by Edna Ferber
“You’ll get used to it,” Ravenal told his bride, a trifle patronizingly, as one who had this monster tamed and fawning. “Don’t be frightened. It’s mostly noise.”
“I’m not frightened, really. It’s just the kind of noise that I’m not used to. The rivers, you know, all these years—so quiet. At night and in the morning.”
That winter she lived the life of a gambler’s wife. Streak o’ lean, streak o’ fat. Turtle soup and terrapin at the Palmer House to-day. Ham and eggs in some obscure eating house to-morrow. They rose at noon. They never retired until the morning hours. Gay seemed to know a great many people, but to his wife he presented few of these.
“Business acquaintance,” he would say. “You wouldn’t care for him.”
Hers had been a fantastic enough life on the show boat. But always there had been about it an orderliness, a routine, due, perhaps, to the presence of the martinet, Parthenia Ann Hawks. Indolent as the days appeared on the rivers, they still bore a methodical aspect. Breakfast at nine. Rehearsal. Parade. Dinner at four. Make-up. Curtain. Wardrobe to mend or refurbish; parts to study; new songs to learn for the concert. But this new existence seemed to have no plot or plan. Ravenal was a being for the most part unlike the lover and husband of Cotton Blossom days. Expansive and secretive by turn; now high-spirited, now depressed; frequently absent-minded. His manner toward her was always tender, courteous, thoughtful. He loved her as deeply as he was capable of loving. She knew that. She had to tell herself all this one evening when she sat in their hotel room, dressed and waiting for him to take her to dinner and to the theatre. They were going to McVicker’s Theatre, the handsome new auditorium that had risen out of the ashes of the old (to quote the owner’s florid announcement). Ravenal was startled to learn how little Magnolia knew of the great names of the stage. He had told her something of the history of McVicker’s, in an expansive burst of pride in Chicago. He seemed to have a definite feeling about this great uncouth giant of a city.
“When you go to McVicker’s, “ Ravenal said, “you are in the theatre where Booth has played, and Sothern, and Lotta, and Kean, and Mrs. Siddons.”
“Who,” asked Magnolia, “are they?”
He was so much in love that he found this ignorance of her own calling actually delightful. He laughed, of course, but kissed her when she pouted a little, and explained to her what these names meant, investing them with all the glamour and romance that the theatre—the theatre of sophistication, that is—had for him; for he had the gambler’s love of the play. It must have been something of that which had held him so long to the Cotton Blossom. Perhaps, after all, his infatuation for Magnolia alone could not have done it.
And now she was going to McVicker’s. And she had on her dress with the open-throated basque, which she considered rather daring, though now that she was a married woman it was all right. She was dressed long before the time when she might expect him back. She had put out fresh linen for him. He was most fastidious about his dress. Accustomed to the sloppy deshabille of the show boat’s male troupers, this sartorial niceness in Ravenal had impressed her from the first.
She regarded herself in the mirror now. She knew she was not beautiful. She affected, in fact, to despise her looks; bemoaned her high forehead and prominent cheek-bones, her large-knuckled fingers, her slenderness, her wide mouth. Yet she did not quite believe these things she said about herself; loved to hear Ravenal say she was beautiful. As she looked at her reflection now in the long gilt-framed mirror of the heavy sombre walnut bedroom, she found herself secretly agreeing with him. This was the first year of her marriage. She was pregnant. It was December. The child was expected in April. There was nothing distorted about her figure or her face. As is infrequently the case, her condition had given her an almost uncanny radiance of aspect. Her usually pallid skin showed a delicious glow of rosy colouring; her eyes were enormous and strangely luminous; tiny blue veins were faintly, exquisitely etched against the cream tint of her temples; her rather angular slimness was replaced by a delicate roundness; she bore herself well, her shoulders back, her head high. A happy woman, beloved, and in love.
