by Gwen Bristow
Before she could look back she felt herself put on a horse and Philip was leaping up behind her. He thrust a gun into her hands.
“You hold it ready, Judith. There may be Indians in the forest.”
The horse started. Without speaking again they rode into a wood that closed darkly around them as they went. Judith held the gun in her left hand and put her arm around his neck. They went down a weird trail between the oaks, and they were still riding when the moon set on the other side of the forest. Judith could see nothing but the black trees and hear nothing but the clatter of the horse’s hoofs, and she wondered where he was taking her, but as she felt the support of Philip’s arm around her waist and his cheek against hers she knew he could not possibly take her anywhere that she would not want to go.
Chapter Two
Black Tibby knelt before the fireplace, reaching into the pot with a long-handled iron spoon. She brought up a dip of gumbo and examined it.
“Dinner nigh about done, young miss.”
The odor filled the cabin, rich with suggestions of shrimp and chicken, okra and bay leaf and thyme. Judith sat on the edge of the bed pretending to mend a rent in a shirt of Philip’s, but her hands were so damp that the cloth clung to them and her seam was crooked as a little girl’s. The sun poked fingers of hot light through the chinks between the logs and poured through the windows to make blinding splotches on the floor. In the fireplace the flames licked around the pot, scorching Judith’s face although she had huddled herself on the farthest corner of the bed. She felt sick and dizzy with the heat; a dull ache throbbed at the back of her head and she could feel perspiration trickling down her thighs.
She held her under lip between her teeth and bit on it hard. The pain gave her something beside the heat to think about. She was repeating to herself, over and over, “I am not going to faint. I am not going to faint. If I start fainting in June I will probably die in August. I am not going to faint.”
Why hadn’t somebody told her it was going to be like this? Six weeks it had been now since she reached Louisiana, and for five of them the sky had been like a cup of brass turned down over the forest that Philip proudly called “the plantation.” The sun came up with a blistering glory so beautiful that sometimes for a little while one could forget its intensity, but it moved across the sky with a torrent of fire which there was no escaping. Then when evening came the sun tumbled down again into the river, leaving streaks of purple and red to be blotted out by the dark. But even at night the heat still pressed down with a weight that made the covering of a sheet unbearable, and she tossed about until the moss mattress under her was wet and she fell asleep from sheer exhaustion, to be wakened again by that pitiless sun pushing between the logs.
Even when it rained the coolness was brief and one paid for it afterward, for when the sun came out again the ground began to steam and the air was so thick one could hardly breathe. Sometimes when she remembered the gentle summers of Connecticut Judith cried with homesickness. But she tried not to let Philip know. Philip was so splendid and adoring; it would hurt him if he knew she cried. Philip minded the heat no more than he minded the grasshoppers that leaped away as the trees of the Ardeith forest fell under the strokes of the axes, and Judith knew he would find it impossible to believe that sometimes she really thought the heat was killing her.
“Tibby,” she exclaimed, “if you make that fire any hotter I am going to scream!”
“Ma’am?” said Tibby. She stood questioningly, another log in her hands. “Gumbo gotta bile, Miss Judith.”
Judith sighed helplessly. She couldn’t understand half Tibby said, but Tibby was a good cook and Judith supposed she knew what she was doing. She was the only house-woman Philip had found among the slaves he took off the pirate boat, so he had given her to Judith and put the others to work clearing the forest. If there was only another room, Judith thought despairingly, where she could go to escape the fire. But the cabin was only four walls with a door and a couple of holes for windows, and outdoors it was worse. Judith looked out at the slaves setting up cypress lathes on the foundations of the new dwelling. It was going to be a big house like the one where Gervaise and Walter Purcell had welcomed her and from which she had run away that first night. Sometimes she wished she had not run away. Philip might have waited for her till he had a house fit for a woman to live in. But she stopped herself with remorse. He had loved her too much to wait, and had not dreamed how horrible the summer would seem to a girl from Connecticut. He did not mind living in a log hovel or seeing ants creep between the cracks in the floor, and he laughed about the bugs in the cornmeal. None of this troubled him, for he was clearing his own land and planting his indigo.
