I

Old Jaap Visser was mad. Out there on the island of Marken, in the Zuyder Zee, he was the one madman, and a curiosity. The little boys—all born web-footed, and eager as soon as they could walk to toddle off on their stout little Dutch legs and take to the water—used to run after him and jeer at him. An underlying fear gave zest to this amusement. The older of them knew that he could lay a strange binding curse upon people. The younger of them, resolving this concept into simpler terms, knew that he could say something that would hurt more than a spanking; and that would keep on hurting, in some unexplained but dreadful way, beyond the sting of the worst spanking that ever they had known. Therefore, while they jeered, they jeered circumspectly. Out in the open—on the brick-paved pathways which traverse the low marsh-land and unite the little knolls on which are the villages: the Hafenbeurt (where the harbour is), the Kerkehof, and the Kesbeurt—butter would not melt in their small Dutch mouths when they met him. But when they had him at their mercy among the houses of one or another of the villages things went differently. Then they would yell "Old Jaap!" "Mad old Jaap!" after him—and as he turned upon them would whip off their sabots, that they might run the more lightly, and would dash around corners into safety: with delightful thrills of dread running through their small scampish bodies at the thought of the curse that certainly was flying after them, and that certainly would make them no better than dead jelly-fish if they did not get around the corner in time to ward it off! And old Jaap would be left free for a moment from his tormentors, brandishing his staff in angry flourishes and shouting his strange curse after them: "May you perish in the wrath of the Zuyder Zee!"

The young men and women of Marken, who never had known old Jaap save as a madman, felt toward him much as the children did; though as they got older, and came to understand the cause of his madness and the effectiveness of his curse, their dread of him was apt to take on a more serious cast. Even Krelis Kess, a notorious daredevil in all other directions, and for a long while one of old Jaap's most persistent tormentors, came in the end to treat him with a very obliging civility. But then, to be sure, Marretje de Witt was old Jaap's granddaughter—and everybody in Marken knew that this gentle Marretje, because of her very unlikeness to him it was supposed, had made capture of Krelis Kess's much too vagrant heart. One person, it is true, did dissent from this view of the matter, and that was Geert Thysen—who declared that Krelis was too much of a man really to care for a pale-faced thing fit only to marry another oyster like herself. And Geert's black eyes would snap, and her strong white teeth would show in a smile that was not a pleasant one as she added: "A live man who knows the nip of gin-and-water does not waste his time in drinking weak tea!" But then, to quote the sense of the island folk again, everybody in Marken knew that to win Krelis's love for herself Geert Thysen would have given those bold black eyes of hers, and would have said thank you, too!

Among the old people of Marken, who had known old Jaap before his madness came upon him, a very different feeling prevailed. They dreaded him, of course, because they knew what his curse could accomplish; but, also, they sorrowed for him—remembering the cruel grief which had come upon him in his youth suddenly and had driven him mad. Well enough, they said, might he call down his strange curse upon those who angered him, for twice had he known the bitterness of it: when death, and again worse than death, had struck at that which was dearer than the very heart of him through the wrath of the Zuyder Zee.

It all had happened so long back that only the old people had knowledge of it—in the great storm out of the Arctic Ocean which had driven into the Zuyder Zee the North Sea waters; and there had banked them up, higher and higher, until the whole island of Marken was flooded and half the dykes of the mainland were overrun. Old Jaap—who was young Jaap, then—was afloat at his fishing when the storm came on, and his young wife and her baby were alone at home. In her fear for him she came down from the Kerkehof, where their home was, to the Hafenbeurt; and there, standing upon the sea-wall that shelters the little harbour, watching for him, was the last that ever was seen of her alive. When his schuyt came in she had vanished—caught away by the up-leaping sea. That was bad enough, but worse followed. A month later, when he was at his fishing again—glad to be at work, that in the stress of it he might a little forget his sorrow—his net came up heavy, and in it was his dead wife.

Then it was that his madness fell upon him. By the time that he was come back to Marken—sailing his schuyt for a long night through the dark waters with that grewsomely ghastly lading—he was a crazed man.

