Deep Summer

by Gwen Bristow

  “I reckon he’s walking now?” asked Dolores breathlessly. “And maybe talking?”

  “Oh yes, he toddles all around. And he can say a few funny little words.”

  “Like—father?”

  Judith found she couldn’t answer. She was suddenly choked up as if there was a wad of cotton in her throat. She put her arms around Dolores, and finally blurted with a break in her voice:

  “Dear, I’m so sorry! And I can’t do anything. Caleb thinks he’s doing right by the baby and I can’t help it. But I’m so sorry.”

  Dolores held to her tight. “You do mean to be good to me, don’t you? Sometimes I don’t like you but I reckon you always mean to be good. Judith, what do they give Roger to eat?”

  “Milk and soft-boiled eggs, and rice-gruel, and things like that.”

  “Can he hold a spoon yet?”

  “No, sometimes he tries, but he spills it.”

  “Who does he look like?”

  Judith still stood holding Dolores’ head on her breast. “Mostly like us, honey. He’s got the gold Sheramy eyes and his hair is light brown like ours. But I think his nose is going to turn up the way yours does.”

  “He sure sounds beautiful,” murmured Dolores.

  Judith sat down, holding both Dolores’ hands in hers. She told her everything she could think of about Roger, when he got his first tooth and spoke his first word, how they dressed him and everything she could remember that he had said or done. Dolores listened with her lips parted and her eyes wide. At last she suggested:

  “You’re right sure they don’t ever be mean to him, Judith?”

  “Mean to him? I should say not. His father tries to pet him to death.”

  “You see him a lot?”

  “Oh yes. He’s here often playing with David and Christopher.”

  “How big does Roger be now?”

  “About so high.” Judith measured from the floor.

  Dolores dug her teeth into her lip, looking down. “I was think I could forget about him. But I miss him something awful. Every time I see a little boy I wish it was mine. I’ve got another baby,” she added abruptly.

  “You have another baby? I’m glad of that,” said Judith, and she meant it, though she wondered that Dolores should be so frank about acknowledging it.

  “Yes. A little girl. But she don’t make it better about Roger, somehow.” With the toe of her slipper Dolores followed a crack between the boards of the floor. “Do you think I am very bad because I have another baby?” she asked after a moment.

  “Why of course not. It’s easy to understand how you’d want one.”

  “But I didn’t want her,” said Dolores, laughing a little. She was making pleats in the ruffle around the end of her sleeve. “I didn’t know if I should tell you or not, because you will tell Caleb—”

  “I won’t if you don’t want me to.”

  “It don’t matter. He think I am so bad anyway he can’t think any worse. He is so damn pious. But I didn’t have any place to go and I met a man who was nice to me, and I thought I would stay around awhile and maybe get a chance to go to New Orleans, but—” she laughed shortly. “I was get myself in trouble right off first thing and then I couldn’t go any place because I couldn’t look out for myself.”

  “Where is he now?” Judith asked gently.

  “Oh, he’s still taking care of me. He likes me and I like him too. He gets work pretty regular now there’s so much more trade. His name is Thad Upjohn.”

  Judith thought a moment. “Caleb still wants to take care of you. He has told me two or three times to tell you so if I ever heard from you.”

  Dolores gave another short little laugh. “Funny, me living right in Dalroy and none of you ever knowing. But rich folks don’t come down below the wharfs. I reckon I could live there a hundred years and never have you see me.” Her mouth hardened. “You tell Caleb,” she said, “I don’t want nothing from him nor ever will. I’m all right.”

  “Very well,” said Judith. She did not blame her. Dolores twisted the end of her hat-ribbon a moment without speaking, then she said:

  “I don’t reckon I’ll be going to New Orleans. I’d have a hard time getting along there with a baby and all, and I don’t expect Thad would let me go anyway. He makes a lot of fuss over my little girl. Judith, when I told him I was going to have a baby he said we should make a marriage and one of those Irish priests married us. Do you reckon that makes all right?”

