The covenant - James A. Michener [612]
'I was thinking of how the Dutch language deteriorated at the Cape. Became quite debased, you know.'
'I shouldn't wonder if they'd done a good thing, Laura. Mark you, languages change. You say the Afrikaners blotted their copybook. I say they've kept up with the times, and a good thing, too.'
'But there's a grandeur about language. I don't like to see it cheapened.'
'The odd bit of improvement never hurt any language. I relish some of the changes the Americans have made. Mortician's a delightful word. Custodian's much higher-toned than janitor. Not to worry about a few modifications.'
'It offends me to see signs in my dress shop which say, "Wear U get tru value," and in Afrikaans, "U is welkom." I may sound chauvinistic, but they seem silly.'
Since Lady Ellen knew nothing of Afrikaans, Laura dropped the subject, but three nights later when they drove north to see the Oxford Players do King Lear at Stonehenge, and the great monoliths glowed somberly in the night shadows, she surrendered to the glories of Shakespeare and actually trembled when the old king, huddling against the darkest pillars, shared his pity with those less fortunate:
'Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are, That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm, How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides, Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you From seasons such as these?'
It seemed to her that words could not be more glorious, and later, when the young man tried to frighten the crazy blind Earl of Gloster by describing the cliff and the workman climbing perilously down its face, she sighed with the terrible power of the words:
'How fearful
And dizzy 'tis to cast one's eyes so low! The crows and choughs that wing the midway air Show scarce so gross as beetles: half way down Hangs one that gathers samphiredreadful trade! Methinks he seems no bigger than his head . . .'
Unaware of the dangerous path she was treading, she sat there in the shadow of Stonehenge and gave herself over to the magic of great-fashioned words hurled into the night and became drunk on them, and when old Lear at the end confessed his weakness, she had tears in her eyes from suffering with him:
'I am a very foolish fond old man,
Fourscore and upward, not an hour more nor less;
And, to deal plainly,
I fear I am not in my perfect mind.'
Three days later, still mesmerized by words, she borrowed Lady Ellen's Austin and drove by herself to Cambridge, where as a young woman of twenty she had enjoyed such flawless hours with her older brother, Wexton.
Parking the car in a municipal lot, she walked along King's Parade, ignoring the noble chapel of King's College, for she wanted to see again the austere entrance to Clare College, which her brother had attended. Walking as if in a dream, she entered the old surroundings which had housed scholars since 1326 and stood for a long time recalling ruefully those long spring days when she had visited Wexton here. How mercurial they were, how filled with surging ideas. Shaking her head in mournful recollection, she left Clare, nodding her head as she remembered the excellent education her brother had obtained here: You were one of the brilliant lads, Wexton. Oh, God, how I miss you.
She walked aimlessly south till she reached the gatehouse to King's College, where almost against her will she entered that stately court where Wexton had encountered the temptations he could not resist. She intended hastening through, wanting to see the Backs, where she and her brother's friends had enjoyed so many hours, but she was diverted to the right toward that grandest of England's self-contained chapels, King's, with its glorious arches reaching to heaven, its ornate choir reminding one of kings and princes. It had been spoiled somewhat since she first knew it by the installation of one of the best canvases Peter Paul Rubens ever painted, a gigantic adoration of the Magi worth millions of whatever currency might be in vogue: Damn, that's a fine painting, maybe the best he ever did. But it doesn't belong here.
She sat in one of the