The Covenant Part 46

'There were lions,' she said.

When Theunis Nel began riding over to the Van Doorn farm after the death of Wilhelmina, it was ostensibly to report on the progress of the children, but after a third visit Jakoba took Tjaart aside: 'When he first came I thought it was to have a good meal. You know how the Bronks scrimp on food.'

'He eats practically nothing.'

'Do you know why? He's courting Minna. It's ridiculous. Tell him to stay away.'

'Minna!' Tjaart sat down heavily. 'Do you think . . .'

That afternoon he rode over to the school and invited Theunis Nel to dine, and the eagerness with which the little schoolmaster accepted convinced Tjaart that Jakoba had made a shrewd guess. That night both the Van Doorns scanned the teacher as he toyed with his food, and after he departed they whispered together.

'It's wrong, Tjaart. He's older than you.'

'I'm not so old.'

'But Minna's'

'I know what Minna is. She's nearly sixteen, a woman without a man. And she's not so well-favored that she'll easily catch a good one now.' These blunt truths brought tears, and Jakoba asked, 'What can we do?' 'We can encourage Theunis Nel.' 'You can't mean to marry her?' 'That's exactly what I mean.' 'But she's a girl. He's an old man.'

'Any woman past fifteen is thirty years old, or forty, or fifty, or whatever is required. When Nel comes to sit with Minna, you make him welcome.'

But how to inform the schoolmaster that he was free to sit with Mejuffrouw van Doorn in the opening stages of a formal courts.h.i.+p? Tjaart solved the problem in what he deemed a subtle way: 'Theunis, I've ridden over here to tell you that you've done wonders with our grandchildren. I have a daughter, you may have met her, I think. She ought to learn her letters, too, and we will pay you extra . . .'

'I'm sure I could arrange some free time,' Nel said, and he entered upon the most hectic period of his life: school all day, sick-comforting many nights, nine miles to De Kraal; instructing Minna at night; and helping everywhere on unforeseen tasks.

Sometimes Tjaart and Jakoba would peer into the kitchen, and there would be the schoolmaster, gazing raptly at Minna as she laboriously copied her alphabet. 'I wonder if she knows?' Tjaart asked, and Jakoba said, 'Women always know.'

And one night after Nel had departed, so weary that he fell asleep on his horse and allowed the beast to take him back to the school, Minna told her parents, 'I think he wants to speak with you, Father.' But having reported this, as she had promised Theunis she would, she burst into tears. 'But I'm in love with Ryk Naude. I always will be.'

'Minna,' her mother said sternly, 'he's gone.'

'But I can't marry that schoolmaster.'

Jakoba shook her and said, 'When a woman's past fifteen she must make the best bargain.'

'You want me to marry him?'

'You heard what Nel said. "The generations of man are but as the winnowing of wheat." '

'I still don't know what that means,' Tjaart protested.

'It means a woman must do what she has to,' Jakoba said.

Two nights later Theunis Nel, wearing the best clothes he could command, appeared in the kitchen, and when Minna spread her papers, he brushed them aside: 'Tonight I speak with you, Mijnheer van Doorn.'

'Yes?' Tjaart said.

'Mijnheer van Doorn'the schoolmaster spoke as if he were sixteen and Tjaart seventy'I have the great honor of asking whether I might have the hand of your daughter Minna . . .'

When Minna heard these fateful words and saw the pitiful man that spoke them she might have broken into a sob had not her mother antic.i.p.ated such a scene and grabbed her daughter's wrist furiously, as if to say, You cannot.

'I am older,' Nel continued, 'and have no farm . . .'

'But you're a good man,' Jakoba said, and she pushed her daughter forward.

'Theunis,' Tjaart said, 'we welcome you into our family.'

'Oh!' the schoolmaster gasped. Recovering his composure, he said, 'Can we all ride to Graaff-Reinet for the wedding?'

'Not in these troubled times,' Tjaart said. 'But you can start the marriage, and whenever a dominee comes this way . . .'

'I could not,' the devout little man protested, unable to imagine living with a woman before vows had been solemnized. 'I must pray on this.'

'Go ahead,' Tjaart said, eager to have his daughter married. 'But I've noticed that whenever men pray on this subject, the answer's always yes. Do you want Minna to ride with you to Bronk's?'

