Show Boat (26 page)

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 through 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 …

Never had the
Cotton Blossom
troupe so revelled in home-baked cakes, pies, cookies; home-brewed wine; fruits of tree and vine. The female population of the river towns from the Great Lakes to the Gulf beheld in him the lover of their secret dreams and laid at his feet burnt offerings and shewbread. Ravenal, it was said by the
Cotton Blossom
troupe, could charm the gold out of their teeth.

Perhaps, with the passing of the years, he might have grown quite content with this life. Sometimes the little captain, when the two men were conversing quietly apart, dropped a word about the future.

“When I’m gone—you and Magnolia—the boat’ll be yours, of course.”

Ravenal would laugh. Little Captain Andy looked
so very much alive, his bright brown eyes glancing here and there, missing nothing on land or shore, his brown paw scratching the whiskers that showed so little of gray, his nimble legs scampering from texas to gangplank, never still for more than a minute.

“No need to worry about that for another fifty years,” Ravenal assured him.

The end had in it, perhaps, a touch of the ludicrous, as had almost everything the little capering captain did. The
Cotton Blossom
, headed upstream on the Mississippi, bound for St. Louis, had struck a snag in Cakohia Bend, three miles from the city. It was barely dawn, and a dense fog swathed the river. The old
Cotton Blossom
probably would have sunk midstream. The new boat stood the shock bravely. In the midst of the pandemonium that followed the high shrill falsetto of the little captain’s voice could be heard giving commands which he, most of all, knew he had no right to give. The pilot only was to be obeyed under such conditions. The crew understood this, as did the pilot. It was, in fact, a legend that more than once in a crisis Captain Andy on the upper deck had screamed his orders in a kind of dramatic frenzy of satisfaction, interspersing these with picturesque and vivid oaths during which he had capered and bounced his way right off the deck and into the river, from which damp station he had continued to screech his orders and profanities in cheerful unconcern until fished aboard again. Exactly this happened. High above the clamour rose the voice of Andy. His little figure whirled like that of a dervish. Up, down, fore, aft—suddenly he was overboard unseen in
the dimness, in the fog, in the savage swift current of the Mississippi, wrapped in the coils of the old yellow serpent, tighter, tighter, deeper, deeper, until his struggles ceased. She had him at last.

“The river,” Magnolia had said, over and over. “The river. The river.”

T
HEBES?” echoed Parthenia Ann Hawks, widow. The stiff crêpe of her weeds seemed to bristle. “I’ll do nothing of the kind, miss! If you and that fine husband of yours think to rid yourself of me
that
way——”

“But, Mama, we’re not trying to rid ourselves of you. How can you think of such things! You’ve always said you hated the boat. Always. And now that Papa—now that you needn’t stay with the show any longer, I thought you’d want to go back to Thebes to live.”

“Indeed! And what’s to become of the
Cotton Blossom
, tell me that, Maggie Hawks!”

“I don’t know,” confessed Magnolia, miserably. “I don’t—know. That’s what I think we ought to talk about.” The
Cotton Blossom
, after her tragic encounter with the hidden snag in the Mississippi, was in for repairs. The damage to the show boat had been greater than they had thought. The snag had, after all, inflicted a jagged wound. So, too, had it torn and wounded something deep and hidden in Magnolia’s soul. Suddenly she had a horror of the great river whose treacherous secret fangs had struck so poisonously. The sight of the yellow turbid flood sickened her; yet held her hypnotized. Now she thought that she must run from it, with her husband and her child, to safety.
Now she knew that she never could be content away from it. She wanted to flee. She longed to stay. This, if ever, was her chance. But the river had Captain Andy. Somewhere in its secret coils he lay. She could not leave him. On the rivers the three great mysteries—Love and Birth and Death—had been revealed to her. All that she had known of happiness and tragedy and tranquillity and adventure and romance and fulfilment was bound up in the rivers. Their willow-fringed banks framed her world. The motley figures that went up and down upon them or that dwelt on their shores were her people. She knew them; was of them. The Mississippi had her as surely as it had little Andy Hawks.