II

The shadow that rested on Jaap Visser's mind was a deep melancholy that for the most part kept him silent, yet that was broken now and then by outbursts of rage in which he raved against the cruel wickedness of the sea. It did not unfit him for work. He had his living to make; and he made it, as all the men of Marken made their living, by fishing. But those who sailed with him in his schuyt said that always as the net came home he hauled upon it with tight-shut eyes; that always, as it was drawn inboard, he turned away—until the thrashing of the fish and some word about the catch from his companions assured him that he might look without fear of such a sight as that which had flashed burning through his eyes and had turned his brain.

When he was on land he spent little time in his own home: of which, and of the baby motherless, his mother had taken charge. Usually he was to be found within or lingering near the graveyard that lies between the Kerkehof and the Hafenbeurt: an artificial mound, like those whereon the several villages on the island are built, raised high enough to be above the level of the waters which cover Marken in times of great storm. Before this strange habit of his had become a matter of notoriety, a dozen or more of the islanders, as they passed at night along the path beside the graveyard, had been frightened pretty well out of their wits by seeing his tall figure rise from among the graves suddenly and stand sharply outlined against the star-gleam of the sky.

But in those days, as I have said, his madness was no more than a sombre melancholy—save for his fitful outbursts of rage against the sea. The bitterness that came into his heart came later: when his daughter was a woman grown and Jan de Witt married her—and presently deserted her, as was known openly, for an Edam jade over on the mainland. Things went worse and worse for a while: until one day when old Jaap—even then they were beginning to call him old Jaap—fell into a burning rage with his son-in-law and cursed him as he deserved for the scoundrel that he was.

It was down at the dock that the two men came together. The schuyts were going out, and Jan was aboard his own boat making ready to cast off. Half the island folk were there—the fishermen about to sail, and their people come to see them get away. Some one—who did not see old Jaap standing on the piling near where Jan's boat lay—called out: "The fishing is good off Edam still, eh, Jan?" And then there was a general laugh as Jan answered, laughing also: "Yes, there's good fishing off Edam—better than there is nearer home."

At this old Jaap broke forth into a passionate outburst against his son-in-law: calling him by all the evil names that he could get together, crying out against his wickedness and his cruelty, and ending—as Jan's boat slid away from her moorings, with Jan standing at the tiller laughing at the old man's fury—by calling out with a deep grave energy, in strange contrast with his previous angry ravings: "God cannot and will not forgive. He will judge you and He will punish you. In His name I say to you: May the might of the angered waters be upon you—may you perish in the wrath of the Zuyder Zee!"

There was such a majesty in old Jaap's tone as he spoke those words, and such intense conviction, that all who heard him were thrilled strangely. Some of the old men of Marken, who were there that day, still will tell you that it seemed as though they heard the voice of one who truly was the very mouth-piece of God. Even Jan, they say, paled a little; but only for a moment—and then he was off out of the harbour with a jeer and a laugh.

But that was Jan's last laugh and jeer at his father-in-law, and his last sight of Marken. The next day the boats came hurrying home before a storm, but Jan's boat did not come with them. At first it was thought that he had put into the canal leading up to Edam—it was about there that the other fishermen had lost sight of him—but a couple of days later his boat drifted ashore, bottom upward, in the bight of Goudzee south of Monnikendam. That left room for guess-work. Certainty came at the end of a fortnight: when the two men who had been with him got back to Marken—after a trip to England in the steamer that had picked them up afloat—and told how the schuyt had gone over in the gale and spilt them all out into the sea. As for Jan, he never came back at all. As he and the other two men were thorough good sailors, and as the survivors themselves were quite at a loss to account for their catastrophe, there was only one way to explain the matter: old Jaap's curse had taken effect!

After that old Jaap had a place still more apart from the other islanders. What he had done to one he could do to another, it was whispered—and thenceforward he was both shunned and dreaded because of the power for life and death that was believed to be his. The reflex of this popular conviction seemed to find a place in his own heart, and now and again he would threaten with his curse those who got at odds with him. But he never uttered it; and the fact was observed that even in the case of the teasing little boys he was careful not to curse any one of his tormentors by name.

