THIS, then, turned out to be Magnolia’s first glimpse of Gaylord Ravenal—an idle elegant figure in garments whose modish cut and fine material served, at a distance, to conceal their shabbiness. Leaning moodily against a tall packing case dumped on the wharf by some freighter, he gazed about him and tapped indolently the tip of his shining (and cracked) boot with an exquisite little ivory-topped malacca cane. There was about him an air of distinction, an atmosphere of richness. On closer proximity you saw that the broadcloth was shiny, the fine linen of the shirt-front and cuffs the least bit frayed, the slim boots undeniably split, the hat (a delicate gray and set a little on one side) soiled as a pale gray hat must never be. From the Cotton Blossom deck you saw him as the son, perhaps, of some rich Louisiana planter, idling a moment at the water’s edge. Waiting, doubtless, for one of the big river packets—the floating palaces of the Mississippi—to bear him luxuriously away up the river to his plantation landing.
The truth was that Gaylord Ravenal was what the river gamblers called broke. Stony, he would have told you. No one had a better right to use the term than he. Of his two possessions, save the sorry clothes he had on, one was the little malacca cane. And though he might part with cuff links, shirt studs and, if necessary, shirt itself, he would always cling to that little malacca cane, emblem of good fortune, his mascot. It had turned on him temporarily. Yet his was the gambler’s superstitious nature. To-morrow the cane would bring him luck.
Not only was Gaylord Ravenal broke; he had just politely notified the Chief of Police of New Orleans that he was in town. The call was not entirely one of social obligation. It had a certain statutory side as well.
In the first place, Chief of Police Vallon, in a sudden political spasm of virtue, endeavouring to clear New Orleans of professional gamblers, had given them all twenty-four hours’ shrift. In the second place, this particular visitor would have come under the head of New Orleans undesirables on his own private account, even though his profession had been that of philanthropist. Gaylord Ravenal had one year-old notch to his gun.
It had not been murder in cold blood or in rage, but a shot fired in self-defence just the fraction of a second before the other man could turn the trick. The evidence proved this, and Ravenal’s final vindication followed. But New Orleans gathered her civic skirts about her and pointed a finger of dismissal toward the door. Hereafter, should he enter, his first visit must be to the Chief of Police; and twenty-four hours—no more—must be the limit of his stay in the city whose pompano and crayfish and Creoles and roses and Ramos gin fizzes he loved.
The evening before, he had stepped off the river packet Lady Lee, now to be seen lying alongside the New Orleans landing together with a hundred other craft. His twenty-four hours would expire this evening.
Certainly he had not meant to find himself in New Orleans. He had come aboard the Lady Lee at St. Louis, his finances low, his hopes high, his erstwhile elegant garments in their present precarious state. He had planned, following the game of stud poker in which he immediately immersed himself, to come ashore at Memphis or, at the latest, Natchez, with his finances raised to the high level of his hopes. Unfortunately his was an honest and over-eager game. His sole possession, beside the little slim malacca cane (itself of small tangible value) was a singularly clear blue-white diamond ring which he never wore. It was a relic of luckier days before his broadcloth had become shiny, his linen frayed, his boots split. He had clung to it, as he had to the cane, through almost incredible hazards. His feeling about it was neither sentimental nor superstitious. The tenuous streak of canniness in him told him that, possessed of a clear white diamond, one can hold up one’s head and one’s hopes, no matter what the state of coat, linen, boots, and hat. It had never belonged, fiction-fashion, to his sainted (if any) mother, nor was it an old Ravenal heirloom. It was a relic of winnings in luckier days and represented, he knew, potential hundreds. In the trip that lasted, unexpectedly, from St. Louis to New Orleans, he had won and lost that ring six times. When the Lady Lee had nosed her way into the Memphis landing, and again at Natchez, it had been out of his possession. He had stayed on board, perforce. Half an hour before coming into New Orleans he had had it again, and had kept it. The game of stud poker had lasted days, and he rose from it the richer by exactly nothing at all.
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 chiefs 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 Able’s tedious manœuvres, 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. Preparatory 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 her 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 childlike 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 after-piece, 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 ingénue 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 lighted 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.
Together, Andy, Parthy, and Doc went into consultation. They must keep Ravenal. But Ravenal obviously was not of the stuff of show-boat actors. He had made it plain, when first he came aboard, that he was the most impermanent of troupers; that his connection with the Cotton Blossom would continue, at the latest, only until Schultzy’s return. He meant to leave them, not at New Orleans, as they had at first feared, but at Natchez, on the up trip.
“Don’t tell him Schultzy ain’t coming back,” Doc offered, brilliantly.
“Have to know it some time,” was Andy’s obvious reply.
“Person’d think,” said Parthy, “he was the only juvenile lead left in the world. Matter of fact, I can’t see where he’s such great shakes of an actor. Rolls those eyes of his a good deal, and talks deep-voiced, but he’s got hands white’s a woman’s and fusses with his nails. I’ll wager if you ask around in New Orleans you’ll find something queer, for all he talks so high about being a Ravenal of Tennessee and his folks governors in the old days, and slabs about ’em in the church, and what not. Shifty, that’s what he is. Mark my words.”
“Best juvenile lead ever played the rivers. And I never heard that having clean finger nails hurt an actor any.”
“Oh, it isn’t just clean finger nails,” snapped Parthy. “It’s everything.”
