Revillagigedo--only a little more than a century ago--became Viceroy;
and as soon as that most energetic gentleman saw it he wanted to know
in a hurry--being indisposed to let anything or anybody rust in
idleness--why a bell that needed only a tongue in it to make it
serviceable was not usefully employed. For some time no one could tell
him anything more about the bell than that there was a curse upon it;
and that answer did not satisfy him, because curses did not count for
much in his very practical mind. In the end a very old clerk in the
Secretariat gave him the bell's true story; and proved the truth of it
by bringing out from deep in the archives an ancient yellowed
parchment: which was precisely the royal order, following the decree
of the Consejo, that the bell should have its tongue torn out, and
forever should remain tongueless and exiled over seas.
With that order before him, even the Conde de Revillagigedo, Señor,
did not venture to have a new tongue put into the bell and to set it
to regular work again; but what he did do came to much the same thing.
At that very time he was engaged in pushing to a brisk completion the
repairs to the Palace--that had gone on for a hundred years
languishingly, following the burning of it in the time of the Viceroy
Don Gaspar de la Cerda--and among his repairings was the replacement
of the Palace clock. Now a clock-bell, Señor, does not need a tongue
in it, being struck with hammers from the outside; and so the Conde,
whose wits were of an alertness, perceived in a moment that by
employing the bell as a clock-bell he could make it useful again
without traversing the king's command. And that was what immediately
he did with it--and that was how the Palace clock came to have foisted
upon it this accursed bell.
But, so far as I have heard, Señor, this bell conducted itself as a
clock-bell with a perfect regularity and propriety: probably because
the devils which were in it had grown too old to be dangerously
hurtful, and because the curse that was upon it had weakened with
time. I myself, as a boy and as a young man, have heard it doing its
duty always punctually; and no doubt it still would be doing its duty
had not the busybodying French seen fit--during the period of the
Intervention, when they meddled with everything--to put another bell
in the place of it and to have it melted down. What was done with the
metal when the bell was melted, Señor, I do not know; but I have been
told by an old founder of my acquaintance that nothing was done with
it: because, as he very positively assured me, when the bell was
melted the metal of it went sour in the furnace and refused to be
recast.
If that is true, Señor, it looks as though all those devils in the
bell--which came to it from the Moor and from the devil-forged armor
and from Don Gil de Marcadante--still had some strength for wickedness
left to them even in their old age.
LEGEND OF THE CALLEJÓN DEL PADRE LECUONA[7]
Who Padre Lecuona was, Señor, and what he did or had done to him in
this street that caused his name to be given to it, I do not know. The
Padre about whom I now am telling you, who had this strange thing
happen to him in this street, was named Lanza; but he was called by
everybody Lanchitas--according to our custom of giving such endearing
diminutives to the names of those whom we love. He deserved to be
loved, this excellent Padre Lanchitas: because he himself loved
everybody, and freely gave to all in sickness or in trouble his loving
aid. Confessing to him was a pleasure; and his absolution was worth
having, because it was given always with the approval of the good God.
My own grandfather knew him well, Señor, having known a man who had
seen him when he was a boy. Therefore this strange story about him is
true.
On a night--and it was a desponding night, because rain was falling
and there was a chill wind--Padre Lanchitas was hurrying to the house
of a friend of his, where every week he and three other gentlemen of a
Friday evening played malilla together. It is a very serious game,
Señor, and to play it well requires a large mind. He was late, and
that was why he was hurrying.
When he was nearly come to the house of his friend--and glad to get
there because of the rain and the cold--he was stopped by an old woman
plucking at his wet cloak and speaking to him. And the old woman
begged him for God's mercy to come quickly and confess a dying man.
Now that is a call, Señor, that a priest may not refuse; but because
his not joining them would inconvenience his friends, who could not
play at their game of malilla without him, he asked the woman why she
did not go to the parish priest of the parish in which the dying man
was. And the woman answered him that only to him would the dying man
confess; and she begged him again for God's mercy to hurry with her,
or the confession would not be made in time--and then the sin of his
refusal would be heavy on his own soul when he himself came to die.
