Part 5

“I was wakened by the earthquake but not very much frightened at first. I did get up and go to the window to watch the sea. It was terrible to hear and most curious. Out in the bay there was a wide circle of whitish yellow light which stayed in one place; it looked like moonlight, but there was no moon, and it was round, not straight like the wake of a star. I could see the waves breaking high on the shore. In no time the poor _contadini_ were coming out of their houses over on the hills with their lanterns; they looked like Will o’ the wisps; they were hurrying over to the town for protection. The big quaking lasted forty seconds, but we had small ones all day. The town was in a panic; men, women, and children ran out into the streets without anything on, or trying to struggle into their clothes. Some of their shirts were upside down; all were screaming with fright. They crowded into the churches by hundreds. At eight I heard music; I went to the window and saw a procession marching down the narrow street that runs along by the old Roman wall. First came the _Misericordia_, dressed in white with red shoulder capes carrying lighted candles. On a _paso_ was San Pancrazio dressed as a bishop, with two rows of candles burning before him. As soon as they were in sight of the sea they stopped and cried out a prayer and waved their hands towards the sea; they went on again to the end of the street, waving towards Etna standing against the blue sky like a great white pyramid with a mass of new fallen snow on the summit. It was glorious. The band was playing a slow muffled march, the other instruments stopping while the muffled drum carried on the time with slow steady taps. Before San Pancrazio walked the Archpriest with his two assistants carrying lighted candles, then came the great crowd of men, women and children, the white Carmelite nuns, and the yellow and red handkerchiefs of the peasants making spots of color in the dark mass; they were all so terrified and earnest looking! They took San Pancrazio from his own church to the cathedral to wait and protect them for a while until Saint Peter could be brought to join him. About five o’clock in the afternoon they brought Saint Peter with the same sort of procession, only more people, and placed the two cousins opposite each other in the cathedral. At the mass the church was packed with people kissing their hands and crossing themselves when they passed the statues. My poor old cook Venera spent most of the day on her knees. Down at the little town of Giardini there was a cloudburst a few weeks before the earthquake. Some of the houses were entirely crushed or buried. After the earthquake a fearful tidal wave took the water out to sea over twenty feet, then it rushed back and inundated the town, breaking and spoiling all that the deluge had spared and sweeping the fishing boats out to sea. Before the quake the people in Giardini saw two flashes of lightning; they saw a great fiery dragon pass over towards Calabria, and queer little dancing light spots as if the water were boiling.

“Since Tuesday all the English and Americans and a few Sicilians have been working night and day down at the station, feeding and watering the sick, wounded, and dying on the endless trains passing through from Messina to Catania. Many refugees have been left here; one woman gave birth to a dear little boy at the station. The American and English are organizing committees to help the sick and wounded who remain here in Taormina. Miss Swan and I are on the cooking committee; we go Wednesdays and Fridays and tend the cooking of a great kettle of pasta, or beans, or rice. Some take the food home; others eat it in the old deserted church near the clock tower, that used to be used as a school. We give them cheese, wine, and clothing--some of them have never before been so well fed or clothed. Many grumbled because they did not have meat, and didn’t like their clothes--they are already sadly spoiled. The news was brought by a sailor who walked from Messina; he told us that Messina was destroyed and thousands killed. Mr. Wood went over Tuesday morning to see if he could find Mr. and Mrs. Cheney. The great palace where they lived was a mass of rubbish. He could look into what had been their parlor and just see a corner of a piece of their beautiful antique furniture, a mirror still hanging on the wall, one of the yellow damask silk curtains hanging out of the window. When they found the dear little woman they only recognized her by the locket she always wore.”

The Cheneys had spent Christmas at Palermo, where their friends had urged them to stay longer, but they had felt obliged to return to Messina.

“As the trains came into the station the first cry was ‘Water, water.’ Six hundred or more were put off here at Taormina. We went down to the station at ten, worked there all day and did not get home till eleven or twelve at night. There were five or six trains during the day and as many during the night. The first week was the hardest work and kept us all jumping. In a few days we got settled and organized into committees. There were about three groups all working for the same thing, but each head was afraid some other head would get the greater credit and praise. Truth is, we were all working for humanity, to try and give the poor scared hungry souls food and drink and homes; it didn’t matter whether it was A, B or C; they all did splendid work and all worked with all their souls, and every one, including the Sicilian ladies and people from Russia, Germany, Austria and France, was only too glad to help. We gave away over three hundred loaves of bread a day, crackers, oranges, cooked polenta, everything that could be found to eat, milk, water and wine, all paid for by the _forestieri_, and a few of the townspeople. They were so much dazed for the most that it took them ten days to ‘come to.’ So many had lost friends that at first they could think of nothing else, and some were perfectly willing to stand by and let the strangers do the work. The first official action of the town authorities was on the eleventh day. I looked up from boiling some coffee for a train that was coming, and there stood the Mayor and two or three other short fat fathers of the town all talking at the tops of their voices, their hands and arms going in every direction. They were perfectly purple in the face and looked like so many bantam cocks ready to tear each other to pieces. I asked what the matter was?

