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Title: The Conscript Mother
Author: Robert Herrick
Release Date: January 21, 2022 [eBook #67218]
Language: English
Produced by: D A Alexander and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONSCRIPT MOTHER ***
THE CONSCRIPT MOTHER
IN SIMILAR FORM
16mo, Boards, net 50c.
_Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews_
The Perfect Tribute
The Lifted Bandage
The Courage of the Commonplace
The Counsel Assigned
_Maltbie Davenport Babcock_
The Success of Defeat
_Katherine Holland Brown_
The Messenger
_Richard Harding Davis_
The Consul
The Boy Scout
_Marion Harland_
Looking Westward
_Robert Herrick_
The Master of the Inn
The Conscript Mother
_Frederick Landis_
The Angel of Lonesome Hill
_Francis E. Leupp_
A Day with Father
_Alice Duer Miller_
Things
_Thomas Nelson Page_
The Stranger’s Pew
_Robert Louis Stevenson_
A Christmas Sermon
Prayers Written at Vailima
Æs Triplex
Father Damien
_Isobel Strong_
Robert Louis Stevenson
_Henry van Dyke_
School of Life
The Spirit of Christmas
The Sad Shepherd
The First Christmas Tree
[Illustration: “Five minutes at the most I had with him there by the
side of the highroad....” [_Page 95_]
THE
CONSCRIPT MOTHER
BY
Robert Herrick
Author of “The Master of the Inn”
NEW YORK
Charles Scribner’s Sons
1916
_Copyright, 1916, by Charles Scribner’s Sons_
_Published April, 1916_
THE
CONSCRIPT MOTHER
I
WHEN I met the signora at the tram station that May morning she was
evidently troubled about something which was only partly explained by
her murmured excuse, “a sleepless night.” We were to cross the Campagna
to one of the little towns in the Albanian hills, where young Maironi
was temporarily stationed with his regiment. If we had good luck and
happened upon an indulgent officer, the mother might get sight of her
boy for a few minutes. All the way over the flowering Campagna, with
the blue hills swimming on the horizon before us, the signora was
unusually taciturn, seemingly indifferent to the beauty of the day,
and the wonderful charm of the Italian spring, to which she was always
so lyrically responsive on our excursions. When a great dirigible
rose into the blue air above our heads, like a huge silver fish, my
companion gave a slight start, and I divined what was in her mind--the
imminence of war, which had been threatening to engulf Italy for many
months. It was that fear which had destroyed her customary gayety, the
indomitable cheerfulness of the true Latin mother that she was.
“It is coming,” she sighed, glancing up at the dirigible. “It will not
be long now before we shall know--only a few days.”
And to the ignorant optimism of my protest she smiled sadly, with the
fatalism that women acquire in countries of conscription. It was futile
to combat with mere theory and logic this conviction of a mother’s
heart. Probably the signora had overheard some significant word which
to her sensitive intelligence was more real, more positive than all the
subtle reasonings at the Consulta. The sphinx-like silence of ministers
and diplomats had not been broken: there was nothing new in the
“situation.” The newspapers were as wordily empty of fact as ever. And
yet this morning for the first time Signora Maironi seemed convinced
against her will that war was inevitable.
These last days there had been a similar change in the mood of the
Italian public, not to be fully explained by any of the rumors flying
about Rome, by the sudden exodus of Germans and Austrians, by anything
other than that mysterious sixth sense which enables humanity, like
wild animals, to apprehend unknown dangers. Those whose lives and
happiness are at stake seem to divine before the blow falls what is
about to happen.... For the first time I began to believe that Italy
might really plunge into the deep gulf at which her people had so long
gazed in fascinated suspense. There are secret signs in a country like
Italy, where much is hidden from the stranger. Signora Maironi knew.
She pointed to some soldiers waiting at a station and observed: “They
have their marching-kit, and they are going north!”
* * * * *
We talked of other things while the tram crept far up above the
Campagna and slowly circled the green hillsides, until we got down at
the dirty little gray town of Genzano, where Enrico Maironi’s regiment
had been sent. There were no barracks. The soldiers were quartered here
and there in old stone buildings. We could see their boyish faces at
the windows and the gray uniform of the _granatieri_ in the courtyards.
It seemed a hopeless task to find the signora’s boy, until a young
lieutenant to whom the mother appealed offered to accompany us in our
search. He explained that the soldiers had to be kept shut up in their
quarters because they were stoned by the inhabitants when they appeared
on the streets. They were a tough lot up here in the hills, he said,
and they were against the war. That was why, I gathered, the grenadiers
had been sent thither from Rome, to suppress all “demonstrations” that
might embarrass the government at this moment.
The citizens of Genzano certainly looked ugly. They were dirty and
poor, and scowled at the young officer. The little town, for all its
heavenly situation, seemed dreary and sad. The word “_socialismo_”
scrawled on the stone walls had been half erased by the hand of
authority. War meant to these people more taxes and fewer men to work
the fields.... The young lieutenant liked to air his French; smoking
one of the few good cigars I had left, he talked freely while we waited
for Enrico to emerge from the monastery where we finally located him.
It would be war, of course, he said. There was no other way. Before
it might have been doubtful, but now that the Germans had been found
over in Tripoli and German guns, too, what could one do? Evidently the
lieutenant welcomed almost anything that would take the grenadiers from
Genzano!
Then Enrico came running out of the great gate, as nice a looking lad
of nineteen as one could find anywhere, even in his soiled and mussed
uniform, and Enrico had no false shame about embracing his mother in
the presence of his officer and of the comrades who were looking down
on us enviously from the windows of the old monastery. The lieutenant
gave the boy three hours’ liberty to spend with us and, saluting
politely, went back to the post.
With Enrico between us we wandered up the hill toward the green lake
in the bowl of the ancient crater. Signora Maironi kept tight hold of
her lad, purring over him in French and Italian--the more intimate
things in Italian--turning as mothers will from endearment to gentle
scolding. Why did he not keep himself tidier? Surely he had the needles
and thread his sister Bianca had given him the last time he was at
home. And how was the ear? Had he carried out the doctor’s directions?
Which it is needless to say Enrico had not. The signora explained to
me that the boy was in danger of losing the hearing of one ear because
of the careless treatment the regimental doctor had given him when he
had a cold. She did not like to complain of the military authorities:
of course they could not bother with every little trouble a soldier had
in a time like this, but the loss of his hearing would be a serious
handicap to the boy in earning his living....
It seemed that Enrico had not yet breakfasted, and, although it was
only eleven, I insisted on putting forward the movable feast of
continental breakfast, and we ordered our _colazione_ served in the
empty garden of the little inn above the lake. While Enrico ate and
discussed with me the prospects of war, the signora looked the boy
all over again, feeling his shoulders beneath the loose uniform to see
whether he had lost flesh after the thirty-mile march from Rome under a
hot sun. It was much as an American mother might examine her offspring
after his first week at boarding-school, only more intense. And Enrico
was very much like a clean, hearty, lovable schoolboy, delighted to be
let out from authority and to talk like a man with another man. He was
confident Italy would be in the war--oh, very sure! And he nodded his
head at me importantly. His captain was a capital fellow, really like a
father to the men, and the captain had told them--but he pulled himself
up suddenly. After all, I was a foreigner, and must not hear what the
captain had said. But he let me know proudly that his regiment the
_granatieri_ of Sardinia, had received the promise that they would be
among the first to go to the front. The mother’s fond eyes contracted
slightly with pain.
