Deep Summer

by Gwen Bristow

  Her English improved that first summer as to grammar, though her accent remained as heavy as ever. But it was a piquant English, and she was somewhat of a darling when she talked, with that pout hiding the gap in her teeth. She had acquired the habit of pouting all the time, which made her look as if she were always about to kiss somebody. Men liked it without often guessing its cause, and Judith could not help admiring Dolores for turning into an asset what would have spoilt the looks of a less resourceful girl.

  Dolores was amusing too, after she got over her shyness. She told them about the heel-clicking statesmen who used to dine at her father’s house in Havana, and the dignitaries who escorted her on horseback rides through the parks. Dolores could ride superbly; there wasn’t a horse on the plantation she couldn’t manage. “Odd, when she can ride so well, she should have fallen and knocked her tooth out,” Caleb said.

  “I didn’t know she was on a horse when she fell,” said Judith. “She told me two men got into a fight in the courtyard and frightened her. Strange she should have been riding a horse in the courtyard.”

  “Maybe the patios in Havana are bigger than they are in New Orleans,” Caleb suggested.

  Judith still thought it surprising and said so to Philip one day in August when they were riding over the plantation. Dolores had been four months at Silverwood. Philip, who liked virtually everybody, had accepted her with easy grace, but he tilted his eyebrows when Judith asked him if the courtyards in Havana were so big one could ride horses around them. “I suspect,” said Philip, “that she’s a shameless little liar.”

  “Philip!”

  “My dear Judith, I don’t know how she lost her tooth and I don’t care. It’s not important.”

  “I can’t understand,” said Judith, “why she should be so uncertain about the etiquette of entertaining. But it may just be ignorance of all our customs.”

  Philip gave her a level look. “She’s all right,” he said. “Mind your own business.”

  “She didn’t even know about cups with two saucers,” Judith persisted. “I thought they were in every good china service. But I had to explain to her that when the coffee was poured into the deep saucer to cool the cup was set in the shallow saucer so it wouldn’t make a ring on the tablecloth. Maybe they don’t have double saucer services in Cuba.”

  “Maybe,” said Philip coolly, “you knew all about double saucer services when you came down from Connecticut.”

  “Oh Philip, we never made any pretenses to elegance! We were just ordinary farmers.”

  Philip did not answer directly. He made some remark about his indigo and rode ahead to tell the overseer to put some Congo Negroes in among the Iboes, because the Congoes were amenable and the Iboes were likely to make trouble if there were too many of them in one place.

  “David will have an easy time when he grows up and takes over the plantation,” he said to Judith when he rejoined her. “By that time he can have all American-born Negroes. Africans are hard to control. You never can tell when you’re buying one who used to be a king.”

  She saw that he was not inclined to discuss Dolores further, so she said nothing more about her for some time. But she noticed that Angelique, though she made no comment, had small regard for Caleb’s Creole wife, and one day in the fall when she was getting dressed to go to dinner at Silverwood Judith asked Angelique what she thought of Miss Dolores.

  “She has always been very kind to me,” said Angelique. She was on her knees putting on Judith’s stockings.

  “That’s not an answer.”

  Angelique smoothed the stocking over Judith’s leg. “Well—she talks pretty big. Miss Judith, you should have let me polish these shoe-buckles.”

  “If they’re tarnished it’s too late now. You’ve barely time to do my hair. I want it very high with those silk birds on top. What do you mean by saying she talks big?”

  “I don’t like to be making remarks about white people,” said Angelique, getting up from the floor.

  “You’ve got more sense than most white people and you know it. Comb it over the frame and use lots of pomade so I won’t have to take it down in a hurry. You mean you think she sometimes just tells yarns?”

  Angelique laughed over Judith’s head into the mirror. “Miss Judith, I reckon she talks big because Mr. Caleb likes to hear it. He thinks she’s wonderful.”

  “Yes,” said Judith moodily, “he certainly does.”

