The Covenant Part 37

It was there when daylight came into the cabin, accusing him. He did not shave that morning, nor take any food. The young captain left him severely alone, but at midafternoon he returned, picked up the revolver, and banged it down again: 'Good G.o.d, man! It's your duty. Shoot the filthy blighter.' When Richard was unable to respond, the young man said, 'I'll testify. I've heard everything, G.o.d knows. If you want to shoot 'em both, I'll testify for that, too.'

But the Saltwoods of Salisbury were not a family that solved problems by shooting. In Parliament, Peter had been challenged to a duel by a foolish city member and had ridiculed the man into retreating. In the wilds of Illinois, young David had refused to gun down an Indian caught trespa.s.sing, although his neighbors shot them for much less. And in the South Atlantic, with storms rising as the coast of Africa hove into sight, Richard could not bring himself to shoot a young wagon builder and perhaps the man's mistress as well. Instead he waited till dusk, then told his cabin mate to put away the revolver while he went next door to talk with his sister-in-law, as she had sometimes phrased herself.

'Vera, your behavior's been shameless.'

'What do you mean?' she said, bristling.

'The bulkhead. It's very thin.' She looked at the wall in amazement, tapped upon it and heard nothing. 'We don't make noises, the captain and I,' Richard said. 'We're gentlemen.'

She tapped again, whereupon the captain, lounging in bed, tapped back. It sounded like the explosion of a gun. 'My G.o.d!' she said, covering her face.

'Yes. The captain offered me his gun, wanted me to shoot you both.'

This had quite the opposite effect from what he had intended. Vera stiffened, lost any sense of contrition, and faced him boldly. 'I'm in love, Richard. For the first time in my life I know something that you've never known, will probably never know. What it's like to be in love.'

'You're a foolish woman on a lonely s.h.i.+p . . .'

Instead of attempting to defend herself, she laughed. 'Don't you think I know that your poor little Hilary is sadly damaged? That you're desperate to find him a wife ... to get him back on course? I know that. Everyone knows it.'

'Who told you?'

'Simon Keer. The Reverend Simon Keer. Oh, at the public meetings he extolled your brother. So did your mother. But when I spoke with Keer alone, what do you think he said? That Hilary's a bit of an a.s.s. Those were his words. He said I might be able to do something with him, the LMS certainly wasn't able to.'

'He told you that?'

'What else could he tell me, if I asked him in all honesty?' 'But Keer's the reason ... He sent Hilary to Africa.' 'What he said was "Some young men, especially from Oxford . . ."' 'Natural envy from a man without an education.' "'.,. some young men from Oxford take religion too seriously. It addles them."'

'But Keer marches up and down England, lecturing about the missions.'

'He does so for a purpose, Richard. He wants to end slavery. Doesn't give a d.a.m.n about religion ... in the old sense.'

'What do you mean?'

'And neither do I.'

The blasphemy staggered Saltwood, and he sat down abruptly, whereupon Vera confided in a rush of words that it had been she, not her mother, who was desperate to find a husband. She loathed being a spinster, the afternoon teas, the sober dresses. Hilary, off in Africa, had been a last chance and she had grabbed at him. 'Your mother was so afraid I'd be put off by the long sea voyage.' She laughed nervously. 'I'd have fought my way aboard this s.h.i.+p. It was my last chance.'

Richard had never heard a woman talk this way, had never imagined that a Lambton of Salisbury could. And now the girl was saying, 'The journey's changed everything. You're no longer responsible for me. I'm going to marry Thomas.'

'No minister would'

'Then we'll marry ourselves. When we reach South Africa he'll go to his land, and I'll go with him.'

'But Hilary will be there. Waiting.'

She did not even reply to that. She laughed in a way that caused her shoulders to shake, after which she took Richard by the arm, pulled him to his feet, and helped him out the door. She would discuss the matter no further, and that night both Richard and the captain could again hear rumbles from the adjoining cabin.

'You goin' to shoot 'em?' the captain asked.

'No! No! Stop such questions.'

