In Great Waters: Four Stories

by Thomas A. Janvier

But Marretje's love-dreams were living ones. As Krelis lounged over his pipe of a Sunday 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 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 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 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.

VII

It was a little past the turn of the half-year after the wedding that the prophets of evil pricked up their ears hopefully—as there began to go humming through Marken a soft buzz of talk about the carryings on of Geert Thysen and Krelis Kess. It was only vague talk, to be sure; but then when talk of that sort is vague there is the more seaway for speculation and inference. All sorts of rumours went flashing about—and carried the more weight, perhaps, because they could not be traced to a starting-point and were disavowed by each person who passed them on. The sum of them became quite amazing before long!

In the end, of course, this talk worked around to Marretje. Bit by bit, one kind friend after another brought her variations of the same budget of news, pleading their friendship for her as the excuse for their chattering; and all of them were a good deal disconcerted by the placid way, with scarcely a word of comment, in which she suffered them to talk on. Only when they took to saying harsh things about Krelis did they rouse her a little. Then she would stop them shortly, and with a quiet insistence that put them in an awkward corner, by asking them to remember that it was her husband whom they were talking about, and that what they were saying was not fit for his wife to hear. This line of rejoinder was disconcerting to her interlocutors. To be put in the wrong, that way, while performing for conscience' sake a very unpleasant duty, could not but arouse resentment. Presently it began to be said that Marretje was a poor-spirited thing upon whom friendly sympathy was thrown away.

Perhaps it was because Marretje was not feeling very strong just then that she took matters so quietly. Certainly she had not much energy to spare, and her days went slowly and heavily. Even on the Sunday mornings when she had Krelis at home with her—and a good many of his Sundays were spent away from the island, in order, as he explained, that he might get off on the Mondays earlier to his fishing—she found it hard to keep up the laughing talk and the light-hearted way with him that he seemed to think always were his due. When she flagged a little he told her not to be sulky—and that cut her sharply, for she thought that he ought to feel in his own heart how very tenderly she was loving him in those days, and how earnestly she was longing for a tender and sustaining love in return.

It is uncertain how much of all this old Jaap understood, but a part of it he certainly did understand. In some matters his clouded brain seemed to work with a curious clearness, and especially had he a strange faculty for getting close to troubled hearts. Many there were in Marken, on whom sorrow had fallen, who had been comforted by his sympathy; and who had found it the more soothing and helpful because it was given with no more than a gentle look or a few gentle words. In this same soft way, that asked for no answer and that needed none, he comforted Marretje in that sad time of her loneliness. Many a day, when the other fishermen kept the sea, he kept the land—letting his boat go away to the fishing without him while he made company at home for his granddaughter, and even helped her in the heavier part of her house-work with his big clumsy old hands. These awkward efforts to serve her touched Marretje's heart very keenly—yet also added a pang to her sorrow because of her longing that Krelis might show his love for her in the same way.