Deep Summer

by Gwen Bristow

  He sprang into the wagon and clucked at the mules. Judith glanced up at him as they started. Philip was so different from the men of her family. How wonderful it must be to have a temperament like his. Philip was sincerely sorry when her mother died, but now that it was over it was over—he seemed blithely incapable of concerning himself with any demands but those of the day he was living in. Judith caught at the seat on both sides of her to keep from being jolted out. “Don’t let them go so fast!” she exclaimed.

  “I’m sorry, honey.” He pulled back on the reins and smiled down at her. “Now then, we won’t bump so. It’s going to be good to have you back,” he added. “Every time I came over I missed you more when I went home.”

  She smiled at him, wondering what had happened to the cabin while she was away. Probably the ants had taken possession entirely. It had been hard enough to keep them out of her father’s kitchen, though it was built so tight.

  How hot it still was, though it was already September. The trees in Connecticut would be turning red and gold before long, and the mornings would have a frosty nip. The men were gathering the harvest and the women spinning wool and knitting warm stockings against the winter—wool and heavy stockings! The thought made her legs get crusty with goose-bumps.

  “With this good weather,” said Philip, “we ought to get in a lot of indigo.”

  “Is this good weather for indigo?” Judith asked.

  “Oh yes. We’ll put in a little cotton too, next spring. Most planters won’t put in cotton. They say it costs as much as they get for it to have the slaves pick out the seeds. But we’ll set the children to that. It’s easy work.”

  “I—suppose so,” said Judith. She held tight to the seat. With this jolting her bones would be thrown out of place and her baby shaken to death. No wonder Mr. Purcell made Gervaise stay at home when she was carrying a child. Philip took one hand from the reins and steadied her.

  “Did you hear me tell your father I’d bought you a new girl?”

  She nodded. “That was good of you. Then I won’t have to do the work myself?”

  “I wouldn’t let you. You’re white about the eyes now from working too hard. She’s a nice girl from New Orleans. Her master was a man named Peyroux, and when he died they sent some of his Negroes up the river to settle the estate. Her name is Angelique.”

  Judith glanced back to where Tibby sat on the floor of the wagon. She had hated to think of doing without Tibby.

  “Angelique,” she said. “It’s a pretty name. Is she a French Negro?”

  “Oh yes. You’ll have to teach her English.”

  The wagon creaked over a fallen log. Judith bounced and caught at Philip to keep from falling. He was telling her how planters brewed indigo in vats to get the dye. She wished he’d stop talking about his wretched indigo and pay some attention to her. Couldn’t he understand she was aching all over, and dreading to be left alone with a servant girl who couldn’t speak English, and scared about her baby? There was nobody to help her solve her problems but Philip and he was too merrily self-assured to know a problem when he saw one.

  They drew up at the cabin and he lifted her out of the wagon. Tibby gathered up the bundle of clothes and followed.

  “Now you can get a rest,” said Philip.

  The cabin looked shakier than ever. It had started to lean to one side. The weeds were so thick around the door Judith had to hold up her skirts to walk. She went in and Philip after her, and then Judith caught her breath with comforting surprise.

  Inside, the cabin was as tidy as such a shack could possibly be, with the rough board floor scrubbed clean and the cooking-pots set in order by the fireplace. Philip’s clothes hung neatly on pegs. The boxes were set in order against the wall and the sheets were smooth on the bed. On the table was a dish holding a bunch of scarlet flowers.

  “Oh—it’s nice,” Judith exclaimed.

  Philip smiled. “Angelique did it.”

  The new slave-girl came forward from the corner by the fireplace and dropped a curtsey. She said something in French and Philip answered. Judith looked at her with curiosity.

  Angelique was straight and slim, with coffee-colored skin and eyes like black velvet. She wore a gown of blue calico and a white apron. Her head was wrapped in a gold and scarlet tignon tied in a bow over her forehead, and on each of her cheeks a black curl bobbed as she curtseyed.

