Show Boat

by Edna Ferber

  But Parthy did not hear him. He did not exist. Her face was ashen. “He’s a murderer!” she now gasped.

  Andy’s patience, never too long-suffering, snapped under the strain of the afternoon’s happenings. “What’s wrong with you, woman! Have you gone clean crazy! Who’s a murderer! Frank? Who’s he murdered? For two cents I’d murder the both of you, come howling in here when a man’s trying to run his business like a business and not like a yowling insane asylum——”

  Parthy stood up, shaking. Her voice was high and quavering. “Listen to me, you fool. I talked to the man on the docks—the one he was talking to—and he wouldn’t tell me anything and he said I could ask the chief of police if I wanted to know about anybody, and I went to the chief of police, and a perfect gentleman if there ever was one, and he’s killed a man.”

  “The chief of police! Killed a man! What man!”

  “No!” shrieked Parthy. “Ravenal! Ravenal’s killed a man.”

  “God A’mighty, when!” He started as though to rescue Magnolia.

  “A year ago. A year ago, in this very town.”

  The shock of relief was too much for Andy. He was furious. “They didn’t hang him for it, did they?”

  “Hang who?” asked Parthy, feebly.

  “Who! Ravenal! They didn’t hang him?”

  “Why, no, they let him go. He said he shot him in self——”

  “He killed a man and they let him go. What does that prove? He’d a right to. All right. What of it!”

  “What of it! Your own daughter is out driving in an open carriage this minute with a murderer, that’s what, Andy Hawks. I saw them with my own eyes. There I was, out trying to protect her from contamination by finding out … and I saw her the minute my back was turned … your doings … your own daughter driving in the open streets in an open carriage with a murderer——”

  “Oh, open murderer be damned!” squeaked Andy in his falsetto of utter rage. “I killed a man when I was nineteen, Mrs. Hawks, ma’am, and I’ve been twenty-five years and more as respected a man as there is on the rivers, and that’s the truth if you want to talk about mur——”

  But Parthenia Ann Hawks, for the first time in her vigorous life, had fainted.

  X

  GAYLORD RAVENAL had not meant to fall in love. Certainly he had not dreamed of marrying. He was not, he would have told you, a marrying man. Yet Natchez had come and gone, and here he was, still playing juvenile leads on the Cotton Blossom; still planning, days ahead, for an opportunity to outwit Mrs. Hawks and see Magnolia alone. He was thoroughly and devastatingly in love. Alternately he pranced and cringed. To-day he would leave this dingy scow. What was he, Gaylord Ravenal, doing aboard a show boat, play-acting for a miserable thirty dollars a week! He who had won (and lost) a thousand a night at poker or faro. To-morrow he was resolved to give up gambling for ever; to make himself worthy of this lovely creature; to make himself indispensable to Andy; to find the weak chink in Parthy’s armour.

  He had met all sorts of women in his twenty-four years. He had loved some of them, and many of them had loved him. He had never met a woman like Magnolia. She was a paradoxical product of the life she had led. The contact with the curious and unconventional characters that made up the Cotton Blossom troupe; the sights and sounds of river life, sordid, romantic, homely, Rabelaisian, tragic, humorous; the tolerant and meaty wisdom imbibed from her sprightly little father; the spirit of laissez faire that pervaded the whole atmosphere about her, had given her a flavour, a mellowness, a camaraderie found usually only in women twice her age and a hundredfold more experienced. Weaving in and out of this was an engaging primness directly traceable to Parthy. She had, too, a certain dignity that was, perhaps, the result of years of being deferred to as the daughter of a river captain. Sometimes she looked at Ravenal with the wide-eyed gaze of a child. At such times he wished that he might leap into the Mississippi (though muddy) and wash himself clean of his sins as did the pilgrims in the River Jordan.

  On that day following Parthy’s excursion ashore at New Orleans there had been between her and Captain Andy a struggle, brief and bitter, from which Andy had emerged battered but victorious.

  “That murdering gambler goes or I go,” Parthy had announced, rashly. It was one of those pronunciamentos that can only bring embarrassment to one who utters it.

  “He stays.” Andy was iron for once.

  He stayed. So did Parthy, of course.

  You saw the two—Parthy and Ravenal—eyeing each other, backs to the wall, waiting for a chance to lunge and thrust.

