Show Boat (40 page)

Now then. Words that differ in the
wh
sound. Mr. Karel, let us hear your list. Mr. Karel obliges. Whether-weather, when-wen, whinny-winnow, whither-wither; why do you spell it with a y?

Miss Rogers,
l
sounds. Miss Rogers, enormously solemn (fated for Lady Macbeth at the lightest)—level, loyal, lull, lily, lentil, love, lust, liberty, boil, coral——

Now then! The nerve vitalizing breath! We’ll all stand. Hold the breath. Stretch out arms. Arms in—and IN—AND IN—out—in—head up—mouth open——

Shades of Modjeska, Duse, Rachel, Mrs. Siddons, Bernhardt! Was this the way an actress was made!

“You wait and see,” said Kim, grimly. Dancing, singing, fencing, voice, French. One year. Two. Three. Magnolia had waited, and she had seen.

Kim had had none of those preliminary hardships and terrors and temptations, then, that are supposed to beset
the path of the attractive young woman who would travel the road to theatrical achievement. Her success actually had been instantaneous and sustained. She had been given the part of the daughter of a worldly mother in a new piece by Ford Salter and had taken the play away from the star who did the mother. Her performance had been clear-cut, modern, deft, convincing. She was fresh, but finished.

She was intelligent, successful, workmanlike, intuitive, vigorous, adaptable. She was almost the first of this new crop of intelligent, successful, deft, workmanlike, intuitive, vigorous, adaptable young women of the theatre. There was about her—or them—nothing of genius, of greatness, of the divine fire. But the dramatic critics of the younger school who were too late to have seen past genius in its heyday and for whom the theatrical genius of their day was yet to come, viewed her performance and waxed hysterical, mistaking talent and intelligence and hard work and ambition for something more rare. It became the thing to proclaim each smart young woman the Duse of her day if she had a decent feeling for stage tempo, could sustain a character throughout three acts, speak the English language intelligibly, cross a stage or sit in a chair naturally. By the time Kim had been five years out of the National Theatre School there were Duses by the dozen, and a Broadway Bernhardt was born at least once a season.

These gave, invariably, what is known as a fine performance. As you stood in the lobby between the acts,
smoking your cigarette, you said, “She’s giving a fine performance.”

“A fine performance!” Magnolia echoed one evening, rather irritably, after she and Kim had returned from the opening of a play in which one of Kim’s friends was featured. “But she doesn’t act. Everything she did and everything she said was right. And I was as carried out of myself as though I were listening to a clock strike. When I go to the theatre I want to care. In the old days maybe they didn’t know so much about tempo and rhythm, but in the audience strong men wept and women fainted——”

“Now listen, Nola darling. One of your old-day gals would last about four seconds on Broadway. I’ve heard about Clara Morris and Mrs. Siddons, and Modjeska, and Bernhardt all my life. If the sentimental old dears were to come back in an all-star revival to-day the intelligent modern theatre-going audience would walk out on them.”

The new-school actresses went in for the smarter teas, eschewed cocktails, visited the art exhibits, had their portraits painted in the new manner, never were seen at night clubs, were glimpsed coming out of Scribner’s with a thick volume of modern biography, used practically no make-up when in mufti, kept their names out of the New York telephone directory, wore flat-heeled shoes and woollen stockings while walking briskly in Central Park, went to Symphony Concerts; were, in short, figures as glamorous and romantic as a pint of milk. Everything they did on the stage was right.
Intelligent, well thought out, and right. Watching them, you knew it was right—tempo, tone, mood, character. Right. As right as an engineering blueprint. Your pulses, as you sat in the theatre, were normal.

Usually, their third season, you saw them unwisely lunching too often at the Algonquin Round Table and wise-cracking with the critics there. The fourth they took a bit in that new English comedy just until O’Neill should have finished the play he was doing for them. The fifth they married that little Whatshisname. The sixth they said, mysteriously, that they were Writing.

Kim kept away from the Algonquin, did not attend first nights with Woollcott or Broun, had a full-page Steichen picture in
Vanity Fair
, and married Kenneth Cameron. She went out rarely. Sunday night dinners, sometimes; or she had people in (ham
à la
Queenie part of the cold buffet). Her list of Sunday night guests or engagements read like a roster of the New York Telephone Company’s Exchanges. Stuyvesant, Beekman, Bleeker, Murray, Rhinelander, Vanderbilt, Jerome, Wadsworth, Tremont. She learned to say, “It’s just one of those things——” She finished an unfinished sentence with, “I
mean——
!” and a throwing up of the open palms.

