Deep Summer (29 page)

Emily pressed backward, her hands spread out against the wall and her whole body quivering with fear.

“
Benny!
”

The syllables slid into an inarticulate cry as she rushed out of the room and up the back stairs to the nursery.

Judith pulled the bellcord and heard the bell jangle in the silence of the house-quarters. With a furious effort she made herself stop trembling and forced her thoughts into clarity. They were miles from any other residence. A slave uprising at Ardeith could happen and nobody need know it until she and Emily and Emily’s children were found murdered when the men returned in the morning. They had never seriously considered any such possibility. The Negroes at Ardeith were well trained, well treated and to all appearances happy. But one malcontent like Benny could stir up rebellion in a hundred others who would never of their own accord have dreamed of such a thing. Evidently he had done so. They were a mob, crazy and undisciplined, yelling for the chance to plunder the big house while the masters were away.

She was about to ring again when Christine ran in, her eyes heavy with sleep. “What’s the trouble, Miss Judith? I went to sleep waitin’ to get you ready for bed.”

“What do you know about a disturbance among our people?” Judith demanded.

Christine’s eyes popped. “Ma’am?”

Judith drew aside the curtain.

“Oh my lawsy, those dirty field-niggers!” Christine burst into tears and fell on her knees, her hands clasped in supplication. “Miss Judith, I swear before God us house-folk haven’t done a thing! We don’t get mixed up with them—you know we don’t—I swear to Lord God Almighty, may he turn my bones to water—”

“All right, get up and quit slobbering.” Judith spoke almost fiercely. “If you mean what you say wake the others in the house-quarters and have them get horses. And if you don’t want to get killed be quick about it. You know the fieldhands think the house-folk live as mighty as the master and they’d kill you as soon as us. Hurry.” She wheeled to face Emily, who came in leading Sebastian by the hand, followed by mammy in her bedgown with the little girl. “Emily, give those children to mammy. She’ll take care of them as well as you can. Do as I tell you!” she ordered as Emily hugged the children defensively to her. “And here’s the key to the gun-room. Get a gun for yourself and bring one to me.”

She went out to the gallery. The rebellious slaves were rushing upon the house, nearly here now. Judith pulled the rope of the plantation bell. It clanged commandingly. That would rouse the overseers, and any Negroes who had spurned Benny’s yarns of glory.

Emily brought her the guns. “Did you lock the gun-room?” asked Judith.

“Of course.”

“Good. If they got in there we’d be massacred. There can’t be very many of them armed now. Here. You’ve shot birds and squirrels. Keep your hand steady. Don’t shoot to kill unless you have to.”

Emily gave her children a last terrified embrace and mounted a horse. The house-servants were rushing out in various stages of undress. Judith hurried back indoors to get guns for Josh and Cicero, and a few others of the oldest and most faithful. She sprang upon a horse and they rode to meet the fieldhands.

Their leader had evidently tried to make the Negroes advance quietly upon the house, but at sight of the house-folk armed and mounted the last vestige of their discipline fled and they rushed ahead wildly. There were not more than a hundred of them, riding work-mules and carrying sticks and torches made of lightwood. Only a few had guns, for except those belonging to the overseers no firearms were permitted in the fields, but Judith saw with horror that many of them brandished machetes, the murderous short-handled cane-knives, with blades wide at the top and narrow toward the bottom and saw-teeth on both edges pointing down toward the handle. Machetes were distributed in the morning by the overseers and locked up in the sugar-house at night; she wondered whose carelessness had permitted them to break into a sugar-house, then she remembered with a blaze of fury that Benny had been a sugar-overseer with machetes under his care. She saw him on a horse at the head of the yelling mob. A torch showed her his face and she knew him because he looked like Philip.

She heard a shot and then another, and saw half-dressed overseers riding upon the Negroes, and colored women running up from everywhere, shrieking.

“Drop those machetes!” yelled a man’s voice, and the overseers’ guns cracked. Several of the Negroes fell, dropping their knives, but she hardly saw them. She was conscious only that Benny was riding toward her, very close, and he had a machete tied around his neck and a gun in his hand.

