Deep Summer (7 page)

Angelique began to be very busy about the cabin, getting things out of chests and hanging a kettle of water on the crane in the fireplace. She called Josh to bring in some wood. Judith stayed where she was. The pains came curiously, like two hands tearing her apart in the middle, but there were long spaces between when nothing hurt her at all. She wished Philip would get back. She could tell him she really believed their baby was about to be born, and she would like to have the chance before it was born to say she was sorry she had been so foolish about the looking-glass and scolded him like that for forgetting the plaster. Yes, she must be hard to live with. She did try to hold her tongue, but when it got the better of her she could say things that were pretty nasty.

The pain grabbed at her and Judith held the window-sill with both hands. Josh came in and piled up the wood. When he had gone out she began to think maybe she ought to go to bed. Women who had babies had them in bed. She asked Angelique to bring her a bedgown, and Angelique undressed her, stopping to let Judith hold to her shoulders when the pains came. But when Judith tried to climb into bed Angelique held her back.

“No, no,” she said. “No. Walk.”

That was strange. But she walked up and down obediently. Angelique was gentle and sympathetic, and she kept murmuring soft things in French, incomprehensible but comforting.

Judith began to think it really wasn’t so awful to have a baby. The pains were getting rather bad, but they weren’t unbearable.

But as it got dark, Philip did not come back and the pains got worse and worse and worse. They came so close together that she could hardly catch her breath between them, and while they were wrenching at her she couldn’t breathe at all, but only hold on to Angelique and make little tormented gasps in her throat. Angelique was so dear and gentle. But Judith wished for Philip. He should be back by now. She could lean on him as hard as she wanted to, and sometimes Angelique stumbled when Judith caught at her. Besides, it did take a good deal of pain to have a baby and Philip ought to be here to appreciate it. Then maybe he’d forgive her for being so quicktempered.

Angelique said, “You hold de bed, young miss. De fire, he go out for more wood.”

Judith held to the bedpost while Angelique put logs on the fire. The pains came faster and harder. Judith bit on her fingers. She held the bedpost tight and would not scream. Angelique looked up and said, “You good brave lady, young miss.”

It occurred to Judith that this was quite a lot of pain. It was dark outside and it must have been several hours since the first one struck her. A lot of curious things were going on in her body that she hadn’t expected at all, though Angelique didn’t seem surprised. But the baby ought to be getting itself born by now.

“How much longer does this last, Angelique?” she inquired unsteadily.

Angelique looked up from the fire. “Ma’am?”

“I said—” Judith stopped, for the pain had caught her again and she wrapped both arms around the bedpost and found herself clamping her teeth on the wood to stiffen her through it. As it passed she managed to jerk out, “I said—how much longer—does this go on?”

Angelique stopped tending the fire. She stood up slowly. “Pauvre petite,” she said gently and she came over and took Judith in her arms and kissed her forehead. She did not say anything else. But Judith understood that this was not the end. The pain began clawing at her again. By this time it was agony pure and simple and Judith thought if this wasn’t the last she would rather die now than have the baby born at all. But nothing happened. Angelique tried to make her walk again when Judith’s relaxing muscles told her this one was passing, but Judith fell down when she tried to take a step. As Angelique bent to help her up she managed to gasp out:

“Please let me lie down, Angelique! Please!”

Angelique let her go to bed then. Avalanches of torment came over her, so fast she thought she was going to split in two and she bit her arms till blood seeped through the prints of her teeth. She remembered how the woman in the quarters had screamed and didn’t blame her. Angelique sat by her and wiped her forehead.

She could see everything so clearly, the broken cabin walls and the leaning roof, and the clothes hanging on pegs and the boxes standing around because there was no place to put the things that were in them, and the bag of cornmeal with a cockroach crawling over it, and a line of ants winding over the floor, and the firelight making everything look red. She had jerked up the coverlet in a spasm of agony, but though she had had a vague sensation of something stinging her ankles she had paid no attention till now, when she saw them and cried out:

“There’s ants all over me, Angelique!”

Her voice trailed off. Angelique saw the ants and rushed to get them off her, but there were hundreds of them and a moment later Judith knew why they were so thick.

