CHAPTER II.

THE QUICKSANDS.

My case had been decided by the consistory. I was not the first man who had had such an experience; and I was philosophical enough to conclude that if other men had survived their disgrace, I might also.

So, I made up my mind to forgive my wife, and live amicably with her. I acted as if nothing had happened to mar the relations between us, and all would have been well, had not my neighbors tormented me beyond endurance.

I became furious every time I went into the street. Everybody saluted me as "your majesty." They would inquire how I was getting on with my crowns--as if I had a dozen! One man would ask me if I had seen a Maimuna lately; another would tell me he had seen a stork with a baby in its bill fly through the air. I received scurrilous letters through the post, and bands of singers would stop under my window and chant my shameful history from beginning to end. In short, everything those Nimeguen citizens could invent to annoy me was done. I boiled with rage, for I was unable to defend myself.

In any other community I could have defended myself from such persecution. I should have challenged the first one who insulted me, and run him through with my sword. That is an effective way to silence scurrilous tongues. In Nimeguen, however, it would have been impossible to find a second to deliver a challenge; and if I had sent it by a messenger the challenged person would have hastened at once to the burgomaster to complain that I had threatened to murder him.

If I had tweaked the nose of a fellow for refusing to give me satisfaction, he would have sued me; and I would have been sentenced to pay three marks for a nose-tweak, and six for a slap on the mouth. This would have resulted in my spending nearly all my time in the burgomaster's office, because of the numerous summons to answer the charge of assault and battery, and my wife would have been kept busy paying the fines.

At last, I could endure it no longer. I told my wife I should have to go away, and she decided that we would go together to Vliessingen, where she would drink the medicinal waters.

I was glad enough to accompany her. I would have gone anywhere to be rid of my tormenters. But I was mistaken in believing I should be rid of them at Vliessingen. I received anonymous letters by every post; but I paid no heed to them until one day I received the following:

"What a stupid fellow you are! Your wife does not need a jinnee to carry her where she wants to go. You are her Maimuna; and Vliessingen is the Ararat whither Danesh has transported her lover. He has sent her a red velvet cap trimmed with gold braid and white lace, and every time she wears it, she signals to him that you will be away from home that day. Oh, stupid dolt that you are!"

This was more than enough.

My wife had received just such a cap as was described in the letter; and when she put it on, it always seemed to me that she looked happier.

I began to find fault with the cap. I begged her not to wear it, or at least not to go out doors when she had it on. But she persisted in wearing it, and ridiculed my anger, until I got to hate the sight of the red cap.

One day I was obliged to go to Antwerp on business. My wife insisted on accompanying me part of the way, as I should have to walk a considerable distance from the baths to take a conveyance.

Something--my white dove mayhap--whispered in my ear not to let her go with me; that it would be better for both of us if she remained at home.

But she had set her head on going, and nothing could prevent it. And she put on the red cap!

I remonstrated with her about wearing it, but she laughed at me and said:

"You silly fellow! Of whom are you jealous, here in this sandy desert? Of the gulls, perhaps?--or the moles?"

Are the honorable gentlemen of the court familiar with that region? No?

Then it will be necessary to describe it, in order that what I relate may appear clear to you.

The entire country thereabout is an arid waste, a seemingly illimitable stretch of sand dunes, and brackish pools, partly grown with brown reeds, broom and heath, but so stunted that the horns of the cattle grazing there are plainly seen. The herders are obliged to wear long stilts. This uninhabited territory is separated by a dike several feet in height from the downs, which is a fearful region.

There, earth and water are combined against man and beast; the two life-dispensing elements have become agents of death. The sand blown from the shore of the sea settles on the deep pools and dries. No plants grow there, and woe to the man or beast that strays on to the downs from the dike, or the heath beyond. The sand will sink beneath the feet of the incautious wanderer; if he draws up one foot, the other will sink yet deeper. At first, the instability of the earth amuses him; he fancies that, when he shall tire of the amusement, it will be easy enough to leave the place.

But the sand into which he is slowly but surely sinking is bottomless. Inch by inch the unfortunate victim is swallowed--as is the dove in the jaws of the serpent. Not until he has sunk to his waist, does despair seize him, and he realizes that escape is impossible. Every effort to extricate himself is futile--he only sinks the deeper into the treacherous sand.

