The covenant - James A. Michener [382]
Saltwood added his own imaginative touch to the quest. Finding himself only a short distance from Salisbury, he hurried there by train, burst into Sentinels and cried, 'I can use all the spare women in town.' His brother was absent, attending Parliament, but his wife was there, and she organized a hunt which produced five young women who had only bleak prospects at home. One ill-favored lass named Maggie began to whimper, 'I don't want no South Aferkee.'
'That's where you're going,' Saltwood said sternly, herding his charges onto the train, which frightened them just as much as the prospective sea voyage.
At the ship two chaotic days were spent in a grand sorting-out, but since many of the Germans and some of the women were drunk, when dawn came on the third day and the passengers awoke to see the horrible choices they had made in the dark, there was rebellion.
This man did not intend to spend his life with that woman, and this woman who could speak no German knew that a substitute husband had been fobbed off on her in the confusion. A wild scene ensued, which the two German ministers aboard could not resolve, and it seemed as if the whole plan might go smash when Saltwood grabbed a whistle, blew it shrilly, and ordered the men to line up on one side of the ship, the women on the other. Then he addressed them: 'Gentlemen, do you wish to spend your lives alone?' When the interpreter repeated this question, many men said 'No.' And Saltwood continued: 'Well, if you don't find your wives this day, you won't find any out there for three or four or a dozen years. Is that what you want?' The interpreter handled this message with brutal frankness, and the German men looked at the deck, saying nothing.
Saltwood then directed his words at the English women: 'You haven't had good lives here. I can see that. Now you have a chance to go to a bright new land, with hope and a good husband. Are you daft, that you would surrender this?'
Before his chastened listeners could dredge up excuses, he ordered the men and women to remain in lines, facing each other, upon which he blew his whistle three times, then said, his finger pointing, 'You, at the head of the line. This is your woman!' And that couple moved forward.
'You!' the interpreter repeated in German. 'This is your woman.'
He went down the entire roster, arbitrarily deciding who was to be married to whom, and at his signal, Reverend Johannes Oppermann stepped forward and in one grand ceremony married the lot. The two hundred and forty couples spent three months together aboard the old Alice Grace, and when they reached their destination they established some of the strongest families in South Africa.
The London press delighted in the spectacle of a brother to the sobersides member of Parliament, Sir Peter Saltwood, engaged in so amorous a royal commission, and a Punch caricaturist fleshed Richard considerably, plumped up his cheeks, stripped off his clothing but added a discreet diaper, gave him a little bow and arrow, and christened him Cupid.
When officials at Cape Town implored Queen Victoria to send some member of the royal family out to the colony to show the flag and instill patriotism in the hearts of the English segment of the population, she found herself in something of a quandary. She herself would not think of leaving England, and Prince Albert was in failing health. Five of their nine children were girls, and deemed unsuitable for foreign travel among lions and elephants. That left four sons, but the youngest two were ten and seven, hardly appropriate for diplomatic service, while the oldest boy, the Prince of Wales, was visiting the United States and Canada that year. That left only the second son, Alfred, but he was only sixteen. Still, South Africa was a country of farmers and shopkeepers, not a real country like Canada, so little Alfred might do.
He was a popular lad, and within the