“Well, we’re talking about it, ain’t we?” Mrs. Hawks now demanded.

“I mean—the repairs are going to be quite expensive. She’ll be laid up for a month or more, right in the season. Now’s the time to decide whether we’re going to try to run her ourselves just as if Papa were still——”

“I can see you’ve been talking things over pretty hard and fast with Ravenal. Well, I’ll tell you what we’re going to do, miss. We’re going to run her ourselves—leastways, I am.”

“But, Mama!”

“Your pa left no will. Hawks all over. I’ve as must say-so as you have. More. I’m his widow. You won’t see me willing to throw away the good-will of a business that it’s taken years to build up. The boat’s insurance’ll take care of the repairs. Your pa’s life insurance is paid up, and quite a decent sum—for him.
I saw to that. You’ll get your share, I’ll get mine. The boat goes on like it always has. No Thebes for me. You’ll go on playing ingénue leads; Ravenal juvenile. Kim——”

“No!” cried Magnolia much as Parthy had, years before. “Not Kim.”

“Why not?”

There was about the Widow Hawks a terrifying and invincible energy. Her black habiliments of woe billowed about her like the sable wings of a destroying angel. With Captain Andy gone, she would appoint herself commander of the Cotton Blossom Floating Palace Theatre. Magnolia knew that. Who, knowing Parthy, could imagine it otherwise? She would appoint herself commander of their lives. Magnolia was no weakling. She was a woman of mettle. But no mettle could withstand the sledge-hammer blows of Parthy Ann Hawks’ iron.

It was impossible that such an arrangement could hold. From the first Ravenal rejected it. But Magnolia’s pleadings for at least a trial won him over, but grudgingly.

“It won’t work, Nola, I tell you. We’ll be at each other’s throats. She’s got all kinds of plans. I can see them whirling around in her eye.”

“But you will try to be patient, won’t you, Gay? For my sake and Kim’s?”

But they had not been out a week before mutiny struck the
Cotton Blossom
. The first to go was Windy. Once his great feet were set toward the gangplank there was no stopping him. He was over seventy now, but he
looked not an hour older than when he had come aboard the
Cotton Blossom
almost fifteen years before. To the irate widow he spoke briefly but with finality.

“You’re Hawks’ widow. That’s why I said I’d take her same’s if Andy was alive. I thought Nollie’s husband would boss this boat, but seems you’re running it. Well, ma’am, I ain’t no petticoat-pilot. I’m off the end of this trip down. Young Tanner’ll come aboard there and pilot you.”

“Tanner! Who’s he? How d’you know I want him? I’m running this boat.”

“You better take him, Mrs. Hawks, ma’am. He’s young, and not set in his ways, and likely won’t mind your nagging. I’m too old. Lost my taste for the rivers, anyway, since Cap went. Lost my nerve, too, seems like.… Well, ma’am, I’m going.”

And he went.

Changes came then, tripping on each other’s heels. Mis’ Means stayed, and little weak-chested Mr. Means. Frank had gone after Magnolia’s marriage. Ralph left.

Parthy met these difficulties and defeats with magnificent generalship. She seemed actually to thrive on them. Do this. Do that. Ravenal’s right eyebrow was cocked in a perpetual circumflex of disdain. One could feel the impact of opposition whenever the two came together. Every fibre of Ravenal’s silent secretive nature was taut in rejection of this managerial mother-in-law. Every nerve and muscle of that energetic female’s frame tingled with enmity toward this suave soft-spoken contemptuous husband of her daughter.

Finally, “Choose,” said Gaylord Ravenal, “between your mother and me.”

Magnolia chose. Her decision met with such terrific opposition from Parthy as would have shaken any woman less determined and less in love.

“Where you going with that fine husband of yours? Tell me that!”

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll warrant you don’t. No more does he. Why’re you going? You’ve got a good home on the boat.”

“Kim … school …”

“Fiddlesticks!”