the wedding was the finest that had been known in marken for years. at the church the parson gave his "golden clasp" address, which was the most beautiful of his three wedding addresses and cost five gulden. then the company streamed away along the brick-paved pathway from the kerkehof to the hafenbeurt, with the sunshine gleaming gallantly on the white caps and white aprons of the women and on the shiny high hats of the men, while the wind fluttered the little dutch flags—and they all walked much more steadily then than they did when they took their after-breakfast walk, before the dancing began. in that second walk the men's legs wavered a good deal, and some of them had trouble in steering the stems of their long pipes to their mouths. but that is not to be wondered at when you think what a breakfast it was! jan de jong fairly excelled himself. they talk about it in marken to this day!
while the wedding-party walked unsteadily abroad the big room in the tavern was cleared; and when the company was come back again, much the better for fresh air and exercise, the[20] dancing began. and just then a very queer thing happened: krelis led off the dance with geert thysen instead of with marretje his bride!
some say that geert made him promise to do this as the price of her coming to the wedding; others say that it was done on the spur of the moment—was one of geert's sudden whims that krelis, who also was given to sudden whims, fell in with. about the truth of this matter there can be only guess-work, but about what happened there is plain fact: just as the set was forming, krelis dropped marretje's hand and said lightly: "you won't mind, marretje, will you? it's for old friendship's sake, you know." and with that he took the hand of geert thysen, who was standing close beside him, and away he went with her in the dance. those who think that it had been arranged between them beforehand point out that geert had refused all offers to dance and had come close to krelis just as the set was formed. there is something in that, i think. but whether they had planned it or had not planned it, the fact remains that marretje's place at the head of the dance at her own wedding was taken by another woman; and as the set was complete[21] without her, she did not dance at all until the first figure came to an end. they say that there were tears in her eyes as she stood alone there—and that she was very white when krelis took her hand again, at the end of the first figure, and gave her for the rest of the dance the place at the head of it that was hers. they say, too, that geert stood watching them—when krelis had left her and had taken his bride again—with a hot blaze of color coming and going in her cheeks, and with a wonderful flashing and sparkling of her great black eyes. and before the dance ended geert went home.
there was a great crackling of talk, of course, about this slight that krelis had put upon marretje on her wedding-day; and people shook their heads and said that worse must come after it. some of the stories about krelis's escapades in amsterdam were raked up again and were pointed with a fresh moral. as for geert, the marken women had but one opinion of her—and the least unkindly expression of it was that she was walking in a very dangerous path. but when echoes of this talk came to geert's ears—as they did, of course—she merely curled her red lips a little and said that as she was neither a weak woman nor a fool[22]ish woman she was safe to walk where she pleased.
