Deep Summer

by Gwen Bristow

  But maybe it was better just to have it happen. For when it came like this you were thrilled to such ecstasy with the surprise of it. Here there were no daisies, but there were great red blooms for which she had no name, and purple flowers bursting on the dead-looking sticks in the bayous; and soon this trouble she was so afraid of would be over and she would be light on her feet again. Even now it was splendid to feel a child moving in her body and know it was the first of a dynasty that was to rule this glorious country. She was proud to be having a child so soon.

  Philip came in unexpectedly one mid-morning.

  “I’m going into town to get the plows mended, Judith. What shall I bring you?”

  She smiled up at him.

  “Some plaster to chink up the cabin, please!”

  “I will, dear, really. I won’t forget this time. And that looking-glass?”

  “Do you still think I’m pretty?” she asked wistfully.

  “You have the loveliest eyes I ever saw. Dark gold like the sun on the river.”

  “Anyway,” said Judith, “I feel perfectly wonderful.”

  “So do I. I hate to take time out for sleeping.” He kissed her. “Goodbye, honey, and I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  She stood in the doorway and waved at him as he climbed into the wagon and drove away. The wind ruffled her hair. Judith stretched out her arms and took a deep breath. In the west, over the river, some clouds were piling up very white against the deep blue of the sky. She did hope it wouldn’t rain before Philip came back with the plaster.

  By afternoon when Philip returned the clouds in the west were black, and the sun behind them made purple ridges in the pile. Judith went to the door, watching as Philip and Josh unloaded things from the wagon. Philip ran in eagerly.

  “Look what I’ve brought you, darling! A boat came up from New Orleans yesterday and they were having a sale of merchandise on the Purcell wharfs. Look at this.”

  He shook out a bolt of silk gauze, so fine and thin one could almost read printing through it. “From Paris, Judith. There’ll be mighty few ladies on the bluff who can have a gown like this. Angelique can make it for you—Angelique! Regardez!”

  “Oh Philip, how beautiful!” Judith and Angelique together gathered the gauze into their hands. It was vaguely rose-colored, with little clusters of blue flowers printed on it. She thanked him, though she was wondering what on earth she was going to do with a gauze dress in a log cabin.

  “And look at this. Rose-colored ribbons to trim it, silk both sides. And here’s a jar of pomade to set the curls in your hair, made in New Orleans with crushed jasmine flowers.”

  “And what’s in this package?”

  “That’s a couple of French romances.”

  “Oh, I see. I can’t read them.”

  “I’ll read them to you. See this—a girdle of plum-colored velvet.”

  “It’s perfectly beautiful, but—but really, I can’t get it on!”

  “Keep it till you can. These flasks are wine from Burgundy. And now, this is the finest present of all. Just what you wanted.”

  He brought in a big covered object, taller than a spinning-wheel.

  “What’s that, Philip?”

  “Uncover it and see.”

  Judith reached out eagerly and pulled off the cloth. She started and her jaw dropped and she moved a step backward. For an instant she was silent, then she began to cry.

  “Judith, honey, what is it?”

  Judith turned around and put her hand over her eyes to keep back the tears.

  “Oh my Lord, Philip, is that what I look like?”

  Philip stood quite still. He glanced at Angelique and she shook her head. He looked at Judith, crying with her back to the mirror.

  “Cover it up!” she said angrily.

  Philip slowly reached down and replaced the cloth over the glass. “Maybe you’re right,” he said after a moment. “I’m sorry I brought it now.”

  Judith was drying her eyes on the end of her kerchief. She ran impulsively to him and put her arms around him.

  “Oh Philip, I’m so sorry. You were sweet to bring it. I do like it, really I do. But I was so—shocked!”

  Philip smiled at her tenderly. “It’s all right, honey. We’ll keep it covered till you’re pretty again.”

  “No we won’t. I’m just behaving like a little girl. I don’t know how you put up with me at all.” Judith pulled the cloth down. “I think you’re a dear to bring me such pretty things.”

  “You do like them, don’t you?”

  “Why Philip, I love them. We must put that beautiful silk in the bottom of the chest where it won’t get wet if it rains tonight. I think you’d better have Josh start filling up the worst cracks now. Those clouds look awfully threatening.”

  Philip’s arms dropped from around her. “Judith, I forgot about the plaster.”

  “Oh Philip! Again?”

  He nodded. “I reminded myself all the way in to bring it, then when I got to the wharfs I was having such fun buying things for you that it pushed everything else out of my head.”

  Judith took a long breath. She walked away from him. Then she wheeled around.

  “Oh, you’re such a fool!” she cried. “I can’t go to town because shaking over the trails would kill me and I haven’t anybody to depend on but you, and all you get me is clothes I can’t wear and French books I can’t read and a mirror to show me how ugly I am! All I ever asked you for was something to keep the rain off and I can’t trust you even for that. I’m tired of living in a chicken-coop!”

  Philip turned around on his heel and walked out. Judith ran to the door and saw him getting back into the wagon.

  “Where are you going?” she cried.

  “To town to get that plaster,” he called without turning.

  “Not now, Philip! It’ll be night before you can get back!”

  “Josh will take care of you. It’s easier driving at night than staying in the house with your temper.”

  He struck the mules. The wagon started with a jerk. Philip was standing up, and Judith guessed by the way he was slashing the mules that he wished it was herself instead of them he was punishing. Josh, standing by the cabin step, looked up.

  “I reckon I better hang around, young miss?”

  Judith said yes. She went back inside. Angelique came toward her timidly.

  “Dis glass?” she said, the covering cloth in her hand.

  “Oh, leave it alone will you?” said Judith curtly. She went and sat by the window. The clouds were too thick to leave a vestige of sun, and Judith was too unhappy to care.

  Presently Angelique came and touched her arm, and Judith saw that she had set out some cornbread and cold meat on the table. Judith shook her head. She sat watching the trees bow to the rising wind, not thinking about anything in particular but dully miserable. Angelique sat down on a chest in a corner to eat her own supper.

  All of a sudden Judith felt a thunderclap of pain in the middle of her. She jerked, catching her breath, and Angelique sprang up.

  “Qu’est-ce que c’est, madame?”

  “I—I don’t know,” said Judith shakily, for the pain had gone as abruptly as it had come. Angelique went back to her supper and Judith sat down again, but before she had time to relax the pain struck at her again. She grabbed the back of the chair behind her and cried “Angelique!”

  Angelique came to her. Judith was white, less with pain than with bewilderment, for now that the pain had passed she felt almost well. Angelique spoke to her soothingly; Judith did not catch the words, but she smiled to show she understood the tone. Angelique stood with an arm around her, and when the next pain came Judith caught her hands and held them till it was gone. “I feel all right now,” she said.

  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

  Philip 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.