'I must pray.'

It was Minna who answered that particular prayer. 'You heard what Wilhelmina did when she married Lodevicus. She rode one hundred miles.

The school's nine miles. I'm riding with you.' Tjaart van Doorn had found a son-in-law.

In December 1834 it seemed as if all of Tjaart's uncertainties were laid to rest. Theunis and Minna returned to help run the farm, and the English government began to show common sense in running the country. But almost immediately trouble resumed, for the Xhosa launched a series of forays deep into Boer country, and all commandos were summoned to Grahamstown to strengthen the English regular troops and their civilian helpers like Saltwood. 'We're dealing not with hundreds of Xhosa warriors,' the commanding officer said, 'but thousands. An invasion of our colony is under way.'

After fourteen rugged days in the saddle, Tjaart's men were given a week's furlough; they were farmers, not soldiers, and their first responsibility lay in ensuring the safety of their homestead and flocks. As the tired men rode back to Grahamstown, a place Tjaart had grown to love for its hospitality, Saltwood spoke seriously: 'Piet Retief is talking about pulling out of here and emigrating north. If that good man leaves, it's obvious to me you'll all go. I think that's a mistake. You and I have proved that Boers and Englishmen can live together.'

'Your laws go against the Bible.'

'Against the Old Bible, not the New.'

'It's the Old that counts.'

'Be that as it may, if you ever decide to go north, I'd be very interested in your farm. It's the best in this area.' 'I'd not care to sell.'

'Then why did you buy that new wagon?'

Tjaart reflected on this. He refused to concede that he had acquired the wagon in order to emigrate, even though his wife had been counseling this for some time. 'I bought it because a farmer needs good tools,' he had told his sons. But gradually he admitted that he might also have done so because there was in the air a desire for life unimpeded by English law and custom. Perhaps Jakoba had been right. Perhaps they should go north and form a new nation.

But such thoughts fled from him when he and De Groot came over the last hill to De Kraal, for from its summit they looked down on a scene of devastation: all parts of the barn that were not of stone were burned away; the wooden shed attached to the house was burned; and in the s.p.a.ce between barn and house stood what had been the new wagon, all parts charred and shattered.

'Great G.o.d!' Tjaart shouted, spurring his horse to find what might have happened to his family. 'De Groot!' he cried from the ashes. 'They've all been killed.'

But a search of the ruins uncovered no bodies, and now Tjaart feared that his family had been take captive. A wide-ranging search for spoor finally disclosed a trail leading to a faraway glen, and there they found Theunis Nel, the women, the children and the slavessafe and hungry. His sons had been slain.

'Theunis saved us,' Jakoba said quietly when Tjaart embraced her. 'How?'

A Coloured servant, grateful that he was still alive, replied, 'Two guns. We fight one hour. We move back, step by step. We kill many. They go.'

Theunis had supervised the brilliant retreat which had saved the remnants of the Van Doorn family. Curiously, he had fired neither of the guns; Jakoba had used one, a Coloured shepherd the other. But it had been Theunis who had kept the group together and picked the route of their escape.

When Tjaart asked the would-be dominee, 'How did you find the courage, Theunis?' Nel replied, 'I had to. Minna's pregnant, you know.'

Six hundred miles away in Cape Town it was New Year's Eve, and guests at the Governor's Ball were saying it was the finest entertainment ever staged at the Cape. The ladies and gentlemen of the capital were resplendent in modish suits and gowns, but what really gave dazzling romance to the occasion were the immaculately uniformed English officers who moved through the festive crowd like valiant princes. The guests had come from every comer of the western Cape, and among them were the Trianon Van Doorns, one of the most prosperous of the older Cape Dutch families.

There were now more than twenty thousand people in the bustling town, a chaotic mix of wild irreverent seaport and nascent commercial center. Shops offering the fas.h.i.+ons of Europe, fine blended teas and spices of Ceylon and Java, exquisite silks from China; little nooks where silversmiths crafted their precious wares; and a gentleman like Baron von Ludwig, who could advise on snuff's and tobaccosall flourished. Comfortable hotels and clubs where the latest news from 'home' could be pondered at leisure stood alongside bawdy taverns with their Gentoo hostesses, stable yards, chandlers, the workshops of Malay carpenters, alleys jammed with the shacks of Coloureds and poor whites.