Kenneth Cameron. Her marriage with Kenneth Cameron was successful and happy and very nice. Separate bedrooms and those lovely negligées—velvet with Venetian sleeves and square neck-line. Excellent friends. Nothing sordid. Personal liberty and privacy of thought and action—those were the things that made
for happiness in marriage. Magnolia wondered, sometimes, but certainly it was not for her to venture opinion. Her own marriage had been no such glittering example of perfection. Yet she wondered, seeing this well-ordered and respectful union, if Kim was not, after all, missing something. Wasn’t marriage, like life, unstimulating and unprofitable and somewhat empty when too well ordered and protected and guarded? Wasn’t it finer, more splendid, more nourishing, when it was, like life itself, a mixture of the sordid and the magnificent; of mud and stars; of earth and flowers; of love and hate and laughter and tears and ugliness and beauty and hurt? She was wrong, of course. Ken’s manner toward Kim was polite, tender, thoughtful. Kim’s manner toward Ken was polite, tender, thoughtful. Are you free next Thursday, dear? The Paynes are having those Russians. It might be rather interesting.… Sorry. Ken’s voice. Soft, light. It was the—well, Magnolia never acknowledged this, even to herself, but it was what she called the male interior decorator’s voice. You heard it a good deal at teas, and at the Algonquin, and in the lobby between the acts on first nights and in those fascinating shops on Madison Avenue where furniture and old glass and brasses and pictures were shown you by slim young men with delicate hands. I
mean
——! It’s just one of those things.…

There was no Mississippi in Kim. Kim was like the Illinois River of Magnolia’s childhood days. Kim’s life flowed tranquilly between gentle green-clad shores, orderly, well regulated, dependable.

“For the land’s sakes, Magnolia Hawks, you sitting out there yet! Here it’s after three and nearly dinner time!” Elly Chipley at the screen door. “And in the blazing sun, too. You need somebody to look after you worse than your ma did.”

Elly was justified, for Magnolia had a headache that night.

Kim and Ken arrived unexpectedly together on June second, clattering up to the boat landing in a scarecrow Ford driven by a stout Negro in khaki pants, puttees, and an army shirt.

Kim was breathless, but exhilarated. “He says he drove in France in ’17, and I believe it. Good God! Every bolt, screw, bar, nut, curtain, and door in the thing rattled and flapped and opened and fell in and fell out. I’ve been working like a Swiss bell-ringer trying to keep things together there in the back seat. Nola darling, what do you mean by staying down in this miserable hole all these weeks! Ken, dear, take another aspirin and a pinch of bicarb and lie down a minute.… Ken’s got a headache from the heat and the awful trip.… We’re going back to-night, and we sail on the tenth, and, Nola darling, for heaven’s sake …”

They had a talk. The customary four o’clock dinner was delayed until nearly five because of it. They sat in Magnolia’s green-shaded bedroom with its frilled white bedspread and dimity curtains—rather, Kim and Magnolia sat and Ken sprawled his lean length on the bed, looking a little yellow and haggard, what with the heat and the headache. And in the cook’s galley, and
on the stage, and in the little dressing rooms that looked out on the river, and on deck, and in the box office, the company and crew of the Cotton Blossom Floating Palace Theatre lounged and waited, played pinochle and waited, sewed and napped and read and wondered and waited.

“You can’t mean it, Nola darling. Flopping up and down these muddy wretched rivers in this heat! You could be out at the Bay with Andy. Or in London with Ken and me—Ken, dear, isn’t it any better?—or even in New York, in the lovely airy apartment, it’s cooler than——”

Magnolia sat forward.

“Listen, Kim. I love it. The rivers. And the people. And the show boat. And the life. I don’t know why. It’s bred in me, I suppose. Yes, I do know why. Your grandpa died when you were too little to remember him, really. Or you’d know why. Now, if you two are set on going back on the night train, you’ll have to listen to me for a minute. I went over things with the lawyer and the banker in Thebes when we took Mama back there. Your grandmother left a fortune. I don’t mean a few thousand dollars. She left half a million, made out of this boat in the last twenty-five years. I’m giving it to you, Kim, and Ken.”