  She watched in the mirror as Angelique combed her hair up. Dolores still wore Spanish combs instead of silk figures in her hair. The combs were very becoming to her, particularly when she found a real silk mantilla at the market and draped it over the comb. “You want the birds, Miss Judith?” said Angelique. “Not the battleships?”

  “No, everybody’s wearing battleships these days on account of the American war. I want two birds and a nest between with eggs in it. You know the set.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  When it was finished Judith picked up the hand mirror and turned around. “Nice. Eleven inches?”

  “About,” said Angelique.

  “They say that in Paris the ladies are wearing their coiffures so high they have to kneel down in their carriages so the decorations won’t be knocked off.”

  Angelique laughed as she put away the combs. “I reckon eleven inches is pretty good for the colonies, Miss Judith.”

  Judith still had an uncomfortable feeling about Dolores. But when their carriage arrived at Silverwood and Dolores came scampering across the gallery with more exuberance than dignity she found her apprehensions stilled again. The girl was really attractive—attractive enough to mollify Caleb’s homespun ideas about the need for strict honesty. And to be sure, her fibs were harmless. If she wanted to put on a few extra plumes to impress her husband’s family it wasn’t a major fault.

  Judith watched Gervaise, cool and remote across the table, and wondered if she too thought Dolores did not ring true. When they were leaving for home she got into the Purcell carriage with Gervaise, as Walter and Philip had some business to talk over and were riding together until their roads divided. When the carriage had started Judith asked abruptly,

  “Gervaise, what do you think of my sister-in-law?”

  Gervaise tilted a shoulder under her cloak. “She is very lovely as long as she keeps her mouth shut.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Yes it is.” Gervaise gave an ironic little smile. “I wish she would speak to me in English. Her French is shocking.”

  Judith owned she had a hard time understanding it. But then her own French was not very good.

  “She speaks nigger-French,” said Gervaise briefly. “And such language! I don’t know where she picked up some of the words she uses.”

  Judith reminded her that Caleb sometimes had to stop Dolores from using swear-words in English. “She doesn’t know what they are, Gervaise.”

  Gervaise repeated her little shrug. “I am afraid she thinks we are simple folk up here and makes herself too grand.” She put her hand over Judith’s. “But she is very sweet and don’t you tell my husband I made unkind remarks about her. He thinks she is excessively charming.”

  Judith had observed before now that men liked Dolores more than women did. She decided to make Philip tell her definitely what he thought.

  After she had kissed the children good night she told Philip what Gervaise had said about Dolores’ French. They were together in the dining-room over the wine and biscuits that served them for supper after a company dinner in the afternoon. Philip listened with an odd smile. For a moment he was silent, as he refilled her wineglass and his own, then he said:

  “Judith, why are you so concerned about Dolores?”

  “Oh, because she’s really a dear in her way, Philip, and she strikes me as the sort of person who’d be helpless in a disaster—”

  “What sort
of disaster?”

  “The sort a pair of puritans like my father and Caleb could turn loose if they felt righteously indignant about anything.”

  Philip moved the candlestick aside so he could look more directly at her. “Judith,” he said, “it’s none of my business. But if that girl’s the daughter of a Spanish grandee I’m a watermoccasin.”

  “Philip! Are you sure?”

  “I think I know trash when I see it,” said Philip.

  Judith’s biscuit dropped out of her hand into the plate. Philip’s conviction crystallized everything she had feared.

  “Who is she, then?” she ventured.

  “I haven’t the faintest idea.” After a moment he asked, “Haven’t you ever noticed how she sniffles when she dips snuff?”

  Judith bit her lip. “I’ve noticed various things.”

  “Dolores is clever,” said Philip, “and she’s picking up the ways of mannerly people. But I think she’s made an absolute fool out of your brother.”

  “But Philip,” she exclaimed, “if you’re so sure, why don’t you tell him?”

  “Why should I?”

  “But for heaven’s sake—”

  “For heaven’s sake what, Judith? He’s perfectly happy as long as he doesn’t know it, and she’s doing the best she can. Maybe they decided between them to say she came of great folk so as to make your father more reconciled to a foreign marriage.”