Judith dropped the shirt into her lap and put her hands to her aching head.
“Oh, all right,” she said to Tibby. “Make up the fire. Make it so hot I cook like a shrimp in the gumbo. I don’t care. Maybe I’ll die sooner.”
“Now, young miss.” Tibby stuck the log under the pot and came over to the bed. “What ails you, honey child?”
Tibby’s black face sparkled as the sun struck the drops of perspiration on it. She put her arms around Judith and patted her.
“Don’t you get yo’sef upset, honey. I ’spects you miss yo’ mamma, don’t you now?”
Judith hid her face on Tibby’s deep bosom and nodded. She wondered how her mother was enduring this inferno. Judith had seen her mother only two or three times in these weeks; the Sheramy grant joined that of Philip Larne, but between this cabin and that of the Sheramys was the forest, so thick that the space might almost have been a hundred miles. She asked:
“Does the heat ever kill people, Tibby?”
“Lawsy mussy me, young miss! ’Fo’ long you gets like me—you don’t pay it no mind at all. Ain’t dey got no summertime where you come from, honey?”
“Not—not like this.” Judith had not lifted her head. It was a comfort to have somebody holding her so tenderly, even a black slave.
“Well, jes’ you be patient now, sugarplum, twell Mr. Philip get you dat air big new house put up out yonder, and you’ll be so nice and cool—”
Judith doubted it. But she was too exhausted to argue. She pushed her damp hair off her forehead and stood up.
“I think I’ll go out,” she said. The smell of that bubbling gumbo was making her sicker every minute. How could anybody eat anything rich and hot like that in such weather?
“Yassum. You c’n call Mr. Philip in.”
“Dinner’s ready?”
“Yassum, sho. Shum deh?” Tibby covered her hand with a rag and took the lid off the pot.
The odor of shrimp and hot spices rose thickly. Judith ran out of the cabin. She was angry with heaven for devising this heat to torture her, and with Philip for coming in at noon hungry enough to eat that spicy mess, and with Tibby for using gullah talk nobody from Connecticut could be expected to understand. Leaning against the side of the cabin she covered her face with her hands and hated everything and everybody. A mosquito lit on her neck; Judith slapped at it and walked back toward the woods.
The axes were ringing against the trees where the slaves were clearing a field for indigo. The air out here was fresher, but the sun was pounding on her head. Her sleeves felt prickly on her arms. The cuffs were too tight for her to roll them up, and it didn’t seem quite respectable to be going about with bare arms anyway. There was a smell of food out here too. The slave-women Philip had brought with him were cooking greens and side-meat in pots slung from tripods over fires outdoors. The earth clung to Judith’s shoes and weeds slapped her skirts as she made her way among the stumps, around the foundations of the new house.
The slaves were working to the rhythm of a droning song. The words were a mingling of the half-forgotten tongue of the jungle and the patter of the gullah coast, and the song as they sang it, lifting their axes in slow time, was grewsome like a savage chant in some
far lost wilderness where no Christian had ever set foot. Through the pressing heat she felt a chill run down her back as she stopped to watch them. The sun glanced on the bare backs of the Negroes, for they were naked to the waist, and the muscles of their shoulders knotted as they raised their axes. Overhead the branches of the trees met in a green tangle. Here and there a vine climbed up, hugging the moss close to the branches and hanging purple and scarlet flowers like lights in the forest dimness.
Little showers of bark and splinters gushed from the trees as the axes struck. Judith watched, half frightened and half fascinated. She wondered what Negroes were like, really. The parsons argued about whether or not the blacks had souls like white people—how could they, the rector of St. Margaret’s had asked, when they roamed like animals in the African jungles and boiled each other in pots for dinner? But then, Tibby who was cooking the gumbo, she really seemed human.
