“It must be that I do not need it,” he would argue; “everyone eats too much!”
The fine weather broke and it rained a good deal; strong winds swept over the forest that October, the beech trees sighed and groaned under the storms, while Gian-Luca got wet to the skin. He must always be lighting fires, and this distressed him, for now he lived in the dread of getting caught; keepers and foresters were after him, he fancied, waiting to shut him up between walls. In the end he grew desperate, preferring to go wet than to risk getting caught by those keepers.
“The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests,” he would sometimes think, smiling ruefully; and then he would wonder where these words had come from—surprised when his memory failed him.
His money was running very short by now, he had only about three pounds left; but he firmly resolved not to write home for more, he was not going to rob Maddalena.
“When it is gone I must find work in the forest, perhaps with the charcoal-burner,” he thought vaguely. “If I cannot find work, well then, I must beg.” And he tried to remember what the tramp had once told him regarding those signs chalked on gateposts.
He began to have a queer feeling in his heart, his heart was constantly moving. “Keep quiet!” he would tell it, pressing his side. “Ma che! you behave exactly like a wild thing.” But his heart would continue to change its position, for that was what it felt like to Gian-Luca: “Are you in bed that you have to turn over?” he would ask. “Do not beat like the caged richiami! You turn over and then you beat with your wings—yet I am not cruel like Sisto—”
Whenever he saw the wild ponies now, he pitied, thinking of the horror of the mines; and whenever he pitied his sick heart grew restless, beating like Sisto’s richiami. Then one evening he came face to face with himself, as he walked slowly back to his beech tree. Towards him came walking another Gian-Luca, a gaunt, ragged fellow with a little cleft beard.
“Ah!” said Gian-Luca, “I have found you at last; I have looked for a very long time!” Yet even as his arm shot out to detain him, this other Gian-Luca vanished. “Never mind,” thought his twin, “I shall see him again; he lives, as I suspected, in the forest.”
But this strange apparition had reminded him of God, who still remained to be found; so now he went scouring the thickets for God, and the glades and the long, green rides.
“God!” he would call softly, as he called to the ponies, “come here, I have something to give You! I will give You Gian-Luca—he is not very grand, he is not the smart fellow who served at the Doric; but that, as You know, is because he came to find You.” And then he would hold out his hand.
“Magari!” Gian-Luca would presently mutter, having failed to coax God from His hiding: “Magari! I am dirty, and my clothes are in rags—perhaps that is why He avoids me.”
They were saying in Lyndhurst that Gian-Luca must be starving, judging from his haggard appearance.
“Well,” said the baker, “he certainly looks queer, but he seems to have money enough to buy bread; I changed a pound note for him three days ago.”
“He’s some ‘new-religion’ crank, I expect,” suggested the girl from the Post Office.
III
A week later, when Gian-Luca called for his letter, the girl eyed him curiously. “An unpleasant change in the weather—” she began; but Gian-Luca had thanked her and had hurried away before she could get any further.
He shuffled along in his battered old shoes, which now felt too small for his feet; as he went he kept staring down at the letter—it seemed heavy, he thought, it was thicker than usual—and his fretful heart thudded against his side because the letter looked thicker.
He opened the letter under the beech tree, sitting with his back against its trunk. “No wonder it was thicker than usual,” he murmured as he drew out the closely written pages.
“I am well, Gian-Luca,” the letter began—Maddalena never stooped to deception—“I am well, Gian-Luca—” but the rest of those pages were covered with the ache that was in her.
“All that I have promised I have done,” wrote Maddalena; “no one knows this address that I write to. They worry, they question, Rosa and the others, and I answer: ‘Gian-Luca writes that he is well, he has gone away to think over our future, I expect him home any day now.’ I pray to the Madonna every night and every morning—she must surely be weary of my poor prayers, amore. I say: ‘Do whatever is best for Gian-Luca, whatever will bring him happiness,’ I say. And I pray the Madonna to give you her peace, and the peace of her blessed Son. But oh, Gian-Luca, I am only a woman, I am not brave and holy like Our Lady of Sorrows—I am only Maddalena, who was born on the Campagna, just a poor, loving, ignorant peasant—”
Then Maddalena wrote as a woman will write to the man she has taken for her mate—all the love and the longing of her soul and her body; all the emptiness of days and the loneliness of nights; all the difficult, hopeless, yearning frustrations of a mother-of-men without child. The letter was terribly truthful and simple, as simple as the law of the forest: “Come back to me, Gian-Luca, amore, come quickly. You are all I have in the world.”
Gian-Luca folded Maddalena’s letter and slipped it into his pocket. Getting to his feet, he stood against the beech tree, then, scarcely conscious of what he was doing, he stretched out his hands, palms upwards. He stood so still that the birds fluttered
