“Cer’nly is,” agreed Jo.
The young man appeared a trifle embarrassed, which made him look all the younger. Years later, in New York, Kim was to know him as one of the most powerful theatrical producers of his day. And he was to say to Kim, “Ravenal, h’m? Why, say, I knew your mother when she was better-looking than you’ll ever be. And smart! Say, she tried to sell me a coon song turn down in Jopper’s in the old days, long before your time. I thought they were hymns and wouldn’t touch them. Seems they’re hot stuff now. Spirituals, they call them. You hear ’em in every show on Broadway. ’S fact! Got to go to church to get away from ’em. Well, live and learn’s what I say.”
It was through this shrewd, tough, stage-wise boy that Magnolia had her chance. He did not understand or like her Negro folk songs then, but he did recognize the quality she possessed. And it was due to this precociousness in him that Magnolia, a little more than a year later, was singing American coon songs in the Masonic Roof bill, her name on the programme with those of Cissie Loftus and Marshall Wilder and the Four Cohans.
But now she stood up, the scarlet receding from her face, leaving it paler than before. Silently she handed the husky singer his banjo; tried to murmur a word of thanks; choked. She put on her hat, adjusted her veil.
“Here, wait a minute, sister. No offense. I’ve seen ’em lighter’n you. Your voice sounds like a—ain’t that the truth, Jo?” Actually distressed, he appealed again to his unloquacious ally in the third row.
“Sure does,” agreed Jo.
The unfortunate hoarse-voiced man who had loaned her the banjo now departed. He seemed to bear no rancour. Magnolia, seeing this, tried again to smile on the theory that, if he could be game, then so, too, could she. And this time, it was the real Magnolia Ravenal smile of which the newspapers made much in the years to come. The ravishing Ravenal smile, they said (someone having considered that alliterative phrase rather neat).
Seeing it now the young showman exclaimed, without too much elegance, “Lookit that, Jo!” Then, to Magnolia: “Listen, sister. You won’t get far with those. Your songs are too much like church tunes, see? They’re for a funeral, not a theaytre. And that’s a fact. But I like the way you got of singing them. How about singing me a real coon song? You know. Hello, Mah Baby! or something like that.”
“I don’t know any. These are the only songs I know.”
“Well, for——! Listen. You learn some real coon songs and come back, see, in a week. Here. Try these over at home, see.” He selected some song sheets from the accommodating piano top. She took them, numbly.