THE CAGED BIRD OF THE FIELDS
THERE is a short, crooked street in Cutigliano, which leads back of the
church and out upon the promenade of San Vito. This street is confined
on either hand by stone houses and stone walls of gardens, and paved
with large square stones. Here and there a gateway gives a peep at
lapping hills across the river. The massive church tower rises directly
from a narrow turn in this street, and when the bells ring down from
the arches in the top of this tower, the stony street reverberates with
a deafening clamor.
By the time the priest and Natale reached the foot of the church tower,
the boy was weeping bitterly but quietly. His one free arm hid as much
of his face as possible, and his feet in the clumsy new shoes stumbled
so helplessly that Luigi had some trouble in preventing his falling.
As they had passed through the town, where everybody sat at their doors
or lounged in the _piazza_, all had recognized the little acrobat, as
Natale realized only too well. Many accosted him in wonder, and some
would even have stopped him to inquire into his misfortune in being
left behind by his family. But the young priest motioned such away
with authority, silencing with a gesture of his long finger the too
curious. Others had already learned how it had come about that Natale
was to spend a year with Sora Grazia, and her son the priest, and these
contented themselves with shrugs and smiles for the boy’s companion, as
who should say: “We wish you well of your bargain, Signor priest.”
The great hands of the church clock pointed to ten minutes of four,
as the bell boomed the hour of six. No one, however, ever thought of
consulting the huge figures painted on the stone face of the tower
clock, for those long iron hands had not stirred for many a day.
The deep sound of the bell struck so suddenly upon Natale’s ears that
he started, and dropping his arm from before his eyes, gazed dully
ahead. It was not often that he had strayed farther than this corner of
the old church, and he had never followed the San Vito promenade to the
end. Most of the town was left behind now; whither could this man be
taking him?
A row of houses with numbers in blue figures on one side of the lintels
extended back of the church, but before none of these did Luigi pause.
Next came a low, broken wall, and then a house, detached from its
neighbors and with a long, sloping roof, covered with slabs of slate.
This house had no door opening on the street, and in the blank front
wall there was only a very small window at one corner close under the
eaves. Over a door in the end of the house nearest the church there was
a small crucifix in carved stone set into the wall, but this door was
seemingly closed and unused.
The priest led Natale a few steps farther, to the other end of the
house, and then they left the street and entered a long balcony leading
to a wide-open door.
A middle-aged woman sat just inside this doorway at the foot of a
flight of stairs leading up into the room under the roof. She wore
a kerchief of red and black cotton over her head and tied in a knot
under her chin, and her eyes were bent upon a coarse piece of mending
occupying her work-worn hands.
[Illustration: The priest led Natale to the other end of the house.
_Page 94._]
At Luigi’s heavy step on the stone flooring of the balcony, she
lifted her face to his and something like a smile softened the
expression of her stern features. Her black brows unbent and she made
way for her son to enter by twisting her stool slightly and shifting
her feet. Luigi passed by her and took up his stand in the gathering
gloom of the little passage, his eyes fixed warily upon Natale. The
little boy had released his hand from the priest’s outside the door,
and now stood leaning against the railing of the balcony, staring
frowningly at the woman.
“You are content to have it over with, Gigi?” the mother asked,
glancing from man to boy and back again.
Luigi nodded his head.
“Give him something to eat and put him to bed,” he counseled in a low
tone, “and do not argue with him to-night. To-morrow the sun will shine
and he will begin to forget.”
Natale’s sharp ears caught every word, stolid as he looked. “Forget?”
What did they think he would forget? Not Olga’s last words, certainly:
“I would run after the wagon, if I were you.”
But, _why was he not running now_? No door, as yet, kept him prisoner.
There was the empty street. Below ran the long, long white road. The
night was coming down, and he was not afraid of the dark. Once out
of sight, around one of the loops of the road, it would take but a
moment to slip off the heavy shoes with their soles half an inch thick,
and then on and on in the cool darkness he might run on light bare
feet--“after the wagon.”
He thrilled with the thought as it flashed through his mind, but a
flash of the same thought thrilled Sora Grazia at the same time, for
just then she leaned forward and laying her hand on Natale’s arm, she
drew him to her side.
“Once I had a curly-haired little boy of my own,” she said with a
serious smile, “but after a while, he grew to be a man, and now he has
brought to me another little boy. Natalino, I hope you will be as good
a boy as my Gigi ever was.”
Natale gazed earnestly into the woman’s face.
“I am not at all good, signora,” he said unsteadily, and he could not
help the stirring of hope in his heart, with this confession, but Sora
Grazia only smiled again and tapped his cheek, and said that perhaps
the good Luigi would teach him to be good.
And there was no more opportunity left Natale for running away, for he
was presently led into the kitchen where he had to sit and watch Sora
Grazia prepare the macaroni for supper. He was hungry enough to enjoy
a plateful of this but the slip of boiled beef served him on a clean
plate afterward could not be choked down. He had overheard some one in
the tent--could it have been only that very day?--say that he was to
have meat every day in his new home, and his sister, Arduina, had added
that she wished _she_ were sure of getting a morsel three times a week.
