“Let’s see,” he said, aloud. “Where was I——”
And as one man the audience chanted, happily, “Sue, ef he loves yuh and you love him——”
What weapon has a Parthenia against a man like that? And what chance a Frank?
Drama leaped to him. There was, less than a week later, the incident of the minister. He happened to be a rather dirty little minister in a forlorn little Kentucky river town. He ran a second-hand store on the side, was new to the region, and all unaware of the popularity and good-will enjoyed by the members of the Cotton Blossom troupe. To him an actor was a burning brand. Doc had placarded the little town with dodgers and handbills. There was one, especially effective even in that day of crude photography, showing Magnolia in the angelic part of the ingénue lead in Tempest and Sunshine. These might be seen displayed in the windows of such ramshackle stores as the town’s river-front street boasted. Gaylord Ravenal, strolling disdainfully up into the sordid village that was little more than a welter of mud and flies and mules and Negroes, stopped aghast as his eye chanced to fall upon the words scrawled beneath a picture of Magnolia amidst the dusty disorderly mélange of the ministerial second-hand window. There was the likeness of the woman he loved looking, starry-eyed, out upon the passer-by. And beneath it, in the black fanatic penmanship of the itinerant parson:
A LOST SOUL
In his fine English clothes, swinging the slim malacca cane, Gaylord Ravenal, very narrow-eyed, entered the fusty shop and called to its owner to come forward. From the cobwebby gloom of the rear reaches emerged the merchant parson, a tall, shambling large-knuckled figure of the anaconda variety. You thought of Uriah Heep and of Ichabod Crane, experiencing meanwhile a sensation of distaste.
Ravenal, very elegant, very cool, very quiet, pointed with the tip of his cane. “Take that picture out of the window. Tear it up. Apologize.”
“I won’t do anything of the kind,” retorted the holy man. “You’re a this-and-that, and a such-and-such, and a so-and-so, and she’s another, and the whole boatload of you ought to be sunk in the river you contaminate.”
“Take off your coat,” said Ravenal, divesting himself neatly of his own faultless garment as he spoke.
A yellow flame of fear leaped into the man’s eyes. He edged toward the door. With a quick step Ravenal blocked his way. “Take it off before I rip it off. Or fight with your coat on.”