Deep Summer

by Gwen Bristow

  Judith looked up at Philip. There was a troubled frown between his eyes. “Do you want to go to her, Judith?” he asked.

  “Oh yes! Please let me go, Philip.”

  “But you aren’t well yourself. Haven’t you got any house Negroes?” he asked Caleb impatiently.

  Caleb bashfully shook his head. “All we’ve bought are gumbo French from New Orleans and they’re just fieldhands. Mother didn’t want any for the house. She’s not used to them.”

  “Oh Philip, please let me go!” Judith repeated. “Wait, Caleb.” She pulled Philip inside. “You’ve got to let me go. I was going over anyway tomorrow. And I was a bad girl to run off like that with you. I guess she’s been worrying about me all these weeks. She wouldn’t say anything but I’m sure she’s been worrying. I’ll just go and tell her I’m doing all right, and put her mind easy.”

  “Very well,” he agreed doubtfully. “I’ll tell Caleb you’re coming.”

  “Give him dinner while I’m putting some things in a bundle. You can come for me tomorrow.”

  Philip went out to speak to Caleb while Judith wrapped up a bedgown and a clean dress. She was ashamed to own to Philip how eager she was to see her mother.

  “This isn’t much of a place that man makes you live in,” said Caleb suddenly, as the wagon rumbled along the trail.

  “It’s perfectly all right,” retorted Judith. “We live mighty tidy there. And I have a nigger slave to do for me, too.”

  “Mother says they’re all right for the fields but not messing around the food. How can you tell if they’re clean, she says, when they’re so black?”

  Judith would not admit that at first she had felt the same qualms about Tibby. “They can be clean as white folks,” she said stoutly. “The black don’t mean they’re dirty. Philip’s had slaves all his life and he knows.”

  Caleb clucked at the mules. Judith was holding the seat on both sides of her to keep from being jolted out. The sun was scorching her head through her sunbonnet, but she would not say so to Caleb; it seemed to her that in defending Philip to her family she should defend too this country he loved so much. After awhile Caleb cleared his throat and asked:

  “Judith—you’re doing all right, are you?”

  “Why of course I am.”

  “Well, mother—she’s been kind of afraid you weren’t. She got upset the day she rode over and saw that cabin. Don’t the rain come in?”

  “Not unless it’s raining very hard.”

  “And Philip—he’s good to you?”

  “He’s wonderful to me.”

  “He don’t make you work too much?”

  Judith laughed. “He won’t let me work at all. I asked him to get me a spinning-wheel and he said he wouldn’t till he could get a house-girl to do the spinning. Back where he comes from ladies of quality let slaves do all their work.”

  “Well,” said Caleb, “we never let on to be quality.”

  “But we will be, Caleb!” she cried. “All of us. With plantations from the king and indigo growing so easy. Look how the Purcells live.”

  “Father says he don’t know what’s come over Mr. Purcell, putting on such airs. Must be that French wife of his.”

  “Gervaise? She’s nice, just a little bit quiet. I don’t believe she means to be uppity.”

  “Anyway, you set mother’s mind easy about you,” said Caleb. “She’s not been doing a bit well.”

  Judith smiled. She would tell her mother how splendid Philip was, and then she would ask about her own problem. Tonight they would send the menfolks out and they would have a long private talk. Judith gave a sidelong pitying glance at Caleb. He was four years older than she was, and yet he was just a boy, while she who was only fifteen was a married woman about to have a child who would be the heir to Ardeith Plantation.

  The Sheramys’ grant of land had been named Silverwood. Caleb had suggested the name, for though it was buried deeper than Judith’s he too had a streak of romance in him, and the white trunks of the cypresses had set him to thinking of a musical word that would fit the land where they grew. He and his parents had stayed with the Purcells while Mark Sheramy’s slaves put up a house snug enough to live in a year or two, until the land was clear and the slaves could be spared to build a moss manor. The house was a log cabin with four rooms, strong and tight. No wonder they had looked askance at the shack Philip and his Negroes had knocked together in a week. But he had built it in a week because he couldn’t live without her any longer, Judith remembered proudly as she scrambled out of the wagon and ran indoors.

