Waves of Mercy

by Lynn Austin

  Their cheeks were red with cold when they finally tumbled inside. I dried them off and fed them soup and got them ready for bed. Maarten told them stories in front of the fire, stories from back home in the Netherlands and from the Bible. I held baby Gerrit and rocked him to sleep, then tucked him in his little bed. When Maarten went out to the lean-to to take care of our cow, I followed him.

  “I want to go home,” I told him.

  He stopped chipping the ice in the watering trough. “To the Netherlands?”

  “Yes. I don’t care how far I’ve traveled or how long it takes me to get there, or how much it costs, I want to go home. Will you help me make all the arrangements?”

  Maarten stared at me. “By yourself?” I nodded. In truth, I was terrified of traveling by myself, let alone boarding another steamship after the Phoenix disaster. Hadn’t our sailing ship the Southerner caught fire, too, on the way here? Fortunately for us, we had been in port and not five miles out to sea. But I wouldn’t let fear stop me.

  “I want to go home to Leiden. I’ll live with one of my sisters.”

  “Things will get better here—”

  “How?” I shouted. “How will things get better? Can you really promise me that?” I lowered my voice, not wanting Widow Van den Bosch or the children to hear me. “And when? In a year? Two years? Will we have everything we left behind in Leiden by then? I’ve lost everyone I ever cared about!”

  Maarten looked away. I could see I had hurt him. “What about Arie and Gerrit?” he asked. “Will you take them back to Leiden with you?”

  “I don’t know. . . . Please help me figure out a way to go home, Maarten. I’m afraid I’ll go insane if I can’t hang on to the hope of going home.”

  He exhaled, creating a cloud of icy steam with his breath. He started chipping at the frozen water again. “I’ll talk to Dominie Van Raalte—”

  “No! Don’t do that. He’ll ask me why I’ve lost hope, and I don’t want to talk about God or faith or any of those things right now.” I hadn’t attended church since the morning Dominie had told us the news about the Phoenix. I had nothing to say to God, and I didn’t want to hear what He might have to say to me. “There’s no explanation he could possibly give for why God took my parents. Or those two innocent children’s parents. Why are we suffering in this place when all we wanted to do was obey God and follow where He led us?” Maarten didn’t try to reply, too beaten down by my doubts. “Can you or Dominie Van Raalte or anyone else tell me why God took Hendrik,” I asked, “when he was coming here to learn more about Him and try to serve Him? Or why God took an entire boatload of families with little children, people who loved Him and trusted Him?”

  My questions hung in the frozen air. The cow shifted positions, stomping her feet and bumping against me. I pushed her away. When Maarten finally replied, his words surprised me. “I’ll try to figure out how to get us home, Geesje. Can you wait for a few more months, though? The lakes won’t thaw until spring. And I’ll need to earn some money for our passage back across the country to New York, then across the ocean.” He stroked the cow’s muzzle as he continued talking, almost to himself. “I can sell your father’s land and this cabin. And I can probably find farmwork in the spring to earn a little more money for our fares.”

  “I’m not asking you to come with me, Maarten. Just help me figure out how to get home.”

  He shook his head. “I promised your father I would take care of you. I can’t let you travel all that way by yourself.”

  “I’m not afraid. If I can survive this terrible place . . .” I couldn’t finish, my throat choking at the memory of how these violent woods and lakes had taken the people I loved. Yet I knew Maarten was right. A pretty young woman like me had no business traveling alone. I didn’t speak English. Strangers had leered at me at Castle Garden when I was with an entire group of people. I would be much safer if Maarten went with me.

  “We’ll go together,” he said. “We’ll take Arie and Gerrit with us.”

  “Do you want to go back home, too?” I asked. He hesitated. “Tell me the truth, Maarten.”

  “I want you to be happy. I feel so sorry for all that you’ve gone through. . . . I’ll talk to Dominie Van Raalte in the morning about selling this land. We’ll see what he says.”

