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

What the Marken folk still speak of as "the great storm"--the worst

storm of which there is record in the island's history--set in a good

four-and-twenty hours before the December day on which Geert Thysen

and Krelis Kess were married. From the Polar ice-fields a rushing

and a mighty wind thundered southward over the Arctic Ocean and down

across the shallows of the North Sea--sucking away the water from the

Baltic, sending a roaring tide out through the English Channel into the

Atlantic, and piling higher and higher against the Holland coast a wall

of ocean: which broke at the one opening and went pouring onward into

the Zuyder Zee.

Already on the morning of that wild wedding-day the waves were lapping

high about Marken, and here and there a dull gleam of water showed

where the marshes were overflowed. Just before daybreak the storm

lulled a little, but came on again with a fresh force after the unseen

sunrise, and grew stronger and stronger as the black day wore on. Down

by the little haven the fishermen were gathered in groups anxiously

watching their tossing boats--in dread lest in spite of the doubled and

tripled moorings they should fetch away. Steadily from the black sky

poured downward sheets of rain.

According to Marken notions, even a landsman should not have ventured

to marry on a day like that; and for a fisherman to marry while such

a storm was raging was a sheer tempting of all the forces which work

together for evil in the tempests of the sea. Every one expected that

the wedding would be put off; and when word was passed around that

it was not to be put off, all of the older and steadier folk refused

with one voice to have anything to do with it. How Krelis succeeded in

inducing the minister to perform the ceremony no one ever knew--for

the minister was one of the many that day on Marken who never saw the

rising of another sun. He was not well liked, that minister, and

stories not to his credit were whispered about him; at least so one of

the old women told me--and more than half hinted that what happened to

him was a judgment upon him for his sins.

Even when the wedding-party came across from the Kerkehof to the

Hafenbeurt, some little time before mid-day, the marshes on each side

of the raised path were marshes no longer, but open water--that was

whipped southward before the gale in little angry waves. There was no

chance for a show of finery. The men wore their oil-skins over their

Sunday clothes, and the women were wrapped in cloaks and shawls. But it

was a company of young dare-devils, that wedding-party, and the members

of it came on through the storm laughing and shouting--with Geert and

Krelis leading and the gayest madcaps of them all. So far from being

dismayed by the roaring tempest, those two wild natures seemed only

to be stirred and aroused by it to a fierce happiness. They say that

Geert never was so beautiful as she was that day--her face glowing with

a strong rich colour, her eyes sparkling with a wonderful brilliancy,

her full red lips parted and showing the gleam of those strong white

teeth of hers, her lithe body erect and poised confidently against the

furious wind which swept them all forward along the path.

But as the party came near to the graveyard, lying midway between the

Kerkehof and the Hafenbeurt close beside the path, some of the young

men and women found their merriment oozing out of them. In that day

of black storm the rain-sodden mound was inexpressibly desolate. All

around it, save for the pathway leading up to its gate, the marsh was

flooded. The graveyard almost was an island--would be quite an island

should the water rise another foot. Rushed onward by the gale, shrewd

little waves were beating against its windward side so sharply that the

soft soil visibly was crumbling away--a sight which recalled a dim but

very grisly legend of how once a great storm had hurled such a sea upon

Marken that the dead bodies lying in that very spot had been torn from

their resting-places by the tumultuous waves. But crueler still was

the shivering thought of Marretje, only two months dead, lying in that

sodden ground in her storm-beaten grave.

And then, as they came closer, the memory of Marretje was brought home

to them still more sharply and in a strangely startling way: as they

saw old Jaap uprise suddenly from where he had been crouched amidst

the graves. Bareheaded, with his long grey hair and long grey beard

soaked with the falling torrent and flying out before the wind, he

stood upright on the crest of the mound close above them--his tall lean

figure towering commandingly against the black rain clouds, defiant as

some old sea-god of the furious storm.

He seemed to be speaking, but the storm noises were as a wall shutting

him off from them, and not until they had passed on a little and were

to leeward of him could they hear his words. Then they heard him

clearly: speaking slowly, with no trace of anger in his tones but

with a strange solemn fervour--as though he felt himself to be out

beyond the line which separates Time from Eternity, and from that

vantage-point uttered with authority the judgments of an outraged God.

It was to Geert and Krelis that he spoke, pointing at them with one

outstretched hand while the other was raised as though in invocation

toward the wild black sky: "For your sins the anger of God is loosed

upon you in His tempests, and in His name I curse you with a binding

curse. May the raging waters be upon you! May you perish in the wrath

of the Zuyder Zee!"

A shudder went through all the wedding company. Even Krelis, half

stopping, suddenly paled. Only Geert, bolder than all of them put

together, held her own. With a quick motion she drew Krelis onward, and

her lip curled in that way of hers as she said to him: "What has old

Jaap to do with you or me, Krelis? He is a mad old fool!" And then she

looked straight at old Jaap, into the very eyes of him, and laughed

scornfully--as they all together went on again through the wind and

rain.

But when they came to Jan de Jong's tavern, where the wedding-breakfast

was waiting for them, Krelis was the first to call for gin. He said

that he was cold.