Show Boat

by Edna Ferber

  A LOST SOUL

  In his fine English clothes, swinging the slim malacca cane, Gaylord Ravenal, very narrow-eyed, entered the fusty shop and called to its owner to come forward. From the cobwebby gloom of the rear reaches emerged the merchant parson, a tall, shambling large-knuckled figure of the anaconda variety. You thought of Uriah Heep and of Ichabod Crane, experiencing meanwhile a sensation of distaste.

  Ravenal, very elegant, very cool, very quiet, pointed with the tip of his cane. “Take that picture out of the window. Tear it up. Apologize.”

  “I won’t do anything of the kind,” retorted the holy man. “You’re a this-and-that, and a such-and-such, and a so-and-so, and she’s another, and the whole boatload of you ought to be sunk in the river you contaminate.”

  “Take off your coat,” said Ravenal, divesting him-self neatly of his own faultless garment as he spoke.

  A yellow flame of fear leaped into the man’s eyes. He edged toward the door. With a quick step Ravenal blocked his way. “Take it off before I rip it off. Or fight with your coat on.”

  “You touch a man of God and I’ll put the law on you. The sheriff’s office is just next door. I’ll have you——”

  Ravenal whirled him round, seized the collar of his grimy coat, peeled it dexterously off, revealing what was, perhaps, as maculate a shirt as ever defiled the human form. The Ravenal lip curled in disgust.

  “If cleanliness is next to godliness,” he remarked, swiftly turning back his own snowy cuffs meanwhile, “you’ll be shovelling coal in hell.” And swung. The minister was taller and heavier than this slight and dandified figure. But Ravenal had an adrenal advantage, being stimulated by the fury of his anger. The godly one lay, a soiled heap, among his soiled wares. The usual demands of the victor.

  “Take that thing out of the window!… Apologize to me!… Apologize publicly for defaming a lady!”

  The man crept groaning to the window, plucked the picture, with its offensive caption, from amongst the miscellany there, handed it to Ravenal in response to a gesture from him. “Now then, I think you’re pretty badly bruised, but I doubt that anything’s broken. I’m going next door to the sheriff. You will write a public apology in letters corresponding to these and place it in your filthy window. I’ll be back.”

  He resumed his coat, picked up the malacca cane, blithely sought out the sheriff, displayed the sign, heard that gallant Kentuckian’s most Southern expression of regard for Captain Andy Hawks, his wife and gifted daughter, together with a promise to see to it that the written apology remained in the varmint’s window throughout the day and until the departure of the Cotton Blossom. Ravenal then went his elegant and unruffled way up the sunny sleepy street.

  By noon the story was known throughout the village, up and down the river for a distance of ten miles each way, and into the back country, all in some mysterious word-of-mouth way peculiar to isolated districts. Ravenal, returning to the boat, was met by news of his own exploit. Business, which had been booming for this month or more, grew to phenomenal proportions. Ravenal became a sort of legendary figure on the rivers. Magnolia went to her mother. “I am never allowed to talk to him. I won’t stand it. You treat him like a criminal.”

  “What else is he?”

  “He’s the——” A long emotional speech, ringing with words such as hero, gentleman, wonderful, honourable, nobility, glorious—a speech such as Schultzy, in his show-boat days as director, would have designated as a so-and-so-and-so-and-so-and-so-and-so.

  Ravenal went to Captain Andy. I am treated as an outcast. I’m a Ravenal. Nothing but the most honourable conduct. A leper. Never permitted to speak to your daughter. Humiliation. Prefer to discontinue connection which can only be distasteful to the Captain and Mrs. Hawks, in view of your conduct. Leaving the Cotton Blossom at Cairo.

  In a panic Captain Andy scampered to his lady and declared for a more lenient chaperonage.

  “Willing to sacrifice your own daughter, are you, for the sake of a picking up a few more dollars here and there with this miserable upstart!”

  “Sacrificing her, is it, to tell her she can speak civilly to as handsome a young feller and good-mannered as I ever set eyes on, or you either!”

  “Young squirt, that’s what he is.”

