The Covenant, page 49
'You're the man for the job,' the Proprietor said. 'But I want you to take it seriously. During the first four years it'll be better if you say nothing. Just listen and vote as I instruct, and after four or five years, you might begin to do things. Nothing flashy. You're not to be noticed. Men from the provinces are apt to make asses of themselves and don't last. Show me one from Old Sarum who ever spoke much and I'll show you one who lasted only a session.'
Saltwood very much wanted to ask, 'How about William Pitt?' but had the good sense to keep his mouth shut. Indeed, as he stood silent in the manner the Proprietor liked, the old man said, 'Even Pitt, he talked too much. Much better if he'd sat silent more often.'
With the necessary papers signed, and endorsed by Saltwood, the old gentleman signaled for the horses, and when he was safely inside his carriage for the ride back to the cathedral for evensong, he flicked his hat to his factor, riding behind, and said, 'We've done a good day's work.'
Behind them stood the great elm, its branches covering an immense spread. For three hundred years this venerable tree had witnessed elections like this, but never one conducted so speedily. A significant percentage of Parliament had been elected by one man in the course of seven minutes.
When Josiah Saltwood assembled his family under the oak trees to inform them of the surprising event at Election Elm, his wife Emily did not try to anticipate what her husband was about to announce; her task had been the rearing of four sons, and it had occupied her exclusively. Her principal recreation had been walking the mile or so to the cathedral to listen to the choristers; she did not care much for the sermons.
The four boys came to the meeting with eagerness; for some time they had been speculating on what they must do to find a settled place in life, and any sudden change in their father's position excited them for the possibilities it might uncover for them. Peter, the eldest, had come down from Oxford some years back and was serving as a kind of junior clerk for the family estate while vaguely learning the tasks involved in his father's role as factor to the Proprietor. He was not accomplishing much.
Hilary Saltwood, twenty-four years old that day, presented a serious problem. As a younger son he could not look forward to inheriting either the Saltwood house or his father's occupation. He must look to the army or to the church for his life's sustenance, and up to now he had decided on neither. He had done well at Oxford and could possibly have aspired to work in India, but he had dallied, and now all positions for which he might have been eligible were filled by young men with greater concentration. In some respects he was brilliant; in others, quite confused, so that the family often speculated on what might become of him.
Richard Saltwood, however, though he had done poorly at Oxford and left with the most meager degree awarded, had bought his way into what was always called 'the Gallant Fifty-ninth,' a regiment stationed in India. His father had told the Proprietor, 'That boy was destined for the army from birth, and I'm damned relieved he's found a place!' Then, with proper deference, he added, 'Thanks principally to you.' It had been the Proprietor who had put up the money to purchase the commission and who had recommended young Saltwood to the commanding colonel. Richard would soon be on his way to India and was delighted with the prospect.
It was young David who was most worrisome. He had managed to stay at Oriel in Oxfordthe college to which Saltwoods had gone time out of mindonly one term, after which he was sent down 'with prejudice,' meaning that he need not reapply when and if he ever learned Latin. To be dismissed from Oriel was rather shameful, for even the most backward scholar should have been able to get a degree from that feckless college. If a lad had real promise, he went to Balliol; if he sought preferment, he went to Christ Church; and if he wanted to cut a figure, he went to Trinity. If he came from some rural cathedral town like Salisbury, with little Greek and less social footing, he went to Oriel. Indeed, the archetypal Oriel student was a Saltwood from Sentinels, and had been for over a hundred and fifty years. What with four Saltwood boys of child-producing age, it looked as if the college was assured of an endless future supply of its preferred students.
What to do about David, no one knew. As his father once said, 'If a boy can't handle it at Oriel, what on earth can be expected of him?'
Saltwood coughed as his family sat in the picnic chairs, awaiting his revelations. 'It's rather surprising news,' he said modestly. 'I'm to be the new member of Parliament from Old Sarum.'