III

Certainly, if ever old Jaap had cursed any particular little boy it would have been Krelis Kess—who was quite the worst boy on the island, and who usually was the leader of the troop that hung about the old man's heels.

And even when Krelis got to be a big young fellow of twenty—old enough to go on escapades in Amsterdam of which the rumour, coming back to Marken, made all steady-going folk on the island look askance at him—he still took an ugly pleasure, as occasion offered, in stirring up old Jaap's wrath. If the old man chanced to pass by while he was sitting of a Sunday afternoon in Jan de Jong's tavern, drinking more gin-and-water than was good for him, it was one of his jokes to call out through the open window "Mad old Jaap!" in the shrill voice of a child; and to repeat his cry, with different inflections but always in the same shrill tones, until the old man would go off into a fury and shout his curse at the little boys who seemed to be so close about him but who could not anywhere be seen. At that Krelis would fall to laughing mightily, and so would the loose young fellows his companions—who had found out that that would send his hand to his pocket and give them free drinks all around.

Under such conditions it is not surprising that the wonder, and also the regret, of these young scapegraces was very great when on a certain Sunday afternoon in mid-spring time Krelis not only did not volunteer his usual pleasantry at old Jaap's expense—as the old man came shambling up the narrow street toward the tavern—but actually refused to practise it when it was suggested to him. And the wonder grew to be blank astonishment, a minute later, when he went to the window and begged Herr Visser to come in and have a glass of schnapps with him! To hear old Jaap called "Herr Visser" by anybody was enough to stretch to the widest any pair of Marken ears; but to hear him addressed in that stately fashion by Krelis Kess was enough to make any Marken man believe that his ears had gone crazy!

At first the young scamps in the tavern were quite sure that Krelis was about to play some new trick on old Jaap, and that this wonderful politeness was the beginning of it. But the marvel increased when the old man—who liked schnapps as well as anybody—joined the little company of tosspots and was treated by Krelis with as much respect as though he had been a burgomaster! And more than that, when the session was ended—and old Jaap, to whom such treats came rarely, was so far fuddled that he could not manage his legs easily—Krelis said that nothing could be pleasanter than a walk across to the Kerkehof in the cool of the evening, and so gave him a steadying arm home. As the two set off together the young fellows left behind stared at each other in sheer amazement; and such of the Marken folk as chanced to meet this strangely assorted couple marching amicably arm in arm together were inclined to disbelieve in their own eyes!

For a week, while they all were away at their fishing, there was a lull in the excitement; but it was aroused again the next Sunday when Krelis did not come as usual to the tavern—and went to a white heat when a late arrival, a young fellow who lived in the Kerkehof, told that as he came past Jaap Visser's house he had seen Krelis sitting on the bench in front of it talking away with old Jaap and making eyes behind old Jaap's back at Marretje. At first, being so entirely incredible, this statement was scouted scornfully; but it aroused so lively a discussion that presently the whole company left the tavern and went over in a body to the Kerkehof bent upon disproving or verifying it—and there, sure enough, were old Jaap and Krelis smoking their pipes together, and Marretje along with them, on the bench in front of old Jaap's door!

Young Jan de Jong—the son of the tavern-keeper—expressed the feelings of the company when he said, later, that as they stood there looking at that strange sight you might have knocked down the whole of them with the flirt of a skate's tail! But they did not stop long to look at it. Krelis glared at them so savagely, and his big fists doubled up in so threatening a fashion, that they took themselves off in a hurry—and back to the tavern to talk it over, while they bathed their wonder in very lightly watered gin.

IV

That was the beginning of Krelis Kess's courting of Marretje de Witt—about which, in a moment, all the island blazed with talk. Until then, in a light-loving way, Krelis had been keeping company with Geert Thysen. That seemed a natural sort of match, for Geert and Krelis had much the same bold way with them and well enough might have paired. But Geert, like Krelis, had a devil of a temper, and it was supposed that an angry spat between them had sent Krelis flying off in a rage from her spit-firing—and that the gentle Marretje had caught his heart on the rebound. The elders, reasoning together out of their worldly wisdom, perceived that under the law of liking for unlike this bold-going young fellow very well might be drawn toward a maiden all gentleness; and that, because of her gentleness, Marretje would find a thrilling pleasure in the strong love-making with which Krelis would strive to take her heart by storm. All that, as they knew, was human nature. Had they known books also they would have cited the case of Desdemona and the Moor.

