by Gwen Bristow
“You’re going down the river?” Judith repeated in incredulous relief. So he had understood at last.
Angelique went on speaking in a simple, relentless monotone. “Miss Judith, I never meant this to happen. I didn’t want it to happen at first. But you know how Mr. Philip is—it’s so hard to tell him no to anything—”
Judith wanted to scream. How well she knew it.
“But I wanted to tell you too, Miss Judith, that I was the only one. That’s really true. We used to talk about it, the girls here at Ardeith, how the master never paid any mind to anybody but Miss Judith, and it was surprising to some of us because we’d waited on other married people before. I don’t mean, just that, but everything about you—we all said we’d never seen a pair that got along together like you and Mr. Philip.”
Judith had put her arm along the back of the chair and buried her face in it. Every word she heard was like a reminder of a homeland from which she was an exile. She frantically wished Angelique would stop, but her throat was too choked for her to say so.
“If you’ve ever had that you know what it is. Colored folks have it too sometimes. I had a husband once. His name was Claude. When they broke up the estate we were sold apart. I think he’s on M. Farron’s plantation across the river. I don’t suppose I’ll ever see him again, but I always thought about myself as married to him still. When our baby died he was so good to me. I know you aren’t interested in my troubles, but I wanted to tell you because I know how it is when you’ve got somebody that means that much to you and something breaks it up, and I wanted to ask you please don’t let anything break up you and Mr. Philip.”
Judith could not lift her head nor force words past the pain in her throat. She heard Angelique go out and close the door, but she stayed with her face hidden against the back of the chair, trembling still before Angelique’s assurance.
At length she got up, letting her knitting fall on the floor. She went out of the house and walked down through the indigo fields, past the quarters, and skirted the rice fields toward the levee. She wanted to be alone where she could think, away from the distractions of the house and children. The afternoon sun beat on her as she climbed the levee and looked down at the shining river. Was it true, what Angelique had tried to say, that she could get back what she had lost simply by being willing to take it?
She turned and looked back at the wide, wild kingdom of indigo pressing on the forest. That was Ardeith Plantation, Ardeith of her children and her children’s children. Philip had built the plantation. That was what he would leave them. But she would leave them something more, purity of inheritance. Their pride in their line would be based on their faith in her integrity. Civilization had to be a matriarchy.
Two or three flatboats passed under the levee, going down the river toward the docks. Every day they came down, great ugly argosies that had made their dangerous way from Illinois or Pennsylvania, to unload on the wharfs bales of stuff and new settlers as the Dalroy bluff wrenched itself out of the wilderness.
One of them was a slave-boat. She could see the Negroes sunning themselves on deck. Each one had rings on his ankles and chains between. Several Negroes were poling the boat, and a white overseer walked around among them. He carried a whip. Now and then he struck it idly against the wall of the cabin.
Judith sprang to her feet, catching up her skirts so she could run down the levee. She went as fast as she could past the indigo vats and through the fields where the slaves were walking toward the quarters after their day’s work. The dark tumbled abruptly out of the sky as she went. She could see lights in the windows of her house.
Philip sat on the gallery steps, pulling up blades of grass with his hands. As she approached he glanced up and looked down again without pausing in his restless pulling at the grass. She noticed he had not changed his garments since coming in from the fields.
“There’s a slave-boat docking tonight,” he said. “I gave orders for Angelique to be put on it tomorrow.”
She had paused by the step. He added, “Are you satisfied?”
Judith put the fingers of one hand tight around the wrist of the other. This was going to be hard to say. She spoke tensely.
“Please forgive me for that, Philip. I mean for saying she had to go. She doesn’t have to. No, please don’t stop me. I don’t want you to give her to a trader. I want something else. I want you to send to M. Farron’s plantation—it’s somewhere across the river, you can find out where—and buy a man named Claude who used to belong to M. Peyraux in New Orleans. I don’t care what he costs. Buy him and bring him here. He’s Angelique’s husband. Give them a cabin beyond the far indigo fields. Tell her she’s got to stay there and not come to the big house. I can’t stand having them here. But buy that man as soon as you can find him and give him to Angelique.”
She stopped breathlessly. Philip had stood up. He was looking down at her in amazement, trying to see through the dark what there was in her face that matched the rush of her voice.
“My dear girl.” He gave a soft little laugh of relief. “Are you trying to tell me you’re done tormenting Angelique?”
“Yes. Yes. Will you buy that man, Philip?”
“Of course, if you want me to.” He put out his hands and drew her to him. “Don’t you know I’d do anything to stop this hell I’ve been living through?”
She did not answer. They stood by the steps, Philip holding her hands in his. The dark was heavy with scents of magnolias and night-blooming jasmine. She could vaguely see the long draperies of moss hanging from the oaks, and the sparkle of fireflies. As he drew her into his arms she began to understand that to Philip the passing of this crisis meant it was forgotten. But she was wiser now and the dazzle would never again be complete. She let him think it was; she was very tired, though she had not realized how tired she was until she glimpsed the road on which she had just started and saw that it was going to be hard to travel.
