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.