Six o’clock. A little late, but he would be here at any moment now. Half-past six. She was opening the door every five minutes to peer up the red-carpeted corridor. Seven. Impatience had given way to fear, fear to terror, terror to certain agony. He was dead. He had been killed. She knew by now that he frequented the well-known resorts of the city, that he played cards in them. “Just for pastime,” he told her. “Game of cards to while away the afternoon. What’s the harm in that? Now, Nola! Don’t look like your mother. Please!”
She knew about them. Red plush and gilt, mahogany and mirrors. Food and drink. River-front saloons and river-front life had long ago taught her not to be squeamish. She was not a foolish woman, nor an intolerant. She was, in fact, in many ways wise beyond her years. But this was 1888. The papers had been full of the shooting of Simeon Peake, the gambler, in Jeff Hankins’ place over on Clark Street. The bullet had been meant for someone else—a well-known newspaper publisher, in fact. But a woman, hysterical, crazed, revengeful, had fired it. It had gone astray. Ravenal had known Simeon Peake. The shooting had been a shock to him. It had, indeed, thrown him so much off his guard that he had talked to Magnolia about it for relief. Peake had had a young daughter Selina. She was left practically penniless.
Now the memory of this affair came rushing back to her. She was frantic. Half-past seven. It was too late, now, for the dinner they had planned for the gala evening—dinner at the Wellington Hotel, down in the white marble café. The Wellington was just across the street from McVicker’s. It would make everything simple and easy; no rush, no hurrying over that last delightful sweet sip of coffee.
Eight o’clock. He had been killed. She no longer merely opened the door to peer into the corridor. She left the room door open and paced from room to hall, from hall to room, wildly; down the corridor. Finally, in desperation, down to the hotel lobby into which she had never stepped in the evening without her husband. There were two clerks at the office desk. One was an ancient man, flabby and wattled, as much a part of the hotel as the stones that paved the lobby. He had soft wisps of sparse white hair that seemed to float just above his head instead of being attached to it; and little tufts of beard, like bits of cotton stuck on his cheeks. He looked like an old baby. The other was a glittering young man; his hair glittered, his eyes, his teeth, his nails, his shirt-front, his cuffs. Both these men knew Ravenal; had greeted him on their arrival; had bowed impressively to her. The young man had looked flattering things; the old man had pursed his soft withered lips.
Magnolia glanced from one to the other. There were people at the clerks’ desk, leaning against the marble slab. She waited, nervous, uncertain. She would speak to the old man. She did not want, somehow, to appeal to the glittering one. But he saw her, smiled, left the man to whom he was talking, came toward her. Quickly she touched the sleeve of the old man—leaned forward over the marble to do it—jerked his sleeve, really, so that he glanced up at her testily. “I—I want—may I speak to you?” “A moment, madam. I shall be free in a moment.” The sparkler leaned toward her. “What can I do for you, Mrs. Ravenal?”
“I just wanted to speak to this gentleman——”
“But I can assist you, I’m sure, as well as——”
She glanced at him and he was a row of teeth, all white and even, ready to bite. She shook her head miserably; glanced appealingly at the old man. The sparkler’s eyebrows came up. He gave the effect of stepping back, courteously, without actually doing so. Now that the old clerk faced her, questioningly, she almost regretted her choice.
She blushed, stammered; her voice was little more than a whisper. “I … my husband … have been … he hasn’t returned … worried … killed or … theatre …”
The old baby cupped one hand behind his ear. “What say?”
Her beautiful eyes, in their agony, begged the sparkler now to forgive her f
or having been rude. She needed him. She could not shout this. He stepped forward, but the teeth were hidden. After all, a chief clerk is a chief clerk. Miraculously, he had heard the whisper.
“You say your husband——?”
She nodded. She was terribly afraid that she was going to cry. She opened her eyes very wide and tried not to blink. If she so much as moved her lids she knew the mist that was making everything swim in a rainbow haze would crystallize into tears.