Part Two
Chapter Thirteen
What a happy lot was his, after all, thought Philip Larne as he leaned back in his carriage. His nineteen years in Louisiana had been bountiful. The forest had gone down before him in magnificent submission. There was no house on the bluff more luxuriously furnished than his, nor any woman more richly dressed than Judith, and his sons were the first in Dalroy to learn fencing from a French master. Not many families even in this prosperous town by the river could witness the inauguration of the new governor in such opulence of velvet and muslins as theirs, or make the journey in a carriage so nobly cushioned against the jolting of the road.
It had been a picturesque ceremony under an array of flags, though half the spectators did not understand enough Spanish to know what was being said. Judith had attempted at first to have her children taught what she referred to as all three of their native languages, but she had given up, owning that it was hard enough to learn good English in a place like this. They had picked up Creole French, and David had sufficient Spanish to read the regulations posted on the church doors. Of what went on inside the churches they knew very little. Religion had become such a confusion of languages and forms that they found it easier to let it alone. Judith had tried to make them pious. She taught them to pray “Jesus, make me gentle, meek and mild like thee,” which they dutifully recited and as dutifully forgot, knowing as well as she did that these were not the virtues required for subduing the raw majesty of Louisiana.
Philip smiled at Judith, who sat on the seat opposite devastatingly pretty in a hat with nodding pink plumes, and a muslin gown still crisp in spite of the August heat.
“You’re very charming in that outfit,” he said to her.
“Thanks. Gervaise says we won’t be dressing like this much longer.”
“Why not?”
“Well, since they declared a republic in France they’re changing everything, even the clothes. Her sister sent her a sketch of a dress that just c
ame in from Paris, and it’s amazing—not fluffed out at the sides at all, but long and straight. Greek, she says.”
Philip reflected that Judith might look rather well in a Greek dress. She was thirty-four and had four children, but her figure was still as straight as when he saw her first. They had three sons and a daughter, and what gallant children they were, Philip thought proudly. The two older boys and Roger Sheramy were riding horseback alongside the carriage. Philip looked out at them. David was eighteen, a young reflection of himself, Judith always said, though Philip found it hard to believe he had ever been so beautiful a youth. David was golden-headed and blue-eyed, with a round chin and a nose that might have belonged to an emperor on a Roman coin, and so tall his mother had to stand on tiptoe to kiss him.
Christopher rode by him, a dark, quiet, austere lad who reminded Philip of Mark Sheramy. He sometimes thought it odd that Judith, so unlike her father, should have given so many of his qualities to her son. Christopher was laconic of speech and undemonstrative of manner. He said he did not want to be a planter, though Philip had found it hard to believe him. Most of the lads on the bluff would have given their eye-teeth for a share of a plantation like Ardeith.
The third son sat by Judith on the opposite seat, watching the Dalroy estates as the carriage drove past. He was eleven years old, and his name was Philip.
Sometimes Philip fancied he loved his namesake best of all his children; watching the rosy-cheeked youngster across from him he shivered to remember how near little Philip had come to being not born at all. He remembered his secret fear lest this child come into the world with some deformity of mind or body given him by his mother’s reckless agony. But the baby had appeared yelling with health, and Judith had named him for his father. Philip was glad of that. He would not have suggested it just then, but he did want a son named for himself, and that Judith had wanted it for this one had a tender significance.
Little Philip, blond as David and valiantly pretty in a sky-blue suit with a white lace collar crocheted by his mother, bounced on the seat as he called something to his big brother David, for whom he manifested an adoring worship. David grinned, snapped his riding-crop in the air, and called back:
“Tomorrow I’m going fishing with Roger.”
“Will you bring me some new fish for the pond?” Philip demanded.
“Yes, if you’ll clean up the weeds around the edge. That pond’s a disgrace to the plantation.”
“I will. Honest. This very day.”
“Phil,” said Judith, “don’t you think you can possibly sit still until we get home?”
“Yes ma’am, but will you tell the niggers not to bother the fish in my pond?”
“Yes, dear, I’ll tell them. Now be quiet.”
“I’m hungry,” said young Philip. “What’s going to be for dinner?”
“There’s fig-cake with whipped cream,” said Judith, “but you don’t get it unless you eat all your rice first.”
Philip grinned across at his son. Little Philip grinned back, still restless, though he had subsided obediently.
“Do I get some fig-cake?” demanded Rita, who was six years old; too young to attend the inauguration, Judith said, but Philip thought she would enjoy the parade.
“Yes,” said Philip, “if you’re good.” He put her on his knee. She was a piquant little girl, with a lot of dark hair in curls down her back.
“And may I come to table with the company?” Rita persisted.
“Yes,” said Philip. Judith made a face at him. There was to be a dinner-party at home in honor of the inauguration holiday. Rita was too little to come to table, or so Judith thought, but Philip had been so delighted when she turned out to be a girl that he proceeded from her birth upwards to spoil her. Beginning, Judith said, by giving her a Spanish name that would look heathenish on a parish register, but Philip had retorted that since their children were growing up heathens anyway it was a perfectly suitable name.
Judith said, “Very well then, Rita in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and if she grows up to marry a Spanish don from New Orleans don’t blame me.”
