refreshed by tea, was moved to exclamations of admiration. Look at that,
Kim! Ingenious. Oh, say, we must stay over and see a performance. I’d no
idea! And these combination dressing rooms and bedrooms, eh? Well, I’ll
be damned!
Elly Chipley was making up in her special dressing room, infinitesimal
in size, just off the stage. Her part for to-night was that of a grande
dame in black silk-and-lace cap and fichu. The play was The Planter’s
Daughter. She had been rather sniffy in her attitude toward the
distinguished visitors. They couldn’t patronize _her_. She applied the
rouge to her withered cheeks in little pettish dabs, and leaned
critically forward to scrutinize her old mask of a face. What did she
see there? Kim wondered, watching her, fascinated.
“Mother tells me you played Juliet, years ago. How marvellous!”
Elly Chipley tossed her head skittishly. “Yes, indeed! Played Juliet,
and was known as the Western Favourite. I wasn’t always on a show boat,
I promise you.”
“What a thrill—to play Juliet when you were so young! Usually we have
to wait until we’re fifty. Tell me, dear Miss La Verne”—elaborately
polite, and determined to mollify this old harridan—“tell me, who was
your Romeo?”
And then Life laughed at Elly Chipley (Lenore La Verne on the bills) and
at Kim Ravenal, and the institution known as the Stage. For Elly Chipley
tapped her cheek thoughtfully with her powder puff, and blinked her old
eyes, and screwed up her tremulous old mouth, and pondered, and finally
shook her head. “My Romeo? Let me see. Let—me—see. Who _was_ my
Romeo?”
They must go now. Oh, Nola darling, half a million! It’s too fantastic.
Mother, I can’t bear to leave you down in this God-forsaken hole. Flies
and Negroes and mud and all this yellow terrible river that you love
more than me. Stand up there—high up—where we can see you as long as
possible.
The usual crowd was drifting down to the landing as the show-boat lights
began to glow. Twilight was coming on. On the landing, up the river
bank, sauntering down the road, came the Negroes, and the hangers-on,
the farm-hands, the river folk, the curious, the idle, the
amusement-hungry. Snatches of song. Feet shuffling upon the wharf
boards. A banjo twanging.
They were being taken back to the nearest railroad connection, but not
in the Ford that had brought them. They sat luxuriously in the car that
had been Parthy’s and that was Magnolia’s now.
“Mother, dearest, you’ll be back in New York in October or November at
the latest, won’t you? Promise me. When the boat closes? You will!”
Kim was weeping. The car started smoothly. She turned for a last glimpse
through her tears. “Oh, Ken, do you think I ought to leave her like
this?”
“She’ll be all right, dear. Look at her! Jove!”
There stood Magnolia Ravenal on the upper deck of the Cotton Blossom
Floating Palace Theatre, silhouetted against sunset sky and water—tall,
erect, indomitable. Her mouth was smiling but her great eyes were wide
and sombre. They gazed, unwinking, across the sunlit waters. One arm was
raised in a gesture of farewell.
“Isn’t she splendid, Ken!” cried Kim, through her tears. “There’s
something about her that’s eternal and unconquerable—like the River.”
A bend in the upper road. A clump of sycamores. The river, the show
boat, the straight silent figure were lost to view.
THE END
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HER FATHER’S DAUGHTER
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CONTRARY MARY
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FORTUNE’S FOOL
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BARDELYS THE MAGNIFICENT
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THE SNARE
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TRANSCRIBER NOTES
Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple
spellings occur, majority use has been employed.
Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors
occur.
[The end of _Show Boat_, by Edna Ferber.]