Like the stage sets he so cleverly devised for the show boat, Gaylord Ravenal had a gift for painting about himself the scenery of romance. These settings, too, did not bear the test of too close scrutiny. But in a favourable light, and viewed from a distance, they were charmingly effective and convincing.
His sense of the dramatic did not confine itself to the stage. He was the juvenile lead, on or off. Audiences adored him. Mid-western village housewives, good mothers and helpmates for years, were, for days after seeing him as the heroic figure of some gore-and-glory drama, mysteriously silent and irritably waspish by turn. Disfavour was writ large on their faces as they viewed their good commonplace dull husbands across the midday table set with steaming vegetables and meat.
“Why’n’t you shave once in a while middle of the week,” they would snap, “ ’stead of coming to the table looking like a gorilla?”
Mild surprise on the part of the husband. “I shaved Sat’dy, like always.”
“Lookit your hands!”
“Hands? . . . Say, Bella, what in time’s got into you, anyway?”
“Nothing.” A relapse into moody silence on the part of Bella.
Mrs. Hawks fought a good fight, but what chance had her maternal jealousy against youth and love and romance? For a week she would pour poison into Magnolia’s unwilling ear. Only making a fool of you . . . probably walk off and leave the show any day . . . common gambler . . . look at his eyes . . . murderer and you know it . . . rather see you in your grave. . . .
Then, in one brief moment, Ravenal, by some act of courage or grace or sheer deviltry, would show Parthy that all her pains were for nothing.
That night, for example, when they were playing Kentucky Sue. Ravenal’s part was what is known as a blue-shirt lead—the rough brave woodsman, with the uncouth speech and the heart of gold. Magnolia, naturally, was Sue. They were playing Gains Landing, always a tough town, often good for a fight. It was a capacity audience and a surprisingly well-behaved and attentive. Midway in the play’s progress a drawling drunken voice from the middle of the house began a taunting and ridiculous chant whose burden was, “Is ’at so!” After each thrilling speech; punctuating each flowery period, “Is ’at so!” came the maddening and disrupting refrain. You had to step carefully at Gains Landing. The Cotton Blossom troupe knew that. One word at the wrong moment, and knives flashed, guns popped. Still, this could not go on.