'Father!' It was difficult to separate what the various boys were saying, but that they were honestly pleased with this turn of fortune was apparent, and they were gratified not only because of what it might mean to them, but especially because their father had been such a hard-working, responsible citizen.
'No better choice!' Richard said. Striking the pose of a politician arguing a point, he cried, 'Sirs, sirs! I beg of you! Attention, please.'
'When do you leave for London?' Peter asked, but before his father could reply, young David leaped to his feet, ran to his father, and embraced him.
'Good on you!'
Quietly Mrs. Saltwood said, 'Let's hear your father's plans.'
'They're simple,' Josiah said. 'You and I leave for London immediately, find a flat, and stay there for the season.'
'I shouldn't like to leave the trees,' Emily said, pointing to the cedars and chestnuts.
'We've new fields to consider,' he said abruptly, and his wife spoke no more.
'Who's to mind our interest?' Peter asked hesitantly, afraid lest his question seem like begging.
'You, Peter. And you're to become the Proprietor's manager. He asked for you.'
'And I'm off to India,' Richard said brightly. 'How about you, Hilary?' The second son blushed, for he was being importuned to disclose his plans before he was entirely ready, but in such a conclave, when issues of gravity were being decided, he could not refrain. Very softly he said, 'I've been wrestling ... for many days ... I've been away, you know, in the fields mostly . . .'
'And what did you decide?' his father asked.
Hilary rose and slowly moved among the oaks, coming back to stand before his mother. 'I'm to be a missionary,' he said. 'God has called me out of my confusion.'
'A missionary!' Emily repeated. 'But where?'
'Wherever God sends me,' he replied, and again he reddened as his brothers gathered to congratulate him.
'I'm going overseas, too,' David broke in. 'You're what?' his father cried.
'I'm emigrating. Four chaps I know in London . . . we're off to America.'
'Good God, those rebels!'
'It's a settlement scheme. Ohio, some place like that. I'm sailing next month.'
'Good God!' his father repeated, aghast at the prospect of a son of his in such a wilderness. 'David,' he said seriously. 'We'll be at war with those rebels within a year. As soon as I get to Parliament, I'm to vote for war. The Proprietor said so.'
'I'll be fighting your troops somewhere in Ohio, wherever that is.'
'When will you be back home?' Emily asked.
'It'll take some years to get the plantation going,' the young man said. 'Slaves hoeing the cotton, and all that. But I'll be back.'
'You must never take arms against England,' Josiah said gravely. 'You'd be shot for a traitor. And there will be war.'
'Father, America's a sovereign nation. Don't send a lot of silly troops like Richard'
'Brother against brother!' Richard cried. 'Wouldn't that be jolly?'
So under the oak trees at Sentinels in the County of Wiltshire the Saltwoods reached decisions on the destinies of their sons. Peter, who had brains, would take charge of the family business. Hilary, who had character, would go into the ministry. Richard, who had courage, would enter the army. And young David, who had neither brains, nor character, nor courage, would emigrate to America.
The shock caused by Hilary's announcement that he intended becoming a missionary instead of a proper clergyman grew into a firestorm when his family learned that he proposed joining the Missionary Society operated not by the Church of England but by the dissidents, and more especially, the radical Congregationalists. 'You'll ruin your prospects,' his mother warned, but he was adamant, assuring his family that when he reported to the training headquarters at Gosport, not far from Salisbury, he would not be required to convert to the rebellious faith. 'I'll serve my time with Jesus overseas and come back to Salisbury,' but even as he promised this he announced that he was not going to be a part-time missionary but one wholly dedicated to the cause: 'I've elected to go for a complete theological education, terminating with ordination as a full-fledged minister.' His father, now in Parliament and a resident of London, encouraged him in this decision: 'In for a penny, in for a pound. Choose the highest possible, because one day, when this missionary foolishness is over, your mother and I expect to see you dean of Salisbury Cathedral.' At tea one afternoon, during the later stages of his training, his mother said, 'Hilary, you must discharge your duties quickly, because the Proprietor has promised most faithfully that when you're through and safely back in the Church of England, he plans to exert every influence for your assignment as dean of the cathedral.'