'Then I will.' And there had to be a scuffle before Richard could wrest the captain's revolver from him. But this did not deter the violent young man, who felt that somehow his honor, and that of his regiment, had been impugned, for he burst out of his cabin, knocked loudly on the adjoining door, and demanded that Carleton go below 'to your proper quarters, d.a.m.n you.' When the young wagon builder tried to slip past, the captain swung a mighty blow at his head, knocking him down the ladder.

'I hope he broke his neck,' the officer growled as he returned to bed, and after some painful moments of silence he felt compelled to say, 'Salt-wood, I can understand why you had to leave the regiment. You were a disgrace to the uniform.' For two days he refused to speak to his cabin mate, but on the third day, with tears in his eyes, he clasped Saltwood's hand as if they were brothers and said, 'Richard, dear boy, is there anything I can do to help?'

'There is,' Saltwood replied in deep grat.i.tude. 'When we stop at Cape Town, have that miserable blighter thrown ash.o.r.e. I promised Mother I'd deliver this girl to Hilary, and by G.o.d, I shall, damaged or not.'

So when the Alice Grace Alice Grace put in for replenis.h.i.+ng, none of the pa.s.sengers belowdecks were allowed ash.o.r.e, for they were docketed to Algoa Bay, three weeks more sailing along the coast. But the young wagon builder who had dared to make love to a lady of quality was thrown onto the wharf, with his axes and angles, while the lady of quality wept for him from the railing. put in for replenis.h.i.+ng, none of the pa.s.sengers belowdecks were allowed ash.o.r.e, for they were docketed to Algoa Bay, three weeks more sailing along the coast. But the young wagon builder who had dared to make love to a lady of quality was thrown onto the wharf, with his axes and angles, while the lady of quality wept for him from the railing.

She was rudely dragged away by Richard, who said with fierce determination, 'You must go on to Hilary. As you promised Mother.' And all the time the Alice Grace Alice Grace stayed in Cape Town, she was kept prisoner in her cabin, guarded by the brother-in-law who stood guard outside, relinquis.h.i.+ng his position to the captain when sleep was necessary. Even when the governor invited all the captain's guests to a gala, she was not allowed to attend lest she meet with Thomas Carleton and run away. stayed in Cape Town, she was kept prisoner in her cabin, guarded by the brother-in-law who stood guard outside, relinquis.h.i.+ng his position to the captain when sleep was necessary. Even when the governor invited all the captain's guests to a gala, she was not allowed to attend lest she meet with Thomas Carleton and run away.

She remained in her cabin even when the s.h.i.+p resumed its journey, as did everyone else who had one, for a wintry gale blew up, driving the vessel far south, reminding the sailors of Adamastor, the tempestuous giant who guarded the Cape in the time of Vasco da Gama, and of whom Luis de Camoens had written with such brilliance.

Day after day the winds raged, forcing waves so high across the bow of the s.h.i.+p that they flooded cabins. At times the vessel plunged downward in such steep and sickening falls that everyone belowdecks was sent flying in one direction and then another as shrieks and wails competed with the howling winds. Sleep was impossible and food unthinkable; at numerous times, when her wet and lonely cabin s.h.i.+vered as if its bulkhead might splinter, Vera huddled in a corner, fearful of the moment when the voyage would end, terrified of its continuance, but never did she give way to superst.i.tion and castigate herself or her actions with Thomas as being in any way the cause of this violent storm. She was glad she had known him, even for just their brief pa.s.sage through the tropics, and she prayed that in some mysterious way she might meet him again.

Alone, at the heart of a shattering tempest, she changed from being a meek English spinster and became a mature woman with a surprisingly independent mind. She had enjoyed being loved by a strong man and realized that she could never return to the dreamy afternoons of a cathedral town. As for marrying a missionary, that was quite impossible, but what she would do she did not know. Once, as the s.h.i.+p fell sideways in a plunge that could have torn it apart, she clung to her bed to prevent being swept away and cried, 'If we make land, I'm an African.' And she shook her fist in some wild direction, supposing the storm-girt continent to lie in that quarter.