In vain he shouts for help. No help will come to him, for, he that hears despairing cries from the downs, will flee in the opposite direction to get beyond reach of the sound, knowing well that were he to attempt to rescue the sinking wretch he too would be engulfed in the quicksand.

When the victim's head has vanished beneath the surface, only a funnel-shaped depression marks the spot where a living creature has met death, and this sign will be obliterated by the first wind that blows across the sands.

As I have mentioned before, a dike, with a road along its summit, divides the treacherous quicksands and the grazing cattle.

It was along this dike-road that my wife and I walked arm in arm the morning I started for Antwerp.

"You see, my love," I said to her, "how happy we are together when there is no one to disturb us. I should want for nothing else on earth if you would but promise not to wear that red cap again."

"And I," she returned, "need only to wear this red cap in order to make me perfectly contented and happy."

"Very well, then wear it--wear three red caps, one over the other, only don't wear this one while I am away from you."

"Well--I won't wear it while you are away."

"Swear that you won't?"

"No, I will not swear not to wear it, for if I should forget my oath, and put the cap on, then I should perjure myself--and no cap is worth that!"

"Then the cap is dearer to you than I am?" I asked.

"Do you hate the cap so much that you hate me because I wear it?" she inquired in turn.

"I have just cause to hate this cap, and I don't want to hate you for the same reason. Promise not to wear it while I am away."

"No, I will not promise--you must not be so quarrelsome."

"I will show you why you ought not wear it. Here, read this letter I received from Nimeguen."

I took the letter from my pocket, and gave it to her. Her face took on the hue of her cap as she read, and when she had finished, she stamped her foot, tore the letter into bits and flung them over the downs, exclaiming:

"Now, I shall wear the cap for spite."

"No, you shall not wear it," I cried, beside myself with rage.

I tore the cap from her head and flung it after the letter. What followed, the honorable gentlemen of the court will be able to conjecture after I have described my wife's figure and disposition.

In Holland, as well as in some other portions of the globe, married people occasionally disagree; but I believe that only in Holland is it the husband who goes to a justice of the peace with a blackened eye to substantiate a complaint against his wife.

My spouse was no exception to her fellow-countrywomen. Taller by half a head than I, broad-shouldered and with a powerful chest, she could hold at arm's length a small child seated on her hand--and it was a hand, too, that would render superfluous a _visam repertum_, if it came in contact with a human face!

And from this amazon I had dared to snatch a favorite cap, and toss it on the quicksands. As I flung the cap away, the woman threw herself against me like an enraged elephant, and sent me staggering backward to the edge of the embankment, where I turned a somersault down into one of the bitter, natron-impregnated pools on the heath, in which not even a leech can exist.

I had fallen with my head in the water; it sank to the chin in the slimy mud at the bottom, and had it not been for my presence of mind, I should have drowned; for the most expert swimmer will forget his skill if he finds his eyes, nose, mouth and ears filled with mire--and mire, too, that burns and stings like nettles.

I managed with great difficulty to wriggle out of the pool, but I could see neither sky nor earth for several minutes. It took considerable time to cleanse the mire from my mouth, nose, eyes and ears; and it was hours before I could hear again.

I felt like one resuscitated from drowning; my entire body burned as if I were covered from crown to sole with a vesicatory. Then I began to think of what might have happened while I was sitting on the heath ridding myself of the mire.

I could not see my wife anywhere on the embankment. What had become of her?

I was compelled to wade through the pools a considerable distance, in order to get back to the dike-road, for the embankment where I had fallen over was too steep to be climbed.

Therefore, a half hour or more passed before I stood again on the dike-road looking about for my wife. She was nowhere in sight on the road. Then I turned toward the sands, and what I saw there caused the blood to curdle in my veins--the foolish woman had gone after her cap!

She had it on her head, which, with her two arms, was all that was visible of her body above the sands. It was a horrible sight. Her staring eyes were fixed on me in accusation, her hands battled vainly with the empty air, her lips were open, but no sound issued forth. She was still alive, but entombed.

