The covenant - James A. Michener [334]
Very cautiously he said to Theunis, 'You are right. We must have a marriage and a baptism. In Graaff-Reinet.' That's all that was said, but everyone within the enfolding hills at De Kraal understood that the Van Doorns were preparing to abandon the farm they had spent sixty years in perfecting. The women began to sort away things for which they would have no space. The men sold off the weaker cattle. And little Paulus, approaching five, carried a hammer and banged away at everything.
No one mentioned a date for their leaving, but someone said casually that Nachtmaal would start in seven weeks. No one picked up the comment, yet day by day departure became more inevitable, and one day when Tjaart came upon his wife gathering eggs he saw that she was close to weeping. 'What a woman! You shout at me, "Go north!" and when I start, you weep.' She denied this.
He had a bad moment himself one morning when two Coloured herdsmen shouted, 'Baas! Baas! Look what come!' There, entering the farmlands from the hills at the southwest, came seventeen sable antelope, the most beautiful creatures in Africa, stately dark animals with white blazes across their faces and incredible scimitar horns that curved backward from the head, reaching forty, fifty inches. No purpose for these horns had ever been demonstrated; they swung so far back that they could not possibly be used in fighting. Perhaps, just perhaps, they were intended merely to be beautiful.
All the Van Doorns came from the house to witness this elegant parade. 'They must be the last ones south of the Orange River,' Tjaart said. 'See how gently they lift their feet.' How beautiful they were, how stately, this remnant of a great herd now diminished. Never before had they been seen at De Kraal, and their quiet passage across the farm seemed to presage a similar movement of the Van Doorns.
That night, while the majesty of the sables lingered in the valley, Tjaart said simply, 'We'll be following them north. Our life, too, has been used up here,' and once these words were thrown into the air, Jakoba and Minna felt free to weep.
If ever a group of people entered their exile with heavy hearts and moral reluctance it was the Van Doorns, and they spent one night drafting a letter of justification to their English neighbors in Grahamstown and their Boer friends in Graaff-Reinet. Tjaart began by saying, 'I think we've all heard the statement the Americans made when they broke away from England. I'm sure we must do the same.' And with ample guidance from Theunis, plus an occasional strong remark from Lukas de Groot, he compiled these thoughts which appeared in the papers of each community:
When in the course of human events a group of people decide to leave their homes, they must, out of decent respect for their neighbors, explain why they are doing so. We leave our farms with sadness, our neighbors with deep regret, but we can do no other. Our reasons for leaving will be adjudged by all good men to be just and reasonable.
The ravages of the past war show to the world that this Government is incapable of protecting our farmers against invasions of the Kaffir, and it has removed the last hope for an effective barrier to keep these hordes out of the colony.
Government has taken our slaves from us without compensating us adequately or honestly. It has ridiculed our traditional way of handling slaves and has listened only to contumelious adversaries who parade up and down England preaching lies and defamations. The honest citizens of this land, who live with the problem, have not been listened to.
Government has placed in the pulpits of our church predikants unfamiliar with our language. It has sent us officials to try our law cases who cannot understand the words we speak in our defense. It fills our schools with teachers who erase our children's knowledge of their mother tongue.
We leave soil claimed by the English Government without rancor, or threats, or ill will. We