* * * * *
After our breakfast Enrico took me into the garden of the old monastery
where other youthful grenadiers were loafing on the grass under the
trees or writing letters on the rough table among the remains of food.
Some of the squad had gone to the lake for a swim; I could hear their
shouts and laughter far below. Presently the signora, who had been
barred at the gate by the old Franciscan, hurried down the shady path.
“I told him,” she explained, “that he could just look the other way and
avoid sin. Then I slipped through the door!”
So with her hand on her recaptured boy we strolled through the old
gardens as far as the stable where the soldiers slept. The floor was
littered with straw, which, with an overcoat, Enrico assured me, made a
capital bed. The food was good enough. They got four cents a day, which
did not go far to buy cigarettes and postage-stamps, but they would be
paid ten cents a day when they were at war!...
At last we turned into the highroad arched with old trees that led down
to the tramway. Enrico’s leave was nearly over. All the glory of the
spring day poured forth from the flowering hedges, where bees hummed
and birds sang. Enrico gathered a great bunch of yellow heather, which
his mother wanted to take home. “Little Bianca will like it so much
when she hears her brother picked it,” she explained. “Bianca thinks he
is a hero already, the dear!”
When we reached the car-tracks we sat on a mossy wall and chatted. In
a field across the road an old gray mare stood looking steadfastly
at her small foal, which was asleep in the high grass at her feet.
The old mare stood patiently for many minutes without once cropping a
bit of grass, lowering her head occasionally to sniff at the little
colt. Her attitude of absorbed contemplation, of perfect satisfaction
in her ungainly offspring made me laugh--it was so exactly like the
signora’s. At last the little fellow woke, got somehow on his long
legs, and shaking a scrubby tail went gambolling off down the pasture,
enjoying his coltish world. The old mare followed close behind with
eyes only for him.
“Look at him!” the signora exclaimed pointing to the ridiculous foal.
“How nice he is! Oh, how beautiful youth always is!”
She looked up admiringly at her tall, handsome Enrico, who had just
brought her another bunch of heather. The birds were singing like mad
in the fields; some peasants passed with their laden donkeys; I smoked
contemplatively, while mother and son talked family gossip and the
signora went all over her boy again for the fourth time.... Yes, youth
is beautiful, surely, but there seemed something horribly pathetic
about it all in spite of the loveliness of the May morning.
* * * * *
The three hours came to an end. Enrico rose and saluted me formally.
He was so glad to have seen me; I was very good to bring his mother
all the way from Rome; and he and the comrades would much enjoy my
excellent cigarettes. “_A riverderci!_” Then he turned to his mother
and without any self-consciousness bent to her open arms....
When the signora joined me farther down the road she was clear-eyed but
sombre.
“Can you understand,” she said softly, “how when I have him in my
arms and think of all I have done for him, his education, his long
sickness, all, all--and what he means to me and his father and little
Bianca--and then I think how in one moment it may all be over for
always, all that precious life--O God what are women made for!... We
shall have to hurry, my friend, to get to the station.”
I glanced back once more at the slim figure just going around the bend
of the road at a run, so as not to exceed his leave--a mere boy and
such a nice boy, with his brilliant, eager eyes, so healthy and clean
and joyous, so affectionate, so completely what any mother would adore.
And he might be going “up north” any day now to fight the Austrians.
“Signora,” I asked, “do you believe in war?”
“They all say this war has to be,” she said dully. “Oh, I don’t
know!... It is a hard world to understand!... I try to remember that
I am only one of hundreds of thousands of Italian women.... I hope I
shall see him once more before they take him away. My God!”
* * * * *
That afternoon the expert who had been sent to Rome by a foreign
newspaper to watch the critical situation carefully put down his empty
teacup and pronounced his verdict:
“Yes, this time it looks to me really like war. They have gone too far
to draw back. Some of them think they are likely to get a good deal
out of the war with a small sacrifice--everybody likes a bargain, you
know!... Then General Cadorna, they say, is a very ambitious man, and
this is his chance. A successful campaign would make him.... But I
don’t know. It would be quite a risk, quite a risk.”
Yes, I thought, quite a risk for the conscript mothers!
II
The politician came to Rome and delivered his prudent advice, and the
quiescent people began to growl. The ministers resigned: the public
growled more loudly.... During the turbulent week that followed, while
Italy still hesitated, I saw Enrico Maironi a number of times. Indeed,
his frank young face with the sparkling black eyes is mingled with all
my memories of those tense days when the streets of Rome were vocal
with passionate crowds, when soldiers barred the thoroughfares, and no
one knew whether there would be war with Austria or revolution.
One night, having been turned out of the Café Nazionale when the troops
cleared the Corso of the mob that threatened the Austrian embassy, I
wandered through the agitated city until I found myself in the quarter
where the Maironis lived, and called at their little home to hear if
they had had news of the boy. There was light in the dining-room,
though it was long past the hour when even the irresponsible Maironis
took their irregular dinner. As I entered I could see in the light of
the single candle three faces intently focused on a fourth--Enrico’s,
with a preoccupation that my arrival scarcely disturbed. They made me
sit down and hospitably opened a fresh bottle of wine. The boy had
just arrived unexpectedly, his regiment having been recalled to Rome
that afternoon. He was travel-stained, with a button off his military
coat which his sister was sewing on while he ate. He looked tired but
excited, and his brilliant eyes lighted with welcome as he accepted one
of my Turkish cigarettes with the air of a young worldling and observed:
“You see, it _is_ coming--sooner than we expected!”
There was a note of boyish triumph in his voice as he went on to
explain again for my benefit how his captain--a really good fellow
though a bit severe in little things--had let him off for the evening
to see his family. He spoke of his officer exactly as my own boy might
speak of some approved schoolmaster. Signor Maironi, who in his post
at the war office heard things before they got into the street, looked
very grave and said little.
“You are glad to have him back in Rome, at any rate!” I said to the
signora.
She shrugged her shoulders expressively.
“Rome is the first step on a long journey,” she replied sombrely.
The silent tensity of the father’s gaze, fastened on his boy, became
unbearable. I followed the signora, who had strolled through the open
door to the little terrace and stood looking blankly into the night.
Far away, somewhere in the city, rose a clamor of shouting people, and
swift footsteps hurried past in the street.
“It will kill his father, if anything happens to him!” she said slowly,
as if she knew herself to be the stronger. “You see he chose the
grenadiers for Enrico because that regiment almost never leaves Rome:
it stays with the King. And now the King is going to the front, they
say--it will be the first of all!”
“I see!”
“To-night may be his last time at home.”
“Perhaps,” I said, seeking for the futile crumb of comfort, “they will
take Giolitti’s advice, and there will be no war.”
Enrico, who had followed us from the dining-room, caught the remark
and cried with youthful conviction: “That Giolitti is a traitor--he has
been bought by the Germans!”
“Giolitti!” little Bianca echoed scornfully, arching her black brows.
Evidently the politician had lost his popularity among the youth of
Italy. Within the dining-room I could see the father sitting alone
beside the candle, his face buried in his hands. Bianca caressed her
brother’s shoulder with her cheeks.
“I am going, too!” she said to me with a little smile. “I shall join
the Red Cross--I begin my training to-morrow, eh, _mamma mia_?” And she
threw a glance of childish defiance at the signora.
“Little Bianca is growing up fast!” I laughed.
“They take them all except the cripples,” the signora commented
bitterly, “even the girls!”
“But I am a woman,” Bianca protested, drawing away from Enrico and
raising her pretty head. “I shall get the hospital training and go up
north, too--to be near ’Rico.”
