A little unaccustomed flush surged over Magnolia’s pallor—the deep, almost painful red of indignation. She was an inexperienced woman, but she was no fool. These last few months had taught her many things. Also the teachings of her school-teacher mother had not, after all, been quite forgotten, it appeared.
“She’s a common woman of the town, Gaylord Ravenal. All the wigs and patches and silks in the world wouldn’t make her anything else. She’s no more a Du Barry than your Hinky Dink is a—uh—Mazarin.”
It was as though he took a sort of perverse pleasure in thus startling her. It wasn’t that she was shocked in the prim sense of the word. She was bewildered and a little frightened. At such times the austere form and the grim visage of Parthenia Ann Hawks would rise up before her puzzled eyes. What would Parthy have said of these unsavoury figures now passing in parade before Magnolia’s confused vision—Hetty Chilson, Doc Haggerty, Mike McDonald, “Prince” Varnell, Effie Hankins? Uneasy though she was, Magnolia could manage to smile at the thought of her mother’s verbal destruction of this raffish crew. There were no half tones in Parthy’s vocabulary. A hussy was a hussy; a rake a rake. But her father, she thought, would have been interested in all this, and more than a little amused. His bright brown eyes would have missed nothing; the little nimble figure would have scampered inquisitively up and down the narrow and somewhat sinister lane that lay between Washington and Madison streets, known as Gamblers’ Alley; he would have taken a turn at faro; appraised the Levee ladies at their worth: visited Sam T. Jack’s Burlesque Show over on Madison, and Kohl & Middleton’s Museum, probably, and Hooley’s Theatre certainly. Nothing in Chicago’s Levee life would have escaped little Captain Andy, and nothing would have changed him.
“See it all, Nollie,” he had said to her in the old Cotton Blossom days, when Parthy would object to their taking this or that jaunt ashore between shows. “Don’t you believe ’em when they say that what you don’t know won’t hurt you. Biggest lie ever was. See it all and go your own way and nothing’ll hurt you. If what you see ain’t pretty, what’s the odds! See it anyway. Then next time you don’t have to look.”
Magnolia, gazing about her, decided that she was seeing it all.
The bulk of the money had gone at faro. The suckers played roulette, stud poker, hazard, the bird-cage, chuck-a-luck (the old army game). But your gambler played faro. Faro was Gaylord Ravenal’s game, and he played at Hankins’—not at George Hankins’ where they catered to the cheap trade who played percentage games—but at Jeff Hankins’ or Mike McDonald’s where were found the highest stakes in Chicago. Faro was not a game with Ravenal—it was for him at once his profession, his science, his drug, his drink, his mistress. He had, unhappily, as was so often the case with your confirmed gambler, no other vice. He rarely drank, and then abstemiously; smoked little and then a mild cigar, ate sparingly and fastidiously; eschewed even the diamond ring and shirt-stud of his kind.
The two did not, of course, watch the money go, or despair because it would soon be gone. There seemed to be plenty of it. There always would be enough. Next week they would invest it securely. Ravenal had inside tips on the market. He had heard of a Good Thing. This was not the right time, but They would let him know when the magic moment was at hand. In the meantime there was faro. And there were the luxurious hotel rooms with their soft thick carpets, and their big comfortable beds; ice water tinkling at the door in answer to your ring; special dishes to tempt the taste of Mr. Ravenal and his lady. The sharp-eyed gentleman in evening clothes who stood near the little ticket box as you entered the theatre said, “Good-evening, Mr. Ravenal,” when they went to Hooley’s or McVicker’s or the Grand Opera House, or Kohl and Castle’s. The heads of departments in Mandel’s or Carson Pirie’s or even Marshall Field’s said, “I have something rather special to show you, Mrs. Ravenal. I thought of you the minute it came in.”
Sometimes it seemed to Magnolia that the Cotton Blossom had been only a phantom ship—the rivers a dream—a legend.
It was all very pleasant and luxurious and strange. And Magnolia tried not to mind the clang of Clark Street by day and by night. The hideous cacophony of noise invaded their hotel apartment and filled its every corner. She wondered why the street-car motormen jangled their warning bells so persistently. Did they do it as an antidote to relieve their own jangled nerves? Pay-pes! MO’nin’ pay-pes! Crack! Crack! Crackcrackcrack! The shooting gallery across the street. Someone passing the bedroom door, walking heavily and clanking the metal disk of his room key. The sound of voices, laughter, from the street, and the unceasing shuffle of footsteps on stone. Whee-e-e-e-e! Whoop-a! Ye-e-eow! A drunkard. She knew about that, too. Part of her recently acquired knowledge. Ravenal had told her about Big Steve Rowan, the three-hundred-pound policeman, who, partly because of his goatee and moustache, and partly because of his expert manipulation of his official weapon, was called the Jack of Clubs.
“You’ll never see Big Steve arrest a drunk at night,” Gay had explained to her, laughing. “No, sir! Nor any other Clark Street cop if he can help it. If they arrest a man they have to appear against him next morning at the nine o’clock police court. That means getting up early. So if he’s able to navigate at all, they pass him on down the street from corner to corner until they get him headed west somewhere, or north across the bridge. Great system.”