The Covenant (78 page)

In short, the volcanic little man had found in the philanthropic movement his golden Ophir, and he was coming back to South Africa to increase his treasure.

Wherever he went he caused turmoil, lecturing the locals about morality, threatening them with the laws his friends in Parliament were about to pass, and accusing the Boer farmers of crimes that would have been rejected even by the Black Circuit of 1812. Always he made the confrontation one between the honest Englishmen of the empire and the dishonest Boers of the backveld, and when one man who had seen the real horrors of slavery in the English islands of the Caribbean said in public meeting, “Don’t come preaching to us. Clean up your own islands,” he silenced the man with the thundering response: “Your observation is irrelevant.”

When rumors circulated that two Boers had tried to assassinate him at Swellendam, his audiences increased in size, as did his fury; he was certainly not without courage, for he took his message to all parts of the colony, and in due course he convoked at Grahamstown a meeting of all LMS personnel, and when messengers had ridden to the outposts, a strange, ungainly group of men and women began to straggle in. They were the forward agents of God, an impassioned, dedicated, unlikely lot made old before their time by the bleak conditions under which they lived, but intensified in their beliefs by the problems they had succeeded in solving.

Strangest of all the couples were the Saltwoods of Great Karroo, he walking in long strides, staff in hand, his black wife riding a small horse. They had come three hundred miles, their eyes ablaze at the prospect of meeting the leaders of their calling. When they entered the thriving mercantile center the first sign they saw was
THOMAS CARLETON, WAGON BUILDER
. It was a real building now, with stone walls, tiled roof; in fact, it was two buildings, one the foundry and carpenter’s shop, the other a sturdy house.

“We must halt here,” Hilary said, anxious to try to heal any wounds that might still exist between him and the man who had stolen his bride. “Hello, Thomas!” he called, and when the builder appeared at the door of his forge, Hilary was astonished to see how the
years that had handled him so roughly had scarcely touched this bright-faced young man.

“I’m Saltwood,” Hilary said hesitantly.

“Why, so it is! Vera, come here!” And from the house beside the shop came the former Miss Lambton of Salisbury, now a matron with two blond children. No longer the timid spinster studying watercolors, she was now in her mid-thirties, mistress of a house and keeper of accounts for her husband’s thriving business.

“Good morning, Hilary,” she said graciously. Then, with a mischievousness she could never have disclosed back in Wiltshire, she teased: “You’re the reason I sailed so far.”

“Are these your children?”

“They are.”

“I have three now,” he said quietly.

“We haven’t stopped, you know,” Carleton said, putting his arm about his wife.

“Has my brother any little ones?”

“Like all of us. He has one.”

During this colloquy Emma had remained on her horse, quietly to the rear, and now Vera cried warmly, “Here is your wife!”

“It is. Emma, as you know.”

The wagon builder helped her alight, took her by both hands, and asked, “Didn’t you tell us you’re a Madagascan?”

“I did.”

“How in the world did you get down here?”

“I was born here,” she said in the slow, beautiful English she had acquired from her Oxford-educated husband. “But my parents were … How do you say it, Hilary?”

“Kidnapped.”

“They were kidnapped by Portuguese slavers. It was quite common. Still is, I think.”

“Little woman like you, three children!” Carleton shook his head and returned to his work.

In the days prior to Dr. Keer’s arrival, the Karroo couple participated in many friendly meetings like this, for the indignation caused by their marriage had abated. Grahamstown was now a typical rural English settlement with a thriving marketplace to which many Boer wagons came. They were heartily welcomed, not only for their trade but also because of the commandos they provided whenever untamed Kaffirs from across the Fish River attacked.

Hilary overheard one tough English farmer joking with a Boer: “After we were here eighteen months, and the Kaffirs had attacked us once and you Boers five times, our minister said on Sunday, ‘See how the heathen restrain themselves in the face of God! They always prefer to raid the Boers.’ And a man in the back of the church cried, ‘It isn’t God, Dominee. It’s cattle. We don’t have any and the Boers do!’ ”

Hilary was particularly pleased to renew acquaintance with his brother Richard, whose exuberant wife Julie had undergone a transformation somewhat similar to Vera Lambton’s, except that whereas the latter had descended from the role of Salisbury elite, Julie had climbed the ladder from Dorset illiterate to solid gentlewoman, wife of a former major in the Fifty-ninth. She found no difficulty in accepting Emma Saltwood as her sister-in-law, partly because everyone knew that Emma would be returning to the Karroo as soon as the convening ended, and could thus pose no problem with her miscegenation, but partly also because of Christian charity. Julie saw that Emma was a remarkable woman and no doubt a fine mother, and as such she merited acceptance.

