“Were you not afraid?”
“Of what? Of a shell hitting my poor old body? I never thought of it. I just felt—little ’Rico is on there ahead in the middle of all that. But it was beautiful all the same—yes,” she repeated softly, with a strange gleam on her tired face, “it was beau and horrible at the same time.... I passed the frontier stones. Yes! I have been on Austrian territory, though it’s no longer Austrian now, God be praised! I was very nearly in Gradesca, where the battle was. I should never have gotten that far had it not been for a kind officer in a motor-car who took me off the road with him. How we drove in all that muddle! He stopped when we passed any troops to let me ask where the granatieri were. It was always ‘just ahead.’ The sound of the guns got louder.... I was terribly excited and so afraid I was too late, when suddenly I saw a soldier bent over a bicycle riding back down the road like mad. It was my ’Rico coming to find me!... I jumped out of the motor and took him in my arms, there beside the road.... God, how he had changed already, how thin and old his face was! And he was so excited he could hardly speak, just like ’Rico always, when anything is going on. ‘Mother,’ he said, ‘I wanted so to see you. You told me you might come up here, and I looked for you all along where the train stopped, at Bologna and Mestre and Palma Nova. But I couldn’t find you. This morning I knew you would come—I knew it when I woke.’ (Don’t you see I was right in keeping on?)... The young lieutenant had told ’Rico I was looking for him, and they let him come back on his bicycle to find me. Poor boy, he was so excited and kept glancing over his shoulder after his regiment! ‘You see, mamma,’ he said, ‘this is a real battle! We are at the front! And our regiment has the honor to make the first attack!’ He was so proud, the poor boy!... Of course I could not keep him long—five minutes at the most I had with him there by the side of the highroad, with all the noise of the guns and the passing wagons. Five minutes, but I would rather have died than lost those minutes.... I put your watch on his wrist. He was so pleased to have it, with the illuminated hands which will give him the time at night when he is on duty. He wrote you a few words on this scrap of paper, all I had with me, leaning on my knee. I took his old watch—the father will want it. It had been next his heart and was still warm.... Then he kissed me and rode back up the road as fast as he could go. The last I saw was when he rode into a cloud of dust....
“Well,” the signora concluded, after a long pause, “that is all! I found my way back here somehow. I have been through the lines, on Austrian territory, almost in battle itself—and I have seen my boy again, the Virgin be praised! And I am content. Now let God do with him what he will.”
Later we went in search of Count Foscari’s brother and the lady to whom he had sent his letters. Then Giuseppe and I took the signora to the train for Rome. As I stood beside the compartment, the signora, who seemed calmer, more like herself than for the past fortnight, repeated dreamily: “My friend, I have seen ’Rico again, and I am content. Perhaps it is the last time I shall have him in my arms, unless the dear God spares him. And I know now what it is he is doing for his country, what battle is! He is fighting for me, for all of us. I am content!”
With a gentle smile the signora waved me farewell.
Enrico came out of that first battle safely, and many others, as little Bianca wrote me. She and the signora were making bandages and feeding their thirsty hearts on the reports of the brave deeds that the Italian troops were doing along the Isonzo. “They are all heroes!” the girl wrote. “But it is very hard for them to pierce those mountains which the Austrians have been fortifying all these years. There is perpetual fighting, but Enrico is well and happy, fighting for Italy. Yesterday we had a postal from him: he sent his respects to you....”
Thereafter, there was no news from the Maironis for many weeks; then in the autumn came the dreaded black-bordered letter in the signora’s childish hand. It was dated from some little town in the north of Italy and written in pencil.
“I have been in bed for a long time, or I should have written before. Our dear Enrico fell the 3d of August on the Col di Lana. He died fighting for Italy like a brave man, his captain wrote.... Bianca is here nursing me, but soon she will go back to Padua into the hospital, and I shall go with her if there is anything that a poor old woman can do for our wounded soldiers.... Dear friend, I am so glad that I saw him once more—now I must wait until paradise....”