Dominion (20 page)

Oswin, the Englishman, smoldered at him from the pulpit, but when Purchase moved away it was of his own accord, as nothing in the world would have been able to move him otherwise. All his strength had gone over to the thing that afflicted him. He was sick with love.

After the meeting she was gone very quickly with the Englishman, but Purchase pursued them and showed up at every one of their revivals until he could have given Palmer's sermon himself. Once the Englishman even fired a shot at him, telling him he knew how to handle his sort. This was in Bladen County, when he saw him on the road behind their carriage, but Purchase escaped unharmed. Nor did he see it as his business to argue further with the husband, as the only talking he wished for was with the wife.

It was in Georgia that he finally persuaded her to come off with him again. She and her husband had done their preaching that day to a crowd that was mostly slaves but receptive to the message they were sharing. When she looked out and saw Purchase standing at the back of the tent she nodded to him, as if it had been her intention all along to wait five weeks then come to him again.

He did not know what her nod meant, for she had refused to speak to him the entire time of his pursuit, and, as the crowd dispersed after the sermon he was still half surprised when he turned and saw her standing there behind him.

“Are you ready?” she asked.

He nodded and led her to where his horse was and put her upon it. Once he had her he galloped off, with a quick pacing heart, and all want pressed against him from the inside out.

They stopped in a pine stand and slept that night out-of-doors. It was late November and the days still held a little of their autumn warmth, but at night there was nothing deceptive about which time of year it was, and the two of them bundled tight as a single coil of hair all the night long.

When he woke in the morning it was because he no longer felt her under his outstretched arm. He opened his eyes in the half gray of a clouded dawn and found no sign of her, but for another of the little keep-sake coins she had left before.

They had been so rapt in each other's arms he had not even asked her why she changed her mind and came to him, but he thought it must have been his steadfast presence that persuaded her. There on the cold damp ground, with pine needles prickling the side of his face, Purchase felt like a born idiot. She must have had a falling out with her Englishman and only taken him for revenge on the other.

For his own part he could not answer why he behaved as he did, but that it had gotten beyond his ability to govern his own actions. When he realized this he felt a deep penetrating shame that, more than her drumming his emotions and hoaxing him, brought him close to tears. This in its turn increased his shame and he grew angry with himself, as something hard and dark turned over inside of him—showing a burning underbelly that shone in his eyes as he rose that morning and went off again in search of her.

That he should get back to his people he had no doubt, but he was lost to them as he was to himself, thinking only how he would keep the woman from leaving once he had her back.

The night with her had been tender, and the one before that endearing, but after this there would only be the power of his will and her will when they were with each other, locked in contest.

When Purchase disappeared from Stonehouses everyone thought he had simply slipped off for a few days, as he was wont to do when one thing or other had caught his attention. After three days of not seeing him, though, Merian knew something must have happened and tried to keep Sanne calm while he discovered what it was.

He went first to Magnus to ask whether he knew what had happened to his brother. Magnus, looking at his father, knew he had to confess what little he knew. “He sure had it for that preacher woman,” he offered, leaving Merian to ponder aloud whether Purchase could be foolish and unsensible enough to run off after a married woman. Sanne, when she heard this, was filled with woe, worrying that his emotions had led him somewhere irredeemable.

Magnus, for his part, could not understand his brother at all in this instance and, try as he might, could not relate to him. Not long after Purchase disappeared he had the dream again about the woman who lifted her skirts and taunted him. When he awoke, instead of the malaise the dream usually left him with, he found himself thinking about the nights he had spent at the roadhouse with Purchase. He tried then to recall the women he had done his best to avoid looking at before, as he satisfied himself on these pictures drawn from memory. His nature had gotten up, though, and he knew he would eventually have to do something about it.

When he saw Adelia in the kitchen that next morning his eye lingered on her longer than usual, until the girl grew uncomfortable under his staring. It was the first time since the month he arrived that he had
paid any more attention to her than he had the dining room table. This morning, though she was entirely present to him. “What a pretty girl you are,” he said, sounding full of sorrow, as he left the kitchen with his cup of coffee that was mostly milk.

As he walked past her she tried to shrink out of his way, not wanting an involvement that could jeopardize her position.

She thought momentarily about confessing her uneasiness to Sanne later that morning, after the older woman had come into the kitchen, but was not certain Sanne wouldn't reprimand her as having done something to invite Magnus's attention, or else of being the kind of servant who was just a certain way, no matter who the man was or how imprudent the idea would strike a reasonable person. In the end she kept her misgivings to herself, deciding out of hand it was all inappropriate to her station and employment.

As the weeks wore on into winter that year, Magnus did not leave her alone but grew more and more forward with his interest and intentions. In the face of such attention, Adelia found herself growing increasingly ambivalent in her refusals, until she was no longer certain about her position in the matter at all.

Sanne was the first to suspect there was something between them, seeing how Adelia became silent whenever Magnus entered a room, always hurrying herself away or else lingering over him, if she thought no one was paying attention.

When she mentioned Adelia to Merian as a possibility for Magnus, though, he was set against the idea and said he would speak to Magnus about his behavior.

“He can't help if she is who he's drawn to,” Sanne argued.

“Yes, he can,” Merian answered. “Everything can always be helped, and what can't be helped belongs to the devil.”

“Who are you to be so high-and-mighty all of a sudden?” Sanne asked. “Their coming together, if that's what they want to do, can't hurt anything.”

“It just isn't proper,” Merian argued. “And what isn't proper, if it is allowed to happen in a house, begins to break down the very roof.”

