chestnuts as well. At this final -affront they bolted, and for the next fifteen minutes -Magnolia clutched the little iron rod at the end of the -seat with one hand and clung to her hat with the other -as the outraged horses stretched their length down the -rutty country road, eyes flaming, nostrils distended, -hoofs clattering, the light high cart rocking and leaping -behind them. Ravenal’s slender weight was braced -against the footboard. The veins in his wrists shone -blue against dead white. With a tearing sound his -right sleeve ripped from his coat. Little beads of -moisture stood out about his mouth and chin. Magnolia, -white-lipped, tense, and terribly frightened, -magnificently uttered no sound. If she had been one -of your screamers there probably would have been a -sad end. Slowly, gradually, the chestnuts slowed a -trifle, slackened, resumed a normal pace, stood panting -as Ravenal drew up at the side of the road. They -actually essayed to nibble innocently at some sprigs of -grass growing by the roadside while Ravenal wiped his -face and neck and hands, slowly, with his fine perfumed -linen handkerchief. He took off his black derby hat -and mopped his forehead and the headband of his hat’s -splendid white satin lining. He fell to swearing, softly, -this being the form in which the male, relieved after -fright, tries to deny that he has been frightened.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He turned to look at her, his eyes narrow. She -turned to look at him, her great eyes wide. She leaned -toward him a little, her hand over her heart. And then, -suddenly, they both began to laugh, so that the chestnuts -pricked up their ears again and Ravenal grabbed -the reins. They laughed because they were young, and -had been terribly frightened, and were now a little -hysterical following the strain. And because they loved -each other, so that their fear of injury and possible death -had been for each a double horror.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s what happens when you talk about going -on the stage,” said Ravenal. “Even the horses run at -the thought. I hope this will be a lesson to you.” He -gathered up the reins.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A person would think I’d never been an actress and -knew nothing of the stage.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You don’t think that catch-as-catch-can performance -was acting, do you? Or that hole in the wall a -stage! Or that old tub a theatre! Or those plays——Good -God! Do you remember . . . ‘Sue, if he -loves yuh, go with him. Ef he ain’t good to yuh——’ ”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I do!” cried Magnolia. “I do think so. I -loved it. Everybody in the company was acting because -they liked it. They’d rather do it than anything -in the world. Maybe we weren’t very good but the -audiences thought we were; and they cried in the places -where they were supposed to cry, and laughed when -they should have laughed, and believed it all, and were -happy, and if that isn’t the theatre then what is?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Chicago isn’t a river dump; and Chicago audiences -aren’t rubes. You’ve seen Modjeska and Mansfield -and Bernhardt and Jefferson and Ada Rehan since then. -Surely you know the difference.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“That’s the funny part of it. I don’t, much. Oh, -I don’t mean they haven’t got genius. And they’ve -been beautifully directed. And the scenery and costumes -and all. But—I don’t know—they do exactly -the same things—do them better, but the same things -that Schultzy told us to do—and the audiences laugh at -the same things and cry at the same things—and they -go trouping around the country, on land instead of -water, but trouping just the same. They play heroes -and heroines in plays all about love and adventure; and -the audiences go out blinking with the same kind of -look on their faces that the river-town audiences used -to have, as though somebody had just waked them -up.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t be silly, darling. . . . Ah, here we are!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And here they were. They had arrived in ample -time, so that Magnolia chatted shyly and Ravenal -chatted charmingly with Pa and Ma Dowling; and -Magnolia was reminded of Thebes as she examined the -shells and paper roses and china figurines in the parlour. -The dinner was excellent, abundant, appetizing. -Scarcely were they seated at the long table near the -window when there was heard a great fanfare and hullabaloo -outside. Up the winding driveway swept a -tallyho, and out of it spilled a party of Chicago bloods -in fawn covert coats and derby hats and ascot ties and -shiny pointed shoes; and they gallantly assisted the -very fashionable ladies who descended the perilous steps -with much shrill squealing and shrieking and maidenly -clutching at skirts, which clutchings failed satisfactorily -of their purpose. Some of the young men carried banjos -and mandolins. The four horses jangled their metal-trimmed -harness and curveted magnificently. Up the -steps swarmed the gay young men and the shrill -young women. On closer sight Magnolia noticed that -some of these were not, after all, so young.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Good God!” Ravenal had exclaimed; and had -frowned portentously.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do you know them, Gay?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s Bliss Chapin’s gang. He’s giving a party. -He’s going to be married day after to-morrow. They’re -making a night of it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Really! How lovely! Which one’s the girl he’s -to marry? Point her out.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And for the second time Ravenal said, “Don’t be -silly, darling.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They entered the big dining room on a wave of sound -and colour. They swarmed the table. They snatched -up bits of bread and pickles and celery, and munched -them before they were seated. They caught sight of -Ravenal.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Gay! Well, I’m damned! Gay, you old Foxey -Quiller, so that’s why you wouldn’t come out! Heh, -Blanche, look! Here’s Gay, the bad boy. Look who’s -here!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I thought you were going out to Cramp’s place,” -Gay said, sullenly, in a low voice, to one of the men.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He chose the wrong confidant, the gentleman being -neither reticent nor ebriate. He raised his voice to a -shout. “That’s a good ’un! Listen! Foxey Gay -thought we were going out to Cramp’s place, so what -does he do? He brings his lady here. Heh, Blanche, -d’you hear that? Now you know why he couldn’t -come.” He bent upon Magnolia a look of melting -admiration. “And can you blame him? All together! -NO!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You go to hell,” said the lady named Blanche from -the far end of the table, though without anger; rather -in the manner of one who is ready with a choice bit of -repartee. Indeed it must have been so considered, for -at its utterance Mr. Bliss Chapin’s pre-nuptial group -uttered shouts of approbation.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Shut up, you jackass,” said Ravenal then, sotto -voce.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And “Oho!” bellowed the teaser. “Little Gay’s -afraid he’ll get in trouble with his lady friend.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Gay’s lady friend now disproved for all time her -gentleman friend’s recent accusation that she knew nothing -about the art of acting. She raised her head and -gazed upon the roistering crew about the long table. -Her face was very white, her dark eyes were enormous; -she was smiling.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Won’t you introduce me to your friends, Gay?” -she said, in her clear and lovely voice.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t be a fool,” whispered Ravenal, at her side.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The host, Bliss Chapin, stood up rather red-faced -and fumbling with his napkin. He was not sober, -but his manner was formal—deferential, even. “Mrs.—uh—Rav’nal—I—uh—charmed. -I rem’ber seeing -you—someone pointed you out in a box at th—th—th—” -he gave it up and decided to run the two words -together—“ththeatre. Chapin’s my name. Bliss -Chapin. Call me Bliss. Ever’body calls me Bliss. -Uh—” he decided to do the honours. He indicated -each guest with a graceful though vague wave of the -hand. “ ’S Tantine . . . Fifi . . . Gerty -. . . Vi’let . . . Blanche . . . Mignon. -Lovely girls. Lovely. But—we’ll let that pass. Uh -. . . Georgie Skiff. . . . Tom Haggerty . . . -Billy Little—Li’l’ Billee we call him. Pretty cute, -huh? . . . Know what I mean? . . . Dave -Lansing . . . Jerry Darling—that’s his actu-al -name. Can you ’mazhine what the girls can do with -name like that! Boys ’n girls, this’s Mrs. Gaylord -Ravenal, wife of the well-known faro expert. An’ a -lucky dog he is, too. No offense, I hope. Jus’ my rough -way. I’m going to be married to-morr’. An’thing -goes ’sevening.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Prolonged applause and shouting. A twanging of -mandolins and banjos.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Speech!” shouted the man who had first called -attention to Magnolia. “Speech by Mrs. Ravenal!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They took it up shrilly, hoarsely, the Fifis, the Violets, -the Billys, the Gertys, the Jerrys. Speech! Speech!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ravenal got to his feet. “We’ve got to go,” he -began. “Sorry——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Sit down! Throw him out! Foxey Gay! Shut up, -Gay!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ravenal turned to Magnolia. “We’ll have to get -out of this,” he said. He put a hand on her arm. His -hand was trembling. She turned her head slowly and -looked up at him, her eyes blank, the smile still on her -face. “Oh, no,” she said, and shook her head. “Oh, -no. I like it here, Gay dear.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Speech!” yelled the Tantines, the Mignons, the -Daves, beating on their plates with their spoons.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia brought one hand up to her throat in a -little involuntary gesture that betokened breathlessness. -There was nothing else to indicate how her heart was -hammering. “I—I can’t make a speech,” she began in -her lovely voice.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Speech! Speech!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She looked at Ravenal. She felt a little sorry for -him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I’ll sing you a song if you’ll lend me a banjo, -someone.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She took the first of a half-dozen instruments thrust -toward her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Magnolia!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Do sit down, Gay dear, and stop fidgeting about so. -It’s all right. I’m glad to entertain your friends.” She -still wore the little set smile. “I’m going to sing a song -I learned from the Negroes when I was a little girl and -lived on a show boat on the Mississippi River.” She -bent her head above the banjo and began to thumb it -softly. Then she threw her head back slightly. One -foot tapped emphasis to the music’s cadence. Her -lids came down over her eyes—closed down over them. -She swayed a little, gently. It was an unconscious -imitation of old Jo’s attitude. “It’s called Deep River. -It doesn’t mean—anything. It’s just a song the niggers -used to——” She began to sing, softly. “Deep——river——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>When she had finished there was polite applause.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I think it’s real sweet,” announced the one they -called Violet. And began to snivel, unbecomingly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mr. Tom Haggerty now voiced the puzzlement which -had been clouding his normally cheerful countenance.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You call that a coon song and maybe it is. I don’t -dispute you, mind. But I never heard any song like -<span class='it'>that</span> called a coon song, and I heard a good many coon -songs in my day. I Want Them Presents Back, and A -Hot Time, and Mistah Johnson, Turn Me Loose.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Sing another,” they said, still more politely. -“Maybe something not quite so sad. You’ll have us -thinking we’re at prayer meeting next. First thing you -know Violet here will start to repent her sins.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So she sang All God’s Chillun Got Wings. They -wagged their heads and tapped their feet to that. I got -a wings. You got a wings. All o’ God’s chillun got -a wings. When I get to heab’n I’m goin’ to put on my -wings, I’m goin’ to fly all ovah God’s heab’n . . . -heab’n . . .</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Well, that, they agreed, was better. That was more -like it. The red-faced cut-up rose on imaginary wings -to show how he, too, was going to fly all over God’s -heab’n. The forthright Blanche refused to be drawn -into the polite acclaim. “If you ask me,” she announced, -moodily, “I think they’re rotten.” “I like -somepin’ a little more lively, myself,” said the girl they -called Fifi. “Do you know What! Marry Dat Gal! -I heard May Irwin sing it. She was grand.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No,” said Magnolia. “That’s the only kind of -song I know, really.” She stood up. “I think we must -be going now.” She looked across the table, her great -dark eyes fixed on the red-faced bridegroom. “I hope -you will be very happy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A toast to the Ravenals! To Gaylord Ravenal and -Mrs. Ravenal!” She acknowledged that too, charmingly. -Ravenal bowed stiffly and glowered and for the -second time that day wiped his forehead and chin and -wrists with his fine linen handkerchief.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The chestnuts were brought round. Bliss Chapin’s -crew crowded out to the veranda off the dining room. -Magnolia stepped lightly up to the seat beside Ravenal -in the high dog-cart. It was dusk. A sudden sharpness -had come into the evening air as always, toward -autumn, in that Lake Michigan region. Magnolia -shivered a little and drew about her the little absurd -flounced shoulder cape so recently purchased. The -crowd on the veranda had caught the last tune and were -strumming it now on their banjos and mandolins. -The kindly light behind them threw their foolish faces -into shadow. You heard their voices, plaintive, even -sweet: the raucous note fled for the moment. Fifi’s -voice and Jerry’s; Gerty’s voice and little Billee’s. I -got a wings. You got a wings. All God’s chillun -got a wings. When I get to heab’n I’m goin’ to put -on my wings, I’m goin’ to fly . . .</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia turned to wave to them as the chestnuts -made the final curve in the driveway and stretched -eagerly toward home.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Silence between the two for a long half hour. Then -Ravenal, almost humbly: “Well—I suppose I’m in for -it, Nola. Shoot!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But she had been thinking, “I must take things -in hand now. I have been like a foolish young girl -when I’m really quite an old married woman. I suppose -being bossed by Mama so much did that. I must -take Kim in hand now. What a fool I’ve been. ‘Don’t -be silly, darling.’ He was right. I have been——” -Aloud she said, only half conscious that he had spoken, -“What did you say?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You know very well what I said. I suppose I’m -in for one of your mother’s curtain lectures. Go on. -Shoot and get it over.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t be silly, darling,” said Magnolia, a trifle -maliciously. “What a lovely starlight night it is! . . .” -She laughed a little. “Do you know, those dough-faced -Fifis and Tantines and Mignons were just like the Ohio -and Illinois farm girls, dressed up. The ignorant girls -who used to come to see the show. I’ll bet that when -they were on the farm, barefooted, poor things, they -were Annie and Jenny and Tillie and Emma right -enough.”</p> - -<div><h1>XVI</h1></div> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='lead-in'><span class='dropcap'>“A</span>nd</span> this,” said Sister Cecilia, “is the chapel.” -She took still another key from the great bunch -on her key chain and unlocked the big gloomy -double doors. It was incredible that doors and floors -and wainscotings so shining with varnish could still -diffuse such an atmosphere of gloom. She entered -ahead of them with the air of a cicerone. It seemed to -Magnolia that the corridors were tunnels of murk. -It was like a prison. Magnolia took advantage of this -moment to draw closer still to Kim. She whispered -hurriedly in her ear:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Kim darling, you don’t need to stay. If you don’t -like it we’ll slip away and you needn’t come back. -It’s so gloomy.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I do like it,” said Kim in her clear, decisive -voice. “It’s so shiny and clean and quiet.” In spite -of her lovely Ravenal features, which still retained something -of their infantile curves, she looked at that moment -startlingly like her grandmother, Parthenia Ann -Hawks. They followed Sister Cecilia into the chapel. -Magnolia shivered a little.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In giving Kim a convent education it was not in -Magnolia’s mind to prepare her for those Sunday -theatrical page interviews beginning, “I was brought -up by the dear Sisters in the Convent.” For that matter, -the theatre as having any part in Kim’s future -never once entered Magnolia’s mind. Why this should -have been true it is difficult to say, considering the -child’s background, together with the fact that she was -seeing <span class='it'>Camille</span> and <span class='it'>Ben Hur</span>, and the Rogers Brothers -in Central Park at an age when other little girls were -barely permitted to go to cocoa parties in white muslin -and blue sashes where they might, if they were lucky, -see the funny man take the rabbit out of the hat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The non-sectarian girls’ schools of good standing -looked askance at would-be entrants whose parentage -was as socially questionable, not to say bizarre, as that -represented by Ravenal mère and père. The daughter -of a professional gambler and an ex-show-boat actress -would have received short shrift at the hands of the -head mistress of Miss Dignam’s School for Girls at -Somethingorother-on-the-Hudson. The convent school, -then, opened its gloomy portals to as motley a collection -of <span class='it'>jeunes filles</span> as could be imagined under one roof. -In the prim dim corridors and cubicles of St. Agatha’s -on Wabash Avenue, south, you might see a score of -girlish pupils who, in spite of the demure face, the sleek -braids, the severe uniform, the modest manner, the -prunes-and-prism expression, still resembled in a startling -degree this or that vivacious lady whose name was -associated with the notorious Everleigh Club, or with -the music halls and museums thriving along Clark -Street or Madison or Dearborn. Visiting day at St. -Agatha’s saw an impressive line of smart broughams -outside the great solemn brick building; and the ladies -who emerged therefrom, while invariably dressed in -garments of sombre colour and restrained cut, still -produced the effect of being attired in what is known as -fast black. They gave forth a heady musky scent. -And the mould of their features, even when transformed -by the expression that crept over them as they gazed -upon those girlish faces so markedly resembling their -own, had a look as though the potter had used a heavy -thumb.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The convent had been Magnolia’s idea. Ravenal -had laughed when she broached the subject to him. -“She’ll be well fed and housed and generally cared for -there,” he agreed. “And she’ll learn French and embroidery -and deportment and maybe some arithmetic, -if she’s lucky. But every t—uh—every shady lady on -Clark Street sends her daughter there.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She’s got to go somewhere, Gay. This pillar-to-post -life we’re leading is terrible for a child.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What about your own life when you were a child? -I suppose you led a prissy existence.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It was routine compared to Kim’s. When I went -to bed in my little room on the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> I at least -woke up in it next morning. Kim goes to sleep on north -Clark and wakes up on Michigan Avenue. She never -sees a child her own age. She knows more bell boys and -chambermaids and waiters than a travelling man. She -thinks a dollar bill is something to buy candy with and -that when a stocking has a hole in it you throw it away. -She can’t do the simplest problem in arithmetic, and -yesterday I found her leaning over the second-floor -rotunda rail spitting on the heads of people in the——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Did she hit anybody?