Deep Summer (22 page)

Everybody came, of course; they said Gervaise was going to have her heart broken by this shameless man who was so eager for her dowry that he had been willing to become a step-grandfather at the age of thirty-one, and they wanted to see what he looked like. They met a lean, dark Frenchman with a whimsical face and an air of private amusement, who danced beautifully and made no secret of his accomplishments on the clavichord. Judith and Philip liked him at once. They agreed that Gervaise was too shrewd to blunder calamitously with her own life, and they were delighted at her sudden blooming. With them Gervaise was smilingly frank. “It’s absurd,” she said, “but this should have happened to me twenty years ago, and it would be quite silly of me to pretend that it did.”

Mr. Valcour was equally candid about his doings. He had come up from New Orleans with a scant sum of money, all that had been left him by a gambling parent, with the intention of building a warehouse on the Purcell wharfs for the accommodation of traders. After Walter Purcell’s death he had called at Lynhaven to complete business arrangements with the heirs, and thus he had met Mr. Purcell’s widow, who presented a singularly griefless face under her weeds. He had fallen in love.

“Love!” said Mrs. St. Clair contemptuously, when she discussed the behavior of the Valcours with Judith a week later.

“He adores her,” said Judith.

But Mrs. St. Clair, whose daughter was betrothed to Harry Purcell, snorted, “She’s robbed her own children for the sake of a fortune-hunter!”

Judith observed that if the young Purcells couldn’t live on their income from the wharfs they must be extravagant indeed. She admired the competence with which Louis Valcour was building warehouses with Gervaise’s dowry. He prospered exceedingly, and Gervaise gave every evidence of enjoying her lot. She was the first woman on the bluff to appear in gowns made in the startling new fashion of low-cut bodices and sashes tied about the ribs, with skirts straight as bedgowns showing off to advantage every line of a figure more elegant than any woman of thirty-seven had any business displaying. It was not long before the ladies began to whisper that it was perfectly obvious Gervaise wasn’t wearing any stays. Judith asked her, and Gervaise retorted, “Certainly I’m not. I’m going to have a baby. Tell them that and see how they like it.”

Judith chuckled. Gervaise did not know it, but now that she had a Creole husband and spoke French most of the time, her English was re-acquiring the accent she had worked so hard to be rid of.

Chapter Seventeen

D
avid came back from New Orleans eloquent on the possibilities of sugar-cane. He waited impatiently for the crop to mature. Philip was pleased with his enthusiasm, though he privately owned to Judith a certain apprehension lest it wane before the cane was cut.

Judith resented his saying that. The next day she went into the field and reminded David this was his first independent effort and it was important that he prove his earnestness. “I don’t believe your father quite trusts you,” she warned him.

“Father’s mad with me,” said David dryly.

“What do you mean?”

“Oh Lord, didn’t he tell you?” David stroked a ribbony leaf of cane. “He thinks I made too many bills in New Orleans.”

“David!” she exclaimed reproachfully. “I thought you promised not to make any.”

“Well, I did—but how was I to know the money he gave me wasn’t going to be enough? I had to buy a lot of presents for Mademoiselle Durand—would you want me to go courting a New Orleans lady like poor white trash?”

Judith sighed. David had talked a good deal about the charms of Gervaise’s niece. She hoped he wasn’t falling in love already. “How much attention did you give Clélie Durand?” she asked.

“Oh mother, don’t be silly! She’s a nice girl and I liked her, that’s all. But father’s got no business scolding me for spending a little more than I meant to.”

“No,” she agreed smiling, “I suppose he hasn’t. It was your first holiday in a long time. Do you want me to remind him of that?”

“Will you?” David exclaimed with such unaffected relief that she promised.

When she got back to the house she asked Philip if David had been extravagant in New Orleans.

“Look,” said Philip. He put a sheaf of bills on the table before her, and added:

“When he went to buy from the boats he had to do it on credit, for he got rid of most of his cash betting on the cock-fights.”

“Cock-fights!” she said laughing. “Is that all? If he never did anything worse than that you ought to thank the Lord.”

“But I’m afraid,” Philip said seriously, “he doesn’t know the value of money, and I told him so. He promised to be more careful, but I don’t know how long it will last.”

Judith looked thoughtfully at the totals. “Still, I don’t see why you’re so harsh with him. You can afford this.”

“It’s not that. He’s old enough to learn to keep his promises.”

She gave him an oblique glance. “You hadn’t learned very much at twenty.”

“That’s why I know it’s important, honey. I was harsh with him, and I’m not sorry.”

“He certainly bought clothes enough,” she observed, turning over the accounts. “Linen, broadcloth, boots, cravats—but what in the name of heaven do you suppose he wanted with a hundred yards of silk-striped muslin?”

Philip tilted a shoulder and did not answer.

