Show Boat

by Edna Ferber

  Magnolia, inured to money crises, realized that the situation to-night was different. This was not a crisis. It was an impasse.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Gay had said. There was no way out. The men from whom he had borrowed in the past were themselves as harried as he. The sources from which he had gained his precarious livelihood were drying up; had almost ceased to exist, except furtively. I know somebody. Somebody who would like to do me a favour. Some body—who—would—like—— A horrid suspicion darted through her mind, released from the subconscious. Appalled at its ugliness, she tried to send it back to its hiding place. It would not go. It stayed there before her mind’s eye, grinning, evil, unspeakably repulsive. She took up her sewing again. She endeavoured to fix her mind on Kim. Kim asleep in the cold calm quiet of the great walled convent on South Wabash. French and embroidery and deportment and china painting and wimples and black wings and long dark shining halls and round white faces and slim white tapers and statues of the saints that turned into fauns and why was that not surprising? A clatter. One of the saints had dropped her rosary on the bare shining floor. It wasn’t a rosary. It was an anchor ringing against the metal stanchion of the Cotton Blossom.

  Magnolia awoke. Her sewing scissors had fallen from her lap. Her face felt stiff and drawn. She hugged herself a little, and shivered, and looked about her. Her little gold watch on the dresser—no, of course not. That was gone. She folded her sewing. It was late, she knew. She was accustomed to being up until twelve, one, two. But this was later. Something told her that this was later. The black hush of the city outside. The feel of the room in which she sat. The sinister quiet of the very walls about her. The cheap clock on the shelf had stopped. The hands said twenty minutes after two. Twenty-one minutes after, she told herself in a foolish triumph of precision.

  She took down her fine long black hair. Brushed it. Plaited it. One of the lacy nightgowns so absurd in the sordid shabbiness of the rooming-house bedroom; so alien to the coarse gray sheets. She had no other kind. She went to bed. She fell asleep.

  It was just before dawn when he returned. The black of the window panes showed the promise of gray. His step had an unaccustomed sound. He fumbled for the gas jet. His very presence was strange in the dark. The light flared blue, but she knew; she knew even before it illumined his face that bore queer slack lines she had never before seen there. For the first time in their life together Gaylord Ravenal was drunk.

  She sat up; reached for her wrapper at the foot of the bed and bunched it about her shivering shoulders. He was immensely serious and dignified. He swayed a little. The slack look on his face. That was all.

  “I’ll do the worrying,” he said, as though continuing the conversation that had held them at nine o’clock. He placed the malacca stick carefully in its corner. He removed his coat, keeping his hat on. The effect was startlingly rowdy, perhaps because he had always so meticulously observed the niceties. Standing thus, weaving back and forth ever so slightly, he pulled from his left vest pocket, where it fitted much too snugly, a plump bill-folder. Custom probably cautioned him to retain this, merely widening its open side to reveal the sheaf of notes within. But his condition, and all that had gone to bring it about, caused him to forego his cunning. With a vague, but successful, gesture, and a little lurch as he stood, he tossed the leather folder to the counterpane. “Coun’ it!” he commanded, very distinctly. “Ten one hun’er’ dollar bills and ten one hun’er’ dollar bills makes twen’y one hun’er’ dollar bills an’ anybody says it doesn’ is a liar. Two thousan’ dollars. Would you kin’ly count ’em, Mrs. Rav’nal? I believe”—with businesslike dignity—“I b’lieve you’ll find that correc’.”

  Magnolia Ravenal in her nightgown with her wrapper hunched about her shoulders sat staring at the little leather booklet on the bed. Its gaping mouth mocked her. She did not touch it.

  “Two thousand dollars?” she said.

  “I b’lieve you’ll fin’ tha’s correc’.” He seemed to be growing less distinct.

  “Where did you get this, Gay?”

  “Never min’. I’ll do th’ worrying.”

  He unbuttoned his vest with some difficulty. Yawned prodigiously, like one who has earned his rest after a good day’s work.

  She looked at him. She was like a drawing in French ink—her face so white, her eyes so enormous, her hair so black.

  “You got this from Hetty Chilson.”

  His collar came off with a crack-snap. He held it in the hand that pointed toward the money. He seemed offended at something. Not angry, but hurt. “How can you say that, M’nolia! I got one thousan’ from good ol’ Het and not cen’ more. Wha’ do I do then! Marsh up to Sheedy’s and win a thousan’ more at roulette. Ha! That’s a great joke on Sheedy because, look, roulette isn’ my game. Nev’ has been. Faro’s my game. Tha’s a gen’leman’s game, faro. One thousan’ Hetty, and marsh ri’ up … roulette … win … ’nother … Thous …” He lurched to the bed.

