Free Deep Summer by Gwen Bristow Page A

and gathered Judith into her arms, still talking, though it was some time before Judith could grasp what she said. But Angelique said it over and over, and at last Judith made it out.
    “I get baby one time, miss. I be here to help when it comes your time.”
    Judith raised her head. Angelique said again, “I help you, miss.”
    “Oh,” said Judith. “You had a baby?”
    Angelique nodded.
    “What happened to your baby, Angelique?”
    “It die, miss. We not let your baby die.”
    “And you’ll take care of me?”
    Angelique smiled and nodded. Judith put her arms around Angelique and hid her face. Angelique held her tight, stroking her hair tenderly, and began to sing to her as though she were singing a child to sleep.
    Yé halé li la cyprier
    So bras yé ’tassé par derrier,
    Ye ’tasse so la main divant. …
    Judith could not understand the words, and neither could Philip when he came in and Angelique was still singing. He told her it was the French of the Congo slaves spun into a folksong. But Angelique’s voice was so low and rich and her caresses so tender that Judith did not need any words to make her feel less alone.
    In spite of the big fire the cabin was cold these days. Judith had thought it would not be cold in Louisiana. But the winter had come with a strange damp chill and such clouds of fog that nobody could get warm. Philip had set his Negroes to mending the roof, but it was still not secure against the heavy winter rains, and the wet came through the chinks between the logs. Philip promised to get some more plaster when he went to town, but he forgot it again, for the indigo was being planted and his precious cleared acres crowded the cabin out of his mind.
    In January the fogs cleared and the days were cold and bright, and Judith began to feel better. Then, all of a sudden, it was February.
    Nobody had told her to expect February, except as the name of a month. But she woke up one morning to a day so blue and gold and glorious that she leaped out of bed and leaned her arms on the window-sill, wishing her body was not so heavy because she felt like dancing. The sun was blazing on the oaks and magnolias, brilliant as summer though the air was still cold. The days went by and the glory was still there. Even though Judith felt sometimes so heavy her legs were inadequate to carry her from one side of the cabin to the other, her spirit was on wings. What a strange splendid country, in which February was the peak of beauty. The name sounded like snow and ice, but here the earth was heaving and putting forth green shoots, and the live-oaks were turning up the tips of their branches with eager new leaves that pushed the old ones to the ground, and there were long dark buds on the magnolias. The moss that had been gray on the trees was a shadowy green, and there was life everywhere, life new and stirring and magnificent.
    Why hadn’t somebody told her, Judith wondered, last summer when she had been nearly prostrate with the heat, that February would be like this? Oh, she was sorry for the folk she had left behind in New England, who could not open their shutters every morning to such miracles of gold and sapphire. There would be summer again, and the sky would be like a cup of brass turned down by a pitiless God, but this year she would not mind because she would know the world was turning and soon there would be another February. Maybe those poor souls who first came to New England had felt the same way about the long white winter, because there had been nobody to tell them that in June there would be daisies and the queen’s lace over the fields. What a marvel that first June must have been to them, just as this first February was to her. There should be some way to know beforehand that June in Connecticut was worth the winter, and February in Louisiana was worth the summer and the fogs.
    But maybe it was better just to have it happen. For when it came like this you were thrilled to such ecstasy with the