The Priest’s Serving Maid.
The little footpath that, amid pear and cherry trees, and vine-trelissed ‘pergola,’ runs up alongside of the church, leads to the threshold of the prevosto’s house. The establishment does not boast many rooms, and these are rough and poorly built, with great bare rafters, whitewashed walls and deep embrasured windows. The walls are ill-plastered, so that, when the weather has been hot and the rains heavy, spiders and scorpions can creep from out the cracks; the doors are cumbrous and unsightly, with great chinks at the hinges, but the rooms are large and lofty as far as may be, and in summer the curato is cosy enough.
It is the kitchen that you must enter first, and through it alone can you pass into the rest of the house. Caterina, the maid-of-all-work, stands before the dresser, rolling out the paste for minestra. Beans and potatoes, sliced gourd and mushrooms, tomatoes, sweet herbs, and the unfailing garlic are already cooking, so that the kitchen is filled with a fragrant odour. Caterina rolls out the paste, throwing it gracefully over the rolling-pin, wielding and handling it artfully. She is a gaunt, threadbare-looking woman, of some five-and-thirty years—but the prevosto is gaunt too, and sallow; the two match well together.
‘The neighbour, Maddalena, has come to eat two lasagne with us,’ says the priest, now entering timidly—for Caterina is a bit of a tyrant. She does not answer now, and he makes a sign to the woman to seat herself upon the stone step at the threshold. There are platters and dishes ranged upon the shelf, and the peasant woman eyes them with interest. There is bread baking, too, in the oven, and Maddalena fancies perhaps that the poor little place wears even an air of opulence.
She sits on the doorstep chattering away fluently in a shrill soprano, that her voice may be heard above the noise of rushing water from without—for there is a fountain beneath the vine pergola in the courtyard—a rough little fountain, into which water pours incessantly from a spring above, and from which troughs are laid sometimes to water the flowers and vegetables in the prevosto’s little garden. This fountain is well known to the people of the village; there is a back-way to it which does not pass before the priest’s door, and many a time have I seen the villagers, when other springs have run low, filling their pitchers at this spout.
The peasant woman holds the talk herself, for Caterina makes no answer. She is in a bad humour. Both the women are plain and ill-favoured specimens of their class, only that Caterina is a little less unkempt and disorderly than her neighbour. Her hair is smooth though scant, and her faded print dress is neat; but Maddalena has many different patterns and patches upon her skirt—the bright yellow kerchief around her shoulders is soiled, and the fine and cunning plaits of her grey hair are not as well ordered as the women’s are wont to be on mass days.
Presently Caterina bustles into the darkened parlour, where, sits the prevosto lazily smoking his pipe and reading the country newspaper. He has put aside even the least of his clerical garments now, and lounges at ease in an old coat and slippers, his tonsured head covered by a battered straw hat.
THE PRIEST’S SERVANT ADMINISTERING A REPROOF.
‘Listen to me, Prevosto,’ breaks forth the faithful woman, and she is not careful to modulate her voice even to a semblance of secrecy; ‘you don’t bring another mouth for me to feed here when it is baking-day again! Per Bacco! no, indeed! The mean, grasping creature! She has as much food in her own house as we have in ours any day, and she must come here, forsooth, to delay me in my work, and to pry into my affairs, that she may report them in the village! It’s all her laziness. Who’s to get the merenda for her husband and her children, I wonder, if she’s to find her’s ready for her here, whenever she chooses to ask for it! I’m sick of her slanderous tongue. But it shan’t happen again, do you hear? And I have the holy wafers to bake to-day, besides. For shame of you! Come now to your dinner in the kitchen. I’m not going to bring it in here. You’d best look sharp, for I know there’s that dying woman up at San Fedele, you ought to go after. I don’t know what you took off your canonicals for!’ And Caterina, the better for this free expression, hastens to dish up the minestra.
‘Poor old priest! What a shrew has he got in his house!’ says some pitying reader. Yet he would not part with her for worlds! She is his solace and his right hand, and loves him, besides, none the less because of her sharp and uncurbed speech.
Words in Caterina’s mouth are only the natural vent of her quick and eager nature, when the words are spoken to the old priest. For the most part, they are forgotten as soon as uttered, both by master and servant. The lonely man cannot afford to quarrel with mere froth of words in the woman who devotes her life to his comfort. Who would care for him as cares this poor hard-working servant? Who else would lay aside her ease, and forget her people, that she might carry his interests the steadier at heart, the better fight his battles and guard his homestead, and order his goods to advantage?
Yet Caterina is no miracle of a servant. In many a lone and cheerless home of Italian priest can I call to mind such a woman as this—such a fond and faithful drudge, with harsh ways and soft heart! And where the priest is old, having plodded out his life in some little secluded parish, amid a people more uneducated than himself—there the servant is old also, and the one has almost drifted into a shape and mould of the other’s nature and mind. For, as far as home-companionship goes, are these not all-in-all to each other? There is no wife for a comrade, there are no children to keep the old life burning to the end, in these homes of the Roman priesthood. And yet, who shall pretend that they are always sad? If you have been to see them now with me, surely, for all their quarrels, for all her loud voice and his cunningly judged and well-feigned meekness, you will scarcely say this is an unhappy house!
So the lasagne are cooked and eaten with a good relish, and Maddalena has her portion upon the door-step, spite of Caterina’s vehement remonstrances beforehand. Neither is a little plateful denied to the pretty contadinella who comes presently to the door with a summons for the prevosto. ‘Did I not tell you that you had best hasten up the hill without further delay?’ says Caterina, sending forth her parting shaft. And the priest sallies out on his mission while the girl gets detained awhile for a gossip. For this one is a favourite; she is young and merry, and comes not too often nor a begging. Caterina loves her well enough.