V
I
Gian-Luca had been married for just three years when there came those mighty rumors of war in the July of 1914. Millo had expected an excellent season, but in June an Austrian archduke had been murdered—a grave, kindly man who deserved a better fate—and Millo had begun to feel uneasy. By the middle of July he felt still more uneasy, while to Old Compton Street came a wave of apprehension coupled with incredulous surprise.
“It cannot mean war,” said Teresa firmly, “the financiers of Europe will never allow it. Is not the world ruled by money?”
“It cannot mean war,” repeated Fabio weakly. “As you say, it cannot mean war.”
“If it comes it will ruin us all—” moaned Nerone; “but then the English are such a calm people, England would never go plunging into war.” And at this thought he almost began to love England for breeding so calm a people.
“If only I had Geppe home!” fretted Rosa.
“He will come, he will come!” Mario told her cheerily. “Why should he not come, donna mia? This would not be Italy’s war.”
“Who knows, if they once start fighting—” she persisted; “I wish that our Geppe were home. Suppose I should never see him again—”
“Dio! You women!” snapped Mario.
Rocca said: “And so here is war at last, and it finds me a miserable butcher. All that I am fit for is to slice little goats, or to chop through the bones of a lamb!”
“You talk rubbish,” declared the Signora Rocca. “Who says there will be war?”
“I do,” replied her husband, “I, who once was a soldier.” Then he swore a great oath, and his eyes filled with tears. “It is coming, it is coming, and I am too old—they will not allow me to fight.”
The Padrone of the Capo di Monte felt angry. “Has the whole world gone mad?” he demanded. “What is the meaning of all this great fuss? And over a dog of an Austrian too! Why do I read in my morning paper that stocks and shares are falling to pieces? Here have I worked for these English for years, and now they will not protect me. What has happened, has England fallen asleep? Why cannot England do something?”
By July the 25th they were really alarmed, for the bourse in Vienna had closed. Three days later there was war between Austria and Serbia, and two days after that they saw in their papers that Russia was mobilizing. But worse was to come, for by the end of July the banks all over England had closed their doors.
“I cannot get a penny of my money,” said Teresa, and her voice was deeply shocked and surprised. “Not a penny of my hard-earned money can I get—yet England is not at war.” Disconcerting days for those who had lived so long in the most placid country on earth. They looked at each other with frightened eyes.
“What can it mean?” they kept on repeating.
England had stood to them all in the past less as a country than as bullion, and now the doors of her banks were closed—was she not quite so rich as they had imagined? Would she go bankrupt and all of them with her?
“What have I always said!” stormed Nerone. “Madonna! I am glad that my money is not here, I am glad that in my wisdom I have sent it all home; it is I who have shown great foresight!”
There were new lines now on Teresa’s old face; she thought a great deal but spoke very little, for only she knew the exact amount that was owed by her firm to the bank. She had recently borrowed another small sum, just before the assassination—she had needed a more convenient counter and a range of larger glass cases. But her mouth was set in a hard, straight line, and her black eyes never wavered. When her shop was raided by people who feared that they might be asked to consume less food, Teresa stood firm as a rock in her cash-desk.
“I will not take five-pound notes,” she announced; “I accept only silver and gold, if you please.”
And they paid her in silver and gold if they had it—if they had not, then their motorcars went away empty.
“We will save the Casa Boselli,” said Teresa. “If Europe has gone mad, we at least remain sane; we will save the Casa Boselli.”
And Fabio, very old and thoroughly frightened, nodded and answered, “Si, si.” But his heart misgave him when he looked round the shop. Denuded it was, as though by the passing of an impious swarm of locusts. “Supposing we cannot renew our stock!” he thought. “Supposing the transport is held up—”
II
Gian-Luca was taking late service at the Doric when the news came that England had joined in the war; like lightning it spread from table to table, and people suddenly stopped eating. Millo, rather pale but perfectly composed, whispered a word to his band; there was silence for a moment, and then through the restaurant sounded the National Anthem. A strange, new meaning the hymn had that night. So simple and yet so poignant a meaning, that something leapt into Gian-Luca’s heart, a feeling of bitter resentment. The clients at his tables had forgotten their suppers, of one accord they stood up and sang.
“They are singing because they have a country!” thought Gian-Luca. And presently when the singing had ceased, he turned away from those people.