  Her father came across the front room to meet her, walking slowly.

  “It was good of you to come,” he said. “I was sorry to take you away from your husband.”

  Judith’s conscience struck her, for he was so gentle and unrebuking.

  “But I wanted to come, father,” she assured him.

  “I’m glad you could leave. Caleb and I, we don’t know much about nursing.”

  “Where is mother?”

  “In the bedroom. Walk easy.”

  Judith crossed to the side door. What a cool house this was, and so clean, with a separate room for the cooking and no mud in the cracks. She went softly into her mother’s room, feeling a pang at the sight of the spinning-wheel that had stood by the hearth at home, and the rag rugs she had helped braid. Her mother was on the bed. The mosquito bar blurred Judith’s eyesight, already dim after the glare outside. Mrs. Sheramy lifted her head a little way from the pillow.

  “Judith?” she said faintly. “My dear little girl.”

  Judith lifted the mosquito bar and took her mother in her arms and kissed her. But when she felt how slowly her mother’s arms went around her and how hot her mother’s cheek was under her kiss, Judith knew she wasn’t going back to Ardeith tomorrow, and she knew too with a feeling of sudden terror that it would be a long time before she could ask any questions.

  Chapter Three

  They did not tell her Catherine Sheramy had troubled herself into her bed, but Judith told herself so. Walter and Gervaise Purcell rode over, bringing gruel and good advice, and Gervaise, her ruffled fragility more incongruous than ever among the rag rugs and crazy-quilts, touched Catherine’s forehead with cool presses and said it was the sort of fever that crept up from the swamps and struck people who weren’t used to the summers, but Judith could not help believing that her mother might have stood the fever if she had been easy in her mind. She tried to imagine what her parents must have thought when they woke up that morning and found Philip’s boy Josh waiting with a letter to tell them Judith had run away.

  The letter they had sent back had been so simple that until now Judith had never tried to think what it might have cost to write it.

  My dear daughter Judith:

  While we would wish that you had dealt with us differently, your mother and I desire nothing but your happiness. Since as you say Mr. Philip Larne has been joined to you in honorable marriage, we offer our prayers that you may be to him a dutiful and obedient wife, and he to you a kind husband. May the Lord ever keep you, nor permit you to depart from his just precepts.

  Your devoted father,

  Mark Sheramy.

  “There now!” she had exclaimed jubilantly to Philip. “I knew they wouldn’t mind when I told them how much I loved you.”

  “Of course they don’t mind,” said Philip laughing. “And I really wouldn’t care if they did.”

  Now that her mother was ill they still made no reproaches. Catherine murmured that she was sorry to be such a bother, and Mark asked, almost timidly, “You have been happy with your husband, Judith?” When Judith answered, “Why of course, father!”—Mark said, “I am glad he is good to you, daughter.” But he never reminded her that he had been, and might still be, afraid for her.

  Judith did the best she could. But there was so much to be done. Th
ere were meals to be cooked and the house to be cleaned, and soup and gruel to be prepared for her mother, who did not seem to rally no matter what was done for her. Philip came over, protesting, “But Judith, you can’t work like this. Do you feel quite well?” She insisted that she did, though cooking at the fire made her so ill that sometimes she wanted to crawl into bed by her mother. Philip sent Tibby over to help her, and he ate what the field-Negroes cooked in the tents at Ardeith.