Something surely had come to the youth of this country when girls like
Bianca Maironi spoke with such assurance of going forth from the home
into the unknown.
“_Sicuro!_” She nodded her head to emphasize what I suspected had
been a moot point between mother and daughter. The signora looked
inscrutably at the girl for a little while, then said quietly: “It’s
’most ten, Enrico.”
The boy unclasped Bianca’s tight little hands, kissed his mother and
father, gave me the military salute ... and we could hear him running
fast down the street. The signora blew out the sputtering candle and
closed the door.
“I am going, too!” Bianca exclaimed.
* * * * *
The poet was coming to Rome. After the politician, close on his
heels, the poet, fresh from his triumph at the celebration of Quarto,
where with his flaming allegory he had stirred the youth of Italy to
their depths! A few henchmen, waiting for the leader’s word, had met
Giolitti; all Rome, it seemed to me, was turning out to greet the poet.
They had poured into the great square before the terminus station
from every quarter. The packed throng reached from the dark walls of
the ancient baths around the splashing fountain, into the radiating
avenues, and up to the portico of the station itself, which was black
with human figures. It was a quiet, orderly, well-dressed crowd that
swayed back and forth, waiting patiently hour after hour--the train
was very late--to see the poet’s face, to hear, perhaps, his word of
courage for which it thirsted.
There were soldiers everywhere, as usual. I looked in vain for the
familiar uniform of the _granatieri_, but the gray-coated boyish
figures seemed all alike. In the midst of the press I saw the signora
and Bianca, whose eyes were also wandering after the soldiers.
“You came to welcome D’Annunzio?” I queried, knowing the good woman’s
prejudices.
“Him!” the signora retorted with curling lip. “Bianca brought me.”
“Yes, we have been to the Red Cross,” the girl flashed.
“Rome welcomes the poet as though he were royalty,” I remarked,
standing on tiptoe to sweep with a glance the immense crowd.
“_He_ will not go to the front--he will just talk!”
“Enrico is here somewhere,” Bianca explained. “They told us so at
the barracks. We have looked all about and mamma has asked so many
officers. We haven’t seen him since that first night. He has been
on duty all day in the streets, doing _pichett ’armato_, ... I wish
Giolitti would go back home. If he doesn’t go soon, he’ll find out!”
Her white teeth came together grimly, and she made a significant little
gesture with her hand.
“Where’s mamma?”
The signora had caught sight of another promising uniform and was
talking with the kindly officer who wore it.
“His company is inside the station,” she explained when she rejoined
us, “and we can never get in there!”
She would have left if Bianca had not restrained her. The girl wanted
to see the poet. Presently the night began to fall, the still odorous
May night of Rome. The big arc-lamps shone down upon the crowded faces.
Suddenly there was a forward swaying, shouts and cheers from the
station. A little man’s figure was being carried above the eager crowd.
Then a motor bellowed for free passage through the human mass. A wave
of song burst from thousands of throats, Mameli’s “L’Inno.” A little
gray face passed swiftly. The poet had come and gone.
“Come!” Bianca exclaimed, taking my hand firmly and pulling the signora
on the other side. And she hurried us on with the streaming crowd
through lighted streets toward the Pincian hill, in the wake of the
poet’s car. The crowd had melted from about the station and was pouring
into the Via Veneto. About the little fountain of the Tritone it had
massed again, but persistent Bianca squirmed through the yielding
figures, dragging us with her until we were wedged tight in the mass
nearly opposite the Queen Mother’s palace.
The vast multitude that reached into the shadow of the night were
cheering and singing. Their shouts and songs must have reached even the
ears of the German ambassador at the Villa Malta a few blocks away.
The signora had forgotten her grenadier, her dislike of the poet, and
for the moment was caught up in the emotion of the crowd. Bianca was
singing the familiar hymn.... Suddenly there was a hush; light fell
upon the upturned faces from an opened window on a balcony in the Hotel
Regina. The poet stood forth in the band of yellow light and looked
down upon the dense throng beneath. In the stillness his words began
to fall, very slowly, very clearly, as if each was a graven message for
his people. And the Roman youth all about me swayed and sighed, seizing
each colored word, divining its heroic symbol, drinking thirstily the
ardor of the poet.
“The light has not wholly gone from the Aurelian wall ... fifty years
ago at this hour the leader of the Thousand and his heroic company....
We will not be a museum, an inn, a water-color in Prussian blue!...”
The double line of soldiers behind us had forgotten their formation and
were pressing forward to catch each word. The signora was gazing at the
man with fascinated eyes. Bianca’s little hand tightened unconsciously
on mine, and her lips parted in a smile. The poet’s words were falling
into her eager heart. He was speaking for her, for all the ardent youth
of Italy:
“_Viva! Viva Roma senza onta! Viva la grande é pura Italia!..._”
The voice ceased: for one moment there was complete silence; then a
cheer that was half a sigh broke from the crowd. But the blade of light
faded, the poet was gone. When at last I got the Maironis into a cab
there were bright tears in Bianca’s eyes and the mother’s face was
troubled.
“Perhaps it has to be,” the signora murmured.
“Of course!” Bianca echoed sharply, raising her little head defiantly.
“What else could Italy do?”
The streets were rapidly emptying. Some companies of infantry that had
been policing the city all day marched wearily past. Bianca jumped up
quickly.
“They’re _granatieri_! And there’s ’Rico’s captain!”
The sympathetic cab-driver pulled up his horse while the soldiers
tramped by.
“’Rico, ’Rico!” the girl called softly to the soldiers.
A hand went up, and the boy gave us a luminous smile as his file swung
past.
“I have seen him again!” the mother said hungrily.
* * * * *
The poet spoke the next day, and the next, to the restless people who
waited hour after hour in the street before his hotel. Having found
its voice--a voice that revealed its inner heart--young Italy clamored
for action. The fret of Rome grew louder hourly; soldiers cordoned
the main streets, while Giolitti waited, the ambassadors flitted back
and forth to the Consulta, the King took counsel with his advisers.
I looked for young Maironi’s face among the lines of troops barring
passage through the streets. It seemed as if he might be called at any
moment to do his soldier’s duty here in Rome!
All day long and half the night the cavalry stood motionless before
the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore, ready to clear away the mobs that
prowled about the corner of Via Cavour, where Giolitti lived. Once
they charged. It was the night the poet appeared at the Costanzi
Theatre. The narrow street was full of shouting people as I drove to
the theatre with the Maironis. Suddenly there was the ugly sound of
horses’ feet on concrete walks, shrieks and wild rushes for safety in
doorways and alleys. As our cab whisked safely around a corner the
cavalry came dashing past, their hairy plumes streaming out from the
metal helmets, their ugly swords high in the air. The signora’s face
paled. Perhaps she was thinking, as I was, that there might be one
thing worse than war with Austria, and that would be revolution. Bianca
exclaimed scornfully:
“They had better be fighting Italy’s enemies!”
“They are not yet enemies,” I ventured.
She gave a little shrug of her shoulders.
“They will be to-morrow!”
The fever within the vast auditorium seemed to bear out the girl’s
words. Here was no “rabble of the piazza,” to repeat the German
ambassador’s sneer, but well-to-do Roman citizens. For three hours they
shouted their hatred of Teuton, sang patriotic hymns, cried defiance of
the politician Giolitti, who would keep the nation safely bound in its
old alliance. “_Fuori i barbari!... Giolitti traditore!_” One grizzled
Roman hurled in my ears: “I’ll drink his blood, the traitor!”