  “I was a girl like Nollie I’d run off with him, by God, and that’s the truth. She had any spirit left in her after you’ve devilled her these eighteen years past, she’d do it.”

  “That’s right! Put ideas into her head! How do you know who he is?”

  “He’s a Rav——”

  “He says he is.”

  “Didn’t he show me the church——”

  “Oh, Hawks, you’re a zany. I could show you gravestones. I could say my name was Bonaparte and show you Napoleon’s tomb, but that wouldn’t make him my grandfather, would it!”

  After all, there was wisdom in what she said. She may even have been right, as she so often was in her shrewish intuition. Certainly they never learned more of this scion of the Ravenal family than the meagre information gleaned from the chronicles of the village church and graveyard.

  Grudgingly, protestingly, she allowed the two to converse genteelly between the hours of five and six, after dinner. But no oriental princess was ever more heavily chaperoned than was Magnolia during these prim meetings. For a month, then, they met on the port side of the upper deck, forward. Their chairs were spaced well apart. On the starboard side, twenty-five feet away, sat Parthy in her chair, grim, watchful; radiating opposition.

  Magnolia, feeling the gimlet eye boring her spine, would sit bolt upright, her long nervous fingers tightly interwoven, her ankles neatly crossed, the pleats and flounces of her skirts spread sedately enough yet seeming to vibrate with an electric force that gave them the effect of standing upright, a-quiver, like a kitten’s fur when she is agitated.

  He sat, one arm negligently over the back of his chair, facing the girl. His knees were crossed. He seemed at ease, relaxed. Yet a slim foot in its well-made boot swung gently to and fro. And when Parthy made one of her sudden moves, as was her jerky habit, or when she coughed raspingly by way of emphasizing her presence, he could be felt, rather than seen, to tighten in all his nerves and muscles, and the idly swinging foot took a clonic leap.

  The words they spoke with their lips and the words they spoke with their eyes were absurdly at variance.

  “Have you really been in Paris, Mr. Ravenal! How I should love to see it!” (How handsome you are, sitting there like that. I really don’t care anything about Paris. I only care about you.)

  “No doubt you will, some day, Miss Magnolia.” (You darling! How I should like to take you there. How I should like to take you in my arms.)

  “Oh, I’ve never even seen Chicago. Only these river towns.” (I love the way your hair grows away from your temples in that clean line. I want to put my finger on it, and stroke it. My dear.)

  “A sordid kind of city. Crude. Though it has some pleasant aspects. New York——” (What do I care if that old tabby is sitting there! What’s to prevent me from getting up and kissing you a long long while on your lovely pomegranate mouth.)

  Lowering, inflexible, sat Parthy. “She’ll soon enough tire of that sort of popinjay talk,” she told herself. She saw the bland and almost vacuous expression on the countenance of the young man, and being ignorant of the fact that he was famous from St. Louis to Chicago for his perfect poker face, was equally ignorant of the tides that were seething and roaring within him now.

  They were prisoners on this boat; together, yet miles apart. Guarded, watched. They had their scenes together on the stage. These were only aggravations. The rather high planes of Magnolia’s cheek-bones began to show a trifle too flat. Ravenal, as he walked along the grass-grown dusty streets of this or that little river town, switched viciously at weed and flower stalks with the slim malacca cane.

  They hit upon a pathetic little scheme whereby they might occasionally, if lucky, steal the ecstasy of a goodnight ki
ss. After the performance he would stroll carelessly out to the stern where stood the settling barrel. Ostensibly he was taking a bedtime drink of water. Magnolia was, if possible, to meet him there for a brief and perilous moment. It was rarely accomplished. The signal to him was the slamming of the screen door. But often the screen door slammed as he stood there, a tense quivering figure in the velvet dark of the Southern night, and it was Frank, or Mrs. Soaper, or Mis’ Means, or puny Mr. Means, coughing his bronchial wheeze. Crack! went the screen door. Disappointment. Often he sloshed down whole gallons of river water before she came—if she came at all.

