Deep Summer (25 page)

“I’m glad you think so,” Philip said. “Carl and I had a talk while he was waiting for Rita to come down. He asked permission to pay his addresses.”

Judith smilingly rolled the corner of the curtain like a lamplighter. “Are you sure he hasn’t already done it?”

“I suspected he had. He seemed pretty sure she’d be willing to receive them.”

“I hope you asked about his prospects.”

“Oh yes. He was very frank. Carl’s a younger son, you know, and there’s not a great deal to be divided anyway. He was quite engaging when he told me he’d always had an idea that what they lost by being Tories had been exaggerated in his mother’s recollection. But Rita’s dowry will be enough for them to start on. What are you thinking of?”

“David.”

“And Emily Purcell? I’m sure of it. He asked me this morning if a young gentleman wanted permission to court a young lady with a stepfather, should he ask her stepfather or her oldest brother or her mother. I told him her mother, though he’ll probably have to arrange about the dowry with Harry Purcell. I’m glad. It’s time David was getting married.”

“Oh dear,” sighed Judith. “Two weddings—with everything else!”

Philip laughed. “At least we don’t have time to get rusty,” he said.

Judith felt breathless. They had entered a new century and now wrote dates beginning with eighteen instead of seventeen, and it seemed as though everything had altered with the almanac. Rumors began to rustle that Spain was to return Louisiana to France, and the Creoles were eager to believe it. Though they had been for so many years technically Spanish, they were still largely French in blood and tradition and heard proudly of the conquests of Napoleon. “It will be divine,” said Gervaise when they met on the wharfs one December day. “Louis is always complaining that he never could learn Spanish.”

Philip grinned. “But if we’re returned to France we won’t be able to ignore decrees that don’t suit our convenience by saying we couldn’t read them.”

Gervaise smiled coolly at Philip, and then at Judith, who was riding alongside him. “Monsieur, madame,” she said, “you were brought up in the English colonies. You don’t understand that we would put up with a few annoyances to see the Bourbon lilies in the square.”

“It wouldn’t be the lilies this time, ma’am,” Philip reminded her. “It would be the tricolor. We live in an age of revolutions.”

“Oh dear,” murmured Gervaise. “I reckon I’m getting old. Louis was shocked only this morning when that impudent Emily said to him, ‘But who cares if we turn French? Who cares what we are?’ She is so young she thinks nothing that happened before she was born was of any possible importance.”

Philip was laughing. “Shall we marry David and Emily under crossed flags?”

“My dear Philip, have you no manners? They haven’t signed any betrothal-papers yet.” She laughed back at him. “Now I really must go. I’ve been buying a new house-boy for two weeks and I’ve got to haggle some more about the price. I’ve got him down to a hundred pounds of cotton, but I won’t give more than ninety and the trader won’t believe me.”

“Shall we see you at dinner tomorrow?” Judith asked as Gervaise beckoned her maid.

“Certainly.” She kissed her hand. “Que le bon Dieu vous bénisse!”

Philip and Judith rode off to the stalls where traders were displaying silks and muslins. Rita had demanded a trousseau fit for a princess. Her betrothal to Carl Heriot was to be formally announced the next day at a dinner-party, and Judith was too busy to be much concerned about pending political changes.

The next morning, however, when she was on her way out to the kitchen to supervise the stuffing of the turkeys, she heard David say something about the supposed transfer to France and asked him what he thought about it. David reined his horse, for he was riding into town.

“I don’t think anything about it,” he said. “If they’re going to hand us about without asking our opinion they’ve got no right to expect us to stand up and cheer every time they do it.”

He laughed and rode off, and Judith laughed too, thinking his nonchalance was typical of what most of them felt. She shivered, and reminded herself there must be a fire in every room of the house before the guests arrived.

When they did begin to come, she was so occupied with greeting them and admiring Rita, who curtseyed and received congratulations with only the proper shade of girlish fluttering, that she paid very little attention to what anybody said. But when she finally paused by the punch-table to catch her breath over a glass she sensed an eager shrillness of talk that was hardly to be accounted for by Rita’s approaching bridal. “What’s all the excitement?” she asked Louis Valcour.