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It isn’t funny, Gay.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It is, too. I’ve always wanted to do it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, so have I—but, anyway, it won’t be funny -five years from now.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>St. Agatha’s occupied half of one of Chicago’s huge -square blocks. Its great flight of front steps was flush -with the street, but at the back was a garden discreetly -protected by a thick brick wall fully ten feet high and -belligerently spiked. St. Agatha herself and a whole -host of attendant cherubim looked critically down upon -Magnolia and Kim as they ascended the long broad -flight of steps that led to the elaborately (and lumpily) -carved front door. Of the two Magnolia was the more -terrified. The windows glittered so sharply. The -stairs were so clean. The bell, as they rang it, seemed -to echo so hollowly through endless unseen halls and -halls and halls. The hand that opened the door had -been preceded by no sound of human footsteps. The -door had loomed before them seemingly as immovable -as the building itself. There was the effect of black -magic in its sudden and noiseless opening. The great -entrance hall waited still and dim. The black-robed -figure before them was vaguely surmounted by a round -white face that had the look of being no face at all -but a flat circular surface on which features had been -clumsily daubed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I came to see about placing my little girl in school.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The flat surface broke up surprisingly into a smile. -She was no longer a mysterious and sombre figure but a -middle-aged person, kindly, but not especially bright. -“This way.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>This way led to a small and shiny office presided over -by another flat circular surface. This, in turn, gave -way to a large and almost startlingly sunny room, one -flight up, where sat at a desk a black-robed figure -different from the rest. A large pink face. Penetrating -shrewd blue eyes behind gold-rimmed spectacles. -A voice that was deep without resonance. A woman -with the look of the ruler. Parthy, practically, in the -garb of a Mother Superior.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, my goodness!” thought Magnolia, in a panic. -She held Kim’s cool little hand tight in her own agitated -fingers. Of the two, she was incalculably the younger. -The classrooms. The sewing room. Sister This. -Sister That. The garden. Little hard benches. Prim -gravel paths. Holy figures in stone brooding down -upon the well-kept flower beds. Saints and angels and -apostles. When all those glittering windows were dark, -and the black-robed figures within lay in slumber, -their hands (surely) crossed on their barren breasts and -the flat circular surfaces reposed exactly in the centre -of the hard pillows, and the moonlight flooded this -cloistered garden spot with the same wanton witchery -that enveloped a Sicilian bower, did these pious stone -images turn suddenly into fauns and nymphs and dryads, -Magnolia wondered, wickedly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Aloud: “I see . . . I see . . . Oh, the -refectory . . . I see. . . . Prayers . . . -seven o’clock . . dark blue dresses . . . -every Thursday from two to five . . . and sewing -and music and painting as well. . . .”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And this was the chapel. I see. And this was her -bedroom to be shared with another pupil. But she has -always had her own. It is the rule. I see. I’ll let you -know. It’s Kim. I know it is, but that’s her name, -really. It’s—she was born in Kentucky and Illinois -and Missouri—that is—yes, it does sound—no, I don’t -think she’d like to have you call her anything else, she’s -so used—I’ll let you know, may I? I’d like to talk it -over with her to see if she thinks she’d be happy . . .</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In the garden, in various classrooms, in the corridors, -and on the stairs they had encountered girls from ten to -sixteen or even eighteen years of age, and they were all -dressed exactly alike, and they had all flashed a quick -prim look at the visitors from beneath demure lids. -Magnolia had sensed a curious undercurrent of plot, of -mischief. Hidden secret thoughts scurried up the bare -varnished halls, lurked grinning in the stairway niches.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They were back in the big sunny second-floor room -after their tour of inspection. The pink-faced Parthy -person was regarding them with level brows. Magnolia -was clinging more tightly than ever to Kim’s hand. It -was as though the child were supporting her, not she the -child.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I know now whether I like it or not,” Kim had -spoken up, astonishingly. “I like it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia was horrified to find that she had almost -cried, “Oh, no! No, Kim!” aloud. She said, instead, -“Are you sure, darling? You needn’t stay unless you -want to. Mother just brought you to see if you might -like it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I do,” repeated Kim, patiently, as one speaks to an -irritating child.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia was conscious of a sinking sense of disappointment. -She had hoped, perversely enough, that -Kim would stamp her feet, throw herself screaming on -the floor, and demand to be carried out of the bare clean -orderly place back to the delightful welter of Clark -Street. She could not overcome the feeling that in thus -bestowing upon Kim a ladylike education and background -she was depriving her of something rich and -precious and colourful. She thought of her own childhood. -She shut her eyes so as to see more clearly the -pictures passing in her mind. Deep rivers. Wide -rivers. Willows by the water’s edge trailing gray-green. -Dogwood in fairy bloom. Darkies on the landing. -Plinketty-plunk-plunk-plunk, plinketty-plunk-plunk-plunk. -Cotton bales. Sweating black bodies. Sue, ef -he loves yuh, go with him. To-morrow night, ladies -and gentlemen, that magnificent comedy-drama, Honest -Hearts and Willing Hands. The band, red-coated, its -brass screaming defiance at the noonday sun.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The steely blue eyes in the pink face surrounded by -the white wimple and the black coif seemed to be boring -into her own eyes. “If you yourself would rather -not have her here with us we would prefer not to take -her.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, but I would! I do!” Magnolia cried hastily.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>So it was arranged. Next week. Monday. Half a -dozen woollen this. Half a dozen cotton that.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Descending the great broad flight of outside steps -Magnolia said, like a child, “From now until Monday -we’ll do things, shall we? Fun. What would you like -to do?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, a matinée on Saturday——” began Kim -eagerly. Magnolia was enormously relieved. She had -been afraid that this brief glimpse into the more spiritual -life might already have had a chastening effect upon the -cosmopolitan Kim.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Thus the child was removed from the pernicious -atmosphere of the Chicago Levee just when the Levee -itself began to feel the chastening hand of reform. -Suddenly, overnight, Chicago went civic. For a -quarter of a century she had been a strident, ample-bosomed, -loud-mouthed Rabelaisian giantess in red -satin and diamonds, who kept open house day and night -and welcomed all comers. There were food and drink -and cheer. Her great muscular arms embraced ranchers -from Montana and farmers from Indiana and bankers -from New York. At Bath House John’s Workingmen’s -Exchange you got a tub of beer for a nickel; -the stubble-faced bums lined the curb outside his -ceaselessly swinging door on Clark Street. The visiting -ranchers and farmers and bankers were told to go over -to the Palmer House and see the real silver dollars sunk -in the tiled floor of that hostelry’s barroom. The garrulous -Coughlin, known as The Bath, and the silent little -Hinky Dink Mike Kenna were Chicago’s First Ward -aldermen and her favourite naughty sons. The roulette -wheels in Gamblers’ Alley spun merrily by day and -by night. The Mayor of the city called a genial, “Hope -you’re all winning, boys!” as he dropped in for a sociable -drink and a look at the play; or even to take a hand. -“What’ll you have?” was Chicago’s greeting, and -“Don’t care if I do,” her catch phrase. Hetty Chilson -was the recognized leader of her sinister world, and that -this world happened to be prefaced by the qualifying -word, “under” made little difference in Chicago’s eyes. -Pawnshops, saloons, dives, and gambling houses lined -Clark Street from Twelfth to the river, and dotted the -near-by streets for blocks around. The wind-burned -ranchmen in bearskin coats and sombreros at Polk and -Clark were as common a sight as the suave white-fingered -gentry in Prince Alberts and diamonds at Clark -and Madison. It was all one to Chicago. “Game upstairs, -gentlemen! Game upstairs!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>New York, eyeing her Western cousin through disapproving -lorgnettes, said, “What a crude and vulgar -person!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Me!” blustered Chicago, dabbing futilely at the -food and wine spots on her broad satin bosom. “Me! -I’ll learn you I’m a lady.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The names of University of Chicago professors -(Economics Department) began to appear on the lists of -aldermanic candidates. Earnest young men and women -with notebooks and fountain pens knocked at barred -doors, stated that they were occupied in compiling a -Survey, and asked intimate questions. Down came -whole blocks of rats’ nests on Clark and Dearborn, with -the rats scuttling frantically to cover. Up went office -buildings that actually sneered down upon the Masonic -Temple’s boasted height. Brisk gentlemen in eyeglasses -and sack suits whisked in and out of these chaste -edifices. The clicking sound to be heard on Clark Street -was no longer that of the roulette wheel but of the -stock market ticker and the Western Union transmitter.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was rumoured that they were going to close Jeff -Hankins’. They were going to close Mike McDonald’s. -They were going to banish the Washington Park race -track.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They can’t do it,” declared Gaylord Ravenal.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, can’t we!” sneered the reformers. Snick-snack, -went the bars on Hankins’ doors and on Mike McDonald’s. -It actually began to be difficult to find an -open game. It began to be well-nigh impossible. It -came to such a pass that you had to know the signal -knock. You had to submit to a silent scrutiny from -unseen eyes peering through a slit somewhere behind a -bland closed door. The Prince Alberts grew shiny. -The fine linen showed frayed edges. The diamonds -reposed unredeemed for longer and longer periods at -Lipman’s or Goldsmith’s. The Ravenal ring and the -succession of sealskin sacques seemed permanently to -have passed out of the Ravenal possession. The malacca -stick, on the other hand, was now a fixture. It -had lost its magic. It was no longer a symbol of security. -The day was past when its appearance at -Lipman’s or Goldsmith’s meant an I O U for whatever -sum Gay Ravenal’s messenger might demand. There -actually were mornings when even the Cockeyed -Bakery represented luxury. As for breakfast at Billy -Boyle’s! An event.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The Ravenals’ past experience in Chicago seemed, -in comparison with their present precarious position, a -secure and even humdrum existence. Ohio and Ontario -streets knew them for longer and longer periods. Now -when Magnolia looked into the motley assemblage of -objects in the more obscure pawnshop windows, she -was likely to avert her eyes quickly at recognition of -some object not only intimate but familiar. Magnolia -thought of Kim, safe, secure, comfortable, in the convent -on Wabash Avenue.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I must have felt this thing coming,” she said to -Ravenal. “Felt it in my bones. She’s out of all this. -It makes me happy just to think of it; to think of her -there.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How’re you going to keep her there?” demanded -Ravenal, gloomily. “I’m strapped. You might as -well know it, if you don’t already. I’ve had the -damnedest run of luck.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia’s eyes grew wide with horror. “Keep her -there! Gay! We’ve got to. I wouldn’t have her -knocking around here with us. Gay, can’t you do -something? Something real, I mean. Some kind of -work like other—I mean, you’re so wonderful. Aren’t -there things—positions—you know—with banks or—uh—those -offices where they buy stocks and sell them -and make money in wheat and—wheat and things?” -Lamely.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Ravenal kissed her. “What a darling you are, Nola. -A darling simpleton.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was a curious and rather terrible thing, this love -bond between them. All that Parthy had grimly predicted -had come to pass. Magnolia knew him for what -he was. Often she hated him. Often he hated her. -Often he hated her because she shamed him with her -gaiety, her loyalty, her courage, her tenderness. He -was not true to her. She knew this now. He knew she -knew this. She was a one-man woman. Frequently -they quarrelled hideously. Tied to you. . . . Tied! -God knows I’d be happier without you. You’ve never -brought me anything but misery. . . . Always -finding fault. . . . Put on those fine lady airs with -me. What’d I take you out of! . . . An honest -living, anyway. Look people in the face. Accusations. -Bitterness. Longing. Passion. The long periods of -living in sordid surroundings made impossible most of -the finer reticences. Garments washed out in the -basin. Food cooked over the gas jet. One room. -One bed. Badly balanced meals. Reproaches. Tears. -Sneers. Laughter. Understanding. Reconciliation.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They loved each other. Over and above and through -and beneath it all, thick and thin, warp and woof, they -loved each other.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was when their fortunes were at lowest ebb; when -the convent tuition had now been two terms unpaid; -when the rent on the Ontario Street lodgings was overdue; -when even Ravenal, handsome and morose, was -forced to content himself with the coffee and rolls of -the bedroom breakfast; when a stroll up Clark Street -meant meeting a dozen McLean suits as shabby as his -own—it was at this unpropitious time that Parthenia -Ann Hawks was seized with the idea of visiting her -daughter, her son-in-law, and her grandchild in Chicago. -Her letters always came to the Sherman House—had -been called for there through these years though the -fluctuations of fortune had carried the Ravenals away -from the hotel and back again with a tide-like regularity. -Twice Magnolia had taken Kim to see her grim -grandmamma at Thebes when the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> was -in for repairs during the winter season. These visits -had always been timed when the Ravenal tide was -high. Magnolia and Kim had come back to Thebes -on the crest of a wave foaming with silks and laces and -plumes and furs. The visits could not, however, be -said to have been a success. Magnolia always came -prepared to be the fond and dutiful daughter. Invariably -she left seething between humorous rage and -angry laughter.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It wasn’t anything she actually did,” she would -explain afterward, ruefully, to Ravenal. “It’s just -that she treats me with such disrespect.” She pondered -this a moment. “I honestly think Mama’s the vainest -woman I have ever met.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Strangely enough, Kim and her grandmother did not -get on very satisfactorily, either. It dawned on Magnolia -that the two were much alike. Their methods -were different, but the result was the same. Each was -possessed of an iron determination; boundless vitality; -enormous resistance; canny foresight; definite ambition. -Parthy was the blustering sort; Kim the quietly stubborn. -When the two met in opposition they stood -braced, horn to horn, like bulls.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>On both occasions these visits had terminated -abruptly in less than a week. The bare, wind-swept -little town, winter-locked, had seemed unspeakably -dreary to Magnolia. In the chill parlour of the cottage -there was a wooden portrait of her father done in crayon. -It was an enlargement which Parthy had had done -from a small photograph of Andy in his blue coat and -visored cap and baggy wrinkled pants. An atrocious -thing, but the artist, clumsy though he was, had somehow -happened to catch the alert and fun-loving brightness -of the keen brown eyes. The mutton-chop whiskers -looked like tufts of dirty cotton; the cheeks were -pink as a chorus girl’s. But the eyes were Andy’s. -Magnolia wandered into the parlour to stand before -this picture, looking up at it with a smile. She wandered, -too, down to the river to gaze at the sluggish yellow -flood thick now with ice, but as enthralling as ever to -her. She stood on the river bank in her rich furs, a -lonely, wind-swept figure, gazing down the river, down -the river, and her eyes that had grown so weary with -looking always at great gray buildings and grim gray -streets and swarming gray crowds now lost their look -of strain, of unrepose, as they beheld in the far still -distance the lazy Southern wharves, the sleepy Southern -bayous—Cairo, Memphis, Vicksburg, Natchez, New -Orleans—Queenie, Jo, Elly, Schultzy, Andy, Julie, -Steve.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She took Kim eagerly to the water’s edge—gave her -the river with a sweep of her arm. Kim did not like it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Is that the river?” she asked.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why, yes, darling. Don’t you remember! The -river!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The river you told me about?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Of course!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s all dirty and ugly. You said it was beautiful.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, Kim, isn’t it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She showed her the picture of Captain Andy.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Grampa?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Cap’n?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, dear. He used to laugh so when you called -him that when you were a little baby. Look at his -eyes, Kim. Aren’t they nice? He’s laughing.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He’s funny-looking,” said Kim.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Parthy asked blunt questions. “Sherman House? -What do you go living in a hotel for all these years, with -the way they charge for food and all! You and that -husband of yours must have money to throw away. -Why don’t you live in a house, with your own things, -like civilized people?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Gay likes hotels.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Shiftless way to live. It must cost a mint of -money.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It does,” agreed Magnolia, amiably.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Like to know where you get it, that’s what.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Gay is very successful.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A snort as maddening as it was expressive from -Parthy. The widow Hawks did not hesitate to catechize -the child in the temporary absence of her mother. -From these sessions Parthy must have gained some -knowledge of the Ohio and Ontario street interludes, -for she emerged from them with a look of grim satisfaction.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And now Parthenia Ann Hawks was coming to -Chicago. She had never seen it. The letter announced -her arrival as two weeks distant. The show-boat -season was at an end. She would stay at the Sherman -House where they were, if it wasn’t too expensive. They -were not to pay. She wouldn’t be beholden to any -one. She might stay a week, she might stay two weeks -or longer, if she liked it. She wanted to see the Stockyards, -the Grand Opera House, the Masonic Temple, -Marshall Field’s, Lincoln Park, and the Chicago River.