But in the large restaurant he ran into Riccardo, whose eyes were unusually bright. Riccardo’s perfect manner had completely left him, he appeared to forget that he was a headwaiter, and seizing Gian-Luca’s unwilling arm, he dragged him behind a screen.
“Dio! It is here?” exclaimed Riccardo. “If only our Italy comes in! Surely our country will fight against Austria? Think of it, amico, we have waited so long, and now at last we get our chance!”
Gian-Luca was silent, and this angered Riccardo. “Do you not feel for our country?” he demanded.
“It is not my country,” said Gian-Luca sullenly. “I am told that it is not my country.”
III
Maddalena was waiting up for her husband; she came into the hall when she heard his latchkey. They stared at each other in silence for a moment, then she put her arms round him and kissed him.
“This is a terrible thing—” said Maddalena; “a solemn and a terrible thing.”
“Terrible perhaps, but splendid for those who may fight for the country they spring from, mia donna—if Italy comes into the war—”
“Then Geppe will go,” she said thinking of Rosa.
He laughed bitterly: “Gia, then Geppe will go, and Riccardo who is still just young enough to fight, and Alano who is almost too young, and all the others—but not Gian-Luca; he will not be wanted, he may feel he is Italian, but who was his father? They will say: ‘You have not got a name, Gian-Luca, we are very much afraid that your mother became English, so as you are a bastard, you too became English.’ Dio!” he shouted, stamping like a child. “Dio! I almost hate the English!”
She surveyed him very sorrowfully for a moment, then she said: “This country has sheltered you, amore.” And as she said it she felt afraid, realizing the meaning of her words.
“No country has ever sheltered me,” he retorted; “what I am I have made myself, Maddalena. I owe nothing to any man on earth but myself.” Then all of a sudden he wanted to cry. “But I wish I were the little Alano—” he muttered.
“Italy may not come in,” she consoled.
“Oh, yes, she will surely come in,” he told her. “There is something in my blood tonight that tells me that my people will fight—but it will not make any difference to me; I am English in the eyes of the law.”
“But what if this England should need you?” she faltered; and all her woman’s weakness urged her to silence, for nothing was steadfast at that moment but her soul.
Gian-Luca’s mouth grew arrogant and angry. “If England needs me she can fetch me,” said Gian-Luca.
IV
Six weeks later Geppe managed to get home, his military service having come to an end. He swaggered into the shop one evening; he had not let them know of his prospective arrival.
“Ah,” said Nerone, “so you have returned!” But he could not quite keep the excitement from his voice. “Rosa!” he called, “here is someone to see us—a fine young soldier from home!”
Rosa came hurrying down the stairs. “Is it my Geppe?” she almost screamed, and seeing that it was she burst into tears and wept in the arms of her son.
Geppe was very much what he had been, except that he now wore a miniature moustache and carried his shoulders better. His eyes were bloodshot from sun and wind, and his hands, which his mother examined anxiously, were covered with corns in the place of blisters; for the rest he was plump and still rather flabby in spite of two years in the army. But to Rosa, gazing at him through her tears, he seemed a thing of rare beauty.
Nerone said: “I will put up the shutters, and then we can talk in peace.” And this from Nerone was a great concession, it meant that he welcomed his grandson home, that the hatchet was buried for the moment.
Geppe helped himself to a cigarette from an open box on the counter. “Italy will not come in,” he announced, though so far no one had asked for his opinion.
However, Nerone paused for a moment in his task of putting up the shutters. “It is surely you who must know,” he said agreeably, “since you are just from the army.”
The shop closed for the night, they retired to the room that was full of Nerone’s birds. Geppe promptly woke up the avadavats by puffing smoke into their cage.
“I think I will go and fetch Fabio,” remarked Nerone; “also Rocca may like to come round.”
Alone with her son, Rosa stroked his large hand. “Mio bimbo—” she murmured. “Mio bimbo.”
“Where is papa?” inquired Geppe, feeling that his father ought to be among his admirers.
“At the Capo, tesoro. He works very hard, and they have not yet raised his wages—”
“As for that,” laughed Geppe, “I know all about hard work! In the army we do not think waiters work hard—however, that is as it may be.” He crossed one leg manfully over the other, and groped for a fresh cigarette.
“I will go into the shop and buy you a packet,” said his mother, looking in her purse for a coin that she would afterwards give to Nerone.
Presently Nerone came stumping back, accompanied by Fabio and Rocca.