Philip said that would be quite satisfactory. Rita was dowried well enough to marry anybody who struck her fancy. Ninety acres of indigo land, seven slaves and a sum of money for the education of her children—not many young ladies could bring so much to their husbands.
Lord, but it was hot. The horses ridden by the boys kicked up scarcely any dust because of the dampness of the ground. It had rained early in the morning and the earth was still steaming. Rita slapped a mosquito that had lit on her ankle as the carriage jiggled and a boy sprang up from outside, catching hold of the window-opening next to Judith.
“Hey, lady, want to buy some bananas?”
“Oh my Lord!” Judith exclaimed. “Get off, will you? You’re going to get your neck broken.”
“No ma’am, I ain’t. I can hold on good. Want some bananas or some nice fresh figs?”
Rita and little Philip stared as the carriage rattled over the road and the boy clung like a fly, holding with both hands while his basket of fruit dangled from his elbow. He was a dirty little boy in a torn shirt. The coachman riding on top had not seen him and had not slowed the carriage.
Philip was reaching for a coin. “Here. You’d better stop doing this if you want to live to grow up.”
“Yes sir,” shouted the boy, thrusting two bananas at Philip’s hand. “Right off the boat—”
The carriage went over a bump and with a scream he vanished from the side. Judith sprang forward.
“Stop the carriage! We’ve killed him!”
The children were scrambling to the side to see. Philip leaned out and shouted the order to the coachman. He sprang down, and an instant later the footman lowered the carriage-step so Judith could follow. Philip was indignant; it was nobody’s fault, of course—there was no teaching sense to the wild children of the docks—but his carriage had never hurt one of them before. Judith told the children to stay inside while she hurried out to where the boy had fallen in the road.
He was sitting up, holding his knee, from which a trickle of blood ran down over his bare foot and dripped into the ground. His basket had overturned and the figs and bananas were scattered about. Judith bent over him.
“Let me see your knee. Does it hurt much?”
“Not so bad,” said the child, though his face was twisting with his effort not to cry. He was a sturdy youngster of about ten. The boys on horseback had come up.
“Need anything?” David asked as he reined his horse.
“Your handkerchief,” said Philip, “and yours too,” he added to Roger and Christopher. “If we can stop the blood we’ll put him into the carriage and ride him home. He shouldn’t try to walk.”
He began binding up the gash in the boy’s leg, giving him another handkerchief to hold to a cut in his face. “I’m sorry I fell off, Mr. Larne,” the boy apologized.
“I’m sorry you got hurt. Stay off this leg a few days and you’ll be all right. How did you know my name?”
The child winced and grinned. “Oh, I reckon mighty near everybody knows you. You’ve boughten bananas from me before.”
“Have I?” Philip asked smiling. The boy looked up with wondering envy at the three lads on horseback. “You’s Roger Sheramy, ain’t you?” he asked suddenly, pointing his finger.
Roger Sheramy grinned and nodded. He was about fourteen, and good-looking in his russet coat and high riding-boots. Roger’s hair and eyes were tawny like Judith’s, but he showed his Spanish blood by the blackness of his eyebrows, which almost met over his nose like his mother’s, and his low-bridged nose like hers.
“Yeah,” said the young stranger. “I know you too.”
David offered to put the injured boy on his horse and get him home that way, but Philip thought riding in the carriage would be easier for him. He lif
ted Rita to David’s horse so the boy could have her place in the carriage, and let them go on to Ardeith. “Where do you live?” he asked when he had helped the boy to a seat.
“Below the wharfs. Rattletrap Square.”
Philip gave the order to the coachman. He wished he had sent Judith home. Rattletrap Square was no place for the visiting of a lady.
The boy stared a moment at little Philip’s well-cut blue suit, and ran his fingers over the cushioned seat with inquisitive eagerness. “Say,” he said suddenly, “you know why I jumped up on your carriage?”
“No, why?” Philip asked.
“Because I’m related to you, kind of. I’m Gideon Upjohn. I wanted to see Miss Judith. My ma talks about her sometimes.” His finger pointed to the seat opposite. “Are you her?”
“Yes,” said Judith. She leaned forward and put her hand on his uninjured knee. “Gideon, how is your mother?”
“She’s arright,” said Gideon. He fidgeted. “But she’s gonta be plenty mad to see me coming home in y’all’s carriage. She told me not to pester you.”
“What makes you related to me?” demanded young Philip, who had been staring at Gideon with as much curiosity as Gideon had vouchsafed him.
“We used to know his mother a long time ago,” Judith explained. She asked Gideon about his family. At intervals she sent a servant down to give Dolores news of Roger, but the servant always came back to report that Mrs. Upjohn, though she lived poorly, insisted that she needed nothing. Neither Philip nor Judith had seen her in years.
“Ma’s arright,” Gideon said. “Pa, he’s arright too. He works on the Purcell wharfs.”
“You have some brothers and sisters, haven’t you?” Judith asked.
“Yes’m.”
“How are they?”
“Well, Mamie Sue, that’s my sister that’s older ’n me, she took sick couple of days back.”
“What’s the trouble?”
“I dunno.”