Part 2
It was a little disconcerting to the prophets of evil that the weeks and the months slipped away without any signs of the fulfilment of their prophecies. However keen may have been Marretje's sorrow on her wedding-day, it was not lasting. Indeed, her gentle nature was so filled with a worshipping love for Krelis that he had only to give her a single light look of affection or a half-careless kiss to fill her whole being with happiness. He was a god to her--this gayly daring young fellow who had raised her up to be a shy little queen in a queendom, she was sure, such as never had been for any other woman in all the world. And Krelis was very well pleased with her frank adoration. It was tickling to his vanity that she should be so completely and so eagerly his loving slave.
Next to her love for Krelis--and partly because it was a part of her love for him--Marretje's greatest joy was in her housekeeping. She had taken a just pride in the tidiness of her housekeeping for her grandfather; but it was a very different and far more exciting matter to furbish and polish a house that really was her own. And Krelis's house, of which she was the proud mistress, was far bigger and far finer than her old home. It was a stately dwelling, for Marken, standing on an out-jutting ridge of earth at the back of the Kesbeurt, close upon a delightful little canal--and from the back doorway was a restful far-off outlook over the marsh-land to the level horizon of the Zuyder Zee. Marretje loved that outlook, and she had it before her often: for down beside the canal was her scouring-shelf--where she scoured away through long sunny mornings, while Krelis was away at his fishing, until her pots and kettles ranged in the sunlight shone like burnished gold.
Yet the fact should be added that when the old men of Marken talked together about this fine house of Krelis Kess's they would shake their heads a little--saying that a better spending of money would have been for a smaller house founded on solid piling, instead of for this showy dwelling standing on an out-thrust earth bank which well enough might crumble away beneath it in some time of tremendous tempest when all the island should be overswept and beaten by the sea.
For the most part, of course--save for little chats with her neighbours--Marretje was alone in that fine house of hers. Old Jaap had come to live with the young people--as was only fair, since he had no one but his granddaughter to care for him--but both he and Krelis spent all their week-days afloat at their fishing and only their Sundays at home. Yet now and then the old man, making some excuse for not going out with the fleet, would give himself a turn at shore duty; and would sit in his big chair, smoking his long pipe very contentedly, watching his granddaughter at her endless scouring and cleaning, and listening to her little bursts of song. In his unsettled old mind he sometimes fancied that the years had rolled backward and that he was watching his own young wife again; and in his old heart he would dream young love-dreams by the hour together--blessedly forgetting that the love and the happiness which had made his life beautiful had been snatched away from him and lost forever in the wrathful waters of the Zuyder Zee.
But Marretje's love-dreams were living ones. As Krelis lounged over his pipe of a Sunday morning, taking life easily in his clean Sunday clothes, he would say an airy word or two in praise of her housekeeping that fairly would set her to blushing with happiness--and what with the colour in her fair face and the light in her blue eyes she would be so entirely charming that Krelis's own eyes would go to sparkling, and he would draw her close to him and fondle her in a genuinely loverlike fashion that would fill her with a very tender joy. Krelis was quite sincere in his love-making. His little Marretje's soft beauty, and her shy delight in his caresses, went down into an unsounded depth and touched an unknown strain of gentleness in his easy-going heart.
But even on the first Sunday after they were married Krelis went off after dinner--it had been a wonder of a dinner that Marretje had cooked for him: she had been planning it the week through!--to join his companions as usual at Jan de Jong's. This came hard on Marretje. She had been counting so much on that afternoon! A dozen little tender confidences had been put aside during the morning to be made then comfortably: when the dinner things would all be cleared away, and her grandfather would have gone to take his usual Sunday look at his boat, and she and Krelis would be sitting at their ease--delightfully alone together for the first time in their lives!
She had thought it all out, and had arranged in her own mind that they would sit on the steps above her scouring-shelf--at the back of the house and hidden away from everybody--with the canal at their feet, and in front of them the level loneliness of the marsh-land stretching away and losing itself in the level loneliness of the sea. She had a cushion all ready for Krelis to sit on, and a smaller cushion for herself that was to go on the next lower step--and she blushed a little to herself as she thought how she would make a back to lean against out of Krelis's big knees. And then, just as she had finished her clearing away and was getting out the cushions, Krelis put on his hat and said that he thought he would step across to the tavern and have a look at the boys. The boys would laugh at him, he said, if he settled right down into being an old married man--and he tried to give a better send-off to this small pleasantry by laughing at it himself. But he did not laugh very heartily, and he almost turned back again when he got to the bridge--thinking how the light of happiness which had made Marretje's face so beautiful through that Sunday morning suddenly had died out of it as he came away. And then he pulled himself together with the reflection that she would be all right again when he got back to her at supper-time, and so went on. When he was come to the tavern he forgot all about Marretje's unhappiness, for the boys welcomed him with a cheer.