  “Why certainly,” said Judith, though she knew she wasn’t speaking the truth. That paper from the English court hadn’t given either Dolores or Caleb the privilege of marrying anybody else. It took an Act of Parliament, or something like that, to dissolve a marriage. But maybe since they had been handed over to Spain the marriage laws were in the same sort of jumble as the others and at any rate she wasn’t going to take away any scrap of consolation Dolores had managed to find. “It must have been all right,” she added reassuringly, “if the priest said it was.”

  “I didn’t tell him I’d been married before,” said Dolores artlessly. “But my husband knows about it. He thinks it’s all right.” Dolores rested her elbows on her knees and leaned forward. “Judith, do you think Caleb would let me see Roger just for a few minutes some day? If I didn’t say a single word? Just so I could see how he looks?”

  Judith unconsciously doubled her fists. She stood up slowly. “Stay where you are,” she said to Dolores as she crossed to the other side of the room and pulled the bellcord. “Angelique,” she said tersely when the door opened, “tell Josh to saddle a horse for me and one for you. We’re going to Silverwood.”

  Angelique glanced at Dolores as she closed the door. Dolores got up and came wonderingly to Judith. “What’s that for?”

  “Honey,” said Judith, “I’m going to bring Roger over here so you can play with him awhile. You wait till I come back. I’ll get him here if I have to break every bone in Caleb’s body to do it.”

  Dolores put her hands up to her eyes as though ashamed that one of the Sheramys should see her crying. After a silence she looked up and said, “Judith, I’m sorry I took your things.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You can have them.”

  “I sold them,” said Dolores. “We had a hard time at first, and there was a Spanish trader bought them off me.”

  “I don’t mind.” Judith put her arm around Dolores’ waist. She noticed how carelessly Dolores was corseted now, and remembered how she used to lace in her little figure. “Dolores,” she said softly, “I don’t blame you for not wanting anything from Caleb, but if you need anything won’t you tell me?”

  “I don’t need anything,” said Dolores.

  Judith did not insist. She told Cicero to bring some wine and biscuits for Mrs. Upjohn while she was out.

  Judith thought grimly she could never again bear a sight so bitter as Dolores’ saying goodby to Roger after she had played with him an hour. Dolores could not bear it either. When she was leaving she thanked Judith, but she added in a broken voice, “I can’t stand this another time. Just send a nigger down sometimes to tell me how he is.”

  Judith watched her go and went in to shed tears of pity on her children’s heads. When Philip came in she told him she couldn’t possibly leave them to go to New Orleans. He retorted that if she didn’t get a taste of frivolity soon she’d worry herself into a bad spell of the vapors and what use would she be to her children then?

  And New Orleans, once the wrench of parting was over, proved to be delightful. Gervaise’s brother, Michel Durand, lived with his family in a house on the Rue Royale. It was built like a hollow square around a courtyard, with the main rooms in front and the slave-quarters behind. Judith found Creole life enchanting—riding in sedan-chairs to call on ladies who sipped coffee behind their lacy balconies and talked clothes and politics in slurry Louisiana French; buying slaves at the
market, where the fashionable ladies and gentlemen came to drink coffee and gossip as though it were a club; and dancing at endless balls with young gentlemen who had been to Paris and knew the latest variations of the minuet. She visited the boats that brought merchandise from France and Spain, and got deliciously confused among bales of silk and embroidered shoes, snuffboxes, tobacco cases, flasks of perfume, cases of wine and boxes of glass and china, and fashion dolls proudly decked in the styles sponsored by Marie Antoinette.

  Or maybe it was Creoles who made it all so pleasant. She had never seen people who had such gay, casual charm. The young gentlemen flattered her till sometimes she ran to her mirror and enumerated her defects to keep from losing her head entirely. They said her uncertain French was delectable, and they praised her tawny eyes and hair, which did make her stand out among them, for the Creoles were mostly dark. She had her portrait painted by a young artist named Armand Bardou, just back from a Parisian atelier and the rage of the season; he did her head and shoulders against a blue background and went into ecstasies over what he called her Mississippi-colored eyes. It cost her two hundred pounds of tobacco, but though her thrifty conscience pricked her as she wrote the order on the plantation she knew Philip would not mind. He had told her to be extravagant. Life on the plantation was still too primitive to offer much temptation for riotous spending.

