Show Boat

by Edna Ferber

  He had glanced out of the Lady Lee’s saloon window, his eyes bloodshot from sleeplessness, his nerves jangling, his hands twitching, his face drawn; but that face shaven, those hands immaculate. Gaylord Ravenal, in luck or out, had the habits and instincts of a gentleman.

  “Good God!” he exclaimed now, “this looks like—it is New Orleans!” It was N’Yawlins as he said it.

  “What did you think it was?” growled one of the players, who had temporarily owned the diamond several times during the journey down river. “What did you think it was? Shanghai?”

  “I wish it was,” said Gaylord Ravenal. Somewhat dazedly he walked down the Lady Lee’s gangplank and retorted testily to a beady-eyed giant-footed gentleman who immediately spoke to him in a low and not unfriendly tone, “Give me time, can’t you! I haven’t been twenty-four hours stepping from the gangplank to this wharf, have I? Well, then!”

  “No offence, Gay,” said the gentleman, his eyes still searching the other passengers as they filed across the narrow gangplank. “Just thought I’d remind you, case of trouble. You know how Vallon is.”

  Vallon had said, briefly, later, “That’s all right, Gay. But by this time to-morrow evening——” He had eyed Ravenal’s raiment with a comprehending eye. “Cigar?” The weed he proffered was slim, pale, and frayed as the man who stood before him. Gaylord Ravenal’s jangling nerves ached for the solace of tobacco; but he viewed this palpably second-hand gift with a glance of disdain that was a triumph of the spirit over the flesh. Certainly no man handicapped by his present sartorial and social deficiencies was justified in raising a quizzical right eyebrow in the manner employed by Ravenal.

  “What did you call it?” said he now.

  Vallon looked at it. He was not a quick-witted gentleman. “Cigar.”

  “Optimist.” And strolled out of the chief’s office, swinging the little malacca cane.

  So then, you now saw him leaning moodily against a wooden case on the New Orleans plank wharf, distinguished, shabby, dapper, handsome, broke, and twenty-four.

  It was with some amusement that he had watched the crew of the Mollie Able bring the flat unwieldy bulk of the Cotton Blossom into the wharfside in the midst of the confusion of packets, barges, steamboats, tugs, flats, tramp boats, shanty boats. He had spoken briefly and casually to Schultzy while that bearer of evil tidings, letter in hand, waited impatiently on the dock as the Cotton Blossom was shifted to a landing position farther upstream. He had seen these floating theatres of the Mississippi and the Ohio many times, but he had never before engaged one of their actors in conversation.

  “Juvenile lead!” he had exclaimed, unable to hide something of incredulity in his voice. Schultzy, an anxious eye on the Mollie Abie’s tedious manoeuvres, had just made clear to Ravenal his own position in the Cotton Blossom troupe. Ravenal, surveying the furrowed brow, the unshaven cheeks, the careless dress, the lack-lustre eye, had involuntarily allowed to creep into his tone something of the astonishment he felt.

  Schultzy made a little deprecating gesture with his hands, his shoulders. “I guess I don’t look like no juvenile lead, and that’s a fact. But I’m all shot to pieces. Took a drink the size of this”—indicating perhaps five fingers—“up yonder on Canal Street; straight whisky. No drinking allowed on the show boat. Well, sir, never felt it no more’n it had been water. I just got news my wife’s sick in the hospital.”

  Ravenal made a little perfunctory sound of sympathy. “In New Orleans?”

  “Little Rock, Arkansas. I’m going. It’s a dirty trick, but I’m going.”

  “How do you mean, dirty trick?” Ravenal was mildly interested in this confiding stranger.

  “Leave the show flat like that. I don’t know what they’ll do. I——” He saw that the Cotton Blossom was now snugly at ease in her new position, and that her gangplank had again been lowered. He turned away abruptly, without a good-bye, went perhaps ten paces, came back five and called to Ravenal. “You ever acted?”

  “Acted!”

  “On the stage. Acted. Been an actor.”

