The Covenant Part 27

But interested as Dr. Linnart was in botany, he was even more captivated by Seena's remarkable capacity for keeping the camp lively, and he was enchanted one morning when she said briskly, 'Biltong's gone. You, Linnart, shoot us an eland.' So he and Dikkop had gone hunting, and although they failed to get one of the huge antelopes, they did knock down two gemsboks, which they butchered on the spot, bringing back to camp large stores of thinly cut strips of the best lean meat.

'Looks good,' Seena said approvingly as she tended a pot in whose liquor the meat would be marinated.

Linnart, hungry to know the procedures of every operation, asked, 'What's in the pot?' and she showed him: 'A pound of salt. Two ounces of sugar. A heavy pinch of saltpeter. A cup of strong vinegar, a little pepper and those crushed herbs.'

'What herbs?'

'Any I can find,' she said. And into this cold mixture she dropped the strips of meat, stirring them occasionally so that each would be well penetrated. When she was satisfied that the gemsbok was properly marinated, she directed Linnart to remove the strips, take them to the sunny side of the camp where the wind could strike them, and leave them there to dry.

When they were hard as rock, with flavor permeating every cell, they were packed in cloth, to be gnawed upon when other food was lacking. 'The best meal for the veld,' Linnart exclaimed as he nearly broke his teeth chewing. 'Better than the pemmican our Reindeer People make. More flavor.'

The best part of each day came in the late afternoon when Seena and the Hottentots were preparing supper, for then Dr. Linnart sat with Adriaan, discussing Africa and comparing it with other lands he had seen. He liked to take down his atlas and press flat the maps of areas he spoke of, and then little Dikkop would crowd in, look at the incomprehensible pages and nod sagely in agreement with whatever the Swede said. Adriaan, who could not read the words, grasped the geographical forms and he, too, approved.

'Look at this map of Africa,' Linnart told the men one evening. 'Your little colony is truncated. It ought to run all the way north to the Zambezi, its natural boundary. And east to the Indian Ocean.'

'Here in the east,' said Adriaan, tapping the map, 'are many Xhosa.'

'Who are they?'

'Tell him, Dikkop.' And the Hottentot expressed his apprehension over the large tribes of blacks that Sotopo had described during their meeting in the glade.

'Mmmm!' Linnart said. 'If that's the case, sooner or later...' And with his forefinger he indicated the blacks moving westward and the trekboers eastward. 'There's got to be a clash.'

'I think so too,' Dikkop said.

'But up here? Toward the Zambezi? Have any of you gone up there?'

'The Compagnie wouldn't allow us,' Adriaan said.

'But the Compagnie lets you live where you are, hundreds of miles from the Cape. What stops you from exploring the north?' When neither of the men responded, he said, 'Men should always move out till they reach the final barriers. East to the ocean. North to the Zambezi.'