However, there was not much time for talking. Krelis was not of the sort to let grass grow under his feet in any matter, and in a love matter least of all. Nor were there any obstacles to bar his way. He had his own boat, that came to him when his father was drowned; and he had his own house in the Kesbeurt, where he had lived alone since his mother had ended a notably short widowhood by marrying a second time. Old Jaap, moreover, was ready enough to accept as a son-in-law the only man in Marken who ever had styled him Herr Visser, and who in addition to that unparalleled courtesy had given him in quick succession nearly a dozen bottles of the best Schiedam. There was nothing to hinder the marriage, therefore, but Marretje's shyness—and Krelis overcame that quickly in his own masterful way.

And so everybody saw that matters were like to come quickly to a climax—everybody, that is, except Geert Thysen, who said flatly that the marriage was both impossible and absurd. Geert had her own notion that Krelis was serving her out for her hard words to him, and was only waiting for a soft word to come back to her—and she bit those full red lips of hers with her strong teeth and resolved that she would keep him waiting until he was quite in despair. Then, at the very last, she would whistle him back to her—with a laugh in his face first, and then such a kiss as all the Marretjes in the world could not give him—and the comedy of his mock courtship would be at an end. Sometimes, to be sure, the thought did cross her mind that Krelis might not come to her whistle. Then the color would go out of her red cheeks a little, and as she ground her big white teeth together she would have a half-formed vision of Krelis lying dead somewhere with a knife in his heart. But visions of this sort came seldom, and were quickly banished—with a sharp little laugh at her own folly in fancying even for an instant that Krelis could hesitate in choosing between herself and that limp pale doll.

And then, one day, she found herself face to face with the fact that Krelis had not been playing a comedy at all. The news was all over the island that he and Marretje were to be married the next Sunday; and that he meant to be married handsomely, with a great wedding-feast at Jan de Jong's tavern in Jan de Jong's best style. "So there's an end of your lover for you, Geert Thysen!" said Jaantje de Waard, who brought the news to her.

At this Geert's red cheeks grew a little redder, and her big black eyes had a brighter flash to them; but she only laughed as she answered: "It's one thing to lay the net—but it's another to haul it in!" And Jaantje remembered afterward what a strange look was in her face as she said those strange words.

V

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 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 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 foolish woman she was safe to walk where she pleased.

VI

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 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 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.

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.

But old Jaap had his work to do at sea, and Marretje had to make the best of many and many a weary and lonely day. Being in so poor a way she could busy herself but little with her house-work—nor was there much incentive to scour and polish since Krelis had ceased to commend her housekeeping; and, indeed, was at home so little that he was indifferent as to whether she kept her house well or ill.

And so she spent much of her time as she had spent that first lonely Sunday afternoon—sitting on the steps above her scouring-shelf, looking out sadly and dreamily across the marsh-land and the sea. Or she would walk slowly to the end of the village, where rough steps went down to a little-used canal, and there would lean against the rail while she gazed steadfastly across the marshes seaward—trying to fancy that she could see the fishing fleet, and trying to build in her breast little hope-castles in which Krelis again was all her own. They comforted her, these hope-castles: even though always, when the week ended and the fleet was back again, they came crashing down. Sometimes Krelis's boat did not return at all. Sometimes it returned without him. When he did come back in it very little of his idle Sunday was passed at home. The dark months of winter dragged on wearily. Grey chill clouds hung over Marken, and grey chill clouds rested on this poor Marretje's heart.

VIII

But one glad day in the early spring-time the sun shone again—when Krelis bent down over her bed with a look of real love in his bright eyes and kissed her; and then—in a half-fearful way that made her laugh at him with a weak little laugh in which there was great happiness—kissed also his little son. "As if his father's kiss could hurt this great strong boy!" she said in a tone of vast superiority: and held the little atom close to her breast with all the strength of her feeble arms. She loved with a double love this little Krelis: greatly for himself and for the strong thrilling joy of motherhood, but perhaps even more because his coming had brought the other Krelis back again into the deep chambers of her heart.