  Ravenal threw back his handsome head and laughed as he would have thought, ten minutes ago, he never could laugh again. “Me! An actor! N—” then, suddenly sober, thoughtful even—“Why, yes. Yes.” And eyeing Schultzy through half-shut lids he tapped the tip of his shiny shabby boot with the smart little malacca cane. Schultzy was off again toward the Cotton Blossom.

  If Ravenal was aware of the scrutiny to which he was subjected through the binoculars, he gave no sign as he lounged elegantly on the wharf watching the busy waterside scene with an air of indulgent amusement that would have made the onlooker receive with incredulity the information that the law was even then snapping at his heels.

  Captain Andy Hawks scampered off the Cotton Blossom and approached this figure, employing none of the finesse that the situation called for.

  “I understand you’ve acted on the stage.”

  Gaylord Ravenal elevated the right eyebrow and looked down his aristocratic nose at the capering little captain. “I am Gaylord Ravenal, of the Tennessee Ravenals. I failed to catch your name.”

  “Andy Hawks, captain and owner of the Cotton Blossom Floating Palace Theatre.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the show boat.

  “Ah, yes,” said Ravenal, with polite unenthusiasm. He allowed his patrician glance to rest idly a moment on the Cotton Blossom, lying squat and dumpy alongside the landing.

  Captain Andy found himself suddenly regretting that he had not had her painted and overhauled. He clutched his whiskers in embarrassment, and, under stress of that same emotion, blurted the wrong thing. “I guess Parthy was mistaken.” The Ravenal eyebrow became interrogatory. Andy floundered on. “She said that no man with a crack in the shoe——” he stopped, then, appalled.

  Gaylord Ravenal looked down at the footgear under discussion. He looked up at the grim and ponderous female figure on the forward deck of the show boat. Parthy was wearing one of her most uncompromising bonnets and a gown noticeably bunchy even in that day of unsymmetrical feminine fashions. Black was not becoming to Mrs. Hawks’ sallow colouring. Lumpy black was fatal. If anything could have made this figure less attractive than it actually was, Ravenal’s glance would seem to have done so. “That—ah—lady?”

  “My wife,” said Andy. Then, mindful of the maxim of the sheep and the lamb, he went the whole way. “We’ve lost our juvenile lead. Fifteen a week and found. Chance to see the world. No responsibility. Schultzy said you said … I said … Parthy said …” Hopelessly entangled, he stopped.

  “Am I to understand that I am being offered the position of—ah—juvenile lead on the—” the devastating glance upward—“Cotton Blossom Floating Palace——”

  “That’s the size of it,” interrupted Andy, briskly. After all, even this young man’s tone and manner could not quite dispel that crack in the boot. Andy knew that no one wears a split shoe from choice.

  “No responsibility,” he repeated. “A chance to see life.”

  “I’ve seen it,” in the tone of one who did not care for what he has beheld. His eyes were on a line with the Cotton Blossom’s deck. His gaze suddenly became concentrated. A tall slim figure in white had just appeared on the upper deck, forward—the bit of deck that looked for all the world like a nautical veranda. It led off Magnolia’s bedroom. The slim white figure was Magnolia. Prepatory to going ashore she was taking a look at this romantic city which she always had loved, and which she, in company with Andy or Doc, had roamed a dozen times since her first early childhood trip on the Creole Belle.

  Her dress was bunchy, too, as the mode demanded. But where it was not bunchy it was very tight. And its bunchiness thus only served to emphasize the slimness of the snug areas. Her black hair was drawn smoothly away from the temples and into a waterfall at the back. Her long fine head and throat rose exquisitely above the little pleated frill that finished the neckline of her gown. She carried her absurd beribboned and beflowered high-crowned hat in he
r hand. A graceful, pliant, slim young figure in white, surveying the pandemonium that was the New Orleans levee. Columns of black rose from a hundred steamer stacks. Freight barrels and boxes went hurtling through the air, or were shoved or carried across the plank wharf to the accompaniment of shouting and sweating and swearing. Negroes everywhere. Band boxes, carpet bags, babies, drays, carriages, wheelbarrows, carts. Beyond the levee rose the old salt warehouses. Beyond these lay Canal Street. Magnolia was going into town with her father and her mother. Andy had promised her supper at Antoine’s and an evening at the old French theatre. She knew scarcely ten words of French. Andy, if he had known it in his childhood, had quite forgotten it now. Parthy looked upon it as the language of sin and the yellow back paper novels. But all three found enjoyment in the grace and colour and brilliance of the performance and the audience—both of a sort to be found nowhere else in the whole country. Andy’s enjoyment was tinged and heightened by a vague nostalgia; Magnolia’s was that of one artist for the work of another; Parthy’s was the enjoyment of suspicion. She always hoped the play’s high scenes were going to be more risqué than they actually were.