One of the Negroes pointed to Judith and called out. Judith started and stared; he shouted again, and then they all turned and saw her and began to yell, and Judith caught her kerchief over her breast with both hands and wanted to run, but her knees were shaking so she could not. Visions of being boiled in a pot rushed into her head. She opened her mouth and tried to scream for Philip, but her voice stuck in her throat, and at that instant the Negroes dropped their axes with a unanimous gesture and rushed toward her. She found herself stumbling under an avalanche of bodies, and as the black cascade went over her terror opened her throat and she began to scream. But though she cried out and struggled she felt herself picked up, and the Negro carrying her stumbled on a root and fell and another Negro snatched her and dragged her over the ground. Her skirt ripped on the shrubs and palmetto fronds scraped her face and tore through her hair. There was a thundering crash behind her and then as the Negroes stopped she saw Philip. He shoved the slaves out of his way and knelt down, gathering her into his arms.
“Are you all right, Judith?”
She clung to him, feeling a trickle of blood run down her cheek.
“Philip!” she gasped. “Philip, what were they doing to me?”
The Negroes were standing around, grinning and jabbering.
“Philip,” she cried again, “what were they doing?”
He laughed aloud. “Judith, honey, haven’t I told you to stay out of the woods? Didn’t they tell you to run?”
He was sitting on the ground, holding her like a baby. Judith choked.
“They all started howling at me at once. I—I thought they were going to eat me up.”
Philip was still laughing. “Honey child, that tree was coming down on your head. They called and you didn’t run and there wasn’t anything to do but knock you down and drag you out of the way. I reckon they’re due for an extra ration of side-meat.”
“Stop laughing at me,” snapped Judith. She got to her feet. Philip was brushing mold and dead leaves from his legs. His shirt had big wet streaks across the shoulders and his thick light hair, tied back with a ribbon, was wet for two inches on either side of the parting. Judith started back toward the cabin, feeling little and worthless and cross at Philip for laughing at her.
Philip caught up with her and laid his arm across her shoulders.
“I’m hungry as a mountain lion. I hope Tibby has lots to eat.”
“Gumbo,” said Judith, “with shrimp and rice.”
“Perfect,” said Philip. “It’s hungry work, clearing. Look, Judith, how much they’ve done on the house today. If I could spare more of them from the fields we could move in before winter.”
He was not walking very fast, but she found it hard to keep up with his long strides. Her skirts clung damply to her legs and the heat was making her dizzy again.
“This time next year,” Philip was saying, “there’ll be indigo back there where they’re cutting those trees, and then a tobacco field. We ought to have it all clear in a few years. Indigo is the best crop, but we’ll have rice too, and oranges, and we might put a few acres into cotton.”
He isn’t concerned about a single thing but his crops, she thought rebelliously. He doesn’t even notice how miserable I am. He just takes me for granted like Tibby—
She put her head against the cabin wall and burst into tears.
Philip stopped short. He took her in his arms. His voice when he spoke was low with troubled astonishment.
“Judith, darling, what on earth is the trouble?”
All her resolutions seemed to have gone down at once. She hid her face on his breast and sobbed.
“I—I can’t help it!” she choked out. “The heat and everything—and I can’t breathe and my head hurts all the time and I’m sick all over and I think I’m going to die.”
Philip held her close to him. She felt his kisses on her cheeks where the tears were.
“You poor dear child,” he was saying. “It’s the first deep summer you’ve ever seen, isn’t it? Come inside.”
“By that fire?” she protested, but apparently he did not hear her, for he drew her indoors. With a great effort Judith swallowed her sobs. Philip made her sit down on a box in the corner away from the fire.
“Bring her some water, Tibby,” he said.
Tibby was scooping the gumbo into big bowls and setting them on the table. “She ain’t been feelin’ so peart, young miss ain’t,” she said. She dipped a gourd into the bucket of water on the shelf. “Heah you is, honey lamb.”