He paused with his wineglass halfway to his lips, astonished. “My dear Mrs. Larne, haven’t you heard?”

“Heard what?”

“A boat arrived this noon with the news. The transfer to France was only a formality. Louisiana has been sold to the United States of America.”

“Good heavens!” said Judith, and nearly spilt her punch. “Do you mean we’re Americans now?”

Gervaise approached and held out her hand. “What do you suppose we’ll be next? Dutch?”

“With yet another language to learn?” objected David, who had come up with Emily very slim and adoring at his elbow. “At least the Americans speak English.”

Judith sighed. “Seriously, how long do you suppose this will last?”

“What? The American dominance?” asked Louis. “Not very long, if our history’s any criterion.”

“Sold,” said David with a shrug. “Not even ceded.”

Rita approached them with Carl. Carl was saying, “Just wait till my mother hears of this!”

“How much were we worth?” Judith asked.

“Fifteen million dollars,” said Louis Valcour.

“And how much is that?”

“Madame,” he returned, “I haven’t the remotest idea. But it sounds like a stupendous sum.”

“Where’s Christopher?” Rita demanded. “He always understands about money. Cicero,” she said to one of the servants, “go find Mr. Christopher and bring him here at once. Tell him it’s a matter of business. That,” she added twinkling to the others, “always makes him run.”

“At any rate,” murmured Judith, “it’s something to live in a country worth fifteen million dollars.”

When Christopher appeared, Rita asked, “Who is the president of the United States, and how much is fifteen million dollars?”

“His name is Thomas Jefferson,” said Christopher promptly, “and fifteen million dollars is four hundred and thirty-three tons of silver.”

“Holy angels,” murmured Gervaise. “How under heaven do you know so much?”

“The boat brought copies of the Congressional debates,” Christopher responded smiling. “The Congressmen raised a big row about it. They said Louisiana couldn’t possibly be worth so much. No country on earth could. One pious old speechmaker from New England said he would advocate that the older Anglo-Saxon states secede and make their own government rather than be overwhelmed by foreigners and heathens from the Mississippi valley.”

“It’s all fantastic,” murmured Judith, and Rita said, “I’m still puzzled.”

“Look,” said Christopher. He took a coin out of his pocket. “This is a picayune. It’s worth approximately half an American dime. Their monetary system is very simple—ten dimes to the dollar. That’s all.”

“Two picayunes to a dime, ten dimes to a dollar, fifteen million dollars—Oh Lord,” said Rita, “I can’t count that far. I don’t blame them for not wanting to pay it.”

“Carl!” said a sharp voice, and Carl Heriot turned to see his mother approaching them. “What’s this nonsense about Louisiana’s having been sold to the Americans?”

Carl smothered a chuckle. He was a merry-faced young man with a freckled nose and a lock of hair that no amount of brushing would keep from standing straight up on the crown of his head. “It’s true, ma’am,” he answered. “We were just talking about it.”

“And after all I’ve been through!” said Mrs. Heriot. “We might just as well have stayed in Pennsylvania.”

Judith linked her arm in that of Rita’s prospective mother-in-law. “It probably won’t make much difference. Just some new parades. I don’t think you’ll mind it.”

But after the guests had gone that evening, and she was changing into a simpler gown for supper, she asked Philip if he thought there was anybody in Louisiana who really liked the idea of being American. “There are the Spanish,” she said, “who would rather be Spanish; there are the French who’d rather be French; and there are lots of people like the Heriots—”

“And people like ourselves,” said Philip, “who are so used to being nothing at all that we don’t care. However, Chris says it will be good for trade on the river. The Americans are supposed to be very enterprising.”

“Carl wants to be married immediately,” said Judith irrelevantly, “but Rita wants to put it off till April so she can wear real orange blossoms.”

“Tell her,” said Philip, “April will do very well, because Emily is trying to induce David to wait till June so she can carry calla lilies. Let’s go to supper.”

Rita had her wish about the orange blossoms, and she was married in the parlor of the Ardeith manor under an arch of white roses. One of the newly opened residence streets ran across the Heriot property, and Carl built her a house there, not large but invitingly gracious, set in a broad garden. Rita said, “It can be a really superb estate when we get it all planted,” which meant when the timber and firewood business improved sufficiently for her to afford a landscape artist. Judith was glad Carl and Rita had such confidence in their future; building a little house on a vast piece of ground was gratifyingly indicative of the spirit that seemed to animate everybody of their generation.

