Deep Summer

by Gwen Bristow

  The Sunday she was churched Judith went to Lynhaven to stay with Gervaise until the moss house at Ardeith was ready. She was reluctant to go, for the cabin was not so bad now that the cracks had been plastered. But since the night David was born Philip for the first time seemed to find the place intolerable. He detested the cracks and the ants and having to sleep and cook in one room, and often said he didn’t see how she endured it at all. So though she hated the idea of leaving him she yielded, and climbed with Gervaise into the beautiful carriage Walter Purcell had just received from New Orleans. Gervaise was but recently up from her own confinement.

  Angelique rode behind in a cart with the nurse Philip had brought from the quarters for David. Judith whispered to Gervaise that at first it had shocked her to see her little pink baby nursing at the breast of a black woman, in spite of Philip’s assurances that women who had slaves never troubled to nurse their own children. Gervaise chuckled softly and whispered back that she too had had a problem about her children—both of them had been baptized here at St. Margaret’s chapel, for though she was Catholic, George the Third permitted no Catholic churches in English Louisiana, but she had rebaptized them herself in private, just to be sure. After this exchange of confidences they laughed intimately and felt like good friends.

  Philip came to Lynhaven every Saturday and stayed till Sunday evening. Though she missed him between times, Judith enjoyed being there. Gervaise was an impeccable hostess and housekeeper, though she was quite unable to do any work herself and marveled at Judith’s ability to cook and sew fine seams. Judith found it delightful to lie in bed every morning until Angelique brought her coffee, and to spend the day riding or gossiping or being fitted for new gowns according to fashion dolls from Paris. On his weekly visits Philip told her she was changing. She could feel it, vaguely; it was as though the rhythms of her body were adapting themselves to the indolent rhythm of the river by which she lived. And the working of her mind too—it was so easy here to be casual.

  But she would never, thought Judith, learn to be as casual as Gervaise; never learn to regard life with detachment as though it were only an amusing spectacle. Sometimes she envied Gervaise and sometimes pitied her for this. It was a very protective attitude, but it shielded her from ecstasy as well as pain. In spite of her success at making her home-life pleasant, Judith could not help wondering if Gervaise really loved any one as she herself loved Philip. Certainly not her husband, though she liked him very well and they never quarreled.

  She told Judith about her marriage in a matter-of-fact way. It was evident that she regarded Philip as a charming scamp and Judith’s elopement a piece of puzzling recklessness. When Gervaise was fourteen Walter Purcell had come to New Orleans to buy slaves from her father, an importer of blacks from Sainte Domingue. Her father was a hard-headed Creole burdened with several daughters whose need for dowries was keeping him in debt. Gervaise was pretty, and the young American from up the river with his royal grant in his pocket was potentially rich. Moreover, Monsieur Durand was happy to discover that Americans were not as insistent about dowries as Creoles, an inducement sufficient to let him overlook Mr. Purcell’s British heresy in the matter of religion. Walter Purcell wanted a wife, and women of good breeding were scarce in the rude settlements of West Florida. So Gervaise was offered almost empty-handed and thus accepted, and each of the two gentlemen considered that he had driven a good bargain. Gervaise was then informed that she had been happily disposed of. She did not complain, for Walter Purcell seemed to her a personable young man, though his barbarous language made acquaintance difficult; to tell the truth, she considered herself fortunate. An epidemic aboard one of her father’s ships had carried off half a cargo of good Negroes and she had been wondering where her dowry was to come from. If her suitor was willing to accept her with but a handful of sous to her name Gervaise decided he must be smitten indeed with her charms.

  Oh yes, Gervaise was happy enough. Walter was fond of her and treated her like a pet kitten, and as Gervaise never manifested any desire to control her own destiny things went smoothly at Lynhaven. But when Philip came on his weekly visits Judith compared the flaming love between them to the carefully nurtured pleasantness of the Purcells and knew she would not have exchanged a minute of her life with Gervaise, not even the cabin and the bugs.