  Cotton Blossom business was booming. News of the show boat’s ingénue and juvenile lead filtered up and down the rivers. During the more romantic scenes of this or that play Parthy invariably stationed herself in the wings and glowered and made muttering sounds to which the two on stage—Magnolia starry-eyed as the heroine, Ravenal ardent and passionate as the lover—were oblivious. It was their only opportunity to express to each other what they actually felt. It probably was, too, the most public and convincing love-making that ever graced the stage of this or any other theatre.

  Ravenal made himself useful in many ways. He took in hand, for example, the Cotton Blossom’s battered scenery. It was customary on all show boats to use both sides of a set. One canvas side would represent, perhaps, a drawing room. Its reverse would show the greens and browns of leaves and tree trunks in a forest scene. Both economy and lack of stage space were responsible for this. Painted by a clumsy and unimaginative hand, each leaf daubed as a leaf, each inch of wainscoting drawn to scale, the effect of any Cotton Blossom set, when viewed from the other side of the footlights, was unconvincing even to rural and inexperienced eyes. Ravenal set to work with paint and brush and evolved two sets of double scenery which brought forth shrieks of ridicule and protest from the company grouped about the stage.

  “It isn’t supposed to look like a forest,” Ravenal explained, slapping on the green paint with a lavish hand. “It’s supposed to give the effect of a forest. The audience isn’t going to sit on the stage, is it? Well, then! Here—this is to be a gate. Well, there’s no use trying to paint a flat thing with slats that nobody will ever believe looks like a gate. I’ll just do this … and this …”

  “It does!” cried Magnolia from the middle of the house where she had stationed herself, head held critically on one side. “It does make you think there’s a gate there, without its actually being … Look, Papa!… And the trees. All those lumpy green spots we used to have somehow never looked like leaves.”

  All unconsciously Ravenal was using in that day, and in that crude milieu, a method which was to make a certain Bobby Jones famous in the New York theatre of a quarter of a century later.

  “Where did you learn to——” some one of the troupe would marvel; Magnolia, perhaps, or Mis’ Means, or Ralph.

  “Paris,” Ravenal would reply, briefly. Yet he had never spoken of Paris.

  He often referred thus casually to a mysterious past.

  “Paris fiddlesticks!” rapped out Parthy, promptly. “No more Paris than he’s a Ravenal of Tennessee, or whatever rascally highfalutin story he’s made up for himself.”

  Whereupon, when they were playing Tennessee, weeks later, he strolled one day with Magnolia and Andy into the old vine-covered church of the village, its churchyard fragrant and mysterious with magnolia and ilex; its doorstep worn, its pillars sagging. And there, in a glass case, together with a tattered leather-bound Bible a century and a half old, you saw a time-yellowed document. The black of the ink strokes had, perhaps, taken on a tinge of gray, but the handwriting, clear and legible, met the eye.

  WILL OF JEAN BAPTISTA RAVENAL.

  I, Jean Baptista Ravenal, of this Province, being through the mercy of Almighty God of sound mind and memory do make, appoint, declare and ordain this and this only to be my last Will and Testament. It is my will that my sons have their estates delivered to them as they severally arrive at the age of twenty and one years, the eldest being
Samuel, the second Jean, the third Gaylord.

  I will that my slaves be kept to work on my lands that my estate be managed to the best advantage so as my sons may have as liberal an education as the profits thereof will afford. Let them be taught to read and write and be introduced into the practical part of Arithmetic, not too hastily hurrying them to Latin and Grammar. To my sons, when they arrive at age I recommend the pursuit and study of some profession or business (I would wish one to ye Law, the other to Merchandise).

  “The other?” cried Magnolia softly then, looking up very bright-eyed and flushed from the case over which she had been bending. “But the third? Gaylord? It doesn’t say——”

  “The black sheep. My great-grandfather. There always was a Gaylord. And he always was the black sheep. My grandfather, Gaylord Ravenal and my father Gaylord Ravenal, and——” he bowed.

  “Black too, are you?” said Andy then, drily.

  “As pitch.”

  Magnolia bent again to the book, her brow thoughtful, her lips forming the words and uttering them softly as she deciphered the quaint script.

