Romantic legends of Spain

At that moment, a man with unpleasant features, thin, bony, and cross-eyed, too, hurriedly made his way to the place where the prelate was sitting.

“Master Pérez is sick,” he said. “The ceremony cannot begin. If it is your pleasure, I will play the organ in his absence; for neither is Master Pérez the first organist of the world, nor at his death need this instrument be left unused for lack of skill.”

The archbishop gave a nod of assent, and already some of the faithful, who recognized in that strange personage an envious rival of the organist of Santa Inés, were breaking out in exclamations of displeasure, when suddenly a startling uproar was heard in the portico.

“Master Pérez is here! Master Pérez is here!”

At these cries from the press in the doorway, every one looked around.

Master Pérez, his face pallid and drawn, was in fact entering the church, brought in a chair about which all were contending for the honor of carrying it upon their shoulders.

The commands of the physicians, the tears of his daughter had not been able to keep him in bed.

“No,” he had said. “This is the end, I know it, I know it, and I would not die without visiting my organ, and this night above all, Christmas Eve. Come, I wish it, I command it; let us go to the church.”

His desire had been fulfilled. The people carried him in their arms to the organ-loft, and the mass began.

At that instant the cathedral clock struck twelve.

The introit passed, and the Gospel, and the offertory, and then came the solemn moment in which the priest, after having blessed the Sacred Wafer, took it in the tips of his fingers and began to elevate it.

A cloud of incense, rolling forth in azure waves, filled the length and breadth of the church; the little bells rang out with silvery vibrations, and Master Pérez placed his quivering hands upon the keys of the organ.

The hundred voices of its metal tubes resounded in a prolonged, majestic chord, which died away little by little, as if a gentle breeze had stolen its last echoes.

To this opening chord, that seemed a voice lifted from earth to heaven, responded a sweet and distant note, which went on swelling and swelling in volume until it became a torrent of pealing harmony.

It was the song of the angels, which, traversing the ethereal spaces, had reached the world.

Then there began to be heard a sound as of far-off hymns entoned by the hierarchies of seraphim, a thousand hymns at once, melting into one, which, nevertheless, was no more than accompaniment to a strange melody, – a melody that seemed to float above that ocean of mysterious echoes as a strip of fog above the billows of the sea.

One anthem after another died away; the movement grew simpler; now there were but two voices, whose echoes blended; then one alone remained, sustaining a note as brilliant as a thread of light. The priest bowed his face, and above his gray head, across an azure mist made by the smoke of the incense, appeared to the eyes of the faithful the uplifted Host. At that instant the thrilling note which Master Pérez was holding began to swell and swell until an outburst of colossal harmony shook the church, in whose corners the straitened air vibrated and whose stained glass shivered in its narrow Moorish embrasures.

From each of the notes forming that magnificent chord a theme was developed, – some near, some far, these keen, those muffled, until one would have said that the waters and the birds, the winds and the woods, men and angels, earth and heaven, were chanting, each in its own tongue, an anthem of praise for the Redeemer’s birth.

The multitude listened in amazement and suspense. In all eyes were tears, in all spirits a profound realization of the divine.

The officiating priest felt his hands trembling, for the Holy One whom they upheld, the Holy One to whom men and archangels did reverence, was God, was very God, and it seemed to the priest that he had beheld the heavens open and the Host become transfigured.

The organ still sounded, but its music was gradually sinking away, like a tone dropping from echo to echo, ever more remote, ever fainter with the remoteness, when suddenly a cry rang out in the organ-loft, shrill, piercing, the cry of a woman.

The organ gave forth a strange, discordant sound, like a sob, and then was still.

The multitude surged toward the stair leading up to the organ-loft, in whose direction all the faithful, startled out of their religious ecstasy, were turning anxious looks.

“What has happened?” “What is the matter?” they asked one of another, and none knew what to reply, and all strove to conjecture, and the confusion increased, and the excitement began to rise to a height which threatened to disturb the order and decorum fitting within a church.