On the seventh day of the storm, when the little barque was well down toward polar waters, pa.s.sengers began reciting old tales of s.h.i.+ps, rudderless and sails gone, being driven relentlessly southward till ice entrapped them, holding them forever in its embrace: 'A graveyard of s.h.i.+ps down there, masts erect. Everyone aboard frozen stiff and standing erect till judgment day.' They told also of the Flying Dutchman: 'Captain van der Decken, out of Rotterdam. One of his great-grandsons settled at the Cape years ago. Swore he could round the Cape in a storm like this, swore an oath to do so. He's out there somewhere, still trying to breast the Cape, and will be till the people frozen down there are called to judgment.'

The poor s.h.i.+p was so knocked about that when the storm finally abated and the sun allowed the captain to calculate his position, all were shocked to learn how far south they had been driven; they were indeed on their way to the ice, and now, as they turned north toward Algoa Bay, they were humbled and chastened in spirit, so that even the young captain felt remorse at the way he had wanted to treat the awakened young woman in the cabin next to him, and he knocked on her door to apologize.

'I'm sorry,' he said.

'I'm not,' she replied.

'In the storm,' the captain confided, 'I thought once or twice we must surely sink. And do you know what I thought next?' He smiled at her engagingly, a man much younger than herself, endeavoring to reach understanding. 'I thought how utterly insane I'd been to interfere in your affairs. I wanted to shoot you, you know.'

'I was told.'

'Madam, would you allow me to make amends? I was such an a.s.s. Whom you love makes no difference to others.' And to her astonishment, he fell to one knee, took her handand kissed it.

The scene at Algoa Bay in the winter of 1820 was one of historic confusion, confusion because five s.h.i.+ps like the Alice Grace Alice Grace were trying to unload pa.s.sengers in the open roadstead without a wharf to aid them, historic because a whole new type of person was coming ash.o.r.e to add a new dimension to South African life. were trying to unload pa.s.sengers in the open roadstead without a wharf to aid them, historic because a whole new type of person was coming ash.o.r.e to add a new dimension to South African life.

The confusion was monumental, both in the bay and ash.o.r.e. Captains endeavored to anchor their s.h.i.+ps as securely as possible, but wind and tide tossed them vigorously, so that anyone trying to debark was in peril. Long ropes were led ash.o.r.e through the water; they would be used to haul the boats to the beach. Women and children, of which there were aplenty, were crowded into the rude boats and taken ash.o.r.e through the surf. Occasionally a boat broke loose to wander off, pa.s.sengers screaming, until some stout-hearted swimmer came to rescue it.

Some women, having come seven thousand miles to their destination, flatly refused to debark, trusting neither the frail boats nor the men guiding them, but bellowed orders from the s.h.i.+p's officers usually forced them loose from the railings to which they clung; a few had to be dropped bodily into the tossing boats, and these ran the risk of broken limbs. Some daring children, unable to wait any longer to reach the paradise about which they had been constantly told, leaped gaily into the water as the lighters neared the beach, gasped and spat and spluttered toward sh.o.r.e, screaming their delight. Their mothers watched anxiously till they were lifted out of the water and onto the shoulders of men who would carry them through the surf. Among those who helped the immigrants to safety were some Xhosa who only a year before had flung themselves against Grahamstown.

Ash.o.r.e the confusion worsened: 'The party from Manchester, over here! Liverpool, over there! Glaswegians, stay by that dune. Please, please! The Cardiff people must come over here to the big man with the top hat!' Das.h.i.+ng from one end of the beach to the other, instructing everyone what to do, was Colonel Cuyler of Albany, New York, now in charge of a much more pleasant task. But even here the energetic man encountered troubles, for the government had appointed him to instruct the immigrants in harsh facts overlooked in England when the glories of South Africa were being extolled: This is not yet a land of milk and honey. It's a land of guns. Never, never go into your fields without your muskets.'

In addition to the scrambling immigrants, the sh.o.r.e was cluttered with Boer farmers who had driven in, from sixty and seventy miles away, in heavy wagons pulled by fourteen or sixteen or twenty oxen, and these men forced hard bargains with the newcomers, offering to cart them and their possessions to their new homes for outrageous prices. But what alternative did the immigrants have? So day after day wagons were loaded, whips were cracked, and teams of stolid oxen began the long journey to the new paradise.

