Calvin Baker - Dominion

“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.”

“You didn’t even ask what I wanted. You couldn’t even treat me with that decency but just turned me away from you.” She did start crying then, and Magnus was very moved by her tears.

“What is it you want, Adelia? Tell me that now and I will try to hear it.” He walked closer to her and looked down at the top of her head as she wiped her face with her hand. She looked back up and he saw again that she was very pretty, and was sorry he could not maintain the steadiness of devotion that a good husband must have. He was, however, taken again with wanting for her and touched her very lightly, in case she should be shocked or offended by his gesture.