  She hurried to untie Judith’s sunbonnet and kerchief and when Judith sat down Angelique knelt and took off her shoes. She brought a basin of water to wash the streaks of perspiration off Judith’s face. Judith smiled up at Philip.

  “I like her.”

  “I thought you would. It’s hard to get her sort up here in the wilds.” He bent and kissed Judith. “Now you tell her the names of things, will you? I have to go out to the clearing.”

  Judith kissed her hand to him. Oh, he was good to her, really. You could hardly expect a man like Philip who hardly knew what physical discomfort was to understand how a girl felt when she was four months with child and had been nearly shaken to pieces in a wagon. But Angelique was a woman. She could understand, if only she could be talked to.

  Tibby, who had been busy at the fireplace, set a bowl of okra and rice on the table.

  “Now you get yo’sef a good meal o’ vittles, honey lamb,” said Tibby belligerently. “Don’t you pay no mind to dat air gal. She cain’t eb’m make talk.”

  Angelique opened a box and took out a big palm-leaf cut to make a fan, and began to wave it, brushing the flies away from the okra-bowl and making a wind in Judith’s hair. Tibby hurried to bring a gourd of water.

  “Tibby,” said Judith, “I’m sorry you have to go back to Silverwood. If you were going to be here you could help me teach Angelique to talk like us.”

  “Yassum. But dem bright-skin gals, dey ain’t no count.”

  Judith lifted her eyes seriously. “Why not, Tibby?”

  “Causin’ if her mammy’d been right she wouldna been bright.”

  Judith thrust the spoon into the bowl.

  “Tibby!”

  “Yassum,” said Tibby hastily. She brushed off her apron. “’Scusin’ de respeck I owe you, young miss.”

  Angelique was listening with amusement. Evidently she was too well acquainted with the dislike of black slaves for bright ones to need any language to comprehend it. Now and then she flashed a little secret smile at Judith and Judith smiled back.

  “Bright-skin niggers,” said Tibby contemptuously. “All time tryin’ to be white folks.”

  Judith laughed and told Tibby to take a bowl of okra out to Mr. Philip. Relieved of Tibby’s resentful presence, she ran about touching objects in the cabin, teaching Angelique their English names. Angelique learned quickly and they laughed together over her mispronunciations. Angelique didn’t seem like a slave. She was just another girl who wanted to be friends. She was astonishingly pretty too—prettier than Judith had thought any colored girl could be. Judith put her hands to her own face thoughtfully and wondered if Philip still thought her pretty. The only looking-glass in the cabin was a little square one Philip used for shaving.

  That night she asked him if he would get her a big mirror when he went to town.

  “The first one I can find on the wharfs,” he promised, and he drew her to him and kissed her.

  Her head lay back on his shoulder so that she was looking up. Between two of the logs that roofed the cabin she saw a star.

  “Philip, the roof is warping,” she exclaimed. “Next time it rains we’ll get wet.”

  “I’ll have the men mend it,” he said, glancing up. “It leaked during that rain last week and I meant to have them put on a patch. I’m glad you reminded me.”

  Judith pulled back from him. Every joint in her body was aching from her ride, and his casual way of telling her the hole had been there a week cracked open her resolve not t
o complain.

  “A fine husband you are!” she cried. “Why didn’t you mend it before you brought me back from father’s?”

  “But honey, it’s not raining now!” he exclaimed in astonishment. “I’ll have it fixed. I told you I forgot about it.”

  He tried to put his arms around her again, but she caught the bedpost.

  “You let me alone! You say you love me and you’re going to make me a great lady and you put me in a hovel not fit for a pig. Father told me I’d be miserable. You and your grand vaporings! I never pretended to be elegant but before I married you I could always get out of the rain.”

  “But my precious child,” Philip protested, “it’s not raining. What on earth are you shouting about?”