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My God!” said Gaylord Ravenal, almost piously. -“My GOD!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Stricken, they looked at each other. Stared. It was -a thing beyond laughter. Every inch of space about -them spelled failure. Just such failure as had been -predicted for them by the woman who was now coming, -and whose coming would prove to her the triumph of -that prediction. They were living in a huddle of discomfort -on Ontario Street. Magnolia, on her visits to -Kim at the convent, was hard put to it to manage the -little surprise gift planned to bring to the girl’s face the -flashing look of gay expectancy. A Henrici cake -elaborately iced, to share with her intimates; a book; a -pair of matinée tickets as a special treat; flowers for the -Mother Superior; chocolates. Now the Christmas -holidays were approaching. Kim would expect to -spend them with her parents. But where? They -would not bring her to this sordid lodging. And somehow, -before the new term began, the unpaid tuition -fee must be got together. Still, the Ravenals had faced -such problems as these before now. They could have -met them, they assured each other, as they always had. -Luck always turned when things looked blackest. Life -did that to tease you. But this was different. Gaylord -Ravenal’s world was crumbling. And Parthy! -Parthy! Here was a situation fraught with what of -horror! Here was humiliation. Here was acknowledged -defeat.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Borrow,” suggested Magnolia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“On what security?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t mean that kind of—I don’t mean businesslike -borrowing. I mean borrowing from friends. -Friends. All these men——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Men! What men?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The men at the—at the places.” She had always -pretended that she did not actually know he came by -his livelihood as he did. She never said, “Gamblers’ -Alley.” She refused to admit that daily he had disappeared -within the narrow slit of lane that was really -a Clark Street alley; that he had spent the hours there -watching bits of pasteboard for a living. “The men -you have known so many years.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Grimly: “They’ve all been trying to borrow of me.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But Mike McDonald. Hankins. Varnell.” She -cast pretense aside now. “Thousands. They’ve had -thousands of dollars. All the money we brought with -us to Chicago. Won’t they give some of it back?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>This he found engaging rather than irritating, as well -he might have. He shouted with laughter as he always -did at a fresh proof of her almost incredible naïveté. -At times such as these he invariably would be impelled -to caress her much as one laughs at a child and then -fondles it delightedly after it has surprised one with an -unexpected and charming trick. He would kiss the -back of her neck and then her wide, flexible mouth, and -she would push him away, bewildered and annoyed -that this should be his reaction to what she had meant -so seriously.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Nola, you’re priceless! You’re a darling. There’s -no one like you.” He went off again into a shout of -laughter. “Give it back! McDonald, h’m? There’s -an idea for you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How can you act like that when you know how -serious it is!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Serious! Why, damn it, it’s desperate. I tell you -I’ll never have her come here and see us living like this. -We’ll get out, first. . . . Say, Nola, what’s to prevent -us getting out, anyway? Chicago’s no good any -more. Why not get out of this! I’m sick of this town.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“We haven’t any money to get out with, for one -reason. And Kim’s at school and she’s going to stay -there. She’s going to stay there if I have to——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Have to what?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ask Mama for the money.” She said this mischievously, -troubled though she was. Out he flew into a -rage.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll see her in—— I’ve been in deeper holes than -this and managed to crawl out.” He sat a moment in -silence, staring with unseeing eyes at the shabby sticks -of furniture that emphasized the room’s dreariness. -Magnolia, seated as quietly opposite him, sewing on a -petticoat for Kim, suddenly let her hands sink in her -lap. She realized, with a sort of fright, that he was -as completely outside the room as though his body had -been wafted magically through the window. And for -him she, too, had vanished. He was deep in thought. -The mask was off. She sat looking at him. She -saw, clearly, the man her mother had so bitterly -fought her marrying. The face of this man now in -his late thirties was singularly unlined. Perhaps that -was what you missed in it. The skin and hair and -eyes, the set of the shoulders, the lead of the hand from -the wrist, bespoke a virile man. But vigour—vigorous—no, -he was not that. This was a fencer, not a fighter. -But he had fought for her, years ago. The shambling -preacher in the little river town whose name she had -forgotten. That simple ignorant soul who preached -hell fire and thought that play actors were damned. -He had not expected to be knocked down in his own -musty little shop. Not much of a victory, that. Gay -had opposed that iron woman, her mother. But the -soft life since then. Red plush, rich food, Clark Street. -Weak. What was it? No lines about the mouth. -Why was it weak? Why was it weak now if it had not -been twelve years ago? A handsome man. Hard. -But you couldn’t be hard and weak at the same time, -could you? What was he thinking of so intently? -His face was so exposed, so defenceless, as sometimes -when she awoke in the early morning and looked at -him, asleep. Almost ashamed to look at his face, so -naked was it of the customary daytime covering.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Now resolve suddenly tightened it. He stood up. -He adjusted the smart and shabby hat at an angle that -defied its shabbiness. He reached for the malacca -stick. It was nine o’clock in the evening. They had -had a frugal and unappetizing meal at a little near-by -lunch room. Ravenal had eaten nothing. He had, for -the most part, stared at the dishes with a detached and -slightly amused air as though they had been served him -by mistake and soon would be apologetically reclaimed -by the slovenly waitress who had placed them before -him.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She had never been one to say, “Where are you -going?” Yet now her face was so moving in its appeal -that he answered its unspoken question.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Cheer up, old girl! I know somebody.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Who? Who, Gay?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Somebody I’ve done favours for. She owes me a -good turn.” He was thinking aloud.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Never mind.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She, Gay?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Did I say—now never mind, Nola. I’ll do the -worrying.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He was off.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She had become accustomed, through these years, to -taking money without question when there was money; -to doing without, uncomplainingly, when there was -none. They had had to scheme before now, and scurry -this way and that, seeking a way out of a tight corner. -They had had to borrow as they had often lent. It had -all been part of the Clark Street life—the gay, wasteful, -lax, improvident sporting life of a crude new Mid-west -city. But that life was vanishing now. That city was -vanishing with it. In its place a newer, harder, more -sophisticated metropolis was rearing its ambitious -head.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia, inured to money crises, realized that the -situation to-night was different. This was not a crisis. -It was an impasse.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Let’s get out of here,” Gay had said. There was -no way out. The men from whom he had borrowed in -the past were themselves as harried as he. The sources -from which he had gained his precarious livelihood were -drying up; had almost ceased to exist, except furtively. -I know somebody. Somebody who would like to do -me a favour. Somebody—who—would—like—— A -horrid suspicion darted through her mind, released -from the subconscious. Appalled at its ugliness, she -tried to send it back to its hiding place. It would not -go. It stayed there before her mind’s eye, grinning, -evil, unspeakably repulsive. She took up her sewing -again. She endeavoured to fix her mind on Kim. Kim -asleep in the cold calm quiet of the great walled convent -on South Wabash. French and embroidery and deportment -and china painting and wimples and black wings -and long dark shining halls and round white faces and -slim white tapers and statues of the saints that turned -into fauns and why was that not surprising? A clatter. -One of the saints had dropped her rosary on the bare -shining floor. It wasn’t a rosary. It was an anchor -ringing against the metal stanchion of the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span>.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia awoke. Her sewing scissors had fallen -from her lap. Her face felt stiff and drawn. She -hugged herself a little, and shivered, and looked about -her. Her little gold watch on the dresser—no, of course -not. That was gone. She folded her sewing. It was -late, she knew. She was accustomed to being up until -twelve, one, two. But this was later. Something told -her that this was later. The black hush of the city outside. -The feel of the room in which she sat. The -sinister quiet of the very walls about her. The cheap -clock on the shelf had stopped. The hands said twenty -minutes after two. Twenty-one minutes after, she -told herself in a foolish triumph of precision.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She took down her fine long black hair. Brushed it. -Plaited it. One of the lacy nightgowns so absurd in -the sordid shabbiness of the rooming-house bedroom; -so alien to the coarse gray sheets. She had no other -kind. She went to bed. She fell asleep.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was just before dawn when he returned. The -black of the window panes showed the promise of gray. -His step had an unaccustomed sound. He fumbled for -the gas jet. His very presence was strange in the dark. -The light flared blue, but she knew; she knew even before -it illumined his face that bore queer slack lines she -had never before seen there. For the first time in their -life together Gaylord Ravenal was drunk.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She sat up; reached for her wrapper at the foot of -the bed and bunched it about her shivering shoulders. -He was immensely serious and dignified. He swayed a -little. The slack look on his face. That was all.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll do the worrying,” he said, as though continuing -the conversation that had held them at nine o’clock. -He placed the malacca stick carefully in its corner. He -removed his coat, keeping his hat on. The effect was -startlingly rowdy, perhaps because he had always so -meticulously observed the niceties. Standing thus, -weaving back and forth ever so slightly, he pulled from -his left vest pocket, where it fitted much too snugly, a -plump bill-folder. Custom probably cautioned him to -retain this, merely widening its open side to reveal the -sheaf of notes within. But his condition, and all that -had gone to bring it about, caused him to forego his -cunning. With a vague, but successful, gesture, and a -little lurch as he stood, he tossed the leather folder to the -counterpane. “Coun’ it!” he commanded, very distinctly. -“Ten one hun’er’ dollar bills and ten one -hun’er’ dollar bills makes twen’y one hun’er’ dollar bills -an’ anybody says it doesn’ is a liar. Two thousan’ -dollars. Would you kin’ly count ’em, Mrs. Rav’nal? -I believe”—with businesslike dignity—“I b’lieve you’ll -find that correc’.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia Ravenal in her nightgown with her wrapper -hunched about her shoulders sat staring at the little -leather booklet on the bed. Its gaping mouth mocked -her. She did not touch it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Two thousand dollars?” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I b’lieve you’ll fin’ tha’s correc’.” He seemed to be -growing less distinct.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Where did you get this, Gay?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Never min’. I’ll do th’ worrying.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He unbuttoned his vest with some difficulty. Yawned -prodigiously, like one who has earned his rest after a -good day’s work.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She looked at him. She was like a drawing in French -ink—her face so white, her eyes so enormous, her hair -so black.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You got this from Hetty Chilson.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>His collar came off with a crack-snap. He held it -in the hand that pointed toward the money. He seemed -offended at something. Not angry, but hurt. “How -can you say that, M’nolia! I got one thousan’ from -good ol’ Het and not cen’ more. Wha’ do I do then! -Marsh up to Sheedy’s and win a thousan’ more at -roulette. Ha! That’s a great joke on Sheedy because, -look, roulette isn’ my game. Nev’ has been. -Faro’s my game. Tha’s a gen’leman’s game, faro. -One thousan’ Hetty, and marsh ri’ up . . . roulette -. . . win . . . ’nother . . . Thous. . .” -He lurched to the bed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He was asleep at once, heavily, deeply, beside her -on the bed, his fine long head lolling off the pillow. She -knelt in her place and tried to lift the inert figure to -a more comfortable position; succeeded, finally, after -some tugging. She drew the lumpy coverlet over him. -Then she sat as before, hunched in her nightgown and -the wrapper, staring at the open wallet with its many -leaves. It was dawn now. The room was gray with it. -She ought to turn out the gas. She arose. She picked -up the wallet. Before extinguishing the light she -counted out ten one-hundred-dollar bills from the sheaf -within the wallet. One thousand dollars. Her fingers -touched the bills gingerly, fastidiously, and a little -wrinkle of disgust curled her lip. She placed the bills -on the dresser. She folded the leather holder and -tucked it, with its remaining contents, under his pillow. -He did not waken. She turned out the light then, and -coming back to the bedside drew on the slippers that lay -on the floor. She got her shirtwaist—a fresh white -one with a Gibson tuck—from the drawer, and her skirt -and jacket from the hooks covered over with a protecting -length of calico against the wall. She heated a -little water, and washed; combed and dressed her hair; -put on her clothes, laid her hat on the dresser. Then -she sat in the one comfortable chair that the room -afforded—a crazy and decayed armchair done in dingy -red plush, relic of some past grandeur—and waited. -She even slept a little there in the sagging old chair, -with the morning light glaring pitilessly in upon her -face. When she awoke it must have been nearly noon. -A dour day, but she had grown accustomed to the half-lights -of the Chicago fogs. She glanced sharply at him. -He had not moved. He had not stirred. He looked, -somehow, young, helpless, innocent, pathetic. She -busied herself in making a cup of coffee as quietly as -might be. This might rouse him, but it would make -little difference. She knew what she had to do. She -drank the hot revivifying liquid in great gulps. Then -she put on her jacket, pinned on her hat, took up the -bills and placed them neatly in her handbag. She -glanced at herself in the mirror.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My, you’re plain!” she thought, meaninglessly. -She went down the dim stairway. The fusty landlady -was flapping a gray rag in the outer doorway as her -contribution to the grime of the street.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What’s taking you out so bright and early, Mis’ -Ravenal? Business or pleasure?” She liked her little -joke.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Business,” said Magnolia.</p> - -<div><h1>XVII</h1></div> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='lead-in'><span class='dropcap'>T</span>he</span> knell had sounded for the red brick house -with the lions guarding its portals. The Chicago -soot hung like a pall over it. The front steps -sagged. Even the stone lions had a mangy look. The -lemon-water sunshine of a Chicago winter day despoiled -the dwelling of any sinister exterior aspect. That light, -filtering through the lake mist, gave to the house-front -the look of a pock-marked, wrinkled, and evil old hag -who squats in the market place with her face to the sun -and thinks of her purple past and does not regret it. -It was half-past one. Magnolia Ravenal had figured -this out nicely. That part of Clark Street would be -astir by now. As she approached the house on Clark, -near Polk, her courage had momentarily failed her, and -she had passed it, hurriedly. She had walked a block -south, wretchedly. But the feel of the bills in her bag -gave her new resolve. She opened the handbag to look -at them, turned and walked swiftly back to the house. -She rang the bell this time, firmly, demandingly; stood -looking down at its clean-scrubbed doorstep and tried -to ignore the prickling sensation that ran up and down -her spine and the weak and trembling feeling in her -legs. The people passing by could see her. She was -knocking at Hetty Chilson’s notorious door, and the -people passing by could see her: Magnolia Ravenal. -Well, what of it! Don’t be silly. She rang again.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The door was opened by a Negro in a clean starched -white house coat. Magnolia did not know why the -sight of this rather sad-eyed looking black man should -have reassured her; but it did. She knew exactly what -she wanted to say.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My name is Mrs. Ravenal. I want to speak to -Hetty Chilson.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mis’ Chilson is busy, ma’am,” he said, as though -repeating a lesson. Still, something about the pale, -well-dressed, earnest woman evidently impressed him. -Of late, when he opened the door there had been frequent -surprises for him in the shape of similar earnest -and well-dressed young women who, when you refused -them admittance, flashed an official-looking badge, -whipped out notebook and pencil and insisted pleasantly -but firmly that he make quite sure Miss Chilson was not -in. “You-all one them Suhveys?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Uncomprehending, she shook her head. He made as -though to shut the door, gently. Magnolia had not -spent years in the South for nothing. “Don’t you shut -that door on me! I want to see Hetty Chilson.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The man recognized the tone of white authority. -“Wha’ you want?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia recovered herself. After all, this was not -the front door of a home, but of a House. “Tell her -Mrs. Gaylord Ravenal wants to speak to her. Tell her -that I have one thousand dollars that belongs to her, and -I want to give it to her.” Foolishly she opened her bag -and he saw the neat sheaf of bills. His eyes popped a -little.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes’m. Ah tell huh. Step in, ma’am.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia entered Hetty Chilson’s house. She was -frightened. The trembling had taken hold of her knees -again. But she clutched the handbag and looked about -her, frankly curious. A dim hallway, richly carpeted, -its walls covered with a red satin brocade. There were -deep soft cushioned chairs, and others of carved wood, -high-backed. A lighted lamp on the stairway newel -post cast a rosy glow over the whole. Huge Sèvres -vases stood in the stained-glass window niches. It was -an entrance hall such as might have been seen in the -Prairie Avenue or Michigan Avenue house of a new rich -Chicago packer. The place was quiet. Now and then -you heard a door shut. There was the scent of coffee -in the air. No footfall on the soft carpet, even though -the tread were heavy. Hetty Chilson descended the -stairs, a massive, imposing figure in a black-and-white -patterned foulard dress. She gave the effect of activity -hampered by some physical impediment. Her descent -was one of impatient deliberateness. One hand clung -to the railing. She appeared a stout, middle-aged, -well-to-do householder summoned from some domestic -task abovestairs. She had aged much in the last ten -years. Magnolia, startled, realized that the distortion -of her stout figure was due to a tumour.