“It’s a very intimate sort of present for a lady,” Judith murmured. “I’m sure Clélie Durand’s father wouldn’t let her accept dress-goods from a casual admirer! Philip—”

She stopped with a sense of relief. It wasn’t commendable of David to be buying expensive presents for girls who didn’t care about the propriety of what they accepted from young gentlemen. But at least it indicated that he had no serious regard for Clélie Durand. She went on:

“Have you been scolding him about that hundred yards of muslin? Funny that a man as sophisticated as you would expect David to be an angel at his age.”

There was a pause. “I thought you’d be shocked,” said Philip. “That’s why I hadn’t told you.”

“I’m not shocked at all.” Judith gathered up the papers in one hand and tucked her other hand into Philip’s. “Oh darling, please pay these and stop scolding him! You’re foolish to risk impairing your own credit just to annoy David.”

Philip yielded, but he said again that David had to learn responsibility. Judith answered that David was proving his good sense by his attention to the cane. David had set up a contrivance he called a crusher, where he fed his first crop stalk by stalk between two wheels turned by mules. Judith came into the field often, and sat on a pile of fresh-cut canes watching the juice drop down a gutter into a kettle that stood under a flimsy palm-roofed shed. She hoped for David’s sake the mess would granulate, though she was doubtful.

But one day just after Christmas David came into the house carrying a big wooden bowl in his arms. He burst into the dining-room where his parents were writing up accounts of the household and plantation, shouting, “Look! Mother, father—look!”

He set the bowl between them and thrust spoons into their hands. “Taste it,” he ordered.

Philip and Judith scowled at the stuff before them. It looked like a pile of damp dirty sand. David’s face was radiant with boyish triumph. Bravely they plunged in their spoons.

As Judith’s tongue twisted over the grains she saw Philip’s face clear with astonishment.

“David!” she cried. “It’s good!”

“It
is
good!” said Philip.

David hugged them both till their heads bumped. “I told you it would sugar! Now do you believe me?” He sprang up and sat on the table, crumpling the pages on which Judith was writing her sewing-records, and grabbing the spoon from Judith’s hand he shoved into his own mouth a pyramid of brown sugar. “It tastes grand,” he said with his mouth full. “Father, can I have a big field next year?”

Philip nodded. “You certainly can. This is a crop.” His eyes twinkled proudly. “You’re a born planter, David.”

“Yes sir,” returned his son demurely.

David and Judith exchanged a look of secret triumph.

To David the extension of the canefields was more of an adventure than a task. He pushed back the tobacco as lustily as Philip had pushed back the forest. In moments of private candor Philip and Judith admitted to each other that they wished Christopher had been more like him. “Not, of course,” said Philip, “that we’ve any reason to be really disappointed in Christopher.”

“No, no,” said Judith with a twinge of conscience. “Certainly not.”

But they were disappointed. Christopher was dignified and unassuming, a most trustworthy young man, Mr. Durham said. But his parents found it hard to establish any sort of intimacy with him. He was not particularly affectionate, and rarely talked about his plans or asked for advice. Philip had a good deal of respect for Christopher’s unwavering confidence in what he wanted to do, and sometimes when David’s ebullience amounted to a fault Philip observed thankfully that Christopher would never have a problem or be one, but he could not help a certain dismayed surprise when Christopher did not get tired of accounting.

On the contrary, as soon as he crossed the birthday that made him a man instead of a child, Christopher signed another contract giving him a junior partnership in the business of supplying flatboats to the river-trade, and he kept his nose in an ink-horn. The next year he quietly announced that he was getting married to Alan Durham’s daughter Audrey.

Judith owned to Philip that she was uncertain as to whether their uncommunicative son was in love with Audrey or Audrey’s share of the boat business. They could not understand Christopher’s calm. But neither could they find any objection to Audrey, except that she seemed incapable of enthusiasm. “She’ll probably make the most irreproachable housekeeper,” said Judith, “and there’ll never be a muddy footprint on her gallery.”

“That will suit Chris perfectly,” said Philip.

Christopher built his bride a compact house of cypress wood with myrtle trees in front, and they settled down correctly and peacefully. Audrey proved as austere as Christopher; her conduct was dutiful and her dinners were faultless and dull. When she gave birth to a daughter the year after her marriage she accepted motherhood with tranquil competence. Judith embroidered a set of dresses for the baby and pouted in private.

“There ought at least to be a fanfare of trumpets about my first grandchild,” she exclaimed to Philip. “Audrey behaves as if having children was an everyday affair.”

“My darling,” said Philip laughing, “it is.” He added, more seriously, “Sometimes I can’t help wishing, though, that they weren’t quite so independent. Building a house and providing for one’s first child is pretty expensive and Christopher’s income isn’t large. But when I offered to help him through he said he didn’t like the idea of taking money from his father when he didn’t actually need it.”

Judith did not reply. If Philip was trying to make an excuse for rebuking her tolerance toward David’s spending she wasn’t going to give him any opening to do so.