I thought of nothing but saving her. I sprang down the embankment, but when the sinking woman saw me coming toward her, she began to beat the sand furiously with her hands, as if she were trying to prevent my approach. I could not have saved her. I had made but fifty steps toward her when I too began to sink. Recognizing the futility of further effort on my part, I flung myself face down on the sand, that my entire weight might not rest on my feet, and thus I managed to propel my body slowly, painfully, toward the stable earth.

A seemingly endless time elapsed before I reached the foot of the embankment, and all the while there was a sound in my ears as of waves dashing against rocks, each wave crying hoarsely: "Curse you!" "Curse you!"

When at last, dripping with ice-cold perspiration and quivering with horror, I reached the top of the dike, I could see only the red velvet cap on the sands; and as I looked, a sudden gust of wind sweeping up from the sea, seized it and bore it toward me.

Overcome by terror I turned and fled like a madman down the road. All day long I continued my flight over pathless wastes; through withered copses, which had been destroyed by frequent inundations; across marshes filled with croaking frogs, and nesting storm-petrels; the lurking place of weasels and others, and from every corner I heard voices calling after me: "Murder!" "Murder!" The frogs croaked it from the water, the birds piped it from the air. The withered trees moaned it, and stretched their branches threateningly toward me; and the briars trailing along the ground caught at my feet and cried: "Stop, stop! let me bind you, murderer!"

All things animate and inanimate joined in accusing me; and at last a wall rose before me to hinder further flight.

It was only a broken dike; but to me it seemed a prison. Foot-sore and weary, I lay down amid the stones fallen from the wall. They were covered with thick moss, and it was a relief to stretch my tired limbs among them.

I began to collect my scattered senses, to think calmly over what had happened, and after awhile I began to excuse myself to the frogs and the petrels, the moles and the sparse-branched withered trees that stood around me staring at me as if they would say:

"Come, murderer, decide which of us will best suit you."

I defended myself: "I am not a murderer; I am not going to hang myself. I did not lay a finger on the woman--it was she who thrust me over the dike into a pool where I nearly drowned. She was foolish enough to go where certain death awaited her--she alone is to blame!"

"But, why did you throw her cap on the sands?" questioned the frogs, the storm-birds, and the moles. "Had not I a right to do it? Hadn't I a right to prevent her from wearing the cap which disgraced her and me? Had not she brought dishonor on me once before? Was I to permit it a second time? By throwing the cap away I was only defending my honor and her virtue. I did not kill her--she alone is to blame for her death!"

"Ha, ha, ha!" sneered every animate creature. "Ha, ha, ha!" scoffed the breeze sweeping over the moor. No one--nothing in the wide world took sides with me. The elements were against me; every human being on the globe--large, small, white, black, olive-hued--all were against me. Cities, towns, villages; houses palaces, huts--all were my enemies; I must flee from every human habitation.

And yet, I am not guilty. All the world will say that I am. My wife will be missed; she was seen going away in my company; her cap will be found beside the dike. It will be said that I murdered her, and thrust her body into the quicksands.

I am not my wife's murderer. Did no one see her thrust me over the dike? Will no one testify for me?

A fluttering wing brushed my cheek:

"Ah, my white dove! Are you there? You will speak for me. You will tell all the world that I am innocent--that I did not murder my wife?"

Filled with hope and joy, I turned my eyes toward my shoulder. The white dove was not perched there, but a coal black raven, and he croaked:

"Thou didst it!"

"At last," exclaimed the mayor as he shook the ink from the pen with which he had authenticated the protocol. "At last we have a confession that cannot be rendered invalid by a pharasaical _referrata mentalis_! At last the executioner will get something to do! _Uxoricidium aequale_: quartering, _praecedente_: the right hand to be severed from the wrist."

"I don't agree with your honor," interposed the prince. "There is a law that was promulgated by _Sanctus Ladislaus rex_--he was a Hungarian king, to be sure, but he is a saint for all that; and because he was canonized his law is held sacred by all christendom; it reads something like this: 'If a man finds his wife guilty of infidelity, and takes her life, he is answerable to God alone for the deed--'"

"Of course!" angrily exclaimed the chair, "I'll warrant the knave never dreamed that _Sanctus Ladislaus rex_ would drag him by the hair of his head out of limbo!--Let it be added to the rest of the miracles performed by Saint Ladislas!"