“He is terribly late. I—I’ve been so worried. We were going to the—to McVicker’s—and dinner—and now it’s after seven——”
“After eight,” wheezed cotton whiskers, peering at the clock on the wall.
“—after eight,” she echoed, wretchedly. There! She had winked. Two great drops plumped themselves down on the silk bosom of her bodice with the open-throated neck line. It seemed to her that she heard them splash.
“H’m!” cackled the old man.
The glittering one leaned toward her. She was enveloped in a waft of perfume. “Now, now, Mrs. Ravenal! There’s absolutely nothing to worry about. Your husband has been delayed. That’s all. Unavoidably delayed.”
She snatched at this. “Do you think—? Are you sure? But he always is back by six, at the latest. Always. And we were going to dinner—and Mc——”
“You brides!” smiled the young man. He actually patted her hand, then. Just a touch. “Now you just have a bite of dinner, like a sensible little woman.”
“Oh, I couldn’t eat a bite! I couldn’t!” “A cup of tea. Let me send up a cup of tea.” The old one made a sucking sound with tongue and teeth, rubbed his chin, and proffered his suggestion in a voice that seemed to Magnolia to echo and reëcho through the hotel lobby. “Why’n’t you send a messenger around for him, madam?” “Messenger? Around? Where?” Sparkler made a little gesture—a tactful gesture. “Perhaps he’s having a little game of—uh—cards; and you know how time flies. I’ve done the same thing myself. Look up at the clock and first thing you know it’s eight. Now if I were you, Mrs. Ravenal——”
She knew, then. There was something so sure about this young man; and so pitying. And suddenly she, too, was sure. She recalled in a flash that time when they were playing Paducah, and he had not come. They had held the curtain until after eight. Ralph had searched for him. He had been playing poker in a waterfront saloon. Send around for him! Not she. The words of a popular sentimental song of the day went through her mind, absurdly.
Father, dear father, come home with me now.
The clock in the steeple strikes one.
She drew herself up, now. The actress. She even managed a smile, as even and sparkling and toothy as the sparkler’s own. “Of course. I’m very silly. Thank you so … I’ll just have a bit of supper in my room.…” She turned away with a little gracious bow. The eyes very wide again.
“H’m!” The old man. Translated it meant, “Little idiot!”
She took off the dress with the two dark spots on the silk of the basque. She put away his linen and his shiny shoes. She took up some sewing. But the mist interfered with that. She threw herself on the bed. An agony of tears. That was better. Ten o’clock. She fell asleep, the gas lights burning. At a little before midnight he came in. She awoke with a little cry. Queerly enough, the first thing she noticed was that he had not his cane—the richly mottled malacca stick that he always carried. She heard herself saying, ridiculously, half awake, half asleep, “Where’s your cane?”
His surprise at this matter-of-fact reception made his expression almost ludicrous. “Cane! Oh, that’s so. Why I left it. Must have left it.”
In the years that followed she learned what the absence of the malacca stick meant. It had come to be a symbol in every pawnshop on Clark Street. Its appearance was bond for a sum a hundred times its actual value. Gaylord Ravenal always paid his debts.
She finished undressing, in silence. Her face was red and swollen. She looked young and helpless and almost ugly. He was uncomfortable and self-reproachful. “I’m sorry, Nola. I was detained. We’ll go to the theatre to-morrow night.”
She almost hated him then. Being, after all, a normal woman, there followed a normal scene—tears, reproaches, accusations, threats, pleadings, forgiveness. Then:
“Uh—Nola, will you let me take your ring—just for a day or two?”
“Ring?” But she knew.
“You’ll have it back. This is Wednesday. You’ll have it by Saturday. I swear it.”
The clear white diamond had begun its travels with the malacca stick.
He had spoken the truth when he said that he had been unavoidably detained.
