Deep Summer (17 page)

Judith was breathless with anger. “If slave-boats are no paradise neither is what I’ve been going through. Get that woman away from here.”

“I won’t. I’m not a barbarian. A girl like Angelique chained to the wall every night, at the mercy of every African savage on board and every filthy boatman, bearing her child in a slave-camp somewhere in the marshes around New Orleans—why don’t you ask me to cut her throat and be done with it?”

Judith twisted her hands together. She sat down and held them still laced tight to her aching forehead.

“Then what are you going to do with her?”

“I’ll keep her here till next year. When she’s well again she can go down with somebody we know who’s making the trip to New Orleans, with instructions that she’s not to be sold at all unless as a lady’s servant in a respectable house. But I’m not going to sell her now.”

“I can’t have that child born at Ardeith,” said Judith desperately. “I can’t stand it, Philip.”

“I’m sorry, Judith,” he said, gently but inexorably.

“Then go to the Spanish council and get permission to set her free.”

“And turn her into a trollop on the docks? There’s nothing else for a free quadroon. I certainly won’t.”

She sprang up. “All right. Keep her here. Tell me I ought to show Christian meekness and put cold presses on her forehead because she doesn’t feel quite well. Keep her here indefinitely because you can’t find a boat luxurious enough for her to ride in. Keep her as your mistress.” Judith took a step backward. “I hope,” she added deliberately, “that you have a perfectly wonderful time and that she bears you a child every year and that they’re much prettier and cleverer than my children, but it’s a shame they’ll be niggers and can’t get into good society with mine.”

Philip walked over to her and slapped her face. He went to the door. As he lifted the latch he said over his shoulder:

“I knew I was going to hit you some day if you didn’t learn to keep a decent tongue in your head. I’m glad I’ve done it.”

Judith stood perfectly still. The door shut behind him. She put up her hand to her stinging cheek. She felt it vaguely, as if it belonged to somebody else, for her whole body was tingling with rage that was shaking and blinding her. She dropped down on her knees by a chair and began to sob. They were long deep sobs that trembled through her and left her at last exhausted but unrelieved, aware of nothing but a wordless hate against everything in the world.

After awhile she got to her feet. Her mouth was dry and her tongue felt too big for it. Her head ached violently. All her mind seemed concentrated under the pain in a sharp point of resolution. She dressed and went out of the house, walking fast through the gardens and into the indigo, toward the field-quarters.

She did not often go alone into the fields. The Negroes turned with curiosity as she approached. An overseer took off his hat and nodded.

“Good morning, ma’am. Can we do something for you?”

“No, thank you,” said Judith. “I’m only walking down to the quarters.”

“Yes ma’am. Hey, you black nigger, can’t you keep a straight row? Quit gaping at the missis!”

Judith glanced at the Negroes, naked but for loin-cloths or pantaloons, their sweaty bodies gleaming in the sun. The light ones were Iboes and the black ones Congoes. In a cabin down at the far end of the quarters there was an old Congo woman who knew voudou. She was too old to work, but so wise was she with charms and medicines that even the proud house-Negroes went to consult her for their ailments. Judith turned away from the indigo and stumbled over the rough ground toward the quarters. The old woman who knew so much might know even a way out of her present desperation. She felt soiled and insulted, and she ran toward the cabin of the Congo woman ready to plead on her knees for escape.

Chapter Twelve

P
hilip did not go in to see her that night, for he was too indignant to want to talk to her again. In the morning he rode out early, glad to be away from the house. But the sun was hot, and in the afternoon he came in again.

Nobody was in front to take his horse. He dismounted and flung the reins over the low branch of a live-oak, annoyed at the inefficiency that became evident as soon as Judith took herself out of the establishment. But when he crossed the front threshold he sensed that something was wrong. The girls were hurrying about in a confused hush, and as he went down the passage he saw Christine running into Judith’s room. As she opened the door mammy came out and went quickly down the hall to the back, where David and Christopher were quarreling. She rushed them outdoors with orders to be quiet and not trouble their mother. Philip had started for Judith’s room in alarm when he saw Angelique coming down the passage toward him. She should not have been here. He had told her to stay out of the house where Judith might see her.

Angelique came to him quickly and stopped him.

“Oh!” she exclaimed breathlessly, “I’m glad you came in. Maybe you should go to her.”

“What’s the trouble?” Philip demanded in fright. “Is she ill, Angelique?”

Angelique nodded. She put the back of her hand to her eyes. “I’m afraid she’s going to die.”

Philip gripped her arms. “Die? Who? Judith? Get out of way, Angelique! Let me in.”

“No. Wait a minute till I tell you.” She held him back from the door. “That vile old Congo woman. You know the one—you bought her because you were buying all her children—she makes charms for those fools back in the fields—Miss Judith should have known better!” Angelique’s voice broke in her throat. She stood with his hands still gripping her, and her fine features distorted with grief. “You didn’t know she was going to have a baby. She got some voudou mess from that woman and tried to get rid of it.”