In the waiting crowd ash.o.r.e was Reverend Hilary Saltwood, come to greet his bride. He was still extraordinarily thin and visibly entering middle age, for he was thirty-five and showed the effects of his hard life. He was certainly not an attractive bridegroom, and few women would have sailed so far to claim him, but when his present duties ended and he could be got back to England for some fattening up, and settled in some quaint rural parish, he might prove acceptable. The outstanding thing in his favor was the gleam that suffused his face: it was the countenance of a man who believed in what he was doing and found constant rea.s.surance in the honesty of his calling. He loved people; his expedition to Grahamstown with the commando had taught him even to love the Boers who opposed him so vigorously, and the fact that he had fought well against the Xhosa warriors had earned him respect, so that the ox wagon that waited to take his bride to Golan Mission had been volunteered by Tjaart van Doorn himself.

There the two men waited amidst the wild confusion: the tall dark-suited missionary so ill-at-ease; the short, squared-off Boer with the heavy beard; the sixteen lumbering oxen indifferent to the whole affair. 'Dear G.o.d!' Hilary cried. 'It's Richard!' And he ran to the beach to embrace his brother coming wet and dripping out of the waves.

'Where's the lady?' Hilary asked in some apprehension, forgetting to introduce Van Doorn, who stood nearby, testing his hippopotamus-hide whip.

'She'll be coming,' Richard said. 'Who's this?' 'Oh, this is my neighbor, Tjaart van Doorn.' 'You live at the mission?' Thirty miles north.'

Richard blinked. Neighbors at thirty miles? But then he heard a shout from the Alice Grace's the Alice Grace's lighter. It was the captain, with Vera Lambton beside him: 'Richard! Ho, Saltwood! Here comes the bride!' lighter. It was the captain, with Vera Lambton beside him: 'Richard! Ho, Saltwood! Here comes the bride!'

His cry was so hearty, and the message so warm in this scene of new lives beginning, that everyone in the vicinity stopped work to watch the arrival of Miss Lambton, who looked quite pretty in her rough traveling clothes. Three cheers went up as the lighter was slowly pulled ash.o.r.e, strong hands grasping the rope and guiding it to the beach.

Ash.o.r.e, men quickly learned that she was the intended of Reverend Saltwood, and cheers were raised in his behalf. Even Tjaart van Doorn, moved by the spectacle of a wife arriving in such manner, relaxed and clapped the minister on the back: 'Exciting, eh?' And he moved forward to help bring his neighbor's betrothed ash.o.r.e.

In the boat Vera sat rigid, her eyes down; she did not want to scan the sh.o.r.e lest she see the missionary she had been sent to marry. She did not want him, her heart lay elsewhere, and she doubted she could ever mask that fact; but the fierce rejection she had voiced during the storm had subsided, and now, faced with the prospect of making her way alone in a strange continent, she supposed that she must accept him: G.o.d forgive me for what I am about to do.

At the last moment she looked up, and what she saw banished all her fearsand although she endangered herself, she stood up in the boat, waved both hands, and screamed, 'Thomas!'

Thomas Carleton, wagon builder of Saffron Walden, had galloped at breakneck speed across the flats, across the mountains and the long reaches, to intercept the boat, and there he stood, arms outstretched, to greet his love. Disdaining the hands that waited to lead her onto dry land, Vera leaped into the shallow water, lifted her skirts, and ran through the waves, throwing her arms wide to embrace the one man she could ever love. She was twenty-nine, he twenty-five; she was educated in Bible, painting and music, he in wood-handling; but they were joyously committed to living in South Africa the rest of their lives. They were the English settlers of 1820.

Vera's arrival in this dramatic manner dominated the attention of everyone, even Richard Saltwood, who stood aghast as he watched her. Reverend Hilary was left standing alone, off with the oxen and the waiting wagon that would never carry his bride to the mission. Gradually people on the sh.o.r.e became aware of him, and turned to look at the forlorn figure, and as they did so, they broke into laughter. Harsh words were thrown, and ribald ones, and he stood apart, allowing them to fall over him like a cascade of icy water. He sought condolence from no one, nor did he try in any way to dissuade Miss Lambton from her extraordinary behavior. He could not guess what had precipitated it, but he was sure it must have been an emotion of powerful force, and certainly it was G.o.d's will that she should go with the other and not with him.

He did not demur when Tjaart came back and said apologetically, 'Since I'm here, I'll cart the couple to their new home ... if it's all right with you.'