She had meant not to sleep. She had felt sure that she would not sleep. But she was young and healthy and exhausted from emotion. She slept. As she lay there by his side she thought, before she slept, that life was very terrible—but fascinating. Even got from this a glow of discovery. She felt old and experienced and married and tragic. She thought of her mother. She was much, much older and more married, she decided, than her mother ever had been.
They returned to Thebes in February. Magnolia longed to be near her father. She even felt a pang of loneliness for her mother. The little white cottage near the river, at Thebes, looked like a toy house. Her bedroom was doll-size. The town was a miniature village, like a child’s Christmas set. Her mother’s bonnet was a bit of grotesquerie. Her father’s face was etched with lines that she did not remember having seen there when she left. The home-cooked food, prepared by Parthy’s expert hands, was delicious beyond belief. She was a traveller returned from a far place.
Captain Andy had ordered a new boat. He talked of nothing else. The old Cotton Blossom, bought from Pegram years before, was to be discarded. The new boat was to be lighted by some newfangled gas arrangement instead of the old kerosene lamps. Carbide or some such thing Andy said it was. There were to be special footlights, new scenery, improved dressing and sleeping rooms. She was being built at the St. Louis shipyards.
“She’s a daisy!” squeaked Andy, capering. He had just returned from a trip to the place of the Cotton Blossom’s imminent birth. Of the two impending ac couchements—that which was to bring forth a grand child and that which was to produce a new show boat—it was difficult to say which caused him keenest anticipation. Perhaps, secretly, it was the boat, much as he loved Magnolia. He was, first, the river man; second, the showman; third, the father.
“Like to know what you want a new boat for!” Parthy scolded. “Take all the money you’ve earned these years past with the old tub and throw it away on a new one.”
“Old one a’n’t good enough.”
“Good enough for the riff-raff we get on it.”
“Now, Parthy, you know’s well’s I do you couldn’t be shooed off the rivers now you’ve got used to ’em. Any other way of living’d seem stale to you.”
“I’m a woman loves her home and asks for nothing better.”
“Bet you wouldn’t stay ashore, permanent, if you had the chance.”
He won the wager, though he had to die to do it.
The new Cotton Blossom and the new grandchild had a trial by flood on their entrance into life. The Mississippi, savage mother that she was, gave them both a baptism that threatened for a time to make their entrance into and their exit from the world a simultaneous act. But both, after some perilous hours, were piloted to safety; the one by old Windy, who swore that this was his last year on the rivers; the other by a fat midwife and a frightened young doctor. Through storm and flood was heard the voice of Parthenia Ann Hawks, the scold, berating Captain Hawks her husband, and Magnolia Ravenal her daughter, as though they, and not the elements, were responsible for the predicament in which they now found themselves.
There followed four years of war and peace. The strife was internal. It raged between Parthy and her son-in-law. The conflict of the two was a chemical thing. Combustion followed inevitably upon their meeting. The biting acid of Mrs. Hawks’ discernment cut relentlessly thr
ough the outer layers of the young man’s charm and grace and melting manner and revealed the alloy. Ravenal’s nature recoiled at sight of a woman who employed none of the arts of her sex and despised and penetrated those of the opposite sex. She had no vanity, no coquetry, no reticences, no respect for the reticence of others; treated compliment as insult, met flattery with contempt.
A hundred times during those four years he threatened to leave the Cotton Blossom, yet he was held to his wife Magnolia and to the child Kim by too many tender ties. His revolt usually took the form of a gambling spree ashore during which he often lost every dollar he had saved throughout weeks of enforced economy. There was no opportunity to spend money legitimately in the straggling hamlets to whose landings the Cotton Blossom was so often fastened. Then, too, the easy indolence of the life was beginning to claim him—its effortlessness, its freedom from responsibility. Perhaps a new part to learn at the beginning of the season—that was all. River audiences liked the old plays. Came to see them again and again. It was Ravenal who always made the little speech in front of the curtain. Wish to thank you one and all … always glad to come back to the old … to-morrow night that thrilling comedy-drama entitled … each and every one … concert after the show …