For days Philip wandered about the house, helpless and tormented. He gave orders that any slave on the plantation who went to the house of the Congo woman for anything whatever was to be given thirty lashes, but except for this angry gesture he could do nothing but watch Judith and send supplications for her recovery to a deity in whom he had never had much belief. By now he dreaded the sight of Angelique almost as Judith had, though he still could not yield to Judith’s tortured pleas that he ship her down the river.

However, he did not think much about Angelique or anything else except whether Judith was going to get well. He did not care if her child came to birth or not, and was neither glad nor sorry when they told him she had not succeeded in putting it out of the way.

Their friends came by in a stream, the women bringing armfuls of roses and calla lilies and well-meant delicacies Judith could not eat. They had heard she was very ill; was there anything they could do? Philip thanked them shortly and said no. He let Gervaise stay awhile, for Judith seemed glad to see her. Gervaise took charge of the house with quiet competence, and gossiped pleasantly of affairs on the bluff, which she always knew before anybody else. She said nothing to indicate that she knew the cause of Judith’s illness, and though he found it impossible to believe that she did not he welcomed her tact.

But Judith, who seemed to be blessed with a constitution that could stand almost any amount of abuse, recovered and Gervaise went home. Judith took over her housekeeping again and set the servants to rolling the woolens with tobacco leaves and putting up mosquito bars, but she showed no inclination to move from the room she had been occupying. At first he did not ask her to, for she talked to him as little as possible and eyed him with a smouldering resentment that showed she had not forgiven him. One morning he came into the dining-room where she was giving elaborate instructions to two of the house-girls about starching the curtains. When the girls had gone he said to her:

“You needn’t do so much, Judith. It’s not necessary, and I don’t want you to get sick again.”

She sat down by the table where her account-books were. “I’d like to get everything done before it gets to be really deep summer. I’m stronger now than I’ll be later on.”

He pulled out a chair and sat down opposite her. “Do you feel well?”

“Oh, as well as I’ve any right to feel. I suppose I’m lucky to be alive.” She ruffled the corners of the pages before her. “If you’re afraid I’m going to try again not to have this child,” she added, “you needn’t be. I won’t be such a fool twice.”

“I wasn’t thinking of that.” Philip propped his chin on his hands and looked squarely across at her. She did not meet his eyes. “But I’d like to talk to you.”

“About what?”

“About how much longer you intend treating me as if I were a not very welcome stranger lodging at Ardeith.”

Judith dipped her pen into the ink. “How soon are you going to send that woman down the river?” she asked.

“Are you still thinking of that?” he exclaimed. “I told you I wasn’t going to send her down.”

“You still mean it?”

“Yes.”

She flung her pen on the table, making a blot that ran down the grain of the wood. “If that child of Angelique’s is born at Ardeith I swear I’ll never speak to you even as much as this.”

“I’ll do anything you ask of me but that,” Philip returned vehemently. “But I won’t put her on a slave-boat now. That’s final.”

Judith held her head between her fists. Philip set his teeth. It was hard not to yield to her. He had tried to make up his mind to do it. He wanted so desperately to prove to Judith that nothing would be too much for him to do to have her back. But he knew the slave-camps better than she did, and in spite of all he had tried to tell her he could not believe she realized what she was asking. He waited.

Judith did not look up. She sat holding her head as if it ached beyond bearing.

“Philip, don’t do this to me!” she exclaimed at last with a sob in her voice. “That child will be nearly white. It will look like you.”

She dropped her head on her arms. Philip saw tears staining the frill below her elbow. He stood up.

“Oh, stop talking, can’t you?” he said curtly, wondering if she could be enduring much more than he was.

Judith picked up the pen and wrote several words on the page before her. Suddenly she threw the pen down again and pushed back her chair. She went over to the window and looked out. Philip was still standing by the table.

“I’d rather lose every acre of the plantation than see you suffer like this, Judith,” he said to her then. “But in fairness to both of us, you’re making it too vital.”

“You think so?” she asked wonderingly.

“Yes I do. You’re breaking up your life, my life, the children’s lives, everything we have, because of a passing incident. It wasn’t fundamentally important until you made it so.”

“No?” Judith fumbled with the latch of the shutter. It rattled loudly in the quiet room. After awhile she went on, her face half turned away from him.

“You still don’t know what you did to me. I’m not sure I can make you know. You’ve been a lie to me all these months since I came home. Oh, I’ve lived over every minute of it, every time you kissed me, every night I’ve gone to sleep in your arms with that sense of peace I’ll never have again, believing there was nothing else in the world so splendid as what you and I had between us—when all the time I was trusting something that wasn’t there. And if that wasn’t true, what else is there in the world I can believe in?” She turned around and faced him. “I’ve built my life on it. And now I’ve found it was just a vapor in my own imagination. Because I trusted you I let you give me another child. I’m walking around with a living, moving lie inside of me. I tried to kill it because I hated it. I couldn’t kill it but I still hate it, and when this child is born I’m still going to hate it because every time I look at it I’ll know it’s part of the lies you told me.”

She stopped.

Philip asked, “Are you quite done?”