“The Mayor and the municipality had come down to forbid any more bread or food being given away; there would be a bread famine, a wheat famine; we were taking the bread out of the mouths of the Taorminesi, and soon there would be a mob and the people would break into our houses. We had on hand three hundred loaves of bread bought, paid for, and broken up. In spite of the city fathers the bread was given to the refugees on the next train. Then there was a rumor that the milk had given out. Just before I reached the station that day I met three men driving a herd of twenty goats; they had escaped with their goats from Messina. The milk was bargained for and fifteen quarts, good and fresh, was milked from the goats and paid for by some Boston girls.”

A young lady, whose name is I think Miss Fernald, wrote the following story of what she saw at that station of Giardini to her brother:

“The first train from Messina. Oh, George, you can never imagine the horror of that first train! It squirmed through the tunnel like an injured worm, and stopped at our station crammed jammed with dying, crushed and bleeding humanity, leaving a trail of human blood as it wound its way from Messina. We had provided ourselves with bandages, brandy, wine, bread, milk. As soon as the train stopped we rushed to the windows and doors with our supplies. I shall never forget the roar of this groaning humanity wildly screaming for water and doctors. People were dying every moment, stretcher after stretcher was brought in and gently laid down in the station. Dr. and Mrs. Dashwood (English residents of Taormina) were angels in the work of rescue; they brought four babies into the world at the station. We turned the place into a hospital in the twinkling of an eye; soon the building was packed with the injured and dying. Delirious women, women gone mad from fright, wounded children, and gentlemen, so patient and grateful. It made my heart ache to hear their humble thanks for what was being done to comfort them. One train we entered had a basket with twelve or fifteen babies, five of whom had died on the way from Messina. The hour’s journey had taken nine hours because of the many washouts. One beautiful young lady, who, no one knew, died at the station; they called her ‘a princess.’ Every person from the villas went down with huge supplies of food. There was hot soup and cocoa, besides bread and fruit. We girls spent three nights and three days at the station and saved many lives by giving nourishment and what comfort was possible to half naked and starving people. The trains returning to Messina were crowded with people looking for their families, and also with a bad set of thieves. We have a regiment now at the station and soldiers all along the beach to Messina. Any one seen in the ruined city without a passport is shot on sight. Our new year’s eve was spent resting on sacks of figs at the station, administering to and comforting the poor crazed women and children, and waiting for the next train. I can’t write of the effect of this dreadful spectacle. Now things are more systematic as regards our work. It was my duty to go about and find the poor wretches who had wandered into Taormina. I found in one church five sisters who had found their way with great difficulty from Messina. The distance is nearly thirty miles. They were thinly clad and in a starving condition. The natives here have responded to the call fairly well and clothes have come in--but such rags. However, new ones are being made and distributed as fast as possible. The Prince of Cherami of the San Domenico is doing wonderful work as well as the villa people. All the visitors have fled from Taormina, the hotels are entirely deserted and will of course be closed. At the station I saw a woman with a cage of twelve birds; she had lost all her five children. We have felt shocks for five days. Most of the villa people are trembling with fear. What is to be done with these homeless wretched people? God only knows. It’s over a week now since the earthquake; the trains still come in filled to overflowing with injured taken every day from the ruins.”

“The German battle-ship ‘Serapim,’” says Miss Lee, “brought a great number of refugees. One music hall singer had her little canary on her finger; the little creature was singing, the only happy thing on that dreadful ship. I worked for over three weeks at the station of Giardini. One night Mr. Kitson was going through the Red Cross car, helping with milk, wine and so forth. At the end of the car was a large clothes basket full of little new-born babies, two dead, three or five alive, and nothing to cover them or keep them warm, so the dead ones had been kept for that. They had been born on the train and had had no one to tend them, poor little souls. It made him perfectly sick and was, we think, partly responsible for his long illness. I was kept in the surgical ward room to have the water ready for the doctors and so I did not see all the horrors as those did who went through the cars--I was spared that, thank God.”

III

AMERICA TO THE RESCUE

On the first of January, three days after the great earthquake, a band of Calabrians, living in New York, flashed this message across the Atlantic to their mother country:

“Do not forget Scylla!”