The gentry lived well in their fine town houses or in the gabled grandeur of their farms, devoting their energies to establis.h.i.+ng the great Cape families of the future while debating such disparate subjects as the vexatious loss of their slaves and the newfangled bathing machine that would enable them to immerse their bodies in the Atlantic, 'a process which guarantees medicinal benefit.'

Much of the talk on this night at the ball centered upon the hunt, that New Year's Day event featuring scarlet-jacketed men led by the governor himself in thunderous pursuit of the fox of the veld, the jackal. 'd.a.m.n good job, too,' one crusty major cried. 'Gives one a touch of the old country, eh, what? Helps rid the farmer of his pests. Sporting show, what? Takes an English countryman to show these Boers how to make the best of this country.' He sealed his opinion with a mighty draught of port.

Outside the Castle, this New Year's was special too; the black and brown slaves were enjoying their first day of freedom. A huge crowd of these persons, with a horde of children, had gathered at the Lutheran church, their eye on the steeple clock that would announce the New Year. The children were whooping and yelling, impatient for the giant fireworks promised for midnight. At dawn next day they would receive their presents, as always.

At Government House the regimental band, augmented by the best town musicians, struck up another waltz, and there was an enthusiastic cheer as the garrison's lieutenant-colonel led his pretty wife onto the floor. Henry George Wakelyn Smith was a reedy, hawk-faced young officer whose reputation pleased both his soldiers and the Cape civilians. He had conducted himself with rare bravery while serving under the Duke of Wellington in the Spanish campaign against Napoleon, and had been honored, but he insisted upon being known as plain Harry Smith, one of fourteen children from an impoverished family. And he positively loved playing at war.

If the locals were proud of Harry, they adored his wife. Everyone knew of the gallant manner in which he had won her. At the siege of Badajoz, when he led his troops in their final a.s.sault on that city, two Spanish children, one a young girl, came running from the French-held lines in tears: 'Soldiers have killed our parents. And look! They've ripped the rings from our ears.'

Young Smith took one look at Juanita and declared to a friend, 'There has never been a lovelier lady.' And forthwith he married her, even though she was only fourteen and a Catholic. They formed one of the notable married couples in history, a marvelous, well-matched pair. He entertained the public with his bravery, she with her guitar. Years after this first sojourn at the Cape, Sir Harry would return as governor, and Juanita would be wors.h.i.+pped by everyone.

On this night, as he waltzed with her, Harry saw one of the governor's aides enter the hall and with grave gestures beckon him. Graciously he deposited his lady with friends, and without betraying any excitement, walked slowly to the governor's study.

'The Kaffirs have broken through all our frontier lines. Grahamstown and the Boer commandos can't hold them back. They're destroying everything in their path. Burning and pillaging.'

Without hesitation Harry said, 'I shall go.'

'It will be weeks before a wars.h.i.+p can get you there.'

'Forget the d.a.m.ned navy. I'll ride.' Then he bowed slightly. 'Sir, midnight is almost here. Would it not be proper for us to rejoin the ladies?'

In the ballroom, as the eleventh hour ended, a great cheer went up and the band played that exquisite song of nostalgia 'Auld Lang Syne.' Harry Smith, aware that he must soon be off across the continent, clasped Juanita tightly as he voiced with her the words of Robert Burns: 'We twa hae run about the braes, And pu'd the gowans fine; But we've wandered mony a weary foot Sin' auld lang syne.

We twa hae paidl'd in the burn, Frae morning sun till dine; But seas between us braid hae roar'd Sin' auld lang syne.'

From outside came the explosion of fireworks and cries of delight from those who welcomed 1835.

Harry and Juanita left the dance immediately. After a brief three hours' rest he kissed her farewell, buckled on his saber, picked up dispatches for the frontier, and rode out into the night as the citizens slept soundly in preparation for the next day's revelry.

At dawn Smith was well east of Cape Town, and in six days he covered the six hundred miles to Grahamstown, where, without resting, he took command.

The governor, Sir Benjamin D'Urban, sorely frightened by the Xhosa invasion, arrived himself on January 14, and soon Englishmen and Boers, two thousand strong, were ready, accompanied by their three hundred Coloured militiamen. 'We shall thrash the Kaffirs,' Smith said, but it took seven months to make good his threat. However, with men like Tjaart van Doorn and Richard Saltwood at his side he proved tireless ... and merciless. After one three-week push, he announced with satisfaction, 'I have burned two thousand, seven hundred and sixteen huts. That'll teach 'em.' But in a more sober mood he estimated correctly: 'It would take me one hundred thousand of England's finest to crush these Xhosa.'

When finally he had forced them back to their own territory he returned to Grahamstown, where triumphal arches lauded him as the victor of the frontier, the subduer of the rebellion. 'We shall now have peace,' he declared.

But peace depended primarily upon the actions of Sir Benjamin, who had arrived at the Cape filled with the preachments of Dr. Simon Keer. However, service with a realist like Harry Smith, plus personal experience on the battlefront, had induced a radical change of mind. In his perceptive report on the Sixth Kaffir War he informed London that 'this fertile and beautiful province is almost a desert, and the murders which have gone hand in hand with this work of pillage and rapine have deeply aggravated its atrocity.' He added that in his opinion the Kaffirs were irreclaimable savages: 'Merciless barbarians who have driven our seven thousand farmers to utter dest.i.tution.'

Desirous of preventing a repet.i.tion, and eager, as an honest man, to formulate a just settlement, he annexed a vast territory, erected a chain of forts, and moved every man he could to garrison the land. Friendly blacks who had not partic.i.p.ated in the war were invited to remain where they were, and new lands would be opened up for Boer and English settlers.

It was a sensible solution and went a long way toward compensating the farmers for their grievous losses, but when the costs of the war had been totted up, Sir Benjamin stuck a.s.segais in a large map to indicate the extent of the huge losses suffered by the white men: 100 slain, 800 farms burned, 119,000 cattle stolen, 161,000 sheep missing. Coloured suffered comparably.

When news of this prudent settlement reached London, Dr. Keer stormed Parliament: 'The blacks were fully justified in their attempts to reclaim lands that were rightfully theirs. Three thousand of these gentle, helpless people are dead, martyrs in their struggle against the systematic injustice of the Boer and his new ally, the sc.u.m of England who live along the frontier.'

Keer won the propaganda war. The sensible peace arranged by D'Urban and Smith was annulled, with the annexed territory being returned to the blacks. D'Urban was recalled in semi-disgrace, and Harry Smith was left powerless: 'How am I to eat up Kaffirs with a lawbook?'

Keer and his philanthropicals had a simple answer: 'Send considerate English officials to live among our black friends and make good English citizens of them.' They also suggested the establishment of a dozen new Golans in which missionaries could offer refuge.

It didn't work. The frontier slipped back into tension and anxiety, and in region after region the Boers, now smitten by a vicious drought that withered their crops, met quietly, some amid the ruins of the farms, and said, 'To h.e.l.l with these Englishmen!'

Tjaart's attention to these grievances was diverted when his daughter Minna, about to deliver her first child, became persuaded that because of her husband's imperfect appearance, her baby would be a misshapen monster: 'I can feel him in my belly. He's fighting to get out. Because he's grotesque and evil.'

She became so convinced that she was about to bear some hideous thing, and that the fault was her husband's, that she could not tolerate his presence. 'I look at him,' she whimpered, 'and all I see is that crookbackt. Then he stares at me like a wounded bird and I see that pitiful eye, always weeping. G.o.d cursed him, and now Theunis has pa.s.sed the curse along to our son.'

She often became hysterical, and when Tjaart heard of her rantings he grew angry: 'd.a.m.nit, Minna, thousands of women have babies every year. Mevrouw Bronk has how many?'

'This wife has twelve' Minna sniffed'but her husband is a whole man.'

'So is your husband. He saved your life, didn't he?'

'He couldn't even fire a gun. Mama had to. I know my son is going to be all bent and twisted.'

Her obsession grew so strong that as time for delivery approached, Theunis had to leave the poor hut that served as their temporary home, taking residence with a Du Toit family that had three boys in school. These boys heard about their teacher's troubles at home, and even the cause, and rowdier lads began to torment Nel, but when Tjaart heard of this he stormed into the school, brusquely told Theunis to wait outside, and threatened to thrash the entire student body if there was any more of this nonsense.

'Your teacher is my friend,' he growled. 'A good, decent man, and as you've been whispering, he's going to be a father in a few days.'

'Du Toit says the thing's going to be a monster.'

'Who's Du Toit?' And when that boy stood, Tjaart rushed at him, stopping with his face close to the boy's: 'If I hit you, you'd bounce through that wall.'

No one laughed, for the menace was real. But immediately Tjaart relaxed and said quietly, 'Du Toit, go fetch the master.' And when the bewildered teacher returned, dabbing at his eye, Tjaart said, 'Boys, his son will be my grandson. And my father was Lodevicus the Hammer. We raise only the best.'

He quieted the schoolboys but not his daughter, and now her apprehensions contaminated him, so that when Minna was about to have her baby, and women filled the hut, he fell into a sweat greater than any he had known when his own children were being born. As he paced near the doorway during the agonizing wait, he could see ill-formed cripples drifting across his vision, and he prayed that this child would be whole: G.o.d, this is an empty land. We need all the young ones we can get, and we need them strong.

Cries came from inside, then women running out: 'A beautiful baby girl!'

Brus.h.i.+ng people out of his way, he rushed into the hut, then slowly went to the cot and picked up the naked infant. Holding it aloft by its heels, he inspected it from all angles, satisfied himself that it was perfect, then returned it gently to Minna's arms: 'Thank you, daughter. Not a blemish. I must tell Theunis.'

He galloped the miles to the school, where he crashed into the room, shouting, 'Theunis! It's a girl. Perfect in every detail.' Then he pointed at the Du Toit boy who had led the disturbances: 'You, fetch some water.' For although Theunis was grinning happily, it was apparent that he might faint.

The Boer frontiersmen could have withstood the drought and resisted the renewed Xhosa incursions, but now the English government insulted them with the disgraceful business of the slave payments. The Van Doorns and their Boer neighbors had been long prepared for the ultimate freeing of their slaves, and they did not object in principle, but they did sometimes wonder why England was so insistent when countries equally moralHolland, the United States, for examplewere content to hold on to their slaves.

What happened was difficult to explain and impossible to justify. The English Parliament, even though Sir Peter Saltwood, M.P., as manager of the bill had promised otherwise, refused to provide the 3,000,000 which would have compensated the Cape slaveholders for their financial losses. Such a miserly amount was voted that Tjaart would receive for his six legally owned slaves not the 600 promised, but a grudging 180. And then, because the rules were mindful of London-based magnates with vast holdings in the West Indies, it was stipulated that no Cape farmer could receive even his diminished allowance unless he traveled personally to London to collect it.

'I don't understand,' Tjaart said, endeavoring to unravel these incredible instructions.

'It's simple,' Lukas de Groot said as he listened to the law with a group of Boers. 'Instead of six hundred pounds, you get one-third. And to get this, you have to trek to Cape Town, six weeks, then take a s.h.i.+p to London, four months, then back by s.h.i.+p, then trek back home. Better part of a year.' And the reader added, 'Look at this line at the bottom.' There it was: Any claimant who comes to London must pay a filing fee of 1-10-6 per slave to cover the cost of drafting the papers. Any claimant who comes to London must pay a filing fee of 1-10-6 per slave to cover the cost of drafting the papers.

Tjaart was outraged. Under these insane regulations, there could not be in the entire region east of Stellenbosch one Boer slaveowner who could collect the compensation due him, and it became obvious that this had been London's intention. Who could absent himself from his farm for most of a year? And who, if he did get to London, could argue before the claims court in English, the required language?

It was such a gross injustice that it encouraged a brood of unsavory types to circulate through the hinterlands, offering to buy up the farmers' rights at nine s.h.i.+llings to the pound; some of these scavengers were Englishmen who had failed at proper work and who saw this as a device for paying their pa.s.sage back to London. The chances that any Boer would receive his funds from this gang of thieves was remote. 'But look, Tjaart,' one of them weasled, 'I make the trek to Cape Town for you. I sail to London for you. I spend days in the claims courts and urge your case in English. I earn my fee.'

'But the government owes me the whole amount,' Tjaart argued in Dutch. 'Why should I have to pay you more than fifty per centum?' 'Because you will be here, on a farm, and I'll be in London, in court.' 'It's so unfair.'