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.”