One of his silences.
He never had any money—that is, he never had it for long. It vanished. He would have one hundred dollars. He would go ashore at some sizable town and return with five hundred—a thousand. “Got into a little game with some of the boys,” he would explain, cheerfully. And give her three hundred of it, four hundred, five. “Buy yourself a dress, Nola. Something rich, with a hat to match. You’re too pretty to wear those homemade things you’re always messing with.”
Some woman wisdom in her told her to put by a portion of these sums. She got into the habit of tucking away ten dollars, twenty, fifty. At times she reproached herself for this; called it disloyal, sneaking, underhand. When she heard him say, as he frequently did, “I’m strapped. If I had fifty dollars I could turn a trick that would make five hundred out of it. You haven’t got fifty, have you, Nola? No, of course not.”
She wanted then to give him every cent of her tiny hoard. It was the tenuous strain of her mother in her, doubtless—the pale thread of the Parthy in her make-up—that caused her to listen to an inner voice. “Don’t do it,” whispered the voice, nudging her, “keep it. You’ll need it badly by and by.”
It did not take many months for her to discover that her husband was a gambler by profession—one of those smooth and plausible gentry with whom years of river life had made her familiar. It was, after all, not so much a discovery as a forced admission. She knew, but refused to admit that she knew. Certainly no one could have been long in ignorance with Mrs. Hawks in possession of the facts.
Ten days after Magnolia’s marriage to Ravenal (and what a ten days those had been! Parthy alone crowded into them a lifetime of reproach), Mrs. Hawks came to her husband, triumph in her mien, portent in her voice:
“Well, Hawks, I hope you’re satisfied now.” This was another of Parthy’s favourite locutions. The implication was that the unfortunate whom she addressed had howled heaven-high his demands for hideous misfortune and would not be content until horror had piled upon horror. “I hope you’re satisfied now, Hawks. Your son-in-law is a gambler, and no more. A common barroom gambler, without a cent to his trousers longer’n it takes to transfer his money from his pocket to the table. That’s what your only daughter has married. Understand, I’m not saying he gambles, and that’s all. I say he’s a gambler by calling. That’s the way he made his living before he came aboard this boat. I wish he had died before he ever set foot on the Cotton Blossom gangplank, and so I tell you, Hawks. A smooth-tongued, oily, good-for-nothing; no better than the scum Elly ran off with.”
“Now, Parthy, what’s done’s done. Why’n’t you try to make the best of things once in a while, instead of the worst? Magnolia’s happy with him.”
“She ain’t lived her life out with him yet. Mark my words. He’s got a roving eye for a petticoat.”
“Funny thing, Parthy. Your father was a man, and so’s your husband, and your son-in-law’s another. Yet seems you never did get the hang of a man’s ways.”