Scylla, how the old name thrills! Scylla had suffered severely, though its gray castle, perched high on the cliff that rises sheer from the shore, was spared. Scylla, the ancient village at the foot of the purple Calabrian mountains, was not forgotten, nor Reggio, nor the white fishing hamlets that line the tawny shores of Sicily and Calabria on either side of the restless straits. The people of the coast were soonest reached and soonest helped by the sailors of the passing ships, for the navies of the world flew on the wings of love and pity to succor the stricken ports. Never were ships watched for with such eagerness, never were sailors greeted with such passionate rapture since Theseus sailed back from Crete to Athens with his precious freight of Athenian youths and maidens, saved from the dreadful Minotaur. The people who lived in the hills and valleys of the interior suffered longest, were last relieved; but even to them help came, for the sailors were faithful and carried the world’s bounty to the desolate inland towns of Sicily and Calabria. The story of their labor of love would fill an encyclopedia. This is the story of the American relief ship “Bayern,” that brought comfort and hope to the forlorn survivors of the great earthquake; to tell the story clearly, we must go back to Rome where the cruise was planned.

Saturday afternoon, January second, the Via Quattro Fontane, in the neighborhood of the American Embassy, was crowded with carriages, cabs and automobiles. The tall handsome porter of the Palazzo del Drago was on duty in full dress; he wore a long broadcloth overcoat that came down to his feet, a black cocked hat with a cockade of red, white and blue. His mighty staff of office, a certain grand air he has, make him a formidable personage to those who have no real business at the palace. Once you are known to this Cerberus, he has no terrors for you; he is gentle by nature as such big men so often are.

“Can I see the Ambassador?” I asked the porter.

“That I cannot promise, lady. He has just returned from the Quirinal; there are many persons waiting to see him, but--” he raised his shoulders with the Latin gesture that expresses doubt--“who knows? The Signora can but try.” He stood back, made me a splendid bow with as fine a flourish of his tricorne as if I had been a princess, and the way was free. I entered the handsome _portone_, walked through the long marble gallery, past the courtyard where the noise of the fountain sounds like the trampling of impatient steeds, past the twin lions of giallo antico that guard the entrance, and up the magnificent stairway leading to the _piano nobile_, the home of the American Ambassador. At the door of the apartment I was met by another of those prodigious serving men--the giants of the American Embassy were the talk of Rome that winter--they were recruited from the ex-cuirassiers of the King’s own body guard, the glorious hundred, the shortest of whom is six feet tall.

“Her Excellency would receive me; as to his Excellency, it was just possible. The ladies were in the dancing hall.” He waved me towards the mirrored gallery. I paused a moment to stare about the great anticamera, big enough to hold an ordinary embassy. At one end there is a wide fireplace, over which, instead of armorial bearings, our Eagle spreads its mighty sheltering wings. This splendid anticamera was in strange confusion, crowded with packing cases, piled half-way to the ceiling with bales of goods, boxes of clothing, boots, food, medicines, relief supplies of all kinds. Every able-bodied American in Rome was working _pro Sicilia e Calabria_, and the Ambassador’s home was not only the nerve-center of the relief work but a warehouse, a base of supplies.

From the ballroom came the sound of women’s voices, the snip-snip of shears, the click of sewing machines. Here was another transformation; the sumptuous ballroom with the smooth polished floor had become a busy workroom. Under the gilt chandelier stood a long table, heaped with bales of flannel and cloth, over which leaned four or five ladies, scissors in hand, cutting out skirts, blouses and jackets. On the satin-covered benches sat a bevy of young women and girls, basting, sewing, planning, and chatting as they worked.

“I have nothing left but red flannel,” said the chief cutter-out, “what shall I do with it?”

“Petticoats and under jackets,” said the Doctor’s wife. “We must put all the colored goods into under-clothing. The poor things beg so for black dresses. You wouldn’t want to wear red or blue if you had lost twenty-five members of your family, as my _profughi_ have.”

“Still we must use what material we have. Let us keep the black for our _profughi_ here in Rome and send the colored things down there where the need is greater and they cannot be so particular.”

The scene was typical of Rome, of Italy, of the civilized world at that time. In every home, rich or poor, in every country, women of all classes were sewing for those naked wretches who had escaped from the great earthquake with nothing but their lives. In the Palace of the Quirinal the little princesses, Jolanda and Mafalda, sat up in their high chairs, stitching busily for the children of the stricken South. The fury of benevolence that had driven men and women all over the world into some action, some sacrifice, for their suffering brothers, was being organized, had become the great driving force that should compel some sort of order out of chaos unparalleled. When it grew too dark to see in the ballroom the friendly giant lighted the chandelier and the candles in the gilt sconces. As he passed me he murmured:

“If the Signora can wait till the other ladies have gone her Excellency--“

“Of course I can wait.” I settled down to overcast the seams of a black woolen frock.