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How do you do?” said Hetty Chilson. Her keen -eyes searched her visitor’s face. The Negro hovered -near by in the dim hallway. “Are you Mrs. Ravenal?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What is it, please?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia felt like a schoolgirl interrogated by a stern -but well-intentioned preceptress. Her cheeks were -burning as she opened her handbag, took out the sheaf -of hundred-dollar bills, tendered them to this woman. -“The money,” she stammered, “the money you gave -my—you gave my husband. Here it is.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hetty Chilson looked at the bills. “I didn’t give it -to him. I loaned it to him. He said he’d pay it back -and I believe he will. Ravenal’s got the name for being -square.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia touched Hetty Chilson’s hand with the -folded bills; pressed them on her so that the hand opened -automatically to take them. “We don’t want it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t want it! Well, what’d he come asking me -for it for, then? I’m no bank that you can take money -out and put money in.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m sorry. He didn’t know. I can’t—we don’t—I -can’t take it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Hetty Chilson looked down at the bills. Her eyeglasses -hung on the bodice of her dress, near the right -shoulder, attached to a patent gold chain. This she -pulled out now with a businesslike gesture and adjusted -the eyeglasses to her nose. “Oh, you’re that kind, -huh?” She counted the bills once and then again; -folded them. “Does your husband know about this?” -Magnolia did not answer. She looked dignified and -felt foolish. The very matter-of-factness of this world-hardened -woman made this thing Magnolia had done -seem overdramatic and silly. Hetty Chilson glanced -over her shoulder to where the white-coated Negro -stood. “Mose, tell Jule I want her. Tell her to bring -her receipt book and a pen.” Mose ran up the -soft-carpeted stairs. You heard a deferential rap at an -upper door; voices. Hetty turned again to Magnolia. -“You’ll want a receipt for this. Anyway, you’ll have -that to show him when he kicks up a fuss.” She moved -ponderously to the foot of the stairway; waited a moment -there, looking up. Magnolia’s eyes followed her -gaze. Mose had vanished, evidently, down some rear -passage and stairway, for he again appeared mysteriously -at the back of the lower hall though he had not -descended the stairway up which he had gone a moment -before. Down this stair came a straight slim gray-haired -figure. Genteel, was the word that popped into -Magnolia’s mind. A genteel figure in decent black silk, -plain and good. It rustled discreetly. A white fine -turnover collar finished it at the throat. Narrow cuffs -at the wrist. It was difficult to see her face in the dim -light. She paused a moment in the glow of the hall -lamp as Hetty Chilson instructed her. A white face—no, -not white—ivory. Like something dead. White -hair still faintly streaked with black. In this clearer -light the woman seemed almost gaunt. The eyes were -incredibly black in that ivory face; like dull coals, -Magnolia thought, staring at her, fascinated. Something -in her memory stirred at sight of this woman in -the garb of a companion-secretary and with a face like -burned-out ashes. Perhaps she had seen her with -Hetty Chilson at the theatre or the races. She could -not remember.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Make out a receipt for one thousand dollars received -from Mrs. Gaylord Ravenal. R-a-v-e-n-a-l. -Yes, that’s right. Here; I’ll sign it.” Hetty Chilson -penned her name swiftly as the woman held the book for -her. She turned to Magnolia. “Excuse me,” she said. -“I have to be at the bank at two. Jule, give this receipt -to Mrs. Ravenal. Come up as soon as you’re through.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>With a kind of ponderous dignity this strange and -terrible woman ascended her infamous stairway. Magnolia -stood, watching her. Her plump, well-shaped -hand clung to the railing. An old woman, her sins -heavy upon her. She had somehow made Magnolia feel -a fool.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The companion tore the slip of paper from the booklet, -advanced to Magnolia and held it out to her. -“One thousand dollars,” she said. Her voice was deep -and rich and strange. “Mrs. Gaylord Ravenal. -Correct?” Magnolia put out her hand, blindly. Unaccountably -she was trembling again. The slip of paper -dropped from her hand. The woman uttered a little -exclamation of apology. They both stooped to pick -it up as the paper fluttered to the floor. They bumped -awkwardly, actually laughed a little, ruefully, and -straightening, looked at each other, smiling. And as -Magnolia smiled, shyly, she saw the smile on the face -of the woman freeze into a terrible contortion of horror. -Horror stamped itself on her every feature. Her eyes -were wild and enormous with it; her mouth gaped with -it. So the two stood staring at each other for one hideous -moment. Then the woman turned, blindly, and -vanished up the stairs like a black ghost. Magnolia -stood staring after her. Then, with a little cry, she -made as though to follow her up the stairway. Strangely -she cried, “Julie! Julie, wait for me!” Mose, the -Negro, came swiftly forward. “This way out, miss,” -he said, deferentially. He held the street door open. -Magnolia passed through it, down the steps of the brick -house with the lions couchant, into the midday brightness -of Clark Street. Suddenly she was crying, who -so rarely wept. South Clark Street paid little attention -to her, inured as it was to queer sights. And if a -passer-by had stopped and said, “What is it? Can I -help you?” she would have been at a loss to reply. -Certainly she could not have said, “I think I have just -seen the ghost of a woman I knew when I was a little -girl—a woman I first saw when I was swinging on the -gate of our house at Thebes, and she went by in a long-tailed -flounced black dress and a lace veil tied around -her hat. And I last saw her—oh, I can’t be sure. I -can’t be sure. It might not——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Clark Street, even if it had understood (which is impossible), -would not have been interested. And presently, -as she walked along, she composed herself. She -dabbed at her face with her handkerchief and pulled -down her neat veil. She had still another task to perform. -But the day seemed already so old. She was -not sleepy, but her mind felt thick and slow. The -events of the past night and of the morning did not -stand out clearly. It was as if they had happened long -ago. Perhaps she should eat something. She had had -only that cup of coffee; had eaten almost nothing the -night before.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She had a little silver in her purse. She counted -it as it lay next to the carefully folded thousand-dollar -receipt signed in Hetty Chilson’s firm businesslike -hand. Twenty-five—thirty-five—forty—fifty—seventy-three -cents. Ample. She stopped at a lunch room on -Harrison, near Wabash; ate a sandwich and drank two -cups of coffee. She felt much better. On leaving she -caught a glimpse of herself in a wall mirror—a haggard -woman with a skin blotched from tears, and a shiny -nose and with little untidy wisps of hair showing beneath -her hat. Her shoes—she remembered having -heard or read somewhere that neat shoes were the first -requisite for an applicant seeking work. Furtively and -childishly she rubbed the toe of either shoe on the back -of each stocking. She decided to go to one of the -department-store rest rooms for women and there repair -her toilette. Field’s was the nicest; the Boston store -the nearest. She went up State Street to Field’s. The -white marble mirrored room was full of women. It -was warm and bright and smelled pleasantly of powder -and soap and perfume. Magnolia took off her hat, -bathed her face, tidied her hair, powdered. Now she -felt less alien to these others about her—these comfortable -chattering shopping women; wives of husbands who -worked in offices, who worked in shops, who worked in -factories. She wondered about them. She was standing -before a mirror adjusting her veil, and a woman was -standing beside her, peering into the same glass, each -seemingly oblivious of the other. “I wonder,” Magnolia -thought, fancifully, “what she would say if I -were to turn to her and tell her that I used to be a show-boat -actress, and that my father was drowned in the -Mississippi, and my mother, at sixty, runs a show boat -all alone, and that my husband is a gambler and we have -no money, and that I have just come from the most -notorious brothel in Chicago, where I returned a thousand -dollars my husband had got there, and that I’m on -my way to try to get work in a variety theatre.” She -was smiling a little at this absurd thought. The other -woman saw the smile, met it with a frozen stare of utter -respectability, and walked away.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There were few theatrical booking offices in Chicago -and these were of doubtful reputation. Magnolia knew -nothing of their location, though she thought, vaguely, -that they probably would be somewhere in the vicinity -of Clark, Madison, Randolph. She was wise enough -in the ways of the theatre to realize that these shoddy -agencies could do little for her. She had heard Ravenal -speak of the variety houses and museums on State -Street and Clark and Madison. The word “vaudeville” -was just coming into use. In company with her husband -she had even visited Kohl & Middleton’s Museum—that -smoke-filled comfortable shabby variety house -on Clark, where the admission was ten cents. It had -been during that first Chicago trip, before Kim’s birth. -Women seldom were seen in the audience, but Ravenal, -for some reason, had wanted her to get a glimpse of this -form of theatrical entertainment. Here Weber and -Fields had played for fifteen dollars a week. Here you -saw the funny Irishman, Eddie Foy; and May Howard -had sung and danced.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They’ll probably build big expensive theatres some -day for variety shows,” Ravenal had predicted.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The performance was, Magnolia thought, much like -that given as the concert after the evening’s bill on the -<span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span>. “A whole evening of that?” she said. -Years later the Masonic Temple Roof was opened for -vaudeville.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There!” Ravenal had triumphantly exclaimed. -“What did I tell you! Some of those people get three -and four hundred a week, and even more.” Here the -juggling Agoust family threw plates and lighted lamps -and tables and chairs and ended by keeping aloft a -whole dinner service and parlour suite, with lamps, -soup tureens, and plush chairs passing each other -affably in midair without mishap. Jessie Bartlett -Davis sang, sentimentally, Tuh-rue LOVE, That’s -The Simple Charm That Opens Every Woman’s Heart.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>At the other end of the scale were the all-night -restaurants with a stage at the rear where the waiters -did an occasional song and dance, or where some -amateur tried to prove his talent. Between these were -two or three variety shows of decent enough reputation -though frequented by the sporting world of Chicago. -Chief of these was Jopper’s Varieties, a basement -theatre on Wabash supposed to be copied after the -Criterion in London. There was a restaurant on the -ground floor. A flight of marble steps led down to the -underground auditorium. Here new acts were sometimes -tried out. Lillian Russell, it was said, had got her -first hearing at Jopper’s. For some reason, Magnolia -had her mind fixed on this place. She made straight for -it, probably as unbusinesslike a performer as ever presented -herself for a hearing. It was now well on toward -mid-afternoon. Already the early December dusk was -gathering, aided by the Chicago smoke and the lake fog. -Her fright at Hetty Chilson’s door was as nothing compared -to the sickening fear that filled her now. She -was physically and nervously exhausted. The false -energy of the morning had vanished. She tried to goad -herself into fresh courage by thoughts of Kim at the -convent; of Parthy’s impending visitation. As she -approached the place on Wabash she resolved not to -pass it, weakly. If she passed it but once she never -would have the bravery to turn and go in. She and -Ravenal had driven by many times on their way to the -South Side races. It was in this block. It was four -doors away. It was here. She wheeled stiffly, like a -soldier, and went in. The restaurant was dark and -deserted. One dim light showed at the far end. The -tablecloths were white patches in the grayness. But a -yellow path of light flowed up the stairway that led to -the basement, and she heard the sound of a piano. She -descended the swimming marble steps, aware of the -most alarming sensation in her legs—rather, of no sensation -in them. It was as though no solid structure of -bone and flesh and muscle lay in the region between her -faltering feet and her pounding heart.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There was a red-carpeted foyer; a little ticket window; -the doors of the auditorium stood open. She put out a -hand, blindly, to steady herself against the door jamb. -She looked into the theatre; the badly lighted empty -theatre, with its rows and rows of vacant seats; its -stage at the far end, the curtain half raised, the set a -crudely painted interior. As she looked there came -over her—flowed over her like balm—a feeling of security, -of peace, of home-coming. Here were accustomed -surroundings. Here were the very sights and -smells and sounds she knew best. Those men with their -hats on the backs of their heads and their cigars waggling -comfortably and their feet on the chair in front of -them might have been Schultzy, Frank, Ralph, Pa -Means. Evidently a song was being tried out in rehearsal. -The man at the piano was hammering it and -speaking the words in a voice as hoarse and unmusical -as a boat whistle coming through the fog. It was a coon -song full of mah babys and choo-choos and Alabam’s.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia waited quietly until he had come to a full -stop.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A thin pale young man in a striped shirt and a surprising -gray derby who had been sitting with his wooden -kitchen chair tipped up against the proscenium now -brought his chair down on all fours.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You was with Haverly’s, you say?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I cer’nly was. Ask Jim. Ask Sam. Ask anybody.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, go back to ’em is what I say. If you ever -was more than a singin’ waiter then I’m new to the -show business.” He took his coat from where it lay on -top of the piano. “That’s all for to-day, ain’t it, Jo?” -He addressed a large huddle whose thick shoulders and -round head could just be seen above the back of a -second-row centre seat. The fat huddle rose and -stretched and yawned, and grunted an affirmative.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia came swiftly down the aisle. She looked -up at the thin young man; he stared at her across the -footlight gutter.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Will you let me try some songs?” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Who’re you?” demanded the young man.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My name is Magnolia Ravenal.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Never heard of it. What do you do?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I sing. I sing Negro songs with a banjo.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“All right,” said the thin young man, resignedly. -“Get out your banjo and sing us one.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I haven’t got one.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Haven’t got one what?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“One—a banjo.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, you said you—didn’ you just say you sung -nigger songs with a banjo!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I haven’t got it with me. Isn’t there one?” Actually, -until this moment, she had not given the banjo -a thought. She looked about her in the orchestra pit.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, for God’s sakes!” said the gray derby.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The hoarse-voiced singer who had just met with rebuff -and who was shrugging himself into a shabby -overcoat now showed himself a knight. He took an -instrument case from the piano top. “Here,” he said. -“Take mine, sister.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia looked to left, to right. “There.” The -fat man in the second row jerked a thumb toward the -right stage box back of which was the stage door. -Magnolia passed swiftly up the aisle; was on the stage. -She was quite at ease, relaxed, at home. She seated -herself in one of the deal chairs; crossed her knees.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Take your hat off,” commanded the pasty young -man.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She removed her veil and hat. A sallow big-eyed -young woman, too thin, in a well-made suit and a -modish rather crumpled shirtwaist and nothing of the -look of the stage about her. She thumbed the instrument -again. She remembered something dimly, dimly, -far, far back; far back and yet very recent; this morning. -“Don’t smile too often. But if you ever want anything . . .”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She smiled. The thin young man did not appear -overwhelmed. She threw back her head then as Jo -had taught her, half closed her eyes, tapped time with -the right foot, smartly. Imitative in this, she managed, -too, to get into her voice that soft and husky Negro -quality which for years she had heard on river boats, -bayous, landings. I got a wings. You got a wings. -All God’s chillun got a wings.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Sing another,” said the old young man. She sang -the one she had always liked best.</p> - - - <div class='poetry-container' style=''> - <div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<div class='stanza-outer'> -<p class='line0'>“Go down, Moses,</p> -<p class='line0'>’Way down in Egypt land,</p> -<p class='line0'>Tell ole Pharaoh,</p> -<p class='line0'>To let my people go.”</p> -</div> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>Husky, mournful, melodious voice. Tapping foot. -Rolling eye.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Silence.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What kind of a coon song do you call that?” inquired -the gray derby.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Why, it’s a Negro melody—they sing them in the -South.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Sounds like a church hymn to me.” He paused. -His pale shrewd eyes searched her face. “You a nigger?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The unaccustomed red surged into Magnolia’s cheeks, -dyed her forehead, her throat, painfully. “No, I’m not -a—nigger.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, you cer’nly sing like one. Voice and—I don’t -know—way you sing. Ain’t that right, Jo?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Cer’nly is,” agreed Jo.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The young man appeared a trifle embarrassed, which -made him look all the younger. Years later, in New -York, Kim was to know him as one of the most powerful -theatrical producers of his day. And he was to say to -Kim, “Ravenal, h’m? Why, say, I knew your mother -when she was better-looking than you’ll ever be. And -smart! Say, she tried to sell me a coon song turn down -in Jopper’s in the old days, long before your time. I -thought they were hymns and wouldn’t touch them. -Seems they’re hot stuff now. Spirituals, they call them. -You hear ’em in every show on Broadway. ’S fact! -Got to go to church to get away from ’em. Well, live -and learn’s what I say.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It was through this shrewd, tough, stage-wise boy -that Magnolia had her chance. He did not understand -or like her Negro folk songs then, but he did recognize -the quality she possessed. And it was due to this -precociousness in him that Magnolia, a little more than -a year later, was singing American coon songs in the -Masonic Roof bill, her name on the programme with -those of Cissie Loftus and Marshall Wilder and the -Four Cohans.