The Conscript Mother by Robert Herrick - HTML preview

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 hav