If he implied that the trekboers were delinquent in comparison with other peoples who had explored other lands, he had some justification, but if he thought that they held back through lack of adventurousness, he was wrong, as he discovered when at the end of seven months they came back south through the mountains, looking for signs of the Van Doorn farm: Then I learned what trekboer trekboer means, for when we approached the farm where I had spent those four happy months, I saw to my horror that the place had been wiped out. The roof of the hut was flapping in the wind. The kraal was deserted. The gardens had gone to weeds and there was no sign of sheep or cattle or human beings. It was total desolation, and I looked with anguish at the young Van Doorns, trying to antic.i.p.ate how they would accept this tragedy. They were unconcerned. 'Father moved, I suppose' was all my extraordinary guide said, and with no more concern than if the journey involved perhaps a mile, we set off eastward toward a destination we could not guess. At the forty-mile mark I asked, 'Will they be here?' and Van Doorn merely shrugged his shoulders, saying, 'If not here, somewhere else.' I was especially impressed by the indifference of red-haired Seena. When I asked her one night after an especially difficult day fording rivers, 'Where do you think they are?' she spoke like a sailor: 'Who cares a G.o.dd.a.m.n? They've got to be out here somewhere.' And at the end of the seventy-fifth mile, by my calculation, we came upon a handsome valley in which the old man had staked out a circular farm comprising, I calculated, not less than six thousand acres of the best. For this he paid only a handful of rix-dollars annually, was not obligated to fence it, and when he judged the pastures to be exhausted, he was free to abandon it and move some seventy miles to some other spot of equal beauty, to treat it as roughly. 'Tiptoeing through paradise,' they call it. means, for when we approached the farm where I had spent those four happy months, I saw to my horror that the place had been wiped out. The roof of the hut was flapping in the wind. The kraal was deserted. The gardens had gone to weeds and there was no sign of sheep or cattle or human beings. It was total desolation, and I looked with anguish at the young Van Doorns, trying to antic.i.p.ate how they would accept this tragedy. They were unconcerned. 'Father moved, I suppose' was all my extraordinary guide said, and with no more concern than if the journey involved perhaps a mile, we set off eastward toward a destination we could not guess. At the forty-mile mark I asked, 'Will they be here?' and Van Doorn merely shrugged his shoulders, saying, 'If not here, somewhere else.' I was especially impressed by the indifference of red-haired Seena. When I asked her one night after an especially difficult day fording rivers, 'Where do you think they are?' she spoke like a sailor: 'Who cares a G.o.dd.a.m.n? They've got to be out here somewhere.' And at the end of the seventy-fifth mile, by my calculation, we came upon a handsome valley in which the old man had staked out a circular farm comprising, I calculated, not less than six thousand acres of the best. For this he paid only a handful of rix-dollars annually, was not obligated to fence it, and when he judged the pastures to be exhausted, he was free to abandon it and move some seventy miles to some other spot of equal beauty, to treat it as roughly. 'Tiptoeing through paradise,' they call it.

It became a tearful moment when this brilliant young man left the Van Doorn farm and headed toward the Cape with his two wagons filled with specimens. Adriaan and Seena did not cry, of course, for they had known for some time that he must leave them. The tears came from Dr. Linnart, who tried three times to make a flowery farewell speech to the effect that he had lived for nearly a year with nature and with two people who understood it better than he did, but every time he looked at Seena he was so overcome with love and fellows.h.i.+p that tears choked him and he had to start over. It was an expedition, he affirmed, that he would never forget; he ended his comments rather awkwardly: 'My cousin, who publishes his books under his Latin name, Carolus Linnaeus, would send you a copy of the volume in which this material will appear, except, of course, neither of you can read.'

Several of his comments regarding his trip to the Cape were widely circulated in Europe and America; after recounting his horrendous experience in crossing the final mountains, when his specimens ran the risk of being lost in a sudden fog, he told of coming to Trianon: It was impossible to believe that the same family which occupied the huts in the wilderness also owned this delectable country mansion, laid out as meticulously as any French palace. It boasted four separate gardens, each with its special quality, and a facade which, while not ornate in any way, displayed an elegance that could not be improved upon. These Van Doorns make two kinds of wine, a rich sweet Trianon for sale in Europe, where it is highly regarded, and a pale, very dry white wine of almost no body or fragrance until the last bottle has been drunk. Then it remembers beautifully . . .

At last we reached the Cape, which had been described by several Dutchmen as something comparable to Paris or Rome. It was a miserable town of less than three thousand souls, unkempt streets and flat-roofed houses, with some recollection of Amsterdam in the ca.n.a.ls that brought water down from mountain streams. The Castle and the Groote Kerk, a fine gabled octagonal building, dominate life here, the former telling the people what their hands must do, the latter instructing their souls.