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>But now she stood up, the scarlet receding from her -face, leaving it paler than before. Silently she handed -the husky singer his banjo; tried to murmur a word of -thanks; choked. She put on her hat, adjusted her veil.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Here, wait a minute, sister. No offense. I’ve -seen ’em lighter’n you. Your voice sounds like a—ain’t -that the truth, Jo?” Actually distressed, he appealed -again to his unloquacious ally in the third row.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Sure does,” agreed Jo.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The unfortunate hoarse-voiced man who had loaned -her the banjo now departed. He seemed to bear no -rancour. Magnolia, seeing this, tried again to smile -on the theory that, if he could be game, then so, too, -could she. And this time, it was the real Magnolia -Ravenal smile of which the newspapers made much in -the years to come. The ravishing Ravenal smile, they -said (someone having considered that alliterative phrase -rather neat).</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Seeing it now the young showman exclaimed, without -too much elegance, “Lookit that, Jo!” Then, to Magnolia: -“Listen, sister. You won’t get far with those. -Your songs are too much like church tunes, see? -They’re for a funeral, not a theaytre. And that’s a -fact. But I like the way you got of singing them. -How about singing me a real coon song? You know. -Hello, Mah Baby! or something like that.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t know any. These are the only songs I -know.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, for——! Listen. You learn some real coon -songs and come back, see, in a week. Here. Try these -over at home, see.” He selected some song sheets from -the accommodating piano top. She took them, numbly.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was again in the cold moist winter street. Quite -dark now. She walked over to State Street and took a -northbound car. The door of their room on the third -floor was locked, and when she had opened it she felt -that the room was empty. Not empty merely; deserted. -Before she had lighted the gas jet she had an -icy feeling of desolation, of impending and piled-up -tragedy at the close of a day that already toppled with -it. Her gaze went straight to the dresser.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>An envelope was there. Her name on it in Ravenal’s -neat delicate hand. Magnolia. Darling, I am going -away for a few weeks . . . return when your -mother is gone . . . or send for you . . . six -hundred dollars for you on shelf under clock . . . -Kim . . . convent . . . enough . . . weeks . . . -darling . . . love . . . best . . . always . . .</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She never saw him again.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She must have been a little light-headed by this time, -for certainly no deserted wife in her right senses would -have followed the course that Magnolia Ravenal now -took. She read the note again, her lips forming some -of the words aloud. She walked to the little painted -shelf over the wash stand. Six hundred. That was -right. Six hundred. Perhaps this really belonged to -that woman, too. She couldn’t go there again. Even -if it did, she couldn’t go there again.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She left the room, the gas flaring. She hurried down -Clark Street, going a few blocks south. Into one of the -pawnshops. That was nothing new. The man actually -greeted her by name. “Good-evening, Mrs. Ravenal. -And what can I do for you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A banjo.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I want to buy a banjo.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She bargained for it, shrewdly. When she tendered -a hundred-dollar bill in payment the man’s face fell.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, now, Mrs. Ravenal, I gave you that special price -because you——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll go somewhere else.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She got it. Hurried back with it. Into her room -again. She had not even locked the door. Five of the -six one-hundred-dollar bills lay as she had tossed them -on the dresser. A little crazy, certainly. Years, years -afterward she actually could relate the fantastic demoniac -events of this day that had begun at four in the -morning and ended almost twenty hours later. It made -a very good story, dramatic, humorous, tragic. Kim’s -crowd thought it was wonderful.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She took off her veil and hat and jacket. Her black -hair lay in loose limp ugly loops about her face. She -opened one of the sheets of music—Whose Black Baby -Are You?—and propped it up against the centre section -of the old-fashioned dresser. She crossed her knees. -Cradled the banjo. One foot tapped the time rhythmically. -An hour. Two hours.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A knock at the door. The landlady, twelve hours -fustier than she had been that morning. “It ain’t me, -Mis’ Ravenal, but Downstairs says she can’t sleep for -the noise. She’s that sickly one. She says she pounded -but you didn’t——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’ll stop. I didn’t hear her. I’m sorry.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“For me you could go on all night.” The landlady -leaned bulkily and sociably against the door. “I’m -crazy about music. I never knew you was musical.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, yes,” said Magnolia. “Very.”</p> - -<div><h1>XVIII</h1></div> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='lead-in'><span class='dropcap'>“I</span> was educated,”</span> began Kim Ravenal, studying her -reflection in the mirror, and deftly placing a dab of -rouge on either ear lobe, “in Chicago, by the dear -Sisters there in St. Agatha’s Convent.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She then had the grace to snigger, knowing well what -the young second-assistant dramatic critic would say to -that. She was being interviewed in her dressing room -at the Booth between the second and third acts of -Needles and Pins. She had opened in this English -comedy in October. Now it was April. Her play before -this had run a year. Her play before that had run -two years. Her play—well, there was nothing new to -be said in an interview with Kim Ravenal, no matter -how young or how dramatic the interviewer. There -was, therefore, a touch of mischievous malice in this -trite statement of hers. She knew what the bright -young man would say in protest.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He said it. He said: “Oh, now, Pete’s sake, Miss -Ravenal! Quit kidding.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But I was. I can’t help it. I was! Ask my -mother. Ask my husband. Ask anybody. Educated -by the dear Sisters in the con——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, I know it! So does everybody else who reads -the papers. And you know as well as I do that that -educated-in-a-convent stuff is rubber-stamp. It ceased -to be readable publicity when Mrs. Siddons was a gal. -Now be reasonable. Kaufman wants a bright piece -about you for the Sunday page.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“All right. You ask intelligent questions and I’ll -answer them.” Kim then leaned forward to peer intently -at her own reflection in the dressing-room mirror -with its brilliant border of amber lights. She reached -for the rabbit’s foot and applied to her cheeks that -nervous and redundant film of rouge which means that -the next curtain is four minutes away.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He was a very cagey New York second-assistant -dramatic critic, who did not confine his talents to -second-assistant dramatic criticism. The pages of -<span class='it'>Vanity Fair</span> and <span class='it'>The New Yorker</span> (locally known as the -Fly Papers) frequently accepted first (assistant dramatic) -aid from his pen. And, naturally, he had written -one of those expressionistic plays so daringly different -that three intrepid managers had decided not to put it -on after all. Embittered, the second-assistant dramatic -critic threatened sardonically to get a production -through the ruse of taking up residence in Prague or -Budapest, changing his name to Capek or Vajda, and -sending his manuscript back to New York as a foreign -play for them to fight over.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Though she had now known New York for many -years, there were phases of its theatrical life that still -puzzled Kim’s mother, Magnolia Ravenal; and this -was one of them. “The critics all seem to write plays,” -she complained. “It makes the life of a successful -actress like Kim so complicated. And the actors and -actresses all lecture on the Trend of the Modern Drama -at League Luncheons given at the Astor. I went to -one once, with Kim. Blue voile ladies from Englewood. -In my day critics criticized and actors acted.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her suave and gifted son-in-law, Kenneth Cameron, -himself a producer of plays of the more precious pattern -(The Road to Sunrise, 1921; Jock o’ Dreams, 1924), -teased her gently about this attitude of intolerance. -“Why, Nola! And you a famous stage mama! You -ought to know that even Kim occasionally has to do -things for publicity.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“In my <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> days we were more subtle. -The band marched down Main Street and played on -the corner and Papa gave out handbills. That was our -publicity. I didn’t have to turn handsprings up the -levee.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There was little that the public did not know about -Kim Ravenal. There was nothing that the cagey -young assistant critic did not know. He now assumed -a tone of deep bitterness.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“All right, my fine lady. I’ll go back and write a -pattern piece. Started in stock in Chicago. Went to -New York National Theatre School. Star pupil and -Teacher’s Pet while there. Got a bit in—uh—Mufti, -wasn’t it?—and walked away with the play just like the -aspiring young actress in a bum short story. Born on -a show boat in Kentucky and Illinois and Missouri -simultaneously—say, explain that to me some time, will -you?—hence name of Kim. Also mother was a show-boat -actress and later famous singer of coon—— Say, -where is your mother these days, anyway? Gosh, I -think she’s grand! I’m stuck on her. She’s the burning -passion of my youth. No kidding. I don’t know. -She’s got that kind of haunted hungry et-up look, like -Bernhardt or Duse or one of them. You’ve got a little -of it, yourself.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Oh, sir!” murmured Kim, gratefully.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Cultivate it, is my advice. And when she smiles! . . . -Boy! I work like a dawg to get her to smile whenever I -see her. She thinks I’m one of those cut-ups. I’m -really a professional suicide at heart, but I’d wiggle my -ears if it would win one of those slow, dazzling——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Listen! Who—or whom—are you interviewing, -young man? Me or my mama?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She around?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No. She’s at the Shaw opening with Ken.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, then, you’ll do.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Just for that I think I’ll turn elegant on you and -not grant any more interviews. Maude Adams never -did. Look at Mrs. Fiske! And Duse. Anyway, interviews -always sound so dumb when they appear in -print. Dignified silence is the thing. Mystery. Everybody -knows too much about the stage, nowadays.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Believe me, <span class='it'>I</span> do!” said the young second-assistant -dramatic critic, in a tone of intense acerbity.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A neat little triple tap at the dressing-room door. -“Curtain already!” exclaimed Kim in a kind of panic. -You would have thought this was her first stage summons. -Another hasty application with the rabbit’s -foot.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A mulatto girl in black silk so crisp, and white batiste -cap and apron so correct that she might have -doubled as stage and practical maid, now opened the -door outside which she had been discreetly stationed. -“Curtain, Blanche?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Half a minute more, Miss Ravenal. Telegram.” -She handed a yellow envelope to Kim.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>As Kim read it there settled over her face the rigidity -of shock, so plain that the second-assistant dramatic -critic almost was guilty of, “No bad news, I hope?” -But as though he had said it Kim Ravenal handed him -the slip of paper.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“They’ve misspelled it,” she said, irrelevantly. “It -ought to be Parthenia.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He read:</p> - -<div class='blockquoter9'> - -<p class='noindent'>Mrs. Parthna A. Hawks died suddenly eight o’clock before evening -show Cotton Blossom playing Cold Spring Tennessee advise sympathy -company.</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:right;margin-right:1em;'><span class='sc'>Chas. K. Barnato.</span></p> - -</div> - -<p class='pindent'>“Hawks?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“My grandmother.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m sorry.” Lamely. “Is there anything——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I haven’t seen her in years. She was very old—over -eighty. I can’t quite realize. She was famous on -the rivers. A sort of legendary figure. She owned and -managed the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span>. There was a curious kind -of feud between her and Mother and my father. She -was really a pretty terrible—I wonder—Mother——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Curtain, Miss Ravenal!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She went swiftly toward the door.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Can I do anything? Fetch your mother from the -theatre?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She’ll be back here with Ken after the play. Half -an hour. No use——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>He followed her as she went swiftly toward the door -from which she made her third-act entrance. “I don’t -want to be offensive, Miss Ravenal. But if there’s a -story in this—your grandmother, I mean—eighty, -you know——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Over her shoulder, in a whisper, “There is. See -Ken.” She stood a moment; seemed to set her whole -figure; relaxed it then; vanished. You heard her lovely -but synthetic voice as the American wife of the English -husband in the opening lines of the third act:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m so sick of soggy British breakfast. Devilled -kidneys! Ugh! Who but the English could face food -so visceral at nine <span style='font-size:smaller'>A. M.</span>!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was thinking as she played the third act for the -three hundredth time that she must tuck the telegram -under a cold cream jar or back of her mirror as soon as -she returned to her dressing room. What if Magnolia -should take it into her head to leave the Shaw play -early and find it there on her dressing table! She must -tell her gently. Magnolia never had learned to take -telegrams calmly. They always threw her into a panic. -Ever since that one about Gaylord Ravenal’s death in -San Francisco. Gaylord Ravenal. A lovely name. -What a tin-horn sport he must have been. Charming -though, probably.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Curtain. Bows. Curtain. Bows. Curtain. Bows. -Curtain.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was back in her dressing room, had removed her -make-up, was almost dressed when Ken returned with -her mother. She had made desperate haste, aided expertly -by her maid.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The two entered laughing, talking, bickering good-naturedly. -Kim heard her husband’s jejune plangent -voice outside her dressing-room door.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m going to tell your daughter on you, Nola! Yes, -I am.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t care. He started it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Kim looked round at them. Why need they be so -horribly high-spirited just to-night? It was like comedy -relief in a clumsily written play, put in to make the -tragedy seem deeper. Still, this news was hardly tragic. -Yet her mother might——</p> - -<p class='pindent'>For years, now, Kim Ravenal had shielded her mother; -protected her; spoiled her, Magnolia said, almost resentfully.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She stood now with her son-in-law in the cruel glare -of the dressing-room lights. Her face was animated, -almost flushed. Her fine head rose splendidly from the -furred frame of her luxurious coat collar. Her breast -and throat were firm and creamy above the square-cut -décolletage of her black gown. Her brows looked -the blacker and more startling for the wing of white -that crossed the black of her straight thick hair. There -was about this woman past middle age a breath-taking -vitality. Her distinguished young son-in-law appeared -rather anæmic in contrast.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“How was the play?” Kim asked, possibly in the hope -of changing their ebullient mood.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Nice production,” said Cameron. “Lunt was flawless. -Fontanne’s turned just a shade cute on us. -She’d better stop that. Shaw, revived, tastes a little -mouldy. Westley yelled. Simonson’s sets were—uh—meticulous -I think the word is. . . . And I want -to inform you, my dear Mrs. C., that your mama has -been a very naughty girl.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>This would never do, thought Kim, her mind on the -yellow envelope. She put an arm about her mother. -“Kiss me and I’ll forgive you,” she said.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You don’t know what she’s done.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Whatever it is——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Woollcott started it, anyway,” protested Magnolia -Ravenal, lighting her cigarette. “I should think a man -who’s dramatic critic of the New York <span class='it'>World</span> would -have more consideration for the dignity of his——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Cameron took up the story. “Our seats turned out -to be next to his. Nola sat between us. You know -how she always clutches somebody’s hand during the -emotional scenes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The last time I went to the theatre with Woollcott -he said he’d slap my hands hard if I ever again——” -put in Magnolia. But Cameron once more interrupted.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Then in the second act she clutched him instead -of me and he slapped her hand——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And pinched——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“And Nola gave him a sharp dig in the stomach, I’m -afraid, with her elbow, and there was quite a commotion. -Mothers-in-law are a terrible responsibility.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mother <span class='it'>dear</span>! A first night of a Shaw revival at -the National!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“He started it. And anyway, you’ve brought me -up wrong.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There was about her suddenly a curious effect of -weariness. It was as though, until now, she had been -acting, and had discarded her rôle. She stood up. -“Ken, if you’ll get me a taxi I’ll run along home. I’m -tired. You two are going to the Swopes’, aren’t you? -That means three o’clock.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I’m not going,” said Kim. “Wait a minute, Ken.” -She came over to Magnolia. “Mother, I just got a -telegram.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mama?” She uttered the word as though she were -a little girl.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Where is it?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Kim indicated it. “There, Ken. Get it for me, will -you? Under the make-up tray.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Dead?” Magnolia had not unfolded the yellow slip.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She read it. She looked up. The last shadow had -vanished of that mood in which she had entered ten -minutes earlier. She looked, suddenly, sallow and -sixty. “Let me see. Tennessee. Trains.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But not to-night, Mother!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes. Ken, there’s something to St. Louis—Memphis—I’m -sure. And then from there to-morrow -morning.