The covenant - James A. Michener [121]
'I'm sorry.'
'My sister said,' the taller woman repeated, 'that if you learn shipping, you could become one of our managers.'
With the bluntness that characterized most French farmers, and especially the Calvinists, De Pre blurted out, 'But I want to work the earth. You've seen what I can do with your garden.'
The widows liked his honesty, and the roundish one said, 'You're an excellent gardener, Paul, and we have a former neighbor who might use your services, too.'
'I'd not want to leave you,' he said frankly.
'We don't intend that you shall. But he's a friend, and one of the Lords XVII, and we could spare him three hours of your time a day. You can keep the wages.'
His hands dropped to his side, and he had to bite his lip to control his emotion. He had wandered into a strange land with no recommendation but his devotion to a form of religion, and in this land he had found a solid friend in Vermaas, who had gone out of his way to help him, a church whose members were encouraged to worship in French, and these two widows who were so kind to his wife, so loving with his sons and so generous with him. When the Huguenots fled France they found refuge in twenty foreign lands, where they encountered a score of different receptions, but none equaled the warmth extended to them in Holland.
On Tuesday morning at nine o'clock, after De Pre had put in his usual four hours of hard work, the Bosbeecq women suggested that he accompany them to the stately Herengracht (Gentlemen's Canal), along which his new employer lived, and there they knocked at the door of a house much grander than theirs. A maid dressed in blue admitted them to a parlor filled with furniture from China and bade them sit upon the heavy brocades. After a wait long enough to allow Paul time to admire the richness of the room, a gentleman appeared, clad in a most expensive Chinese robe decorated with gold and blue dragons.
He was tall and thin, with a white mustache and goatee. He had piercing eyes that showed no film of age, and although he was past seventy, he moved alertly, going directly to De Pre and bowing slightly. 'I am Karel van Doorn, and I understand from these good women that you wish to work for me.'
'They said you could have me three hours a day.'
'If you really work, that would be enough. Can you really work?' De Pre sensed that he was in the hands of someone much harsher than the widows, but he was so captivated by the idea of Java that he did not want to antagonize anyone who might be associated with that wonderland. 'I can tend your garden,' he said.
With no apologies to the Bosbeecqs, Van Doorn took Paul by the arm, hurried him through a chain of corridors to a big room, and threw open a window overlooking a garden in sad repair. 'Can you marshal that into some kind of order?'
'I could fix that within a week.'
'Get to it!' And he shoved Paul out the back door and toward a shed where some tools waited. 'I must explain to the'
'I'll tell them you're already at work.' Van Doorn started to leave, then stopped abruptly and cried, 'Remember! You said you could do it in a week.'
'And what do I do after that?' Paul asked.
'Do? You could work three hours a day for ten years and not finish all the things I have in mind.'
When De Pre returned to the Bosbeecq house, where the widows were preparing a gigantic meal because they knew he would be hungry, the two women suggested that he sit with them in the front room, and there, in forthright terms, they warned him about his new employer, speaking alternately, as usual, like two angels reporting to St. Peter regarding their earthly investigations.
'Karel van Doorn will pay you every stuiver you earn. He's fiercely honest.'
'Within