The avaricious Compagnie utilizes the Cape not as a serious settlement but as a provisioning station on the way to Java. Compagnie law dominates all: the church, the farmer, the clerk and the future. There are no schools of any distinction, the scholars barely able to keep ahead of their students. Yet the Compagnie officials and the few persons of wealth live indulgently, as I witnessed during a splendid dinner at the Castle, where no fewer than thirty-six fine dishes were offered, and even the ladies, who ate separately, partook most liberally of the governor's largesse.

My visit to the Cape occurred two years prior to my collecting tour in the English colonies of America. These colonies were launched more or less at the same time as the Dutch venture in Africa, and I was constantly oppressed by comparison of the two. The colonies had scores of printing presses, the most lively newspapers and journals, and books in every town. I was able to consult with scholars at several fine colleges, Harvard, Yale and Pennsylvania among them. But my most doleful concern grew out of my extended meeting with Dr. Franklin in Philadelphia, that self-educated genius. He reminded me precisely of Adriaan van Doorn, for the two had identical casts of mind. But because of the cultural opportunities in the English colonies, Dr. Franklin is acknowledged to be a great scholar, while Van Doorn, who can neither read nor write, is called at home Mai Adriaan, Crazy Adriaan . . .

It was my own ignorance that caused a major disappointment. Although I knew some Dutch, I had expected to speak mostly French, because of the large number of immigrants who reached the Cape from that country. I had taken mainly French books with me, but when I tried to use the language, which I speak moderately well, I found no one to talk with. Custom and the stern measures of Compagnie rule have eradicated the language, and throughout the colony no sound of French is heard.

Adriaan and Seena had four children, who were reared in the same slapdash manner that prevailed at Rooi van Valck's, and to a degree, at the hartebeest huts of the Van Doorns. They were raised with love and boundless physical affection, much as if they were young puppies, and they showed signs of becoming close copies of their wandering father or their rowdy and profane mother. The first and third had red hair inherited from the Van Valcks; the second and fourth, light blond hair like the Van Doorns; and in 1750 it seemed probable that they would be frontier nomads like their parents, illiterate, contemptuous of Compagnie authority, and delightfully tied to the soil of which they were a part. In a few years strange young men would wander in to court the girls and then start eastward to launch loan-farms of their own, stepping off the six thousand acres to which they felt they would always be ent.i.tled. 'The land out there is limitless,' the trekboers proclaimed. 'We can keep moving till we meet the Indian Ocean.' And if a man kept his farm for about ten years before leapfrogging to virgin soil, the process could continue for another hundred years.

'Of course,' Adriaan said when such predictions were being made, 'sooner or later you're going to run into the Xhosa.'

'The what?' the newer trekboers would ask.

'The Xhosa.'

'And what in h.e.l.l are they?'

'The blacks. They're out there, beyond the big river.'

But since he was one of the very few who had seen them, and since the farms were prospering in the new lands, the Xhosa barrier was ignored.

In many ways the Van Doorn farm now resembled that of Rooi van Valck: grandfather, grandmother, Adriaan's family and his brothers', the numerous grandchildren, and many servants, and the large herds of cattle. Life was good, and when one of the women cried at midmorning, 'I want someone to chop this meat,' any man in hearing distance was eager to help, because this meant that the cooks were going to make bobotie, and there was no dish better than this on the veld.

Seena, who had often made it for her father, usually took command. In a large, deep-sided clay baking dish she placed the chopped beef and mutton, mixing in curry and onions, all of which she allowed to brown while she pounded a large handful of almonds mixed with additional spices. When all was blended and seemingly done, she whipped a dozen eggs in such milk as was available, and threw this on top, baking the entire for about an hour. While the smell permeated the area, she boiled up some rice and took the lid off her crock of chutney. No matter how big the baking dish, no matter how few the diners, there were never any sc.r.a.ps when Seena made bobotie. 'All credit to the curry,' she always said.

To sit at a table after a hard day's work and to have a mug of brandy and a huge plateful of bobotie was the kind of treat that kept a farm contented.