When the little poet entered his flower-wreathed box every one cheered
and waved to him. He stood looking down on the passionate human sea
beneath him, then slowly plucked the red flowers from a great bunch of
carnations that some one handed him and threw them one by one far out
into the cheering throng. One floated downward straight into Bianca’s
eager hand. She snatched it, kissed the flower, and looked upward into
the poet’s smiling face....
He recited the suppressed stanzas of a war-poem, the slow, rhythmic
lines falling like the red flowers into eager hearts. The signora
was standing on her seat beside Bianca, clasping her arm, and tears
gathered slowly in her large, wistful eyes, tears of pride and
sadness.... Out in the still night once more from that storm of passion
we walked on silently through empty streets. “He believes it--he is
right,” the signora sighed. “Italy also must do her part!”
“Of course,” Bianca said quickly, “and she will!... See there!”
The girl pointed to a heap of stones freshly upturned in the street. It
was the first barricade.
“Our soldiers must not fight each other,” she said gravely, and glanced
again over her shoulder at the barricade....
In front of Santa Maria the tired cavalry sat their horses, and a
double line of infantry was drawn across the Via Cavour before the
Giolitti home. The boys were slouching over their rifles; evidently,
whatever play there had been in this picket duty had gone out of it.
Suddenly Bianca and her mother ran down the line. “Maironi, Maironi!”
I heard some of the soldiers calling softly, and there was a shuffle in
the ranks. Enrico was shoved forward to the front in comradely fashion.
Mother and sister chatted with the boy, and presently Bianca came
dashing back.
“They haven’t had anything to eat all day!”
We found a café still open and loaded ourselves with rolls, chocolate,
and cigarettes, which Bianca distributed to the weary soldiers while
the young lieutenant tactfully strolled to the other end of the line.
“To think of keeping them here all day without food!” the signora
grumbled as we turned away. The boys, shoving their gifts into pockets
and mouths, straightened up as their officer came back down the line.
“They might as well be at war,” the signora continued.
When I returned to my hotel through the silent streets the _granatieri_
had gone from their post, but the horsemen were still sitting their
sleeping mounts before the old church. Their vigil would be all night.
* * * * *
The nation’s crisis had come and passed. We did not know it, but
it was marked by those little piles of stones in the Via Viminale.
The disturber Giolitti had fled overnight at the invitation of the
government, which now knew itself to be strong enough to do what it
would. And thereafter events moved more swiftly. Rome was once more
calm. The people gathered again by the hundreds of thousands, but
peacefully, in the spirit of concord, in the Piazza del Popolo and in
the Campidoglio. Their will had prevailed, they had found themselves.
A great need of reconciliation, of union of all spirits, was expressed
in these meetings, under the soft spring sky, in spots consecrated by
ancient memories of greatness.
In the crowd that filled the little piazza of the Campidoglio to the
brim and ran down into the old lanes that led to the Forum and the
city I met Signora Maironi once more. She had not come thither to
find her boy--soldiers were no longer needed to keep the Romans from
violence. She came in the hungry need to fill her heart with belief and
confidence, to strengthen herself for sacrifice.
“We haven’t seen Enrico since that night on the streets. He is kept
ready in the barracks unless he has been sent away already.... But he
said he would let us know!”
A procession with the flags of Italy and of the desired provinces
mounted the long flight of steps above us, and the syndic of Rome, the
Prince Colonna, came out from the open door and fronted the mass of
citizens.
“He is going, and his sons!” the signora whispered. “He is a fine man!”
The prince looked gravely over the upturned faces as if he would speak;
then refrained, as though the moment were too solemn for further words.
He stood there looking singularly like the grave portraits of Roman
fathers in the museum near by, strong, stern, resolved. The evening
breeze lifted the cluster of flags and waved them vigorously. Little
fleecy clouds floated in the blue sky above the Aracœli Church. There
were no shouts, no songs. These were men and women from the working
classes of the neighboring quarter of old Rome who were giving their
sons and husbands to the nation, and felt the solemnity of the occasion.
“Let us go,” the Prince Colonna said solemnly, “to the Quirinal to meet
our King.”
As we turned down the hill we could see the long black stream already
flowing through the narrow passages out into the square before the
great marble monument. It was a silent, spontaneous march of the people
to their leader. The blooming roses in the windows and on the terraces
above gayly flamed against the dark walls of the old houses along the
route. But the hurrying crowd did not look up. Its mood was sternly
serious. It did not turn aside as we neared the palace of the enemy’s
ambassador. The time was past for such childish demonstrations.
“If only we might go instead, we older ones,” the signora said sadly,
“not the children.... Life means so much more to them!”
We reached the Quirinal hill as the setting sun flooded all Rome from
the ridge of the Janiculum. The piazza was already crowded and at the
Consulta opposite the royal palace, where, even at this eleventh
hour, the ambassadors were vainly offering last inducements, favored
spectators filled the windows. It was a peculiarly quiet, solemn scene.
No speeches, no cheers, no songs. It seemed as if the signora’s last
words were in every mind. “They say,” she remarked sadly, “that it will
take a great many lives to carry those strong mountain positions, many
thousands each month, thousands and thousands of boys.... All those
mothers!”
At that moment the window on the balcony above the entrance to the
palace was flung open, and two lackeys brought out a red cloth which
they hung over the stone balustrade. Then the King and Queen, followed
by the little prince and his sister, stepped forth and stood above us,
looking down into the crowded faces. The King bowed his head to the
cheers that greeted him from his people, but his serious face did not
relax. He looked worn, old. Perhaps he, too, was thinking of those
thousands of lives that must be spent each month to unlock the Alpine
passes which for forty years Austria had been fortifying!... He bowed
again in response to the hearty cries of _Viva il Re!_ The Queen bowed.
The little black-haired prince by his father’s side looked steadily
down into the faces. He, too, seemed to understand what it meant--that
these days his father’s throne had been put into the stake for which
Italy was to fight, that his people had cast all on the throw of this
war. No smile, no boyish elation, relieved the serious little face.
“Why does he not speak?” the signora murmured, as if her aching heart
demanded a word of courage from her King.
“It is not yet the time,” I suggested, nodding to the Consulta.
The King cried, “_Viva Italia!_” then withdrew from the balcony with
his family.
“_Viva Italia!_” It was a prayer, a hope, spoken from the heart, and
it was received silently by the throng. Yes, might the God of battles
preserve Italy, all the beauty and the glory that the dying sun was
bathing in its golden flood!...
Signora Maironi hurried through the crowded street at a nervous pace.
“I do not like to be long away from home,” she explained. “’Rico may
come and go for the last time while I am out.”
We had no sooner entered the door of the house than the mother said:
“Yes, he’s here!”
The boy was sitting in the little dining-room, drinking a glass of
wine, his father on one side, his sister on the other. He seemed much
excited.
“We leave in the morning!” he said.
There was an exultant ring in his voice, a flash in his black eyes.
“Where for?” I asked.
He shrugged his shoulders.
“They never tell--to the front somewhere!... See my stripes. They have
made me bicyclist for the battalion. I’ve got a machine to ride now. I
shall carry orders, you know!”
His laugh was broken by a cough.
“Ugh, this nasty cold--that comes from Messer Giolitti--too much
night-work--no more of that! The rat!”
I glanced at the signora.
“Have you all his things ready, Bianca?” she asked calmly. “The cheese
and the cake and his clothes?”
“Everything,” the little girl replied quickly. “’Rico says we can’t
come to see him off.”
