Deep Summer (19 page)

“I’m going in,” said Judith. She told the footman to get into the carriage and stay with young Philip, ignoring his protests at being left behind. Two or three dirty children were scrambling over the carriage wheels to finger the design painted on the door. The coachman yelled at them.

“Get off’n dis carriage!” he ordered. “Po’ white trash.”

Gideon, limping and leaning on the support of Philip’s arm, led them down a narrow alley strewn with dead cats and scraps of decaying food. Judith followed, holding up her skirts.

Gideon opened a door. “I reckon my ma’s home,” he said, “if you all want to see her.”

They followed him inside. In spite of the brilliance of the sun without, the room was dim. They heard a woman’s voice exclaim, “Gideon, what makes you tied up like that?”

It was a big room, but sickeningly hot and close. At one side was a fireplace where something was cooking in a pot slung over the flames. There were three mattresses on the floor, one of them draped with a mosquito bar hung over wooden supports. Against the wall was a rough pine table, and some stools and packing-boxes stood about. Clothes hung on pegs driven into the walls. There were two windows and the shutters were open, but the house next door blocked off the sun. As his eyes got used to the bad light Philip saw a little girl playing in the corner with a doll made out of a corn-cob, and a woman standing near the pallet. The sick girl was faintly visible under the mosquito bar. Though he had not seen her in so long he reluctantly recognized the standing woman as Dolores.

Dolores let Gideon sit down on the goods-box from which she had risen and came slowly toward her visitors. She was not corseted at all, and her dress was shapeless and of indeterminate color. Her black hair, lined with gray, was pushed out of the way into a straggly knot. Her throat was stringy, and the veins stood out on her hands.

“Hello,” she said. “What do you want?”

Philip told her how Gideon had fallen off the carriage and they had brought him home. While he talked his eyes kept going from Dolores to Judith. This morning at the inauguration he had been proud of Judith’s elegance, but in this place she looked unreal, like a vision. Her flowered bodice fitted closely about her trim well-laced figure; her hat was white, with four pink plumes and white ribbons tied at one side of her chin; there were black silk lace mitts on her hands, and her petticoat was short enough to show the silver buckles on her shoes.

“Thanks for bringing him home,” said Dolores. “I’ve told him not to jump on moving carriages, but it’s hard work selling, and besides—” she shrugged apologetically—“he always likes to get a look near up at folks from Ardeith and Silverwood.”

Judith went to her. “May I talk to you a minute, Dolores?”

Dolores hesitated, then walked off with Judith toward a window. Gideon sat where he was, nursing his hurts. The little girl with the doll stared at them.

Judith was talking to Dolores in a low voice. Philip could not hear what she said, but at length Dolores exclaimed, “No, Judith. No.” She moved back, her hands together on her breast. “I don’t want for nothing. Thad makes a living on the docks. And as for you,” she added sharply to Gideon, “if you go pestering these folks any more I’ll set you to loading boats like your pa.”

“Yeah,” said Gideon. He blurted out, “I just wanted to see how the lady looked.”

Philip told her he wanted to pay for the basket of fruit Gideon had lost. She took that, though she hesitated until he assured her that it was the coachman’s fault Gideon had fallen. He said it earnestly, though he still believed the child had tumbled down on purpose. These little wharf-rats were too agile to fall off carriages.

The girl on the pallet made a noise in her throat and groaned. “Poor child,” murmured Judith. She went to kneel by the pallet and lifted the mosquito bar.

There was an inarticulate retching sound from the pallet.

Philip sprang forward and glanced at the child. He struck the pillow out of Judith’s hands and snatched her to her feet.

“Get out of here, Judith!” he cried.

“What is it?” she exclaimed in fright, looking back over her shoulder at the moaning child. “Oh my God—it can’t be—”

“Yes it is, said Philip. “Yellow fever.” He was dragging her toward the door.

She broke from him and ran. Philip gripped Dolores’ arm. “How long has she had it?”

“Two or three days. I reckon you’d better go.”

“Is there much fever in this part of town?”

“Quite a lot, all of a sudden.”

Judith exclaimed over her shoulder that she would send some necessities, which Dolores must accept for the sake of her child. They rushed out and scrambled into the carriage. Judith ordered little Philip not to touch her.

As the carriage drew up at the steps of Ardeith she gave him decisive instructions.

“Take off every stitch of clothes you’ve got on and have mammy burn them in the kitchen fire. And take a bath.”

“Not my new blue suit!” little Philip protested. “Father, do I have to burn up my new suit?”

“Yes, son, and your shoes too. Hurry, and don’t let any of the others come near you till you’ve put on fresh clothes.” They were hurrying indoors.