Occasionally Grandfather Hendrik brought out his big Bible, hoping to instruct the children in their alphabet, but they felt that if their parents and their uncles and aunts survived without reading, so could they. But once or twice the youngest boy, Lodevicus, who was now eleven, showed signs that he might be the one who would return to the earlier scholars.h.i.+p of the Van Doorns who had lived in Holland. He would ask his grandfather, 'How many letters must I learn if I want to read?' and Hendrik, referring to the Dutch alphabet, would reply, 'Twenty-two.' And he would show the boy that each letter had two forms, small and capital, taking unusual care in explaining that in Dutch, unlike other languages, capital IJ was not two letters but one. It was all too confusing for Lodevicus, and soon the boy was out rampaging with the others.

However, old Hendrik noticed that it was this same Lodevicus who was beginning to show impatience whenever Adriaan disappeared on one of his explorations: 'Why isn't Father here to help with the work?' And he became quite agitated if Seena accompanied her husband, as she liked to do: 'Mother ought to be home, making us bobotie.' The three other children accepted their father's strange behavior and showed no concern when he was absent for months at a time. Moreover, they enjoyed it when their parents began to say, 'People are crowding in. Too many Compagnie rules. That valley where the cattle grazed last year looks better.' But Lodevicus said, 'Why can't we stay in one place? Build us a house of stone?'

Hendrik and Johanna, always willing to move when they were younger, now sided with their grandson: 'Lodevicus is right. Let's build a house of stone.' And they argued that this piece of land was good for another twenty years, if properly managed. But Adriaan became increasingly restless, and red-headed Seena backed him up: 'Let's all get out of here!' So the wagons were loaded, the huts were abandoned, and with little Dikkop in the lead, everyone moved eastward, but along the way, Hendrik whispered to his grandson, 'Lodevicus, when you're older, you must stop wandering and build your house of stone.'

It was during one such journey that old Hendrik, now sixty-nine, collapsed and died. This was no great tragedy; his years had been full and he had lived them at the heart of a lively family whose future seemed secure. But there was the matter of burial, and this posed a difficult problem, for whereas Hendrik had been a religious man who would have wanted G.o.d's words to be read over his grave, the family no longer contained anyone who could read. Johanna brought out the old Bible and there was serious talk of burying it with the old man who had loved it, but at this moment Lodevicus happened to look away and saw a rider coming down the hills to the west.

'A man comes!' he called to the mourners, and Dikkop hurried off to ascertain who it might be. Within a short time a stranger rode up, tall and thin, wearing dark clothes and broad-brimmed hat, but no gun of any kind. When he reined his horse he looked with piercing eye at each of the Van Doorns, and said in a voice that seemed to come from deep within the earth, 'I have been searching for you, Van Doorns, and I see that my arrival is timely.' Alighting, he strode to the grave, looked down and asked, 'What sinner has been called to face the judgment of his Lord?'

'Hendrik van Doorn.'

'The same,' the tall man said. 'He alone among you was saved, is that not true?'

'He knew the book,' Johanna said, pointing to the Bible.

'Let us bury him with prayer,' the stranger said, and while the commingled family bowed, he launched into a long supplication, beseeching G.o.d to forgive the grievous sins of his wayward child Hendrik, whereupon red-headed Seena began to snicker, for if there had been any Van Doorn who was not wayward, it was Hendrik.

The stranger paid no attention to this irreverence, but continued his endless prayer. The Hottentots who had worked for Baas Hendrik, some from the earliest days, stood respectfully to one side. They had loved the old trekboer as a father, and the old patriarch had often seen them as children, using the whip when he felt it was needed, rewarding the industrious when he returned with cloth and implements from the cattle trading. He never understood why they so readily drank themselves into a stupor, or why their children ran away to become vagrants rather than work for him. He had acknowledged them to be master herdsmen, far better than the pesky Bushmen still out there sniping at colonists with their poisoned arrows. When the prayer finally ended, the stranger said peremptorily, 'Now you can bury him. He's on his way to meet his Maker.'