A raindrop splashed on her arm, and a fine spray coming through a break in the wall peppered her forehead. She remembered that she had heard it raining for some time but had hardly noticed. But now in the moments between the pains she began to understand that the rain was coming down in a torrent, tearing up the flimsy patches in the roof and washing the mud from between the logs of the wall. The ants on the floor were circling a puddle. The ants in the bed were stinging her arms and legs. The rain was dripping on her, and this time of year there was not even a mosquito bar over the bed to keep some of it off. She was jerking with torture, and Philip was out in the forest. A cockroach with wings crept through a chink in the wall and then, terrified at the sudden firelight, flew up and struck her in the face.

She screamed then. She shrieked over and over, calling Philip, and begging Angelique to help her. Angelique shoved at the bed to move it from under the leak. She brought wet cloths and tried to wash the ants off Judith’s legs. Pulling out the sheets, she emptied the ants into the fire, but there were more of them than she could fight. The rain poured in through the roof and ran out again through the cracks in the floor. The flying cockroaches buzzed around the bed. Sometimes one of them plopped against the wall and fell down. Judith shrieked for Philip, but it was daybreak when Philip returned, wet, cold, conscience-stricken and slightly drunk, for he had sat in a tavern till long after dark and the rain had bogged the trail so that it had taken him seven hours to make the journey home.

He heard Judith’s screams above the beat of the rain. At the cabin door he leaped out of the wagon and rattled the bolt, calling who he was. Angelique slipped the bolt and he went in, dripping. Judith raised halfway up from the bed, crying out, “Philip! Get these things off me!” But for a moment he could not move.

The bed was in the middle of the room. Angelique had torn holes in the corners of a blanket and tied it over the bedposts to make a shelter, for the rain was coming in through a dozen places in the roof of the cabin.

He went over to the bed. In the firelight Judith’s face was yellow with agony. The sheets were off and there were damp spots on the moss mattress. The quilt Angelique had put over her was tossed to one side, lined with ants, and there were streaks of ants crawling over Judith’s arms and legs. She looked up at him and through her clenched teeth he heard her say, “Please get them off me, Philip!”

“I’ll take care of you,” said Philip. He scraped the ants off her with his hands and threw the quilt on the puddled floor. “Judith,” he exclaimed as he worked over her, “can you understand me? Do you forgive me for leaving you like this?”

She nodded. Philip lifted her up and brushed the ants off her. He picked up a cockroach from the mattress and crushed it between his fingers. Angelique had not been strong enough to raise the legs of the bed, but Philip held them up one by one and made her set each leg in a pot of water to prevent any more ants crawling up from the floor. He picked them off Judith’s arms and legs as fast as he could. At last he sat by her and wiped the lines of sweat off her face, helplessly watching the muscles of her neck knot like ropes.

Judith smothered a cry in her throat and felt for his hands. She held them tight, straining at them as the pains went through her. He saw red splotches on her legs where the ants had bitten her, and Angelique crushing with her fingers other ants that had hidden in the creases of the mattress. Streaks of wet gray light pushed between tile chinks, showing him a huddle of rats gnawing the sack of potatoes in a corner. It was the first time Philip had ever felt like the good-for-nothing fool everybody on the Carolina coast had told him he was; he remembered his father’s warning that one day something would happen to make him know it. He wondered if Judith would ever believe he loved her, and resolved bitterly that after this he was going to be so tender with her that she would be compelled to understand it.

“Judith,” he said, “dear sweetheart, I’m so sorry for everything! Please tell me you know what I’m saying!”

She made some noises in her throat. He could not tell whether she was answering or not.

Philip tried to speak to her again, but at that instant she jerked herself up with a shriek and sank back with such gray exhaustion on her face that he thought she was dead. He sprang up and bent over her, and saw her chest move as she caught her breath, and behind him Angelique said:

“Mais il est beau, ’Sieur Philip!”

Philip leaned over Judith again. “Dearest girl, it’s all over. You have been delivered of a son.”

She lay still, her arm over her eyes. By the time Angelique brought the baby to lay it by her, wrapped in a calico apron which was the only dry garment she could find in the cabin, Judith was asleep.