  He had managed to save almost a hundred dollars. He was restless, irritable. Except for a mild pinochle game now and then with the men of the company, he had not touched a card in weeks. If he could get into a real game, somehow; manage a sweepstakes. Chicago. St. Louis, even. These little rotten river towns. No chance here. If he could with luck get together enough to take her away with him. Away from the old hell-cat, and this tub, and these damned eternal rivers. God, but he was sick of them!

  They were playing the Ohio River—Paducah, Kentucky. He found himself seated at mid-afternoon round a table in the back room of a waterfront saloon. What time is it? Five. Plenty of time. Just for that raise you five. A few hundred dollars would do it. Six o’clock. Seven. Seven-thirty. Eight. Half-past—Who said half past! Ralph in the doorway. Can’t be! Been looking everywhere for you. This’s a fine way … Come on out a here you.… Christ!… Ten dollars in his pocket. The curtain up at eight. Out, the shouts of the men echoing in his ears. Down to the landing. A frantic company, Andy clawing at his whiskers. Magnolia in tears, Parthy grim but triumphant, Frank made up to go on in Ravenal’s part.

  He dashed before the curtain, raised his shaking hand to quiet the cat-calling angry audience.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I ask your patience. There has been an unfortunate but unavoidable delay. The curtain will rise in exactly five minutes. In the name of the management I wish to offer you all apologies. We hope, by our performance, to make up for the inconvenience you have suffered. I thank you.” A wave of his hand.

  The band.

  Parthy in the wings. “Well, Captain Hawks, I guess this settles it. Maybe you’ll listen to your wife, after this. In a saloon—that’s where he was—gambling. If Ralph hadn’t found him—a pretty kettle of fish. Years building up a reputation on the rivers and then along comes a soft-soaping murdering gambler …”

  Ravenal had got into his costume with the celerity of a fireman, and together he and Magnolia were giving a performance that was notable for its tempo and a certain vibratory quality. The drama that unrolled itself before the Paducah gaze was as nothing compared to the one that was being secretly enacted.

  Between the lines of her part she whispered between immovable lips: “Oh, Gay, why did you do it?”

  A wait, perhaps, of ten minutes before the business of the play brought him back within whispering distance of her.

  “Money” (very difficult to whisper without moving the lips. It really emerged, “Uh-ney,” but she understood). “For you. Marry you. Take you away.”

  All this while the lines of the play went on. When they stood close together it was fairly easy.

  Magnolia (in the play): What! Have all your friends deserted you! (Mama’ll make Andy send you away.)

  Ravenal: No, but friendship is too cold a passion to stir my heart now. (Will you come with me?)

  Magnolia: Oh, give me a friend in preference to a sweetheart. (But how can I?)

  Ravenal: My dear Miss Brown—Miss Lucy——

  (Marry me).

  Magnolia: Oh, please don’t call me Miss Brown. (When?)

  Ravenal: Lucy! (Where do we play to-morrow? Marry me there.)

  Magnolia: Defender of the fatherless! (Metropolis. I’m frightened.)

  Ravenal: Will you be a poor man’s bride? (Darling!)

  For fear of arousing suspicion, she did not dare put on her best dress in which to be married. One’s best dress does not escape the eye of a Parthy at ten o’clock in the morning, when the landing is Metropolis. With a sigh Magnolia donned her second best—the reseda sateen, basqued, its overskirt caught up coquettishly at the side. She determined on her Milan hat trimmed with the grosgrain ribbon and pink roses. After all, Parthy or no Parthy, if one has a hat with pink roses, the time to wear it is at one’s wedding, or never.

  Ravenal vanished beyond the river bank immediately after breakfast next day; a meal which he had eaten in haste and in silence. He did not, the general opinion ran, look as crushed as his misdemeanour warranted. He had, after all, been guilty of the crime of crimes in the theatre, be it a Texas tent show or an all-star production on Broadway; he had held up the performance. For once the Cotton Blossom troupe felt that Mrs. Hawks’ bristling attitude was justified. All through the breakfast hour the stern ribbon bow on her breakfast cap had quivered like a seismographic needle registering the degree of her inward upheaval.