'He's dead,' Seena said brusquely. 'He had a d.a.m.ned good life and he's dead.'

'I take that you're the daughter of Rooi van Valck. By your red hair, I mean.'

'I am.'

'I have been sent by the Compagnie to bring the word of G.o.d to the wilderness. I am Dominee Specx, of Huguenot lineage, and I have been living at the new town of Swellendam. I am commissioned to marry and baptize, and to bring families like yours back to the ways of the Lord.'

'You're welcomed,' Johanna said, as matriarch of the sprawling family.

'You're on your way to a new farm?'

'We are.'

'They're going to collect the rents on farms now.' 'They'll get none from us,' Adriaan said sharply. 'We've farmed where we willed and paid taxes to no one.'

'That's ending,' the stranger said. 'Beginning this year, all will be collected.'

'All but us,' Adriaan said. 'We explored this land. We occupied it alone. And it belongs to us, not the Compagnie.'

Predikant Specx asked if he could ride with them to the new site, and Johanna said, 'Yes, if you will read to us from the Bible.'

And it was in this way that Lodevicus van Doorn memorized the great, stirring pa.s.sages of the Old Testament, the experiences of Abraham and Joshua in their wildernesses, the love stories of David and Ruth. Night after night, as the tall dominee sat by the candle, intoning timeless stories of men who wandered into strange lands, Lodevicus reflected on how much he had missed in the years when he could not read the Bible, and he asked Specx how long it would take him to learn, and the dominee said, 'One week, if G.o.d commissioned you.'

To the surprise of the Van Doorns, he proved to be a congenial traveling companion, eager to share the work, willing to share the hards.h.i.+ps. At the riverbanks he was often up front with the Hottentots to guide the oxen across, and he was a strong man with an axe when they settled on their new land and it came time to cut wood. Nor was he reticent, as some predikants were apt to be. He entered any argument, made his statement, and listened to those who tried to rebut him. He was fun at meals, for he had a most voracious appet.i.te and startled the children with the amounts of food he consumed: 'I do believe I could eat that entire bobotie.'

'I'm sure you could,' Seena said. She alone displayed animosity toward the predikant, an inheritance from her father, who had fought the church incessantly, and one afternoon he took her aside and said, 'Seena, I know your father. I've fought with him. Last year he threw me off his farm when I went there to talk with him about G.o.d. He roared, "I need no G.o.d meddling in my affairs." And now you're roaring at me.'

'We don't need you here, Dominee. We're doing very well.'

'I'm sure you are, Seena. You and Adriaan are falling into the footsteps of your father'

'Not a bad way to fall,' she said sharply.

'I'm sure it isn't. I've shared great love and happiness living with you.'

'And great pans full of bobotie, too.'

'I would gladly pay, Seena, had I the money. But I travel alone, I travel with nothing, like the original men who did the work of Jesus.' When Seena started to comment scathingly on his acceptance of charity, he took her by the hands and said, 'For myself, I am ashamed to come to you with nothing. But I bring you a gift greater than any you will ever know. I bring you the love of G.o.d.'

'We have His love,' Seena said harshly. 'He prospers our farm. He increases our flocks. We wors.h.i.+p Him in our way.'

'But you cannot always accept everything and give nothing.'

'You seem to.'

'I give you the greatest gift, salvation.'

'You just said the greatest gift was love, or something. Now it's salvation. Dominee, in some ways you're a fool.'

He was not insulted by her rejection. Without ever trying to divert her criticism, he plodded on with his message: 'Seena, I've come to marry and baptize. I want the first marriage to be yours.'

'I need no prayers said over me. I have four children . . .'

'Legally, if you are not properly married, and Adriaan died . . .'

'Adriaan dies, I keep this farm,' she said defiantly.