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Ken will go with you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No!” sharply. “No!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She had her way in the end; left that night, and alone, -over Kim’s protests and Ken’s. “If I need you, Ken -dear, I’ll telegraph. All those people in the troupe, -you know. Some of them have been with her for ten -years—fifteen.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>All sorts of trains before you reached this remote -little town. Little dusty red-plush trains with sociable -brakemen and passengers whose clothes and bearing -now seemed almost grotesque to the eyes that once -had looked upon them without criticism. A long, hard, -trying journey. Little towns at which you left this -train and waited long hours for the next. Cinder-strewn -junctions whose stations were little better than -sheds.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mile after mile the years had receded as New York -was left behind. The sandy soil of the South. Little -straggling villages. Unpainted weather-stained cabins, -black as the faces that peered from their doorways. -When Magnolia Ravenal caught the first gleam of April -dogwood flashing white in the forest depths as the train -bumbled by, her heart gave a great leap. In a curious -and dream-like way the years of her life with Ravenal -in Chicago, the years following Ravenal’s desertion of -her there, the years of Magnolia’s sudden success in -New York seemed to fade into unreality; they became -unimportant fragmentary interludes. This was her -life. She had never left it. They would be there—Julie, -and Steve, and Windy, and Doc, and Parthy, and -Andy, and Schultzy—somehow, they would be there. -They were real. The others were dream people: Mike -McDonald, Hankins, Hetty Chilson, all that raffish -Chicago crew; the New York group—Kim’s gay, fly, -brittle brilliant crowd with which Magnolia had always -assumed an ease she did not feel.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She decided, sensibly, that she was tired, a little -dazed, even. She had slept scarcely at all the night -before. Perhaps this news of her mother’s death had -been, after all, more of a shock than she thought. She -would not pretend to be grief-stricken. The breach -between her and the indomitable old woman had been -a thing of many years’ standing, and it had grown wider -and wider with the years following that day when, -descending upon her daughter in Chicago, Mrs. Hawks -had learned that the handsome dashing Gaylord Ravenal -had flown. She had been unable to resist her -triumphant, “What did I tell you!” It had been the -last straw.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She had wondered, vaguely, what sort of conveyance -she might hire to carry her to Cold Spring, for she knew -no railroad passed through this little river town. But -when she descended from the train at this, the last stage -but one in her wearisome journey, there was a little -group at the red brick station to meet her. A man -came toward her (he turned out to be the Chas. K. -Barnato of the telegram). He was the general manager -and press agent. Doc’s old job, modernized. “How -did you know me?” she had asked, and was startled -when he replied:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You look like your ma.” Then, before she could -recover from this: “But Elly told me it was you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A rather amazing old lady came toward her. She -looked like the ancient ruins of a bisque doll. Her -cheeks were pink, her eyes bright, her skin parchment, -her hat incredible.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Don’t you remember me, Nollie?” she said. And -pouted her withered old lips. Then, as Magnolia -stared, bewildered, she had chirped like an annoyed -cockatoo, “Elly Chipley—Lenore La Verne.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“But it isn’t possible!” Magnolia had cried.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>This had appeared to annoy Miss Chipley afresh. -“Why not, I’d like to know! I’ve been back with the -<span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> the last ten years. Your ma advertised -in the <span class='it'>Billboard</span> for a general utility team. My husband -answered the ad, giving his name——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Not——?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Schultzy? Oh, no, dearie. I buried poor Schultzy -in Douglas, Wyoming, twenty-two years ago. Yes, -indeed. Clyde!” She wheeled briskly. “Clyde!” -The man came forward. He was, perhaps, fifty. -Surely twenty years younger than the erstwhile ingénue -lead. A sheepish, grizzled man whose mouth looked -as if a drawstring had been pulled out of it, leaving it -limp and sprawling. “Meet my husband, Mr. Clyde -Mellhop. This is Nollie. Mrs. Ravenal, it is, ain’t it? -Seems funny, you being married and got a famous -daughter and all. Last time I saw you you was just a -skinny little girl, dark-complected—— Well, your ma -was hoity-toity with me when she seen it was me was -the other half of the Mellhop General Utility Team. -Wasn’t going to let me stay, would you believe it! -Well, she was glad enough to have me, in the end.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>This, Magnolia realized, must be stopped. She met -the understanding look of the man Barnato. He -nodded. “I guess you must be pretty tuckered out, -Mrs. Ravenal. Now, if you’ll just step over to the car -there.” He indicated an important-looking closed car -that stood at the far end of the station platform.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Gratefully Magnolia moved toward it. She was -a little impressed with its appearance. “Your car! -That was thoughtful of you. I was wondering how I’d -get——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“No, ma’am. That ain’t mine. I got a little car of -my own, but this is your ma’s—that is—well, it’s yours, -now, I reckon.” He helped her into the back seat with -Elly. He seated himself before the wheel, with Mellhop -beside him. He turned to her, solemnly. “I suppose -you’d like to go right over to see your—to view the remains. -She’s—they’re at Breitweiler’s Undertaking -Parlours. I kind of tended to everything, like your -son-in-law’s telegram said. I hope everything will suit -you. Of course, if you’d like to go over to the hotel -first. I took a room for you—best they had. It’s real -comfortable. To-morrow morning we take her—we go -to Thebes on the ten-fifteen——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The hotel!” cried Magnolia. “But I want to sleep -on the boat to-night. I want to go back to the boat.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s a good three-quarters of an hour run from here, -even in this car.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I know it. But I want to stay on the boat to-night.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“It’s for you to say, ma’am.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The main business street of the little town was bustling -and prosperous-looking. Where, in her childhood -river-town days the farm wagons and buggies had stood -hitched at the curb, she now saw rows of automobiles -parked, side by side. Five-and-Ten-Cent Stores. Motion -Pictures. Piggly-Wiggly. Popular magazines in -the drug-store window. She had thought that everything -would be the same.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Breitweiler’s Undertaking Parlours. Quite a little -throng outside; and within an actual crowd, close-packed. -They made way respectfully for Barnato and -his party. “What is it?” whispered Magnolia. “What -are all these people here for? What has happened?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Your ma was quite a famous person in these parts, -Mrs. Ravenal. Up and down the rivers and around -she was quite a character. I’ve saved the pieces for you -in the paper.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You don’t mean these people—all these people have -come here to see——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes, ma’am. In state. I hope you don’t object, -ma’am. I wouldn’t want to feel I’d done something you -wouldn’t like.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She felt a little faint. “I’d like them to go away now.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Parthenia Ann Hawks in her best black silk. Her -strong black eyebrows punctuated the implacable old -face with a kind of surprised resentment. She had not -succumbed to the Conqueror without a battle. Magnolia, -gazing down upon the stern waxen features, the -competent hands crossed in unwilling submission upon -her breast, could read the message of revolt that was -stamped, even in death, upon that strong and terrible -brow. Here! I’m mistress of this craft. You can’t -do this to me! I’m Parthenia Ann Hawks! Death? -Fiddlesticks and nonsense! For others, perhaps. But -not for me.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Presently they were driving swiftly out along the -smooth asphalt road toward Cold Spring. Elly Chipley -was telling her tale with relish, palpably for the hundredth -time.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“. . . seven o’clock in the evening or maybe a -few minutes past and her standing in front of the -looking-glass in her room doing her hair. Clyde and -me, we had the room next to hers, for’ard, the last few -years, on account I used to do for her, little ways. Not -that she was feeble or like that. But she needed somebody -younger to do for her, now and then”—with the -bridling self-consciousness of a girlish seventy, as compared -to Parthy’s eighty and over. “Well, I was in the -next room, and just thinking I’d better be making up -for the evening show when I hear a funny sound, and -then a voice I didn’t hardly recognize sort of squeaks, -‘Elly! A stroke!’ And then a crash.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia was surprised to find herself weeping: not -for grief; in almost unwilling admiration of this powerful -mind and will that had recognized the Enemy even -as he stole up on her and struck the blow from behind.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“There, there!” cooed Elly Chipley, pleased that her -recital had at last moved this handsome silent woman to -proper tears. “There, there!” She patted her hand. -“Look, Nollie dear. There’s the boat. Seems funny -not to see her lighted up for the show this time of night.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia peered through the dusk, a kind of dread -in her heart. Would this, too, be changed beyond -recognition? A great white long craft docked at the -water’s edge. Larger, yes. But much the same. In -the gloom she could just make out the enormous letters -painted in black against the white upper deck.</p> - -<div class='lgc' style='margin-top:1em;margin-bottom:1em;'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<p class='line'>COTTON BLOSSOM FLOATING PALACE THEATRE</p> -<p class='line'>Parthenia Ann Hawks, Prop.</p> -</div> <!-- end rend --> - -<p class='pindent'>And there was the River. It was high with the April -rains and the snows that nourished it from all the -hundreds of miles of its vast domain—the Mississippi -Basin.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Vaguely she heard Barnato—“Just started out and -promised to be the biggest paying season we had for -years. Yessir! Crops what they were last fall, and -the country so prosperous. . . . Course, we don’t -aim to bother you with such details now. . . . -Troupe wondering—ain’t no more’n natural—what’s to -become of ’em now. . . . Finest show boat on the -rivers. . . . Our own electric power plant. . . . -Ice machine. . . . Seats fifteen hundred, -easy. . . .”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And there was the River. Broad, yellow, turbulent. -Magnolia was trembling. Down the embankment, -across the gangplank, to the lower forward deck that -was like a comfortable front porch. The bright semi-circle -of the little ticket window. A little group of -Negro loungers and dock-hands making way respectfully, -gently for the white folks. The sound of a banjo -tinkling somewhere ashore, or perhaps on an old side-wheeler -docked a short distance downstream. A playbill -in the lobby. She stared at it. Tempest and -Sunshine. The letters began to go oddly askew. A -voice, far away—“Look out! She’s going to faint!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A tremendous effort. “No, I’m not. I’m—all right. -I don’t think I’ve eaten anything since early morning.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was up in the bedroom. Dimity curtains at the -windows, fresh and crisp. Clean. Shining. Orderly. -Quiet. “Now you just get into bed. A hot-water bag. -We’ll fix you a tray and a good cup of tea. To-morrow -morning you’ll be feeling fine again. We got to get an -early start.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She ate, gratefully. Anything I can do for you now, -Nollie? No, nothing, thanks. Well, I’m kind of beat, -myself. It’s been a day, I can tell you. Good-night. -Good-night. Now I’ll leave my door open, so’s if you -call me——</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Nine o’clock. Ten. The hoarse hoot of a boat whistle. -The clank of anchor chains. Swish. Swash. -Fainter. Cluck-suck against the hull. Quieter. More -quiet. Quiet. Black velvet. The River. Home.</p> - -<div><h1>XIX</h1></div> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='lead-in'><span class='dropcap'>K</span>im Ravenal’s</span> tenth letter to her mother was -the decisive one. It arrived late in May, when -the Cotton Blossom Floating Palace Theatre -was playing Lulu, Mississippi. From where the show -boat lay just below the landing there was little enough -to indicate that a town was situated near by. Lulu, -Mississippi, in May, was humid and drowsy and dusty -and fly-ridden. The Negroes lolled in the shade of their -cabins and loafed at the water’s edge. Thick-petalled -white flowers amidst glossy dark green foliage filled -the air with a drugging sweetness, and scarlet-petalled -flowers stuck their wicked yellow tongues out at the -passer-by.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia, on the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> upper deck that was -like a cosy veranda, sat half in the shade and half in the -sun and let the moist heat envelop her. The little -nervous lines that New York had etched about her eyes -and mouth seemed to vanish magically under the languorous -touch of the saturant Southern air. She was -again like the lovely creamy blossom for which she had -been named; a little drooping, perhaps; a little faded; -but Magnolia.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Elly Chipley, setting to rights her privileged bedroom -on the boat’s port side, came to the screen door in cotton -morning frock and boudoir cap. The frock was a gay -gingham of girlish cut, its colour a delicate pink. The -cap was a trifle of lace and ribbon. From this frame -her withered life-scarred old mask looked out, almost -fascinating in its grotesquerie.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Beats me how you can sit out there in the heat like -a lizard or a cat or something and not get a stroke. -Will, too, one these fine days.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia, glancing up from the perusal of her letter, -stretched her arms above her head luxuriously. “I -love it.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Elly Chipley’s sharp old eyes snapped at the typewritten -sheets of the letter in Magnolia’s hand. “Heard -from your daughter again, did you?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I never seen anybody such a hand at writing letters. -You got one about every stand since you started with -the boat, seems. I was saying to Clyde only yesterday, -I says, what’s she find to write about!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>This, Magnolia knew, was not a mere figure of speech. -In some mysterious way the knowledge had seeped -through the <span class='it'>Cotton Blossom</span> company that in these frequent -letters between mother and daughter a battle was -being waged. They sensed, too, that in the outcome of -this battle lay their own future.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The erstwhile ingénue now assumed an elaborate -carelessness of manner which, to the doubting onlooker, -would forever have decided the question of her dramatic -ability. “What’s she got to say, h’m? What——” -here she giggled in shrill falsetto appreciation of her own -wit—“what news on the Rialto?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia glanced down again at the letter. “I think -Kim may come down for a few days to visit us, in June. -With her husband.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The ribbons of Elly’s cap trembled. The little withered -well-kept hand in which she still took such pride -went to her lips that were working nervously. “You -don’t say! Well, that’ll be nice.” After which triumph -of simulated casualness you heard her incautious steps -clattering down the stairs and up the aisle to the lesser -dressing rooms and bedrooms at the rear of the stage.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia picked up the letter again. Kim hated to -write letters. The number that she had written her -mother in the past month testified her perturbation.</p> - -<div class='blockquoter9'> - -<p class='pindent'>Nola darling, you’ve just gone gaga, that’s all. What do you -mean by staying down there in that wretched malarial heat! Now -listen to me. We close June first. They plan to open in Boston -in September, then Philadelphia, Chicago. My contract, of course, -doesn’t call for the road. Cruger offered me an increase and a house -percentage if I’d go when the road season opens, but you know how -I hate touring. You’re the trouper of this family. Besides, I -wouldn’t leave Andy. He misses you as much as Ken and I do. -If he could talk, he would demand his grandmother’s immediate -presence. If you aren’t in New York by June third I shall come and -get you. I mean this. Ken and I sail on the <span class='it'>Olympic</span> June tenth. -There’s a play in London that Cruger wants me to see for next -season. You know. Casualty. We’ll go to Paris, Vienna, -Budapest, and back August first. Come along or stay in the country -with Andy. Nate Fried says he’ll settle up your business affairs -if that’s what’s bothering you. What is there to do except sell -the old tub or give it away or something, and take the next train -for New York? Your bookings say Lazare, Mississippi, June -fourth, fifth and sixth. Nate looked it up and reports it’s twenty -miles from a railroad. Now, Nola, that’s just too mad. Come on -home.</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:right;margin-right:1em;font-size:.7em;'><span class='sc'>Kim</span>.</p> - -</div> - -<p class='pindent'>The hand that held the letter dropped to her lap -again. Magnolia lay relaxed in the low deck chair and -surveyed through half-closed lids the turgid, swift-flowing -stream that led on to Louisiana and the sea. Above -the clay banks that rose from the river lay the scrubby -little settlement shimmering in the noonday heat. A -mule team toiled along the river road drawing a decrepit -cart on whose sagging seat a Negro sat slumped, the -rope lines slack in his listless hands, his body swaying -with the motion of the vehicle. From the cook’s galley, -aft, came the yee-yah-yah-yah of Negro laughter. -Then a sudden crash of piano, drum, horn, and cymbals. -The band was rehearsing. The porcine squeal and bleat -and grunt of the saxophone. Mississippi Blues they -were playing. Ort Hanley, of the Character Team, sang -it in the concert after the show. I got the blues. I -said the blues. I got the M-i-s-, I said the s-i-s, I said -the s-i-pp-i, Mississippi, I got them Miss-is-<span class='it'>sippi</span> <span class='it'>blu</span>-hoo-hoos.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The heat and the music and the laughter and the -squeak of the mule cart up the road blended and made -a colourful background against which the woman in the -chair viewed the procession of the last twenty-five years.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It had turned out well enough. She had gone on, -blindly, and it had turned out well enough. Kim. Kim -was different. Nothing blind about Kim. She had -emerged from the cloistral calm of the Chicago convent -with her competent mind quite made up. I am going -to be an actress. Oh, no, Kim! Not you! But Kim -had gone about it as she went about everything. Clear-headed. -Thoughtful. Deliberate. But actresses were -not made in this way, Magnolia argued. Oh, yes, they -were. Five years in stock on Chicago’s North Side. -A tiny part in musical comedy. Kim decided that she -knew nothing. She would go to the National Theatre -School of Acting in New York and start all over again. -Magnolia’s vaudeville days were drawing to an end. -A middle-aged woman, still able to hold her audience, -still possessing a haunting kind of melancholy beauty. -But more than this was needed to hold one’s head above -the roaring tide of ragtime jazz-time youngsters surging -now toward the footlights. She had known what it -was to be a headliner, but she had never commanded the -fantastic figures of the more spectacular acts. She had -been thrifty, though, and canny. She easily saw Kim -through the National Theatre School. The idea of Kim -in a school of acting struck her as being absurd, though -Kim gravely explained to her its uses. Finally she took -a tiny apartment in New York so that she and Kim -might have a home together. Kim worked slavishly, -ferociously. The idea of the school did not amuse -Magnolia as much as it had at first.