The covenant - James A. Michener [333]
'We must go north,' she said bluntly. 'To seek free land.'
When Lukas and Rachel de Groot came south to report on the sad condition of their farm they fortified Jakoba's advice: 'We haven't the heart to build again. We're leaving.' 'To where?'
'Cross the Orange River. Then down into Natal.'
'I think I shall stay here,' Tjaart said deliberately. 'This is a good farm in a good region. I think the English will govern it well, one day.'
When the De Groots volunteered to stay and help him rebuild, he had an opportunity to see what a fine lad their boy Paulus had become. He was four, a stocky little man who wore heavy trousers like his father's. His copious blond hair was cut straight across his forehead, bobbing this way and that when he ran, and his sturdy limbs indicated the strength he already had.
In the repairs to the farm the boy took to himself many tasks that might have gone to men, such as struggling with broken timbers and keeping the cattle to their proper areas. Tjaart, looking at the lad, thought: How splendid it would be if that boy married Minna's daughter. But when his thoughts ran in this pattern they were sooner or later diverted to that dazzling girl up north, Aletta Naude, and he wondered if he would ever see her again. He pictured the inadequacy of Ryk, and imagined various ways in which he might come to a bad end: he proved a coward and Xhosa slew him; he stole money and an English officer shot him; he led a hunting party and an elephant crushed him. Always he disappeared, leaving Aletta to be saved by Tjaart van Doorn. The years would pass, but she would never age; never do household tasks. She was forever the nubile girl he had seen in her father's shop at Graaff-Reinet.
That name came up in the conversation quite often these days. From the first Theunis Nel had felt uncomfortable about living with a girl to whom he was not married, and when she became pregnant he felt downright immoral. But now that he was the father of the beautiful girl Sybilla, he began to nag Tjaart about taking the family to Nachtmaal, 'so that we can become acceptable in the sight of the Lord.' But Tjaart had no wagon and he was loath to borrow a neighbor's; still, Theunis was so insistent in his desire to sanctify his marriage, that Tjaart had to respect him, for in his own marriages he had experienced the same emotion. He was not an overly religious man, and certainly his two wives were rugged, rough women accustomed to frontier exigencies, but they had felt vaguely uneasy until their marriages were solemnized; there was something about living with a person of the other sex which had mysterious overtones: the passing of the month, the spacing of fertility, the birth of a child, the establishment of a home, the blessing of a barn to prevent lightning. These mysteries deserved attention, and prudent men gauged their lives accordingly. If Theunis Nel, a man of God, found himself enmeshed in these human complications and sought verification, Tjaart van Doorn was not going to ridicule him, even though sanctification lay ninety-two miles away, with no wagon to cover the distance.
Slowly, slowly in the rugged mind of this stubborn Boer his enthusiasm for rebuilding De Kraal waned and another stratagem began to coalesce: If we did go to Nachtmaal, Theunis and Minna could be married and Sybilla baptized, and we'd already be well on our way to the north. Three days' turning to the east, we'd be on the track the others took. The De Groots could ride in their good wagon. And I'm sure he'd help me build something usable on the burned frame.
Once he came close to weeping when he thought of that fine wagon, charred to