Adam’s Breed

one ate, the less one needed; there were always berries to be found in the forest, so sometimes he lived on berries. But food he must buy because of his birds, and because of a wild roan pony⁠—a fierce little fellow, very handy with his hoofs, very anxious not to sell his free soul. And yet, as is often the case with his betters, curiosity would overcome his shyness; he could not keep away from the strange fascination of this man-thing who followed him with carrots. Once a week, when Gian-Luca went in to the post, he would purchase his frugal supplies; carrots for the pony, bread and seed for the birds, and occasionally something for Gian-Luca. His clothes were worn out and his shoes needed soling, very badly indeed they needed soling; but out in the forest he had ceased to wear shoes; he went about barefoot for the joy of the earth, and his love of the forest was increased by this contact of his naked feet with its soil.

His possessions were gradually dwindling away, and somehow they never got replaced. He had given his raincoat to a woman one evening, drenched through she had been, that poor Sister of the Road, and it always hurt him to see such women battered by the wind and the rain. Their faces were sunken or heavily bloated, their tired feet dragged slowly or shuffled to keep up with the shuffling stride of their men. They were miserable, heartsick, homesick creatures, the outcasts of cities, the outcasts of life.

“Men can exist without roots,” thought Gian-Luca, “but not women; they need roots, like the trees.”

He would sometimes give away his food to such people, and then he would have nothing to eat; and his money he gave them because they were ill-clad, more so than he was himself, he fancied. They took all that he offered, and sometimes they thanked him, but sometimes they would look at him askance.

“I have not stolen the money,” he would tell them, and would know that they did not believe him.

His head had begun to ache badly at times, and at times he felt giddy and stupid; too stupid almost to think about God or to ask his eternal questions. But standing against his calm friend the beech tree, feeding its trustful birds, he could still recapture that sense of oneness with something that belonged to the birds and the beech tree, to the smallest particle of soil in the forest, to the humblest flower that sprang from that soil⁠—to the pity in the heart of Gian-Luca. Then the moment would pass, and back he would come to earth with a kind of mental thud, with a sense of desolation more poignant than pain, so that he must sometimes cry out very loudly in his bitterness: “God, where are You?”

The birds, grown startled, would all fly away, deserting Gian-Luca for that morning; then he would sit down and begin to cry weakly, begging the birds not to leave him.

“Can it be that you are frightened of me?” he would reproach them. “Are you frightened of Gian-Luca, who feeds you?”

Then one day who should come but the little roan pony, and it took a carrot from his hand, and it lipped his hand, which meant: “Thank you, Gian-Luca,” which meant: “I am your servant⁠—this had to be so, for my people are born servants of men.”

After that it took to following Gian-Luca about, letting him twist his fingers in its mane; and Gian-Luca loved it and would walk beside it, fondling its silky nostrils.

“Oh, well,” he would say, “I have not found God, but I have found you, little friend of the lonely⁠—” Then the pony would sometimes nuzzle his hand, as though it had understood him.

He began to sleep badly, for his body had grown feverish, so sometimes he would get up and wander to a stream; undressing, he would plunge straight into the water, which would strike cold against his thin body. He was always doing foolish things like this lately, grown careless of his physical welfare; he scarcely troubled to think about illness, so busy was his mind with its problems. And then there was something that was always coming nearer⁠—nearer and nearer he would feel the thing coming, and for some strange reason this began to console him.

“Is that You, God?” he would whisper.

He would often be haunted by the memory of a poem, the memory of the “Gioia della Luce.” The great, beautiful stanzas would go rolling through his brain until the words seemed to be a part of the forest, a part of its hope, and of other blessed things; and one night as he murmured the poem, half asleep, he thought that the words were part of God. Thus it was that Gian-Luca, all unknowing, ratified his peace with Ugo Doria.

V

The hunting of the red deer began in July, and Gian-Luca would hear hounds giving tongue; a curious, half-plaintive, half-merciless sound, as they broke away on the scent. The faint blast of a horn would echo through the forest, the faint cry of the huntsman, the faint cracking of whips, and then, strangely enough, something quite unregenerate would stir to life in Gian-Luca. He would throw back his head and stand stock-still and listen, thrilling to that pagan music, the music of men and beasts taking their pleasure in the hot, steaming bloodlust of death. Then Gian-Luca would know that the passion of the chase lay somewhere deep down in every male creature, from the stoat who hunted his scurrying rabbits to the man who hunted his deer. He would know that death stalked abroad in the forest, even as he had done on the battlefields of France, when Gian-Luca, held in leash at the Officers’ Mess, had fretted for his outraged manhood. These thoughts would give him fresh cause for speculation, fresh cause for bewilderment and sadness, and then he would remember