  “Caleb wouldn’t be equal to that,” she objected. “He’s so honest it hardly ever occurs to him that people lie. But he’s dreadfully fond of her.”

  “So he is. That’s why I tell you to leave them alone. Maybe Caleb enjoys deluding himself, maybe he’s not deluded, maybe on the other hand I’m mistaken and she’s genuine. At any rate it’s not my affair and don’t you try to make it yours.”

  Judith pushed back from the table and went over to the window, where she stood a moment looking at a clump of banana trees, pale in the autumn moonlight. “But how could he have been so foolish, Philip?”

  “Oh honey child, it’s so easy to be a fool when one falls in love.” He came up to her and put his arm across her shoulders. “Didn’t everybody say you were a fool when you fell in love with me?”

  “Yes—but that was so different!”

  “Was it? Thanks.” He drew her head back on his shoulder. “Anyway, as long as Caleb and Dolores seem content as they are you’re positively not to make any trouble. Understand?”

  Judith promised not to make trouble, but she could not help feeling that trouble was made and ready to explode. So far Caleb seemed to have no suspicion that Dolores might not be all she professed. He adored her blindly. As for Mark, he rarely mentioned Dolores at all and Judith was never sure what he thought. When Dolores rode proudly over one day in March to tell them she was with child Judith found it hard to seem pleased. She had begun to hope Dolores was barren, since she had been married nearly a year without any expectation of motherhood. This new complication increased Judith’s foreboding.

  The climax came when other concerns had thrust themselves to the front so forcefully that the problem of Dolores became subordinate. Governor Galvez had replaced Governor Unzaga in New Orleans, but though the new governor took pains to keep amicable relations with the Tories of West Florida his own interest in lessening the power of his British rivals prompted him to offer supplies to the rebellious Americans. Gunboats bearing the striped flag of the rebels passed the Dalroy docks more and more frequently on their way to New Orleans. Most of the West Floridians regarded the rebel boats with indignant disdain, and were prevented from molesting them only by fear of having their own passage to New Orleans blocked off, but Philip wanted to know what was going on. He had no quarrel with either the British or Americans, he told Judith, but if he had stayed in Carolina he’d probably be into the rebellion up to his neck by now; besides, having a rebel emissary to dinner now and then provided enlightening conversation. When Mr. Thistlethwaite stopped at Dalroy on his way up the river with a suspicious-looking boat from New Orleans, Philip met him on the wharf and brought him to Ardeith for dinner.

  Mr. Thistlethwaite came from Delaware. He was a big fellow with an ample paunch, a face like a beefsteak and a vocabulary that sent Angelique running out to the gallery to grab the children and send them into the back yard to play.

  The Sheramys had been invited to dinner that same day, and Mark and Caleb were in the parlor. Philip brought them out to the gallery and introduced Mr. Thistlethwaite. “Mrs. Larne will be here in a moment,” Philip told him. “She’s working her flowers.”

  “Love to see a lady among the flowers,” boomed Mr. Thistlethwaite. “Something so sweet and suitable about a lady among flowers.”

  Philip chuckled. So did Caleb.

  “My wife used to be smart with a garden,” Mr. Thistlethwaite told them, his beefy face creasing with a reminiscent grin. “Grew foxgloves. Foxgloves all over the place. Not much chance for gardening these times, with the damn redcoats tearing up the earth. Quite a time we’re having, Mr. Larne, quite a time. All the men who want to fight want to be generals, and can’t nobody make ’em all generals, you understand.”

  Mark Sheramy observed that he had been in the French war, and that the same rivalry had been noticeable then.

  “Yes sir,” foghorned Mr. Thistlethwaite, “always the trouble. Want to be big fellows no matter what it does to the country. Unselfish patriotism rare thing these days. But we right-thinking Americans can keep our men in line. Tell you, sir, day of crowns is passing. All men free and equal—”

  Indoors, Judith heard him as she went into the bedroom to change her dress. “Can’t Philip pick up the most astounding people?” she whispered to Dolores, who had been working in the garden with her.

