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[23] 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[24] 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.
"it was a stately dwelling"
but marretje's love-dreams were living ones. as krelis lounged over his pipe of a sunday[25] 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[26] 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[27] 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[28] 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.