  From her vantage point Magnolia stood glancing alertly about her, enjoying the babel that was the New Orleans plank wharves. She now espied and recognized the familiarly capering little figure below with its right hand scratching the mutton-chop whiskers this side and that. She was impatient to be starting for their jaunt ashore. She waved at him with the hand that held the hat. The upraised arm served to enhance the delicate curve of the pliant young figure in its sheath of white.

  Andy, catching sight of her, waved in return.

  “Is that,” inquired Gaylord Ravenal, “a member of your company?”

  Andy’s face softened and glowed. “That? That’s my daughter Magnolia.”

  “Magnolia. Magnol—— Does she—is she a——”

  “I should smile she is! She’s our ingénue lead, Magnolia is. Plays opposite the juvenile lead. But if you’ve been a trouper you know that, I guess.” A sudden suspicion darted through him. “Say, young man —what’s your name?—oh, yes, Ravenal. Well, Ravenal, you a quick study? That’s what I got to know, first off. Because we leave New Orleans to-night to play the bayous. Bayou Teche to-morrow night in Tempest and Sunshine.… You a quick study?”

  “Lightning,” said Gaylord Ravenal.

  Five minutes later, bowing over her hand, he did not know whether to curse the crack in his shoe for shaming him before her, or to bless it for having been the cause of his being where he was.

  That he and Magnolia should become lovers was as inevitable as the cosmic course. Certainly some force greater than human must have been at work on it, for it overcame even Parthy’s opposition. Everything conspired to bring the two together, including their being kept forcibly apart. Himself a picturesque, mysterious, and romantic figure, Gaylord Ravenal, immediately after joining the Cotton Blossom troupe, became the centre of a series of dramatic episodes any one of which would have made him glamorous in Magnolia’s eyes, even though he had not already assumed for her the glory of a Galahad.

  She had never before met a man of Ravenal’s stamp. In this dingy motley company he moved aloof, remote, yet irresistibly attracting all of them—except Parthy. She, too, must have felt drawn to this charming and magnetic man, but she fought the attraction with all the strength of her powerful and vindictive nature. Sensing that here lay his bitterest opposition, Ravenal deliberately set about exercising his charm to win Parthy to friendliness. For the first time in his life he received rebuff so bristling, so unmistakable, as to cause him temporarily to doubt his own gifts.

  Women had always adored Gaylord Ravenal. He was not a villain. He was, in fact, rather gentle, and more than a little weak. His method, coupled with strong personal attractiveness, was simple in the extreme. He made love to all women and demanded nothing of them. Swept off their feet, they waited, trembling deliciously, for the final attack. At its failure to materialize they looked up, wondering, to see his handsome face made more handsome by a certain wistful sadness. At that their hearts melted within them. That which they had meant to defend they now offered. For the rest, his was a paradoxical nature. A courtliness of manner, contradicted by a bluff boyishness. A certain shy boldness. He was not an especially intelligent man. He had no need to be. His upturned glance at a dining-room waitress bent over him was in no way different from that which he directed straight at Parthy now; or at the daughter of a prosperous Southern lawyer, or at that daughter’s vaguely uneasy mama. It wasn’t deliberate evil in him or lack of fastidiousness. He was helpless to do otherwise.

