The covenant - James A. Michener [272]
When they were safely across the flats and entering Cape Town, they assumed that there they would escape the unkind curiosity, but again they were mistaken. Dr. Keer had spoken rather harshly of his stupid outcasts in the Karroo, and many people went out of their way to see them, not as missionaries, but as freaks. They spent a trying time before their ship arrived, but once aboard it, their real troubles began. Four families of some distinction, returning home from India, refused to be seated in the same salon as the blackamoor, so Hilary and his wife had to take their meals apart. They were not welcomed on deck, nor were they included in any of the ship's activities. On Sundays church services were held without the participation of a clergyman, since none but Hilary was aboard, and he was not invited to preach, for his presence would be offensive to the better families.
The ostracism worried him not at all. As he told his wife, 'We're in an age of change, and it's going to take time.' That it would require two hundred years or more would have stunned him, for he moved about the ship unconcerned with the present, assured that the future would see a better balance between the races. With anyone who would speak with him, he talked quietly of mission life, explained the various regions of South Africa, and shared his vision of the future:
'In India you'll have every problem we have. How can a few white Englishmen continue to govern huge numbers of people who aren't? In a hundred years situations will be quite different from what they are now. I see the same happening in Java with the Dutch, or in Brazil with the Portuguese. In New Zealand and Australia, I'm told, the problem is somewhat different, because there the white man forms the majority, but he's still got to rule decently or he'll lose out. Like it or not, we must devise systems of government to meet unforeseen conditions, and I for one am convinced it must be done on a basis of Christ's brotherhood.'
He was so persuasive in his quiet way that toward the end of the voyage certain passengers approached the captain and said that they would like to recommend Reverend Saltwood as minister for one of the last Sundays, but this was dismissed abruptly: 'Passengers wouldn't hear of it.' To which the men replied, 'We're passengers, and we think the others would accept.' The appeal was denied.
However, little Emma had been active among the children, telling them outrageous accounts of lions and leopards, of hippos in the river and rhinos crashing through the forest. Strangely, what interested the children most was her depiction of the Karroo:
'Think of a land as flat as this deck. Here, here and here, what do we have? Little hills, round at the bottom, flat on top, never touching. Scores of them. And from these hills one morning comes a blesbok. You want to see what a blesbok looks like? [Here she took some blacking and transformed a boy's face into the white-and-black glory of the blesbok.] So here comes our blesbok. And then another. And another. You're all blesboks, so get in line. And then another and another, until the world is full of blesboks. Marching in line. As far as you can see, faces like this. That's where I live.'
When Blesbok number one returned to his parents, they wanted to know what in the world had happened to him, and he said, 'I'm a blesbok, on the Great Karroo.' This started inquiries, and several parents discovered that Mrs. Saltwood had been entertaining their children for some time, and when they discussed this with their boys and girls, they found further that she had become something of an idol: 'She can sing, and make games with string, and she tells us about ostriches and meerkats.'
So now certain women joined their husbands in an appeal to the captain, but he was adamant against allowing Saltwood to conduct services, on the very good grounds that whereas a few families may have come to accept the missionary, those that really counted were still set against it; he knew from past experience that to irritate the rabble signified