  Maarten left home to walk to the dominie’s cabin as soon as morning chores were finished. I had no idea how he would find his way there and back through the snow with the trails all buried. I was half afraid the dominie would march back here with Maarten and try to talk me out of it, but Maarten returned alone. “What did he say?” I asked before Maarten had a chance to stomp the snow off his wooden shoes and come inside the cabin. “Can he sell this land for me?”

  “Yes . . . selling the land isn’t going to be the problem.”

  “Well, what is?”

  He came inside and closed the door behind him, taking a moment to ruffle Arie’s thick blond hair. The boy had run to Maarten and was clinging to his leg, making it hard for him to move. Maarten kept his voice low. “He said it wouldn’t be right for us to travel alone together since we aren’t related to each other. And we can’t adopt the boys or take them with us for the same reason. He said we should take more time to pray about our decision, and he would pray about it, too.”

  “But what other choice do we have? I want to go home!”

  Widow Van den Bosch looked up from where she sat sewing beside the fire, letting down the hem of her son’s outgrown trousers. “What do you mean, home?” she asked. “Not to the Netherlands?”

  “Yes. As soon as the snow melts I’m going home. I hate this place!”

  “But don’t you remember the famine? And how there were no jobs for any of the men?”

  “I’d rather die back home in Leiden than in this uncivilized place.”

  Neither she nor Maarten said another word as we all returned to our chores. But I pondered what to do throughout the day. It would be very unwise for me to travel all that way alone. I wanted to accept Maarten’s offer to come with me but traveling together wasn’t proper. And I was devastated to learn that I couldn’t take Arie and Gerrit with me. I’d grown to love them and couldn’t imagine leaving them behind in this godforsaken land. They needed to stay with Maarten and me.

  As I was changing Gerrit’s diaper that afternoon, a solution to all of these problems suddenly occurred to me. If Maarten and I were married, he could take me home. And we could keep the children. But could I go through with it?

  Married. To Maarten. Not Hendrik. Unthinkable.

  And yet I knew I needed him. I had been dependent on Maarten to do all the work a husband did ever since my parents died last summer. He had shown me endless kindness and patience. I knew he had once loved me. He probably still did. And I did care for him as one might love a brother or an old friend. I would be helpless without him. We had endured everything together since the persecution first began back in Leiden, when that first brick had been hurled through our window. He had always been faithful to God and to me and to my family, never complaining, watching out for me.

  I heard him outside chopping firewood, the powerful thunk and thwack penetrating the silence. I put on my coat and an extra pair of socks.

  “I come, too?” Arie asked when he saw me dressing.

  “No, I’m coming right back, lieveling. You stay inside where it’s warm.” I closed the door behind me and crossed the snow-covered yard.

  Maarten stopped working when he saw me. “What’s wrong?”

  “Do you still want to marry me? . . . We could travel home together, and we could take the boys if we were husband and wife.”

  His gaze met mine in the meek winter sunlight. Minutes seemed to pass before he replied. “I love you, Geesje. I always have. I would do anything for you.”

  I had to look away. “And you’re my very best friend. . . . But before you decide if you want to marry me, I need to be honest with you. I don’t think I will ever love anyone the way I loved Hendrik.”


  “I know. I know.” He looked down at his large, square hands, gripping the axe handle.

  “Maarten, look at me.” I waited until he lifted his head. “You deserve so much more than me. You deserve a wife who loves you with all her heart. A wife who has as much faith in God as you do. My faith has withered away to nothing. Don’t say yes unless you truly want to marry me.”

  “I wouldn’t be marrying you with false hopes,” he said. “I know you loved Hendrik. I know I could never take his place in your heart. . . . But still, I would be happy to take care of you for the rest of my life. And little Arie and Gerrit, too.”