  He was asleep at once, heavily, deeply, beside her on the bed, his fine long head lolling off the pillow. She knelt in her place and tried to lift the inert figure to a more comfortable position; succeeded, finally, after some tugging. She drew the lumpy coverlet over him. Then she sat as before, hunched in her nightgown and the wrapper, staring at the open wallet with its many leaves. It was dawn now. The room was gray with it. She ought to turn out the gas. She arose. She picked up the wallet. Before extinguishing the light she counted out ten one-hundred-dollar bills from the sheaf within the wallet. One thousand dollars. Her fingers touched the bills gingerly, fastidiously, and a little wrinkle of disgust curled her lip. She placed the bills on the dresser. She folded the leather holder and tucked it, with its remaining contents, under his pillow. He did not waken. She turned out the light then, and coming back to the bedside drew on the slippers that lay on the floor. She got her shirtwaist—a fresh white one with a Gibson tuck—from the drawer, and her skirt and jacket from the hooks covered over with a protecting length of calico against the wall. She heated a little water, and washed; combed and dressed her hair; put on her clothes, laid her hat on the dresser. Then she sat in the one comfortable chair that the room afforded—a crazy and decayed armchair done in dingy red plush, relic of some past grandeur—and waited. She even slept a little there in the sagging old chair, with the morning light glaring pitilessly in upon her face. When she awoke it must have been nearly noon. A dour day, but she had grown accustomed to the half-lights of the Chicago fogs. She glanced sharply at him. He had not moved. He had not stirred. He looked, somehow, young, helpless, innocent, pathetic. She busied herself in making a cup of coffee as quietly as might be. This might rouse him, but it would make little difference. She knew what she had to do. She drank the hot revivifying liquid in great gulps. Then she put on her jacket, pinned on her hat, took up the bills and placed them neatly in her handbag. She glanced at herself in the mirror.

  “My, you’re plain!” she thought, meaninglessly. She went down the dim stairway. The fusty landlady was flapping a gray rag in the outer doorway as her contribution to the grime of the street.

  “What’s taking you out so bright and early, Mis’ Ravenal? Business or pleasure?” She liked her little joke.

  “Business,” said Magnolia.

  XVII

  THE knell had sounded for the red brick house with the lions guarding its portals. The Chicago soot hung like a pall over it. The front steps sagged. Even the stone lions had a mangy look. The lemon-water sunshine of a Chicago winter day despoiled the dwelling of any sinister exterior aspect. That light, filtering through the lake mist, gave to the house-front the look of a pock-marked, wrinkled, and evil old hag who squats in the market place with her face to the sun and thinks of her purple past and does not regret it. It was half-past one. Magnolia Ravenal had figured this out nicely. That part of Clark Street would be astir by now. As she approached the house on Clark, near Polk, her courage had momentarily failed her, and she had passed it, hurriedly. She had
walked a block south, wretchedly. But the feel of the bills in her bag gave her new resolve. She opened the handbag to look at them, turned and walked swiftly back to the house. She rang the bell this time, firmly, demandingly; stood looking down at its clean-scrubbed doorstep and tried to ignore the prickling sensation that ran up and down her spine and the weak and trembling feeling in her legs. The people passing by could see her. She was knocking at Hetty Chilson’s notorious door, and the people passing by could see her: Magnolia Ravenal. Well, what of it! Don’t be silly. She rang again.

  The door was opened by a Negro in a clean starched white house coat. Magnolia did not know why the sight of this rather sad-eyed looking black man should have reassured her; but it did. She knew exactly what she wanted to say.

  “My name is Mrs. Ravenal. I want to speak to Hetty Chilson.”

  “Mis’ Chilson is busy, ma’am,” he said, as though repeating a lesson. Still, something about the pale, well-dressed, earnest woman evidently impressed him. Of late, when he opened the door there had been frequent surprises for him in the shape of similar earnest and well-dressed young women who, when you refused them admittance, flashed an official-looking badge, whipped out notebook and pencil and insisted pleasantly but firmly that he make quite sure Miss Chilson was not in. “You-all one them Suhveys?”

  Uncomprehending, she shook her head. He made as though to shut the door, gently. Magnolia had not spent years in the South for nothing. “Don’t you shut that door on me! I want to see Hetty Chilson.”

  The man recognized the tone of white authority. “Wha’ you want?”

