The covenant - James A. Michener [276]
The two listeners said nothing, and before either could respond, Emma appeared with glasses of a drink she and Emily Saltwood had made: cold cider with honey and a dusting of cinnamon.
'Point I'm making, Peter, is that if the laws you pass goad the Boers, they'll listen once and accept what they don't like, and they'll listen twice. But I assure you, if you come at them a third time, they'll grab that club and bash you between the eyes.'
Very carefully Simon Keer delivered his next observation: 'What it comes down toit appears to meare we ruling South Africa, or are the Boers, from whom we took the colony some years ago and whom we have cosseted outrageously?'
With equal calm Hilary said, 'We did not take it from them. We took it from their supine government in Europe. They're still there, every one of them, and increasing by the year.' Then he became urgent: 'But more important are the Xhosa, the Pondo, the Tembu and the Fingo. They've always been there, and they always will. They're also increasing, and we must act to keep everyone on balance.'
'Can this be done?' Sir Peter asked, and before there could be a reply to a question that permitted no reply, Emma came rushing across the lawn, and when she reached the oak trees she gasped, 'Hilary! It's Mrs. Saltwood. I think she's dead.'
In the aftermath of the funeral Mrs. Lambton said, in the presence of the two Saltwood boys and their wives, 'Hilary, get back to Africa. You should be forever ashamed of yourself. You killed your mother.'
'Now wait!' Sir Peter said.
'She sat with me day after day, weeping. Once she broke into wild laughter and said, "The fault's all mine. I bought that black girl for him. Yes, I sent him the money and he bought himself a wife." '
'Now, Mrs. Lambton,' Sir Peter interrupted, but she had scorn for him, too: 'If you'd had any love for your mother, you'd have thrown this pair out*
'Mrs. Lambton, just last week my mother told me that it was God's providence that sent Hilary home, and not Richard. We didn't want Hilary to come. We were embarrassed when he did. But as we lived with him and these were my mother's words . . .'
He broke down. All he could do was grasp his wife's hand and nod to her, indicating that she must continue.
Lady Janice said, 'There was a reconciliation. Among all of us.' She reached for Emma's hand, welcoming her at last to Sentinels. But at the door Mrs. Lambton cried, 'You killed your mother. Go back. Go back.'
It could never be determined who murdered the two missionaries. Before dawn one morning in 1828, when Hilary was only forty-three but looked sixty, distant herders saw fire at the hut, and when they reached it they found the two Saltwoods with their throats cut and all their possessions gone.
Fire consumed the place, so that gathering clues proved impossible. Speculation centered on six groups of suspects: Bushmen who liked to creep into such settlements and steal cattle, but none of the mission cattle were gone; Hottentots who rebelled against authority, but the local Hottentots loved the Saltwoods, who had no servants; Kaffirs who were quick with their assegais, but the Kaffirs in the area were mission hands who knew only peace; Boers who despised most missionaries, but the only Boers in the area lived sixty miles away and they rather liked Saltwood; Englishmen who hated the Saltwoods for besmirching the good reputation of the LMS through their miscegenation, but there were none in the area; and wandering Singhalese thieves off some ship, but the nearest harbor was seven hundred miles