Part 22

“When the measured hammering of the heavy bell ceases an instant and its distant echo, blent with the cloud of tones that the wind carries away, is lost, there begins to be heard the sad, uneven, piercing melody of a little clapper-bell.”

“I am,” it says, “the voice that sings the joys and bewails the sorrows of the village which I dominate from my spire; I am the humble bell of the hamlet, that calls down with ardent petitions water from heaven upon the parched fields, the bell that with its pious conjurations puts the storms to flight, the bell that whirls, quivering with emotion, and in wild outcries pleads for succour when fire is devouring the crops.

“I am the friendly voice that bids the poor his last farewell; I am the groan that grief chokes in the throat of the orphan and that mounts on the winged notes of the bell to the throne of the Father of Mercies.

“On hearing my melody, a prayer breaks involuntarily from the lip, and my last echo goes to breathe itself away on the brink of hidden graves--an echo borne by the wind that seems to pray in a low voice as it waves the tall grass that covers them.

“I am the weeping that scalds the cheeks; I am the woe that dries the fount of tears; I am the anguish that presses on the heart with an iron hand; I am the supreme sorrow, the sorrow of the forsaken and forlorn.

“To-day I toll for that nameless multitude which passes through life unheeded, leaving no more trace behind than the broad stream of sweat and tears that marks its course; to-day I toll for those who sleep in earth forgotten, without other monument than a rude cross of wood which, perchance, is hidden by the nettles and the spear-plume thistles, but amid their leaves arise these humble, yellow-petaled flowers that the angels sow over the graves of the just.”

The echo of the clapper-bell grows fainter little by little till it is lost amid the whirlwind of tones, above which are distinguished the crashing, broken strokes of one of those gigantic bells which set shuddering, as they sound, even the deep foundations of the ancient Gothic cathedrals in whose towers we see them suspended.

“I am,” says the bell with its terrible, stentorian peal, “the voice of the stupendous mass of stone which your forefathers raised for the amazement of the ages. I am the mysterious voice familiar to the long-robed virgins, the angels, the kings and the marble prophets who keep watch by night and by day at the church doors, enveloped in the shadows of their arches. I am the voice of the misshapen monsters, of the griffins and prodigious reptiles that crawl among the intertwined stone leaves along the spires of the towers. I am the phantasmal bell of tradition and of legend that swings alone on All Souls’ Night, rung by an invisible hand.

“I am the bell of fearsome folk-tales, stories of ghosts and souls in pain,--the bell whose strange and indescribable vibration finds an echo only in ardent imaginations.

“At my voice, knights armed with all manner of arms rise from their Gothic sepulchres; monks come forth from the dim vaults in which they are sleeping their last sleep to the foot of their abbey altars; and the cemeteries open their gates little by little to let pass the troops of yellow skeletons that run nimbly to dance in giddy round about the pointed spire which shelters me.

“When my tremendous clamor surprises the credulous old woman before the antique shrine whose lights she tends, she believes that she sees for a moment the spirits of the picture dance amid the vermilion and ochre flames by the glimmer of the dying lantern.

“When my mighty vibrations accompany the monotonous recital of an old-time fable to which the children, grouped about the hearth, listen all absorbed, the tongues of red and blue fire that glide along the glowing logs, and the fiery sparks that leap up against the obscure background of the kitchen, are taken for spirits circling in the air, and the noise of the wind shaking the doors, for the work of souls knocking at the leaded panes of the windows with the fleshless knuckles of their bony hands.

“I am the bell that prays to God for the souls condemned to hell; I am the voice of superstitious terror; I cause not weeping, but rising of the hair, and I carry the chill of fright to the marrow of his bones who harkens to me.”

So one after another, or all at once, the bells go pealing on, now as the musical theme that rises clearly above the full orchestra in a grand symphony, now as a fantasia that lingers and recedes, dilating on the wind.

Only the daylight and the noises that come up from the heart of the town at the first dawn can put to flight the strange abortions of the mind and the doleful, persistent tolling of the bells, which even in sleep is felt as an exhausting nightmare through the eternal _Noche de Difuntos_.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] To the posthumous edition of Becquer’s _Works_, Señor Correa prefixed an account of the poet’s life. This, brief and often indefinite as it is, remains the authentic biography. It has been partially reproduced in English by Mrs. Humphry Ward, who published in _Macmillan’s Magazine_, February, 1883, pp. 305-320, a valuable article entitled: _A Spanish Romanticist: Gustavo Becquer_. Professor Olmsted of Cornell, in his recent class-room edition of selected _Legends, Tales and Poems_ by Becquer (Ginn and Company, Boston, 1907) contributes additional facts gathered from Spanish periodical articles--of which he gives a bibliography--and in conversation with Spaniards who had known the poet.

[2] Of the seventy-six poems that make up the _Rimas_, thirty-two are given in literal English rendering by Lucy White Jennison (“Owen Innsley”) as the third section of her _Love Songs and Other Poems_ (The Grafton Press, New York, 1883), and a few are similarly rendered by Mrs. Humphry Ward in the article already mentioned. A complete translation in English verse, by Jules Renard of Seattle, has just come (1908) from The Gorham Press, Richard G. Badger, Boston.

[3] Not, to my knowledge, translated into English.

[4] Except for a few magazine waifs and strays, usually in abridged form, and for seven out of the twelve stories in W. W. Gibbings’ _Terrible Tales_, where the translation, according to Professor Olmsted, is “often inaccurate,” these legends have not before been translated into English. The twenty-one here given include everything even remotely in the nature of a tale contained in the three volumes, with the exception of the two East Indian legends already mentioned, and the two witchcraft tales in _From My Cell_. Good as these witch stories are, it seemed a pity to take them out of their context. What might be considered further omission is noted later. Of the translations in this volume, several have appeared in _Short Stories_, two in _The Churchman_, and one in the _Boston Evening Transcript_.

[5] And therefore has not been included in this volume.

[6] Not included in this volume because it should not be taken from its context.