“Buona sera, Capitano!” said Rocca jovially, and he slapped Geppe’s shoulder with tremendous vigor.
“This is splendid, splendid!” smiled Fabio.
“And now,” said Nerone, “we would hear all the news. How is our beloved country looking?”
“Very hot at the moment, very ugly and hot,” muttered Geppe, whose shoulder was aching.
“And what of the war?” inquired anxious Fabio. “Do you think that Italy will fight?”
“Neanche per sogno!” Geppe answered promptly. “There is no chance of such a thing.”
“What is that?” demanded Rocca. “What is that you say? Perhaps I have not heard correctly.”
But Geppe, nothing daunted, repeated his words, and he added: “Why should we fight?”
“Giurabbaccaccio!” began Rocca, very red.
“Now do let us have peace, here, at any rate,” pleaded Fabio.
“Peace!” thundered Rocca. “You ask me for peace! I, who have known Garibaldi!”
“That will not make our country go to war,” remarked Geppe; “I tell you that we remain neutral.”
“Per Bacco! You lie!” shouted outraged Rocca.
“Let us try to keep calm,” said Nerone unexpectedly; “I would hear what the boy has to say.”
Rocca glared round the room. “Must I sit here and listen?” he demanded; but as nobody troubled to answer, he was forced to listen or go.
Geppe, lounging grandly in his chair, began to give all of a hundred reasons why Italy would not come in. He talked loudly in order to cheer himself up. He kept racking his brain for convincing arguments that he himself could believe. Fabio was relieved, and even Nerone was gradually being persuaded, when Rocca got slowly on to his feet and held up his hand for silence. They all turned to stare in surprise at his face, which had suddenly grown very grave. His voice when he spoke was very grave too, not blustering as was its wont.
“I am only a miserable butcher,” said Rocca, “and one who, alas, has grown old. To our young men the glory, to our old men the patience—because they are past the time for glory. But we who are old have heard many things, and some who are still alive have seen them; and those who have seen can never forget, and those who have heard remember. We have heard of the White Coats swarming in Milan; we have heard of our women flogged in the streets and our patriots hung from the lampposts. We have heard of the glorious Risorgimento—of Mazzini, and the martyr Menotti, and of many a youth much younger than Geppe who died that Italy might live. And this I say to you all this night, if my country stops out of the war, I disown her—I who have fought in the second Custozza, I who have seen the Austrian’s blood, and the blood from my own three wounds; I who have known our father Garibaldi—yes, even I, Rocca, will cast off my country, I will take her no more for my mother. The ghosts of her patriots shall walk through her streets, wailing and wringing their hands; the spirits of her virgins whom the Austrians deflowered, shall come back and proclaim their deflowering; and Rocca will go in sorrow to his grave, because he will be as a man without a country. May the saints put a sword into Italy’s hand, and may Italy use that sword!”
Then Nerone struck the floor with his wooden leg. “Amen,” he said huskily. “Amen.”
And Fabio, forgetting his naturalization, forgetting the debts of the Casa Boselli, stumbled over to Rocca and gripped his arm; and they both tried to stand very straight, like the young.
Rosa looked at her only son and through him and beyond him at her country, and at all those mothers long since dead and gone, and at all their sons who had laid down their lives, whom she seemed to see living again in Geppe—
“Our country will use that sword,” she said quietly, “and Geppe shall help her to use it. My Geppe is brave, he is anxious to fight.”
“Of course I am anxious to fight,” murmured Geppe, staring down at his cigarette.
V
That winter the nations settled in grimly to their struggle of life and death; while at home, in familiar, foggy old London—grown oddly unfamiliar somehow in those days—men and women struggled fiercely and almost as grimly to keep the business flag flying.
Millo, in his office, sat long into the night scheming, calculating, foreseeing. How to maintain the prestige of the Doric at a time when his world was falling to pieces, that was Millo’s great problem. He sent for the heads of departments and addressed them as a field-marshal might address his generals.