It was the prettiest of sights, presently, when she was up and about again, to see Marretje standing in front of her own door in the spring sunshine holding this famous little Krelis in her arms. Then, as now, young mothers were common enough in Marken; but there was a look of radiant happiness about Marretje—so the old people will tell you—that made her different from any young mother whom ever they saw. "Her face was as shining as the face of an angel!" one of the old women said to me—when I heard this story told in Marken on a summer day. And this same old woman told me that through that time of Marretje's great happiness Geert Thysen walked sullen: ready at any moment, without cause or reason, to fly out into what the old woman called a yellow rage.

But even from the first the matrons of the island, knowing in such matters, pulled long faces when they talked about the little Krelis among themselves. Krelis Kess's son, they said, should not have been so frail a child; and then they would account for this puny baby by casting back to the time when Marretje was orphaned before she was weaned, and so was started in life without the toughness and sturdiness with which the Marken folk as a rule are dowered. These worthy women had much good advice to give, and gave it freely, as to how the little Krelis should be dealt with to strengthen him; but Marretje paid scant attention to their suggestions, being satisfied in her own mind that this wonderful baby of hers really was—as she had said he was on the day when his father first kissed him—a great strong boy.

Krelis, seeing his little son only once a week, was the first to notice that he was not so strong as a healthy child should be; but when he said so to Marretje she gave him such a rating that he decided he must be all wrong. And then, one day, Geert Thysen opened both his and Marretje's eyes. It was a bright Sunday afternoon, when the little Krelis was between two and three months old, that Marretje was sitting with him on her lap, suckling him, on the steps above her scouring-shelf; and Krelis was seated on the step above her, and she really was making a back of his big knees. What with the joy of her motherhood, and her joy because her Krelis was her own again, it seemed to Marretje as though in all the world there was only happiness. She held the little Krelis close to her, crooning a soft song sweetly over the tiny creature nestled to her heart; and as she suckled him there tingled through her breast, and thence through all her being, thrills of that strange subtle ecstasy which only mothers know. And Krelis, in his own way, shared Marretje's great happiness: as they sat there lonely, looking out over the marsh-land seaward, their hearts very near together because of the deep love that was in both of them for their child. Presently Krelis leaned a little forward, and with a touch rarely loving and tender encircled the two in his big arms and drew Marretje still closer against his knees. And they sat there for a while so—in the bright silence of that sunny afternoon, fronting that still outlook over level spaces cut only by the level sky-line far away—their two hearts throbbing gently and very full.

A little noise broke the deep silence suddenly, and an instant later Geert Thysen was almost within arm's-length of them—standing in a boat which she had poled very quietly along the canal. Krelis unclasped his arms and drew back quickly; but Marretje bent forward and grasped the little Krelis still more closely, as though to shield him from harm. For a moment there was silence. Krelis flushed and looked uneasy, almost ashamed. There was a dull burning light in Geert's black eyes and her face was pale and drawn. She was the first to speak.

"You're quite right to make the most of your sick baby," she said. "You won't have him long."

"He's not a sick baby," Marretje answered furiously. "He's as strong and well as he can be!"

Geert laughed. "That puny little thing strong and well!" she answered. "Much it is that you know about babies, Marretje! Don't you see how the veins show through his skin? Don't you see the marks under his eyes? Don't you see how little he is, and how he don't grow? In another month you'll know more. He'll be over yonder in the graveyard by that time!" And then she flashed a look on Krelis of that sort of hate which comes when love goes wrong as she added: "And it is no more than you deserve, Krelis Kess. You might have had a strong woman for a wife, and then you would have had a strong child!" With that she gave a sudden thrust with the pole that sent her boat flying away from them, and in an instant vanished around a turn in the canal.