  Magnolia recovered herself. After all, this was not the front door of a home, but of a House. “Tell her Mrs. Gaylord Ravenal wants to speak to her. Tell her that I have one thousand dollars that belongs to her, and I want to give it to her.” Foolishly she opened her bag and he saw the neat sheaf of bills. His eyes popped a little.

  “Yes’m. Ah tell huh. Step in, ma’am.”

  Magnolia entered Hetty Chilson’s house. She was frightened. The trembling had taken hold of her knees again. But she clutched the handbag and looked about her, frankly curious. A dim hallway, richly carpeted, its walls covered with a red satin brocade. There were deep soft cushioned chairs, and others of carved wood, high-backed. A lighted lamp on the stairway newel post cast a rosy glow over the whole. Huge Sèvres vases stood in the stained-glass window niches. It was an entrance hall such as might have been seen in the Prairie Avenue or Michigan Avenue house of a new rich Chicago packer. The place was quiet. Now and then you heard a door shut. There was the scent of coffee in the air. No footfall on the soft carpet, even though the tread were heavy. Hetty Chilson descended the stairs, a massive, imposing figure in a black-and-white patterned foulard dress. She gave the effect of activity hampered by some physical impediment. Her descent was one of impatient deliberateness. One hand clung to the railing. She appeared a stout, middle-aged, well-to-do householder summoned from some domestic task abovestairs. She had aged much in the last ten years. Magnolia, startled, realized that the distortion of her stout figure was due to a tumour.

  “How do you do?” said Hetty Chilson. Her keen eyes searched her visitor’s face. The Negro hovered near by in the dim hallway. “Are you Mrs. Ravenal?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is it, please?”

  Magnolia felt like a schoolgirl interrogated by a stern but well-intentioned preceptress. Her cheeks were burning as she opened her handbag, took out the sheaf of hundred-dollar bills, tendered them to this woman. “The money,” she stammered, “the money you gave my—you gave my husband. Here it is.”

  Hetty Chilson looked at the bills. “I didn’t give it to him. I loaned it to him. He said he’d pay it back and I believe he will. Ravenal’s got the name for being square.”

  Magnolia touched Hetty Chilson’s hand with the folded bills; pressed them on her so that the hand opened automatically to take them. “We don’t want it.”

  “Don’t want it! Well, what’d he come asking me for it for, then? I’m no bank that you can take money out and put money in.”

  “I’m sorry. He didn’t know. I can’t—we don’t—I can’t take it.”

  Hetty Chilson looked down at the bills. Her eyeglasses hung on the bodice of her dress, near the right shoulder, attached to a patent gold chain. This she pulled out now with a businesslike gesture and adjusted the eyeglasses to her nose. “Oh, you’re that kind, huh?” She counted the bills once and then again; folded them. “Does your husband know about this?” Magnolia did not answer. She looked dignified and felt foolish. The very matter-of-factness of this world-hardened woman made this thing Magnolia had done seem overdramatic and silly. Hetty Chilson glanced over her shoulder to where the white-coated Negro stood. “Mose, tell Jule I want her. Tell her to bring her receipt book and a pen.” Mose ran up the soft-carpeted stairs. You heard a deferential rap at an upper door; voices. Hetty turned again to Magnolia. “You’ll want a receipt for this. Anyway, you’ll have that to show him when he kicks up a fuss.” She moved ponderously to the foot of the stairway; waited a moment there, looking up. Magnolia’s eyes followed her gaze. Mose had vanished, evidently, down some rear passage and stairway, for he again appeared mysteriously at the back of the lower hall though he had not descended the stairway up which he had gone a moment before. Down this stair came a straight slim gray-haired figure. Genteel, was the word that popped into Magnolia’s mind. A genteel figure in decent black silk, plain and good. It rustled discreetly. A white fine turnover collar finished it at the throat. Narrow cuffs at the wrist. It was difficult to see her face in the dim light. She paused a moment in the glow of the hall lamp as Hetty Chilson instructed her. A white face—no, not white—ivory. Like something dead. White hair still faintly streaked with black. In this clearer light the woman seemed almost gaunt. The eyes were incredibly black in that ivory face; like dull coals, Magnolia thought, staring at her, fascinated. Something in her memory stirred at sight of this woman in the garb of a companion-secretary and with a face like burned-out ashes. Perhaps she had seen her with Hetty Chilson at the theatre or the races. She could not remember.

