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.