But before long it became impossible to ignore David’s extravagance. His yearly allowance was half the sugar profits, and with sugar at two picayunes a pound this was more than his friends generally had. When David got harassed with gambling debts Philip refused to make an increase. David appealed to Judith. It was midsummer. The cane would not ripen before November, and he was ashamed to wait so long to pay his debts of honor. His distress was so evident and his promises so fervid that Judith was touched and wrote an order on the indigo crop. David was almost incoherent with gratitude. “You’re wonderful!” he exclaimed. “I’ll pay this back the minute I get the sugar made.”

He kissed her rapturously and scampered off, calling his boy to saddle his horse. When he got to town he found he had overestimated his indebtedness and with the surplus she had given him he bought her some blue French morocco for party slippers.

Several days later Philip came into the parlor with the cancelled order. He thrust it into her hand.

“What did you buy with this?” he demanded.

Judith was astonished. He rarely questioned her expenditures. “What makes you want to know?”

Philip’s face was grim. “Did you think it would go through without being countersigned? Haven’t I told you not to pay David’s debts?”

She shrugged and sighed. “Philip, he was half frantic!”

“If he’d stayed frantic awhile it would have been good for him.” He came close to her and took her arm. “If you give David one more indigo order after I’ve told him he can’t have it, that’s the last order you sign on this plantation.”

“Philip!” She jerked from his grasp. “Do you mean after all these years you want me to ask permission every time I buy a yard of ribbon?”

“I mean exactly that,” he returned inexorably. “Stop letting David hide behind your skirts. He’s got to learn to take care of his property.”

“I don’t know what’s come over you!” Judith cried. “You were the most indulgent father on earth till all of a sudden you began glaring at David like a judge. He’s exactly what you were.”

“That’s another thing. You’re not to keep telling him that. At least when I was his age I had to take the consequences of what I did. I didn’t have a doting mother to pat me on the head like a mistreated baby.”

Judith jingled the keys between her hands. She sat down.

Philip’s expression softened. “Now do you promise to behave yourself?” he asked.

“I can’t bear seeing him troubled!” she protested with a regretful smile. “He’s been so hilarious since he got those debts off his mind. I wish you had seen him this afternoon.”

“Where is he?”

“Gone to see a girl. He’s got a high hat and a pair of breeches he can hardly sit down in, but he says the newest thing is to have them tight.”

After a pause Philip sat down by her and put his hand on her knee. “Judith, it’s not your loving David so much that I mind, but your letting it get in the way of your good sense. I wish you wouldn’t encourage his philandering.”

She laughed. “Can I help it if every girl in Dalroy adores him?”

Philip’s eyes met hers. “Can’t you help trying to keep him fickle?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” said Philip slowly, “that as long as David is surrounded by a lot of women and doesn’t single out any one of them you’re supreme in his affections, and you’re trying so hard to put off the day when you won’t matter a picayune to him compared to some empty-headed slip of a girl. Do you really want to make him a mother-ridden old bachelor, Judith?”

Judith was silent awhile, trying to tell herself what Philip said wasn’t true. At last she said in a low voice, “Is it—is it very wrong for me to dread losing him?”

“Yes,” said Philip.

Judith put both her hands in his. “I—I don’t think I ever thought of it quite that way,” she said.

Philip smiled and kissed her, and left her there.

David did manage to curtail his fondness for cards that autumn, and he bet only moderately on the cock-fights that had been imported from New Orleans. Judith told Philip he was settling down and Philip, looking over the tall ribbons of the cane, was inclined to agree with her. The Negroes were cutting David’s fourth crop and those who were not in the fields were busy enlarging the sugar-mill. There were three sets of crushers now, with stout wooden wheels and long yokes for the mules; and instead of one set of kettles there were six rows of them protected by the thatch of palm-leaves over their wooden shelter. He had the slaves construct another shed nearby for storage of stalks that had been through the mill; for the crushed cane, though it looked so limp and empty, was valuable. When it had dried it became what the Creole planters called bagasse, and bagasse was fuel for the sugar-sheds. No wood but the richest kindling could make so hot a fire as bagasse.

“He’s a born planter,” Philip said again to Judith, one night in early December, just before they went to sleep.

“I told you he’d be all right,” she murmured happily.

“He can hardly bear to be away from the sugar-sheds at grinding time,” Philip told her. “Right after supper he went back to watch the fires.”

Judith raised up on her elbow, and saw far off in the canefields a faint glow that she might have thought was only a reflection of the moon if she had not known the sugar-sheds were there. The fires burned all day and night in grinding time and were never left unguarded. David usually kept watch in the evening and was relieved by the Negroes after midnight. Judith snuggled down under the covers again with a secret thrill. Her men—how nobly they had brought the wilderness under their domain! The fields of Ardeith now stretched so far that it was only on very clear days she could see the border of forest from her bedroom window, like a dark fuzz edging the plantation. And the forest too belonged to Ardeith, miles and miles of it, and it was there they cut their firewood, and there was Christopher’s timber. Rita’s dowry had been increased to three hundred acres. She remembered with a pang that the increase included part of what would have been little Philip’s portion had he lived. But the children who had been spared to her, she reminded herself, were a noble group in whom any mother would take pride. She went to sleep with a feeling of triumphant peace.