  Philip arranged to buy part of Walter Purcell’s uncleared land, for Walter had built docks on his riverfront property and was more concerned with wharf development than planting. Gervaise remarked that she couldn’t see what Philip wanted with more forest when it was going to take him years to clear what he had, but Judith understood; her vision of the future, like his, included a realm of indigo far out-reaching the three thousand acres he had from the king. Philip sold his first crop at a profit, and gave Judith money for shopping. She and Gervaise rode down to the wharfs, with Angelique and Gervaise’s maid following them, for she had found that here ladies did not venture out of doors unattended. They boarded the boats from New Orleans, and Judith bought muslins and shoes, and a French rattle for David made of thin wood painted with animals. She got blue calico and plaid tignons for Angelique, partly to show gratitude for her tenderness the night David was born and partly because Angelique was so pretty it was a joy to dress her up. Angelique was so grateful Judith was surprised, and exclaimed impulsively:

  “But Angelique, I’d like to get you something really nice. Tell me what you want.”

  Angelique said, “I got mighty little want, young miss.” She was silent a moment, and added in a low voice, “No white lady been good to me like you.”

  Judith watched her thoughtfully. Angelique was embroidering a dress for David. Her golden hands moved deftly over the muslin. Judith wondered what her life had been like before they brought her up the river to be sold.

  “Weren’t they good to you, Angelique, at Mr. Peyroux’s house?” she asked.

  Angelique did not lift her eyes. “Dey was arright. We get plenty to eat and not too much work. But dey don’t make talk to us like you, young miss.”

  “Maybe,” ventured Judith, “you never had a chance to show them how good you could be. I’d really like to give you something, Angelique, just to prove I haven’t forgotten.”

  Angelique looked up, hesitated, and dropped her eyes again.

  “I don’t need something bought,” she said. “But I could make wish—”

  “What?”

  “Dat you not ever sell me away from you.”

  Judith sprang up. “Why Angelique! Did you think I ever would?”

  Angelique shrugged fatalistically. “Sais pas,” she said.

  “But I wouldn’t, Angelique!” Judith put her arms around her. “I don’t know what I did before I had you. You’re my very best friend. Not for a thousand pounds. Not if the king and queen came from London to buy you. Not ever, ever, ever.”

  Angelique’s black eyes were bright with tears as she raised them again. “You say for true, Miss Judith?”

  Judith nodded vehemently.

  “You are good lady,” said Angelique.

  Judith sat down on the floor and rested her arms on Angelique’s lap. “Listen. I want you to promise me something.”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Don’t ever tell anybody about the night I was delivered. About the rain coming in or the ants or Mr. Philip’s leaving me alone.”

  Angelique smiled. “I don’t tell, young miss.”

  Their eyes met in comprehension.

  Gervaise came in, and told Judith Philip was outside. Judith ran out, for it was not Saturday and she wondered if something was wrong. But Philip was evidently in high spirits, and he looked more elegant than ever in a blue coat with a cascade of pleated linen falling from the stock around his neck. Judith adored the courtly way he bent to kiss Gervaise’s hand and murmured, “You grow more beautiful every day, madam.”

  He put his hands on Judith’s waist
and lifted her to sit on his crossed arms like a baby, while he asked her about David. Then he told her he had come to take her home. The moss house at Ardeith was done, yes, and furnished too. “Not a castle,” said Philip, his blue eyes crinkling with a teasing pride, “but fit to live in.”

  Judith hugged him in delight. “Let me down. I do want to see it so!”

  Philip spoke to Gervaise as he set Judith on her feet. “Where’s Walter?”

  “Indoors,” said Gervaise. “Why?”

  “I have great news for him. A boat came down this morning with some English despatches. They say the seaboard colonies are rebelling against the king.”

  Judith caught her breath. “But how dreadful!”

  “What are they quarreling about?” asked Gervaise, more for politeness’ sake than because she wanted to know, for the seaboard colonies were as remote from her reckoning as England itself.

