Part 2

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.”