Scarcely more than a week had passed since the blow first struck him. He was, as yet, benumbed, paralyzed by the icy clasp of the inevitable. He was isolated; cut off suddenly from all his past; the possibility of revolt had not yet occurred to him; the craving for life, mere life, had not awakened; all his experiences had changed at the same moment; he had not had time to grow accustomed to the new conditions, to realise the inextricable inescapable claims of habit. He was like a man shipwrecked, and keeping a precarious footing upon some slippery rock in mid-ocean; his actions, his preoccupations, were so many temporary measures. He was engrossed in the present precisely because he had no future.
Could he have been asked, that is, more or less, the account he would have given of himself. But in truth, he did not realise the situation. And how could he?—while the young blood ran easily and warmly in his veins, and the morning air tasted freshly, and there was no sense of physical effort in scaling the steepest crest of these hills. The very fulness of his life deceived him. He thought himself resigned to lose all because he could not—he was incapable of comprehending the final loss of anything. For the present, his youth, his sense of vitality, were lying dormant, silenced and motionless like that sleeping sea.
But indeed he was not conscious of himself this morning. He walked for hours, steadily, determinedly; stopping at the top of every hill to look back at the country beneath him with a blank mechanical stare. He could never remember of what he had been thinking, or if he had been thinking of anything at all. There was nothing left of this day in his memory but a confused recollection of wide grassy spaces where the wind was the only thing living, and the face of a shepherd to whom he spoke about mid-day, and the sight of many fields planted with vines.
The man's face came back to him, later, a vivid and detached image, like the fragment of a fever dream. It was after twelve o'clock when Dino passed him, sitting on the side of a hill, eating his dinner of sour black bread, with his sheep scattered about him, and his dog lying at his feet. Dino might have passed without seeing him had it not been for the dog, who started up, growling. And then, at sight of the bread, the young man remembered suddenly that he had not tasted food that day. The shepherd had merely lifted his eyes for a moment, but without speaking or interrupting his meal. Dino threw himself on the sun-warmed grass a few paces farther on; in the very action of lying down he realised his fatigue. He shut his eyes for an instant or two, then he said with some impatience:
'Eh, buon' uomo! are you accustomed to so many strangers, then, that you hav'n't a single word left to say?'
There was a perceptible pause, and then, 'Are you speaking to me, sir?' the man inquired slowly.
Dino laughed.
'My good fellow, do you suppose I am talking to your dog? He did his best by barking; do you think I expected him also to wish me good morning?'
The shepherd looked at him reflectively. It was a strange idea, but then people who came from a distance often expected strange things to happen. He turned his eyes slowly upon the dog; there was something reassuringly unchangeable in the cock of that ear and the accustomed wag of that stumpy tail.
'He does not speak. È un cane', he remarked tranquilly.