The covenant - James A. Michener [264]
Loved! Did he love Emma, his marvelous little assistant with the laughing eyes? He believed he did, but he wondered whether God would approve of such a union.
His thinking thus far had required one full day; he spent the next two in trying to ascertain whether a man totally devoted to Jesus Christ dared risk such a marriage, and just as the Boers searched the Old Testament for guidance in their time of tribulation, so he took down the New Testament and tried to decipher the teachings of Jesus and St. Paul, and the old familiar phrases leaped and tumbled in contradiction through his mind: 'It is better to marry than to burn ... He that is unmarried careth for the things of the Lord . . . Husbands, love your wives ... It is good for a man not to touch a woman ... So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies,' and St. Paul's specific command to celibacy: 'I say therefore to the unmarried, "It is good for them if they abide even as I." '
It was a confusing doctrine, generated in a time when people were living in agitated communities much like the South Africa of 1821, and a searcher could find Biblical justification for either marrying or not marrying, but in the end one incident in the New Testament superseded all others: when a poor couple in Cana were being married without enough money to provide wine for their guests, Jesus stepped forward and converted water into wine so that the celebration could proceed. Laughter possessed Hilary when he thought of it: I've always liked that miracle best of all. A celebration. A blessing. And at the end the governor himself saying, 'At most parties they serve good wine at the beginning, rubbish as soon as the guests are drunk. But you've brought us the best wine at the end. Stout fellow!' I believe that Jesus and his disciples must have danced at this wedding.
He spent the third night praying, and in the morning he went to Emma and said, 'Jesus Himself would dance at our wedding. Will you have me?'
They were married quietly by Saul, who now served as deacon at the missionthis tall white man, this short black woman. They shared a wattled hut beside the church, and since no announcements were broadcast, news of the extraordinary marriage did not circulate.
It certainly did not reach Grahamstown, seventy-five miles to the east, where Richard Saltwood had found himself a saucy bride, Julie, the Dorset girl who had ridden her own horse to Plymouth to take passage on one of the last emigrant ships. Alone and unprotected, she lacked the funds to hire a sixteen-oxen wagon to freight her to Grahamstown, so she had walked, bringing with her barely more than the clothes on her back. Within a week six men had wanted to marry her, and in her flirtatious way she had chosen Richard. She could not read, but when he explained that one day he would take her back to the cathedral town of Salisbury, she said brightly, 'Then, by God, I better learn,' and she had sought out Mrs. Carleton to teach her, and the two women, so unlike in breeding, so similar in courage, had a fine time wrestling with the alphabet.
When Richard proposed that he send for his brother to conduct the wedding, Julie cried, 'Capital! It'll give us a chance to introduce him to the town.'
So a servant was sent west on horseback to invite Hilary to perform the ceremony, and the invitation seemed so sincere and the opportunity to establish connections with the new settlement so favorable that the missionary accepted. He would take Emma with him so that the Grahamstown people could witness the depth of his conviction that a new era was beginning in the colony.
Hilary, Emma, Saul and the servant made the eastward journey, with Bible reading each evening, prayers each dawn, and much conversation