Had not a doctor in Sicily said that she must have all delicate and
nourishing food? And what were dry bread and sour wine as substitutes?
No, Natale could not eat the meat that night. Happily the plate of
macaroni had been generous, and what in all the land of sunny Italy is
so filling as a plate of macaroni?
The valley looked dismally dark that night, as Natale crept from his
little trestle bed and crouched on the brick floor at the window,
after he was supposed to be asleep. He was to share the priest’s attic
chamber, and a few moments before Sora Grazia had carried away the
candle. He peered out between the flower pots on the window ledge
and again wondered in his childish way why anybody in the big world
outside should have troubled to make him miserable.
He was very sure that he had done nothing to harm the foreign lady
with the spectacles. Once he had laughed when she had sneezed many
times very loudly, in crossing the field near him, but he was sure no
one had heard him, for he was lying on the ground and had buried his
face in the grass. The pretty signorina with her had laughed too, and
said something in their strange language which the lady had answered
by another loud sneeze. Besides this, there was absolutely nothing he
could have done to provoke any of the people in the garden. Yet, here
he was being punished!
The thought of Sora Grazia oppressed him, her serious face and her
high hopes of his goodness. The house, too, was quieter than any place
he had ever known,--he who had been used to few roofs save those of
the caravan and tent. There were no children about, and there was no
sound inside of crying, or laughing, or singing, or whistling. It was
almost as bad as having to live in a solemn church when the candles
are all out and the crowds are gone, and one feels, in the dimness and
silence, as if something were coming up stealthily behind one to scare
one’s wits away. It is all very well to rest for a minute in a cool
church, out of the glare of the sunlight, when one may run out again at
will, free as a wild bird or butterfly. But to have to stay, night and
day, for a whole year in such a place! Natale shuddered, for this was
just the way in which the awful quiet of the little stone house of the
priest affected him.
When Luigi came up to bed, hours later, he lifted the sleeping boy from
the bricks at the window and covered him up snugly in bed.
“My mother thinks we can do it,” he muttered to himself, as he threw
off his black gown. “I shall do my part, but I am not sure they have
done a wise thing.” Then he sighed a little. Perhaps he was wishing
that he could be a little boy again, with the wide, wide world before
him, and no one to interfere with his choice of a career,--free to be
acrobat or priest, but always to have his own choice.
With the passing of the first night all idea of running away seemed
to have left Natale’s mind, and Sora Grazia was at first delighted to
find her charge as submissive as a lamb to all her arrangements. After
the first day or two, however, it became not quite so comfortable to
see the little boy sit immovable for hours at a time, on the floor of
the balcony, gazing down into the valley where the river ran merrily
over the rocks. She would even have preferred to rebuke the child
for something a little more outrageous than his listless torpor. She
herself had to eat the meat prepared for Natale, if she would not see
it wasted, for Natale could not touch it, nor would Luigi, her usually
tractable son.
The young priest was no less puzzled over Natale’s conduct than his
mother was. The schoolmaster reported to him that the boy held his
little paper-covered spelling-book before his eyes with the utmost
diligence, and really seemed to try to remember the letters as they
were pointed out to him with patient repetition, but that he might as
well have been gazing off into the valley instead, for all the good the
pages did him, and Luigi believed it.
The other boys tried to lure him into their games and to practice his
funny _capitomboli_ but he would only sit quietly by, on the stone
steps of the church, watching them till playtime was over, when he must
sit up on the bench in the schoolroom again and hold his book before
his eyes.
“He cannot keep up his sulking forever,” Sora Grazia said on the
sixth day of Natale’s stay with her. Luigi was standing near her in
the balcony, brushing the dust from the skirts of his long gown, which
he shook vigorously with his strong hands, as his mother continued, “I
confess that I am surprised he has taken things so quietly.”
“A little too quietly!” muttered Luigi into the folds of his gown.
“But now, one would like to see him brighten up a little instead of
glooming over his food and everything else,” Sora Grazia went on.
“He is not the same child he was a week ago, making his ridiculous
_capitomboli_ over the circus carpet. I wonder if he could turn a
somersault now, Luigi.” The woman lifted her head from her work to look
over at Natale, who sat on the low street wall with his feet dangling
into the road.
“I gave him leave to go and play with the boys down in the field, this
afternoon,” said Luigi, shaking his gown almost viciously. “He said he
did not wish to go where his tent had been, and that he never expected
to turn a somersault again.”
“Impertinent!” exclaimed Sora Grazia. “We’ll let him alone a while
longer, and he’ll come all right. A child cannot sulk forever, as I
said before.”
“But one can die of starvation and homesickness, perhaps,” quoth Luigi,
stepping past his mother and springing up the stairs, his gown upon his
arm.
Grazia’s retort was stayed upon her lips by what she now saw passing in
the street.