  Certainly he had never meant to remain a member of this motley troupe, drifting up and down the rivers. He had not, for that matter, meant to fall in love with Magnolia, much less marry her. Propinquity and opposition, either of which usually is sufficient to fan the flame, together caused the final conflagration. For weeks after he came on board, he literally never spoke to Magnolia alone. Parthy attended to that. He saw her not only daily but almost hourly. He considered himself lucky to be deft enough to say, “Lovely day, isn’t it, Miss Magn——” before Mrs. Hawks swept her offspring out of earshot. Parthy was wise enough to see that this handsome, graceful, insidious young stranger would appear desirable and romantic in the eyes of women a hundredfold more sophisticated than the child-like and unawakened Magnolia. She took refuge in the knowledge that this dangerous male was the most impermanent of additions to the Cotton Blossom troupe. His connection with them would end on Schultzy’s return.

  Gaylord Ravenal was, in the meantime, a vastly amused and prodigiously busy young man. To learn the juvenile leads in the plays that made up the Cotton Blossom troupe’s repertoire was no light matter. Not only must he memorize lines, business, and cues of the regular bills—Uncle Tom’s Cabin, East Lynne, Tempest and Sunshine, Lady Audley’s Secret, The Parson’s Bride, The Gambler, and others— but he must be ready to go on in the concert afterpiece, whatever it might be—sometimes A Dollar for a Kiss, sometimes Red Hot Coffee. The company rehearsed day and night; during the day they rehearsed that night’s play; after the performance they rehearsed next night’s bill. With some astonishment the Cotton Blossom troupe realized, at the end of two weeks, that Gaylord Ravenal was acting as director. It had come about naturally and inevitably. Ravenal had a definite theatre sense—a feeling for tempo, rhythm, line, grouping, inflection, characterization—any, or all, of these. The atmosphere had freshness for him; he was interested; he wished to impress Andy and Parthy and Magnolia; he considered the whole business a gay adventure; and an amusing interlude. For a month they played the bayous and plantations of Louisiana, leaving behind them a whole countryside whose planters, villagers, Negroes had been startled out of their Southern lethargy. These had known show boats and show-boat performances all their lives. They had been visited by this or that raffish, dingy, slap-dash, or decent and painstaking troupe. The Cotton Blossom company had the reputation for being the last-named variety, and always were patronized accordingly. The plays seldom varied. The performance was, usually, less than mediocre. They were, then, quite unprepared for the entertainment given them by the two handsome, passionate, and dramatic young people who now were cast as ingenue and juvenile lead of the Cotton Blossom Floating Palace Theatre company. Here was Gaylord Ravenal, fresh, young, personable, aristocratic, romantic of aspect. Here was Magnolia, slim, girlish, ardent, electric, lovely. Their make-believe adventures as they lived them on the stage became real; their dangers and misfortunes set the natives to trembling; their love-making was a fragrant and exquisite thing. News of this troupe seeped through from plantation to plantation, from bayou to bayou, from settlement to settlement, in some mysterious underground way. The Cotton Blossom did a record-breaking business in a region that had never been markedly profitable. Andy was jubilant, Parthy apprehensive, Magnolia starry-eyed, tremulous, glowing. Her lips seemed to take on a riper curve. Her skin was, somehow, softly radiant as though light
ed by an inner glow, as Julie’s amber colouring, in the years gone by, had seemed to deepen into golden brilliance. Her eyes were enormous, luminous. The gangling, hobbledehoy, sallow girl of seventeen was a woman of eighteen, lovely, and in love.

  Back again in New Orleans there was a letter from Schultzy, a pathetic scrawl; illiterate; loyal. Elly was out of the hospital, but weak and helpless. He had a job, temporarily, whose nature he did not indicate. (“Porter in a Little Rock saloon, I’ll be bound,” ventured Parthy, shrewdly, “rubbing up the brass and the cuspidors.”) He had met a man who ran a rag-front carnival company. He could use them for one attraction called The Old Plantation; or, The South Before the War. They were booked through the Middle West. In a few weeks, if Elly was stronger …

  He said nothing about money. He said nothing of their possible return to the Cotton Blossom. That, Andy knew, was because of Elly. Unknown to Parthy, he sent Schultzy two hundred dollars. Schultzy never returned to the rivers. It was, after all, oddly enough, Elly who, many many years later, completed the circle which brought her again to the show boat.