“What was it?” asked the great ladies of the prefect who, attended by his officers, had been one of the first to mount to the loft, and now, pale and showing signs of deep grief, was making his way to the archbishop, waiting in anxiety, like all the rest, to know the cause of that disturbance.

“What has occurred?”

“Master Pérez has just died.”

In fact, when the foremost of the faithful, after pressing up the stairway, had reached the organ-loft, they saw the poor organist fallen face down upon the keys of his old instrument, which was still faintly murmuring, while his daughter, kneeling at his feet, was vainly calling to him amid sighs and sobs.

III

“Good evening, my dear Doña Baltasara. Are you, too, going to-night to the Christmas Eve Mass? For my part, I was intending to go to the parish church to hear it, but after what has happened – ‘where goes John? With all the town.’ And the truth, if I must tell it, is that since Master Pérez died, a marble slab seems to fall on my heart whenever I enter Santa Inés. – Poor dear man! He was a saint. I assure you that I keep a piece of his doublet as a relic, and he deserves it, for by God and my soul it is certain that if our Lord Archbishop would stir in the matter, our grandchildren would see the image of Master Pérez upon an altar. But what hope of it? ‘The dead and the gone are let alone.’ We’re all for the latest thing now-a-days; you understand me. No? You haven’t an inkling of what has happened? It’s true we are alike in this, – from house to church, and from church to house, without concerning ourselves about what is said or isn’t said – except that I, as it were, on the wing, a word here, another there, without the least curiosity whatever, usually run across any news that may be going. Well, then! It seems to be settled that the organist of San Román, that squint-eye, who is always throwing out slurs against the other organists, that great sloven, who looks more like a butcher from the slaughter-house than a professor of music, is going to play this Christmas Eve in place of Master Pérez. Now you must know, for all the world knows and it is a public matter in Seville, that nobody was willing to attempt it. Not even his daughter, though she is herself an expert, and after her father’s death entered the convent as a novice. And naturally enough; accustomed to hear those marvellous performances, any other playing whatever must seem poor to us, however much we would like to avoid comparisons. But no sooner had the sisterhood decided that, in honor of the dead and as a token of respect to his memory, the organ should be silent to-night, than – look you! – here comes along our modest friend, saying that he is ready to play it. Nothing is bolder than ignorance. It is true the fault is not so much his as theirs who have consented to this profanation, but so goes the world. I say, it’s no trifle – this crowd that is coming. One would think nothing had changed since last year. The same great people, the same magnificence, the same pushing in the doorway, the same excitement in the portico, the same throng in the church. Ah, if the dead should rise, he would die again rather than hear his organ played by hands like those. The fact is, if what the people of the neighborhood have told me is true, they are preparing a fine reception for the intruder. When the moment comes for placing the hand upon the keys, there is going to break out such a racket of timbrels, tambourines and rustic drums that nothing else can be heard. But hush! there’s the hero of the occasion just going into the church. Jesus! what a showy jacket, what a fluted ruff, what a high and mighty air! Come, come, the archbishop arrived a minute ago, and the mass is going to begin. Come; it looks as though this night would give us something to talk about for many a day.”

With these words the worthy woman, whom our readers recognize by her disconnected loquacity, entered Santa Inés, opening a way through the press, as usual, by dint of shoving and elbowing.

Already the ceremony had begun.

The church was as brilliant as the year before.

The new organist, after passing through the midst of the faithful who thronged the nave, on his way to kiss the ring of the prelate, had mounted to the organ-loft, where he was trying one stop of the organ after another with a solicitous gravity as affected as it was ridiculous.

Among the common people clustered at the rear of the church was heard a murmur, muffled and confused, sure augury of the coming storm which would not be long in breaking.

“He’s a clown, who doesn’t know how to do anything, not even to look straight,” said some.

“He’s an ignoramus, who after having made the organ in his own parish church worse than a rattle comes here to profane Master Pérez’s,” said others.

And while one was throwing off his coat so as to beat his drum to better advantage, and another was trying his timbrels, and the clatter was increasing more and more, only here and there could one be found to defend in lukewarm fashion that alien personage, whose pompous and pedantic bearing formed so strong a contrast to the modest manner and kindly courtesy of the dead Master Pérez.

