Chasing the Sunset(40)
Kathleen placed several lumps of dough in bowls, covered them, and put them next to the stove to rise. Maggie listened, fascinated. She had been reading voraciously from Nick’s library since she was here, trying to make up for the years that she had been denied any form of literature, but she had not seen anything like that here. The closest thing she had seen to either of the publications was Tom Paine’s Rights of Man, and she mentioned this to Kathleen, who snorted derisively.
“Well, Nick is a man, after all. Do you think that he is going to have a book lying around that suggests he is not the be-all and end-all of the universe, and that women need to seek more freedom in order to prosper?”
Maggie laughed and protested. “He is not that bad, Kathleen, you are exaggerating.”
“Yes, I am, aren’t I?” she agreed with a wicked grin. “Well, to be fair, these books are hard to find. Joanne had the devil’s own time finding me a copy of either of these, because a lot of booksellers refuse to carry it, so when one does carry it, the book sells out right away. And it is not as popular with men as Tom Paine, who incidentally was a friend of Mary Wollstonecraft’s. I will bring you my copies of them, if you want.” She turned to face Maggie, her face for once as sober as Duncan.
“I think that you are brave to be able to love again after all that has happened to you, Maggie. I admire you for not giving up, and for trying to do what feels right for you. You do not have to be married to love someone, and I for one do not believe greatly in marriage.” She made a wry face. “You only have to see some of my sister’s marriages to see what I mean. Delia is married to a local planter and has been with child for five out of the last six years; she is nearly worn out from birthing babes, and she is only twenty-four. Her husband John practically roams the countryside looking for trouble to get into and fast women to run around with. I saw two little boys in Geddes the last time I went there that look so much like him, I nearly fell over in shock. Delia is always smiling and gay and she pretends to be happy, but I have seen her face when she thinks that nobody else is looking. She is unutterably miserable. And Grace’s husband beat her until Daniel paid him a visit, one that resulted in her husband’s broken arm, and now he does not lay a hand on her–that we know of.” She sighed and flung down a dishtowel. “Jenny’s happy, and Harvey is wonderful to her—but one out of three? What kind of odds are those? My parents are happy, too, but they have a rare communication that transcends the ordinary . . . having met her, how ordinary do you think my mother? My sisters’ unhappy marriages are part of the reason that my mother keeps trying to find me a husband. She believes that she is responsible for their unhappiness, since she never tried to dissuade either of them from their choices in husbands. She is trying to make up for that by finding me a ‘good’ husband.”
Kathleen stared off in the distance, her eyes sightless for a moment, and then she visibly shook herself. “I have vowed not to marry until I find a partnership just as extraordinary as my parent’s . . . and it looks as if I will be waiting forever, no matter how much my mother pushes me towards every available bachelor that she can find.”
Maggie laughed at the dry tone of Katherine’s voice as she spoke that last part. “Your mother is a character all right; I cannot help but agree with you there.” She was silent for a moment while she finished up her share of the loaves and put them with Kathleen’s. “I would like to read those books, if I may,” she told Kathleen. “I think that Miss Wollstonecraft and Miss Fuller and I may have more than a few views in common.”
“I will bring them with me, then, when I come tomorrow.” Kathleen bit her lip and her voice was hesitant as she spoke next. “Maggie? I am afraid you are going to think this very presumptuous of me, but I went to see Granny Thompson the other day.” Maggie looked inquiringly at her. “She is a local herbalist, quite a gifted healer, really, and she does a rousing business with the local women. Anyway,” she said, and she drew the word out and then rushed the rest of the sentence, the color in her face going wildly red. “She gave me something that helps prevent pregnancy, and I brought it to give to you.” Her blue eyes looked anxiously at her friend. “I hope that you are not angry. I did this out of concern; I was not trying to be a busybody.”