Two months after Rita’s wedding came David’s. He and Emily spent their honeymoon in New Orleans, and one day in July he brought her home.

Judith put bowls of roses in their chamber and big dishes of gardenias on the tables in Emily’s sitting-room. How quiet the house was, she thought as she arranged the flowers. The weeks of David’s honeymoon had been the first time she and Philip had been alone together since they lived in the log cabin. When she thought of how different Emily’s homecoming would be from hers it gave her a curious, inexplicable feeling that was somehow pride and somehow sadness.

She looked out to make sure everything was ready that Emily might receive the welcome due a bride. They were all in front, the house-folk and field-slaves and overseers, for it was a holiday on the plantation. How many of them there were—three or four hundred Negroes and ten overseers with their families, waiting before the big house to pay respects to the young lord and lady who would one day rule them all.

Judith caught sight of a carriage approaching on the road and went hurriedly to the upper gallery and down the stairs. On the gallery below was Philip, with Caleb Sheramy and Roger and Roger’s wife Martha, and Rita and her husband, and Christopher with Audrey. “They are coming,” Judith said to Philip.

He went to the steps and pulled the rope of the great plantation bell. The bell rang so rarely that it had a sound of oracular authority. It was there for great occasions or dire emergencies, and when it rang it meant that every soul on the plantation must drop his tools where he stood and come to the big house.

The bell clanged, and Martha covered her ears. “What a noise!” she exclaimed. “Like the crack of doom.”

The slaves, who had been lounging on the grass, scrambled to their feet. The family on the porch stood up. The band of musicians in the parlor began to play softly. Judith went to the steps and waited opposite Philip.

The carriage turned into the avenue and stopped. The coachman, grand in black coat and high hat, grinned at the fieldhands from haughty distance. The footman sprang down and opened the door. David got out, sweeping his hat toward the slaves as they began to cheer. Emily put her hand into his and followed.

For an instant she stood there, looking with a faint, half-abashed little smile at the slaves and the big house, as though hardly sure all this could be for her. She was slim and apple-breasted, in a sheer blue gown that fell straight and narrow to her feet, girdled high with a chain of rosebuds on a velvet ribbon. Below her little puffed sleeves her arms were covered with long gloves of white lace. The brim of her hat was drawn close to her cheeks on each side by wide blue ribbons that tied under her chin. She regarded them all with wide dark eyes, pleased and yet very shy, and her hand still held David’s as though but for him she would have run away. David was looking at Emily with such proud adoration that he hardly seemed aware of the others except as audience for what he had brought home. “Aren’t they sweet?” Philip said suddenly to Judith.

“He loves her very much,” said Judith softly.

Behind her she heard Carl Heriot murmur to Rita, “She’s scared to death.”

“Don’t be silly,” Rita retorted. “So was I. And I’m not usually bashful.” The house-girls to whom had been given the honor tossed flowers for Emily to walk on. The others began to exclaim, “Evenin’, young miss! Evenin’, young massa!”

Emily smiled and looked up at David. He tucked her hand under his arm, and as they began to walk toward the house other Negroes behind the curtseying house-folk shouted “Marriage gif’!”

Emily began to laugh. David dropped her arm and felt in his pockets. Emily cupped her hands, and when he had filled them with coins she flung her bride’s largesse to the slaves. They cheered and scrambled. The footman brought a bag of coins from the carriage and David held it open so Emily could dip in her hands for more.

The slaves tumbled down and got up, shouting, “Happy days foh de missis! Happy days and plenty chirren!” Judith laughed softly as David and Emily made their slow progress to the house. When they reached the steps Philip went down and took Emily’s hands in his and kissed her. “Welcome to Ardeith, daughter.”

Emily said, “Thank you, father.”

She turned to Judith. Judith put her arms around her. “We wish you every happiness, my dear.”

“And for you,” said Emily.

Judith took up the keys hanging from her girdle and detached two of them from the chain. “Your rooms, Emily.”