  They stayed over the New Year. January blew away the fogs that had pearled the streets and the town began to sparkle. Gervaise loved it; this was her home and she fairly worshiped every turn of the levee and every palm in the Place d’Armes, but Judith began to be homesick. She thought how Philip would be dashing over the fields these days, preparing the ground for tobacco and indigo; the oranges were in their full ripeness now, and the children would be making themselves sick sucking the fresh-cut cane. She was, after all, bred to land instead of paving-stones. And she missed Philip achingly. The gallantry of her Creole admirers began to seem pale beside her longing to see him again. She told Gervaise she was ready to go home.

  Yes, Gervaise agreed reluctantly, it was time to leave. Going up the river would be easier now than if they waited for the flood of melting snow from the North. Michel was taking another slave cargo up to Dalroy in two or three weeks and they would go then. Judith wrote happily to Philip that she was coming home and sent the letter by the captain of a merchant vessel.

  When she came the February glory was over the earth and the air was like velvet and champagne. Judith thought she had never known before how beautiful Ardeith Plantation was or how much she loved it. She told Philip that as he had drunk a toast to the day they were united with New Orleans, she felt like drinking a toast to the day she came home.

  Chapter Eleven

  A for Ardeith, and B for baby. He could write those two. “Very nice,” said Judith. “Now I’ll teach you to make the next one. C. Like this.”

  David pursed his mouth, gripped the pen in his chubby fingers and made a C and a blot. “Like that, mother?”

  “Yes, only try and make it without a blot. There.”

  “C,” said David. “C for what?”

  Judith recalled the dame-school alphabet. “C for cherry.”

  “For what? What’s cherry?”

  “Oh my Lord,” said Judith. “This abominable country. A cherry’s a fruit, David.”

  David gave this his consideration. “Like an orange?”

  “No, darling. It’s little and red. But it doesn’t grow here, so we won’t bother about it. C is for cotton.”

  “Oh yes, cotton. C for cotton. What’s next?”

  “The next is D, which stands for David, but you mayn’t try that till you’ve learned to make C. Now make me a page of A, B, C, very nice and clear.”

  David bent his sunshiny head over his lesson, working very hard with the tip of his tongue protruding between his lips. Judith’s mind ran down the rest of the alphabet. Old Mrs. Cheesewright had taught it to her along with a dozen other little girls, swinging their legs over the edge of a bench too high for them in front of a fire that blistered their faces while the wind came in under the door and froze their backs. E for elbow, of course. David would understand that, and F for flower, and G for girl, though she decided with a wry acquiescence to the objects most familiar to David to tell him G stood for grasshopper. H for house, which was all right; I for ice—how ridiculous. For David it would have to be I for indigo.

  She put an arm around him. His golden head touched her cheek. She put her lips to it softly.

  “You’ll make me blot it,” said David.

  “No I won’t. You’re doing it very well. When you’ve finished you may go out to play.”

  David worked so hard he was panting. “A for Ardeith,” he mumbled. “B for baby. C for cotton.”

  His little body was so soft under her arm. Strange to know it was going to be hard and strong, and so much bigger than hers that he would be able to pick her up and carry her as readily as Philip had carried her the night she ran away from Lynhaven.

  “Oh now look! You made me do it!” cried David. He pointed to the blot that had jogged off his pen. “I told you to get away.”

  “I’m sorry, honey. I know it wasn’t your fault.” She squeezed him to her. “David, you’re so little!”

  “I’m not so little. I’m bigger than Chris and I come ’most as high as your belt. Oh stop, mother. I don’t like being kissed.”