At last the looked-for moment came, the solemn moment when the priest, after bowing low and murmuring the sacred words, took the Host in his hands. The little bells rang out, their chime like a rain of crystal notes; the translucent waves of incense rose, and the organ sounded.

At that instant a horrible din filled the compass of the church, drowning the first chord.

Bagpipes, horns, timbrels, drums, all the instruments of the populace raised their discordant voices at once, but the confusion and the clang lasted but a few seconds. All at once as the tumult had begun, so all at once it ceased.

The second chord, full, bold, magnificent, sustained itself, still pouring from the organ’s metal tubes like a cascade of inexhaustible, sonorous harmony.

Celestial songs like those that caress the ear in moments of ecstasy, songs which the spirit perceives but the lip cannot repeat; fugitive notes of a far-off melody, which reach us at intervals, sounding in the bugles of the wind; the rustle of leaves kissing one another on the trees with a murmur like rain; trills of larks which rise warbling from among the flowers like a flight of arrows to the clouds; nameless crashes, overwhelming as the thunders of a tempest; a chorus of seraphim without rhythm or cadence, unknown harmony of heaven which only the imagination understands; soaring hymns, that seem to mount to the throne of God like a fountain of light and sound – all this was expressed by the organ’s hundred voices, with more vigor, more mystic poetry, more weird coloring than had ever been known before.

When the organist came down from the loft, the crowd which pressed up to the stairway was so great, and their eagerness to see and praise him so intense, that the prefect, fearing, and not without reason, that he would be suffocated among them all, commanded some of the police to open, by their staves, a path for him that he might reach the High Altar where the prelate waited his arrival.

“You perceive,” said the archbishop, when the musician was brought into his presence, “that I have come all the way from my palace hither only to hear you. Will you be as cruel as Master Pérez, who would never save me the journey by playing the Midnight Mass in the cathedral?”

“Next year,” responded the organist, “I promise to give you that pleasure, for not all the gold of the earth would induce me to play this organ again.”

“And why not?” interrupted the prelate.

“Because,” replied the organist, striving to repress the agitation revealed in the pallor of his face, – “because it is old and poor, and one cannot express on it all that one would.”

The archbishop retired, followed by his attendants. One by one, the litters of the great folk went filing away, lost to sight in the windings of the neighboring streets; the groups of the portico melted, as the faithful dispersed in different directions; and already the lay-sister who acted as gate-keeper was about to lock the vestibule doors, when there appeared two women, who, after crossing themselves and muttering a prayer before the arched shrine of Saint Philip, went their way, turning into Dueñas alley.

“What would you have, my dear Doña Baltasara?” one of them was saying. “That’s the way I’m made. Every fool has his fancy. The barefooted Capuchins might assure me that it was so and I wouldn’t believe it in the least. That man cannot have played what we have just been hearing. A thousand times have I heard him in San Bartolomé, his parish church, from which the priest had to send him away for his bad playing, – enough to make you stop your ears with cotton. Besides, all you need is to look at his face, which, they say, is the mirror of the soul. I remember, poor dear man, as if I were seeing him now, – I remember Master Pérez’s look when, on a night like this, he would come down from the organ loft, after having entranced the audience with his marvels. What a gracious smile, what a happy glow on his face! Old as he was, he seemed like an angel. But this fellow came plunging down the stairs as if a dog were barking at him on the landing, his face the color of the dead, and – come now, my dear Doña Baltasara, believe me, believe me with all your soul. I suspect a mystery in this.”

With these last words, the two women turned the corner of the street and disappeared.

We count it needless to inform our readers who one of them was.

IV

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.”

THE EMERALD EYES

FOR a long time I have desired to write something with this title. Now that the opportunity has come, I have inscribed it in capital letters at the top of the page and have let my pen run at will.

I believe that I have seen eyes like those I have painted in this legend. It may have been in my dreams, but I have seen them. Too true it is that I shall not be able to describe them as they were, luminous, transparent as drops of rain slipping over the leaves of the trees after a summer shower. At all events, I count upon the imagination of my readers to understand me in what we might call a sketch for a picture which I will paint some day.