Being in this way forsaken, Marretje carried out what was left of her broken plan forlornly--arranging the cushions on the two steps, and sitting on the lower one with her elbow resting on the upper one, and gazing out sorrowfully across the marsh-land and the sea. That great loneliness of sedge and sea and sky made her own loneliness more bitter: and then came the hurting thought that just a week before, very nearly at that same hour, Krelis still more cruelly had forsaken her while he led with Geert Thysen their wedding-dance.
After a while old Jaap came home and seated himself beside her. He was silent, as was his habit, but having him that way soothed and comforted her. As she leaned her head against his shoulder and held his big bony hands the old man went off into one of his dream-fancies that his young wife was beside him again--and perhaps, in some subtle way, that also helped to take the sting out of her pain. When Krelis came home at supper-time, walking a little unsteadily, he did not miss her flow of chattering talk that had gone on through the morning; and presently it began again--for Krelis returned in high good-humour, and his fire of pretty speeches and his kisses quickly brought happiness back to her sore little heart. Knowing thereafter what to expect of a Sunday, her pleasure was less lively--but so was her pain.
VII
It was a little past the turn of the half-year after the wedding that the prophets of evil pricked up their ears hopefully--as there began to go humming through Marken a soft buzz of talk about the carryings on of Geert Thysen and Krelis Kess. It was only vague talk, to be sure; but then when talk of that sort is vague there is the more seaway for speculation and inference. All sorts of rumours went flashing about--and carried the more weight, perhaps, because they could not be traced to a starting-point and were disavowed by each person who passed them on. The sum of them became quite amazing before long!
In the end, of course, this talk worked around to Marretje. Bit by bit, one kind friend after another brought her variations of the same budget of news, pleading their friendship for her as the excuse for their chattering; and all of them were a good deal disconcerted by the placid way, with scarcely a word of comment, in which she suffered them to talk on. Only when they took to saying harsh things about Krelis did they rouse her a little. Then she would stop them shortly, and with a quiet insistence that put them in an awkward corner, by asking them to remember that it was her husband whom they were talking about, and that what they were saying was not fit for his wife to hear. This line of rejoinder was disconcerting to her interlocutors. To be put in the wrong, that way, while performing for conscience' sake a very unpleasant duty, could not but arouse resentment. Presently it began to be said that Marretje was a poor-spirited thing upon whom friendly sympathy was thrown away.
Perhaps it was because Marretje was not feeling very strong just then that she took matters so quietly. Certainly she had not much energy to spare, and her days went slowly and heavily. Even on the Sunday mornings when she had Krelis at home with her--and a good many of his Sundays were spent away from the island, in order, as he explained, that he might get off on the Mondays earlier to his fishing--she found it hard to keep up the laughing talk and the light-hearted way with him that he seemed to think always were his due. When she flagged a little he told her not to be sulky--and that cut her sharply, for she thought that he ought to feel in his own heart how very tenderly she was loving him in those days, and how earnestly she was longing for a tender and sustaining love in return.
It is uncertain how much of all this old Jaap understood, but a part of it he certainly did understand. In some matters his clouded brain seemed to work with a curious clearness, and especially had he a strange faculty for getting close to troubled hearts. Many there were in Marken, on whom sorrow had fallen, who had been comforted by his sympathy; and who had found it the more soothing and helpful because it was given with no more than a gentle look or a few gentle words. In this same soft way, that asked for no answer and that needed none, he comforted Marretje in that sad time of her loneliness. Many a day, when the other fishermen kept the sea, he kept the land--letting his boat go away to the fishing without him while he made company at home for his granddaughter, and even helped her in the heavier part of her house-work with his big clumsy old hands. These awkward efforts to serve her touched Marretje's heart very keenly--yet also added a pang to her sorrow because of her longing that Krelis might show his love for her in the same way.
But old Jaap had his work to do at sea, and Marretje had to make the best of many and many a weary and lonely day. Being in so poor a way she could busy herself but little with her house-work--nor was there much incentive to scour and polish since Krelis had ceased to commend her housekeeping; and, indeed, was at home so little that he was indifferent as to whether she kept her house well or ill.
