Free Deep Summer by Gwen Bristow

up—”
    “I know it, dearest. Isn’t there anything I can do to prove I’m sorry?”
    “Yes. Get some plaster and stop up the holes in this cabin.”
    He laughed under his breath. “All right. The next time I go to town. Honey, I did try to tell you how trifling I was.”
    “You aren’t trifling.” Judith reached up and put her arms around his neck. “Hold me tight, like that. Do you really love me as much as you said you did?”
    “I didn’t know you were listening.”
    “I wasn’t. But I heard you. Philip, I love you so much. I don’t care what happens to me as long as I’ve got you.”
    “You aren’t scared any more about the baby?”
    “I’m not scared a bit. I hope I have a dozen and that they all look like you.”
    She held him close and he kissed her, and that night she was not scared.

Chapter Four
    B ut the next day, and the next and the next, she was scared, and though she did not tell Philip, she grew more frightened as the time passed.
    There was nobody she could ask, and even if there had been she did not know what questions to put. Gervaise sent a servant over one day with some lengths of delicate muslin, and a funny little misspelt note, for Gervaise spoke English better than she wrote it. Another day a lady came by and gave Judith some flannel for the baby’s petticoats. She spoke with a French accent. “I am Sylvie Durham. My husband is American, a builder of flatboats. When your trouble is over you will come to see us, yes?”
    Judith said yes, thank you. Everybody in Dalroy seemed to know Philip and to know his wife was with child. But she could not question these strange women. And in the meantime she could feel her child moving within her, and that was very curious, but she did not know what the rest would be like. Philip said when it happened it would be February. Maybe Angelique knew. But Angelique’s English was still not good enough for her to converse much.
    Still, it was comforting to have Angelique. For Angelique had been a lady’s maid, and she could comb Judith’s hair into a dozen exciting coiffures, and sew with stitches so tiny as to be almost invisible. She helped Judith make up the muslin and flannel into garments for the baby. Judith taught her how to make the letters of the alphabet as she herself had been taught to make them in the dame-school when she was a little girl. They had some merry times as the winter fogs drew in and Judith was more inclined to sit by the cabin fire than to go outdoors. She was more glad every day that Philip had bought Angelique to be with her through these worrisome months.
    But her terror of what lay ahead increased as the time passed. One misty day in December while Angelique was washing clothes in the space behind the cabin, Judith went out for a walk. As she neared the tents where the Negroes lived she began to hear groans as of some one in dreadful pain. She stopped where she was, aghast, and a moment later the groans turned into terrible cries like those of an animal being ripped to pieces by the jaws of a trap. Judith rushed toward the fires where the women were cooking. They seemed to be working placidly, too deaf to hear that some one was being tormented to death in the tents, and she ran up breathless.
    “What’s happening in there?” she cried, her words coming in panting little gasps.
    The woman nearest lifted her head. “Ma’am?”
    “Can’t you hear me?” Judith demanded furiously. “What’s happening?”
    The woman glanced back, shrugged and shook her head. “Oh, don’t you bodder, miss. She jes’ gettin’ a baby.”
    Judith put her hands over her ears and stumbled away from the screams, back toward the cabin. When she reached it she flung herself across the bed, her hands still over her ears. But she could hear the screams, faint but unmistakable, and she was listening in a panic when Angelique came in.
    Angelique hurried over to her, speaking anxiously in a jumble of French and English. She sat on the bed