'That's what you should do,' and when Richard, having a.s.sembled his own gear, said that he, too, must find a carter and be on his way, Hilary nodded. In the end, all the immigrants found transportation of some kind or other and were off to try raising wheat and mealies on land that could scarcely grow weeds; the government had not been entirely honest with these settlers, neither in Cape Town nor in London. They were not supposed to be farmers and merchants in the old sense; they were to form forward hedgehogs of self-defense along the border, keeping the Xhosa away from the established farms farther inland. Vera and Thomas, in their frontier home, were supposed to take the brunt of any Xhosa attack, so that established settlements like Grahamstown could exist in safety.

Hilary, who understood this conniving strategy, was saddened to see his intended bride and his brother heading eastward into such a situation, and as he stood alone he prayed for them, that G.o.d would give them strength for the trials that lay ahead. That done, he watched their wagons disappear, then mounted his horse and rode slowly back to Golan Mission.

He would never forget 1820. For him it was a year of tragedy, with both the Boer and the English communities sneering at him, not even conceding that he was a well-intentioned dominee. His mission was characterized as a farce where blacks could escape honest work; his attempts at agriculture were pitiful; and his constant insistence that Hottentot and Xhosa be given fair treatment was seen as weakness of character. The Boers despised him for his antagonism to coerced labor, the backbone of their existence, while the English dismissed him as socially unacceptable.

His position worsened whenever Dr. Keer, in London, issued a new publication or caused an inquiry to be made in Parliament. The little agitator was finding that his diatribes against the Boers were popular with the English press and his pa.s.skey to the highest ranks of English society. He wrote and preached and lectured, uttering the most inflammatory accusations against the Boers, but whenever he thundered from the safety of London, the lightning struck Hilary Saltwood in his exposed mission, and there was serious talk among the farmers of burning the place.

He seemed sublimely indifferent to the ostracism and to the threats. He maintained a kind of Christian charity at his mission, accepting all who stumbled in, finding them clothes and food in unlikely quarters. He kept the converts working, more or less, and spent much time with the choir, believing that a soul that sang was closer to G.o.d than one that brooded in silence, and many travelers of that period wrote amusingly of coming to Golan and hearing at evening prayers a glorious choir singing old English hymns, all faces dark except that of the missionary, which stood a good foot higher than the others. The writers always implied that Saltwood was out of place, but that was not accurate. He belonged with these people.

It may have been that G.o.d devised this loneliness, when all white men scorned him, so that his attention could be focused on the future of South Africa; at any rate, one night as he lay sleepless he was vouchsafed a vision of such crystal purity that in the morning he had to share it with his paris.h.i.+oners. He spoke in a melange of English, Dutch, Portuguese and Xhosa: 'With the coming of our English cousins, and in such numbers, we can see that this land can henceforth never be of one unit. It must always be broken into fragments, many different people, many different languages. We stand this morning, in 1821, like a river moving along the crest of a ridge. Sooner or later it must come down one side or other, and how it comes will make all the difference in this land. Let us pray that it will come tumbling joyously down as a cascade of love and brotherhood, in which Hottentot and Xhosa and Englishman and Boer share the work and the rewards. Golan Mission must no longer be for blacks alone. We must open our hearts to all people, our school to all children. [Here he frowned.] I cannot believe that our great river of humanity will go rus.h.i.+ng down the wrong side of the mountain, creating a hateful society in which men of different colors, languages and religions will go their separate ways in bitter little streams, each off to itself. For we are all brothers in G.o.d and He intended that we work and live together.'

Among his listeners that morning, when he shared his vision of a new South Africa, were many who could not comprehend what he was talking about; common sense told them that white men who had wagons and guns and many horses were intended to rule and to have lesser people work for them. But there were a few who understood that what the missionary was saying was true, not at this moment perhaps, but in the long reach of a man's whole life, or perhaps within the lives of his grandchildren.

Among this latter group was the gifted soprano Emma, whose family had escaped slavery through Hilary's charity, or rather his mother's, for she had sent the funds which purchased their release. Emma was now twenty-one, smallish in size, and her face was as jet-black as ever, her teeth even and white. She had a wonderfully placid disposition, worked well with children, and guided the mission whenever Saltwood had to be absent.