The trouble came with Dr. Keer, for when he dismounted, tired and hungry after the long ride from Golan, he gasped when he saw Hilary, and thought: Dear God, this man’s ten years younger than me, and look at him! To reach Keer’s hand, Hilary had to stoop, which made him appear even older and more haggard than he was; in missionary work a man on the frontier aged much more rapidly than an official back in London. And when Keer realized that the little black woman trailing behind must be the Kaffir his informants had spoken of, he almost gagged: It’s another case of a man’s taking his missionary work too personally.

In private discussions with the people of Grahamstown he spoke with some force against the awful error of a missionary’s marrying a woman of any tribe with which he worked: “It’s a fatal mistake, really. Look at poor Saltwood. How can he ever return to England? I need an assistant. Work does pile up. Parliament and all that, you know. But could I ask him to help me? With a wife like that, how could he solicit funds from important families?”

One night, at a small gathering, he asked Richard Saltwood directly, “My dear boy, how did you ever allow this to happen to your brother?” and Richard replied with amusement, “I think you’d better ask Mrs. Carleton over there. You and she were responsible, you know.”

“Me? Carleton? Never met the man. What’s he do?”

“He builds wagons. It’s his wife you know.”

“Can’t believe it,” Keer said, but when he was led across the room to where Vera stood, she reminded him that they had met in Salisbury when she was still Miss Lambton. “Of course, of course! When I was giving my lecture on slavery.” He coughed modestly. “I visit the entire country, you know. Becomes very tiring.” He was rambling on so that he might have time to collect his thoughts, and suddenly he remembered: “But you were to marry Hilary Saltwood!” He stopped, then added in a pejorative way, “But I hear you’ve married the carpenter.”

It fell to Vera Carleton to puncture this little man’s balloon, and with the quiet assurance she had gained from doing hard manual work to aid her husband, she said, “Yes, I did marry the carpenter. Because after your lecture that night I took you aside and asked for your personal opinion, and you confided that Hilary Saltwood was rather a silly ass. Which I confirmed later, so I thank you for your good advice.”

Dr. Keer was nonplused at the direction this conversation was going, but Vera forged ahead, her voice rising: “So on the ship coming out I decided not to marry Hilary. I sought out Thomas Carleton, the wagon builder, I asked him to sleep with me, and then to marry me. So I am doubly indebted to you, Doctor.”

When Keer retreated several steps, she followed him. “And I am indebted in a third way. For when I see what a great fool you are, and what a man of nobility Hilary Saltwood is by comparison, I realize that you aren’t fit to tie his boots, or my husband’s, or, for that matter, mine. Now you scamper back to London before the Boers hang you.”

She was still fuming when she reached home: “It was awful, Thomas, that little prig. I suppose you’ll have to apologize tomorrow, but Hilary really is Christ-like, and Keer’s so stupid he wouldn’t recognize Jesus if that carpenter walked in here tonight.” Then she laughed. “Didn’t you see the way Keer patronized you? And me? He seems to forget that a carpenter was once important in this world, and may be so again.”

Angered by Keer’s open abuse of one of his missionaries, Vera was inspired to move closer to Emma Saltwood, and when the two had tea together, or when they walked with Julie Saltwood, there developed a kind of frontier solidarity which was possible among these pioneer women who had come long distances to a strange land and
who had conquered it in limited ways. No one of the three had escaped battles—ten-year-old Emma running away from De Kraal, Vera battling the physical and emotional storms south of the Cape, wild Julie riding a horse to Plymouth to escape stupid parents and more stupid brothers—and each had won through to the reassuring plateau of strong husband and lively children.