Specx ignored this bravado and said, 'But your children should be baptized, Seena.' And when she started to protest that they were getting along all right as it was, he interrupted sharply: 'Seena, the world's changing. Swellendam has legal offices now. Soon there'll be an effective arm of government out here. Taxes will be collected. Laws will be enforced.'

'You mean this n.o.ble land will be hammered down till it looks like the Cape?'

'Exactly. G.o.d and law and decency follow each the other. Seena, allow your children to be baptized.'

But Seena was adamant, and for the time being, Specx dropped the subject. Working alongside them, he helped the Van Doorns establish themselves on what might be called a double farm: six thousand acres to Adriaan van Doorn, six thousand to his brothers, side by side. But when the hartebeest huts were started, the dominee returned to the matter of baptisms: 'I most urgently plead with you to have your children brought into the holy family of the church. You owe it to them. They're not going to live out their lives in this wilderness. There will be churches here before they marry, and they must belong or their lives will be cut off'

'I've lived without churches for thirty-four years,' Seena said. 'Now get back to work and leave me to my cookingso that you can gorge yourself before you leave.' He replied that he did not intend to depart before the children were baptized.

The argument changed dramatically when Seena's two daughters rode up from the south, accompanied by their husbands and two baby girls: 'We want to be married. We want our children to be baptized.'

'G.o.d be praised,' the dominee said, and Johanna said, 'We'll make one of Willem's bread puddings to celebrate,' and Adriaan was surprised at how vigorously his mother partic.i.p.ated in the preparations, for Johanna was visibly delighted that her granddaughters were to be properly married, that her great-grandchildren were to be baptized.

None of the huts was finished when the various ceremonies were performed, but this did not stop the women from preparing a grand feast of mutton, dried fruits, baked cauliflower, carrots, pickled cabbage and pudding, with a whole ox roasted for the servants. And the conclusion of the day was marked by a strange occurrence: the boy Lodevicus came before the dominee and said, 'I, too, wish to be baptized.' And when this was done, he added, 'I want it written in the Bible.'

So the old book was brought out, and Predikant Specx shuddered when he saw how it had been neglected, lacking a whole generation on the page of marriages and births; he called for some implement for writing, but of course there was none.

So he sat with the Bible on his lap and pointed at the various squares where Johanna should have been entered as the wife of Hendrik, and Seena as the wife of Adriaan. He showed them where the daughters and their husbands should be printed, and then where Adriaan's two sons should be placed: 'Lodevicus, this is your square, right here, and when you learn to write, you're to put your name here, and your wife's here, and your children down here. Do you understand?' Lodevicus said he did.

Adriaan made a fearful mistake when he confided to his four children the thoughts he'd had while wrestling with Rooi van Valck for the hand of his daughter: 'You have no idea how big your grandfather was. Tell them, Seena.' And with profane descriptions she told the awe-struck children of her life at the Van Valcks', and of the numerous wives and the score of children. Three of the young Van Doorns relished these tales, for they explained the red hair in their family and the l.u.s.tiness of their mother.

But when Lodevicus, the youngest child, robust, white-haired, very Dutch in appearance, heard his father actually say, 'I knew I was wrestling with the devil, and he would have gouged out my eyes, except your mother bashed him in the head with a log,' he was overcome by a feeling of loathing, for he was convinced that Rooi van Valck was the devil. Judging his mother and her harsh ways, he was convinced that she was the devil's daughter, and that if he did not exorcise himself, he would forever be contaminated with h.e.l.lish sin.

In 1759, when he was twenty years old, he experienced a theophany so palpable it would dominate the remainder of his life. Whenever a crisis approached he would be able to evoke this sacred moment when G.o.d spoke to him beside the stream, commanding him to go to the Cape to find for himself a Christian wife who would counteract the satanic influence of his mother: 'You cannot read. Go to the Cape and learn. You live in sin. Go to the Cape and purify yourself. Your father and mother are of the devil. Cross over the mountains, go to the Cape and find a Christian wife to save them.' The Voice stopped. The night fell silent. But a light glowed to the north toward the mountains, and he fell on his knees, begging G.o.d for strength to obey His commands, whereupon the light intensified and the Voice returned: 'You are the hammer who shall slay the infidel.' There was no more.