“Yes,” said Judith.

Philip turned around and went out.

He did not come back for dinner. Judith waited awhile for him, then ate with the children. She gave David his lesson—he had reached the letter T now, which stood for Tobacco, and he could print the whole word. When he had finished she took her knitting and went to sit by the parlor window where she could watch David and Christopher playing outside. She ached with unhappiness. For awhile a spiritual exhaustion had come over her and she had gone about the house doing what needed to be done because it was easier to follow an established routine than to change it, but hardly thinking at all except to be aware that the glory had gone out of her life. But trying to find words that would make Philip understand what had happened had roused her again to the acute pain of the first days she had known it. She made herself knit. Keeping busy at least prevented her from walking up and down, striking her fists on each other and wondering why she had forsaken the stolid virtue of her father’s house for
the
undisciplined charm of this.

She could hear the voices of the children and the hum of insects drowsing in the sun. It was so quiet that when she heard someone come in by the door behind her she started, and sprang up in indignant surprise when she saw it was Angelique.

Angelique shut the door behind her.

“I’d like to talk to you a few minutes, Miss Judith,” she said.

Judith had sat down again. Her knitting lay in her lap.

“I’d rather not, Angelique,” she answered wearily.

“No, ma’am, I know you wouldn’t, but there’s something I want to say.” Angelique spoke with calm determination. How heavy she had grown in the past weeks. Judith tried not to look at her.

“Go back to the quarters,” she said.

Angelique stood in front of her, her hands linked.

“I will in just a few minutes, Miss Judith. But first I’m going to tell you something, and you can’t punish me for not minding because there’s nothing you can do to me worse than sending me away on a slave-boat, and I’m to go down the river tomorrow.”

“You’re going down the river?” Judith repeated in incredulous relief. So he had understood at last.

Angelique went on speaking in a simple, relentless monotone. “Miss Judith, I never meant this to happen. I didn’t want it to happen at first. But you know how Mr. Philip is—it’s so hard to tell him no to anything—”

Judith wanted to scream. How well she knew it.

“But I wanted to tell you too, Miss Judith, that I was the only one. That’s really true. We used to talk about it, the girls here at Ardeith, how the master never paid any mind to anybody but Miss Judith, and it was surprising to some of us because we’d waited on other married people before. I don’t mean, just that, but everything about you—we all said we’d never seen a pair that got along together like you and Mr. Philip.”

Judith had put her arm along the back of the chair and buried her face in it. Every word she heard was like a reminder of a homeland from which she was an exile. She frantically wished Angelique would stop, but her throat was too choked for her to say so.

“If you’ve ever had that you know what it is. Colored folks have it too sometimes. I had a husband once. His name was Claude. When they broke up the estate we were sold apart. I think he’s on M. Farron’s plantation across the river. I don’t suppose I’ll ever see him again, but I always thought about myself as married to him still. When our baby died he was so good to me. I know you aren’t interested in my troubles, but I wanted to tell you because I know how it is when you’ve got somebody that means that much to you and something breaks it up, and I wanted to ask you please don’t let anything break up you and Mr. Philip.”

Judith could not lift her head nor force words past the pain in her throat. She heard Angelique go out and close the door, but she stayed with her face hidden against the back of the chair, trembling still before Angelique’s assurance.

At length she got up, letting her knitting fall on the floor. She went out of the house and walked down through the indigo fields, past the quarters, and skirted the rice fields toward the levee. She wanted to be alone where she could think, away from the distractions of the house and children. The afternoon sun beat on her as she climbed the levee and looked down at the shining river. Was it true, what Angelique had tried to say, that she could get back what she had lost simply by being willing to take it?

She turned and looked back at the wide, wild kingdom of indigo pressing on the forest. That was Ardeith Plantation, Ardeith of her children and her children’s children. Philip had built the plantation. That was what he would leave them. But she would leave them something more, purity of inheritance. Their pride in their line would be based on their faith in her integrity. Civilization had to be a matriarchy.

Two or three flatboats passed under the levee, going down the river toward the docks. Every day they came down, great ugly argosies that had made their dangerous way from Illinois or Pennsylvania, to unload on the wharfs bales of stuff and new settlers as the Dalroy bluff wrenched itself out of the wilderness.

One of them was a slave-boat. She could see the Negroes sunning themselves on deck. Each one had rings on his ankles and chains between. Several Negroes were poling the boat, and a white overseer walked around among them. He carried a whip. Now and then he struck it idly against the wall of the cabin.

Judith sprang to her feet, catching up her skirts so she could run down the levee. She went as fast as she could past the indigo vats and through the fields where the slaves were walking toward the quarters after their day’s work. The dark tumbled abruptly out of the sky as she went. She could see lights in the windows of her house.

Philip sat on the gallery steps, pulling up blades of grass with his hands. As she approached he glanced up and looked down again without pausing in his restless pulling at the grass. She noticed he had not changed his garments since coming in from the fields.

“There’s a slave-boat docking tonight,” he said. “I gave orders for Angelique to be put on it tomorrow.”