  Sweet Maarten. He had been with me for as long as I could remember, a comforting shoulder to lean on in my grief. He’d protected me from danger, cheered me when I was sad, encouraged me when I was afraid, helped me when I was sick. He’d walked into town for food when he must have been starving and exhausted himself from the hard work of building this cabin and clearing the land. Now he would make another sacrifice for me, leaving everything he’d labored so hard for here in America in order to take me home to Leiden. He was willing to marry me, knowing I didn’t love him, knowing he would always live in Hendrik’s shadow. He would sacrifice his own happiness for mine. The least I could do for this gentle, loving man was to try to be a good wife to him in return.

  The only man I would ever love was dead, and I would have to spend the rest of my life without him. I was not quite nineteen years old, and as I gazed into the future at all the years that stretched ahead of me, I knew I didn’t want to feel this aching loneliness forever. I didn’t want to be alone. I wanted the contentment and security of a husband and family. If I could never be with Hendrik, then why not spend my life with Maarten, who I had known since I was ten years old? He was all I had left from my old life. I couldn’t imagine finding a better husband than him. And he had promised to take me home. I took his hand, red and chapped with cold, and held it between mine.

  “I’ll do my very best to be a good wife to you. Let’s ask Dominie Van Raalte to announce the banns in church.”

  “Are you sure, Geesje?” I saw naked hope in his eyes.

  “Yes. Are you sure, Maarten?”

  “I am.” He smiled, and his hope changed to joy. I could tell he wanted to hold me in his arms, but he just squeezed my hand in return, then released it. “Well, then. It’s decided?”

  “It’s decided.”

  We told Dominie Van Raalte our decision, and when one of the elders read the banns in church that first Sunday, I saw Johanna Van Eyck rise from her seat and quietly leave through the back door. I remembered that she had hoped to marry Maarten. Now I had destroyed her hope.

  Three weeks later, Maarten de Jonge and I were married in a quiet ceremony in the log church on the hill. We returned to our cabin with our adopted sons, Arie and Gerrit, to begin our new life together as a family. And to plan our trip back home to the Netherlands.

  Chapter 18

  Anna

  Hotel Ottawa

  1897

  “I’ve decided to marry William,” I tell Father that evening as we eat in the hotel’s elegant dining room. All day I have felt the weight of father’s financial problems as if I now carried them on my own shoulders.

  “Are you sure, Anna?” I see the guarded hope in my father’s eyes. He seems to be holding his breath.

  “Yes. I’m sure—if William is willing to take me back, that is.”

  “Of course he is. I talked with him about it, and he cares for you, Anna. I know you’ll have a wonderful life with him, with everything a girl could ever dream of.” Father’s relief is palpable.

  I look down at my plate, carefully cutting my broiled whitefish into tiny pieces. Jesus’ question suddenly echoes through my mind. “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” I had read this verse from the eighth chapter of Mark earlier today and remembered hearing the pastor at the castle church quote it in his sermon. Was I sacrificing my soul for this marriage? I needed to finish talking with Derk. I felt certain that he could answer my questions. He planned to become a minister, so he should be honest enough to tell me if I was at risk of losing my soul.

  I look up at my parents again. “I think you and Mother should go back to Chicago without me on Sunday. I would like to stay here for another week.”

  “But why, darling?” Mother asks. “We have a wedding to plan and—”

  “Travel alone?” Father interrupts. “Out of the question.”

  “I’m a grown woman, Father. I’m not afraid.”

  “Well, you should be.”

  “Why do you want to stay?” Mother asks again. “I’ve had the impression that you were becoming bored here.”

  “Not at all. I find it very refreshing to be out of the hot city during the summer and away from all the noise. You must admit, Father, that it’s much cooler here than in Chicago.”

  “What about William? What will I tell him when he asks why you haven’t returned?” Father appears worried again, the creases in his forehead deepening.

