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.
[Illustration: "IT WAS A STATELY DWELLING"]
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.