Even before Kim’s birth the antagonism between Parthy and her son-in-law deepened to actual hatred. She treated him like a criminal; regarded Magnolia’s quite normal condition as a reproach to him.
“Look here, Magnolia, I can’t stand this, you know. I’m so sick of this old mud-scow and everything that goes with it.”
“Gay! Everything!”
“You know what I mean. Let’s get out of it. I’m no actor. I don’t belong here. If I hadn’t happened to see you when you stepped out on deck that day at New Orleans——”
“Are you sorry?”
“Darling! It’s the only luck I’ve ever had that lasted.”
She looked thoughtfully down at the clear colourful brilliance of the diamond on her third finger. Always too large for her, it now hung so loosely on her thin hand that she had been obliged to wind it with a great pad of thread to keep it from dropping off, though hers were the large-knuckled fingers of the generous and resourceful nature. It was to see much of life, that ring.
She longed to say to him, “Where do you belong, Gay? Who are you? Don’t tell me you’re a Ravenal. That isn’t a profession, is it? You can’t live on that.”
But she knew it was useless. There was a strange deep streak of the secretive in him; baffling, mystifying. Questioned, he would say nothing. It was not a moody silence, or a resentful one. He simply would not speak. She had learned not to ask.
“We can’t go away now, Gay dear. I can’t go. You don’t want to go without me, do you? You wouldn’t leave me! Maybe next winter, after the boat’s put up, we can go to St. Louis, or even New Orleans—that would be nice, wouldn’t it? The winter in New Orleans.”