IX

Within a week the story of what had happened between them was all over Marken. Geert Thysen herself must have told what she had done. Certainly Krelis did not tell; and Marretje, having no one else to turn to, told only her grandfather. But various versions of the story went about the island, and the comment upon all of them by the Marken folk was the same: that Krelis had played the part of a coward in suffering such words to be spoken to his wife with never a word on his side of reply. Old Jaap, they say, blazed out into one of his mad rages against his son-in-law. Some say that he then laid the curse upon him—but that never will be known certainly, for the bout between the two men took place when they were alone.

What is known to be true is that Krelis for a while was as a man stunned; and that when he came to himself again—this was after the little Krelis was laid away in the graveyard—what love he had for Marretje was turned to an angry hatred because she had let his boy die. He said this not only to his neighbours but to Marretje herself—telling her that their child had died because she had borne it weakly into the world and had given it no strength with which to live.

Even a strong woman, being well-nigh heart-broken—as Marretje was when her baby was lost to her—could not have stood up against a blow like that. And Marretje, who was not a strong woman, felt the heart-breaking bitterness of what Krelis said because she knew that it was true. Very soon she was as feeble and as wan as the little Krelis had been. Happiness was no more for her, and she longed only for the forgetfulness of sorrow which would come to her when she should be as the little Krelis was. And so her slight hold on life loosened quickly, and presently she and the little Krelis lay in the graveyard side by side.

She had a very nice funeral, so one of the old women in Marken told me: the best bier and the best pall were used, and the minister gave his best address—the one called "The Mourning Wreath"—at the grave. And, to end with, there was a breakfast in Jan de Jong's tavern that was of the best too. It was only just to Krelis, the old woman said, to say that in the matter of the funeral he behaved very well indeed.

But one thing which he did at that breakfast showed that it was for his own pride, and not for the sake of Marretje, that everything was done in so fine a style. On Marken there was left no near woman relative of Marretje's, and when the guests came to the table they were a good deal scandalized by finding that Geert Thysen was to be seated on Krelis's right hand. Old Jaap's place was on his left, but when the old man saw who was to take the seat on the right he drew back quickly from the table and left the room.

At that, for a full half-minute there was an awkward pause—until Krelis, in a strong voice, bade the company be seated: and added that no one had a better right to the seat beside him than Marretje's oldest friend. As he made this speech a little buzzing whisper went around among the company, and some one even snickered down at the lower end of the big room. But there was the breakfast, as good as it could be, before them. It was much too good a breakfast to lose on a mere point of etiquette. The whispering died out, and for a moment the guests looked at one another in silence—and then there was a great scraping and rattling of chairs as they all sat down. And Krelis and Geert presided over the funeral feast with a most proper gravity—save that now and then a glance passed between them that seemed to have more meaning than was quite decorous in the case of those two: the one being a maiden, and the other a widower whose wife had not been buried quite two hours.

Of course there was a good deal of talk about all this afterward; but as public opinion had been moulded under favour able conditions—while the mellowing influence of the good food and abundant drink was still operative—the talk was not by any means relentlessly harsh. The men openly smiled at the proof which Krelis had given that his loss was not irreparable; and the women, with a certain primness, admitted that—after all the talk there had been—Krelis owed it to Geert to marry her with as little delay as the proprieties of the case would allow.

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!"

A shudder went through all the wedding company. Even Krelis, half stopping, suddenly paled. Only Geert, bolder than all of them put together, held her own. With a quick motion she drew Krelis onward, and her lip curled in that way of hers as she said to him: "What has old Jaap to do with you or me, Krelis? He is a mad old fool!" And then she looked straight at old Jaap, into the very eyes of him, and laughed scornfully—as they all together went on again through the wind and rain.

But when they came to Jan de Jong's tavern, where the wedding-breakfast was waiting for them, Krelis was the first to call for gin. He said that he was cold.

XI

It was the strangest wedding-feast, they say, that ever was held on Marken: with the black tempest beating outside, and all the lamps in the big room lighted—although the day still was on the morning side of noon. Young Jan de Jong—the same who is old Jan de Jong now, and who now keeps the tavern—remembers it all well, and tells how his mother was for bundling the whole company out of doors. Such doings would bring bad luck upon the house, she said—and went up-stairs and locked herself into her room and took to praying when her husband told her that bad luck never came with good money, and that what Krelis was willing to pay for Krelis should have.