  “Make out a receipt for one thousand dollars received from Mrs. Gaylord Ravenal. R-a-v-e-n-a-l. Yes, that’s right. Here; I’ll sign it.” Hetty Chilson penned her name swiftly as the woman held the book for her. She turned to Magnolia. “Excuse me,” she said. “I have to be at the bank at two. Jule, give this receipt to Mrs. Ravenal. Come up as soon as you’re through.”

  With a kind of ponderous dignity this strange and terrible woman ascended her infamous stairway. Magnolia stood, watching her. Her plump, well-shaped hand clung to the railing. An old woman, her sins heavy upon her. She had somehow made Magnolia feel a fool.

  The companion tore the slip of paper from the booklet, advanced to Magnolia and held it out to her. “One thousand dollars,” she said. Her voice was deep and rich and strange. “Mrs. Gaylord Ravenal. Correct?” Magnolia put out her hand, blindly. Unaccountably she was trembling again. The slip of paper dropped from her hand. The woman uttered a little exclamation of apology. They both stooped to pick it up as the paper fluttered to the floor. They bumped awkwardly, actually laughed a little, ruefully, and straightening, looked at each other, smiling. And as Magnolia smiled, shyly, she saw the smile on the face of the woman freeze into a terrible contortion of horror. Horror stamped itself on her every feature. Her eyes were wild and enormous with it; her mouth gaped with it. So the two stood staring at each other for one hideous moment. Then the woman turned, blindly, and vanished up the stairs like a black ghost. Magnolia stood staring after her. Then, with a little cry, she made as though to follow her up the stairway. Strangely she cried, “Julie! Julie, wait for me!” Mose, the Negro, came swiftly forward. “This way out, miss,” he said, deferentially. He held the street door open. Magnolia passed through it, down the steps of the brick house with the lions couchant, into the midday brightness of Clark Street. Suddenly she was crying, who so rarely wept. S
outh Clark Street paid little attention to her, inured as it was to queer sights. And if a passer-by had stopped and said, “What is it? Can I help you?” she would have been at a loss to reply. Certainly she could not have said, “I think I have just seen the ghost of a woman I knew when I was a little girl—a woman I first saw when I was swinging on the gate of our house at Thebes, and she went by in a long-tailed flounced black dress and a lace veil tied around her hat. And I last saw her—oh, I can’t be sure. I can’t be sure. It might not——”

  Clark Street, even if it had understood (which is impossible), would not have been interested. And presently, as she walked along, she composed herself. She dabbed at her face with her handkerchief and pulled down her neat veil. She had still another task to perform. But the day seemed already so old. She was not sleepy, but her mind felt thick and slow. The events of the past night and of the morning did not stand out clearly. It was as if they had happened long ago. Perhaps she should eat something. She had had only that cup of coffee; had eaten almost nothing the night before.

  She had a little silver in her purse. She counted it as it lay next to the carefully folded thousand-dollar receipt signed in Hetty Chilson’s firm businesslike hand. Twenty-five—thirty-five—forty—fifty—seventy-three cents. Ample. She stopped at a lunch room on Harrison, near Wabash; ate a sandwich and drank two cups of coffee. She felt much better. On leaving she caught a glimpse of herself in a wall mirror—a haggard woman with a skin blotched from tears, and a shiny nose and with little untidy wisps of hair showing beneath her hat. Her shoes—she remembered having heard or read somewhere that neat shoes were the first requisite for an applicant seeking work. Furtively and childishly she rubbed the toe of either shoe on the back of each stocking. She decided to go to one of the department-store rest rooms for women and there repair her toilette. Field’s was the nicest; the Boston store the nearest. She went up State Street to Field’s. The white marble mirrored room was full of women. It was warm and bright and smelled pleasantly of powder and soap and perfume. Magnolia took off her hat, bathed her face, tidied her hair, powdered. Now she felt less alien to these others about her—these comfortable chattering shopping women; wives of husbands who worked in offices, who worked in shops, who worked in factories. She wondered about them. She was standing before a mirror adjusting her veil, and a woman was standing beside her, peering into the same glass, each seemingly oblivious of the other. “I wonder,” Magnolia thought, fancifully, “what she would say if I were to turn to her and tell her that I used to be a showboat actress, and that my father was drowned in the Mississippi, and my mother, at sixty, runs a show boat all alone, and that my husband is a gambler and we have no money, and that I have just come from the most notorious brothel in Chicago, where I returned a thousand dollars my husband had got there, and that I’m on my way to try to get work in a variety theatre.” She was smiling a little at this absurd thought. The other woman saw the smile, met it with a frozen stare of utter respectability, and walked away.