  “How did you know it wouldn’t be raining tonight?” Her voice broke in her throat. She began to sob. “I’ve done the best I could. I’ve smothered and choked in this horrible weather and I’ve fished bugs out of the gumbo before I could eat it and I nursed my mother till she died and I’ve never told you how scared I was because I don’t know anything about having a baby and there’s nobody to tell me, but I can’t stand not having a roof over my head!”

  She was sobbing so violently that her last words were like screams. As she flung them out Philip picked her up like a child and laid her on the bed. He held her in his arms and leaned over her as she sobbed into the mattress.

  “Judith,” she heard him say.

  “You stop trying to talk to me. You get me into all this trouble and all you can think about is indigo.”

  “My poor dear girl.” He was holding her tight. “I’m sorry about the roof. But you aren’t going to make yourself feel any better by behaving like this.”

  Judith caught a short breath. After a silence Philip spoke again.

  “Judith, I do love you, and you’ve got to believe it. I reckon this is what a man gets when he loves a woman too much to be reasonable and wait for her. I didn’t know I’d get you with child so soon and I did think this cabin would hold together a year—please, sweetheart, say you love me in spite of it! You must love me or you wouldn’t have come with me that night.”

  She was crying quietly, without any sobs. “Oh Philip, I do love you! But I haven’t had any peace since I saw you. It’s all been heat and mosquitoes and rats and being sick and having my ankles swell up—”

  “I know it, dearest. Isn’t there anything I can do to prove I’m sorry?”

  “Yes. Get some plaster and stop up the holes in this cabin.”

  He laughed under his breath. “All right. The next time I go to town. Honey, I did try to tell you how trifling I was.”

  “You aren’t trifling.” Judith reached up and put her arms around his neck. “Hold me tight, like that. Do you really love me as much as you said you did?”

  “I didn’t know you were listening.”

  “I wasn’t. But I heard you. Philip, I love you so much. I don’t care what happens to me as long as I’ve got you.”

  “You aren’t scared any more about the baby?”

  “I’m not scared a bit. I hope I have a dozen and that they all look like you.”

  She held him close and he kissed her, and that night she was not scared.

  Chapter Four

  But the next day, and the next and the next, she was scared, and though she did not tell Philip, she grew more frightened as the time passed.

  There was nobody she could ask, and even if there had been she did not know what questions to put. Gervaise sent a servant over one day with some lengths of delicate muslin, and a funny little misspelt note, for Gervaise spoke English better than she wrote it. Another day a lady came by and gave Judith some flannel for the baby’s petticoats. She spoke with a French accent. “I am Sylvie Durham. My husband is American, a builder of flatboats. When your trouble is over you will come to see us, yes?”

  Judith said yes, thank you. Everybody in Dalroy seemed to know Philip and to know his wife was with child. But she could not question these strange women. And in the meantime she could feel her child moving within her, and that was very curious, but she did not know what the rest would be like. Philip said when it happened it would be February. Maybe Angelique knew. But Angelique’s English was still not good enough for her to converse much.

  Still, it was comforting to have Angelique. For Angelique had been a lady’s maid, and she could comb Judith’s hair into a dozen exciting coiffures, and sew with stitches so tiny as to be almost invisible. She helped Judith make up the muslin and flannel into garments for the baby. Judith taught her how to make the letters of the alphabet as she herself had been taught to make them in the dame-school when she was a little girl. They had some merry times as the winter fogs drew in and Judith was more inclined to sit by the cabin fire than to go outdoors. She was more glad every day that Philip had bought Angelique to be with her through these worrisome months.

  But her terror of what lay ahead increased as the time passed. One misty day in December while Angelique was washing clothes in the space behind the cabin, Judith went out for a walk. As she neared the tents where the Negroes lived she began to hear groans as of some one in dreadful pain. She stopped where she was, aghast, and a moment later the groans turned into terrible cries like those of an animal being ripped to pieces by the jaws of a trap. Judith rushed toward the fires where the women were cooking. They seemed to be working placidly, too deaf to hear that some one was being tormented to death in the tents, and she ran up breathless.