  Sometimes Catherine would have chills, and even in the breathless heat she would lie shaking, her teeth chattering with cold, and all the blankets they had brought from Connecticut failed to warm her. Then the fever would return. There were days when she seemed better, with the chills and fever alike gone out of her, and Judith would hope that now her mother would be well and she herself could ask for advice about her baby, but before Catherine had gained any strength the fever would be back and Judith did not dare ask her anything. She tried not to worry. Nearly all women had children and most of them seemed to get along all right. She remembered that now and then her mother had sent her with jelly or flowers to the home of some friend with a new baby, and the women always seemed happy and proud, but occasionally there were women in Connecticut who had died having children. She did not know what it was that killed them. Probably they hadn’t been well to begin with, and that ought not to bother her, for she had hardly ever been ill in her life. But it did bother her just the same. If Gervaise would only come back she could ask her about it. But Gervaise did not come again. Walter Purcell came often, riding a horse over the forest trails, and one day he called Judith into the front room and asked if there was anything she needed that Gervaise could send. Judith shook her head. “But I should like to see her,” she said.

  “I’m sorry she can’t come to you,” said Mr. Purcell. “She asked me to tell you, because you might think she did not care about your mother’s being so ill. But she is in her third month, and it takes three hours over these trails and longer if it has been raining. I won’t let her come. The jolting might kill her.”

  Judith nodded. “It’s all right. Thank you for being so good to us.”

  But as she watched him go she felt alone and frightened. She envied Gervaise in her big house thronged with servants. And Gervaise had had a child before so she knew what to expect. Judith envied her that too.

  Tibby asked her one day, “Miss Judith, is you standin’ behind a baby?”

  It was a moment before Judith grasped what she meant, and when she did she exclaimed, “Don’t you say anything like that to my father. He’s got enough to worry him.”

  Tibby said: “Yassum,” and went off mumbling, but the next time Philip came over she said to him, “Mr. Philip, you got business to take dat young un home and ease her bones.”

  But Judith would not go. By this time it was August, and she suspected her mother could not hold out much longer. Catherine was tossing and talking in broken words, and her father wandered about the house and fields, so worn and silent that Judith found his grief harder to bear than her mother’s delirium. There was little she could do beyond smoothing the pillows and trying to cool the fever with wet cloths on Catherine’s forehead, but even this was of little use, for it was still deep summer and there was no really cold water to be had. Before the end she sent a field-boy for Philip and asked him to stay at Silverwood with her. He stayed, but he seemed strangely inadequate for such a time. Philip was pained and bewildered, like a child, before a crisis against which his own vitality was helpless.

  Just before she died the wild fever look went out of Catherine’s eyes and she asked for Mark. Judith brought him, and waited in the front room with Philip and Caleb. After a little while Mark came out, closing the door softly behind him. He said nothing, but went out to the gallery, walking heavily, and Judith thought for the first time that he looked like an old man. She knew it was over, though he had not said so. She wondered what he and her mother had said to each other in those last minutes, and knew she would never be told; already she had learned that after two persons had been husband and wife there was something between them that nobody could violate. After a moment she put her hand in Philip’s and they went together out to the gallery. Caleb followed them and stood in the doorway.

  Mark sat on the step, his forehead resting on his hands. Judith went up to him softly, laying her hand on his head, and feeling how strong and stiff the hairs were under her fingers. Mark did not look up. He only said:

  “In this soft country there’s not even a stone to mark her grave.”

  Judith’s breath caught in her throat. Philip put an arm around her. She thought how strange it was that though tears usually came to her so easily when there was only slight reason for them she could not cry now.

  The slaves pegged together a coffin of cypress wood, and the next day the rector of St. Margaret’s came for the funeral. Walter Purcell came, and several other friends her father had made, bringing gardenias and white roses to lay on the coffin. Judith looked around for Philip. She had been so occupied during the day that she had lost sight of him, but she thought he was somewhere about the place. But he was not here, and she hoped her father in his grief had not noticed it. Caleb had, for he whispered a query to her. She could only shake her head and say she did not know.

  The rector came and stood by the coffin. He began to read.

  “I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth on me, though he were dead, yet shall he live, and he that liveth and believeth on me shall never die.”