So, then, the Padre went with her, walking behind her along the cold
dark streets in the mud with the rain falling; and at last she brought
him to the eastern end of this street that is called the Callejón del
Padre Lecuona, and to the long old house there that faces toward the
church of El Carmen and has a hump in the middle on the top of its
front wall. It is a very old house, Señor. It was built in the time
when we had Viceroys, instead of the President Porfírio; and it has no
windows--only a great door for the entering of carriages at one end of
it, and a small door in the middle of it, and another small door at
the other end. A person who sells charcoal, Señor, lives there now.
It was to the middle door that the woman brought Padre Lanchitas. The
door was not fastened, and at a touch she pushed it open and in they
went together--and the first thing that the Padre noticed when he was
come through the doorway was a very bad smell. It was the sort of
smell, Señor, that is found in very old houses of which all the doors
and windows have been shut fast for a very long time. But the Padre
had matters more important than bad smells to attend to, and all that
he did about it was to hold his handkerchief close to his nose. One
little poor candle, stuck on a nail in a board, was set in a far
corner; and in another corner was a man lying on a mat spread upon the
earth floor; and there was nothing else whatever--excepting cobwebs
everywhere, and the bad smell, and the old woman, and the Padre
himself--in that room.
That he might see him whom he was to confess, Padre Lanchitas took the
candle in his hand and went to the man on the mat and pulled aside the
ragged and dirty old blanket that covered him; and then he started
back with a very cold qualm in his stomach, saying to the woman: "This
man already is dead! He cannot confess! And he has the look of having
been dead for a very long while!" And that was true, Señor--for what
he saw was a dry and bony head, with yellow skin drawn tight over it,
having shut eyes deep sunken. Also, the two hands which rested crossed
upon the man's breast were no more than the same dry yellow skin
shrunk close over shrunken bones! And, seeing such a bad strange
sight, the Padre was uneasy and alarmed.
But the woman said back to him with assurance, yet also coaxingly:
"This man is going to confess, Padrecito"--and, so speaking, she
fetched from its far corner the board with the nail in it, and took
the candle from him and set it fast again upon the nail. And then the
man himself, in the light and in the shadow, sat up on the mat and
began to recite in a voice that had a rusty note in it the Confiteor
Deo--and after that, of course, there was nothing for the Padre to do
but to listen to him till the end.
[Illustration: EL CALLEJÓN DEL PADRE LECVONA]
What he told, Señor, being told under the seal of confession, of
course remained always a secret. But it was known, later, that he
spoke of matters which had happened a good two hundred years back--as
the Padre knew because he was a great reader of books of history; and
that he put himself into the very middle of those matters and made the
terrible crime that he had committed a part of them; and that he ended
by telling that in that ancient time he had been killed in a brawl
suddenly, and so had died unconfessed and unshriven, and that ever
since his soul had blistered in hell.
Hearing such wild talk from him, the Padre was well satisfied that the
poor man's wits were wandering in his fever--as happens with many,
Señor, in their dying time--and so bade him lie quietly and rest
himself; and promised that he would come to him and hear his
confession later on.
But the man cried out very urgently that that must not be: declaring
that by God's mercy he had been given one single chance to come back
again out of Eternity to confess his sins and to be shriven of them;
and that unless the Padre did hearken then and there to the confession
of his sins, and did shrive him of them, this one chance that God's
mercy had given him would be lost and wasted--and back he would go
forever to the hot torments of hell.
Therefore the Padre--being sure, by that time, that the man was quite
crazy in his fever--let him talk on till he had told the whole story
of his frightful sinnings; and then did shrive him, to quiet him--just
as you promise the moon to a sick, fretful child. And the devil must
have been very uneasy that night, Señor, because the good nature of
that kind-hearted priest lost to him what by rights was his own!
As Padre Lanchitas spoke the last words of the absolution, the man
fell back again on his mat with a sharp crackling sound like that of
dry bones rattling; and the woman had left the room; and the candle
was sputtering out its very last sparks. Therefore the Padre went out
in a hurry through the still open door into the street; and no sooner
had he come there than the door closed behind him sharply, as though
some one on the inside had pushed against it strongly to shut it fast.
