The Conscript Mother

WHEN I met the signora at the tram station that May morning she was evidently troubled about something which was only partly explained by her murmured excuse, "a sleepless night." We were to cross the Campagna to one of the little towns in the Albanian hills, where young Maironi was temporarily stationed with his regiment. If we had good luck and happened upon an indulgent officer, the mother might get sight of her boy for a few minutes. All the way over the flowering Campagna, with the blue hills swimming on the horizon before us, the signora was unusually taciturn, seemingly indifferent to the beauty of the day, and the wonderful charm of the Italian spring, to which she was always so lyrically responsive on our excursions. When a great dirigible rose into the blue air above our heads, like a huge silver fish, my companion gave a slight start, and I divined what was in her mindthe imminence of war, which had been threatening to engulf Italy for many months. It was that fear which had destroyed her customary gayety, the indomitable cheerfulness of the true Latin mother that she was. "It is coming," she sighed, glancing up at the dirigible. "It will not be long now before we shall knowonly a few days." And to the ignorant optimism of my protest she smiled sadly, with the fatalism that women acquire in countries of conscription. It was futile to combat with mere theory and logic this conviction of a mother's heart. Probably the signora had overheard some significant word which to her sensitive intelligence was more real, more positive than all the subtle reasonings at the Consulta. The sphinx-like silence of ministers and diplomats had not been broken: there was nothing new in the "situation." The newspapers were as wordily empty of fact as ever. And yet this morning for the first time Signora Maironi seemed convinced against her will that war was inevitable. These last days there had been a similar change in the mood of the Italian public, not to be fully explained by any of the rumors flying about Rome, by the sudden exodus of Germans and Austrians, by anything other than that mysterious sixth sense which enables humanity, like wild animals, to apprehend unknown dangers. Those whose lives and happiness are at stake seem to divine before the blow falls what is about to happen.... For the first time I began to believe that Italy might really plunge into the deep gulf at which her people had so long gazed in fascinated suspense. There are secret signs in a country like Italy, where much is hidden from the stranger. Signora Maironi knew. She pointed to some soldiers waiting at a station and observed: "They have their marching-kit, and they are going north!"

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