“Get that white nigger!” one of the overseers shouted. “He’s heading them!”

Judith raised her gun. Her hand was quite steady. She took aim and fired.

He reeled back for an instant, recovered and struck at his horse. Judith fired again. He fell to the ground. “Look out, ole miss!” somebody cried behind her, but she was hardly aware of danger. She forced her horse into the seething black mob, catching the bridle in the bend of her elbow as she reloaded her gun, and as she passed the spot where Benny lay huddled she leaned over and fired into his body again.

A sharp fire blazed in her knee where it was crooked over the saddle and she saw the flash of a lightwood torch along the teeth of a machete. With the butt of her gun she knocked it aside before it could fall again. For an instant she sat rigid, hardly aware of the terrified neighings and jerkings of the horse under her, for it was as though the pain in her knee had pierced what had been simply a blank determination and she could not think of anything except what she had just done.

Her mind felt curiously numb, in odd contrast to the live agony in her body. The shots and yells around her seemed very far away. She felt a hand over hers on the bridle and in the darkness heard somebody say:

“Ole miss done got hurt—she’s liable to faint dis minute.”

It was old Josh who had come down the river with Philip. She recognized his voice and knew she was being snatched off the horse. That was the last she knew that night.

The next thing she got was the sense that the whole lower half of her was afire with pain and there was cold water on her face. She made an involuntary little moaning noise in her throat and heard David say, “Don’t try to move, mother. You’ll be all right.”

She looked around. It was early morning and she was in her own room. There were big spots of blood on the bed-linens. David was there, and Philip, and Emily leaned over the bed stroking Judith’s forehead with cloths dipped in cold water. Judith asked, “Are the children safe?”

“Yes dear,” said Philip gently. He put his hand on hers. “But don’t try to talk yet.”

He was sitting on the edge of the bed. Judith turned her head suddenly away from him and put her arm over her eyes, remembering that she had killed his son and put a last vindictive shot into Benny’s body when he was dying on the ground. She heard herself make another sound like a groan. Emily’s voice said:

“She must be in the most dreadful agony, David! Do you think she could stand a sleeping-draught?”

“Not yet, I’m afraid,” said David. He knelt by the bed. “Mother, please try to stand it. You’ve been so brave and we’re all so proud of you!”

“Oh, can’t you be quiet?” Judith cried.

For awhile after that everything was confused again. She saw them that day through pain and blazes of fever, but the next day her head was clearer. Emily was nursing her with an almost reverent gratitude, and David would hardly leave her. They told her over and over that it was her courage that had saved the house and their children, when she held back the rebellious slaves till the overseers and loyal Negroes could get there, and when she killed Benny his followers were thrown into panic. Her other children and her friends poured in with congratulations long before she was well enough to see them. The story of her bravery was being talked of everywhere; how it had grown in the telling she was not sure, but she found herself a heroine. Oh no, there had been no serious damage, they said—a few of the Negroes had been killed and several overseers hurt, and they had ruined some of the cotton by riding over it, but the leaders were in the guardhouse and the rest were penitent. It was all Benny’s doing, he with his handsome tales had got them crazy for a while. But she had killed Benny, though she had reached an age when a lady should have no more to do than see to her house and be waited on by her grandchildren; she had ridden at him and killed him as valiantly as a soldier.

Judith listened bitterly. When she could bear it no longer and begged them to stop talking and let her alone, they said she was splendidly modest.

But she lay awake and thought for hours when Emily, knitting by her bed, thought she was asleep but would not leave her lest she awake and want something. She tried to analyze what had happened to her that night to wipe her clean of all the wisdom and self-control she thought she had learned, and tried to think whether or not it had been absolutely necessary to kill Benny. Yes, probably if she had not done so somebody else would have. But she asked herself over and over as she lay there, if she had killed him to save David’s children or because she hated him, and she did not know. To the end of her life she did not know. She felt a weight of shame heavier than any burden of grief or anger she had ever known.