The mother looked inquiringly at the boy.
“It’s no use trying. Nobody knows where or when,” he explained. “They
don’t want a lot of mothers and sisters fussing over the men,” he
added teasingly.
* * * * *
Little Bianca told me how she and her mother slipped past all the
sentinels at the station the next morning and ran along the embankment
outside the railroad yards where the long line of cattle-cars packed
with soldiers was waiting.
“They know us pretty well in the regiment by this time,” she laughed.
“I heard them say as we ran along the cars looking for ’Rico, ‘See!
There’s Maironi’s mother and the little Maironi! Of course, they would
come somehow!’... We gave them the roses you brought yesterday--you
don’t mind? They loved them so--and said such nice things.” Bianca
paused to laugh and blush at the pretty speeches which the soldiers
had made, then ran on: “Poor boys, they’ll soon be where they can’t
get flowers and cakes.... Then we found ’Rico at last and gave him
the things just as the train started. He was so glad to see us! Poor
’Rico had such a cough, and he looked quite badly; he doesn’t know how
to take care of himself. Mother is always scolding him for being so
careless--boys are all like that, you know!... There was such a noise!
We ran along beside the train, oh, a long way, until we came to a deep
ditch--we couldn’t jump that! And they cheered us, all the soldiers
in the cars; they looked so queer, jammed in the cattle-cars with the
straw, just like the horses. Enrico’s captain gave us a salute, too. I
wonder where they are now.” She paused in her rapid talk for a sombre
moment, then began excitedly: “Don’t you want to see my Red Cross
dress? It’s so pretty! I have just got it.”
She ran up-stairs to put on her nurse’s uniform; presently the signora
came into the room. She was dressed all in black and her face was very
pale. She nodded and spoke in a dull, lifeless voice.
“Bianca told you? He wanted me to thank you for the cigarettes. He was
not very well--he was suffering, I could see that.”
“Nothing worse than a cold,” I suggested.
“I must see him again!” she cried suddenly, passionately, “just once,
once more--before--” Her voice died out in a whisper. Bianca, who had
come back in her little white dress, took up the signora’s unfinished
sentence with a frown:
“Of course, we shall see him again, mamma! Didn’t he promise to write
us where they sent him?” She turned to me, impetuous, demanding, true
little woman of her race. “You know, I shall go up north, too, to one
of the hospitals, and mamma will go with me. Then we’ll find Enrico.
Won’t we, mother?”
But the signora’s miserable eyes seemed far away, as if they were
following that slowly moving train of cattle-cars packed with boyish
faces. She fingered unseeingly the arm of Bianca’s dress with its cross
of blood-red. At last, with a long sigh, she brought herself back to
the present. Was I ready for an Italian lesson? We might as well lose
no more time. She patted Bianca and pushed her gently away. “Run along
and take off that terrible dress!” she said irritably. Bianca, with a
little, discontented gesture and appreciative pat to the folds of her
neat costume, left us alone. “She thinks of nothing but this war!” the
signora exclaimed. “The girls are as bad as the men!”
“Is it not quite natural?”
We began on the verbs, but the signora’s mind, usually so vivacious,
was not on the lesson. It was still with that slow troop-train on its
way to the frontier.
“You are too tired,” I suggested.
“No, but I can’t stay in here--let us go into the city.”
Rome seemed curiously lifeless and dead after all the passionate
movement of the past week. It was empty, too. All the troops that had
filled the seething streets had departed overnight, and the turbulent
citizens had vanished. The city, like the heart of Italy, was in
suspense, waiting for the final word which meant war.
“You will not stay here much longer, I suppose?” the signora questioned.
“I suppose not.” Life seemed to have flowed out of this imperial Rome,
with all its loveliness, in the wake of the troop-trains.
“If I could only go, too!... If we knew where he was to be!”
“You will know--and you will follow with Bianca.”
“I would go into battle itself to see ’Rico once more!” the poor woman
moaned.
“There will be lots of time yet before the battles begin,” I replied
with lying comfort.
“You think so!... War is very terrible for those who have to stay
behind.”
III
In obedience to Signora Maironi’s mysterious telegram, I waited outside
the railroad station in Venice for the arrival of the night express
from Rome, which was very late. The previous day I had taken the
precaution to attach to me old Giuseppe, one of the two boatmen now
left at the _traghetto_ near my hotel, all the younger men having been
called out. There were few _forestieri_, and Giuseppe was thankful to
have a real signore, whom he faithfully protected from the suspicious
and hostile glances of the Venetians. Every stranger, I found, had
become an Austrian spy! Giuseppe was now busily tidying up his ancient
gondola, exchanging jokes with the soldiers in the laden barks which
passed along the canal. Occasionally a fast motor-boat threw up a long
wave as it dashed by on an errand with some officer in the stern. All
Venice, relieved of tourists, was bustling with soldiers and sailors.
Gray torpedo-boats lay about the piazzetta, and Red Cross flags waved
from empty palaces. Yet there was no war.
“Giuseppe,” I asked, “do you think there will be any war?”
“_Sicuro!_” the old man replied, straightening himself and pointing
significantly with his thumb to a passing bargeful of soldiers. “They
are on the way.”
“Where?”
“Who knows?... The mountains,” and he indicated the north with his
head. “I have two sons--they have gone.”
“And Italy will win?” I continued idly.
“_Sicuro!_” came the reply reassuringly, “_ma!_”
And in that expressive “_ma_” I might read all the anxiety, the fears
of Italy.
At last the signora came, dressed in the same black she had worn the
day Enrico had left Rome. In her hand she carried a little bag. She
gave me a timid smile as Giuseppe settled her under the _felza_.
“You were surprised at the telegram?”
“A little,” I confessed.
“I had to come,” she sighed as the gondola pushed into the narrow,
tortuous canal that led back to the piazza.
“What news from Enrico?”
“Nothing! Not a word!... That’s why I came.”
“It’s only been a week--the mails are slow,” I suggested.
“I could stand it no longer. You will think me mad. I mean to find him!”
“But how---where?” I demanded in bewilderment.
“That’s what I must discover here.”
“In Venice!”
“Somebody must know! Oh, I see what you think--I am out of my head....
Perhaps I am! Sitting there in the house day after day thinking,
thinking--and the poor boy was so miserable that last morning--he was
too sick.”
“Surely you must have some plan?”
“An officer on the train last night--a major going up there to join his
regiment--he was very kind to me, lent me his coat to keep me warm, it
was so cold. He is a well-known doctor in Rome. Here, I have his card
in my sack somewhere.... He says it’s a matter of hours now before they
begin.”
“Well,” I said, in a pause, hoping to bring the signora’s mind back
to the starting-point. “What has the major to do with your finding
Enrico?”
“He told me to inquire at Mestre or here where Enrico’s train had been
sent.... They wouldn’t tell me anything at the railroad station in
Mestre. So I must find out here,” she ended inconsequentially.
“Here in Venice? But they won’t tell you a thing even if they know. You
had a better chance in Rome.”
She shook her head.
“No, they wouldn’t tell his father--he tried to find out.”
“And you couldn’t get north of Mestre. It’s all military zone now, you
know.”
“Is it?” she answered vacantly. “I had to come,” she repeated like a
child, “and I feel better already--I’m so much nearer him.... Don’t you
really think I can get to see him for a few minutes?”