Out in the street he had expected to find the old woman waiting for
him; and he looked about for her everywhere, desiring to tell her that
she must send for him when the man's fever left him--that he might
return and hear from the man a real confession, and really shrive him
of his sins. But the old woman was quite gone. Thinking that she must
have slipped past him in the darkness into the house, he knocked at
the door lightly, and then loudly; but no answer came to his
knocking--and when he tried to push the door open, using all his
strength, it held fast against his pushing as firmly as though it had
been a part of the stone wall.
So the Padre, having no liking for standing there in the cold and rain
uselessly, hurried onward to his friend's house--and was glad to get
into the room where his friends were waiting for him, and where plenty
of candles were burning, and where it was dry and warm.
He had walked so fast that his forehead was wet with sweat when he
took his hat off, and to dry it he put his hand into his pocket for
his handkerchief; but his handkerchief was not in his pocket--and then
he knew that he must have dropped it in the house where the dying man
lay. It was not just a common handkerchief, Señor, but one very finely
embroidered--having the letters standing for his name worked upon it,
with a wreath around them--that had been made for him by a nun of his
acquaintance in a convent of which he was the almoner; and so, as he
did not at all like to lose it, he sent his friend's servant to that
old house to get it back again. After a good long while, the servant
returned: telling that the house was shut fast, and that one of the
watch--seeing him knocking at the door of it--had told him that to
knock there was only to wear out his knuckles, because no one had
lived in that house for years and years!
All of this, as well as all that had gone before it, was so strange
and so full of mystery, that Padre Lanchitas then told to his three
friends some part of what that evening had happened to him; and it
chanced that one of the three was the notary who had in charge the
estate of which that very house was a part. And the notary gave Padre
Lanchitas his true word for it that the house--because of some
entangling law matters--had stood locked fast and empty for as much as
a lifetime; and he declared that Padre Lanchitas must be mixing that
house with some other house--which would be easy, since all that had
happened had been in the rainy dark. But the Padre, on his side, was
sure that he had made no mistake in the matter; and they both got a
little warm in their talk over it; and they ended by agreeing--so that
they might come to a sure settlement--to meet at that old house, and
the notary to bring with him the key of it, on the morning of the
following day.
So they did meet there, Señor, and they went to the middle door--the
one that had opened at a touch from the old woman's hand. But all
around that door, as the notary bade Padre Lanchitas observe before
they opened it, were unbroken cobwebs; and the keyhole was choked with
the dust that had blown into it, little by little, in the years that
had passed since it had known a key. And the other two doors of the
house were just the same. However, Padre Lanchitas would not admit,
even with that proof against him, that he was mistaken; and the
notary, smiling at him but willing to satisfy him, picked out the dust
from the keyhole and got the key into it and forced back hardly the
rusty bolt of the lock--and together they went inside.
Coming from the bright sunshine into that dusky place--lighted only
from the doorway, and the door but part way open because it was loose
on its old hinges and stuck fast--they could see at first nothing more
than that the room was empty and bare. What they did find, though--and
the Padre well remembered it--was the bad smell. But the notary said
that just such bad smells were in all old shut-up houses, and it
proved nothing; while the cobwebs and the closed keyhole did prove
most certainly that Padre Lanchitas had not entered that house the
night before--and that nobody had entered it for years and years. To
what the notary said there was nothing to be answered; and the
Padre--not satisfied, but forced to give in to such strong proof that
he was mistaken--was about to come away out of the house, and so have
done with it. But just then, Señor, he made a very wonderful and
horrifying discovery. By that time his eyes had grown accustomed to
the shadows; and so he saw over in one corner--lying on the floor
close beside where the man had lain whose confession he had taken--a
glint of something whitish. And, Señor, it was his very own
handkerchief that he had lost!