Philip covered her with a fur-lined velvet cloak he had bought in Marseille.

Chapter Five

P
hilip said she must have a white dress for her churching, and Judith had Angelique make it out of a roll of ivory silk Gervaise had sent over when she heard Judith’s son was born. Philip named the baby David for his father. “To remind me of something,” he said, and though she did not know what he meant she had acquiesced. One name was as good as another as long as she had the baby like a new present to see every morning. He was fat and healthy, and now that she was well the night he was born seemed remote like a bad dream.

The Sunday she was churched Judith went to Lynhaven to stay with Gervaise until the moss house at Ardeith was ready. She was reluctant to go, for the cabin was not so bad now that the cracks had been plastered. But since the night David was born Philip for the first time seemed to find the place intolerable. He detested the cracks and the ants and having to sleep and cook in one room, and often said he didn’t see how she endured it at all. So though she hated the idea of leaving him she yielded, and climbed with Gervaise into the beautiful carriage Walter Purcell had just received from New Orleans. Gervaise was but recently up from her own confinement.

Angelique rode behind in a cart with the nurse Philip had brought from the quarters for David. Judith whispered to Gervaise that at first it had shocked her to see her little pink baby nursing at the breast of a black woman, in spite of Philip’s assurances that women who had slaves never troubled to nurse their own children. Gervaise chuckled softly and whispered back that she too had had a problem about her children—both of them had been baptized here at St. Margaret’s chapel, for though she was Catholic, George the Third permitted no Catholic churches in English Louisiana, but she had rebaptized them herself in private, just to be sure. After this exchange of confidences they laughed intimately and felt like good friends.

Philip came to Lynhaven every Saturday and stayed till Sunday evening. Though she missed him between times, Judith enjoyed being there. Gervaise was an impeccable hostess and housekeeper, though she was quite unable to do any work herself and marveled at Judith’s ability to cook and sew fine seams. Judith found it delightful to lie in bed every morning until Angelique brought her coffee, and to spend the day riding or gossiping or being fitted for new gowns according to fashion dolls from Paris. On his weekly visits Philip told her she was changing. She could feel it, vaguely; it was as though the rhythms of her body were adapting themselves to the indolent rhythm of the river by which she lived. And the working of her mind too—it was so easy here to be casual.

But she would never, thought Judith, learn to be as casual as Gervaise; never learn to regard life with detachment as though it were only an amusing spectacle. Sometimes she envied Gervaise and sometimes pitied her for this. It was a very protective attitude, but it shielded her from ecstasy as well as pain. In spite of her success at making her home-life pleasant, Judith could not help wondering if Gervaise really loved any one as she herself loved Philip. Certainly not her husband, though she liked him very well and they never quarreled.

She told Judith about her marriage in a matter-of-fact way. It was evident that she regarded Philip as a charming scamp and Judith’s elopement a piece of puzzling recklessness. When Gervaise was fourteen Walter Purcell had come to New Orleans to buy slaves from her father, an importer of blacks from Sainte Domingue. Her father was a hard-headed Creole burdened with several daughters whose need for dowries was keeping him in debt. Gervaise was pretty, and the young American from up the river with his royal grant in his pocket was potentially rich. Moreover, Monsieur Durand was happy to discover that Americans were not as insistent about dowries as Creoles, an inducement sufficient to let him overlook Mr. Purcell’s British heresy in the matter of religion. Walter Purcell wanted a wife, and women of good breeding were scarce in the rude settlements of West Florida. So Gervaise was offered almost empty-handed and thus accepted, and each of the two gentlemen considered that he had driven a good bargain. Gervaise was then informed that she had been happily disposed of. She did not complain, for Walter Purcell seemed to her a personable young man, though his barbarous language made acquaintance difficult; to tell the truth, she considered herself fortunate. An epidemic aboard one of her father’s ships had carried off half a cargo of good Negroes and she had been wondering where her dowry was to come from. If her suitor was willing to accept her with but a handful of sous to her name Gervaise decided he must be smitten indeed with her charms.