For some time she had been thinking of Golan's future, and because she was a Madagascan and not a Xhosa, she was able to see more clearly than some. She found the Xhosa in general a superior people, and could name a dozen ways in which they excelled: 'Baas, they could be as good farmers or hunters as any Boer.'

'Never, never call me Baas again,' Hilary admonished. 'I am your friend, not your baas.'

She was aware, of course, that Hilary had gone to Algoa Bay to fetch a wife, and speedy rumors had reached even Golan, describing the hilarious scene in which he had stood on the sh.o.r.e, arms open to receive his woman, while she ran right past him to embrace another. Emma, better than most, appreciated the agony this sensitive man must have known then, and upon his return she had discharged most of the managerial duties until he had time to absorb his disgrace, and bury it.

Emma, with no last name, understood the subtle process by which Saltwood had sublimated his personal grief and found, in doing so, his vision of South Africa as a whole, and she supposed that no one would ever understand this country, in which she, like Hilary, was a stranger, until he had experienced some sense of tragedy. She supposed also that once he expressed his vision, he would see its impossibility and would shortly thereafter leave the area and return to England, which must lie very far away.

So she was surprised one day, and perhaps pleased, when he said, 'I shall stay here the rest of my life. I'm needed for the building.'

She believed him, and knowing this, moved closer to him, for it was apparent that no man as fragile as he could survive without strong a.s.sistance, and she further observed that he was held in such scorn by the two white communities that there was little possibility that he could ever find a wife in those quarters.

She was, in some respects, even more solidly informed than Saltwood himself and exercised a sounder judgment, and this had been true when she was ten and realized that her life depended upon escaping from slavery at De Kraal. Her parents had been afraid; the other slaves, all of them, had been terrified of consequences; but she had fled into the night without horse or guide and had made her way to freedom. Now it was she who saw that Hilary must have a partner, and she perceived this on the simplest base: that he could not survive without one.

Reverend Saltwood, after his vision and his willingness to commit his life to it, was thinking along much different lines. He felt that G.o.d had brought him to Golan for some specific and perhaps n.o.ble purpose, and he was sure that it was G.o.d who had vouchsafed him the vision; in this respect he was much like Lodevicus the Hammer, except that Lodevicus had known that G.o.d had visited him personally.

Therefore, if he had been chosen for some exalted design, it was obligatory that he conform to the inherent patterns of that designand what were they? That all men in South Africa were brothers, that all were equal in the sight of G.o.d and that all had just rights, none standing higher than another. He recognized that there were managerial degrees, and he was certainly no revolutionary; in the Missionary Society, for example, he stood on the very lowest rung of the hierarchy, and in his humility he suspected that he deserved little more. In Cape Town lived officials who gave him orders, and in London lived other officials who sent orders to South Africa, and above all, stood the little group of powerful thinkers like Simon Keer who directed everything. He was quite satisfied with the abstract structure, but he was somewhat troubled by the fact that everyone in the chain of command was white, as if this were a prerequisite for power. At Golan he had delegated command and it had worked rather well.

He had turned the mission choir over to Emma, and it was she who had trained the voices into a beautiful instrument, not he. He had found that in his absences Emma had run the establishment at least as well as he, and perhaps better. She certainly was as good a Christian, having braved true hards.h.i.+ps in forging her allegiance to Jesus, and she was kind and humble in dealing with Boers when they came to complain about their runaways. 'Humble, but firm,' he wrote in one report, 'she displays the true sense of Christ's teaching. If she is required to face down some arrogant Boer screaming for the return of his Hottentots, she stands there, a little figure in a gingham dress, hands on hips, defying them to desecrate the house of the Lord. One man thrashed her with his whip, but she would not move, and in some confusion he rode away.'

