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——”