But after they had scrubbed and sent their garments to be burned, he and Judith began to be ashamed of their fright.

“We were in there only a few minutes,” Philip argued. “And there’s always some yellow fever in the summer.”

Judith had never before been close to a case of yellow fever. She asked Philip what it was like.

“You’ll know it if you see it,” Philip said with a little shiver. “Bloodshot eyes and flaming red lips and nostrils, and that awful black vomit. But you don’t get the fever just by being in the house with it.”

Judith felt reassured. She made up a parcel of linens and foodstuffs, and sent them to Rattletrap Square by one of the fieldhands.

Though her parlor was full of guests who had come indoors to escape the mosquitoes plaguing the gallery, Judith lingered in her room, making marks on the heat-softened candle with the end of her comb. Philip came to ask her why she did not come into the parlor.

“I’ll be there,” she said slowly. “I was thinking.”

He told her not to worry any more about Dolores. “You do all you can for her,” he said. “It’s not your fault she won’t take more.”

“I’m not worrying about her. I mean not just about Dolores. I was wondering—” she hesitated.

“About what?”

“Philip, did you notice that all the people we saw down in that beastly district this morning were white?”

Philip leaned his elbows on the bureau and looked out of the window. “It’s a pretty shameful confession to have to make, isn’t it?—but slaves are too valuable to be allowed to live that way.”

“I didn’t know there was anything so awful in the world,” said Judith. “It’s not just Dolores—it’s all of them. What did they ever do to deserve that?”

“What does anybody do to deserve anything?” asked Philip dryly.

Chapter Fourteen

B
ut her own life was so full and rich, Judith told herself proudly as she looked down her dinner-table. In spite of the storms that had raged around and within her Ardeith had reached a triumph of serenity, and she herself had created it.

The long windows were open to the floor so that what air there was might cross the room. The pickaninny at the side of the table pulled the fan of turkey feathers with lazy rhythm, while the servants moved about with plates of rice, roasted poultry stuffed with corn-meal and pecans, hot breads and vegetables cooked with spices, figs and peaches and oranges preserved in syrup, lettuces dressed with olive oil, and flasks of imported wine. They talked merrily, for the diners were all good friends—the Purcells with four of their five children, for the oldest girl was married and Gervaise, who was now thirty-six, had been a grandmother four years; the St. Clairs, with two of their crop of blooming daughters; Alan and Sylvie Durham with the two oldest of their children, and Caleb Sheramy with his son. Mark had died four years ago of a swamp-fever, and freed of his dislike for fashionable furbelows, Silverwood was blooming with porcelains and velvets that Roger Sheramy might have as elegant a background as any young gentleman on the bluff. Judith wondered if she should tell Caleb about her visit to Dolores, and decided not to. He had nothing to offer her except material support; that he was willing to give, but Dolores would not take it, and Judith had a grudging respect for her desire to be left in peace.

They sat at table three hours. No wonder they had the habit, which had struck her as so odd at first, for referring to any time after the midday meal as “evening.” By the time a dinner of any importance was over it generally was evening. When they left the table the servants brought out the horses of those who had to go furthest. David asked for his.

“May I speak to you a minute, David?” she asked as he went out.

“Why yes,” he said, and she followed him to the room across the hall. David waited for her. “What is it, mother?”

She laughed softly, not because there was anything to laugh at but because her pride in him welled up so that she could not help it. “Where are you going?”

He chuckled. “Where do you think?”

“Courting?”

“Don’t I look like it?” asked David. He had a gardenia in his coat, and wore his riding-gloves with the embroidered cuffs. Judith tried to believe that all her children had an equal place in her affections, but there were times when she could not help knowing that she loved David best. He was so like Philip that everything she had learned to understand in Philip she could recognize in David without effort, and his place in her heart was already prepared before he grew up. “What did you want to see me about?” he asked.

She put her hands on his shoulders. “May I kiss you, David?”

He laughed and put his arms around her, bending his face down to hers, and kissed her hard. “There.”

“Thanks.” She was laughing too. “I knew you’d be furious if I started making a fuss over you before the company. Now you may go.”

Still laughing at her silliness, David picked up his riding-crop and went out to his horse. Idiot, she thought lovingly. Thinking enough of any girl to ride off to see her in such killing weather. It was after five o’clock, but the heat had not abated. How splendid he looked, riding down the avenue under the oaks. Too impulsive and too volatile, his father said of him sometimes, too fond of girls and fine raiment and too blithely impervious to advice from his elders, but Judith found such faults more lovable than the calm virtues of her second son.