That was enough to satisfy even the notary; and as nothing more was to
be done there they came out, and gladly, from that bad dark place into
the sunshine. As for Padre Lanchitas, Señor, he was all mazed and
daunted--knowing then the terrible truth that he had confessed a dead
man; and, what was worse, that he had given absolution to a sinful
soul come hot to him from hell! He held his hat in his hand as he
came out from the house--and never did he put it on again: bareheaded
he went thenceforward until the end of his days! He was a very good
man, and his life had been always a very holy life; but from that time
on, till the death of him, he made it still holier by his prayings and
his fastings and his endless helpings of the poorest of the poor. At
last he died. And it is said, Señor, that in the walls of that old
house they found dead men's bones.
LEGEND OF THE LIVING SPECTRE[8]
Apparitions of dead people, Señor, of course are numerous and
frequent. I myself--as on other occasions I have mentioned to
you--have seen several spectres, and so have various of my friends.
But this spectre of which I now am telling you--that appeared on the
Plaza Mayor at noonday, and was seen by everybody--was altogether out
of the ordinary: being not in the least a dead person, but a person
who wore his own flesh and bones in the usual manner and was alive in
them; yet who certainly was walking and talking here on the Plaza
Mayor of this City of Mexico in the very self-same moment that he also
was walking and talking in a most remote and wholly different part of
the world. Therefore--in spite of his wearing his own flesh and bones
in the usual manner and being alive in them--it was certain that he
was a spectre: because it was certain that his journeying could have
been made only on devils' wings. The day on which this marvel
happened is known most exactly: because it happened on the day after
the day that the Governor of the Filipinas, Don Gómez Pérez
Dasmariñas, had his head murderously split open, and died of it, in
the Molucca Islands; and that gentleman was killed in that bad manner
on the 25th of October in the year 1593. Therefore--since everything
concerning this most extraordinary happening is known with so great an
accuracy--there can be no doubt whatever but that in every particular
all that I now am telling you is strictly true.
Because it began in two different places at the same time, it is not
easy to say certainly, Señor, which end of this story is the beginning
of it; but the beginning of it is this: On a day, being the day that I
have just named to you, the sentries on guard at the great doors of
the Palace--and also the people who at that time happened to be
walking near by on the Plaza Mayor--of a sudden saw an entirely
strange sentry pacing his beat before the great doors of the Palace
quite in the regular manner: marching back and forth, with his gun on
his shoulder; making his turns with a soldierly propriety; saluting
correctly those entitled to salutes who passed him; and in every way
conducting himself as though he duly had been posted there--but making
his marchings and his turnings and his salutings with a wondering look
on the face of him, and having the air of one who is all bedazzled and
bemazed.
What made every one know that he was a stranger in this City was that
the uniform which he wore was of a wholly different cut and fabric
from that belonging to any regiment at that time quartered here:
being, in fact--as was perceived by one of the sentries who had served
in the Filipinas--the uniform worn in Manila by the Palace Guard. He
was a man of forty, or thereabouts; well set up and sturdy; and he had
the assured carriage--even in his bedazzlement and bemazement--of an
old soldier who had seen much campaigning, and who could take care of
himself through any adventure in which he might happen to land.
Moreover, his talk--when the time came for him to explain
himself--went with a devil-may-care touch to it that showed him to be
a man who even with witches and demons was quite ready to hold his
own.
His explanation of himself, of course, was not long in coming: because
the Captain of the Guard at once was sent for; and when the Captain of
the Guard came he asked the stranger sentry most sharply what his name
was, and where he came from, and what he was doing on a post to which
he had not been assigned.
To these questions the stranger sentry made answer--speaking with an
easy confidence, and not in the least ruffled by the Captain's
sharpness with him--that his name was Gil Pérez; that he came from the
Filipinas; and that what he was doing was his duty as near as he could
come to it: because he had been duly detailed to stand sentry that
morning before the Governor's Palace--and although this was not the
Governor's Palace before which he had been posted it certainly was a
governor's palace, and that he therefore was doing the best that he
could do. And to these very curious statements he added--quite
casually, as though referring to an ordinary matter of current
interest--that the Governor of the Filipinas, Don Gómez Pérez
Dasmariñas, had had his head murderously split open, and was dead of
it, in the Molucca Islands the evening before.