“It wouldn't be the first time such a thing has happened,” she answered. “Besides, there's nothing improper about it.”

“He should think about himself in a different way,” Merian countered. “She's not the kind of wife who will make him a good helpmate and partner.”

“And what do you know of that?” Sanne wanted to know. “She's perfectly capable.”

“That's just it,” Merian said. “He needs someone more than just perfectly capable, or else he'll start heading backward.”

“Is that how you chose your wife?”

“It did not hurt,” he answered.

Sanne was angry at him then for assuming airs and growing so far out of his own station that he looked unkindly on another.

“A station isn't a given thing,” he countered, “but something a man makes for himself if he can, and if he doesn't like it he changes it or not—loses or gains what he should in the great marketplace—so that by a certain age he should end up in the correct one.

“I came out here without a station. I was not even a slave. A slave is something that belongs to the system of organization of courts and law. But if I had been taken up on charges, what would the law have called me? It would not have properly known. That is why I came to where there was no law and no station, so I might answer the question myself.”

“Well, you are certainly in one by yourself now,” she said, turning her back and giving him her coldness. “Just what do you think he has done?”

At this Merian was silent, but there was still something in the arrangement that did not sit right with him. Nonetheless, he said to Sanne, “Let them do as they please back there, then, but don't come to me if it turns out poorly.”

Whenever Sanne saw Magnus around Adelia after that she would smile beatifically at both young people, in such a way that put Magnus at ease but made Adelia feel very lonely in the house, for now she knew Sanne would not be her champion against Magnus if it came to that.

She was only twenty-two years old at the time, but she sensed something odd about Magnus's interest in her. She also knew she had to be very careful in the business of love and husbanding, not having anything else in this world. As he continued in his pursuit, though, she eventually could not bear it any longer and took control of the situation one evening, when they were alone, when she gave him a little kiss.

The kiss fired his imagination and he persuaded her to lie with him in an upstairs room after the house had all gone to sleep. By the time she came to him that night his head ached from needing her. It was very intense and passionate then, and even though she felt she had done something she should not have, she came to him again the following night. They burned through with need again that night as well, but when she visited him again the next day he did not want her as much and, in fact, sent her away at the end of the week.

He could hear her crying through the floor when she went back downstairs, but he was helpless to do anything for her. The day afterward she seemed very tired out as she went about her chores, and Magnus tried to avoid her. She continued on in her theater of sadness for the rest of the week, though, until Merian himself had to intervene.

“That is no way to treat a person,” he said, as the two of them worked at repairing a broken door on the barn. “If you didn't want her you should have stayed off.”

“It's not that I didn't want her, but that I wanted her very badly and don't anymore,” Magnus answered. “There are no guarantees in things.”

“You should be shamed to talk to your father that way,” Merian said. “Do you think I'm Purchase to just go support you in whatever you want, instead of what is rightful? They have places where you can treat a woman that way, but my wife's kitchen is not one of them.”

After such a strong rebuke, Magnus did feel ashamed of the way he had behaved and apologized to Merian for it. “I couldn't help it,” he said. “I just couldn't.”

Merian started to tell him that everything we do can be helped but, seeing he was already cast low, decided to leave him to his thoughts. “Well, it is her you should apologize to. You led her to one set of expectations and dashed them. That is no way to live.”

“It is not what I meant,” Magnus said. “I will say something to her.”

Merian wondered why his sons acted as if their wants were so important they could not deny themselves anything for the sake of other people. He did not understand it and counted it as a way people were becoming when they were not before. He felt a fear for Magnus, just as he did for Purchase, that he could not abide by the sacrifices of life but only its bounty.

Marriage is like that too, he thought. Some days you want to be with each other and other days you do not, but you determine how to balance
them so they are fair. You cannot just pursue her one day and send her away the next.

Magnus did not want a wife. He wanted to remain untethered to anything outside of himself, especially anything with so many different kinds of need as a woman. Nevertheless, he did go to Adelia some few days later to try to set things aright.

His heart was by now remarkable heavy with the notion that he had used her wrongly, when his only intention was to be rid of the disturbance that thundered in his own head. It was the same as it had always been for him. Where other men, like Purchase, were constantly thinking of women or their own pleasure, with him it simply all built up then burst forth and went away for a while.

When he saw Adelia she was stooped over the fire trying to coax a bit more heat from the embers. She looked up from her task and backed away a little upon seeing him.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, when she saw he was not moving on. “I thought you didn't want me.”

“I was hoping for a little part of your time,” he answered her.

“You did not seem so interested in it a few days ago,” she managed, looking around the room with pulsating nervousness.

“That is what I wanted to talk to you about. I did not mean to treat you low. It's just—well, I am different from other men.”

“I thought you were exactly the image of a certain kind of man.”

“I do like you, Adelia,” he pleaded. “I like you as much as anybody in the world.”

She turned away from him. He had had these scenes before when he had brought someone else into his situation. Some of the women would be very easy about it, as if nothing had happened, while others set to remonstrating and wailing until they had their fill of self-suffering. He only hoped she was not like the latter.

“When I saw you standing here Monday morning you seemed to me like the whole world that was worth having, and it took all the self-governance I had to keep from reaching out to you. Then, after I finally got you to me, I felt cast down because I knew I could not offer what you wanted.”

“You did not have a problem taking,” was her only reply.

“Adelia, I could not make you happy,” he finished. “I thought it would be better to cut it off before we got too far wrapped up.”