And so she spent much of her time as she had spent that first lonely Sunday afternoon--sitting on the steps above her scouring-shelf, looking out sadly and dreamily across the marsh-land and the sea. Or she would walk slowly to the end of the village, where rough steps went down to a little-used canal, and there would lean against the rail while she gazed steadfastly across the marshes seaward--trying to fancy that she could see the fishing fleet, and trying to build in her breast little hope-castles in which Krelis again was all her own. They comforted her, these hope-castles: even though always, when the week ended and the fleet was back again, they came crashing down. Sometimes Krelis's boat did not return at all. Sometimes it returned without him. When he did come back in it very little of his idle Sunday was passed at home. The dark months of winter dragged on wearily. Grey chill clouds hung over Marken, and grey chill clouds rested on this poor Marretje's heart.
VIII
But one glad day in the early spring-time the sun shone again--when Krelis bent down over her bed with a look of real love in his bright eyes and kissed her; and then--in a half-fearful way that made her laugh at him with a weak little laugh in which there was great happiness--kissed also his little son. "As if his father's kiss could hurt this great strong boy!" she said in a tone of vast superiority: and held the little atom close to her breast with all the strength of her feeble arms. She loved with a double love this little Krelis: greatly for himself and for the strong thrilling joy of motherhood, but perhaps even more because his coming had brought the other Krelis back again into the deep chambers of her heart.
It was the prettiest of sights, presently, when she was up and about again, to see Marretje standing in front of her own door in the spring sunshine holding this famous little Krelis in her arms. Then, as now, young mothers were common enough in Marken; but there was a look of radiant happiness about Marretje--so the old people will tell you--that made her different from any young mother whom ever they saw. "Her face was as shining as the face of an angel!" one of the old women said to me--when I heard this story told in Marken on a summer day. And this same old woman told me that through that time of Marretje's great happiness Geert Thysen walked sullen: ready at any moment, without cause or reason, to fly out into what the old woman called a yellow rage.
But even from the first the matrons of the island, knowing in such matters, pulled long faces when they talked about the little Krelis among themselves. Krelis Kess's son, they said, should not have been so frail a child; and then they would account for this puny baby by casting back to the time when Marretje was orphaned before she was weaned, and so was started in life without the toughness and sturdiness with which the Marken folk as a rule are dowered. These worthy women had much good advice to give, and gave it freely, as to how the little Krelis should be dealt with to strengthen him; but Marretje paid scant attention to their suggestions, being satisfied in her own mind that this wonderful baby of hers really was--as she had said he was on the day when his father first kissed him--a great strong boy.
Krelis, seeing his little son only once a week, was the first to notice that he was not so strong as a healthy child should be; but when he said so to Marretje she gave him such a rating that he decided he must be all wrong. And then, one day, Geert Thysen opened both his and Marretje's eyes.
It was a bright Sunday afternoon, when the little Krelis was between two and three months old, that Marretje was sitting with him on her lap, suckling him, on the steps above her scouring-shelf; and Krelis was seated on the step above her, and she really was making a back of his big knees. What with the joy of her motherhood, and her joy because her Krelis was her own again, it seemed to Marretje as though in all the world there was only happiness. She held the little Krelis close to her, crooning a soft song sweetly over the tiny creature nestled to her heart; and as she suckled him there tingled through her breast, and thence through all her being, thrills of that strange subtle ecstasy which only mothers know. And Krelis, in his own way, shared Marretje's great happiness: as they sat there lonely, looking out over the marsh-land seaward, their hearts very near together because of the deep love that was in both of them for their child. Presently Krelis leaned a little forward, and with a touch rarely loving and tender encircled the two in his big arms and drew Marretje still closer against his knees. And they sat there for a while so--in the bright silence of that sunny afternoon, fronting that still outlook over level spaces cut only by the level sky-line far away--their two hearts throbbing gently and very full.
A little noise broke the deep silence suddenly, and an instant later Geert Thysen was almost within arm's-length of them--standing in a boat which she had poled very quietly along the canal. Krelis unclasped his arms and drew back quickly; but Marretje bent forward and grasped the little Krelis still more closely, as though to shield him from harm. For a moment there was silence. Krelis flushed and looked uneasy, almost ashamed. There was a dull burning light in Geert's black eyes and her face was pale and drawn. She was the first to speak.
"You're quite right to make the most of your sick baby," she said. "You won't have him long."
"He's not a sick baby," Marretje answered furiously. "He's as strong and well as he can be!"