  “What’s happening in there?” she cried, her words coming in panting little gasps.

  The woman nearest lifted her head. “Ma’am?”

  “Can’t you hear me?” Judith demanded furiously. “What’s happening?”

  The woman glanced back, shrugged and shook her head. “Oh, don’t you bodder, miss. She jes’ gettin’ a baby.”

  Judith put her hands over her ears and stumbled away from the screams, back toward the cabin. When she reached it she flung herself across the bed, her hands still over her ears. But she could hear the screams, faint but unmistakable, and she was listening in a panic when Angelique came in.

  Angelique hurried over to her, speaking anxiously in a jumble of French and English. She sat on the bed and gathered Judith into her arms, still talking, though it was some time before Judith could grasp what she said. But Angelique said it over and over, and at last Judith made it out.

  “I get baby one time, miss. I be here to help when it comes your time.”

  Judith raised her head. Angelique said again, “I help you, miss.”

  “Oh,” said Judith. “You had a baby?”

  Angelique nodded.

  “What happened to your baby, Angelique?”

  “It die, miss. We not let your baby die.”

  “And you’ll take care of me?”

  Angelique smiled and nodded. Judith put her arms around Angelique and hid her face. Angelique held her tight, stroking her hair tenderly, and began to sing to her as though she were singing a child to sleep.

  Yé halé li la cyprier

  So bras yé ’tassé par derrier,

  Ye ’tasse so la main divant. …

  Judith could not understand the words, and neither could Philip when he came in and Angelique was still singing. He told her it was the French of the Congo slaves spun into a folksong. But Angelique’s voice was so low and rich and her caresses so tender that Judith did not need any words to make her feel less alone.

  In spite of the big fire the cabin was cold these days. Judith had thought it would not be cold in Louisiana. But the winter had come with a strange damp chill and such clouds of fog that nobody could get warm. Philip had set his Negroes to mending the roof, but it was still not secure against the heavy winter rains, and the wet came through the chinks between the logs. Philip promised to get some more plaster when he went to town, but he forgot it again,
for the indigo was being planted and his precious cleared acres crowded the cabin out of his mind.

  In January the fogs cleared and the days were cold and bright, and Judith began to feel better. Then, all of a sudden, it was February.

  Nobody had told her to expect February, except as the name of a month. But she woke up one morning to a day so blue and gold and glorious that she leaped out of bed and leaned her arms on the window-sill, wishing her body was not so heavy because she felt like dancing. The sun was blazing on the oaks and magnolias, brilliant as summer though the air was still cold. The days went by and the glory was still there. Even though Judith felt sometimes so heavy her legs were inadequate to carry her from one side of the cabin to the other, her spirit was on wings. What a strange splendid country, in which February was the peak of beauty. The name sounded like snow and ice, but here the earth was heaving and putting forth green shoots, and the live-oaks were turning up the tips of their branches with eager new leaves that pushed the old ones to the ground, and there were long dark buds on the magnolias. The moss that had been gray on the trees was a shadowy green, and there was life everywhere, life new and stirring and magnificent.

  Why hadn’t somebody told her, Judith wondered, last summer when she had been nearly prostrate with the heat, that February would be like this? Oh, she was sorry for the folk she had left behind in New England, who could not open their shutters every morning to such miracles of gold and sapphire. There would be summer again, and the sky would be like a cup of brass turned down by a pitiless God, but this year she would not mind because she would know the world was turning and soon there would be another February. Maybe those poor souls who first came to New England had felt the same way about the long white winter, because there had been nobody to tell them that in June there would be daisies and the queen’s lace over the fields. What a marvel that first June must have been to them, just as this first February was to her. There should be some way to know beforehand that June in Connecticut was worth the winter, and February in Louisiana was worth the summer and the fogs.