She ate, gratefully. Anything I can do for you now, Nollie? No, nothing, thanks. Well, I’m kind of beat, myself. It’s been a day, I can tell you. Good-night. Good-night. Now I’ll leave my door open, so’s if you call me——
Nine o’clock. Ten. The hoarse hoot of a boat whistle. The clank of anchor chains. Swish. Swash. Fainter. Cluck-suck against the hull. Quieter. More quiet. Quiet. Black velvet. The River. Home.
XIX
Kim Ravenal’s tenth letter to her mother was the decisive one. It arrived late in May, when the Cotton Blossom Floating Palace Theatre was playing Lulu, Mississippi. From where the show boat lay just below the landing there was little enough to indicate that a town was situated near by. Lulu, Mississippi, in May, was humid and drowsy and dusty and fly-ridden. The Negroes lolled in the shade of their cabins and loafed at the water’s edge. Thick-petalled white flowers amidst glossy dark green foliage filled the air with a drugging sweetness, and scarlet-petalled flowers stuck their wicked yellow tongues out at the passer-by.
Magnolia, on the Cotton Blossom upper deck that was like a cosy veranda, sat half in the shade and half in the sun and let the moist heat envelop her. The little nervous lines that New York had etched about her eyes and mouth seemed to vanish magically under the languorous touch of the saturant Southern air. She was again like the lovely creamy blossom for which she had been named; a little drooping, perhaps; a little faded; but Magnolia.
Elly Chipley, setting to rights her privileged bedroom on the boat’s port side, came to the screen door in cotton morning frock and boudoir cap. The frock was a gay gingham of girlish cut, its colour a delicate pink. The cap was a trifle of lace and ribbon. From this frame her withered life-scarred old mask looked out, almost fascinating in its grotesquerie.
“Beats me how you can sit out there in the heat like a lizard or a cat or something and not get a stroke. Will, too, one these fine days.”
Magnolia, glancing up from the perusal of her letter, stretched her arms above her head luxuriously. “I love it.”
Elly Chipley’s sharp old eyes snapped at the typewritten sheets of the letter in Magnolia’s hand. “Heard from your daughter again, did you?”
“Yes.”