Dark days followed. At first only a prisoner, his cruel master now made
him into a galley-slave. He put a chain round his foot, and condemned
him to the servitude of the car and cord. So drag your weight, work your
pulley, haul in your little car, poor outcast! Who has not seen the
monstrous spectacle—one of God’s creatures, created to fly free in the
realms of air, coming and going on a toy platform, a ring about its leg?
Who has not seen the unhappy captive, to win meat and drink, drawing up
by little laborious jerks the water-jar and car, its eye gleaming with
pitiful longing, gaining its subsistence by a never-ending useless
martyrdom? Only he who has seen the cruel sight knows to what lengths
the cruelty of bad men can go.
This was the fate of the poor goldfinch.
The man had given him a cage to imitate a Swiss châlet, in front of
which was a little terrace. On the terrace was fixed a post, with a
pulley attached worked by a thread. This thread the captive had to pull
in with his beak, little by little, till the little drinking-bucket
hooked to the other end rose to the level of the platform; then putting
his foot on the cord, he had to hold it in place and so drink a drop,
bitter as a tear, hurriedly and fearfully, lest the thread should slip
from under his claw and suddenly let the bucket run down again.
More often than not the bucket upset in its descent, and then he had to
go without water for the rest of the day.
A second thread made it possible for him to haul to the edge of the
platform a miniature car running on an inclined plane outside the cage;
this held his bird-seed. What a struggle it was to drag it up! At each
snap of the beak the car would ascend, but oh! so slowly. By successive
jerks, never tiring, never stopping, with straining neck, working with
the adroitness of a galley-slave, and clapping his foot on the cord
after each pull, he had to drag up the accursed car, which would
sometimes elude him and dash down the incline again, spilling the seed
and mocking all his laborious efforts!
A hundred times a day he was forced to begin the horrid task again.
Many a time the goldfinch resolved to give in and die of hunger; but
hunger is a terrible thing, and no sooner did its pangs begin to pinch
his little stomach than he would seize the cord afresh and pull for dear
life.
X
So passed the hours for the once happy bridegroom. Never a chirp now,
never a flirt of the tail! Disconsolate and draggled, every feather of
his little body betraying the misery of his broken life, he seemed an
embodiment of the bitter protest of the winged creation against the
cruelty of man.
A feeble ray of sunshine used to flicker on the garret walls towards
midday; he would watch for it, and when it came at last, shooting a
slender pencil of gold, in which the dust-motes danced athwart the gloom
of his prison-house, it was like a brief instant of recovered freedom;
for a moment he forgot his chain, his car, his slavery, and away he flew
in fancy to the great orchards that showed their black masses of shadow
on the horizon. Alas! the sunbeam slid along the wall and disappeared,
and the appalling reality came home to him again.
What had he done to deserve this cruel fate? To filch a grain of corn
here and there, to forage in the kitchen-gardens, to play the truant, to
make the most of life, all day long to fly hither and thither, the free
denizen of air—was this a crime? He never reflected how he had forgotten
his mother, and that this crime alone deserved the sternest expiation.
His master was one of those good-for-nothing workmen who make the whole
week a series of Sundays. One night he forgot to come home at all; next
morning the ill-starred captive found bucket and car both empty. No use
hauling them up to him and pecking about in every corner; never a grain
of seed was to be found, never a drop of water! Then indeed he knew the
torments of hunger and thirst. In vain he toiled at his cruel, slavish
task; the car ascended, the bucket rose, but without bringing solace to
his famished cravings. His tools refused their office; with pale eyes of
consternation the poor prisoner gazed at them, and could not understand.
As if by the irony of fate, the window had been left wide open, and he
could plainly see the green of the nearest trees, in which the birds,
his more fortunate brethren, were squabbling. He saw the sun slowly sink
and the shadows of the house-roofs lengthen. Then a frenzy of madness
seized him; with quick, frantic pecks he tore at the chain riveted round
his leg, and by sheer fury burst its rings.
To dart to the window, to sail away for the paling blue of the sky, was
the work of an instant; but next minute he fell to earth again, so weak
was he with hunger. Luckily, not far from the foot of the tree where he
had dropped, a flock of pigeons was enjoying a feast of oats at the door
of a stable. He joined the band, and in a very short while had plumped
his crop to such good purpose that he felt his full strength come back
to him.
A long time had passed since he had quitted his bonny bride, and he
trembled to think what changes the days might have brought with them in
her life. Still the longing to see her again grew so irresistible after
he had been free an hour that, even if she had forgotten him, he was
fain to bid her farewell.
And pr-r-r-rt! he was off like the wind.
All the world was asleep when he arrived—even the tomtits, those
inveterate gossips, who love to loiter at their doors long after dark,
talking scandal of their neighbours.
“Little bride! little bride!” he breathed softly.