“We are face to face with disaster—” said Millo, “not financial disaster, for our company is rich, but something even worse, a total collapse of our splendid organization. Each of you will have many arduous new duties for which no money can pay. Already we have lost our most skilled French chefs, only old men and boys are left in the kitchen, but the boys must grow wise and the old men young, for it shall not be said that because there is war we no longer know how to cook. I foresee a coming shortage of food, yet somehow food we must find; if it is not precisely what we have been used to, we must aim at keeping this fact from our clients; we must coax it, disguise it, dress it up in fine clothes, so that they eat it gladly. I foresee a coming shortage of waiters—for Italy will soon be at war—but waiters we must have; I shall aim at getting Swiss, failing them we must do with the unfit English and the ageing—those rejected by the army. Several of you headwaiters will go; Riccardo, Giovanni, Roberto for instance; but you Giuliano, are well over age, I can count on you for the grillroom. The Swiss are a fairly hardworking people, your trouble will lie with the English, who, even when perfectly sound, make vile waiters; in my long experience I have only known one who was all that a waiter should be, but then he had lived among us for years—I remember we called him Luigi—you may have to put up with very many things, but do not come grumbling to me. Gian-Luca, here, will be able to help me; he is only Italian by blood it seems—he is English, he tells me, in the eyes of the law, but so far he does not feel called upon to enlist, and for this I cannot but be thankful. And now,” he concluded, “just one last word; let there be no small jealousies among you. Away with such things! The times are too momentous; we must concentrate our energies entirely on our clients, and through them on the prestige of the Doric.”
Thus it was that the Doric buckled on its armor and girded its loins for battle; while Millo assured his Board of Directors, that if all Europe crumbled yet the Doric should stand as the emblem of perfection in restaurants.
VI
Teresa, at the Casa Boselli, eyed her husband with open disfavor, for Fabio was growing more futile every day—he had taken to sitting about in the parlor holding his head in his hands.
“Already the transport is so slow,” he would mutter; “what will it be like later on? Already the Germans are attacking the food ships—what can we do without food?”
And Fabio was right, there were many little luxuries that looked like disappearing from the price-list—those fat, green, globular snails for instance. No one had time to go hunting snails, they were too busy hunting Germans.
At moments now he gave way altogether. “We are done, we are finished!” he wept.
Then Teresa remembered how much they owed the bank. The moratorium had saved them for a time, but now the bank was demanding higher interest, or failing that, repayment of the loan, and she did not blame the bank either. The Casa Boselli was dipped to the hilt, the leases of both shops had been pledged as security; if she could not meet the interest then the bank must take action, and all in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, there might be no Casa Boselli. But Teresa had not fought against grief and shame, and even her God, for nothing.
“Coward!” she said, looking with scorn at her husband. “You call yourself a man and you weep like a child! Have we not got our macaroni factory? Is not the Doric and many another restaurant clamoring more loudly than ever for our paste? To hear you one would think we were reduced to black-beetles; and suppose we were, I would pickle them with capers, I would surely contrive to make them the fashion, rather then let our business go bankrupt.” And her fierce eyes scorched up the old man’s tears, so that he dared not go on weeping.
Nerone had a great consolation in life, since everyone was buying cigarettes for the soldiers; but his first kind impulse on Geppe’s return was fast giving place to indignation, for Geppe was more useless than ever in the shop, in addition to which he now bragged.
“Here is no life for a soldier,” he would say; “when I was in the army I could outmarch them all, and as for my shooting there was nothing to beat it! A man smokes tobacco, he does not sell it.” And this when Nerone, persuaded at last, was actually paying him wages!
Once again their quarrels resounded through the house, more violent than ever, now that Geppe was older.
“I have got a dog for a grandson,” said Nerone; “a lazy, insolent, lousy dog. What have I done to deserve it?”
And in the very middle of all the confusion, who should turn up but Berta with her twins.
“I’m going to make shells for Albert,” announced Berta. “My Albert’s enlisted, and the least I can do is to make ammunition for the poor old dear.” So she left the twins for her mother to look after, quite forgetting that they had been made for Albert, who much preferred them to shells.
Well, now there were babies again in the house, and rather fussy little babies. Poor Rosa, grown fat and a trifle breathless, found herself running up and down with bottles, trying first this patent mixture then that, in order to pander to their fancies. She who had come to the enviable age when the hips may grow larger and larger, she who had nursed Gian-Luca and reared him, then Geppe in addition to the inconsiderate Berta, must now perforce rear a pair of outraged twins, who preferred death it seemed, to the bottle. And Mario, who seldom protested these days, bore their colic-rent nights without a murmur; while Nerone, after storming and threatening to drown them, could never resist playing with Berta’s offspring, because in his heart he adored all babies, whether they were English or Italian.