  He wriggled out of her arms and faced her defiantly, his legs spread far apart.

  “Do I have to do any more lesson? I was nearabout to the bottom of the page.”

  “Yes, you may stop now. We’ll learn the next letter tomorrow.”

  “Arright!” David banged the door behind him. Judith let the paper dry and took it into her room.

  She caught sight of herself in the mirror. It was the same mirror Philip had brought to the cabin just before David was born. Judith smiled wryly as she recalled her tears when she had first glimpsed her figure, and wondered if she would feel like crying some more before long. She had been astonished into exasperation to find herself with child again. Christopher would be five years old in June, and after so long a respite she had assumed that heaven had relieved her of further childbearing. Curling up on the bed, she gave herself up to angry contemplation of the lonesome months ahead when she would be a prisoner in the house, the dragging lassitude and the long fierce battle at the end. She had so much to do, anyway; it was April, time for the thousand tasks demanded by the approach of summer. Judith jerked the bellcord.

  “Bring me some coffee,” she said when Angelique came in.

  Angelique went out quietly. She was oddly quiet these days and Judith wondered if she wasn’t quite well, though Angelique had said nothing about it. If Angelique should be sick now that would be absolutely too much. Judith shrugged at her own blooming reflection in the mirror. This was what one got for being so disgustingly healthy, and for being in love with one’s husband. She leaned back against the pillows and smiled to herself as she thought about Philip. She did love him so. When she came back from New Orleans after those months of separation she had tumbled into his arms as if she wanted never to be out of them again. She couldn’t possibly help that, and neither could he; and she might as well get her mind made up to accept the consequences of being so dearly loved. Be reasonable, she ordered the resentful person in the glass. You aren’t going to die. Only sometimes you’d rather. Oh, stop going on like this.

  Angelique came in with a cup of coffee. “Is this all you wanted, Miss Judith?”

  “Yes, thanks. Will you have the boys bring in a lot of tobacco leaves to dry? We’ll be having moths soon and I want to get the blankets put away.”

  “All right.” Angelique went out and closed the door.

  Through the window Judith could see Philip. He had stopped his horse and was talking to one of the overseers who stood at his side. Philip was very bu
sy now, setting a gang of Negroes to clearing another field and trying to get the stumps out in time to put in a crop. All his friends marveled at the speed with which he was putting the forest under cultivation, and at the uniform excellence of his harvests. He would be rich if he kept up like this, which meant she would be rich too, for everything he had was hers as well. Not every woman could write an order on her husband’s crops whenever she chose without being questioned, and mighty few women were given so many house-slaves when workers in the fields were so sorely needed. Oh, she was fortunate and no mistake, and she ought to be down on her knees thanking the Lord instead of feeling injured. Judith laughed at herself remorsefully and went out on the gallery. Philip waved and she kissed her hand to him. After all, she thought as she watched him out of sight, what really mattered was not slaves and clothes and houses, but being loved; the rest was what the Creoles called lagniappe, something extra. She leaned her head against the post and resolved that this time she was going to behave herself and not whine about having a baby.

  The page of David’s letters lay on the bureau. Judith wrote in the lower right corner, “David Larne, April 22, 1781,” and knelt to hide it in the box in the armoire where she and Philip kept a collection of secret treasures. The box held broken toys and scuffed shoes, a scrap of the silk gauze he had brought her the day he forgot the plaster and the topaz necklace he had dropped into her bosom the day she was washing pots by the river. She took that out sometimes to wear on special occasions. Judith tucked the grubby sheet of paper among the other things and lifted the topaz necklace. She would wear it to supper. It was about time she was getting dressed. She rang, but Angelique did not answer, so she went out to look for her.

  Angelique was nowhere visible about the house, and one of the parlormaids said she had gone to her room some time ago. Judith hurried down the hall to Angelique’s room. The girl must be ill. She opened the door, “Angelique?” she said.

  Angelique was lying on the cot, half dressed. She started up as Judith came in.