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Fencing lessons. Gymnastic dancing. Interpretive -dancing. Singing lessons. Voice placing. French -lessons.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Are you studying to be an acrobat or a singer or a -dancer? I can’t make it out.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now, Nola, don’t be an old-fashioned frumpy darling. -Spend a day at the school and you’ll know what -I’m getting at.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The dancing class. A big bright bare room. A -phonograph. Ten girls bare-legged, barefooted, -dressed in wisps. A sturdy, bare-legged woman teacher -in a hard-worked green chiffon wisp. They stood in a -circle, perhaps five feet apart, and jumped on one foot -and swung the other leg behind them, and kept this -up, alternating right leg and left, for ten minutes. It -looked ridiculously simple. Magnolia tried it when she -got home and found she couldn’t do it at all. Bar work. -Make a straight line of that leg. Back! Back! -Stretch! Stretch! Stretch! Some of it was too precious. -The girls in line formation and the green chiffon -person facing them, saying, idiotically, and suiting actions -to words:</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Reach down into the valley! Gather handfuls of -mist. Up, up, facing the sun! Oh, how lovely!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The Voice class. The Instructor, wearing a hat with -an imposing façade and clanking with plaques of arts-and-crafts -jewellery, resembled, as she sat at her table -fronting the seated semi-circle of young men and women, -the chairman of a woman’s club during the business -session of a committee meeting.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Her voice was “placed.” Magnolia, listening and beholding, -would not have been surprised to see her remove -her voice, an entity, from her throat and hold it -up for inspection. It was a thing so artificial, so studied, -so manufactured. She articulated carefully and with -great elegance.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“I don’t need to go into the wide-open throat to-day. -We will start with the jaw exercises. Down! To the -side! Side! Rotate!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>With immense gravity and earnestness twelve young -men and women took hold of their respective jaws and -pulled these down; from side to side; around. They -showed no embarrassment.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now then! The sound of <span class='it'>b</span>. Bub-ub-ub-ub. <span class='it'>They -bribed Bob with a bib.</span> Sound of <span class='it'>t</span>. <span class='it'>It isn’t a bit hot.</span> -Sound of <span class='it'>d</span>. <span class='it'>Dad did the deed.</span> Sound of <span class='it'>n</span>. <span class='it'>None of -the nine nuns came at noon.</span>”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Singly and en masse they disposed of Bob and Dad -and the nine nuns. Pharynx resonance. Say, “Clear -and free, Miss Ravenal.” Miss Ravenal said clear-and-free, -distinctly. No, no, no! Not clear-and-free, but -clear—and free. Do you see what I mean? Good. -Now take it again. Miss Ravenal took it again. -Clear—and free. <span class='it'>That’s</span> better.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Now then. Words that differ in the <span class='it'>wh</span> sound. -Mr. Karel, let us hear your list. Mr. Karel obliges. -Whether-weather, when-wen, whinny-winnow, whither-wither; -why do you spell it with a y?</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Miss Rogers, <span class='it'>l</span> sounds. Miss Rogers, enormously -solemn (fated for Lady Macbeth at the lightest)—level, -loyal, lull, lily, lentil, love, lust, liberty, boil, coral——</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Now then! The nerve vitalizing breath! We’ll all -stand. Hold the breath. Stretch out arms. Arms in—and -IN—AND IN—out—in—head up—mouth -open——</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Shades of Modjeska, Duse, Rachel, Mrs. Siddons, -Bernhardt! Was this the way an actress was made!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You wait and see,” said Kim, grimly. Dancing, -singing, fencing, voice, French. One year. Two. -Three. Magnolia had waited, and she had seen.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Kim had had none of those preliminary hardships and -terrors and temptations, then, that are supposed to beset -the path of the attractive young woman who would -travel the road to theatrical achievement. Her success -actually had been instantaneous and sustained. She -had been given the part of the daughter of a worldly -mother in a new piece by Ford Salter and had taken the -play away from the star who did the mother. Her -performance had been clear-cut, modern, deft, convincing. -She was fresh, but finished.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>She was intelligent, successful, workmanlike, intuitive, -vigorous, adaptable. She was almost the first -of this new crop of intelligent, successful, deft, workmanlike, -intuitive, vigorous, adaptable young women -of the theatre. There was about her—or them—nothing -of genius, of greatness, of the divine fire. But -the dramatic critics of the younger school who were too -late to have seen past genius in its heyday and for whom -the theatrical genius of their day was yet to come, -viewed her performance and waxed hysterical, mistaking -talent and intelligence and hard work and ambition for -something more rare. It became the thing to proclaim -each smart young woman the Duse of her day if she -had a decent feeling for stage tempo, could sustain a -character throughout three acts, speak the English -language intelligibly, cross a stage or sit in a chair -naturally. By the time Kim had been five years out of -the National Theatre School there were Duses by the -dozen, and a Broadway Bernhardt was born at least -once a season.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>These gave, invariably, what is known as a fine performance. -As you stood in the lobby between the acts, -smoking your cigarette, you said, “She’s giving a fine -performance.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“A fine performance!” Magnolia echoed one evening, -rather irritably, after she and Kim had returned from -the opening of a play in which one of Kim’s friends was -featured. “But she doesn’t act. Everything she did -and everything she said was right. And I was as carried -out of myself as though I were listening to a clock -strike. When I go to the theatre I want to care. In -the old days maybe they didn’t know so much about -tempo and rhythm, but in the audience strong men -wept and women fainted——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Now listen, Nola darling. One of your old-day gals -would last about four seconds on Broadway. I’ve -heard about Clara Morris and Mrs. Siddons, and Modjeska, -and Bernhardt all my life. If the sentimental -old dears were to come back in an all-star revival to-day -the intelligent modern theatre-going audience would -walk out on them.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The new-school actresses went in for the smarter teas, -eschewed cocktails, visited the art exhibits, had their -portraits painted in the new manner, never were seen -at night clubs, were glimpsed coming out of Scribner’s -with a thick volume of modern biography, used practically -no make-up when in mufti, kept their names out -of the New York telephone directory, wore flat-heeled -shoes and woollen stockings while walking briskly in -Central Park, went to Symphony Concerts; were, in -short, figures as glamorous and romantic as a pint of -milk. Everything they did on the stage was right. -Intelligent, well thought out, and right. Watching -them, you knew it was right—tempo, tone, mood, -character. Right. As right as an engineering blueprint. -Your pulses, as you sat in the theatre, were -normal.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Usually, their third season, you saw them unwisely -lunching too often at the Algonquin Round Table and -wise-cracking with the critics there. The fourth they -took a bit in that new English comedy just until O’Neill -should have finished the play he was doing for them. -The fifth they married that little Whatshisname. The -sixth they said, mysteriously, that they were Writing.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Kim kept away from the Algonquin, did not attend -first nights with Woollcott or Broun, had a full-page -Steichen picture in <span class='it'>Vanity Fair</span>, and married -Kenneth Cameron. She went out rarely. Sunday -night dinners, sometimes; or she had people in (ham <span class='it'>à la</span> -Queenie part of the cold buffet). Her list of Sunday -night guests or engagements read like a roster of the -New York Telephone Company’s Exchanges. Stuyvesant, -Beekman, Bleeker, Murray, Rhinelander, Vanderbilt, -Jerome, Wadsworth, Tremont. She learned -to say, “It’s just one of those things——” She finished -an unfinished sentence with, “I <span class='it'>mean</span>——!” and a -throwing up of the open palms.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Kenneth Cameron. Her marriage with Kenneth -Cameron was successful and happy and very nice. -Separate bedrooms and those lovely négligées—velvet -with Venetian sleeves and square neckline. Excellent -friends. Nothing sordid. Personal liberty and privacy -of thought and action—those were the things that made -for happiness in marriage. Magnolia wondered, sometimes, -but certainly it was not for her to venture opinion. -Her own marriage had been no such glittering -example of perfection. Yet she wondered, seeing this -well-ordered and respectful union, if Kim was not, after -all, missing something. Wasn’t marriage, like life, unstimulating -and unprofitable and somewhat empty -when too well ordered and protected and guarded? -Wasn’t it finer, more splendid, more nourishing, when -it was, like life itself, a mixture of the sordid and the -magnificent; of mud and stars; of earth and flowers; -of love and hate and laughter and tears and ugliness and -beauty and hurt? She was wrong, of course. Ken’s -manner toward Kim was polite, tender, thoughtful. -Kim’s manner toward Ken was polite, tender, thoughtful. -Are you free next Thursday, dear? The Paynes -are having those Russians. It might be rather interesting. . . . -Sorry. Ken’s voice. Soft, light. It -was the—well, Magnolia never acknowledged this, even -to herself, but it was what she called the male interior -decorator’s voice. You heard it a good deal at teas, -and at the Algonquin, and in the lobby between the -acts on first nights and in those fascinating shops on -Madison Avenue where furniture and old glass and -brasses and pictures were shown you by slim young -men with delicate hands. I <span class='it'>mean</span>——! It’s just one -of those things.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There was no Mississippi in Kim. Kim was like the -Illinois River of Magnolia’s childhood days. Kim’s -life flowed tranquilly between gentle green-clad shores, -orderly, well regulated, dependable.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“For the land’s sakes, Magnolia Hawks, you sitting -out there yet! Here it’s after three and nearly dinner -time!” Elly Chipley at the screen door. “And in the -blazing sun, too. You need somebody to look after you -worse than your ma did.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Elly was justified, for Magnolia had a headache that -night.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Kim and Ken arrived unexpectedly together on June -second, clattering up to the boat landing in a scarecrow -Ford driven by a stout Negro in khaki pants, puttees, -and an army shirt.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Kim was breathless, but exhilarated. “He says he -drove in France in ’17, and I believe it. Good God! -Every bolt, screw, bar, nut, curtain, and door in the -thing rattled and flapped and opened and fell in and fell -out. I’ve been working like a Swiss bell-ringer trying -to keep things together there in the back seat. -Nola darling, what do you mean by staying down in -this miserable hole all these weeks! Ken, dear, take -another aspirin and a pinch of bicarb and lie down a -minute. . . . Ken’s got a headache from the heat -and the awful trip. . . . We’re going back to-night, -and we sail on the tenth, and, Nola darling, for heaven’s -sake . . .”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They had a talk. The customary four o’clock dinner -was delayed until nearly five because of it. They sat in -Magnolia’s green-shaded bedroom with its frilled white -bedspread and dimity curtains—rather, Kim and -Magnolia sat and Ken sprawled his lean length on the -bed, looking a little yellow and haggard, what with the -heat and the headache. And in the cook’s galley, and -on the stage, and in the little dressing rooms that looked -out on the river, and on deck, and in the box office, the -company and crew of the Cotton Blossom Floating -Palace Theatre lounged and waited, played pinochle and -waited, sewed and napped and read and wondered and -waited.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“You can’t mean it, Nola darling. Flopping up and -down these muddy wretched rivers in this heat! You -could be out at the Bay with Andy. Or in London with -Ken and me—Ken, dear, isn’t it any better?—or even -in New York, in the lovely airy apartment, it’s cooler -than——”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Magnolia sat forward.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Listen, Kim. I love it. The rivers. And the -people. And the show boat. And the life. I don’t -know why. It’s bred in me, I suppose. Yes, I do -know why. Your grandpa died when you were too -little to remember him, really. Or you’d know why. -Now, if you two are set on going back on the night train, -you’ll have to listen to me for a minute. I went over -things with the lawyer and the banker in Thebes when -we took Mama back there. Your grandmother left a -fortune. I don’t mean a few thousand dollars. She -left half a million, made out of this boat in the last -twenty-five years. I’m giving it to you, Kim, and Ken.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Refusal, of course. Protest. Consideration. Acquiescence. -Agreement. Acceptance. Ken was sitting -up now, pallidly. Kim was lyric. “Half a million! -Mother! Ken! It means the plays I want, and -Ken to produce them. It means that I can establish a -real American theatre in New York. I can do the plays -I’ve been longing to do—Ibsen and Hauptmann, and -Werfel, and Schnitzler, and Molnar, and Chekhov, and -Shakespeare even. Ken! We’ll call it the American -Theatre!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The American Theatre,” Magnolia repeated after -her, thoughtfully. And smiled then. “The American -Theatre.” She looked a trifle uncomfortable, as one -who has heard a good joke, and has no one with whom -to share it.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A loud-tongued bell clanged and reverberated through -the show boat’s length. Dinner.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Kim and Ken pretended not to notice the heat and -flies and the molten state of the butter. They met -everyone from the captain to the cook; from the ingénue -lead to the drum.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Well, Miss Ravenal, this is an—or Mrs. Cameron, -I suppose I should say—an honour. We know all about -you, even if you don’t know about us.” Not one of -them had ever seen her.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A little tour of the show boat after dinner. Ken, still -pale, but refreshed by tea, was moved to exclamations -of admiration. Look at that, Kim! Ingenious. Oh, -say, we must stay over and see a performance. I’d -no idea! And these combination dressing rooms and -bedrooms, eh? Well, I’ll be damned!</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Elly Chipley was making up in her special dressing -room, infinitesimal in size, just off the stage. Her part -for to-night was that of a grande dame in black silk-and-lace -cap and fichu. The play was The Planter’s Daughter. -She had been rather sniffy in her attitude toward -the distinguished visitors. They couldn’t patronize -<span class='it'>her</span>. She applied the rouge to her withered cheeks in -little pettish dabs, and leaned critically forward to scrutinize -her old mask of a face. What did she see there? -Kim wondered, watching her, fascinated.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mother tells me you played Juliet, years ago. How -marvellous!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Elly Chipley tossed her head skittishly. “Yes, indeed! -Played Juliet, and was known as the Western -Favourite. I wasn’t always on a show boat, I promise -you.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“What a thrill—to play Juliet when you were so -young! Usually we have to wait until we’re fifty. Tell -me, dear Miss La Verne”—elaborately polite, and determined -to mollify this old harridan—“tell me, who -was your Romeo?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>And then Life laughed at Elly Chipley (Lenore La -Verne on the bills) and at Kim Ravenal, and the institution -known as the Stage. For Elly Chipley tapped her -cheek thoughtfully with her powder puff, and blinked -her old eyes, and screwed up her tremulous old mouth, -and pondered, and finally shook her head. “My -Romeo? Let me see. Let—me—see. Who <span class='it'>was</span> my -Romeo?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They must go now. Oh, Nola darling, half a million! -It’s too fantastic. Mother, I can’t bear to leave you -down in this God-forsaken hole. Flies and Negroes -and mud and all this yellow terrible river that you love -more than me. Stand up there—high up—where we -can see you as long as possible.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The usual crowd was drifting down to the landing as -the show-boat lights began to glow. Twilight was -coming on. On the landing, up the river bank, sauntering -down the road, came the Negroes, and the hangers-on, -the farm-hands, the river folk, the curious, the idle, -the amusement-hungry. Snatches of song. Feet shuffling -upon the wharf boards. A banjo twanging.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>They were being taken back to the nearest railroad -connection, but not in the Ford that had brought them. -They sat luxuriously in the car that had been Parthy’s -and that was Magnolia’s now.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Mother, dearest, you’ll be back in New York in -October or November at the latest, won’t you? Promise -me. When the boat closes? You will!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Kim was weeping. The car started smoothly. She -turned for a last glimpse through her tears. “Oh, Ken, -do you think I ought to leave her like this?”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“She’ll be all right, dear. Look at her! Jove!”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>There stood Magnolia Ravenal on the upper deck -of the Cotton Blossom Floating Palace Theatre, silhouetted -against sunset sky and water—tall, erect, indomitable. -Her mouth was smiling but her great eyes -were wide and sombre. They gazed, unwinking, across -the sunlit waters. One arm was raised in a gesture of -farewell.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“Isn’t she splendid, Ken!” cried Kim, through her -tears. “There’s something about her that’s eternal and -unconquerable—like the River.”</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A bend in the upper road. A clump of sycamores. -The river, the show boat, the straight silent figure were -lost to view.</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-top:1em;margin-bottom:1em;font-size:.8em;'>THE END</p> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:1.5em;font-style:italic;'>There’s More to Follow!</p> - -<div class='blockquote50percent'> - -<p class='pindent'>More stories of the sort you like; -more, probably, by the author of this -one; more than 500 titles all told by -writers of world-wide reputation, in -the Authors’ Alphabetical List which -you will find on the <span class='it'>reverse side</span> of the -wrapper of this book. Look it over -before you lay it aside. There are -books here you are sure to want—some, -possibly, that you have <span class='it'>always</span> wanted.</p> - -</div> -<div class='blockquote50percent'> - -<p class='pindent'>It is a <span class='it'>selected</span> list; every book in it -has achieved a certain measure of -<span class='it'>success</span>.