Hilary's brothers approved heartily: 'We could sit here under the oaks and look across the meadows and tell each other, "That cathedral's in good hands." Do hurry and finish with the savages, wherever you go.'
He would have made a flawless dean, tall, slightly stoop-shouldered, his head bent a little forward as he walked along the cloisters, as if he were looking for something a few yards ahead, diffident, rather brilliant in his studies and of deep conviction religiously. He should have stayed at home, progressing from one small living to another until his reputation as a sound young man was established, then moving into the larger positions from which he would write two incomprehensible books. Such books were a prudent step in English advancement; no one bothered to read them, but one's superiors were gratified that the effort had been made. And in due course, fortified with credentials from the noble houses of the county, including the Proprietor's, he would move on to professor at Oriel and then the deanship.
What had interrupted this pleasant, routine progression? Hilary Salt-wood had religious insights far deeper than those of the ordinary Oxford graduate, and he had paid attention to those ringing commandments of Paul in the New Testament in which young men were charged with the duty of spreading the gospel. Indeed, his favorite book in the Bible was Acts, in which the birth of a new religion, and especially of a new church, was portrayed so vividly. With Paul he had traveled the Holy Lands and penetrated to those surrounding nations which knew not Jesus and where Christianity began as an organized religion.
He felt a deep affinity with Paul, and a thorough knowledge of Acts prepared him for the Pauline letters that outlined the next steps in the spread of Christianity. His own discovery of Christ was less dramatic than Saul's conversion into Paul on the road to Damascus, but it had been real. He was not, like others he knew, turning to religion because as a second son he had nowhere else to turn; the church was by no means his secondary choice. Long before his father had been nominated for Parliament he had been on the verge of announcing his commitment to Jesus, and would have done so regardless of his family's fortunes.
His conversion was deep if not spectacular, and he enjoyed the opening months of his ministerial education; the London Missionary Society, as it was being called in some quarters, was becoming famous in various parts of the world, even though it had been in existence for barely a decade. Its stern, intense young devotees, coupled with the older, practical artisans, had penetrated to remote areas, often serving as the cutting edge of civilization as it reached unsettled lands. The LMS was a revolutionary force of the most persistent power, but in his early months at Gosport, Hilary did not discover this.
Instruction was principally in the propagational theories of the New Testament, an extension, as it were, of Acts and the missionary letters of St. Paul. He enjoyed the abstract philosophizing and profited especially from the droning lectures of an older scholar who expounded the basic theories of the New Testament, instructing him in facts that sometimes surprised him:
'The Book of Acts is significant for two reasons. It was written by the same hand that gave us the Gospel According to St. Luke, and that unknown author is extremely important because he is probably the only non-Jew to have composed any part of our Bible. All the other authors were rabbis like Jesus and St. Paul, or ordinary laymen like St. Matthew, the tax collector. In Acts we receive the first message about our church from a person like ourselves.'
But apart from knowledge, there was also deep conviction. These mature ministers truly believed that it was the duty of young men to 'go forth unto all the world' to spread the word of God; they were convinced that unless this word was taken to the remotest river, souls worthy of salvation might be lost.
For these simple English clergymen there was no predestination whereby all men were sorted out as either saved or damned; such belief would make missionary work a futility. The Society taught that every human soul was eligible for salvation, but this could be attained only if some missionary could instruct it. The task was to deliver Christ's precious message to savages who were in darkness, and few young Englishmen of this period who absorbed that teaching ever doubted that they personally could bring this salvation.
There was much prayer, and many learned discussions as to how salvation might be conveyed, and crude geography lessons outlining the problems to be encountered in Africa or the South Seas, where the young men were to go. It was studious and pious and soporific. But when Reverend Simon Keer, after having served four years on the frontier, burst into headquarters, every aspect of Hilary Saltwood's life was altered.