I spent a futile hour, while Giuseppe pushed us languidly through the
gray lagoons, trying to convince Signora Maironi that her search for
the boy was worse than useless, might easily land her in prison should
she attempt to penetrate the lines. At the end she merely remarked:
“’Rico expects me--he said that last night,--‘You will come up north to
see me, mother, before war is declared.’”
Thereat I began again at the beginning and tried more urgently to
distract the signora from her purpose.
“You might be locked up as a spy!” I concluded.
“But I am an Italian woman--an Italian mother!” she cried indignantly.
Giuseppe nodded sympathetically over his long sweep and murmured
something like “_Évero!_” It ended by my asking the old fellow if he
knew where the office of the Venetian commandant was.
“_Sicuro!_” the old man laughed, waving a hand negligently toward the
Zattere. So we headed there. I thought that an hour or two spent in
vainly trying to see the busy gentleman in command of Venice would
probably do more than anything else to convince Signora Maironi of the
futility of her quest. As I helped her to the quay from the gondola in
front of the old convent which was now the military headquarters, she
said gently, apologetically: “Don’t be so cross with me, signor! Think
merely that I am an old woman and a mother with a son about to fight
for his country.”
I saw her disappear within the gate after being questioned by the
sentinel; then Giuseppe and I waited in the shadow of an interned
German steamship--one, two, almost three hours, until the sun had set
the marble front of the Ducal Palace aflame with a flood of gold. Then
I heard Giuseppe murmuring triumphantly, “_Ecco! la signora!_” The
little black figure was waiting for us by the steps, a contented smile
on her lips.
“Have I been long?” she asked.
“It makes no difference, if you have found out something. Did you see
the commandant?”
She nodded her head in a pleased manner.
“I thought I should never get to him--there were so many officers and
sentinels, and they all tried to turn me off. But I wouldn’t go! It
takes a great deal to discourage a mother who wants to see her son.”
“And he told you?” I asked impatiently.
“Heavens, how lovely the day is!” the signora remarked with her
provoking inconsequentiality. “Let us go out to the Lido! Maybe we can
find a fisherman’s osteria at San Nicolo where we can get supper under
the trees.”
The gondola headed seaward in the golden light.
“It will be a terrible war,” the signora began presently. “They know
it.... The commandant talked with me a long time after I got to him,
while others waited.... There are many spies here in Venice, he told
me--Austrians who are hidden in the city.... He was such a gentleman,
so patient with me and kind.... Do you know, I wept--yes, cried like a
great fool! When he told me I must return and wait for news in Rome,
and I thought of that long ride back without seeing my sick boy--I just
couldn’t help it--I cried.... He was very kind.”
In the end the facts came out, as they always did with the signora, in
her own casual fashion. The military commander of Venice, evidently,
was a kind, fatherly sort of officer, with sons of his own in the army,
as he had told the signora. After giving the distracted mother the
only sound advice he could give her--to resign herself to waiting for
news of her son by the uncertain mails--he had let fall significantly,
“But if you should persist in your mad idea, signora, I should take
the train to ----,” and he mentioned a little town near the Austrian
frontier not three hours’ ride from Venice.
“What will you do?” I asked as we approached the shore of the Lido.
“I don’t know,” the signora sighed. “But I must see Enrico once more!”
The Buon’ Pesche, a little osteria near the waterside, was thronged
with sailors from the gray torpedo-boats that kept up a restless
activity, dashing back and forth in the harbor entrance. We found a
table under a plane-tree, a little apart from the noisy sailors who
were drinking to the success of Italian arms in the purple wine of
Padua, and, while the dusk fell over distant Venice, watched the antics
of the swift destroyers.
“Don’t they seem possessed!” the signora exclaimed. “Like angry bees,
as if they knew the enemy was near.”
We were speaking English, and I noticed that the country girl
who served us looked at me sharply. When we rose to leave it was
already dark, the stars were shining in the velvet sky, and Venice
was mysteriously blank. As we strolled across the grass toward the
boat-landing, a man stepped up and laid his hand on my shoulder,
indicating firmly that I should accompany him. He took us to the
military post at the end of the island, the signora expostulating and
explaining all the way. There we had to wait in a bare room faintly
lighted by one flaring candle while men came and went outside, looked
at us, talked in low tones, and left us wondering. After an hour of
this a young officer appeared, and with a smiling, nervous air began
a lengthy examination. Who was I? Who was the signora--my wife, my
mother? Why were we there on the Lido after dark, etc.? It was easy
enough to convince him that I was what I was--an amicable, idle
American. My pocketful of papers and, above all, my Italian, rendered
him quickly more smiling and apologetic than ever. But the signora,
who, it seems, had not registered on her arrival in Venice, as they
had ascertained while we were waiting, was not so easily explained,
although she told her tale truthfully, tearfully, in evident
trepidation. To the young officer it was not credible that an Italian
mother should be seeking her soldier son on the Lido at this hour.
Another officer was summoned, and while the first young man entertained
me with appreciations of English and American authors with whose works
he was acquainted, the signora was put through a gruelling examination
which included her ancestry, family affairs, and political opinions.
She was alternately angry, haughty, and tearful, repeating frequently,
“I am an Italian mother!” which did not answer for a passport as well
as my broken Italian. In the end she had to appeal to the kindly
commandant who had listened to her story earlier in the day. After
hearing the signora’s tearful voice over the telephone, he instructed
the youthful captain of artillery to let us go. The young officers,
whose responsibilities had weighed heavily on them, apologized
profusely, ending with the remark: “You know we are expecting something
to happen--very soon!... We have to be careful.”
We hurried to the landing, where we found Giuseppe fast asleep in the
gondola, but before we could rouse him had some further difficulty with
suspicious _carabinieri_, who were inclined to lock us up on the Lido
until morning. A few lire induced them to consider our adventure more
leniently, and well past midnight the sleepy Giuseppe swept us toward
the darkened city.
“You might think they were already at war!” I grumbled.
“Perhaps they are,” the signora replied sadly.
“Well, you see what trouble you will get into if you attempt to enter
the war zone,” I warned.
“Yes,” the subdued woman said dully, “I understand!”
“That story of yours doesn’t sound probable--and you have no papers.”
She sighed heavily without reply, but I thought it well to drive home
the point.
“So you had better take the train home to-morrow and not get arrested
as a spy.”
“Very well.”
Several hours later I woke from a dream with the song of a nightingale
in my ears mingled with a confused reverberation. It was not yet day;
in the pale light before dawn the birds were wheeling and crying in the
little garden outside my room. I stumbled to the balcony from which
I could see the round dome of the Salute against the cloudless sky
and a streak of sunrise beyond the Giudecca. What had cut short the
song of the nightingale? Suddenly the answer came in the roar of an
explosion from somewhere within the huddle of Venetian alleys, followed
by the prolonged shrieks of sirens from the arsenal and the sputter
and crackle of countless guns. I did not have to be told that this was
war! This was what those young officers on the Lido were expecting to
happen before morning. Austria had taken this way of acknowledging
Italy’s temerity in challenging her might: she had sworn to destroy
the jewelled beauty of Venice, and these bombs falling on the sleeping
city were the Austrian answer to Italy’s declaration of war!
Another and another explosion followed in rapid succession, while the
sirens shrieked and the antiaircraft guns from palace roofs rattled
and spluttered up and down the Grand Canal. Then in a momentary lull
I could detect the low hum of a motor, and looking upward I saw far
aloft in the gray heavens the enemy aeroplane winging its way like
some malevolent beetle in a straight line across the city. The little
balconies all about were crowded with people who, unmindful of the
warnings to keep within doors, and as near the cellar as Venetian
dwellings permitted, were gazing like myself into the clear heavens
after the buzzing machine. Their voices began to rise in eager comment
as soon as the noise of bombs and guns died out. I caught sight of
Signora Maironi in a group on a neighboring balcony, looking fixedly at
the vanishing enemy.