I

“The stag is wounded – he is wounded; no doubt of it. There are traces of his blood on the mountain shrubs, and in trying to leap one of those mastic trees his legs failed him. Our young lord begins where others end. In my forty years as huntsman I have not seen a better shot. But by Saint Saturio, patron of Soria, cut him off at these hollies, urge on the dogs, blow the horns till your lungs are empty, and bury your spurs in the flanks of the horses. Do you not see that he is going toward the fountain of the Poplars, and if he lives to reach it we must give him up for lost?”

The glens of the Moncayo flung from echo to echo the braying of the horns and barking of the unleashed pack of hounds; the shouts of the pages resounded with new vigor, while the confused throng of men, dogs and horses rushed toward the point which Iñigo, the head huntsman of the Marquises of Almenar, indicated as the one most favorable for intercepting the quarry.

But all was of no avail. When the fleetest of the greyhounds reached the hollies, panting, its jaws covered with foam, already the deer, swift as an arrow, had cleared them at a single bound, disappearing among the thickets of a narrow path which led to the fountain.

“Draw rein! draw rein, every man!” then cried Iñigo. “It was the will of God that he should escape.”

And the troop halted, the horns fell silent and the hounds, at the call of the hunters, abandoned, snarling, the trail.

At that moment, the lord of the festival, Fernando de Argensola, the heir of Almenar, came up with the company.

“What are you doing?” he exclaimed, addressing his huntsman, astonishment depicted on his features, anger burning in his eyes. “What are you doing, idiot? Do you see that the creature is wounded, that it is the first to fall by my hand, and yet you abandon the pursuit and let it give you the slip to die in the depths of the forest? Do you think perchance that I have come to kill deer for the banquets of wolves?”

“Señor,” murmured Iñigo between his teeth, “it is impossible to pass this point.”

“Impossible! And why?”

“Because this path,” continued the huntsman, “leads to the fountain of the Poplars, the fountain of the Poplars in whose waters dwells an evil spirit. He who dares trouble its flow pays dear for his rashness. Already the deer will have reached its borders; how will you take it without drawing on your head some fearful calamity? We hunters are kings of the Moncayo, but kings that pay a tribute. A quarry which takes refuge at this mysterious fountain is a quarry lost.”

“Lost! Sooner will I lose the seigniory of my fathers, sooner will I lose my soul into the hands of Satan than permit this stag to escape me, the only one my spear has wounded, the first fruits of my hunting. Do you see him? Do you see him? He can still at intervals be made out from here. His legs falter, his speed slackens; let me go, let me go! Drop this bridle or I roll you in the dust! Who knows if I will not run him down before he reaches the fountain? And if he should reach it, to the devil with it, its untroubled waters and its inhabitants! On, Lightning! on, my steed! If you overtake him, I will have the diamonds of my coronet set in a headstall all of gold for you.”

Horse and rider departed like a hurricane.

Iñigo followed them with his eyes till they disappeared in the brush. Then he looked about him: all like himself remained motionless, in consternation.

The huntsman exclaimed at last:

“Señores, you are my witnesses. I exposed myself to death under his horse’s hoofs to hold him back. I have fulfilled my duty. Against the devil heroism does not avail. To this point comes the huntsman with his crossbow; beyond this, it is for the chaplain with his holy water to attempt to pass.”

II

“You are pale; you go about sad and gloomy. What afflicts you? From the day, which I shall ever hold in hate, on which you went to the fountain of the Poplars in chase of the wounded deer, I should say an evil sorceress had bewitched you with her enchantments.

“You do not go to the mountains now preceded by the clamorous pack of hounds, nor does the blare of your horns awake the echoes. Alone with these brooding fancies which beset you, every morning you take your crossbow only to plunge into the thickets and remain there until the sun goes down. And when night darkens and you return to the castle, white and weary, in vain I seek in the game-bag the spoils of the chase. What detains you so long far from those who love you most?”