In Great Waters: Four Stories

by Thomas A. Janvier

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!"