Oh yes, Gervaise was happy enough. Walter was fond of her and treated her like a pet kitten, and as Gervaise never manifested any desire to control her own destiny things went smoothly at Lynhaven. But when Philip came on his weekly visits Judith compared the flaming love between them to the carefully nurtured pleasantness of the Purcells and knew she would not have exchanged a minute of her life with Gervaise, not even the cabin and the bugs.

Philip arranged to buy part of Walter Purcell’s uncleared land, for Walter had built docks on his riverfront property and was more concerned with wharf development than planting. Gervaise remarked that she couldn’t see what Philip wanted with more forest when it was going to take him years to clear what he had, but Judith understood; her vision of the future, like his, included a realm of indigo far out-reaching the three thousand acres he had from the king. Philip sold his first crop at a profit, and gave Judith money for shopping. She and Gervaise rode down to the wharfs, with Angelique and Gervaise’s maid following them, for she had found that here ladies did not venture out of doors unattended. They boarded the boats from New Orleans, and Judith bought muslins and shoes, and a French rattle for David made of thin wood painted with animals. She got blue calico and plaid tignons for Angelique, partly to show gratitude for her tenderness the night David was born and partly because Angelique was so pretty it was a joy to dress her up. Angelique was so grateful Judith was surprised, and exclaimed impulsively:

“But Angelique, I’d like to get you something really nice. Tell me what you want.”

Angelique said, “I got mighty little want, young miss.” She was silent a moment, and added in a low voice, “No white lady been good to me like you.”

Judith watched her thoughtfully. Angelique was embroidering a dress for David. Her golden hands moved deftly over the muslin. Judith wondered what her life had been like before they brought her up the river to be sold.

“Weren’t they good to you, Angelique, at Mr. Peyroux’s house?” she asked.

Angelique did not lift her eyes. “Dey was arright. We get plenty to eat and not too much work. But dey don’t make talk to us like you, young miss.”

“Maybe,” ventured Judith, “you never had a chance to show them how good you could be. I’d really like to give you something, Angelique, just to prove I haven’t forgotten.”

Angelique looked up, hesitated, and dropped her eyes again.

“I don’t need something bought,” she said. “But I could make wish—”

“What?”

“Dat you not ever sell me away from you.”

Judith sprang up. “Why Angelique! Did you think I ever would?”

Angelique shrugged fatalistically. “Sais pas,” she said.

“But I wouldn’t, Angelique!” Judith put her arms around her. “I don’t know what I did before I had you. You’re my very best friend. Not for a thousand pounds. Not if the king and queen came from London to buy you. Not ever, ever, ever.”

Angelique’s black eyes were bright with tears as she raised them again. “You say for true, Miss Judith?”

Judith nodded vehemently.

“You are good lady,” said Angelique.

Judith sat down on the floor and rested her arms on Angelique’s lap. “Listen. I want you to promise me something.”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Don’t ever tell anybody about the night I was delivered. About the rain coming in or the ants or Mr. Philip’s leaving me alone.”

Angelique smiled. “I don’t tell, young miss.”

Their eyes met in comprehension.

Gervaise came in, and told Judith Philip was outside. Judith ran out, for it was not Saturday and she wondered if something was wrong. But Philip was evidently in high spirits, and he looked more elegant than ever in a blue coat with a cascade of pleated linen falling from the stock around his neck. Judith adored the courtly way he bent to kiss Gervaise’s hand and murmured, “You grow more beautiful every day, madam.”

He put his hands on Judith’s waist and lifted her to sit on his crossed arms like a baby, while he asked her about David. Then he told her he had come to take her home. The moss house at Ardeith was done, yes, and furnished too. “Not a castle,” said Philip, his blue eyes crinkling with a teasing pride, “but fit to live in.”

Judith hugged him in delight. “Let me down. I do want to see it so!”

Philip spoke to Gervaise as he set Judith on her feet. “Where’s Walter?”

“Indoors,” said Gervaise. “Why?”

“I have great news for him. A boat came down this morning with some English despatches. They say the seaboard colonies are rebelling against the king.”

Judith caught her breath. “But how dreadful!”

“What are they quarreling about?” asked Gervaise, more for politeness’ sake than because she wanted to know, for the seaboard colonies were as remote from her reckoning as England itself.