Another line of thought was pus.h.i.+ng its way into Saltwood's reflections, and he would have been astonished if its historic parallel had been pointed out to him, but like many men from superior cultures who are placed in a.s.sociation with large numbers of persons of inferior mechanical culture, he was beginning to think that salvation lay in rejecting the inherited superior culture and marrying some simple woman from the less advantaged, and in so doing, establis.h.i.+ng connection with the soil, with the elementary. Thus, at this very time in Russia young men of the ruling cla.s.s were coming to believe that they must marry serfs to attain contact with the real Russia, and in France writers and philosophers contemplated marriage to fallen women, so that together they might start from a solid base, as it were, and climb to new understandings. In Brazil gruff Portuguese planters defiantly married blacks: 'To h.e.l.l with Lisbon. This is my life henceforth.' And in India certain mystic-driven young Englishmen were thinking that to understand the land to which they were now committed, they must take Indian wives.

There was a sense of self-flagellation in all this, and many observers were amused by it, but there was also a sense of primordial experience, of identification with a new land, and of deep-rooted psychological suspicions that in a flowering culture marked by too many books and far too many parties, something fundamental was being lost. When religion, with its example of Jesus Christ's abnegation, was thrown into the scales, there built up a solid impulse toward actions that would never otherwise have been contemplated, and one bright morning when life at Golan Mission was as placid as it would ever be, Reverend Hilary Saltwood entered upon three days of prayer and fasting.

He was thirty-six now, and as far in promotions as he would ever go. He was aware that his mother still fondly imagined him coming home to the deans.h.i.+p at Salisbury, but he knew that l.u.s.trous prize was lost forever; indeed, he sometimes doubted that he could even secure some inconspicuous English living. He suspected also that his term at Golan had better be ended; he had built so well that any new man from London could take charge. But his productive life was by no means finished; he felt an urgent call to the north, where many lived in ignorance of Jesus, and he envisioned his life as spent in one lonely outpost after another. But to live like that he needed a companion.

He remembered how excited he had been when his mother wrote that she was sending him a wife. How often he had read that letter, how carefully he had studied his mother's description of Miss Lambton, visualizing her working with him in outpost stations. In his loneliness he would sometimes recall every item of her dress as she came through the surf that day in Algoa Bay. 'I need a wife to share the veld,' he cried aloud.

But what wife? Dare he ever again enlist his mother in a search? He thought not. Could he ride over to Grahamstown to see if it contained any eligible women, new widows, perhaps, among the immigrants? Not likely. There they would laugh at him and jeer, and no woman would want to share that humiliation. Should he return to Cape Town? Never. Never. His life was on the frontier with the black people he loved.

Loved! Did he love Emma, his marvelous little a.s.sistant with the laughing eyes? He believed he did, but he wondered whether G.o.d would approve of such a union.

His thinking thus far had required one full day; he spent the next two in trying to ascertain whether a man totally devoted to Jesus Christ dared risk such a marriage, and just as the Boers searched the Old Testament for guidance in their time of tribulation, so he took down the New Testament and tried to decipher the teachings of Jesus and St. Paul, and the old familiar phrases leaped and tumbled in contradiction through his mind: 'It is better to marry than to burn ... He that is unmarried careth for the things of the Lord . . . Husbands, love your wives ... It is good for a man not to touch a woman ... So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies,' and St. Paul's specific command to celibacy: 'I say therefore to the unmarried, "It is good for them if they abide even as I." '

It was a confusing doctrine, generated in a time when people were living in agitated communities much like the South Africa of 1821, and a searcher could find Biblical justification for either marrying or not marrying, but in the end one incident in the New Testament superseded all others: when a poor couple in Cana were being married without enough money to provide wine for their guests, Jesus stepped forward and converted water into wine so that the celebration could proceed. Laughter possessed Hilary when he thought of it: I've always liked that miracle best of all. A celebration. A blessing. And at the end the governor himself saying, 'At most parties they serve good wine at the beginning, rubbish as soon as the guests are drunk. But you've brought us the best wine at the end. Stout fellow!' I believe that Jesus and his disciples must have danced at this wedding.

He spent the third night praying, and in the morning he went to Emma and said, 'Jesus Himself would dance at our wedding. Will you have me?'

They were married quietly by Saul, who now served as deacon at the missionthis tall white man, this short black woman. They shared a wattled hut beside the church, and since no announcements were broadcast, news of the extraordinary marriage did not circulate.