Presently, as I was thinking that the attack had passed, there came
again the peculiar hum of another aeroplane from behind the hotel.
It grew louder and louder, and soon came the roar of exploding
bombs followed by the crackle of answering guns. One deafening roar
went up from the canal near by, echoing back and forth between the
palace walls. That was very close, I judged! But the signora, as
if fascinated, stood there, gazing into space, waiting for the
evil machine to show itself. Gradually the noise died down as the
aeroplane swung into view and headed eastward like its mate for the
open Adriatic. A last, lingering explosion came from the direction
of the arsenal, then all was silence except for the twittering of
the disturbed birds in the garden and the excited staccato voices of
Venetians telling one another what had happened.
Yes, this was war! And as I hurriedly dressed myself I thought that
Signora Maironi would be lucky if she got safely out of Venice back
to her home. We met over an early cup of coffee. The signora, to my
surprise, did not seem in the least frightened--rather she had been
stirred to a renewed determination by this first touch of war.
“Return now without seeing my boy!” she said scornfully in reply to my
suggestion that we go at once to the railroad station. “Never!”
“This is the first attack,” I protested, “you can’t tell when they
will be at it again, perhaps in a few hours.... It is very dangerous,
signora!”
“I have no fear,” she said simply, conclusively.
* * * * *
So Giuseppe took her over to Mestre in the gondola. I judged that it
would be safer for her to start on her quest alone, depending solely on
her mother appeal to make her way through the confusion at the front.
She waved me a smiling farewell on the steps of the old palace, her
little bag in one hand, looking like a comfortable middle-aged matron
on a shopping expedition, not in the least like a timid mother starting
for the battle line in search of her child.
And that was the last I saw of Signora Maironi for four days.
Ordinarily, it would not take that many hours to make the journey to
X----. But these first days of war there was no telling how long it
might take, nor whether one could get there by any route. Had her
resolution failed her and had she already returned to Rome? But in that
case she would surely have telegraphed. Or was she detained in some
frontier village as a spy?...
The morning of the fifth day after the signora’s departure I was
dawdling over my coffee in the deserted _salone_, enjoying the scented
June breeze that came from the canal, when I heard a light step and a
knock at the door. Signora Maironi entered and dropped on a lounge,
very white and breathless, as if she had run a long way from somewhere.
“Give me coffee, please! I have had nothing to eat since yesterday
morning.” And after she had swallowed some of the coffee I poured for
her she began to speak, to tell her story, not pausing to eat her roll.
* * * * *
“When I left you that morning--when was it, a week or a year ago?--I
seemed very courageous, didn’t I? The firing, the danger, somehow woke
my spirit, made me brave. But before I started I really wanted to
run back to Rome. Yes, if it hadn’t been for the idea of poor ’Rico
up there in that same danger, only worse, I should never have had the
courage to do what I did.... Well, we got to Mestre, as Giuseppe no
doubt told you. While I was waiting in the station for the train to
that place the commandant told me, I saw a young lieutenant in the
grenadier uniform. He was not of ’Rico’s company or I should have known
him, but he had the uniform. Of course I asked him where he was going.
He said he didn’t know, he was trying to find out where the regiment
was. He had been given leave to go to his home in Sardinia to bury his
father, poor boy, and was hurrying back to join the grenadiers. ‘If you
will stay with me, signora,’ he said, ‘you will find where your boy
is, for you see I must join my regiment at once.’ Wasn’t that lucky for
me? So I got into the same compartment with the lieutenant when the
train came along. It was full of officers. But no one seemed to know
where the grenadiers had been sent. The officers were very polite and
kind to me. They gave me something to eat or I should have starved, for
there was nothing to be bought at the stations, everything had been
eaten clean up as if the locusts had passed that way!... There was one
old gentleman--here, I have his card somewhere--well, no matter--we
talked a long time. He told me how many difficulties the army had to
meet, especially with spies. It seems that the spies are terrible.
The Austrians have them everywhere, and many are Italians, alas! the
ones who live up there in the mountains! They are arresting them all
the time. They took a woman and a man in a woman’s dress off the train.
Well, that didn’t make me any easier in my mind, but I stayed close to
my little lieutenant, who looked after me as he would his own mother,
and no one bothered me with questions....
“Such heat and such slowness! You cannot imagine how weary I became
before the day was done. Trains and trains of troops passed. Poor
fellows! And cannon and horses and food, just one long train after
another. We could scarcely crawl.... So we reached X---- as it was
getting dark, but the _granatieri_ were not there. They had been the
day before, but had gone on forward during the night. To think, if I
had started the night before I should have found ’Rico and had him a
whole day perhaps.”
“Perhaps not,” I remarked, as the signora paused to swallow another cup
of coffee. “It was all a matter of chance, and if you had started the
day before you would have missed your lieutenant.”
“Well, there was nothing for it but to spend the night at X----. For
no trains went on to Palma Nova, where the lieutenant was going in
the morning. So I walked into the town to look for a place to sleep,
but every bed was taken by the officers, not a place to sleep in the
whole town. It was then after nine o’clock; I returned to the station,
thinking I could stay there until the train started for Palma Nova.
But they won’t even let you stay in railroad stations any longer! So I
walked out to the garden in the square and sat down on a bench to spend
the night there. Luckily it was still warm. Who should come by with an
old lady on his arm but the gentleman I had talked with on the train,
Count--yes, he was a count--and his mother. They had a villa near the
town, it seems. ‘Why, signora!’ he said, when he saw me sitting there
all alone, ‘why are you out here at this time?’ And I told him about
there not being a bed free in the town. Then he said: ‘You must stay
with us. We have made our villa ready for the wounded, but, thank God,
they have not begun to come in yet, so there are many empty rooms at
your disposal.’ That was how I escaped spending the night on a bench
in the public garden! It was a beautiful villa, with grounds all about
it--quite large. They gave me a comfortable room with a bath, and that
was the last I saw of the count and his mother--whatever were their
names. Early the next morning a maid came with my coffee and woke me so
that I might get the train for Palma Nova.
“That day was too long to tell about. I found my young lieutenant,
and as soon as we reached Palma Nova he went off to hunt for the
_granatieri_. But the regiment had been sent on ahead! Again I was just
too late. It had left for the frontier, which is only a few miles east
of the town. I could hear the big cannon from there. (Oh, yes, they had
begun! I can tell you that made me all the more anxious to hold my boy
once more in my arms.) Palma Nova was jammed with everything, soldiers,
motor-trucks, cannon--such confusion as you never saw. Everything had
to pass through an old gate--you know, it was once a Roman town and
there are walls and gates still standing. About that gate toward the
Austrian frontier there was such a crush to get through as I never saw
anywhere!
“They let no one through that gate without a special pass. You see,
it was close to the lines, and they were afraid of spies. I tried and
tried to slip through, but it was no use. And the time was going by,
and Enrico marching away from me always toward battle. I just prayed
to the Virgin to get me through that gate--yes, I tell you, I prayed
hard as I never prayed before in my life.... The young lieutenant came
to tell me he had to go on to reach his regiment and offered to take
anything I had for Enrico. So I gave him almost all the money I had
with me, and the little watch you gave me for him, and told him to say
I should get to him somehow if it could be done. The young man promised
he would find ’Rico and give him the things at the first opportunity.