But it was the wife who was right that time—as the husband knew a very little later on. For that night Krelis's boat was one of those swept away from their moorings and foundered, and Krelis's fine house was undermined by the water and went out over the Zuyder Zee in fragments—and so the wedding-feast never was paid for at all. And she always said that but for her prayers their son would have been lost to them too. Old Jan was very grave when he told me about this—and from some of the others I learned that it was because of what happened to him that night that he gave over the wild life that he had been leading and became a steady man.

At first, what with the blackness of the storm and the ringing in everybody's ears of old Jaap's curse, the company was a dismal one. But the plentiful hot gin-and-water that Krelis ordered—and led in drinking—soon brought cheerfulness back again. As for Geert, she had no need of gin-and-water: her high spirits held from first to last. Seated on Krelis's right—just as she had been seated only a little while before on the day of Marretje's funeral—she rattled away steadily with her gay talk; and every now and then, they say, turned to Krelis with a look that brought fire into his eyes!

The walk after breakfast was out of the question. As the afternoon went on the storm raged more and more tumultuously. There was nothing for it but to have the room cleared of the chairs and table and go straight on to the dancing; and that they did—excepting some of the weaker-headed ones, whose legs were too badly tangled for such gay exercise and who sat limply on the benches against the wall.

This time it was not by favour but by right that Geert led the dance with Krelis—her black eyes shining and her face all of a rich red glow. And as she took her place at the head of it she said to Jaantje de Waard: "Who's got him now, this lover of mine you said I'd lost, Jaantje? Didn't I tell you that it's one thing to lay the net, but it's another to haul it in?" And away she went, caught close to Krelis, with a laugh on those red lips of hers and a brighter sparkle in her black eyes. Jaantje said—it was she who told me, an old woman now—that somehow this speech of Geert's, and the sudden thought that it brought of dead Marretje out there in the graveyard, made her feel so queasy in her stomach that she left the dance and went home bare-headed through the storm.

The dancing, with plenty of drink between whiles, went on until evening; and after night-fall the company grew still merrier—partly because of the punch, but more because the feast lost much of its grewsomeness when they all knew that the darkness outside was the ordinary darkness of black night and not the strange darkness of that black day. But there was no break in the storm; and now and then, when a fierce burst of wind fairly set the house to rocking on its foundations, and sent the rain dashing in sheets against the windows, there would be anxious talk among those of the dancers who came from the Kerkehof or the Kesbeurt as to how they were to get home. From time to time one of the men would open the door a little and take a look outside—and would draw in again in a hurry and go straight to the punch-bowl for comforting: for none of them had seen any storm like that on Marken in all their lives.

And so, when at last the storm did lull a little—this was about eight o'clock in the evening, close upon the moonrise—there was a general disposition to take advantage of the break and get away. And Krelis did not urge his guests to stay longer, for he was of the same mind with them—being eager to carry off homeward his Geert with the flashing eyes.

But when the men went out of doors together to have a look about them they were brought up suddenly with a round turn. It is only a step from Jan de Jong's tavern to the head of the path that dips downward and leads across the marshes to the other villages. But when they had taken that step no path was to be seen! Close at their feet, and stretching away in front of them as far as their eyes could reach through the night-gloom, was to be seen only tumultuous black water flecked here and there with patches of foam. Everywhere over Marken, save the graveyard mound and the knolls on which stood the several villages, the ocean was in possession: right across the island were sweeping the storm-lashed waves of the Zuyder Zee!

XII

Though they all were filled with punch-begotten Dutch courage, not one of them but Krelis—as they stood together looking out over what should have been marsh-land and what was angry sea—thought even for a moment of getting homeward before daylight should come again and the gale should break away. And even Krelis would not have been for facing such danger at an ordinary time: but just then his soul and body were in commotion, and over the black stormy water he saw visions of Geert beckoning him to those red lips of hers, and firing him with the sparkle of her flashing eyes.

