Part 6

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.

Therefore--while he staid on in his cell very contentedly--the Familiars of the Holy Office put their heads together and puzzled and puzzled as to what they should do with him: because it certainly seemed as though the devil, to suit his own devilish purposes, simply had made a convenience of Gil Pérez without getting his consent in the matter; and so it did not seem quite fair--in the face of his protest that he was as much annoyed as anybody was by what the devil had done with him--to put him into a flame-covered sanbenito, and to march him off to be burned for a sorcerer at the next auto de fé. Therefore the Familiars of the Holy Office kept on putting their heads together and puzzling and puzzling as to what they should do with him; and Gil Pérez kept on enjoying himself in his cell in Santo Domingo--and so the months went on and on.

And then, on a day, a new turn was given to the whole matter: when the galleon from the Filipinas arrived at Acapulco and brought with it the proof that every word that Gil Pérez had spoken was true. Because the galleon brought the news that Don Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas--the crew of the ship that he was on having mutinied--really had had his head murderously split open, and was dead of it, in the Molucca Islands; and that this bad happening had come to him at the very time that Gil Pérez had named. Moreover, one of the military officers who had come from the Filipinas in the galleon, and up from Acapulco to the City of Mexico with the conducta, recognized Gil Pérez the moment that he laid eyes on him; and this officer said that he had seen him--only a day or two before the galleon's sailing--on duty in Manila with the Palace Guard. And so the fact was settled beyond all doubting that Gil Pérez had been brought by the devil from Manila to the City of Mexico; and, also, that the devil--since only the devil could have done it--had put the knowledge of the murderous killing of Don Gómez into his heart. Wherefore the fact that Gil Pérez was in league with the devil was clear to all the world.

Then the Familiars of the Holy Office for the last time put their heads together and puzzled and puzzled over the matter; and at the end of their puzzling they decided that Gil Pérez was an innocent person, and that he undoubtedly had had criminal relations with the devil and was full of wickedness. Therefore they ordered that, being innocent, he should be set free from his cell in Santo Domingo; and that, being a dangerous character whose influence was corrupting, he should be sent back to Manila in the returning galleon. And that was their decree.

Gil Pérez, Señor, took that disposition of him in the same easy-going way that he had taken all the other dispositions of him: save that he grumbled a little--as was to be expected of an old soldier--over having to leave his comfortably idle life in his snug quarters and to go again to his fightings and his guard-mounts and his parades. And so back he went to the Filipinas: only his return journey was made in a slow and natural manner aboard the galleon--not, as his outward journey had been made, all in a moment on devils' wings.

To my mind, Señor, it seems that there is more of this story that ought to be told. For myself, I should like to know why the Familiars of the Holy Office did not deal a little more severely with a case that certainly had the devil at both the bottom and the top of it; and, also, I should like to know what became of Gil Pérez when he got back to Manila in the galleon--and there had to tell over again about his relations with the devil in order to account for his half year's absence from duty without leave. But those are matters which I never have heard mentioned; and what I have told you is all that there is to tell.

LEGEND OF THE CALLE DE LOS PARADOS

Two dead lovers, Señor, stand always in the Calle de los Parados, one at each end of it; and that is why--because they remain steadfastly on parade there, though it is not everybody who happens to see their yellow skeletons on those corners--the street of the Parados is so named.

[Illustration: LA CALLE DE LOS PARADOS]

As you may suppose, Señor, the lovers now being dry skeletons, what brought them there happened some time ago. Just when it happened, I do not know precisely; but it was when an excellent gentleman, who was an officer in the Royal Mint, lived in the fine house that is in the middle of the street on the south side of it, and had living with him a very beautiful daughter whose hair was like spun gold. This gentleman was named Don José de Vallejo y Hermosillo; and his daughter was named (because her mother was of the noble family of Vezca) Doña María Ysabel de Vallejo y Vezca; and she was of great virtue and sweetness, and was twenty-two years old.

All the young men of the City sought her in marriage; but there were two who were more than any of the others in earnest about it. One of these was Don Francisco Puerto y Solis, a lieutenant of dragoons: who had to offer her only his good looks--he was a very handsome gentleman--and the hope of what he might get for himself with his sword. The other one was the Señor Don Antonio Miguel del Cardonal, Conde de Valdecebro--who also was a handsome gentleman, and who owned mills in Puebla of the Angels, and a very great hacienda, and was so rich that it was the whole business of two old notaries to count his gold.

And these two posted themselves every day in the street in which was Doña María's home--one at the corner of the Calle del Reloj, the other at the corner of the Calle de Santa Catarina--that they might look at her when she came forth from her house; and that she might see them waiting to get sight of her, and so know that they loved her. It was the same custom then, Señor, as it is to-day. In that way all of our polite young men make love.