Another year had gone by. The abbess of the convent of Santa Inés and
the daughter of Master Pérez, half hidden in the shadows of the church
choir, were talking in low tones. The peremptory voice of the bell was
calling from its tower to the faithful, and occasionally an individual
would cross the portico, silent and deserted now, and after taking the
holy water at the door, would choose a place in a corner of the nave,
where a few residents of the neighborhood were quietly waiting for the
Midnight Mass to begin.
“There, you see,” the mother superior was saying, “your fear is
excessively childish. There is nobody in the church. All Seville is
trooping to the cathedral to-night. Play the organ and play it without
the least uneasiness. We are only the sisterhood here. Well? Still you
are silent, still your breaths are like sighs. What is it? What is the
matter?”
“I am--afraid,” exclaimed the girl, in a tone of the deepest agitation.
“Afraid? Of what?”
“I don’t know--of something supernatural. Last night, see, I had heard
you say that you earnestly wished me to play the organ for the mass and,
pleased with this honor, I thought I would look to the stops and tune
it, so as to give you a surprise to-day. I went into the choir--alone--I
opened the door which leads to the organ-loft. At that moment the clock
of the cathedral struck the hour--what hour, I do not know. The peals
were exceedingly mournful, and many--many. They kept on sounding all the
time that I stood as if nailed to the threshold, and that time seemed to
me a century.
“The church was empty and dark. Far away, in the hollow depth, there
gleamed, like a single star lost in the sky of night, a feeble light,
the light of the lamp which burns on the High Altar. By its faint rays,
which only served to make more visible all the deep horror of the
darkness, I saw--I saw--mother, do not disbelieve it--I saw a man who,
in silence and with his back turned toward the place where I stood, was
running over the organ-keys with one hand, while he tried the stops with
the other. And the organ sounded, but it sounded in a manner
indescribable. It seemed as if each of its notes were a sob smothered
within the metal tube which vibrated with its burden of compressed air,
and gave forth a muffled tone, almost inaudible, yet exact and true.
“And the cathedral clock kept on striking, and that man kept on running
over the keys. I heard his very breathing.
“The horror of it had frozen the blood in my veins. In my body I felt an
icy chill and in my temples fire. Then I longed to cry out, but could
not. That man had turned his face and looked at me,--no, not looked at
me, for he was blind. It was my father.”
“Bah, sister! Put away these fancies with which the wicked enemy tries
to trouble weak imaginations. Pray a _Pater Noster_ and an _Ave Maria_
to the archangel Saint Michael, captain of the celestial hosts, that he
may aid you to resist the evil spirits. Wear on your neck a scapulary
which has been touched to the relics of Saint Pacomio, our advocate
against temptations, and go, go in power to the organ-loft. The mass is
about to begin, and the faithful are growing impatient. Your father is
in heaven, and thence, instead of giving you a fright, he will descend
to inspire his daughter in this solemn service which he so especially
loved.”
The prioress went to occupy her seat in the choir in the centre of the
sisterhood. The daughter of Master Pérez opened the door of the loft
with trembling hand, sat down at the organ, and the mass began.
The mass began, and continued without any unusual occurrence until the
consecration. Then the organ sounded, and at the same time came a scream
from the daughter of Master Pérez.
The mother superior, the nuns, and some of the faithful rushed up to the
organ-loft.
“Look at him! look at him!” cried the girl, fixing her eyes, starting
from their sockets, upon the organ-bench, from which she had risen in
terror, clinging with convulsed hands to the railing of the organ-loft.
All eyes were fixed upon the spot to which her gaze was turned. No one
was at the organ, yet it went on sounding--sounding as the archangels
sing in their raptures of mystic ecstasy.
* * * * *
“Didn’t I tell you so a thousand times, my dear Doña Baltasara--didn’t I
tell you so? There is a mystery here. What? You were not at the
Christmas Eve Mass last night? But, for all that, you must know what
happened. Nothing else is talked about in all Seville. The archbishop is
furious, and with good reason. To have missed going to Santa Inés--to
have missed being present at the miracle! And for what? To hear a
charivari, a rattle-go-bang, for people who heard it tell me that what
the inspired organist of San Bartolomé did in the cathedral was just
that. I told you so. The squint-eye could never have played that divine
music of last year, never. There is mystery about all this, a mystery
that is, in truth, the soul of Master Pérez.”