II
Gian-Luca adopted the glade where he had rested on his first day of entering the forest; he made it his own, a kind of headquarters, shared only with the beasts and the birds. A spring of clear water bubbled up close at hand, and this was the spring that he drank from. His knapsack he would hide in the hollow of an oak tree, and since he had no other worldly possessions, the glade made a charming hostel.
During his first few weeks in the forest he was always losing his way, but as time went on he developed new senses—an acuteness of instinct rather than of sight, and much other subtle, inexplicable wisdom that he shared with the lower creation. Thus, he knew when a woodman was somewhere about, feeling the presence of a man before he heard it; the coming of rain or of wind he knew also, though the sky might be cloudless at the moment. And now he was very seldom lost in his wanderings; he would find himself walking back into his glade without quite knowing how he had got there; with the homing instinct of a bird or a rabbit, Gian-Luca would return to his home. The humbler creatures got used to his presence—they began to eye him with interest; while he, in his turn, would offer them friendship, moving gently among them with a kind of politeness.
“You were here before me,” he would say very often; “it is kind of you to make me feel welcome.”
His desire for the beautiful had grown into a craving which the forest constantly augmented, for the great trees were lovely in rain as in sunshine, especially the beeches with their small pointed leaves—glossy leaves, surrounded by a gossamer down which Gian-Luca liked to touch with his finger. One splendid old beech tree he took as his friend, and every morning he would stand close against it, with his back to its trunk and his arms extended on either side of his body. His hands would be held very still, palms upwards, for morsels of food would be lying on his palms, and presently he would whistle softly to the birds that were watching from the branches. So it happened that Gian-Luca, who had served all his life, continued to serve in the forest, waiting upon the simplicity of birds as he had upon Milady’s caprices. One by one the birds would come flying down, blackcap and greenfinch, goldcrest and linnet; and with many small twitters and flutterings and circlings the birds would feed from his hands. Then Gian-Luca’s pale eyes would look out and beyond, seeming to see all things clearly; for all that he saw at such moments as these would be lit by a deep sense of love.
“Is this God’s love or mine?” he would wonder, conscious of the quiet whirring of those wings.
But quite soon the birds would have finished their feasting, and Gian-Luca’s empty hands must drop to his sides; then the light would die out and his vision become darkened.
“I have not found God,” he would mutter sadly, “and yet I came here to find Him.”
He took to talking to the beasts and the birds, not as good St. Francis who had preached them the Word, but rather as a fellow-creature, who must suffer because of their suffering. For even here, in the quiet green forest, suffering and sorrow had pursued him; he had come on a tortured rabbit in a trap, its neck deeply wounded from the wire snare that held it. Sick and sorry, he had stooped down and killed it with his hands, releasing it from its pain; but its pain had lived on in Gian-Luca’s spirit, a shadow on the glory of the forest. One night he had heard the sound of a shot, and the next day he had found the traces of that shooting; a hare with a gun-shattered leg had passed him, trailing the leg behind it. Gian-Luca had started to follow the hare, bent on his errand of mercy, and the wild thing had hidden itself from his pity—knowing him for a man.
But the rabbits and the hares played fearlessly at sunrise, and again in the cool of the twilight, so then it was that Gian-Luca talked to them, “Have you got a God?” he would ask them gravely.
The creatures would continue their artless gambols, apparently not hearing Gian-Luca; or, if they heard him, they would scamper away.
“They do not know either,” thought Gian-Luca.
There were times of innocent happiness, however, when he would feel like a schoolboy; as, for instance, when he first saw a herd of red deer in the northern part of the forest. He had wandered a long way that afternoon, and he chanced on the herd at sundown; the deer stood all together in a wide, open space, with their antlers black against the sky. Their magnificent heads were raised questioningly, their eyes looked attentive and fearful; but Gian-Luca had hidden himself behind a tree, scarcely daring to breathe in his surprise and excitement, for these beasts could seldom be taken unawares—they were hunted and had therefore grown wise. He stood so still that the deer began feeding, bending strong, chestnut necks; Gian-Luca could hear the crisp noise of their cropping and the muffled sound of their lazy movements as they pushed their way through the grass. Then he must have shifted his hand a little, for a twig snapped under his fingers, and up went every head, while the herd wheeled abruptly—in a moment it had bounded away.
Gian-Luca gradually grew familiar with nearly all the beasts of the forests—stoats and weasels, both thoroughly hard-hearted hunters with colossal appetites for birds’ eggs; moles and hedgehogs, and the queer little plush-coated shrewmice with their long, prehistoric-looking noses; foxes and badgers, who were seen for the most part soon after the evening star; squirrels, who were seen at any old time; and the shy, wild ponies who were timid at first, but who afterwards came to know Gian-Luca, so that sometimes the mares would bring him their foals, born in the forest overnight. And birds! Were there ever so many under heaven, or such a variety of songs? All day there was singing, and all night as well, for nightingales sang in the beech trees in June, and Gian-Luca must lie awake under the stars because of their splendid music. He learnt to know the songs and the habits of the birds before he discovered the names of the singers.
“That must be the fellow who shivers while he sings,” he would think, as he listened to the tremulous trill of a wood-wren swinging just above him. Or: “That must be the bird with the little white chin—he always sounds cross like that when he feels frightened.” And sure enough out would bustle a whitethroat, furiously angry with Gian-Luca.
And then there were all the creeping things; the long, graceful grass snakes, very self-conscious and fearfully embarrassed by a stranger; the hot-tempered adders, who were better avoided because of their unregenerate nature; and the harmless but unprepossessing slow-worms, very stupid, nearsighted and inept. There was also a goodly company of beetles, and these varied in disposition; some were peaceable, others quite quarrelsome at times, and one of their number was a veritable fiend—a species of Nero, but with ten times his courage and more than ten times his cunning.
Gentle and fierce by turns was the forest, like a great, throbbing human heart. Its gentler thoughts came to life in its bracken, in its delicate mosses and silvery lichens, in its little wild berries—the food of the birds—in its pools and its glades and its flowers. Gian-Luca had come at the time of the bluebells, but out in the forest they had not depressed him; and because he had once pushed them roughly with his foot, he had knelt down beside them and buried his face in their dewy, ineffable coolness. Anemones and cuckooflower had been blooming, and quite soon the hawthorn had followed. Now it was June, the month of dog-roses, the month of the kingcup in damp, boggy places, the month of forget-me-nots growing along streams or clustering beside quiet water. The days held the nights imprisoned in their brightness, for the dawns broke early and the twilights were long; the darkness, when it came, must perforce reflect light in an endless faint afterglow. Long before the big moon was ready to vanish, the sun would be eyeing her out of the east; then the night and the morning must love one another in a tangle of leaves and birds’ wings and stars.
Below in the forest Gian-Luca would be lying with his face turned up to the sky; and the soul of the forest, always wrapt round with peace, in spite of that heart fierce and gentle by turns, would come timidly touching the soul of Gian-Luca—trying to tell him something. Then Gian-Luca would lie very still and would listen, but after a little he would sigh.
“I cannot find God—not yet,” he must answer; and perhaps he would get up to look for his God, meeting Him face to face in the sunrise, but passing Him by unseeing.