The covenant - James A. Michener [547]
'Well,' the father said deprecatingly, 'he'd be a little young for that. Those New Zealanders . . .' And the rest of that day was spent reminiscing about the 1921 tour and the way Detleef had handled, or not handled, Tom Heeney, the Hard Rock from Down Under.
Maria was pleased that her son should have received such recognition from the Rhodes committee, but like her husband, she said she would be offended if he showed any signs of accepting: 'We don't need a son of ours going to Oxford ... like some Saltwood with divided loyalty . . . living here and calling Salisbury home.'
Both the Van Doorns wrote to Marius that night, congratulating him on the honor, but telling him also that they had heard whispers of his becoming a Springbok, perhaps even the captain, but before their letters could be delivered, he appeared in Cape Town to inform them that he had accepted the scholarship and would be leaving soon for England.
Detleef was so shocked he could hardly speak: 'You're not. . . passing up a Springbok blazer ... for a Rhodes scholarship?' When Marius nodded, Detleef cried, 'But, son! A scholarship comes every day. To be a rugger Springbok, that comes once in a lifetime.'
Marius was firm. He was twenty-one, taller than his father, and without the bull neck. He played not as a rugged forward in the scrum but as a fleet, elusive back. His intellectual brilliance, inherited mostly from his maternal grandfather, Christoffel Steyn, shone in his face, and he could not mask his delight at going to Oxford and competing with the best.
'But, Marius,' his father pleaded. 'You can learn things out of books anywhere, but if you have a real chance to captain a Springbok sidethat would be immortality.'
'There's more to life than rugby,' the young man said.
'What?' Detleef demanded. 'I've done many things in my life. Seen the camps. Had the prize bull at the Rand Agricultural. Fought with De Groot and Christoffel. And watched the triumph of my people. But nothing comes close to stepping on a rugby field in New Zealand wearing the Springbok jersey. For God's sake, Marius, don't throw away that opportunity for something Cecil Rhodes devised as a trick to seduce our Afrikaner lads.'
'I can still play rugby. I'll play for Oxford.'
'You'll what?' Detleef looked at his wife in blank stupor.
'Did you say you'd play for Oxford?' Maria asked.
'Yes, if I can make the team.'
'A man who could be a Springbok . . . playing for Oxford?' Detleef choked a bit, then said, 'You realize that the way things fall, you could one day be playing against South Africa?'
'It's only a game.'
Detleef rose to his full choleric height: 'It is not a game. It's how we instilled patriotism in this nation. I would rather be captain of a Springbok team in New Zealand than prime minister.'
No argument could dissuade Marius, and when, three years later, he informed his parents by cable that he was going to marry an English girl, they wept for two days.
The marriage of Marius van Doorn, Oriel athlete and scholar, to Clare Howard was solemnized on 20 March i960 at the home of her parents in a village northwest of Oxford. His parents were not present, for although they had been invited, they refused to set foot on English soil, and this accounted for the fact that they were at home in Pretoria the next day when South Africa was torn nearly apart by a fusillade of police bullets at Sharpeville, a black township near the Vaal River.
For the past year black indignation had swelled against the laws that placed increasingly severe restrictions on black freedoms: Albert Luthuli, soon to win the Nobel Peace Prize, had been confined to his home district for five years; African women marching in demonstrations had been baton-charged; in the Transkei and Zululand, uprisings had left dozens dead and injured.
At Sharpeville the blacks decided to try peaceful protest: they would turn in their passbooks and offer themselves for arrest, holding it to be an insult to carry such identification