  I give and bequeath unto my son Samuel the lands called Ashwood, which are situated, lying and being on the South Side of the Cumberland River, together with my other land on the North side of said River.…

  I give and bequeath unto my son Jean, to him and his heirs and assigns for ever a tract of land containing seven hundred and forty acres lying on Stumpy Sound … also another tract containing one thousand acres …

  I give and bequeath to my son Samuel four hundred and fifty acres lying above William Lowrie’s plantation on the main branch of Old Town Creek …

  Magnolia stood erect. Indignation blazed in her fine eyes. “But, Gaylord!” she said.

  “Yes!” Certainly she had never before called him that.

  “I mean this Gaylord. I mean the one who came after Samuel and Jean. Why isn’t—why didn’t——”

  “Naughty boy,” said Ravenal, with his charming smile.

  She actually yearned toward him then. He could not have said anything more calculated to bind his enchantment for her. They swayed toward each other over the top of the little glass-encased relic. Andy coughed hastily. They swayed gently apart. They were as though mesmerized.

  “Folks out here in the churchyard?” inquired Andy, briskly, to break the spell. “Ravenal kin?”

  “Acres of ’em,” Gaylord assured him, cheerfully. “Son of … and daughter of … and beloved father of.… For that matter, there’s one just beside you.”

  Andy side-stepped hastily, with a little exclamation. He cast a somewhat fearful glance at the spot toward which Ravenal so carelessly pointed. A neat gray stone slab set in the wall. Andy peered at the lettering it bore; stooped a little. “Here—you read it, Nollie. You’ve got young eyes.”

  Her fresh young cheek so near the cold gray slab, she read in her lovely flexible voice:

  Here lies the body of Mrs. Suzanne Ravenal, wife of Jean Baptista Ravenal Esqr., one of his Majesty’s Council and Surveyor General of the Lands of this Province, who departed this life Octr 19t 1765. Aged 37 Years. After labouring ten of them under the severest Bodily afflictions brought on by Change of Climate, and tho’ she went to her native land received no relief but returned and bore them with uncommon Resolution and Resignation to the last.

  Magnolia rose, slowly, from the petals of her flounced skirt spread about her as she had stooped to read. “Poor darling!” Her eyes were soft with pity. Again the two seemed to sway a little toward each other, as though blown by a gust of passion. And this time little Captain Andy turned his back and clattered down the aisle. When they emerged again into the sunshine they found him, a pixie figure, leaning pensively against the great black trunk of a live oak. He was smoking a pipe somewhat apologetically, as though he hoped the recumbent Ravenals would not find it objectionable.

  “I guess,” he remarked, as Magnolia and Ravenal came up to him, “I’ll have to bring your ma over. She’s partial to history, her having been a schoolma’am, and all.”

  Like the stage sets he so cleverly devised for the show boat, Gaylord Ravenal had a gift for painting about himself the scenery of romance. These settings, too, did not bear the test of too close scrutiny. But in a favourable light, and viewed from a distance, they were charmingly effective and convincing.

  His sense of the dramatic did not confine itself to the stage. He was the juvenile lead, on or off. Audiences adored him. Mid-western village housewives, good mothers and helpmates for years, were, for days after seeing him as the heroic figure of some gore-and-glory drama, mysteriously silent and irritably waspish by turn. Disfavour was writ large on their faces as they viewed their good commonplace dull husbands across the midday table set with steaming vegetables and meat.

  “Why’n’t you shave once in a while middle of the week,” they would snap, “ ’stead of coming to the table looking like a gorilla?”

  Mild surprise on the part of the husband. “I shaved Sat’dy, like always.”

  “Lookit your hands!”

  “Hands?… Say, Bella, what in time’s got into you, anyway?”

  “Nothing.” A relapse into moody silence on the part of Bella.

  Mrs. Hawks fought a good fight, but what chance had her maternal jealousy against youth and love and romance? For a week she would pour poison into Magnolia’s unwilling ear. Only making a fool of you … probably walk off and leave the show any day … common gambler … look at his eyes … murderer and you know it … rather see you in your grave.…

  Then, in one brief moment, Ravenal, by some act of courage or grace or sheer deviltry, would show Parthy that all her pains were for nothing.