  “Who is he?” Dolores asked.

  “One of those violent Americans you see sometimes on the wharfs. He’s probably going to drink the house dry. I wonder if he’d like orange wine? It’s awfully hot for whiskey.”

  “Shall I tell them get out the orange wine?” Dolores asked. “I have made dressed.”

  “Will you? Have one of the boys take it to the gallery.”

  As Judith stepped into the hall she saw Dolores pass, followed by a servant with a tray of wineglasses. Dolores was prettier than ever in a gown of buttercup dimity that set off her dark coloring. Nobody would have guessed that she was carrying a child.

  Dolores hesitated a moment in the doorway. Mr. Thistlethwaite was booming, and the other three men, laughing at his yarn, did not see her. But Mr. Thistlethwaite did, and he slapped his knee with hearty recognition.

  “Well, well, bless my soul if it ain’t Dolores! What you doing up here?”

  Dolores recoiled ever so slightly. Judith, who had come out after her, saw Philip and the others get to their feet as Philip said:

  “Permit me—”

  “Don’t need a bit of introduction!” cried Mr. Thistlethwaite. He took a glass off the tray. “Seems like old times, I swear it does, taking a drink with Dolores!”

  “You know each other?” Caleb asked in astonishment.

  Dolores found her voice. She spoke through tight lips. “I was never see this gentleman before in my life.”

  Mr. Thistlethwaite’s beefy jowls got a shade redder. He cleared his throat. “Well—ahem—I guess—”

  “I think you are mistaken, Mr. Thistlethwaite,” Philip said quietly. “The lady you are addressing is Mrs. Caleb Sheramy. And may I present my wife? Mr. Thistlethwaite.”

  “Howdy do, ma’am.” Mr. Thistlethwaite gave an exaggerated bow and a chuckle. “Well now, ain’t that just the funniest thing! Mrs. Sheramy, ma’am, I beg your pardon, and yours too, Mr. Sheramy, but I’ll be damned—begging your pardon, ladies—if this lady don’t look enough like a girl I used to know in New Orleans to be her twin sister. Spittin’ image, I declare. Ain’t that the funniest thing, no
w!”

  He slapped his thigh and laughed. Nobody laughed with him and nobody said anything. “Tell you, her name was Dolores Bondio, and she come up from Cuby to serve drinks at Miss Juanita’s place. Right pretty too, or would have been except she had a tooth out, but you could know her for a month and not see it, her having a funny little way of laughing out one side of her mouth. Mrs. Sheramy, I swear I beg your pardon for thinking it was you.”

  Dolores’ mouth was quivering. Caleb’s face had gone as white as it was possible for the face of a sunburnt planter to be. His father was holding a chair so tight the muscles stood out on the backs of his hands. Philip said:

  “Since you were mistaken, sir, I am sure Mrs. Sheramy accepts your apology. What was that you were telling us about the encounter at Bunker Hill?”

  Dolores had been standing rigid, holding her wineglass tight. As Philip ceased speaking she threw the glass into Mr. Thistlethwaite’s face. “You goddamn bastard!” she cried, and before he could blink the wine out of his eyes she was hurling at him a volley of invective. Philip gripped her wrists with a swift, “Dolores, stop that!” but as he said it Caleb jerked her from him.

  “Let me attend to this,” he said. He hardly seemed to move his lips when he said it. “I’ll take her home. Be good enough to order the horses.”

  Chapter Eight

  Go on,” said Caleb. “What did your father do in Havana?”

  “He worked in a livery stable,” said Dolores sullenly.

  “How long were you in New Orleans?”

  “Three or four years. I disremember exactly.”

  “What did you do in that tavern besides serve drinks?”

  “Oh, shut up!” cried Dolores. She held her hands to her temples. “I never meant to start any goings-on that morning you spoke to me on the levee! Always I tell men silly stories about me and they like it. Then you said you had a plantation up the river—”

  He stood up. His eyes were narrowed. “And you saw I’d be easy to make a fool of, didn’t you?”