  The slaves carried the coffin out and put it on a cart. Judith got into the wagon with the others, and they followed the coffin down the long uneven trail to the yard of the little log chapel. The sun was setting, throwing long thin shadows across the grave as the slaves lowered the coffin and the rector flung in the first handful of earth. Mark stood by the grave, his head lowered, so still that Judith and Caleb did not dare speak to him, even when the coffin was covered. The darkness rushed up. It was very quiet.

  There was a sharp noise in the silence, the sound of a cart creaking over the shaky road. They turned and tried to see, for there were not many people out after dark. The wagon came straight into the churchyard with noisy irreverence, but not until it was almost upon them did Judith see that Philip was driving, with his boy Josh by him on the seat. She dropped Caleb’s arm and ran to him, but Philip hardly noticed her; he was busy helping Josh unload something from the back of the wagon. They set it on the ground, and Philip went up to Mark.

  “Here it is, sir,” said Philip.

  Mark started. He alone of them all had paid little attention to Philip’s arrival.

  “What?” he asked after an instant, as though only just realizing that he had been spoken to.

  “A stone, sir,” Philip said.

  With an exclamation Mark dropped to his knees and felt of the dark lump on the ground. The rector’s servant was holding a lantern. Judith took it from him. She had not seen a stone since she came to Louisiana. But this was a stone, unevenly rectangular, and cut into its side were crude letters that in spite of their irregularity could be read.

  “Catherine, wife of Mark Sheramy. Died August 21, 1774.”

  She flung her arms around Philip and began to sob. The tears that had refused to come yesterday and today poured out of her, bringing a curiously tender relief, because Philip had not forsaken them, but had somehow managed to bring the single material consolation that could have eased her father’s sorrow.

  It was days before he would confess to Judith where he had got the stone and then only on her promise that she would never tell her father. He had stolen it, he said. The French and Spanish ships that came to New Orleans to buy raw materials brought very little merchandise with them, for there were not many families who could afford to buy manufactured goods from Europe, so the larger ships filled their holds with rocks for ballast on the outgoing trip. The rocks they discarded on the w
harfs of New Orleans, not realizing their value in a country made of mud, and the city government took possession and used them for cobbling the marshy streets.

  Only a day or two ago Philip had heard that a rich planter near Baton Rouge had ordered for a great price a few of these French stones to pave a walk from his gate to his house, and the stone-laden boat was docked at Dalroy. So Philip went down to find the boat, adroitly made the boatmen drunk and helped himself to a stone. Judith, who still believed thievery a deadly sin, could not help forgiving him.

  Philip took her back to Ardeith the first week in September. Mark came out to the wagon to tell her goodbye. Philip had told him she was with child, and Mark said he was sorry he had not known it before her mother died.

  “I should have thought of that before I asked you to come here and do so much,” he added.

  “It was all right,” Judith answered, though all she could think of was that now at last he knew what she had been going through this summer and understood why she had not done as much for them as she might have done. “I’m sorry to be leaving, sir. There won’t be anybody to do for you.”

  “Philip says he’ll send back that black woman of his,” said Mark. “Don’t you worry about us. We’ll manage fine.”

  He put his arm around her and gave her awkward little pats on the shoulder. Judith remembered that her father had had a great deal of sorrow in his life. There had been four children older than herself and Caleb, who had died of smallpox the year before Caleb was born. And now her mother was dead too, and she who might have stood by while he had to work so hard in this forest hadn’t brought him anything but more concern.

  She said, “Father, I’m sorry I ran away with Philip without telling you. I won’t ever do anything to worry you again.”

  “You were always a good girl, Judith,” said Mark.

  Philip came out of the house and greeted them both. “Ready?” he asked Judith. He lifted her into the wagon and shook hands with Mark. “I’ll send Tibby back tomorrow. I wouldn’t be taking her off now, but I’ve bought a new girl for Judith and Tibby’ll have to show her around. Good day, sir.”