“Wouldn’t hold that against him, either,” roared Doc. The two men then infuriated the humourless Mrs. Hawks by indulging in a great deal of guffawing and knee-slapping.
“That’s right, Hawks. Laugh at your own wife. And you, too, Doc.”
“You ain’t my wife,” retorted Doc, with the privilege of sixty-odd. And roared again.
The gossamer thread that leashed Parthy’s temper dissolved now. “I can’t bear the sight of him. Palavering and soft-soaping. Thinks he can get round a woman my age. Well, I’m worth a dozen of him when it comes to smart.” She leaned closer to Andy, her face actually drawn with fear and a sort of jealousy. “He looks at Magnolia, I tell you.”
“A fool if he didn’t.”
“Andy Hawks, you mean to tell me you’d sit there and see your own daughter married to a worthless tramp of a wharf rat, or worse, that hadn’t a shirt to his back when you picked him up!”
“Oh, God A’mighty, woman, can’t a man look at a girl without having to marry her!”
“Having to marry her, Captain Hawks! Having——Well, what can a body expect when her own husband talks like that, and before strangers, too. Having——!”
Doc rubbed his leathery chin a trifle ruefully. “Stretching a point, Mrs. Hawks, ma’am, calling me a stranger, ain’t you?”
“All right. Keep him with the show, you two. Who warned you about that yellow-skinned Julie! And what happened! If sheriffs is what you want, I’ll wager you could get them fast enough if you spoke his name in certain parts of this country. Wait till we get back to New Orleans. I intend to do some asking around, and so does Frank.”
“What’s Frank got to do with it?”
But at this final exhibition of male obtuseness Parthy flounced out of the conference.
On their return from the bayous the Cotton Blossom lay idle a day at the New Orleans landing. Early on the morning of their arrival Gaylord Ravenal went ashore. On his stepping off the gangplank he spoke briefly to that same gimlet-eyed gentleman who was still loitering on the wharf. To the observer, the greeting between them seemed amiable enough.
“Back again, Gay!” he of the keen gaze had exclaimed. “Seems like you can’t keep away from the scene of the——”
“Oh, go to hell,” said Ravenal.
He returned to the Cotton Blossom at three o’clock. At his appearance the idler who had accosted him (and who was still mysteriously lolling at the waterside) shut his eyes and then opened them quickly as though to dispel a vision.
“Gripes, Ravenal! Robbed a bank?”
From the tip of his shining shoes to the top of his pale gray hat, Ravenal was sartorial perfection, nothing less. The boots were hand-made, slim, aristocratic. The cloth of his clothes was patently out of England, and tailored for no casual purchaser, but for Ravenal’s figure alone. The trousers tapered elegantly to the instep. The collar was moulded expertly so that it hugged the neck. The linen was of the finest and whitest, and cunning needlecraft had gone into the embroidering of the austere monogram that almost escaped showing in one corner of the handkerchief that peeped above his left breast pocket. The malacca stick seemed to take on a new lustre and richness now that it found itself once more in fitting company. With the earnings of his first two weeks on the Cotton Blossom enclosed as evidence of good faith, and future payment assured, Gaylord Ravenal had sent by mail from the Louisiana bayous to Plumbridge, the only English tailor in New Orleans, the order which had resulted in his present splendour.
He now paused a moment to relieve himself of that which had long annoyed him in the beady-eyed one. “Listen to me, Flat Foot. The Cotton Blossom dropped anchor at seven o’clock this morning at the New Orleans dock. I came ashore at nine. It is now three. I am free to stay on shore or not, as I like, until nine to-morrow morning. Until then, if I hear any more of your offensive conversation, I shall have to punish you.”
Flat Foot, thus objurgated, stared at Ravenal with an expression in which amazement and admiration fought for supremacy. “By God, Ravenal, with any luck at all, that gall of yours ought to get you a million some day.”
“I wouldn’t be bothered with any sum so vulgar.” From an inside pocket he drew a perfecto, long, dark, sappy. “Have a smoke.” He drew out another. “And give this to Vallon when you go back to report. Tell him I wanted him to know the flavour of a decent cigar for once in his life.”
As he crossed the gangplank he encountered Mrs. Hawks and Frank, the lumbering heavy, evidently shore-bound together. He stepped aside with a courtliness that the Ravenals of Tennessee could not have excelled in the days of swords, satins, and periwigs.
Mrs. Hawks was, after all, a woman; and no woman could look unmoved upon the figure of cool elegance that now stood before her. “Sakes alive!” she said, inadequately. Frank, whose costumes, ashore or afloat, always were négligée to the point of causing the beholder some actual nervousness, attempted to sneer without the aid of make-up and made a failure of it.
Ravenal now addressed Mrs. Hawks. “You are not staying long ashore, I hope?”
“And why not?” inquired Mrs. Hawks, with her usual delicacy.
“I had hoped that perhaps you and Captain Hawks and Miss Magnolia might do me the honour of dining with me ashore and going to the theatre afterward. I know a little restaurant where——”
“Likely,” retorted Parthy, by way of polite refusal; and moved majestically down the gangplank, followed by the gratified heavy.
Ravenal continued thoughtfully on his way. Captain Andy was in the box office just off the little forward deck that served as an entrance to the show boat. With him was Magnolia—Magnolia minus her mother’s protecting wings. After a