Keer was a Lancashire activist, son of a baker and lacking a university education. He was a short, round man, not over five feet two, with an unruly mop of red hair and a pair of wire spectacles that he kept shoving back onto the bridge of his nose. His station had been South Africa, a land that Hilary had scarcely heard of; vaguely he knew that through some accident or other a vast area had fallen under English rule. The students were spellbound when Keer, bounding up and down like the bobbin on an active line, launched his impassioned speeches:
'There is a land down there in our care which cries for the word of God, a land of black souls thirsting for redemption. Lions and hyenas ravage these people by night, slavery and corruption by day.
We need schools, and hospitals, and printing presses, and trusted men to teach farming. We need roads and proper houses for these children of God, and dedicated men to protect them from cruel abuse.'
After he had listed another dozen things the natives required, one young man whose father was a butcher asked, 'Don't we need churches, too?' and Reverend Keer replied, without halting the flow of his impassioned oratory, 'Of course we need churches.' But in the days that followed he never again mentioned any need for them. Instead, he captivated his eager listeners by his explicit accounts of what it was like to be a missionary:
'I landed at Cape Town with my Bible and my dreams, but before I preached my first sermon I traveled three hundred miles over almost impassable mountains, across arid lands and up and down ravines where there was no road. I lived for weeks with white men who spoke not a word of English and black men who knew nothing of Jesus Christ. I slept on the barren veld with only my coat to cover me and ate food that I had never seen before. The first task I was called to perform was aiding the birth of a baby girl, whom I baptized. The first service I conducted was under a thorn tree. When I finally reached my post I was alone, with no house, no food, no books and no congregation. All I had was another thorn tree under whose spreading branches I conducted my second service. Young men, in South Africa a thousand thorn trees wait to serve as your cathedrals.'
He had an overpowering effect upon the young dreamers of the LMS, for with his exhortations to face the practical problems of the world he combined a devout conviction that what he had done, and what they must do, was missionary work over which God exercised a personal supervision. Again and again he cited those stirring commands issued by St. Paul when he struggled with his frontiers, and as he lectured, the reality of the New Testament materialized before the eyes of his listeners.
It was not till the third week of his fiery declamation that he began to confide the real problem that had brought him back to London. In his preliminary lectures he had disposed of the physical world of the missionary and in subsequent ones he had treated knowingly the theological basis of conversion. Now he sought to instruct his future replacements in the realities:
'I care not whether you have planned to work under the palm of the South Seas or the frozen wastelands of Canada. I care not what commitments you have made to your parents or your ministers here. We need you in Africa, and I implore you to dedicate yourselves to the salvation of this continent. Especially do we need you in our new colony, for nowhere else on earth are the challenges to Christ's teaching more clearly dictated. A dozen men like you, dedicating your lives to the task, can set patterns for a new nation.'
Whenever he spoke on this theme, and he returned to it constantly, he became like a man possessed of special insights: his voice soared; he seemed to become taller; his eyes flashed. He was engaged in a kind of spiritual Armageddon and conveyed his thundering sincerity to any listener. In the fourth week, after a series of such flights, he told the young missionaries what the great problem was:
'Slavery! The Dutch who have occupied the Cape for a hundred and fifty years are among the finest people on earth. They're all good Protestants, much like the Presbyterians of Scotland. They tithe; they listen to their predikants; they support their churches; but they have fallen into the great evil of slavery. For generations they have been owners of imported slaves, and now the wonderful brown and black people with whom they share the land they also hold in cruel bondage, and it is our solemn, God-given mission to rescue all these souls from that bondage. If you join me in this task, and I pray that you will, you must expect that men will revile you, and misrepresent your motives, and even threaten you with bodily harm. But you will persist. And God will strengthen you, and in the end we shall build an English nation of which God will be proud.'
