With Enrico between us we wandered up the hill toward the green lake in the bowl of the ancient crater. Signora Maironi kept tight hold of her lad, purring over him in French and Italian—the more intimate things in Italian—turning as mothers will from endearment to gentle scolding. Why did he not keep himself tidier? Surely he had the needles and thread his sister Bianca had given him the last time he was at home. And how was the ear? Had he carried out the doctor’s directions? Which it is needless to say Enrico had not. The signora explained to me that the boy was in danger of losing the hearing of one ear because of the careless treatment the regimental doctor had given him when he had a cold. She did not like to complain of the military authorities: of course they could not bother with every little trouble a soldier had in a time like this, but the loss of his hearing would be a serious handicap to the boy in earning his living....
It seemed that Enrico had not yet breakfasted, and, although it was only eleven, I insisted on putting forward the movable feast of continental breakfast, and we ordered our colazione served in the empty garden of the little inn above the lake. While Enrico ate and discussed with me the prospects of war, the signora looked the boy all over again, feeling his shoulders beneath the loose uniform to see whether he had lost flesh after the thirty-mile march from Rome under a hot sun. It was much as an American mother might examine her offspring after his first week at boarding-school, only more intense. And Enrico was very much like a clean, hearty, lovable schoolboy, delighted to be let out from authority and to talk like a man with another man. He was confident Italy would be in the war—oh, very sure! And he nodded his head at me importantly. His captain was a capital fellow, really like a father to the men, and the captain had told them—but he pulled himself up suddenly. After all, I was a foreigner, and must not hear what the captain had said. But he let me know proudly that his regiment the granatieri of Sardinia, had received the promise that they would be among the first to go to the front. The mother’s fond eyes contracted slightly with pain.
After our breakfast Enrico took me into the garden of the old monastery where other youthful grenadiers were loafing on the grass under the trees or writing letters on the rough table among the remains of food. Some of the squad had gone to the lake for a swim; I could hear their shouts and laughter far below. Presently the signora, who had been barred at the gate by the old Franciscan, hurried down the shady path.
“I told him,” she explained, “that he could just look the other way and avoid sin. Then I slipped through the door!”
So with her hand on her recaptured boy we strolled through the old gardens as far as the stable where the soldiers slept. The floor was littered with straw, which, with an overcoat, Enrico assured me, made a capital bed. The food was good enough. They got four cents a day, which did not go far to buy cigarettes and postage-stamps, but they would be paid ten cents a day when they were at war!...
At last we turned into the highroad arched with old trees that led down to the tramway. Enrico’s leave was nearly over. All the glory of the spring day poured forth from the flowering hedges, where bees hummed and birds sang. Enrico gathered a great bunch of yellow heather, which his mother wanted to take home. “Little Bianca will like it so much when she hears her brother picked it,” she explained. “Bianca thinks he is a hero already, the dear!”
When we reached the car-tracks we sat on a mossy wall and chatted. In a field across the road an old gray mare stood looking steadfastly at her small foal, which was asleep in the high grass at her feet. The old mare stood patiently for many minutes without once cropping a bit of grass, lowering her head occasionally to sniff at the little colt. Her attitude of absorbed contemplation, of perfect satisfaction in her ungainly offspring made me laugh—it was so exactly like the signora’s. At last the little fellow woke, got somehow on his long legs, and shaking a scrubby tail went gambolling off down the pasture, enjoying his coltish world. The old mare followed close behind with eyes only for him.
“Look at him!” the signora exclaimed pointing to the ridiculous foal. “How nice he is! Oh, how beautiful youth always is!”
She looked up admiringly at her tall, handsome Enrico, who had just brought her another bunch of heather. The birds were singing like mad in the fields; some peasants passed with their laden donkeys; I smoked contemplatively, while mother and son talked family gossip and the signora went all over her boy again for the fourth time.... Yes, youth is beautiful, surely, but there seemed something horribly pathetic about it all in spite of the loveliness of the May morning.