After Maggie finished blushing and stammering, she assured Kathleen that she was not angry, and confessed that the thought of pregnancy had been tormenting her. She turned a much brighter red when she told Kathleen that Nick had not been spilling his seed inside her, but that she knew that was not always enough to keep a pregnancy from ‘catching’. Kathleen pulled a small package out of a pocket in her skirt and showed it to Maggie. The package contained a collection of small sponges, and Kathleen told her that the herbalist had instructed her to soak them in vinegar and insert them inside her before making love. They helped to keep the man’s seed from penetrating into the recesses of your body, she explained, and Maggie nodded. She tucked the packet away, and resolved to use them.
Maggie read the books that Kathleen soon brought her, and she agreed with a great deal that Mary Wollstonecraft and Elizabeth Fuller had said in them; her marriage was a case in point. Had not she in fact sold herself into bondage when she had married David? It did not matter that she had not realized that is what her marriage would be like; she had known that she did not love David, but she was just so glad that she had someone to take care of her and a home to call her own that she had sacrificed her own personal standards for safety.
She had been thinking about her relationship with David a lot lately, and with all the time and distance between those nightmare days and the present, she was able to analyze the marriage with amazing objectivity. She understood now that she had been made to pay for all his troubles–had not she seen him grovel, nearly get down on his knees and beg some of his wealthier clients for their business? Then, the moment they were gone from the house, he had reverted back to the master, and the more he had been made to grovel by his wealthy clients, the more despotic he had become with Maggie. He took out all of his humiliations on her; she had been made to pay the price for all of his perceived debasements. He had to control her, she had come to realize, because that was the only way that he could feel like a man. The more that she was brought to her knees, the higher he stood, and he needed to be above someone; he craved it like a drug. In his eyes, men were stronger than women, both physically and mentally, so he could do whatever he wanted to the ‘weaker sex’, without fear of reprisal, and furthermore, he felt that he owned Maggie so she was his to do with as he pleased.
It bothered her a great deal that she still had not told Nick the truth about the way her marriage had ended. She had started to tell him a hundred times, then the words had frozen on her lips, and she could not force them out no matter how hard she tried. He had taken her at her word about Duncan, had never brought up the subject again, though she had seen his lips tighten when Duncan, who had given up his cane for good, had come by to see her. He resented that odd connection that Maggie had with Duncan. She could feel it in the tightening of his body whenever he laid eyes upon her friend. Still, he had said or done nothing to offend either of them, neither had he appeared to be jealous, and Maggie knew that it must be very hard for him to trust after the lessons he had learned from Mary.
He had praised her honesty over and over, every word he spoke stabbing her like a knife in the heart, until she felt that she must surely die from the pain of it. She had to tell him, and soon. The likelihood of anyone finding her here--and knowing who she was–was slim, but it existed. And Maggie did not want to lie to Nick, even by omission. She loved him, and she wanted to share everything with him. Perhaps he could help her find a way out of this whole mess. The thought lifted her heart; to be able to live without a shadow over her head seemed like a sweet dream.
Maggie might be sure that she loved Nick, but she still was not sure of the depth of his
feelings. He had never said the words, and though he showed the force of his desire a dozen times a day, he had never offered anything to Maggie beyond the present. Never once had he intimated that they were meant to be together for all time, and so she had held back her feelings, too, though I love you had screamed inside her mind a hundred, a thousand times since they had come together. And it was becoming harder and harder to keep the words inside. She dreaded the day in which they might slip out by accident and ruin everything that they had between him.
Some days she was positive that his feelings for her ran as deep as hers for him; on other days she was convinced that he felt only lust for her, and that his feelings would soon fade. On those days, it seemed like a good thing that Maggie had held back something of herself, and she was glad she had not confessed her sins, and her love. Those things could be used as weapons against her when Nick’s lust for her soured or began to fade away.
On the days when he seemed particularly tender, when his eyes caressed her and seemed to speak silently those very words that she was so desperate to hear, she longed to lay her soul bare, to present herself figuratively naked before him as a gift . . . but she never did. There was too much fear left in her, too many scars on her psyche to be really sure of his reaction, so she did nothing.