How I hated to see him disappear through that gate into the crowd
beyond! But there was no use trying: there were soldiers with drawn
bayonets all about it. My prayers to the Virgin seemed to do no good at
all....
“So at the end, after trying everywhere to get that special pass, I was
sitting before a café drinking some milk--everything is so frightfully
dear, you have no idea!--and was thinking that after coming so far I
was not to see my boy. For the first time I felt discouraged, and I
must have shown it, too, with my eyes always on that gate. An officer
who was waiting in front of the café, walking to and fro, presently
came up to me and said: ‘Signora, I see that sorrow in your eyes which
compels me to address you. Is there anything a stranger might do to
comfort you?’ So I told him the whole story, and he said very gently:
‘I do not know whether I can obtain the permission for you, but I know
the officer who is in command here. Come with me and we will tell him
your desire to see your son before the battle, which cannot be far off,
and perhaps he will grant your request.’
“Think of such fortune! The Virgin _had_ listened. I shall always pray
with better faith after this! Just when I was at the end, too! The kind
officer was also a count, Count Foscari, from here in Venice. He has a
brother in the garrison here, and there’s a lady to whom he wishes me
to give some letters.... I wonder if I still have them!”
The signora stopped to investigate the recesses of her little bag.
“First, let me know what the Count Foscari did for you,” I exclaimed,
tantalized by the signora’s discursive narrative. “Then we can look
after his correspondence at our leisure.”
“There they are!... He took me with him to the office of the military
commander of the town--a very busy place it was. But the count just
walked past all the sentinels, and I followed him without being
stopped. But when he asked for the pass the commander was very cross
and answered, ‘Impossible!’--short like that. Even while we were
there, another, stronger order came over the telegraph from the staff
forbidding any civilian to pass through the town. I thought again it
was all over--I should never see ’Rico. But Count Foscari did not give
up. He just waited until the commander had said everything, then spoke
very gently to him in a low tone (but I could hear). ‘The signora is an
Italian mother. I will give my word for that! She wants to see her son,
who was sick when he left Rome.’ Then he stopped, but the other officer
just frowned, and the count tried again. ‘It is not much good that any
of us can do now in this life. We are all so near death that it seems
we should do whatever kindness we can to one another.’ He looked at me
more gently, but said nothing. The commandant’s secretary was there
with the pass already made out in his hand--he had been preparing it
while the others were talking--and he put it down on the table before
the officer for his signature. That one turned his head, then the
count gave a nod to the secretary, and the kind young man took the
seal and stamped it and handed it to me with a little smile. And the
commandant just shrugged his shoulders and pretended not to see. The
count said to him: ‘Thanks! For a mother.’
“So there I was with my pass. I thanked Count Foscari and hurried
through that gate as fast as my legs would carry me, afraid that some
one might take the paper away from me. What an awful jam there was! I
thought my legs would not hold out long on that hard road, but I was
determined to walk until I fell before giving up now.... I must have
passed forty sentinels; some of them stopped me. They said I would be
shot, but what did I care for that! I could hear the roaring of the
guns ahead, louder all the time, and the smoke. It was really battle. I
began to run. I was so anxious lest I might not have time.”
“Were you not afraid?”
“Of what? Of a shell hitting my poor old body? I never thought of
it. I just felt--little ’Rico is on there ahead in the middle of all
that. But it was beautiful all the same--yes,” she repeated softly,
with a strange gleam on her tired face, “it was _beau_ and horrible at
the same time.... I passed the frontier stones. Yes! I have been on
Austrian territory, though it’s no longer Austrian now, God be praised!
I was very nearly in Gradesca, where the battle was. I should never
have gotten that far had it not been for a kind officer in a motor-car
who took me off the road with him. How we drove in all that muddle! He
stopped when we passed any troops to let me ask where the _granatieri_
were. It was always ‘just ahead.’ The sound of the guns got louder....
I was terribly excited and so afraid I was too late, when suddenly
I saw a soldier bent over a bicycle riding back down the road like
mad. It was my ’Rico coming to find me!... I jumped out of the motor
and took him in my arms, there beside the road.... God, how he had
changed already, how thin and old his face was! And he was so excited
he could hardly speak, just like ’Rico always, when anything is going
on. ‘Mother,’ he said, ‘I wanted so to see you. You told me you might
come up here, and I looked for you all along where the train stopped,
at Bologna and Mestre and Palma Nova. But I couldn’t find you. This
morning I knew you would come--I knew it when I woke.’ (Don’t you see
I was right in keeping on?)... The young lieutenant had told ’Rico I
was looking for him, and they let him come back on his bicycle to find
me. Poor boy, he was so excited and kept glancing over his shoulder
after his regiment! ‘You see, mamma,’ he said, ‘this is a real battle!
We are at the front! And our regiment has the honor to make the first
attack!’ He was so proud, the poor boy!... Of course I could not keep
him long--five minutes at the most I had with him there by the side of
the highroad, with all the noise of the guns and the passing wagons.
Five minutes, but I would rather have died than lost those minutes....
I put your watch on his wrist. He was so pleased to have it, with the
illuminated hands which will give him the time at night when he is on
duty. He wrote you a few words on this scrap of paper, all I had with
me, leaning on my knee. I took his old watch--the father will want it.
It had been next his heart and was still warm.... Then he kissed me and
rode back up the road as fast as he could go. The last I saw was when
he rode into a cloud of dust....
“Well,” the signora concluded, after a long pause, “that is all! I
found my way back here somehow. I have been through the lines, on
Austrian territory, almost in battle itself--and I have seen my boy
again, the Virgin be praised! And I am content. Now let God do with him
what he will.”
Later we went in search of Count Foscari’s brother and the lady to whom
he had sent his letters. Then Giuseppe and I took the signora to the
train for Rome. As I stood beside the compartment, the signora, who
seemed calmer, more like herself than for the past fortnight, repeated
dreamily: “My friend, I have seen ’Rico again, and I am content.
Perhaps it is the last time I shall have him in my arms, unless the
dear God spares him. And I know now what it is he is doing for his
country, what battle is! He is fighting for me, for all of us. I am
content!”
With a gentle smile the signora waved me farewell.
* * * * *
Enrico came out of that first battle safely, and many others, as little
Bianca wrote me. She and the signora were making bandages and feeding
their thirsty hearts on the reports of the brave deeds that the Italian
troops were doing along the Isonzo. “They are all heroes!” the girl
wrote. “But it is very hard for them to pierce those mountains which
the Austrians have been fortifying all these years. There is perpetual
fighting, but Enrico is well and happy, fighting for Italy. Yesterday
we had a postal from him: he sent his respects to you....”
Thereafter, there was no news from the Maironis for many weeks; then
in the autumn came the dreaded black-bordered letter in the signora’s
childish hand. It was dated from some little town in the north of Italy
and written in pencil.
“I have been in bed for a long time, or I should have written before.
Our dear Enrico fell the 3d of August on the Col di Lana. He died
fighting for Italy like a brave man, his captain wrote.... Bianca is
here nursing me, but soon she will go back to Padua into the hospital,
and I shall go with her if there is anything that a poor old woman can
do for our wounded soldiers.... Dear friend, I am so glad that I saw
him once more--now I must wait until paradise....”
Transcriber’s Notes:
No attempt has been made to change the typesetting of the phrases and
words in Italian, due to differences in dialects.
Railroad-station(s) have been changed on pages 77 and 84 to conform to
other occurrences in the book.
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