“Do you know where one can buy handkerchiefs?” asked the chief cutter-out. “Every shop I tried today was sold out. All Sicilians use handkerchiefs, even the poorest; it’s one of their good points. I was at the station this morning helping the English Committee--they meet every train from Naples that brings ‘survivors,’ and fit out the poor things with shoes and clothes. Some of them were half naked; one pretty girl--a perfect Hebe--was dressed in an officer’s uniform. The poor souls cry so one _has_ to give them one’s own handkerchief; I have hardly one left!”

“Ask the Ambassadress; she knows more about what’s left in Rome than anybody,” said the Doctor’s wife. Then in an undertone to me: “It’s wonderful how she takes the lead and the rest of us all fall in line; she makes us lose sight of the woman in the Ambassadress; she’s taken command of the scattered forces of the colony like a generalissimo; she’s proclaimed an armistice to internecine strife. Look at those two women, the lamb and the wolf cutting out together; it took the earthquake and Mrs. Griscom to bring that about!”

“Time to go home,” said the chief cutter-out, as the cracked bells of San Bernardo’s rang six. “My hands ache with the weight of these shears; this is the best day’s work we have done.”

One by one, the ladies, colonials and transients, fashionable and unfashionable, took their leave. When all had gone, the giant ushered me into the yellow drawing-room, where I found her Excellency seated in a low chair before the fire making tea. She greeted me with her flashing smile and bade me welcome.

I asked for news of those who had gone down to the city of the dreadful night; we had heard nothing of Major Landis, Mr. Cutting, Mr. Chanler and the others who had gone to Messina the Thursday before.

“No news--but from home, oh, so much! It is as we all knew it would be; we shall do our share.”

Rumor already had it that great sums of money had been cabled from America, both to the Ambassador and to the Italian Red Cross. If that money was to be well spent, the Ambassador’s work was cut out for him, as hard work as even he could covet.

A few moments later Mr. Griscom came in and asked his wife for a cup of tea. His Excellency’s dark inscrutable face showed fatigue; the veiled fire of the eyes was nearer the surface than usual, the clear-cut lips were compressed. As the Doctor’s wife said, it was fortunate for us that we had these strong young people to take the lead in the American relief work. From the first they bore the brunt gallantly; work as hard as their helpers might, they out-stripped all others, gave with a lavish hand, power, sympathy, wit, energy, health; in a word they gave themselves. We turned to them as to our natural leaders in all large and even in small questions. It had seemed to me the most natural thing in the world that, having given away all our available cash and all the clothes we could spare, I should go to the Embassy to beg for my _profughi_, the family of Francesco Calabresi, the plumber from Messina.

“You have received large sums of money from home,” I said to Mr. Griscom.

“Yes,” he looked at me steadily, ready to guard the treasure from the most desperate assault. He listened patiently to my story of the Calabresi family, to my plea for money to buy clothes and a cradle for the imminent baby, and plumber’s tools to set Francesco up in business before he should become demoralized by the dreadful Roman system of paying so much _per capita_ every day to each family of _profughi_, without demanding any work in return for the money. First to lose everything they owned, then to be robbed of their habit of self-dependence was the cruel fate of too many.

“We must help these poor people to help themselves,” said the Ambassador, sounding the key-note of the American relief work from first to last. Then very kindly he pointed out to me that my interest in an individual case made me lose sight of the fact that he must deal with the situation as a whole. The American funds must be distributed with method and exactness; the generous help our country was sending must be well spent; his work was to lay out the general scheme, the detail was for others; he had appointed an American Relief Committee; they had held their first meeting that morning.

I saw it all then in a flash, got a sense of some great plan maturing, and took my leave, mortified enough that I should have troubled the god-in-the-machine with a mere detail.

The next day, Sunday, was like a poem bound in blue and gold. I went up on the terrace to gather the last chrysanthemums that had escaped the frost, and to loosen the soil about the first hyacinth, whose close-furled pointed leaves pricked through the brown mould. Below the Tiber rolled, a tawny flood, under the arches of the Ponte Margherita. Across the river the angel of the Castel Sant’ Angelo lifted his bronze sword over the tomb of Hadrian, the dome of St. Peter’s showed like a pale blue bubble against the deeper blue of the sky; the bells of Rome rocked and pealed in their towers, calling the people to mass. From the barracks in the Prati di Castello the bugles sounded, and a regiment swung down the white road by the Tiber, past the statue of Ciceruácchio, and over the bridge to the gay music of the royal march. I was leaning over the parapet to watch the soldiers out of sight, when Agnese called me downstairs.

“A messenger from the Embassy, Signora, with a bundle so large we had to open both sides of the _portone_ to let it pass!”

I hurried down in time to thank the good-natured giant for the gigantic parcel he had brought. Agnese cut the strings and handed me a card with a line in pencil signed Elizabeth Griscom.