  “I’ll write a letter to William—tonight, in fact. You can deliver it to him as soon as you arrive home. I’ll tell him how sorry I am that we quarreled and that I would very much like to marry him.” I know Father is right—William will provide me with a wonderful life. He is a good man. A very wealthy man. He will build a lovely mansion for me on Prairie Avenue, and I will give him a son to inherit his fortune.

  Out of nowhere, another verse I’d read in the Gospel of Mark suddenly comes to mind: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” The words stuck with me because I didn’t understand them. Jesus had been talking with a very wealthy young man who had asked how he could inherit eternal life. “Sell everything you have and give the money to the poor,” Jesus told him. The young man couldn’t do it—any more than William or my father could ever give away all of his wealth to the poor. Would Jesus really ask for such a sacrifice? Maybe Derk can explain what Jesus meant to put my mind at ease.

  “Why not come home and tell William yourself?” Father asks, interrupting my thoughts.

  “Because . . . because I like it here.” I don’t dare to explain my true reasons. “I would like to stay for just one more week. Please, Father?”

  “I cannot let you travel alone, Anna. It isn’t right.”

  I turn to my mother, pleading silently with her. I know she is bored and ready to return to her fashionable life in Chicago. But I also know she owes me a favor after violating my privacy and reading my diary. She knows it, too.

  “If it would make you happy, Anna, I’ll stay one more week with you. Your father can write down all the instructions for returning by rail—is that agreeable to you, Arthur?”

  In the end, Father reluctantly agrees. It’s in his best interests to keep me happy. I stay up late that night composing a letter to William, begging for a second chance. I tell him how sorry I am for not honoring his wishes. I say that as his wife, I will submit to him as the head of our household from now on. If he can forgive me for my stubbornness, I hope we can start all over again and renew our engagement. I assure him that we will have a happy life together.

  I reread the letter before sealing the envelope, and I realize that I haven’t said a single word about loving him. Do I still love him? It doesn’t matter. I am marrying William for my parents’ sakes. It is hardly a sacrifice. Becoming one of Chicago’s wealthiest women couldn’t possibly be considered a sacrifice, even if I’m not in love with him.

  I recall thinking that if I married William my future would be swallowed up by his plans the same way the waves always swallow Mama in my nightmare. But if I don’t marry him, my father’s business may fail, and our future would change in unimaginable ways. I may not be certain of my love for William, but I am certain of my love for my parents.

  The next morning I slip out of my room before breakfast and hurry outside to search
for Derk. I find him tending the boats down by the dock as usual, dragging the beached rowboats and skiffs closer to the water so they’ll be ready when the hotel patrons finish their breakfasts. “You’re up early this morning,” he says when he sees me.

  “Yes. I have a few more questions for you. Is there a time later today when we can talk, perhaps at the end of the day so I won’t interrupt your work?”

  He suddenly appears shy as he looks down at his feet, his tanned cheeks turning faintly pink. I wonder if I’ve been too bold, imposing on his time this way. After all, I’m practically a stranger. But Derk smiles when he looks up again and says, “I finish work at four o’clock. I’ll meet you on that bench over there where you usually sit.” I worry, briefly, that Mother might see us talking and misunderstand, but I don’t want to make any more demands on Derk than I already have.

  “Thank you. I really appreciate all the help you’ve given me.” I hurry away, wondering how I would explain the situation to Father if he happened to look out of his bedroom window and see me talking with a good-looking hotel employee—especially after I’ve begged to stay for an extra week.

  But he hasn’t seen us. Later that morning I give Father my letter for William and bid him farewell as he boards the train to Holland. From there, he will make connections back to Chicago. I wonder why he doesn’t take the more direct route across the lake by steamship the way Mother and I did, but I don’t question him. My thoughts are preoccupied with the letter he’s carrying. Once he delivers it, I will be committed to marrying William. In the meantime, I have one more week to find the answers to all my questions so I can keep my promise never to return to the castle church.

  The first thing I tell Derk when we meet near the bench later that afternoon is precisely that. “I have only one more week to get all of my questions answered.”