  “I think,” said Magnolia, drinking her coffee in very small sips, and eating nothing, “I’ll just go to town and match the ribbon on my grosgrain striped silk——”

  “You’ll do nothing of the kind, miss, and so I tell you.”

  “But, Mama, why? You’d think I was a child instead of a——”

  “You are, and no more. I can’t go with you. So you’ll stop at home.”

  “But Mis’ Means is going with me. I promised her I’d go. She wants to get some ointment for Mr. Means’ chest. And a yard of elastic. And half a dozen oranges.… Papa, don’t you think it’s unreasonable to make me suffer just because everybody’s in a bad temper this morning? I’m sure I haven’t done anything. I’m sure I——”

  Captain Andy clawed his whiskers in a frenzy. “Don’t come to me with your yards of elastic and your oranges. God A’mighty!” He rushed off, a distraught little figure, as well he might be after a wretched night during which Mrs. Hawks had out-caudled Mrs. Caudle. When finally he had dropped off to sleep to the sound of the monotonously nagging voice, it was to dream of murderous gamblers abducting Magnolia who always turned out to be Parthy.

  In her second best sateen and the Milan with the pink roses Magnolia went off to town at a pace that rather inconvenienced the short-breathed Mis’ Means.

  “What’s your hurry!” wheezed that lady, puffing up the steep cinder path to the levee.

  “We’re late.”

  “Late! Late for what? Nothing to do all day till four, far’s I know.”

  “Oh, I just meant—uh—I mean we started kind of late——” her voice trailed off, lamely.

  Fifteen minutes later Mis’ Means stood in indecision before a counter crawling with unwound bolts of elastic that twined all about her like garter snakes. The little general store smelled of old apples and broom straw and kerosene and bacon and potatoes and burlap and mice. Sixteen minutes later she turned to ask Magnolia’s advice. White elastic half an inch wide? Black elastic three quarters of an inch wide? Magnolia had vanished from her side. Mis’ Means peered through the dimness of the fusty little shop. Magnolia! White elastic in one hand, black in the other, Mis’ Means scurried to the door. Magnolia had gone.

  Magnolia had gone to be married in her second best dress and her hat with the pink roses. She flew down the street. Mis’ Means certainly could have achieved no such gait; much less could she have bettered it to the extent of overtaking Magnolia. Magnolia made such speed that when her waiting bridegroom, leaning against the white picket fence in front of the minister’s house next the church, espied her and came swiftly to meet her, she was so breathless a bride that he could make nothing out of her panted—” Elastic … Mis’ Means … ran away …”

  She leaned against the picket fence to catch her breath, a lovely flushed figure, and not a little frightened. And though it was early April with Easter just gone, there was a dogwood in bridal bloom in the minister’s front yard, and a magnolia as well. And along the inside of the picket fence tulips and j
onquils lifted their radiant heads. She looked at Gaylord Ravenal then and smiled her wide and gorgeous smile. “Let’s go,” she said, “and be married. I’ve caught my breath.”

  “All right,” said Ravenal. Then he took from his pocket the diamond ring that was much too large for her. “Let’s be engaged first, while we go up the path.” And slipped it on her finger.

  “Why, Gay! It’s a diamond! Look what the sun does to it! Gay!”

  “That’s nothing compared to what the sun does to you,” he said; and leaned toward her.

  “Right at noon, in the minister’s front yard!”

  “I know. But I’ve had only those few moments in the dark by the settling barrel—it’s been terrible.”

  The minister’s wife opened the door. She looked at the two.

  “I saw you from the parlour window. We were wondering—I thought maybe you’d like to be married in the church. The Easter decorations are still up. It looks lovely, all palms and lilies and smilax, too, from down South, sent up. The altar’s banked with it. Mr. Seldon’s gone there.”

  “Oh, I’d love to be married in church. Oh, Gay, I’d love to be married in church.”

  The minister’s wife smoothed the front of her dress with one hand, and the back of her hair with the other, and, having made these preparations for the réle of bridal attendant, conducted them to the little flower-banked church next door.