The covenant - James A. Michener [325]
In a year of Nel's teaching a child might learn what he or she could have mastered in two weeks at a real school, but would certainly learn a wealth of moral instruction which children in better schools never acquired.
He had one weakness as a schoolmaster, and the farmers who employed him could not correct it. 'I am,' he told them, 'first and last a sick-comforter,' and if anyone in the region fell ill or approached death, he felt obligated to appear at the bedside. This meant that his school went unattended, and for this he was rebuked, but he told Balthazar Bronk, 'God has two concerns in the Graaff-Reinet district. That his young people get started right on their journey through life. That his old people get started right on their journey to heaven. In both instances I am the teacher.'
He was indeed a sick-comforter. With dying men he recalled their vigorous contributions to Boer society; with women he reminded them of the essential role they played in producing and rearing good people. He made the termination of life respectable, proper, inevitable, a thing to be as much appreciated as a beginning: 'You have seen the meadows fill with grain. You have seen six cattle multiply to sixty-six. These have been the signs of a good life, and through them God has marked you for salvation.'
In strict obedience to John Calvin's teaching, he was convinced that every human being he met was destined either for heaven or for hell, and he usually knew which; but this did not mean that he treated the condemned with any less benevolence than he treated the saved, and in the final moments whenever a dying person asked, 'Dominee, am I to be saved?' he replied, 'I am not a dominee, and I often wonder whether I am saved. This crooked back. This blemished eye. All I know about you is what I know about myself. In this life God has been just to me, and I'm sure He will be so in the next.'
The Van Doorns became personally affected by Nel's dual functions when the old grandmother fell ill. Wilhelmina was past sixty and her life was ending in a painful sickness. Nel, hearing of this, closed school and rode the horse his farmers had given him over to De Kraal, where he said simply, 'I am told Ouma is dying.'
'She is,' Tjaart said, tears marring his broad face and beard. 'She built this farm.' He led Nel to the dark room in which the old woman lay, and the first thing Theunis did was open the blinds and the windows. He then stepped to the bedside and spoke to Wilhelmina as if she were one of his scholars: 'Now tell me how you got this farm,' and when she had spoken only a few words, he interrupted, ran to the kitchen and told Tjaart, 'You must assemble all the children, immediately. Ouma wants to talk with them.'
She had in no way indicated that she wished to speak with her grandchildren, but Nel recognized that she possessed words of importance which ought to be passed from one generation to the next. So when they were all assembled, Nel arranged them in the sickroom and said, 'The generations of man are but as the winnowing of grain, and when the chaff is blown aside, the wheat must be treasured.'
'What in hell is he talking about?' Tjaart whispered.
'This Ouma who lies here with us has had a powerful life, and you must know about it, and tell it to your children's children.' And with this he started Wilhelmina on the story of how she had come to De Kraal.
In a wispy voice, sensing that she had only hours to live, she began: 'I lived by the sea in a family that knew not God, and a passing smous told me that up north a good man had lost his wife, so I got on my horse, and without saying goodbye to anyone I left that wrong house, rode north and told your father ...' She was speaking to Tjaart, who listened dumfounded.
'They called your father the Hammer, which was an ugly name, really, and not at all the proud one he thought. But we needed a Hammer. Forty times or more he rode off, and always I prayed that I would see him come