"It's a bit of sea," he said lightly, "but if one of you will lend a hand at an oar with me we'll manage it easily. Just here it's baddish. But a stiff pull of a hundred yards will fetch us into smoother water under the lee of the graveyard, and beyond that we'll be a little under the lee of the Kerkehof—and then another spurt of stiff pulling will fetch us home. Geert will steer, and we can count on her to steer well. I wouldn't have risked it with Marretje at the tiller—but I've got another sort of a wife now. Which of you'll come along?"

There was a dead silence at that, for every one of the young fellows standing there knew that to take a boat out into that water meant a fight for life at every inch of the way.

"Well, since you're all so modest," Krelis went on with a laugh, "I'll pick out big Jan here to pull with me—and no offence to the rest of you, for we all know that not another man on Marken pulls so strong an oar."

It was old Jan himself who told me this, and he said that when Krelis chose him that way there was nothing for him to do but to say that he'd go. But he said that he went pale at the thought of what was before him, and would have given anything in the world to get out of the job. All the others spoke up against their trying it; and that, he said, while it scared him still more—for they all, in spite of the punch that was in them, spoke very seriously—helped him to go ahead. It would be something to talk about afterward, he thought, that he had done what everybody else was afraid to do. And when the others found that he and Krelis were not to be shaken, they set themselves to bringing a strong boat across from the other side of the village and getting it into the water—in a smooth place under the lee of one of the houses—and lashing a lantern fast into its bows.

When Krelis and Jan went back to the tavern to fetch Geert there was another outcry. All the women got around Geert and declared that she should not go. But Geert was ready always for any bit of daredeviltry, and the readier when anybody tried to hold her back from it—and then the way that Krelis looked at her would have taken her with him through the very gates of hell. She only laughed at the other women, and made them help her to put on the oil-skin hat and coat that Krelis fetched for her to keep her dry against the pelting rain. And she laughed still louder when she was rigged out in that queer dress—and what with her sparkling eyes and her splendid colour was so bewitching under the big hat that Krelis snatched a kiss from her and swore that at last he had a wife just to his mind.

All the company, muffled in shawls and cloaks, went along with them to the water-side to see them start; and because there was no commotion in the quiet nook where the boat was lying, and the darkness hid the tumbling waves beyond, most of them thought that the only danger ahead for Geert and the others was a thorough drenching—and were disposed to make fun of this queer wedding-journey on which they were bound. But the young men who had launched the boat knew better, and they tried once more to make Krelis give over his purpose—or, at least, to wait until the moon should rise a little and thin the clouds. And all the answer that they got was a laugh from Geert and a joking invitation from Krelis to come across to the Kesbeurt in the morning and join him in a glass of grog.

Krelis was to pull stroke, and so big Jan got into the boat ahead of him—with his heart fairly down in his boots, he told me—and then Krelis got in; and last of all Geert took her seat in the stern, and as she gripped the tiller steadily gave the order to shove off. With a strong push the young men gave the boat a start that sent it well out from the shore, and then the oars bit into the water and they were under way.

One of the old women whom I talked with was of the wedding-party, and down there by the shore that night, and she told me that they all cheered and laughed for a minute as the boat with the lantern in her bows shot off from the land. The thought of danger, she said, was quite out of their minds. Right in front of them, less than a quarter of a mile away, they saw the lights of the houses in the Kesbeurt shining brightly, and plainly setting the course for Geert to steer; and they knew that the two strongest men on Marken were at the oars. What they all were laughing about, she said, was that anybody should be going from the one village to the other in a boat—and that it should be a wedding-journey, too!

But it was only for a moment that their laughter lasted. The instant that the boat was out of the sheltered smooth water they all knew that not by one chance in a thousand could she live to fetch across. By the light of the lantern fixed in her bows they saw plainly the wild tumult of the sea around her—that caught her and seemed to stand her almost straight on end as Geert held her strongly against the oncoming waves. The old woman said that a thrill of horror ran through them all as they realized what certainly must happen. By a common impulse down they all went on their knees on the sodden ground, with the rain pelting them—and she heard some one cry out in the darkness: "Old Jaap's curse is upon them! May God pity and help them and have mercy on their souls!"

OLD JAAP