As he rode out of sight she went back into the house and said goodby to her remaining guests. When they had gone she went out to the kitchen to order a simple supper of wine and fruit and biscuits; they could eat no more than that after such a dinner as they had had already. Little Philip was in the back yard clearing up the weeds around his fish-pond. He had started it when David brought some exotic colored fish from the marsh country near the Gulf. Judith came out of the kitchen and sat on the back step to watch him working at the weeds, helped by several little colored boys. Philip was bossing with regal authority.

“Now look ahere. Be careful not to drop anything in the water. And don’t you be bothering my fish. Just clean up the edges, and if you work good I’ll show y’all the fish my brother David’s going to bring me.”

“Yassah, Massa Philip.”

The little darkies pulled up weeds and slapped mosquitoes busily, following orders with lazy good-humor. Judith noticed with some disapproval that one of them was dressed in the coarse ozenbrig garments of the fields instead of the nankeen and calico worn by the house-boys. She must tell little Philip not to bring boys in from the fields.

The boy in ozenbrig stopped with a handful of weeds and got down on his knees to watch the antics of a bright-colored fish in the water. He reached in with his free hand and poked at it. Judith was about to call and send him back to his proper work when little Philip shouted at him angrily.

“Hey, you! Quit messing around with my fish!”

“Wait a minute, young massa,” the boy exclaimed absently. He pushed at the fish with fascinated interest.

Philip rushed up to him. “You’ll poke in my pond!” He dealt a blow with his fist that sent the colored boy tumbling down on the grass. The other children stopped and stared. “Get on back to work,” Philip ordered them. “And you, Benny, keep your hands out of my pond.”

The boy who had received the blow got up slowly. His hands were doubled at his sides. He took two or three short furious breaths.

“Go on and clean up the weeds,” Philip commanded.

The boy leaned down slowly to gather up the handful he had dropped when he fell. Judith got to her feet.

“Phil!” she called.

She had to call twice before he glanced over his shoulder to say “Ma’am?”

“Come here, Phil.”

“Wait a minute. Get those little weeds just now coming up. They’ll be a yard high pretty soon.”

“Come here, Phil,” Judith repeated.

He obeyed unwillingly. “What did you want?” he asked as he reached the steps.

She put her hands on his shoulders. “Phil, how many times have I told you not to strike the Negroes?”

Philip looked down. “Well ma’am, I
told
Benny to keep out of the pond! He’ll be killing my fish.”

“That’s got nothing to do with it, Phil. I’m ashamed to think a son of mine would strike a boy who can’t fight back.”

Philip puckered his mouth crossly.

Judith went on. “If you haven’t learned the proper way to treat servants, Phil, you’ve no right to have them wait on you. I’m going to send the boys back to the quarters, and you may go to your room and stay there till I tell you to come out.”

“Oh mother, don’t make me do that! I’ll tell Benny I’m sorry. But David won’t give me any more fish if I don’t clean up the pond. He said so!”

“You may finish pulling up the weeds in the morning, but don’t ask any of the boys to help you. Now go indoors.”

“Oh lawsy.” Philip kicked at a tuft of grass.

“Go in, Phil.”

He obeyed, dragging his feet as he went across the gallery. Judith crossed the back lawn to the pond and told the colored children to go back to the quarters. The boy Philip had struck was leaning sullenly against a tree, breaking up a palmetto leaf. As the others ran off she turned to him.

“Is your name Benny?”

He glanced up and made an instinctive little bow to her. “Yassum, missis.”

His face was twisted with helpless anger. Judith laid her hand on his arm.

“It was wrong of you to meddle with the fish when Master Philip told you not to, Benny, but I’m sorry he you. He won’t do it again.”

Benny looked down, still breaking up the dead palmetto fronds. “No’m.”

“What are you doing up at the big house anyway?” Judith asked. “Don’t you belong in the fields?”

“Yes’m. I was pickin’ seeds outen the cotton when young massa come by and said for one of us niggers to come help him do some work up at the big house.” He was answering with a stiff resentment. Judith felt a rush of pity for his hurt pride. How brutal children could be!

Benny looked up at her after a moment, lifting a face like pale bronze, with fine-cut, almost aquiline features and large dark eyes with curling lashes. The late sun glinted on the satiny waves of his hair. Judith gripped his arms with a suddenness that was almost fierce. She did not know if it was a single feature of his or the general expression of them all, or something in the cool arrogance of his attitude that had set her heart to pounding. She had resolved bitterly that she was not going to try to find this child. There were dozens of colored children on the plantation, most of whom she hardly ever saw, and he was lost among them. She did not even know if Philip had made any effort to recognize him.