Refusal, of course. Protest. Consideration. Acquiescence. Agreement. Acceptance. Ken was sitting up now, pallidly. Kim was lyric. “Half a million! Mother! Ken! It means the plays I want, and Ken to produce them. It means that I can establish a real American theatre in New York. I can do the plays
I’ve been longing to do—Ibsen and Hauptmann, and Werfel, and Schnitzler, and Molnar, and Chekhov, and Shakespeare even. Ken! We’ll call it the American Theatre!”

“The American Theatre,” Magnolia repeated after her, thoughtfully. And smiled then. “The American Theatre.” She looked a trifle uncomfortable, as one who has heard a good joke, and has no one with whom to share it.

A loud-tongued bell clanged and reverberated through the show boat’s length. Dinner.

Kim and Ken pretended not to notice the heat and flies and the molten state of the butter. They met everyone from the captain to the cook; from the ingénue lead to the drum.

“Well, Miss Ravenal, this is an—or Mrs. Cameron, I suppose I should say—an honour. We know all about you, even if you don’t know about us.” Not one of them had ever seen her.

A little tour of the show boat after dinner. Ken, still pale, but refreshed by tea, was moved to exclamations of admiration. Look at that, Kim! Ingenious. Oh, say, we must stay over and see a performance. I’d no idea! And these combination dressing rooms and bedrooms, eh? Well, I’ll be damned!

Elly Chipley was making up in her special dressing room, infinitesimal in size, just off the stage. Her part for to-night was that of a grande dame in black silk and lace cap and fichu. The play was The Planter’s Daughter. She had been rather sniffy in her attitude toward the distinguished visitors. They couldn’t patronize
her
. She applied the rouge to her withered cheeks in little pettish dabs, and leaned critically forward to scrutinize her old mask of a face. What did she see there? Kim wondered, watching her, fascinated.

“Mother tells me you played Juliet, years ago. How marvellous!”

Elly Chipley tossed her head skittishly. “Yes, indeed! Played Juliet, and was known as the Western Favourite. I wasn’t always on a show boat, I promise you.”

“What a thrill—to play Juliet when you were so young! Usually we have to wait until we’re fifty. Tell me, dear Miss La Verne”—elaborately polite, and determined to mollify this old harridan—“tell me, who was your Romeo?”

And then Life laughed at Elly Chipley (Lenore La Verne on the bills) and at Kim Ravenal, and the institution known as the Stage. For Elly Chipley tapped her cheek thoughtfully with her powder puff, and blinked her old eyes, and screwed up her tremulous old mouth, and pondered, and finally shook her head. “My Romeo? Let me see. Let—me—see. Who
was
my Romeo?”

They must go now. Oh, Nola darling, half a million! It’s too fantastic. Mother, I can’t bear to leave you down in this God-forsaken hole. Flies and Negroes and mud and all this yellow terrible river that you love more than me. Stand up there—high up—where we can see you as long as possible.

The usual crowd was drifting down to the landing as the show-boat lights began to glow. Twilight was
coming on. On the landing, up the river bank, sauntering down the road, came the Negroes, and the hangers-on, the farm-hands, the river folk, the curious, the idle, the amusement-hungry. Snatches of song. Feet shuffling upon the wharf boards. A banjo twanging.

They were being taken back to the nearest railroad connection, but not in the Ford that had brought them. They sat luxuriously in the car that had been Parthy’s and that was Magnolia’s now.

“Mother, dearest, you’ll be back in New York in October or November at the latest, won’t you? Promise me. When the boat closes? You will!”

Kim was weeping. The car started smoothly. She turned for a last glimpse through her tears. “Oh, Ken, do you think I ought to leave her like this?”

“She’ll be all right, dear. Look at her! Jove!”

There stood Magnolia Ravenal on the upper deck of the Cotton Blossom Floating Palace Theatre, silhouetted against sunset sky and water—tall, erect, indomitable. Her mouth was smiling but her great eyes were wide and sombre. They gazed, unwinking, across the sunlit waters. One arm was raised in a gesture of farewell.

“Isn’t she splendid, Ken!” cried Kim, through her tears. “There’s something about her that’s eternal and unconquerable—like the River.”

A bend in the upper road. A clump of sycamores. The river, the show boat, the straight silent figure were lost to view.

THE END