It certainly did not reach Grahamstown, seventy-five miles to the east, where Richard Saltwood had found himself a saucy bride, Julie, the Dorset girl who had ridden her own horse to Plymouth to take pa.s.sage on one of the last emigrant s.h.i.+ps. Alone and unprotected, she lacked the funds to hire a sixteen-oxen wagon to freight her to Grahamstown, so she had walked, bringing with her barely more than the clothes on her back. Within a week six men had wanted to marry her, and in her flirtatious way she had chosen Richard. She could not read, but when he explained that one day he would take her back to the cathedral town of Salisbury, she said brightly, 'Then, by G.o.d, I better learn,' and she had sought out Mrs. Carleton to teach her, and the two women, so unlike in breeding, so similar in courage, had a fine time wrestling with the alphabet.

When Richard proposed that he send for his brother to conduct the wedding, Julie cried, 'Capital! It'll give us a chance to introduce him to the town.'

So a servant was sent west on horseback to invite Hilary to perform the ceremony, and the invitation seemed so sincere and the opportunity to establish connections with the new settlement so favorable that the missionary accepted. He would take Emma with him so that the Grahamstown people could witness the depth of his conviction that a new era was beginning in the colony.

Hilary, Emma, Saul and the servant made the eastward journey, with Bible reading each evening, prayers each dawn, and much conversation about Richard and his experiences in India. Hilary, having found great happiness in his own marriage, speculated on what kind of bride his brother was taking, and in his prayers repeatedly asked G.o.d to bless Richard.

As the quartet rode into Grahamstown, Hilary pointed out the little houses that had seemed like secure fortresses that day when he faced the screaming Xhosa, and he showed Emma the site on which Tjaart van Doorn had saved his life.

As they rode down the princ.i.p.al street they came to the s.p.a.cious parade ground where a small church stood on land which would be occupied later by a fine cathedral, and another of Richard's Hottentot servants hailed the procession to say that Baas was at the shop of Carleton, the wagon builder, so the horses were turned in that direction while the slave hurried on ahead, shouting, 'De Reverend kom! Look, he kom!' And to the door of the rude shed in which Carleton worked came his wife, his friend Richard Saltwood and lively Julie, the intended bride. All four looked up at the hors.e.m.e.n and saw Hilary sitting high among them.

'Hullo, Hilary,' Richard said with the casualness that had always marked his behavior toward his brother. 'Glad you could come.'

'h.e.l.lo, Richard. I hear G.o.d has blessed you with a bride. He has blessed me, too. This is my wife, Emma.'

From her horse the pet.i.te Madagascan smiled warmly at the two women, then nodded to their men. She remembered them later as four gaping mouths: 'They were astounded, Hilary. Didn't you see them, four mouths wide open?'

No one spoke. Emma, with a deep sense of propriety, felt that it was not her duty to do so first, since she was being presented to them, but they were too dumbstruck even to speak to Hilary, let alone his extraordinary wife. Finally the missionary said, 'We'd better dismount,' and he extended his hand to his wife.

The story sped through Grahamstown: 'That d.a.m.ned fool Saltwood's married a Xhosa b.i.t.c.h.'

It was an agonizing three days. No one knew where to put Emma, or how to feed her, or what to say to her. They were surprised to learn that she could speak good English and write much better than Julie. She was modest, of good deportment, but very black. There was no way to alleviate the awfulness of her reality, no explanation that could soften the dreadful fact that a decent Englishman, although a missionary, had married one of his Xhosa Kaffirs. When it was pointed out that she was really a Madagascan, one man said, 'Know the place well. The b.a.s.t.a.r.ds ate my uncle.' And now a rumor circulated that Emma had been a cannibal.

Richard quietly insisted that the marriage proceed as planned, with his brother officiating, and the temporary church was crowded, most of the spectators having come to see the cannibal. It was a moving ceremony, filled with the soaring phrases of the Church of England wedding ritual, perhaps the most loving in the civilized world.

'Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of G.o.d, and in the face of this company, to join together this Man and this Woman in holy Matrimony; which is an honourable state, inst.i.tuted of G.o.d in the time of man's innocency . . . which holy estate Christ adorned and beautified with his presence, and first miracle that he wrought in Cana of Galilee . . . Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honour, and keep her in sickness and in health ... so long as ye both shall live . . . forsaking all others ... for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part . . .'