</p> - -</div> -<div class='blockquote50percent'> - -<p class='pindent'>The Grosset & Dunlap list is not only -the greatest Index of Good Fiction -available, it represents in addition a -generally accepted Standard of Value. -It will pay you to</p> - -</div> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:1.1em;font-style:italic;'>Look on the Other Side of the Wrapper!</p> - -<div class='blockquote45percent'> - -<p class='noindent'><span class='it'>In case the wrapper is lost write to -the publishers for a complete catalog</span></p> - -</div> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<hr class='tbk100'/> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:.9em;'>STORIES OF RARE CHARM BY</p> -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:1.2em;'>GENE STRATTON-PORTER</p> - -<hr class='tbk101'/> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:.7em;'>May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap’s list.</p> - -<hr class='tbk102'/> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:0em;margin-top:.5em;text-decoration:underline;'>THE KEEPER OF THE BEES</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A gripping human novel everyone in your family will want to read.</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:0em;margin-top:.5em;text-decoration:underline;'>THE WHITE FLAG</p> - -<p class='pindent'>How a young girl, singlehanded, fought against the power of the Morelands -who held the town of Ashwater in their grip.</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:0em;margin-top:.5em;text-decoration:underline;'>HER FATHER’S DAUGHTER</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The story of such a healthy, level-headed, balanced young woman that -it’s a delightful experience to know her.</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:0em;margin-top:.5em;text-decoration:underline;'>A DAUGHTER OF THE LAND</p> - -<p class='pindent'>In which Kate Bates fights for her freedom against long odds, renouncing -the easy path of luxury.</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:0em;margin-top:.5em;text-decoration:underline;'>FRECKLES</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A story of love in the limberlost that leaves a warm feeling about the -heart.</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:0em;margin-top:.5em;text-decoration:underline;'>A GIRL OF THE LIMBERLOST</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The sheer beauty of a girl’s soul and the rich beauties of the out-of-doors -are in the pages of this book.</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:0em;margin-top:.5em;text-decoration:underline;'>THE HARVESTER</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The romance of a strong man and of Nature’s fields and woods.</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:0em;margin-top:.5em;text-decoration:underline;'>LADDIE</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Full of the charm of this author’s “wild woods magic.”</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:0em;margin-top:.5em;text-decoration:underline;'>AT THE FOOT OF THE RAINBOW</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A story of friendship and love out-of-doors.</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:0em;margin-top:.5em;text-decoration:underline;'>MICHAEL O’HALLORAN</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A wholesome, humorous, tender love story.</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:0em;margin-top:.5em;text-decoration:underline;'>THE SONG OF THE CARDINAL</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The love idyl of the Cardinal and his mate, told with rare delicacy -and humor.</p> - -<hr class='tbk103'/> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:1.1em;'>GROSSET & DUNLAP, <span class='it'>Publishers</span>, NEW YORK</p> - -<hr class='tbk104'/> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<hr class='tbk105'/> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:1.2em;'>MARGARET PEDLER’S NOVELS</p> - -<hr class='tbk106'/> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:.7em;'>May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap’s list.</p> - -<hr class='tbk107'/> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:0em;margin-top:.5em;text-decoration:underline;'>TO-MORROW’S TANGLE</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The game of love is fraught with danger. To win in the finest sense, it -must be played fairly.</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:0em;margin-top:.5em;text-decoration:underline;'>RED ASHES</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A gripping story of a doctor who failed in a crucial operation—and had -only himself to blame. Could the woman he loved forgive him?</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:0em;margin-top:.5em;text-decoration:underline;'>THE BARBARIAN LOVER</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A love story based on the creed that the only important things between -birth and death are the courage to face life and the love to sweeten it.</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:0em;margin-top:.5em;text-decoration:underline;'>THE MOON OUT OF REACH</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Nan Davenant’s problem is one that many a girl has faced—her own -happiness or her father’s bond.</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:0em;margin-top:.5em;text-decoration:underline;'>THE HOUSE OF DREAMS-COME-TRUE</p> - -<p class='pindent'>How a man and a woman fulfilled a Gypsy’s strange prophecy.</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:0em;margin-top:.5em;text-decoration:underline;'>THE HERMIT OF FAR END</p> - -<p class='pindent'>How love made its way into a walled-in house and a walled-in heart.</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:0em;margin-top:.5em;text-decoration:underline;'>THE LAMP OF FATE</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The story of a woman who tried to take all and give nothing.</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:0em;margin-top:.5em;text-decoration:underline;'>THE SPLENDID FOLLY</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Do you believe that husbands and wives should have no secrets from -each other?</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:0em;margin-top:.5em;text-decoration:underline;'>THE VISION OF DESIRE</p> - -<p class='pindent'>An absorbing romance written with all that sense of feminine tenderness -that has given the novels of Margaret Pedler their universal appeal.</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:0em;margin-top:.5em;text-decoration:underline;'>WAVES OF DESTINY</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Each of these stories has the sharp impact of an emotional crisis—the -compressed quality of one of Margaret Pedler’s widely popular novels.</p> - -<hr class='tbk108'/> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:1.1em;'>GROSSET & DUNLAP, <span class='it'>Publishers</span>, NEW YORK</p> - -<hr class='tbk109'/> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<hr class='tbk110'/> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:1.2em;'>THE NOVELS OF TEMPLE BAILEY</p> - -<hr class='tbk111'/> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:.7em;'>May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap’s list.</p> - -<hr class='tbk112'/> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:0em;margin-top:.5em;text-decoration:underline;'>THE BLUE WINDOW</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The heroine, Hildegarde, finds herself transplanted from the middle -western farm to the gay social whirl of the East. She is almost swept off -her feet, but in the end she proves true blue.</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:0em;margin-top:.5em;text-decoration:underline;'>PEACOCK FEATHERS</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The eternal conflict between wealth and love. Jerry, the idealist who -is poor, loves Mimi, a beautiful, spoiled society girl.</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:0em;margin-top:.5em;text-decoration:underline;'>THE DIM LANTERN</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The romance of little Jane Barnes who is loved by two men.</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:0em;margin-top:.5em;text-decoration:underline;'>THE GAY COCKADE</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Unusual short stories where Miss Bailey shows her keen knowledge of -character and environment, and how romance comes to different people.</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:0em;margin-top:.5em;text-decoration:underline;'>THE TRUMPETER SWAN</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Randy Paine comes back from France to the monotony of everyday -affairs. But the girl he loves shows him the beauty in the common place.</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:0em;margin-top:.5em;text-decoration:underline;'>THE TIN SOLDIER</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A man who wishes to serve his country, but is bound by a tie he cannot -in honor break—that’s Derry. A girl who loves him, shares his humiliation -and helps him to win—that’s Jean. Their love is the story.</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:0em;margin-top:.5em;text-decoration:underline;'>MISTRESS ANNE</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A girl in Maryland teaches school, and believes that work is worthy -service. Two men come to the little community; one is weak, the other -strong, and both need Anne.</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:0em;margin-top:.5em;text-decoration:underline;'>CONTRARY MARY</p> - -<p class='pindent'>An old-fashioned love story that is nevertheless modern.</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:0em;margin-top:.5em;text-decoration:underline;'>GLORY OF YOUTH</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A novel that deals with a question, old and yet ever new—how far -should an engagement of marriage bind two persons who discover they no -longer love.</p> - -<hr class='tbk113'/> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:1.1em;'>GROSSET & DUNLAP, <span class='it'>Publishers</span>, NEW YORK</p> - -<hr class='tbk114'/> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<hr class='tbk115'/> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:1em;'>THE NOVELS OF</p> -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:1.2em;'>GRACE LIVINGSTON HILL</p> - -<hr class='tbk116'/> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:.7em;'>May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap’s list.</p> - -<hr class='tbk117'/> - -<div class='literal-container' style=''><div class='literal'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<p class='line'><span class='ul'>BEST MAN, THE</span></p> -<p class='line'><span class='ul'>CITY OF FIRE, THE</span></p> -<p class='line'><span class='ul'>CLOUDY JEWEL</span></p> -<p class='line'><span class='ul'>DAWN OF THE MORNING</span></p> -<p class='line'><span class='ul'>ENCHANTED BARN, THE</span></p> -<p class='line'><span class='ul'>EXIT BETTY</span></p> -<p class='line'><span class='ul'>FINDING OF JASPER HOLT, THE</span></p> -<p class='line'><span class='ul'>GIRL FROM MONTANA, THE</span></p> -<p class='line'><span class='ul'>LO, MICHAEL!</span></p> -<p class='line'><span class='ul'>MAN OF THE DESERT, THE</span></p> -<p class='line'><span class='ul'>MARCIA SCHUYLER</span></p> -<p class='line'><span class='ul'>MIRANDA</span></p> -<p class='line'><span class='ul'>MYSTERY OF MARY, THE</span></p> -<p class='line'><span class='ul'>NOT UNDER THE LAW</span></p> -<p class='line'><span class='ul'>OBSESSION OF VICTORIA GRACEN, THE</span></p> -<p class='line'><span class='ul'>PHOEBE DEANE</span></p> -<p class='line'><span class='ul'>RE-CREATIONS</span></p> -<p class='line'><span class='ul'>RED SIGNAL, THE</span></p> -<p class='line'><span class='ul'>SEARCH, THE</span></p> -<p class='line'><span class='ul'>STORY OF A WHIM, THE</span></p> -<p class='line'><span class='ul'>TOMORROW ABOUT THIS TIME</span></p> -<p class='line'><span class='ul'>TRYST, THE</span></p> -<p class='line'><span class='ul'>VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS, A</span></p> -<p class='line'><span class='ul'>WITNESS, THE</span></p> -</div></div> <!-- end rend --> - -<hr class='tbk118'/> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:1.1em;'>GROSSET & DUNLAP, <span class='it'>Publishers</span>, NEW YORK</p> - -<hr class='tbk119'/> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<hr class='tbk120'/> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:1.2em;'>BOOTH TARKINGTON’S NOVELS</p> - -<hr class='tbk121'/> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:.7em;'>May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap’s list.</p> - -<hr class='tbk122'/> - -<div class='literal-container' style=''><div class='literal'> <!-- rend=';fs:1.2em;' --> -<p class='line' style='font-size:1.2em;'><span class='ul'>THE MIDLANDER</span></p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:1.2em;'><span class='ul'>THE FASCINATING STRANGER</span></p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:1.2em;'><span class='ul'>GENTLE JULIA</span></p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:1.2em;'><span class='ul'>ALICE ADAMS</span></p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:1.2em;'><span class='ul'>RAMSEY MILHOLLAND</span></p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:1.2em;'><span class='ul'>THE GUEST OF QUESNAY</span></p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:1.2em;'><span class='ul'>THE TWO VAN REVELS</span></p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:1.2em;'><span class='ul'>THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS</span></p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:1.2em;'><span class='ul'>MONSIEUR BEAUCAIRE</span></p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:1.2em;'><span class='ul'>SEVENTEEN</span></p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:1.2em;'><span class='ul'>PENROD</span></p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:1.2em;'><span class='ul'>PENROD AND SAM</span></p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:1.2em;'><span class='ul'>THE TURMOIL</span></p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:1.2em;'><span class='ul'>THE GENTLEMAN FROM INDIANA</span></p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:1.2em;'><span class='ul'>THE FLIRT</span></p> -</div></div> <!-- end rend --> - -<hr class='tbk123'/> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:1.1em;'>GROSSET & DUNLAP, <span class='it'>Publishers</span>, NEW YORK</p> - -<hr class='tbk124'/> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<hr class='tbk125'/> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:1.2em;'>DETECTIVE STORIES BY J. S. FLETCHER</p> - -<hr class='tbk126'/> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:.7em;'>May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap’s list.</p> - -<hr class='tbk127'/> - -<div class='literal-container' style=''><div class='literal'> <!-- rend=';fs:1.2em;' --> -<p class='line' style='font-size:1.2em;'><span class='ul'>THE SECRET OF THE BARBICAN</span></p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:1.2em;'><span class='ul'>THE ANNEXATION SOCIETY</span></p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:1.2em;'><span class='ul'>THE WOLVES AND THE LAMB</span></p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:1.2em;'><span class='ul'>GREEN INK</span></p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:1.2em;'><span class='ul'>THE KING versus WARGRAVE</span></p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:1.2em;'><span class='ul'>THE LOST MR. LINTHWAITE</span></p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:1.2em;'><span class='ul'>THE MILL OF MANY WINDOWS</span></p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:1.2em;'><span class='ul'>THE HEAVEN-KISSED HILL</span></p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:1.2em;'><span class='ul'>THE MIDDLE TEMPLE MURDER</span></p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:1.2em;'><span class='ul'>RAVENSDENE COURT</span></p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:1.2em;'><span class='ul'>THE RAYNER-SLADE AMALGAMATION</span></p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:1.2em;'><span class='ul'>THE SAFETY PIN</span></p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:1.2em;'><span class='ul'>THE SECRET WAY</span></p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:1.2em;'><span class='ul'>THE VALLEY OF HEADSTRONG MEN</span></p> -</div></div> <!-- end rend --> - -<hr class='tbk128'/> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:.7em;'><span class='it'>Ask for Complete free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction</span></p> - -<hr class='tbk129'/> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:1.1em;'>GROSSET & DUNLAP, <span class='it'>Publishers</span>, NEW YORK</p> - -<hr class='tbk130'/> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<hr class='tbk131'/> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:1.2em;'>RAFAEL SABATINI’S NOVELS</p> - -<hr class='tbk132'/> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:.7em;'>May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap’s list.</p> - -<hr class='tbk133'/> - -<p class='pindent'>Jesi, a diminutive city of the Italian Marches, was the birthplace -of Rafael Sabatini, and here he spent his early youth. The -city is glamorous with those centuries the author makes live again -in his novels with all their violence and beauty.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Mr. Sabatini first went to school in Switzerland and from there -to Lycee of Oporto, Portugal, and like Joseph Conrad, he has -never attended an English school. But English is hardly an -adopted language for him, as he learned it from his mother, an -English woman who married the Maestro-Cavaliere Vincenzo -Sabatini.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Today Rafael Sabatini is regarded as “The Alexandre Dumas -of Modern Fiction.”</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:0em;margin-top:.5em;text-decoration:underline;'>MISTRESS WILDING</p> - -<p class='pindent'>A romance of the days of Monmouth’s rebellion. The action is rapid, its -style is spirited, and its plot is convincing.</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:0em;margin-top:.5em;text-decoration:underline;'>FORTUNE’S FOOL</p> - -<p class='pindent'>All who enjoyed the lurid lights of the French Revolution with Scaramouche, -or the brilliant buccaneering days of Peter Blood, or the adventures -of the Sea-Hawk, the corsair, will now welcome with delight a turn -in Restoration London with the always masterful Col. Randall Holles.</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:0em;margin-top:.5em;text-decoration:underline;'>BARDELYS THE MAGNIFICENT</p> - -<p class='pindent'>An absorbing story of love and adventure in France of the early seventeenth -century.</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:0em;margin-top:.5em;text-decoration:underline;'>THE SNARE</p> - -<p class='pindent'>It is a story in which fact and fiction are delightfully blended and one -that is entertaining in high degree from first to last.</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:0em;margin-top:.5em;text-decoration:underline;'>CAPTAIN BLOOD</p> - -<p class='pindent'>The story has glamor and beauty, and it is told with an easy confidence. -As for Blood himself, he is a superman, compounded of a sardonic humor, -cold nerves; and hot temper. Both the story and the man are masterpieces. -A great figure, a great epoch, a great story.</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:0em;margin-top:.5em;text-decoration:underline;'>THE SEA-HAWK</p> - -<p class='pindent'>“The Sea-Hawk” is a book of fierce bright color and amazing adventure -through which stalks one of the truly great and masterful figures of romance.</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:left;margin-left:0em;margin-top:.5em;text-decoration:underline;'>SCARAMOUCHE</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Never will the reader forget the sardonic Scaramouche, who fights equally -well with tongue and rapier, who was “born with the gilt of laughter and a -sense that the world was mad.”</p> - -<hr class='tbk134'/> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:1.1em;'>GROSSET & DUNLAP, <span class='it'>Publishers</span>, NEW YORK</p> - -<hr class='tbk135'/> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-top:.5em;font-size:1.2em;font-weight:bold;'>TRANSCRIBER NOTES</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. -Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been -employed.</p> - -<p class='pindent'>Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious -printer errors occur.</p> - -<p class='line'> </p> - -<p class='noindent'>[The end of <span class='it'>Show Boat</span>, -by Edna Ferber.]</p> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHOWBOAT ***</div> -<div style='text-align:left'> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will -be renamed. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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