“Oh, trade and taxes, and they want to send representatives to Parliament.”

“There was a lot of talk about the taxes before I left Connecticut,” said Judith, who like Philip saw the Atlantic coastline as a vivid reality. “In Boston they threw a whole cargo of tea overboard. Father said that was a good gesture—”

“And so it was,” agreed Philip. “But a rebellion against the king’s majesty—that’s mighty drastic.”

“Are they fighting?” Judith asked.

“Yes, there’ve been several clashes between colonial troops and the royal garrisons.” He chuckled. “It almost makes me wish I was back home.”

“Why Philip! You wouldn’t bear arms against the king! What about the oath you swore when you got your grant in Louisiana?”

“I wouldn’t keep my promises if he didn’t keep his, honey. A good hearty rebellion might teach them a lesson in London. The colonials aren’t claiming to be anything but subjects of the king even now—nobody has asked for independence.”

“Independence? I think that’s ridiculous. I was born English and I hope I’ll die English.” Judith stopped and glanced at Gervaise, afraid she had been tactless since Gervaise had not had the good fortune to be born a subject of George the Third. But Gervaise was laughing.

“Chère,” she said, “I have changed my country three times already and I am but eighteen years old. New Orleans was French when I was born, then King Louis gave us to Spain and they put up new flags in the Place d’Armes and after that I married and came up here to live, so now I am English, and what I shall be before I die I don’t know, but I know this—”

“What, Gervaise?” Philip asked when she paused. He was laughing too.

“That in Louisiana, Mr. Philip Larne, you are asking a great deal when you ask to die in the same country you were born in. Is that treason?”

“It’s food for philosophy, ma’am.”

“And now I will send you coffee.” She went into the house.

Philip smiled down at Judith. “Are you glad you’re finally coming home?”

She nodded. “I’ve missed you so terribly.”

“I’ve missed you too, honey.” He grinned mischievously. “Your father and brother are going to meet us at Ardeith. Maybe now they’ll be persuaded I didn’t utterly ruin your life by taking you away from them.”

Judith rubbed her cheek against his satin sleeve. “I don’t care what they think. Let’s go in and tell Angelique to pack my things.”

Judith was bubbling with eagerness. But she had not expected such a house as he took her to that day.

She saw it behind the oaks as the carriage shook over the Ardeith trail. Even before she got close to it she realized triumphantly that her house was bigger and grander than the Purcells’. It was shining, bright pink behind its white gallery, and she saw that it had three entrances instead of one, for it had three halls lengthwise and one crosswise and two rooms front and back between the arms of the crosses, making sixteen rooms in all, not counting the slave-quarters built sideways at the back. Judith stepped over the threshold of the main entrance, followed by the nurse carrying her baby, and after her came her father and Caleb, and after them the Purcells. She gasped, unprepared for such splendor of space and pink walls and cunningly devised crosscurrents of air. Through the open doors she could see slave-made furniture with turned legs and cane bottoms. For a moment she stood speechless, a sob of joy rising within her as she thought of the cabin that had stood here last year, and she turned and looked at her father’s astonished face and the envying admiration of Gervaise, and Philip proud as a king showing off his realm. Her voice choked as she exclaimed :

“Oh Philip, Philip darling, I never expected real glass in the windows!”

Philip tucked an arm around her as he turned to the others. “Come see the rest of it.”

He showed them the master bedroom, where there stood a bed so big four people could have slept on it as comfortably as two. Across the hall was the nursery, with a cot for the nurse and a cradle made of woven canes. “And look,” said Philip, leading them back to the bedroom. Over the bed hung a cord that ran across the ceiling under a series of loops, and through the wall to a bell hanging in Angelique’s room. “So you can call her for coffee in the morning without getting up,” he said.

Judith glanced at her father, who was dumb before such luxury. “There’s another bell in the parlor and another in the dining-room,” said Philip, “to save you running about for the servants.”

He led them to the dining-room, where there was a table big enough for twenty or thirty diners, with a fan of turkey feathers hanging over it from the ceiling. Outdoors was the kitchen-house, with a fireplace twelve feet wide and four cranes for pots and kettles.