For the first few days it was so heavy that she could not bring herself to ask where Philip was. He had been there when she first regained consciousness, but since then she had not seen him. Finally she could bear it no longer and she asked David why he had not come to her.

“Father’s a little bit ill,” David said, and she fancied he hesitated a fraction of a second before he answered. “He caught cold at the palace the other night—we never should have let him come with us, at his age.”

“Did you get rid of the governor?” Judith asked, for the sake of something to say.

“Oh yes. He’s going back to Spain. We’ll be admitted to the Union as part of the state of Louisiana.” He bent over her. “Don’t worry about father.”

“Very well,” said Judith. But she was thinking, a cold. A little cold. Enough to keep him away from me. Enough to let me understand that he alone of them all knows I haven’t any charity or forgiveness in me.

She had asked them to leave her alone at night. She was free of fever now, and slept more comfortably if she wasn’t being watched over. After the others had gone to bed Judith lay awake. If she could have done so she would have gone to find Philip, but her leg was in splints. She thought of how she and Philip had loved each other for thirty-six years. And now he would not forgive her because he knew that secretly she had not forgiven him.

Oh, he might have been more gentle, she cried silently into the dark. He might have known that sometimes one is as helpless in the grip of passion as in that of a human enemy. Remembered now, that last shot was not needful, but at that minute it was inevitable. Philip might have understood that.

She heard the latch lift at the door, and started indignantly. This everlasting devotion—why need they come creeping upon her in the middle of the night?

“Judith?” said a low voice. It was Philip’s, and yet somehow strange.

She raised up. “Philip? Philip!”

By the flicker of the night-light she saw him latch the door. He was wrapped in a dressing-gown and had a woollen scarf about his throat. Kneeling by the bed he took her into his arms, and for a moment she held him with such thankfulness that she did not notice how his face was burning against her. But at last she exclaimed:

“Philip, you’re ill! You’re on fire with fever!”

“Yes, I know,” he whispered. “Those children keep me so supervised I can’t move, and I had to slip out like a prisoner. I hope I didn’t wake you.”

“No, I wasn’t asleep. But you’re really ill!”

She was sobbing. He felt her tears, and asked, “But honey, didn’t they tell you I was ill? I think I’ve been out of my head. How are you?”

“I’m all right. Nothing but a cracked knee. You shouldn’t be out of bed, Philip. Come lie down here and I’ll cover you up.”

He drew himself up by the bedpost. His movements were unsteady, and he almost fell on the bed by her. Judith painfully edged herself over to give him room. He took her in his arms, but his embrace was weak. She asked:

“Can you go to sleep, dearest?”

“No,” he said, “I want to talk to you. I did leave you alone the first day, before the fever got me quite helpless. I’m sorry. I can’t seem to say it very well. But I’m sorry.”

“Then,” she asked faintly, “you do forgive me for killing him?”

“There was nothing else to do, was there?”

“No—but did they tell you I fired again when he was on the ground dying?”

“Yes, I know that.”

“And you forgive me for that, too?”

“I didn’t at first.” His voice was weak and the words were not very clear. “It’s all right. None of it seems to matter very much.”

She drew his head on her shoulder, telling him not to talk any more. Philip lay by her quietly. Judith wondered if really good people could ever know what it meant, this peace that came with the knowledge that there was one human being who knew your innermost sins and secrecies and loved you in spite of them.

Suddenly she sat up, and her shattered knee responded with a wrench. “Philip!” she cried. “
Philip!
” When he did not answer she felt his hands and face and body; they were not cold, but not as hot as they had been. She called and shook him, but he did not respond. At last she heard David at the door.

“Mother, what is it?” he demanded as he came in. “Is that father? What’s he doing out of his room?”

He called Emily, and knelt by Philip. Judith drew herself away from them with terror that made her stiff and speechless. But when David raised his head and looked at her she found that she was asking:

“Is he—dead, David?”

David nodded, and then suddenly he covered his face with his hands and dropped his head on the counterpane, like a child. Judith watched, too stunned to speak to him or touch him, and at last she sank down and gripped her pillow with both arms and buried her face in it.