“What did you think it was?” growled one of the players, who had temporarily owned the diamond several times during the journey down river. “What did you think it was? Shanghai?”
“I wish it was,” said Gaylord Ravenal. Somewhat dazedly he walked down the Lady Lee’s gangplank and retorted testily to a beady-eyed giant-footed gentleman who immediately spoke to him in a low and not unfriendly tone, “Give me time, can’t you! I haven’t been twenty-four hours stepping from the gangplank to this wharf, have I? Well, then!”
“No offence, Gay,” said the gentleman, his eyes still searching the other passengers as they filed across the narrow gangplank. “Just thought I’d remind you, case of trouble. You know how Vallon is.”
Vallon had said, briefly, later, “That’s all right, Gay. But by this time to-morrow evening——” He had eyed Ravenal’s raiment with a comprehending eye. “Cigar?” The weed he proffered was slim, pale, and frayed as the man who stood before him. Gaylord Ravenal’s jangling nerves ached for the solace of tobacco; but he viewed this palpably second-hand gift with a glance of disdain that was a triumph of the spirit over the flesh. Certainly no man handicapped by his present sartorial and social deficiencies was justified in raising a quizzical right eyebrow in the manner employed by Ravenal.
“What did you call it?” said he now.
Vallon looked at it. He was not a quick-witted gentleman. “Cigar.”
“Optimist.” And strolled out of the chiefs office, swinging the little malacca cane.
So then, you now saw him leaning moodily against a wooden case on the New Orleans plank wharf, distinguished, shabby, dapper, handsome, broke, and twenty-four.
It was with some amusement that he had watched the crew of the Mollie Able bring the flat unwieldy bulk of the Cotton Blossom into the wharfside in the midst of the confusion of packets, barges, steamboats, tugs, flats, tramp boats, shanty boats. He had spoken briefly and casually to Schultzy while that bearer of evil tidings, letter in hand, waited impatiently on the dock as the Cotton Blossom was shifted to a landing position farther upstream. He had seen these floating theatres of the Mississippi and the Ohio many times, but he had never before engaged one of their actors in conversation.
“Juvenile lead!” he had exclaimed, unable to hide something of incredulity in his voice. Schultzy, an anxious eye on the Mollie Able’s tedious manœuvres, had just made clear to Ravenal his own position in the Cotton Blossom troupe. Ravenal, surveying the furrowed brow, the unshaven cheeks, the careless dress, the lack-lustre eye, had involuntarily allowed to creep into his tone something of the astonishment he felt.