He waited for her to speak with a quiet deference that had no suggestion of servility. She tried to keep herself from speaking. Might it not be better to let him go while she was still unsure?

But she could not help it. “Who—who is your mother, Benny?” she asked tensely at last.

For an instant he did not reply. She saw that her gentleness had turned his anger at little Philip into shame, and he was blinking back tears that he could not bear to let the mistress see. He tried to speak.

“Her name’s Angeli—” But the effort of forcing out his voice was too much for him, and he broke from her grasp and wheeled around, covering his eyes with his arm and sobbing against the trunk of the tree.

In her sudden wave of resentment that he should be alive and concrete before her she hardly knew he was crying. She simply saw him, with unthinking detestation. But then, he tried to swallow his tears and when he could not stop them he tried to explain them, and she heard the words struggle out between his sobs.

“I’m—so—sick—of bein’—a nigger!”

With an impulsive movement Judith drew him away from the tree and took him into her arms. He sobbed on her breast. She stood holding him, weak with compassion, for his wrong was so much greater than hers.

After a moment he tried to break out of her arms and leave her, in shame at his tears and his confession, but she kept him back.

“Come sit on the steps with me.”

They walked to the gallery edge, her arm around him. The sun was nearly gone. Benny twisted his bare toes through the grass.

“I reckon I went ’n’ acted like a baby, Miss Judith,” he ventured. “Please ma’am don’t tell anybody.”

“I won’t.” They were silent, and she put her arm around him again. After awhile she added, with more effort than it had ever before cost her to say anything, “I’m sorry I can’t make you white, Benny.”

Her tenderness broke down his reserves. “I’m nearabout white,” he blurted. “I’m whiter’n my mammy or my pappy.”

“Who is your pappy?” she asked in a low voice.

“Claude. He’s one of the indigo men. Only he ain’t my sure enough pappy. They says my sure enough pappy was a man who was really white.”

Judith doubled her free hand into a fist in her lap. “They don’t tell you who he was?”

“Well ma’am,” said Benny with the blunt disregard of childhood, “some says he was the master. I dunno.”

“What does your mother tell you?”

“She say it ain’t gonta do me no good to know ’causin’ some bright-skin niggers is got sold before now for sayin’ they was the master’s, and my pappy he gimme a frailin’ when I say I’m too white to be his’n.” Benny sat with his head down and hands dangling between his knees. “But I’m a nigger and I’m too white to be a nigger. It gives me a misery in the heart.”

“Yes,” said Judith faintly, “I know it does.”

Again they were silent. Benny, abashed at having talked so much to a white lady, kicked at the grass, evidently wishing she would give him leave to go back to the quarters. Judith looked away from him toward the darkening sky. There was a great crimson fan over the river where the sun had dropped. Such a beautiful, cruel sky it was, holding in this heat that was still torpid in spite of the twilight. Judith bit hard on her lip, battling again to conquer a resurgence of the fury Benny had done nothing to merit. After awhile, recalling the pity and forgiveness Benny’s mother had taught her, she forced it down. She drew his head to her shoulder.

“Benny,” she said in a voice so low he could not have heard her if her lips had not been close to his ear, “I want to tell you something before you go back.”

“Ma’am?”

“About your misery in the heart. I know what you mean.”

“Yassum. Er—I reckon you don’t though, Miss Judith.”

“Yes I do. Nearly everybody has a misery, Benny.”

“You reckon?” He sounded unbelieving.

She held his head on her breast and stroked his silky hair. “Yes, Benny. White folks too.”

That was hard for him to comprehend and he said nothing. She went on.

“You’ll just have to get used to having a misery in the heart, Benny, because nobody can take it away. You’re mighty lucky to find out when you’re a boy what it’s like because now all the rest of your life you’ll understand other folks when they have one.”

Benny waited some time before he spoke. She wondered if he knew what she was trying to say. Like all children and a good many adults, he probably thought that since she was immune to his own trouble she was immune to all the rest. At length he asked thoughtfully:

“Is you got a misery in the heart, Miss Judith?”

“Yes.”

“What do you do about it, missis?”

“I don’t do anything about it. I can’t. I just keep it in my heart, the way you’ll have to keep yours.”

“Huh,” said Benny. He lifted his head and looked at her, then back at the big house, that temple of the blessed where radiant white folks lived in unimaginably gorgeous autocracy. He asked incredulously,

“What makes your misery, missis?”

“When it’s a really bad one,” she said, “you don’t like to talk about it.”

“Yassum,” said Benny. With a sad triumph he added, “Anybody can see what my misery is, though.”

Judith took an uneven breath. “They don’t have to see how much you mind it.”