Well, Señor, you may fancy what a nest of wasps was let loose when
this Gil Pérez gave to the Captain of the Guard so incredible an
account of himself; and, on top of it, told that the Governor of the
Filipinas had been badly killed on the previous evening in islands in
the Pacific Ocean thousands and thousands of miles away! It was a
matter that the Viceroy himself had to look into. Therefore before the
Viceroy--who at that time was the good Don Luis de Velasco--Gil Pérez
was brought in a hurry: and to the Viceroy he told over again just the
same story, in just the same cool manner, and in just the same words.
Very naturally, the Viceroy put a great many keen questions to him;
and to those questions he gave his answers--or said plainly that he
could not give any answers--with the assured air of an old soldier who
would not lightly suffer his word to be doubted even by a Viceroy; and
who was ready, in dealing with persons of less consequence, to make
good his sayings with his fists or with his sword.
In part, his explanation of himself was straightforward and
satisfactory. What he told about the regiment to which he belonged was
known to be true; and equally known to be true was much of what he
told--being in accord with the news brought thence by the latest
galleon--about affairs in the Filipinas. But when it came to
explaining the main matter--how he had been shifted across the ocean
and the earth, and all in a single moment, from his guard-mount before
the Governor's Palace in Manila to his guard-mount before the
Viceroy's Palace in the City of Mexico--Gil Pérez was at a stand. How
that strange thing had happened, he said, he knew no more than Don
Luis himself knew. All that he could be sure of was that it _had_
happened: because, certainly, only a half hour earlier he had been in
Manila; and now, just as certainly, he was in the City of Mexico--as
his lordship the Viceroy could see plainly with his own eyes. As to
the even greater marvel--how he knew that on the previous evening the
Governor of the Filipinas had had his head murderously split open, and
was dead of it, in the Molucca Islands--he said quite freely that he
did not in the least know how he knew it. What alone he could be sure
of, he said, was that in his heart he did know that Don Gómez had
been killed on the previous evening in that bad manner; and he very
stoutly asserted that the truth of what he told would be clear to Don
Luis, and to everybody, when the news of the killing of Don Gómez had
had time to get to Mexico in the ordinary way.
And then Gil Pérez--having answered all of the Viceroy's questions
which he could answer, and having said all that he had to say--stood
quite at his ease before the Viceroy: with his feet firmly planted,
and his right hand on his hip, and his right arm akimbo--and so waited
for whatever might happen to be the next turn.
Well, Señor, the one thing of which anybody really could be sure in
this amazing matter--and of which, of course, everybody was sure--was
that the devil was at both the bottom and the top of it; and, also,
there seemed to be very good ground for believing that Gil Pérez was
in much closer touch with the devil than any good Christian--even
though he were an old soldier, and not much in the way of Christianity
expected of him--had any right to be. Therefore the Viceroy rid
himself of an affair that was much the same to him as a basket of
nettles by turning Gil Pérez over to the Holy Office--and off he was
carried to Santo Domingo and clapped into one of the strongest cells.
Most men, of course, on finding themselves that way in the clutches of
the Inquisition, would have had all the insides of them filled with
terror; but Gil Pérez, Señor--being, as I have mentioned, an old
campaigner--took it all as it came along to him and was not one bit
disturbed. He said cheerfully that many times in the course of his
soldiering he had been in much worse places; and added that--having a
good roof over his head, and quite fair rations, and instead of
marching and fighting only to sit at his ease and enjoy himself--he
really was getting, for once in his life, as much of clear comfort as
any old soldier had a right to expect would come his way. Moreover, in
his dealings with the Familiars of the Holy Office his conduct was
exemplary. He stuck firmly to his assertion that--whatever the devil
might have had to do with him--he never had had anything to do with
the devil; he seemed to take a real pleasure in confessing as many of
his sins as he conveniently could remember; and in every way that was
open to him his conduct was that of quite as good a Christian as any
old soldier reasonably could be expected to be.