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.