  “Oh, trade and taxes, and they want to send representatives to Parliament.”

  “There was a lot of talk about the taxes before I left Connecticut,” said Judith, who like Philip saw the Atlantic coastline as a vivid reality. “In Boston they threw a whole cargo of tea overboard. Father said that was a good gesture—”

  “And so it was,” agreed Philip. “But a rebellion against the king’s majesty—that’s mighty drastic.”

  “Are they fighting?” Judith asked.

  “Yes, there’ve been several clashes between colonial troops and the royal garrisons.” He chuckled. “It almost makes me wish I was back home.”

  “Why Philip! You wouldn’t bear arms against the king! What about the oath you swore when you got your grant in Louisiana?”

  “I wouldn’t keep my promises if he didn’t keep his, honey. A good hearty rebellion might teach them a lesson in London. The colonials aren’t claiming to be anything but subjects of the king even now—nobody has asked for independence.”

  “Independence? I think that’s ridiculous. I was born English and I hope I’ll die English.” Judith stopped and glanced at Gervaise, afraid she had been tactless since Gervaise had not had the good fortune to be born a subject of George the Third. But Gervaise was laughing.

  “Chère,” she said, “I have changed my country three times already and I am but eighteen years old. New Orleans was French when I was born, then King Louis gave us to Spain and they put up new flags in the Place d’Armes and after that I married and came up here to live, so now I am English, and what I shall be before I die I don’t know, but I know this—”

  “What, Gervaise?” Philip asked when she paused. He was laughing too.

  “That in Louisiana, Mr. Philip Larne, you are asking a great deal when you ask to die in the same country you were born in. Is that treason?”

  “It’s food for philosophy, ma’am.”

  “And now I will send you coffee.” She went into the house.

  Philip smiled down at Judith. “Are you glad you’re finally coming home?”

  She nodded. “I’ve missed you so terribly.”

  “I’ve missed you too, honey.” He grinned mischievously. “Your father and brother are going to meet us at Ardeith. Maybe now they’ll be persuaded I didn’t utterly ruin your life by taking you away from them.”

  Judith rubbed her cheek against his satin sleeve. “I don’t care what they think. Let’s go in and tell Angelique to pack my things.”

  Judith was bubbling with eagerness. But she had not expected such a house as he took her to that day.

  She saw it behind the oaks as the carriage shook over the Ardeith trail. Even before she got close to it she realized triumphantly that her house was bigger and grander than the Purcells’. It was shining, bright pink behind its white gallery, and she saw that it had three entrances instead of one, for it had three halls lengthwise and one crosswise and two rooms front and back between the arms of the crosses, making sixteen rooms in all, not counting the slave-quarters built sideways at the back. Judith stepped over the threshold of the main entrance, followed by the nurse carrying her baby, and after her came her father and Caleb, and after them the Purcells. She gasped, unprepared for such splendor of space and pink walls and cunningly devised crosscurrents of air. Through the open doors she could see slave-made furniture with turned legs and cane bottoms. For a moment she stood speechless, a sob of joy rising within her as she thought of the cabin that had stood here last year, and she turned and looked at her father’s astonished face and the envying admiration of Gervaise, and Philip proud as a king showing off his realm. Her voice choked as she exclaimed :

  “Oh Philip, Philip darling, I never expected real glass in the windows!”

  Philip tucked an arm around her as he turned to the others. “Come see the rest of it.”

  He showed them the master bedroom, where there stood a bed so big four people could have slept on it as comfortably as two. Across the hall was the nursery, with a cot for the nurse and a cradle made of woven canes. “And look,” said Philip, leading them back to the bedroom. Over the bed hung a cord that ran across the ceiling under a series of loops, and through the wall to a bell hanging in Angelique’s room. “So you can call her for coffee in the morning without getting up,” he said.

  Judith glanced at her father, who was dumb before such luxury. “There’s another bell in the parlor and another in the dining-room,” said Philip, “to save you running about for the servants.”