Geert laughed. "That puny little thing strong and well!" she answered. "Much it is that you know about babies, Marretje! Don't you see how the veins show through his skin? Don't you see the marks under his eyes? Don't you see how little he is, and how he don't grow? In another month you'll know more. He'll be over yonder in the graveyard by that time!" And then she flashed a look on Krelis of that sort of hate which comes when love goes wrong as she added: "And it is no more than you deserve, Krelis Kess. You might have had a strong woman for a wife, and then you would have had a strong child!" With that she gave a sudden thrust with the pole that sent her boat flying away from them, and in an instant vanished around a turn in the canal.
IX
Within a week the story of what had happened between them was all over Marken. Geert Thysen herself must have told what she had done. Certainly Krelis did not tell; and Marretje, having no one else to turn to, told only her grandfather. But various versions of the story went about the island, and the comment upon all of them by the Marken folk was the same: that Krelis had played the part of a coward in suffering such words to be spoken to his wife with never a word on his side of reply. Old Jaap, they say, blazed out into one of his mad rages against his son-in-law. Some say that he then laid the curse upon him--but that never will be known certainly, for the bout between the two men took place when they were alone.
What is known to be true is that Krelis for a while was as a man stunned; and that when he came to himself again--this was after the little Krelis was laid away in the graveyard--what love he had for Marretje was turned to an angry hatred because she had let his boy die. He said this not only to his neighbours but to Marretje herself--telling her that their child had died because she had borne it weakly into the world and had given it no strength with which to live.
Even a strong woman, being well-nigh heart-broken--as Marretje was when her baby was lost to her--could not have stood up against a blow like that. And Marretje, who was not a strong woman, felt the heart-breaking bitterness of what Krelis said because she knew that it was true. Very soon she was as feeble and as wan as the little Krelis had been. Happiness was no more for her, and she longed only for the forgetfulness of sorrow which would come to her when she should be as the little Krelis was. And so her slight hold on life loosened quickly, and presently she and the little Krelis lay in the graveyard side by side.
She had a very nice funeral, so one of the old women in Marken told me: the best bier and the best pall were used, and the minister gave his best address--the one called "The Mourning Wreath"--at the grave. And, to end with, there was a breakfast in Jan de Jong's tavern that was of the best too. It was only just to Krelis, the old woman said, to say that in the matter of the funeral he behaved very well indeed.
But one thing which he did at that breakfast showed that it was for his own pride, and not for the sake of Marretje, that everything was done in so fine a style. On Marken there was left no near woman relative of Marretje's, and when the guests came to the table they were a good deal scandalized by finding that Geert Thysen was to be seated on Krelis's right hand. Old Jaap's place was on his left, but when the old man saw who was to take the seat on the right he drew back quickly from the table and left the room.
At that, for a full half-minute there was an awkward pause--until Krelis, in a strong voice, bade the company be seated: and added that no one had a better right to the seat beside him than Marretje's oldest friend. As he made this speech a little buzzing whisper went around among the company, and some one even snickered down at the lower end of the big room. But there was the breakfast, as good as it could be, before them. It was much too good a breakfast to lose on a mere point of etiquette. The whispering died out, and for a moment the guests looked at one another in silence--and then there was a great scraping and rattling of chairs as they all sat down. And Krelis and Geert presided over the funeral feast with a most proper gravity--save that now and then a glance passed between them that seemed to have more meaning than was quite decorous in the case of those two: the one being a maiden, and the other a widower whose wife had not been buried quite two hours.
Of course there was a good deal of talk about all this afterward; but as public opinion had been moulded under favour able conditions--while the mellowing influence of the good food and abundant drink was still operative--the talk was not by any means relentlessly harsh. The men openly smiled at the proof which Krelis had given that his loss was not irreparable; and the women, with a certain primness, admitted that--after all the talk there had been--Krelis owed it to Geert to marry her with as little delay as the proprieties of the case would allow.
But even this kindly public opinion was strained sharply by the discovery that the marriage was to take place only two months after that funeral feast at which, to all intents and purposes, it had been announced. That was going, the women said, altogether too fast. But the men only laughed again--partly at the way in which the women were standing up for the respect due to their sex, and partly at Krelis's hurry to take on again the bonds from which he had been so very recently set free.
Here and there among the talkers a questioning word would be put in as to how old Jaap would take this move on the part of his son-in-law. But even the few people who bothered their heads with this phase of the matter held that old Jaap never would have a clear enough understanding of it to resent the dishonour put upon his granddaughter's memory. He had returned to his home in the Kerkehof and was living there, in his own queer way, solitary. He was madder than ever, people said; and it was certain that he had gone back to his old habit of spending in the graveyard all of the days and many of the nights which he passed ashore. Often those who passed by night between the Hafenbeurt and the Kerkehof saw him there--keeping his strange watch among the graves.
X