“How much money would you want for all your slaves, if you were going to sell them?” she asked quietly.
“Oh about five thousand, I rec’on. I haven’t many now. I sold a good many last Spring, but I’ll buy a good lot more when I go back.”
She knelt by his chair, and clasped his arm with her hands, looking pleadingly up into his face. “Roger, I have never asked a favor of you since our marriage. You know how I abhor slavery. I cannot understand it, and never shall. I cannot imagine one human being selling others as if they were cattle without soul or feeling. Let me buy them of you, Roger. I will free them, and hire them to work on your plantation. Then, parents would not be torn away from their children, as you say is often the case now, and God would bless us for doing right in his eyes.”
Roger burst into a loud guffaw. “That’s rich. By thunder! if it ain’t. You would take my money to purchase my slaves, then liberate them. What do I make by the deal?”
“But I am speaking of my money, Roger. Surely I have a right to do as I please with my own.”
“With mine own,” mimicked Roger. “And pray tell me what is your own? Look at your marriage contract, madam, and see what that tells you. Everything belonging you became mine when I married you. Do you think I would have married you else? You can’t touch a farthing of it without my consent.”
“And do you mean to say that you would refuse to give me a paltry thousand pounds of my own money to do as I please with it?”
“You have understood my meaning fully, my lady. Not a sixpence do you get out of me for the purpose of liberating my slaves. I’d give you any amount you wanted for any other purpose.”
Mary rose in indignation, and raised her hand warningly. “Then beware, Roger Willing, of what is coming. I saw it as I knelt beside you, I see it now. God will send a terrible calamity upon you.” She bent forward as if she saw some awful vision before her, and Roger watched her, fascinated. “Be warned in time, miserable man, and repent ere God’s wrath overtakes you.”
Roger placed his hands before his eyes, and tried in vain to steady his voice as he shouted: “Cease your idle croaking, woman; you are enough to drive one mad. Have you not seen and heard of the Willing temper which stops at nothing when once aroused? Shall I give you a specimen of it now; now, I say?” His voice rose almost to a shriek, while his face became purple with rage.