IX
Once again did Soetkin bear under her girdle the sign of approaching motherhood; and Katheline also was in a like condition. But she was afraid, and never ventured out of her house.
When Soetkin went to see her, “Alas!” said Katheline, “what shall I do? Must I smother the ill-starred fruit of my womb? I would rather die myself. And yet if the Sergeant summons me for having a child without being married, they will make me pay twenty florins like a girl of no reputation, and I shall be flogged in the Market Square.”
Soetkin consoled and comforted her as sweetly as she could, then left her, and returned thoughtfully home.
One day she said to Claes:
“If I brought two children into the world instead of one, would you be angry? Would you beat me, my man?”
“That I cannot say,” Claes answered.
“But if the second were not really mine, but turned out to be like this child of Katheline’s, the offspring of some one unknown—the devil maybe?”
“Devils beget fire, death, smoke,” Claes replied, “but children—no. Yet will I take for my own the child of Katheline.”
“You will?” cried Soetkin. “You really will?”
“I have said it,” Claes replied.
Soetkin hurried off to tell Katheline the news, who when she heard it could not contain her delight, but cried aloud with joy.
“He has spoken, the good man, and his words are the salvation of my body. He will be blessed by God—and blessed by the devil as well, if really”—and she trembled as she spoke the words—“if really it is the devil who is father to the little one that begins to stir beneath my breast!”
And in due time Soetkin and Katheline brought into the world, the one a baby boy and the other a baby girl. Both were brought to baptism as the children of Claes. Soetkin’s son was christened Hans, and did not live. But Katheline’s daughter, who was christened Nele, grew up finely.
She drank of the liquor of life from a fourfold flagon. Two of the flagons belonged to Katheline, and two were Soetkin’s. And there was many a sweet dispute as to whose turn it was to give the child to drink. But much against her will, Katheline was obliged to let her milk dry up, lest questions should be asked as to where it came from, and she no mother....
But when the little Nele, that was her daughter, was weaned, then Katheline took her home to live with her, nor did she let her go back to Soetkin except when Nele called for her “mother.”
The neighbours said that it was a right and natural thing to do for Katheline to look after the child of Claes and Soetkin. For they were needy and poverty-stricken, whereas Katheline was comparatively well off.