The covenant - James A. Michener [198]
'Rebecca?' Lodevicus asked.
'Yes, she planned to marry you from the day you arrived.'
'But the Lord told me to find my wife at the Cape.'
'Exactly what did the Voice say?' Dominee Specx asked, and when Lodevicus replied that he could not remember exactly, the clergyman said, 'You told me that it said, "Go to the Cape . . ." and then "Find a Christian wife." That doesn't mean that you must take your wife from the Cape. It merely means that God wanted you to have the experience of the Cape. And you were quite right to come back here for your bride. God directed you, don't you see?'
The explanation was so logical that Lodevicus had to accept it, and neither then nor afterward would he admit to himself that he had returned to Swellendam to marry Rebecca, for she had seemed too mature and superior to be attainable.
They were married by her father in the newly built church, and after a honeymoon that revealed the quality of the two young peoplehe fanatically determined to exhibit God's handiwork, she unflinching in her resolve to take Christianity to the frontierthey saddled two horses, and with a minimum of possessions, set forth to tame the wilderness.
Their reception at the Van Doorn farm was not a pleasant one. On the trip east Lodevicus had warned his bride that Seena might prove troublesome: 'Adriaan's an infidel, but he's quiet. My mother's the daughter of Rooi van Valck, and she'll be difficult, even hostile.'
When they rode into the farmyard the first voice they heard was Seena's, loud and raucous, shouting to her husband, 'Adriaan! He's back. With a bride.'
When the family assembled, Lodevicus, with new-found assurance, attempted to share with his parents the miracle of his epiphany: 'God called to me to go to the Cape to take a wife.'
'Adriaan heard a call like that once,' Seena said, 'but I doubt God had much to do with it.'
'So I stopped at Swellendam to pray with Dominee Specx, and Rebecca taught me the letters and how to put them together . . .'
'I'll warrant that wasn't all she taught.'
The young couple ignored these interruptions, and Lodevicus continued: 'And when I learned to write, I got down on my knees and thanked God and told Him that as soon as I returned home I would write our names in the Bible. Fetch it.'
He issued this request as a command, and Seena was somewhat irritated when her husband complied. Going to a wagon chest in which he kept the odd valuables that accumulate even in a hartebeest hut, he brought forth the old Bible, opening it to the page of records between the two testaments. 'This time,' Lodevicus said gravely, 'we have a pen,' and with everyone watching, he carefully inscribed the missing names: 'Adriaan van Doorn, born 1712. Seena van Valck born . . .'
'Maybe 1717,' she said.
'Father, Rooi van Valck. Mother . . .'
'I never knew for sure.' Lodevicus and Rebecca stared at her, and he said, 'We've got to put something.'
'Put Fedda the Malayan. I liked her best.'
'Put Magdalena van Delft,' Adriaan said. 'You know she was your real mother.'
Seena spat: 'That for Magdalena.'
Hurriedly Lodevicus wrote in the names of his brother and his two sisters, then, with a flourish and a smile for his wife, he wrote: 'Rebecca Specx, Swellendam, daughter of the Predikant.'
When he put the pen aside, satisfied with his work, Seena asked, 'When you reached Swellendam, were you married?'
'Oh, no!' her son said. 'When I had learned to write I marched on to the Cape, as God had directed.'
'Over the mountains?' Adriaan asked, showing respect for such a trip.
'Over the tall mountains, but when I reached the Cape, I found Sodom and Gomorrah. Indecencies everywhere.'
'What indecencies?' Seena asked.
Again he ignored her, telling of his revulsion, his rejection of the town and his return over the mountains. 'We were married and spent the next weeks in a revelation. The four of us, Dominee Specx and his wife, I and my wife, we sat together and read the entire Bible.'
For the first time Rebecca intruded. In a low voice, but with great firmness, she said, 'The Old Testament, that is.'