  He led them to the dining-room, where there was a table big enough for twenty or thirty diners, with a fan of turkey feathers hanging over it from the ceiling. Outdoors was the kitchen-house, with a fireplace twelve feet wide and four cranes for pots and kettles.

  Judith couldn’t say anything. She wanted to cry. Her father took her hands gravely.

  “You must pray the Lord to save you from pride, daughter,” he said, “living in such opulence as this.”

  Judith was hurting all over with too much happiness. She could see herself mistress of this house, summoning her slaves with bells and queening it at that great table. That she could have come from the flatboat via the log cabin to this was too much to be borne. She snatched her baby out of the nurse’s arms and ran to the master bedroom and dropped on her knees by the bed. David was so soft and sweet in her arms; Philip had promised that her child would be lord of a kingdom, but she hadn’t been able to imagine anything like this. She tried without success to smother the sobs in her throat, and began to pray in broken little whispers.

  “Please, God, help me to be good. Make me good enough to deserve everything—the big kitchen and slave-bells and glass in the windows. Make David a good boy and kind to poor people who haven’t got a palace like this to live in.”

  Then she saw, crawling over the cypress floor as though they had as much right here as she did, a thin wavy line of ants. She shuddered and sprang up, and a grasshopper leaped out of a corner and watched her. She added another prayer.

  “And please, Lord, help me not to call Louisiana a bug-hole where Philip can hear me.”

  Before she had been in her new house a month Judith agreed with the proverb that the mistress of a plantation was the biggest slave on it.

  She had to supervise the spinning, weaving and sewing, plan a flower-garden in front, and give dinners that were veritable banquets. Philip loved to entertain and by this time the circle of his friends had grown to include most of the important planters and business men on the Dalroy bluff. Judith had nine house-servants including Angelique, but they were never finished with what had to be done. Besides, the new ones spoke nothing but gumbo French and though she had picked up some French from Gervaise she was thankful to have Angelique as interpreter. But for Angelique, Judith wondered how she would ever have run her house. Angelique knew everything; how to dry bay leaves in the shade to make the powdered filé that seasoned okra gumbo, how to extract oil from pine to take out the sting of mosquito bites, and how to pile
Judith’s hair over a frame to make the castle-like structures fashionable these days. Angelique showed her where to put piles of arsenic on the galleries to lessen the plague of grasshoppers attracted by the indigo around the house. It was Angelique too who advised that the beds be taken apart twice a year and the cracks painted with quicksilver beaten up with the white of egg.

  “What’s that for?” Judith inquired.

  “Bedbugs,” said Angelique succinctly.

  “Oh my God,” said Judith. She wondered impatiently why decent people should try to live at all in Louisiana, which looked like such a paradise and wasn’t really a paradise for anything but bugs of one sort or another. But she painted the beds with frantic conscientiousness after that, and made the slaves in the quarters paint theirs so often that Philip said she was going to pauperize him with so much buying of quicksilver. The stuff was expensive, didn’t she know that—for it had to be imported from Europe, and since the American war started imports had doubled and tripled in price. To which Judith retorted tartly that if he’d stop spending so much money on French wines he’d have more to spend on keeping the house clean—did he want to wake up some morning and find vermin in David’s cradle? Philip asked if she wanted to serve nothing but domestic orange wine at her dinners, and nice people didn’t have bedbugs anyway, and Judith said that was because nice people took pains to keep them out, and Philip exclaimed that she was getting a little bit insane on the subject of bugs.

  Judith, who was thoroughly angry by this time, snapped at him that if he had ever spent a night enduring not only childbirth but the added frightfulness of being eaten by ants and cockroaches he might be a little bit insane too. Philip went out and banged the door. She looked after him with a certain indignant satisfaction. That was a weapon she could always use against him. At that instant she was glad she had it.

  But in the fall, when she found she was going to have another child, she remembered her first delivery with such horror that it was hard to make any pretense of bravery about facing another. She thought Philip was quite unsympathetic to be so frankly glad of it when she told him.