  That night, for example, when they were playing Kentucky Sue. Ravenal’s part was what is known as a blue-shirt lead—the rough brave woodsman, with the uncouth speech and the heart of gold. Magnolia, naturally, was Sue. They were playing Gains Landing, always a tough town, often good for a fight. It was a capacity audience and a surprisingly well-behaved and attentive. Midway in the play’s progress a drawling drunken voice from the middle of the house began a taunting and ridiculous chant whose burden was, “Is ’at so!” After each thrilling speech; punctuating each flowery period, “Is ’at so!” came the maddening and disrupting refrain. You had to step carefully at Gains Landing. The Cotton Blossom troupe knew that. One word at the wrong moment, and knives flashed, guns popped. Still, this could not go on.

  “Don’t mind him,” Magnolia whispered fearfully to Ravenal. “He’s drunk. He’ll stop. Don’t pay any attention.”

  The scene was theirs. They were approaching the big moment in the play when the brave Kentuckian renounces his love that Kentucky Sue may be happy with her villainous bridegroom-to-be (Frank, of course). Show-boat audiences up and down the rivers had known that play for years; had committed the speech word for word, through long familiarity. “Sue,” it ran, “ef he loves yuh and you love him, go with him. Ef he h’ain’t good to yuh, come back where there’s honest hearts under homespun shirts. Back to Kaintucky and home!”

  Thus the speech ran. But as they approached it the blurred and mocking voice from the middle of the house kept up its drawling skepticism. “Is ’at so! Is ’at so!”

  “Damned drunken lout!” said Ravenal under his breath, looking unutterable love meanwhile at the languishing Kentucky Sue.

  “Oh, dear!” said Magnolia, feeling Ravenal’s muscles tightening under the blue shirt sleeves; seeing the telltale white ridge of mounting anger under the grease paint of his jaw line. “Do be careful.”

  Ravenal stepped out of his part. He came down to the footlights. The house, restless and irritable, suddenly became quiet. He looked out over the faces of the audience. “See here, pardner, there’s others here want to hear this, even if you don’t.”

  The voice subsided. There was a little desultory applause from the audience and some cries of, “That’s right! Make him shut up.” They refused to manhandle one of their own, but they ac
hed to see someone else do it.

  The play went on. The voice was silent. The time approached for the big speech of renunciation. It was here. “Sue, ef he loves yuh and you love him, go with him. Ef he——”

  “Is ’at so!” drawled the amused voice, with an element of surprise in it now. “Is ’at so!”

  Ravenal cast Kentucky Sue from him. “Well, if you will have it,” he threatened, grimly. He sprang over the footlights, down to the piano top, to the keyboard, to the piano stool, all in four swift strides, was up the aisle, had plucked the limp and sprawling figure out of his seat by the collar, clutched him then firmly by this collar hold and the seat of his pants, and was up the aisle again to the doorway, out of the door, across the gangplank, and into the darkness. He was down the aisle then in a moment, spatting his hands briskly as he came; was up on the piano stool, on to the piano keyboard, on the piano top, over the footlights, back in position. There he paused a moment, breathing fast. Nothing had been said. There had actually been no sound other than his footsteps and the discordant jangle of protest that the piano keyboard had emitted when he had stepped on its fingers. Now a little startled expression came into Ravenal’s face.

  “Let’s see,” he said, aloud. “Where was I——”

  And as one man the audience chanted, happily, “Sue, ef he loves yuh and you love him——”

  What weapon has a Parthenia against a man like that? And what chance a Frank?

  Drama leaped to him. There was, less than a week later, the incident of the minister. He happened to be a rather dirty little minister in a forlorn little Kentucky river town. He ran a second-hand store on the side, was new to the region, and all unaware of the popularity and good-will enjoyed by the members of the Cotton Blossom troupe. To him an actor was a burning brand. Doc had placarded the little town with dodgers and handbills. There was one, especially effective even in that day of crude photography, showing Magnolia in the angelic part of the ingénue lead in Tempest and Sunshine. These might be seen displayed in the windows of such ramshackle stores as the town’s river front street boasted. Gaylord Ravenal, strolling disdainfully up into the sordid village that was little more than a welter of mud and flies and mules and Negroes, stopped aghast as his eye chanced to fall upon the words scrawled beneath a picture of Magnolia amidst the dusty disorderly mélange of the ministerial second-hand window. There was the likeness of the woman he loved looking, starry-eyed, out upon the passer-by. And beneath it, in the black fanatic penmanship of the itinerant parson: