The covenant, p.50
The Covenant, page 50
In the fifth week, realizing that he had been painting too somber a picture of the missionary's life in South Africa, he stopped ranting, and began to amuse his listeners with affectionate stories of his life there, using an exaggerated North Country dialect:
'Half an hour before dawn comes a rrrroar! It's a lie-yon, but he's retreating from the sunrise. You learn to know that by the manner in which his voice rrrrecedes. Comes a knock on your tent, and it's the little girl informing you that her baby sister is about to be born and Mother says can you hurry. There are days on the veld with hunters and nights under the starrrrs with more lie-yons and protea flowers, bigger than your mother's washbasin.'
What the young men never forgot, however, were the two brief sermons Keer delivered in the Kaffir languagein them they heard for the first time the click sounds which the Xhosa had borrowed centuries before from the Hottentots. He explained to them that he had mastered the language in order to compile a dictionary, from which a translation of the Gospels for the Xhosa would soon be made.
His first sermon dealt with the Good Samaritan, and since he played all the roles, dancing about the stage, his red hair flying, and since he altered his voice and manner for each of the participants in the parable, the mission-ers could easily follow the story without understanding the words. But his second sermon dealt with Christ's love for all people, and now there were no clues to its meaning except the overwhelming conviction that filled the room when he stood on his toes, eyes closed, deep voice throbbing with the repeated words Jesus Christ.
As he reached the climax of his preachment a hush fell over the room, and when the last click sounds had echoed, Hilary Saltwood knew that his destiny lay in South Africa. Waiting till the other students had left the room, he stepped forward to the podium, but before he could speak, Reverend Keer jumped down and held out his hands: 'Laddie, you've decided to join the Lord's work in Africa?' 'I have.'
'God be praised.'
That night, after he had written explanatory letters to his parents, he felt an enormous sense of having been set free. He had been impelled toward this decision both spiritually and intellectually, and would never question it. It had been God's miracle that sent Simon Keer at this particular time, and Hilary thanked Him for that with a full heart.
But before he fell asleep a most curious reflection flashed across his mind: In all the time I've been here, I've rarely heard the Old Testament mentioned. We're men of the New Testament, the personal followers of Jesus and St. Paul . . .
When Hilary completed his studies, Parliament was not in session, so before sailing for South Africa he returned to Sentinels on Salisbury Plain, and there he sat under the oak trees with his parents and his two brothers. Peter was now in full charge of family affairs and spent half his time on them, the other half devoted to the interests of the Proprietor. Richard had his commission in the Wiltshire regiment and was on leave prior to embarking for India; he joked that when he was a general he would stop off at Cape Town to meet with his brother, the bishop. Their father did not appreciate such remarks, for he still insisted that what Hilary ought to do was serve routine time as a missionary, then hurry back to enter competition for the deanship of the cathedral: 'When a young fellow has backing as strong as the Proprietor's, and as vigorous . . .'
One day the entire family went for a picnic at Old Sarum, where Josiah showed them the ancient elm under whose noble branches he had been elected to Parliament, and the older Saltwoods remained there while the three brothers climbed the low hill to view the ruins. It was both remarkable and moving that they could pick out the lines of those very old buildings which represented a heroic age of England, but after the first moments they paid scant attention to the ruins, for this was a cloudy day, and while they were standing among the fallen rocks a portion of the sky cleared, allowing great shafts of light to fall upon Salisbury to the south, and there the cathedral stood, bathed in radiance, a most noble monument, perhaps the finest in all England, situated on its almost empty meadow with no smaller buildings encroaching, and beyond it, outlined in the same accidental light, the three clumps of trees at Sentinels.
'Oh, look!' Peter cried. 'It's a signal!'
'For what?' Richard asked.
'For us. For us Saltwoods.' Grasping the hands of his brothers, he cried in excited syllables, 'Wherever you go, you're to come back here. This is always to be your home.'
Richard said, somewhat gruffly, 'It looks a far distance from India.'
Peter ignored his brother's dampening comment and asked, in a flush of emotion, 'Hilary, will you say a prayer for us?'
It seemed a most natural thing to do when three brothers, who had shared an old house beside a river of heavenly beauty and in the shadow of a great cathedral, were parting: 'Dearest God, Thy home is everywhere. Ours is here. Let us cherish both.'
'Damned fine prayer, Hilary,' Richard said, and the outing ended, but four days later their father proposed a more serious expedition, one that would require horses and considerable preparation.
'You'll be gone for some time,' he said to Hilary and Richard. 'I've spoken to the Proprietor and he wants to come along. Says it may be his final visit.'
'To where?' Peter asked.
Their father had a welcome surprise. Through the centuries when Salt-woods sent their sons to Oxford, the boys invariably went by carriage north through Wiltshire and then easterly through Berks, a route that carried them past one of the noble monuments of the world, and generations of the family had come to look upon this place as symbolic of their fortunes, so that occasionally, when no lad had gone north to university for some decades, the Saltwoods would convene and go that way without excuse, simply to renew their acquaintance with Stonehenge.
The monument lay only eight miles north of Salisbury, and a visit could be completed within a day, but the Saltwoods liked to pitch a tent there overnight so as to catch the dawn rising over the ancient stones. This expedition consisted of the Proprietor, still traveling by carriage, with the four Saltwood men on horseback and five servants following with tents, the food and the flagons of wine. The road was a rough one, not much traveled, since most people leaving Salisbury headed either east to London or west to Plymouth. Only the occasional scholar on his way to Oxford went north to Stonehenge, or someone headed to the port at Bristol or the towns in Wales.
Toward the close of day Josiah said, 'I rather think that at the rise of the next hill we shall see it,' and he told the boys to rein in their horses and allow the Proprietor to be in the lead when Stonehenge was first sighted.
'There they are!' the old man cried, and to the east on a small mound which caught the first rays of the rising sun and the last light of day stood the hallowed stones, some fallen, some leaning, some erect in the location they had occupied for more than four thousand years. It was an awesome place, and no Englishman conversant with his nation's history could fail to be humbled upon approaching it.
'D'you think it was the Druids?' the Proprietor asked as the group surveyed the somber monument.
'It was here centuries before anyone heard of Druids,' Josiah suggested.
'My own thoughts,' the Proprietor said. 'Sturdy bastards, whoever they were.'
Hilary had always been enchanted by Stonehenge. He had seen it first as a boy of ten on a family excursion much like this. He had seen it again when he accompanied Peter to Oriel, and of course on his own travels to Oxford. It was timeless, old beyond counting when Jesus was born, and it reminded men of the long sweep of history and the periods of darkness. The stones turned red as the sun dipped to its horizon, shimmering in the fading light.
'We'll pitch the tents over there,' the Proprietor suggested, and that night they slept within the shadowed circle.
Long before dawn the Proprietor was up, cursing the night and abusing his servants for not having lighted candles. 'I want to see the sun striking it,' he grumbled, and as the Saltwoods joined him he said, Tm sure they used to conduct human sacrifice here. At the solstices, anyway. Probably killed off two old men like me and three young virgins. Let's go to the sacrifice.'
And they stood among the ancient stones, hauled here from sources far removed, as the sun broke upon them.
'D'you think you could offer us a prayer, Hilary?' the old man asked.
'Let us bow our heads,' the new minister said, and as day came in earnest he prayed: 'God, Who marks our passage back to Salisbury and to India and to South Africa, and also to America where our brother hides, watch over us. Watch over us.'
The Proprietor said that while these were fine words, he would have appreciated some mention of the fact that this might be his last journey to the stones, whereupon Hilary uttered another short prayer, instructing God on this additional matter, and the old man was appeased.
They spent that day inspecting the fallen rocks and making cautious guesses as to how old they might be, but as dusk approached, Hilary experienced a surge of religious emotion and moved apart from the others. Standing among the untoppled pillars, a gaunt, angular, stoop-shouldered figure who might well have been an ancient priest of this temple, he whispered, 'O God, I swear to Thee that I shall be as faithful to Thy religion as the men who erected these stones were to theirs.'
He landed at Table Bay one morning in the spring of 1810, expecting to be greeted by representatives of the LMS who would probably spend some weeks indoctrinating him in his duties and perhaps even accompanying him to his place of assignment. Instead, as soon as he stepped ashore he was grabbed by a sturdy Dutch farmer with very broad shoulders and full beard who asked in heavily accented English, 'Is it true, you're a disciple of Simon Keer?'
Modestly Saltwood conceded that he was, whereupon the farmer pushed him away, muttering, 'You ought to be ashamed, spreading lies.'
He was not allowed even one night's rest in Cape Town, for at noon he found himself in a caravan of sorts heading eastward to a river on the far side of the mountains, where he had been directed to launch a mission. During the arduous journey he learned much about South Africa but even more about Reverend Keer, for wherever he stopped, people asked about the red-headed Lancashire man. The few Englishmen spoke of him with obvious regard, the many Dutchmen with unmasked contempt, and one night he asked an English missionary's wife to explain this contradiction.
'Simple,' she said. 'Simon Keer always stood up for the Hottentots and the Xhosa.'
'Isn't that our duty? To bring them to Jesus Christ?'
'Reverend Keer treated the Hottentots more like workmen in England.
Always fighting for their rights. Decent pay. Decent homes for them to live in. Things like that.'
'Did the Dutch object?'
She put down her cooking pans and turned to face Hilary. 'You must keep one thing in mind, if you're to be an effective missionary. We English have been here four years. The Dutch have been here a hundred and fifty-eight. They know what they're doing and they do it well.'
'Keer says that what they do so well is slavery.'
She placed her two hands on Hilary's and pleaded, 'Don't use that word. Reverend Keer was given to exaggeration. He lacked education, you know.'
'He's translating the Gospels.'
'Oh, he was excellent at identifying himself with the Xhosa. He could stay up all night transcribing their words.' 'I thought it was my duty to do the same.'
'To bring them Christ, yes. To become their advocate against the Dutch, no.'
'You speak harshly.'
'The Xhosa killed my son. They'd have killed me, too, except that a Dutch commando arrived in time.'
'And you stay?'
'It was an incident. We were at war and our troops had killed their people. Simple retaliation.'
'Aren't you afraid?'
'I am, and you will be, too. And pray God that you don't get caught up in it.'
As he penetrated farther into the country he became increasingly aware of how different the long-established Dutch were from the lately arrived English, and in his first letter home he shared his observations with his mother:
The Dutch speak of themselves in three distinct ways. Those in the environs of the Cape call themselves Dutch, although many of them have never seen Holland or ever will. In truth, they speak harshly of the old country, holding in contempt those real Dutchmen who came out from Holland to lord it over the locals with sneers and assumptions of superior education. Some of these long-time Dutch have taken themselves a new name, for they are more of Africa than of Europe. 'We are Afrikaners,' they say, but where I am traveling now these Afrikaners are named Boers (farmers). But farther east toward the lonely perimeter of the country, where the roughest of the Dutch dwell, they call themselves trekboers (migrating graziers), which is appropriate, for they are constantly moving on with their herds, until I am reminded of Abraham and Isaac. My mission is to be established in the lands of those trekboers who have stopped their wanderings.
At his next halt, where only Boers lived, Hilary received his harshest view of Reverend Keer: 'Arrogant, stupid man. Kept saying he loved the Xhosa and the Hottentots, but every action he took damaged them.'
'In what way?'
'Made them dissatisfied with their lot.' 'What is their lot?'
'At school in England, did they teach you the Book of Joshua?' 'I've read it.'
'But have you taken it to heart? God's story of how the Israelites came into a strange land? And how they were to conduct themselves there?' It was obvious to the Boer listeners that the new missionary knew little of Joshua, so the oldest farmer took down his huge Bible and slowly leafed the pages until he came to the familiar instructions, which he translated roughly for the newcomer:
'You shall not marry with the daughters of Canaan . . . You shall keep yourself apart. . . You shall destroy their cities . . . You shall hang their kings from trees . . . You shall block up their graves with stones, even to this day . . . You shall take the land, and occupy it and make it fruitful . . . One man of you shall chase one thousand of them . . . You shall keep yourselves apart. . . And they shall be your hewers of wood and your drawers of water... And all this you shall do in the name of the Lord, for He has commanded it.'
Closing the big book reverently and placing his hands upon it, he stared directly into Hilary's eyes and said, 'That is the word of the Lord. It is His Bible which instructs us.'
'There is another part of the Bible,' Hilary said quietly, leaning his thin shoulders forward to engage the debate.
'Yes, your Reverend Keer preached quite a different message, but he was an idiot. Young friend, believe me, it is the ancient word of God Himself that we follow, and you will break your teeth in this country if you contradict it.'
Across the southern plains of Africa, wherever he stopped, Hilary found himself engaged in argument over the merits of Simon Keer, and the Boers were so forceful in their rejection of the little redhead that in his quiet moments Hilary began to read Numbers and Joshua, finding in them not only the passages which his first Boer mentors had cited, but scores of others which applied directly to the position of the Dutch who had come into this land like the Israelites of old, who had entered their land of Canaan. The parallels were so overwhelming that he began to see local history through Dutch eyes, and this was a salvation when he opened his own mission.
The spot selected for him lay on the left bank of the Sundays River, four hundred miles from Cape Town. When he reached it, not a building stood, not a roadway existed. The river, suffering from drought, carried little water, and there were no trees. But the spot itself was congenial, perched on a broad bend of the river and graced with level fields acceptable to plowing. In the distance was a forest with an abundance of usable wood; and at hand, enough stones to build a city. Hilary, visualizing what this bleak spot might become, named it from a passage in the twentieth chapter of Joshua, where God instructs His people to erect cities of refuge to which any accused could flee and be assured of temporary safety:
And on the other side Jordan . . . eastward they assigned . . . Golan ... that whosoever killeth any person at unawares might flee thither, and not die . . . until he stood before the congregation.
This will be Golan, my city of refuge, Hilary thought, and when the last members of his caravan disappeared, leaving him majestically alone in the heart of a strange land, he prayed that he might be allowed to build well.
The first night, as he lay on the ground close to his belongings, he listened to strange sounds, and the darkness of Africa assailed him with a wild discordance, a sense of awe and anticipation rather than fear. When he awakened at dawn, he found a group of brown people watching him, squatting on their haunches a hundred feet away. For months there had been rumors that a missionary was coming.
Hilary beamed at the sight. Surely the Lord Himself had brought this little gathering into the arms of His servant Saltwood. Dusting himself off, he rose to greet them, overjoyed when one man spoke to him in broken English.
'We stay with you. We your people now.' His name was Pieter, son of that Dikkop who had traveled with Mai Adriaan. It was ten years since he had lived with the Van Doorns; he had run away after a beating for eating a melon from the family garden. He had drifted from farm to farm, working just enough to avoid being classified as 'Vagrant Hottentot,' which would allow his being assigned arbitrarily to any farmer who wanted him.
In truth, Pieter was a man who saw virtue in idleness; he could happily pass an entire day with his back against a tree, eyes firmly shut.
But before sunset that first day the Hottentots had shown Hilary how to dig a foundation to keep out rain, and by the second nightfall they had cut enough saplings to frame out a dwelling. Hilary saw in his imagination how Golan should look: rows of huts facing each other, a meeting hall and a church to close off one end of the rectangle.
