by Edna Ferber
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 racetrack 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 break-fasted 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 naiveté 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 Pa
rk 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.