Common experience allowed them to be friends, but this could happen only in their generation. Already forces were at work which would drive them forever apart, and in the second generation companionship like this would be unthinkable. Then a woman of good heritage from a cathedral town would not care to associate with a runaway illiterate from Dorset, and neither would dare invite into her home a Kaffir, whether married to a white missionary or not.

The cruel wedge that would separate people was driven deeper by everything that Dr. Keer did or said during his convention. In public meetings he excoriated the Boers, making any future relationship between Boer and missionary impossible. In private he continued to ridicule Saltwood for having taken a Kaffir wife; on this subject he did make one important observation: “What Hilary’s done, the silly fool, is place a weapon in the hands of our adversaries. Critics accuse us of being nigger-lovers—kaffir-boeties, the Boers call us—and when one of our own people makes such a disastrous marriage, it proves that everything they said against us is true. It sets missionary work back fifty years.” In general, he spoke and acted as if the welfare of the world depended upon his conciliating the better families of England so that they would bring pressure on Parliament to pass the laws he wanted.

His damage to the Hilary Saltwoods was mortal. As head of the LMS, he dictated that Hilary was to be kept in seclusion on the farthest veld, and at the final reception, when it seemed that he had done as much damage as an intruder could, he delivered his ultimate insult.

He was standing in a reception line, bestowing grace upon the locals, when the wagon builder Carleton and his sharp-tongued wife approached. Since apologies had been made, he was able to nod austerely, as he would to anyone in trade, but then he saw Hilary Saltwood, who had lacked the common sense to leave his Kaffir wife at home. She trailed along behind him, and when she reached Dr. Keer she held out her hand, intending to bid him safe journey home, but he found an excuse to turn away so that he would not have to acknowledge
her. She kept her hand extended for just a moment, then—without showing any disappointment—dropped it, smiled, and passed on.

The wagons that arrived to carry Dr. Keer back to the Cape brought a parcel of mail from London, including a letter from Sir Peter Saltwood, M.P., Old Sarum, advising Richard that their mother was failing. Sir Peter was providing passage which would enable Richard to sail immediately, and it was hoped that he would bring his wife, whom the Salisbury Saltwoods were eager to meet.

This was quite impossible, for after a shaky start, the Richard Saltwoods had now developed a good business in trading ivory, and it was imperative that he journey to the eastern frontiers to buy such tusks as he could from the Kaffirs, but it occurred to him and Julie that since the Hilary Saltwoods were in town, they should go. Much argument was advanced, with Emma pleading that she must return to her children, but as Hilary said, “Those children love to stay in the veld.” So a messenger was posted north with news that the Saltwoods were extending their absence for a year or two.

In their innocence, they supposed it to be what essentially it was, the visit of a son to his aging mother, the presentation of a wife at the ancestral home. Just as Emma had been untouched by Reverend Keer’s refusal to take her hand, so she and Hilary would be unmoved by either acceptance or non-acceptance. And it never occurred to them that in places like Cape Town, London and Salisbury they would encounter open hostility. Raised eyebrows, yes. Amused chatter, yes. Even the repugnance which the Boer farmer felt toward an Englishman who had taken a Kaffir wife, they expected some of that, too. But they had lived so amiably together that they felt certain there could be no cruel surprises.

They were wrong. Even while their wagon traveled slowly westward toward the Cape, curious people clustered to see the long-legged missionary who had taken the short Kaffir wife, and there were many giggles. At some houses where transients customarily slept, they were not welcomed, and occasionally they encountered real difficulty in finding quarters. At Swellendam they were a surprise; at Stellenbosch, a scandal.

When they were safely across the flats and entering Cape Town, they assumed that there they would escape the unkind curiosity, but
again they were mistaken. Dr. Keer had spoken rather harshly of his stupid outcasts in the Karroo, and many people went out of their way to see them, not as missionaries, but as freaks. They spent a trying time before their ship arrived, but once aboard it, their real troubles began. Four families of some distinction, returning home from India, refused to be seated in the same salon as the blackamoor, so Hilary and his wife had to take their meals apart. They were not welcomed on deck, nor were they included in any of the ship’s activities. On Sundays church services were held without the participation of a clergyman, since none but Hilary was aboard, and he was not invited to preach, for his presence would be offensive to the better families.