For the next few weeks Lodevicus walked by himself, pondering how he might get to the Cape to fulfill G.o.d's commandments, and he spent much of this time watching his parents for signs of their satanism. He found none in Adriaan, whom he dismissed as an ineffectual, but he did see in Seena's robust paganism much evidence of her d.a.m.nation. She swore. She drank gin whenever any was available. And she was most offensive in teasing him about when he was going to find himself a wife.

'Get on a horse, ride in any direction, and grab the first young thing you see,' she said. 'One's about as good as another, when it comes to running a farm.'

He shuddered at such blasphemy, remembering that the Voice had told him that he was destined for a special bride who would bring light and Christianity to the trekboers. And one night, when he could bear his mother's abuse no more, he went to the kraal, saddled a horse, and rode westward in the darkness.

He moved from farm to farm, always aware that when he and his bride returned they would bring decency into this wilderness. On two occasions he stayed with families that had marriageable daughters, and there was a flurry of excitement when he rode up, for he was a big and handsome man, with broad shoulders and blond, almost white, hair, but he had no eye for these girls, dedicated as he was to his commission. At this stage in his life he knew the Bible imperfectly, but he imagined himself to be a son of Abraham heading back to the homeland to find a bride of decent heritage.

In this frame of mind, his entire being focused on the Cape, he approached the small settlement of Swellendam, nestled among hills and distinguished by some of the loveliest white houses in the colony. As he entered the village he wondered where he might stay, for already people in towns had become less hospitable than those in the country, where a traveler could expect an enthusiastic welcome wherever he stopped, and he was walking aimlessly when he heard the resonant voice of Dominee Specx: 'Isn't this Lodevicus of the Van Doorns?' When Vicus said, 'Yes, Dominee,' the predikant asked, 'And what brings you to this fair village?' and the young man made the startling explanation: 'Because G.o.d has ordered me to the Cape to take a wife.'

By no gesture did Predikant Specx betray any reaction to this extraordinary statement; instead he invited Lodevicus to the parsonage, informing him that a widow nearby would provide him housing for a small fee; then, sitting him upon a chair, he asked, 'Now what was it that happened to you?' When the epiphany was described, Specx said, 'I believe G.o.d has visited you.' And he suggested that they pray, but before they could do so, a young woman of twenty-two, her hair drawn tightly back against her head, revealing a face of calm austerity, came into the study with a forthright question: 'Who came here with you, Father?'

'Lodevicus, of those Van Doorns I told you about.'

'Oh, yes. How are your parents?'

'Poorly,' Lodevicus said, and before she could say she was sorry, he added, 'They know not G.o.d.'

'Yes, Father told me.'

'He has been called of G.o.d,' the dominee said, 'and we were about to give thanks.'

'May I join?' the girl asked.

'Of course. This is my daughter, Rebecca,' and the first thing young Van Doorn did in the presence of this quiet, stately girl was kneel beside her and pray.

When they rose, Specx explained to his daughter: 'The Lord commanded him to learn how to read and write. I think we could teach him.'

So for the next four weeks father and daughter instructed Lodevicus in his letters, and by the end of the period he was reading in the Bible. He also attended every service conducted by Specx, and later asked for extensions of the sermon's main theses. It was a time of great awakening, with ideas ricocheting about the white walls as the young man formulated the large concepts that would animate him the rest of his life. So powerful was the influence of his epiphany that not once in these days did he contemplate terminating his journey at Swellendam and asking for Rebecca's hand in marriage; the Lord had said that his bride awaited him at the Cape, and he intended setting forth for that town as soon as he was satisfied that he could read.