Kim was breathless, but exhilarated. “He says he drove in France in ’17, and I believe it. Good God! Every bolt, screw, bar, nut, curtain, and door in the thing rattled and flapped and opened and fell in and fell out. I’ve been working like a Swiss bell-ringer trying to keep things together there in the back seat. Nola darling, what do you mean by staying down in this miserable hole all these weeks! Ken, dear, take another aspirin and a pinch of bicarb and lie down a minute. . . . Ken’s got a headache from the heat and the awful trip. . . . We’re going back to-night, and we sail on the tenth, and, Nola darling, for heaven’s sake . . .”
They had a talk. The customary four o’clock dinner was delayed until nearly five because of it. They sat in Magnolia’s green-shaded bedroom with its frilled white bedspread and dimity curtains—rather, Kim and Magnolia sat and Ken sprawled his lean length on the bed, looking a little yellow and haggard, what with the heat and the headache. And in the cook’s galley, and on the stage, and in the little dressing rooms that looked out on the river, and on deck, and in the box office, the company and crew of the Cotton Blossom Floating Palace Theatre lounged and waited, played pinochle and waited, sewed and napped and read and wondered and waited.
“You can’t mean it, Nola darling. Flopping up and down these muddy wretched rivers in this heat! You could be out at the Bay with Andy. Or in London with Ken and me—Ken, dear, isn’t it any better?—or even in New York, in the lovely airy apartment, it’s cooler than——”
Magnolia sat forward.
“Listen, Kim. I love it. The rivers. And the people. And the show boat. And the life. I don’t know why. It’s bred in me, I suppose. Yes, I do know why. Your grandpa died when you were too little to remember him, really. Or you’d know why. Now, if you two are set on going back on the night train, you’ll have to listen to me for a minute. I went over things with the lawyer and the banker in Thebes when we took Mama back there. Your grandmother left a fortune. I don’t mean a few thousand dollars. She left half a million, made out of this boat in the last twenty-five years. I’m giving it to you, Kim, and Ken.”
Refusal, of course. Protest. Consideration. Acquiescence. Agreement. Acceptance. Ken was sitting up now, pallidly. Kim was lyric. “Half a million! Mother! Ken! It means the plays I want, and Ken to produce them. It means that I can establish a real American theatre in New York. I can do the plays I’ve been longing to do—Ibsen and Hauptmann, and Werfel, and Schnitzler, and Molnar, and Chekhov, and Shakespeare even. Ken! We’ll call it the American Theatre!”
“The American Theatre,” Magnolia repeated after her, thoughtfully. And smiled then. “The American Theatre.” She looked a trifle uncomfortable, as one who has heard a good joke, and has no one with whom to share it.
A loud-tongued bell clanged and reverberated through the show boat’s length. Dinner.
Kim and Ken pretended not to notice the heat and flies and the molten state of the butter. They met everyone from the captain to the cook; from the ingénue lead to the drum.
“Well, Miss Ravenal, this is an—or Mrs. Cameron, I suppose I should say—an honour. We know all about you, even if you don’t know about us.” Not one of them had ever seen her.