Judith tried to drink it. She had grown used to river water on the flatboat, but suddenly she thought she had never tasted anything so vile in her life. It was lukewarm and felt gritty on her tongue. The rich odor of the gumbo steamed up toward her. She felt herself get cold with loathing, and then the heat rushed over her again and her stomach turned inside of her and her head began to spin. With an abrupt movement she rushed out of the cabin. By the time Philip reached her she was down on her knees among the weeds, holding herself up with her arm around a palm-tree, retching.
Philip helped her up and led her to the step by the cabin door, where it was shady. He sat down by her.
“I’m so terribly sorry, Philip,” she murmured.
Philip put his arm around her and drew her head down on his shoulder. He began asking her questions. Judith drew back and caught her breath.
“Do you mean I’m going to have a baby, Philip?”
“Darling,” he said gently, “didn’t you know?”
Judith shook her head.
After a moment she said, “I guess I don’t know anything. You must think I’m an awful fool, Philip.”
Philip was gathering up weeds in his hand and breaking them off near the ground.
“No,” he said, “but I think maybe I am.”
Judith rolled up the edges of a tear the palm-fronds had made in her dress. “Philip,” she asked, “does it hurt very much?”
He nodded. “They say it does.”
“Tell me what it’s like, Philip.”
He lifted his head. “I can’t, honey. I don’t know anything about it.”
Her eyes widened with surprise that there should be anything Philip did not know.
“But Philip—”
“I really don’t, sweetheart. I never thought about it before.” He smiled a little. “I’m sorry, Judith.”
“Oh, I’m not,” she exclaimed. Her first thought had been that she mustn’t let Philip start feeling remorseful on her account. Not when he had so much to do. “My mother can tell me. She’ll make it all right. And we really couldn’t start that dynasty you were talking about unless I had babies, could we?”
He laughed and pulled her over to him and kissed her. “I reckon we couldn’t. You dear little soldier. Yes, first thing tomorrow morning I’ll get out the cart and take you over to see your mother.”
“Will you really? She’ll be awfully glad to have us come to see her.”
“She�
��ll probably want to wring my neck,” said Philip dryly. He took her hands. “Judith, you do love me, don’t you? You aren’t sorry you ran away with me?”
“Oh, of course I’m not! I love you so much.” She smiled up at him, relieved to discover that she had a legitimate reason for feeling sick and that it didn’t mean she was unfit to stand the hardships of pioneering. It was exciting to have a baby, particularly a beautiful baby who would look like Philip, and to know you were starting a great house in a wilderness you were going to turn into an empire.
There was a noise under the trees. Judith turned around.
“Why look! Is that a wagon coming down the trail?”
“It certainly is. Now what on earth—?” Philip got his gun out of the holster at his belt. “You’d better go in, Judith.”
She stood up, but before she could obey him the wagon had reached the cleared place in front of the cabin. Judith exclaimed:
“Why, it’s my brother Caleb.”
Philip put up his gun and went toward the wagon, calling a greeting. Judith came after him, wondering what Caleb could want that was important enough to bring him on this long ride.
Caleb got out of the wagon and approached them timidly. He was a tall, bony lad with a stern face like his father’s. Caleb had always been more taciturn than Judith, and more amenable to the rigid discipline of their house, but though he had slight patience with her impulsive ways they were very fond of each other.
He glanced down, kicking his toe in the dust, and said:
“Judith—it’s mother. She’s pretty sick. I guess you’d better come.”
“Mother sick?” Judith echoed in astonishment. How strange. Her mother had always been so healthy. “Is she taken bad, Caleb?”
“I guess so.” Caleb kicked at the dirt. Though he was taller than she was he seemed all of a sudden like a little boy. “She’s not been right well since we got here, the heat and all, and now she’s come down with some kind of fever. Father said it looked like there wasn’t anybody to do for her.”
