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THE RED CROSS GIRLS WITH
THE ITALIAN ARMY

BOOKS BY MARGARET VANDERCOOK

THE RANCH GIRLS SERIES

The Ranch Girls at Rainbow Lodge
The Ranch Girls^ Pot op Gold
The Ranch Girls at Boarding School
The^ Ranch Girls in Europe
The Ranch Girls at Home Again
The Ranch Girls and their Great Ad-
venture

THE RED CROSS GIRLS SERIES

The Red Cross Girls in the British
Trenches

The Red Cross Girls on the French
Firing Line

The Red Cross Girls in Belgium
The Red Cross Girls with the Russian
Army

The Red Cross Girls with the Italian
Army

The Red Cross Girls Under the Stars
AND Stripes

STORIES ABOUT CAMP FIRE GIRLS

The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill
The Camp Fire Girls Amid the Snows
The Camp Fire Girls in the Outside
World

The Camp Fire Girls Across the Sea
The Camp Fire Girls^ Careers
The Camp Fire Girls in After Years
The Camp Fire Girls in the Desert
The Camp Fire Girls at the End of the
Trail

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Lifting Sonya’s Hand He Bent His Head
Kissed It

AND

The Red Cross Girls
With the Italian Army

0

MARGARET VANDERCOOK

A ^

Author of ** The Ranch GirU Series,^ ** Stories
about Camp Fire GirU Series,** etc*

Ulludtrate^

The John C Winston Company

Philadelphia

Copyright, 1917, by
The John C. Winston Co.

MAY 18 1918

©CI,A499028
'Tvo.f ,

CONTENTS

CHAPTER page

L The New Day 7

II. The Night 22

III. Italia 34

IV. Villa Felice 53

V. Bianca 70

VI. Guests at Sonya’s Villa 84

VIL The Italian Singer 110

VIII. A New Patient 122

IX. An Odd Household 132

X. A Conversation 145

XI. The Same Afternoon 159

XII. A Lack of Caution 173

XIII. Dangerous Popularity 184

XIV. Uncertainty 194

XV. Whispers in the Air 204

XVI. Sonya’s Knight 215

XVII. The Culprit 228

XVIII. Nannina Solves the Problem 241

XIX. The Sign of the Cross I 250

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THE RED CROSS GIRLS WITH
THE ITALIAN ARMY

CHAPTER I
The New Day

TOW strange to be returning to
I "T Europe, and so soon, Nona,
^ when I had thought never to
cross the ocean again ! ”

One afternoon in late February, a woman
and a girl were walking slowly up and down
the deck of a ship. Yet if either of them
felt the anxiety, which was natural under
the conditions of traveling by sea then,
neither betrayed the fact. Perchance the
day was so wonderful they had caught a
measure of its inspiration. For sailing
from New York City a little more than two
weeks before under a cloud of rain and mist
they had now reached the eternal blue of
the Mediterranean water and sky.

(7)

8

With the Italian Army

Ah, but, Sonya, these are days when one
never knows from one hour to the next
what may be taking place in the world, nor
how the changes may affect one’s own life.
Still, a year does not seem such a short
time to me!”

The older of the two companions laughed

‘^That is because you are so young,
Nona. As for me, I am ashamed to con-
fess how quickly a year flies. But never
has there been sp glorious a year as this,
with Russia — my own country — free at
last.”

Sonya Valesky stopped for a moment
and, although making no outward movement
with her hands, in her heart she registered
the ‘‘Sign of the Cross.”

^Some time before she had been exiled
from Russia for preaching peace when
Russia was in the throes of the most terrible
phase of the great war.

Then, with three of the four American
Red Cross Girls, who had been nursing the
Russian wounded, she had left her own land
for England and France, and later the
United States. But all her life Sonya’s work

The New Day

9

and prayers had been devoted toward the
creation of a free Russia; and now, within
the past few weeks, she, too, had been a wit-
ness of the great mystery of good which has
been so strangely born out of the evil of
this present war. For Russia, in the most
wonderful revolution in history, had lately
declared herself a republic, so that Sonya’s
<lream at last was realized.

‘‘I wish we were returning to Russia,
Nona, instead of Italy,” she added, with a
wistful inflection in her modulated voice.
For, in spite of speaking English perfectly,
Sonya had a slight foreign accent. ‘‘I
would not preach peace in Russia these
days — not until other people are free as we
are. I too have learned a lesson. But
why, Nona, are we going to Italy? I
scarcely know. It seems to me that I have
fallen under your influence a great deal
recently when, as I am old enough to be
your elder sister, the influence ought to be
the other way around.”

Before replying, Nona Davis slipped her
arm through her friend’s and drew her over
to the ship’s railing, where they stood look-
ing out over the tranquil face of the waters.

10

With the Italian Army

‘‘We are going to Italy, Sonya, because
Italy is - the country where I now most
wish to help with Red Cross nursing. In
spite of your insisting that you cannot
nurse, you will probably be just as useful
in some other way. You remember we
first met you on shipboard when Eugenia,
Barbara, Mildred Thornton and I were
crossing the Atlantic to begin our first
nursing with the British Army; then later
in France and Belgium and in Russia.
Well, as Eugenia married her little French
captain and is now Madame Castaigne, at
present she has charge of one of the largest
field hospitals in France, and Mildred
Thornton is with her. Poor Mildred has
never yet been able to marry General
Alexis, and her family is not willing she
should, with Russia so far away, until this
war is over. But, as Mildred was so rest-
less at home, she crossed over again to
join Eugenia and go on with the nursing in
France at about the time you and I went
south to our old place in Charleston. Since
Barbara and Dick Thornton have a very
new son, of course Barbara is occupied

The New Day

11

with another kind of nursing now I am the
only one of the original four Red Cross
girls left to Mo a bit’ for Italy. Certainly
you would not allow me to cross all alone,
nor would I leave you to go on dreaming in
dear old ‘before the war’ Charleston.
These days, Sonya, it is ‘New Dreams for
Old,’ to quote that lovely poem:

‘Is there no voice in the world to come crying,

New dreams for old!

New for old

Many have long in my heart been lying

Faded, weary and cold.’ ”

Nona paused. She^'^was a fair, slender
girl with a wealth of pale blonde hair which
the soft southern winds were now blowing
about her face. She was wearing a loose
coat of an odd shade of green with a broad
collar of tan silk, and a small green hat,
which by contrast showed brighter the
gold of her hair.

Her friend and companion looked older,
since her hair was almost white. The
one-time Russian noblewoman had extraor-
dinary deep, dark-blue eyes with dark

12

With the Italian Army

brows and lashes, skin of a strange Russian
pallor, and a beautiful mobile mouth, more
able to express emotion than most persons.

At this instant she smiled rather teas-
ingly upon the younger girl.

‘‘Oh, Nona, of course I understand that
I must wake up again and find some new
work. I suppose I have grown idle; and
yet life has been so difficult for me for so
many years that I feel glad to have been
able to rest. Nevertheless I think I have
been pretty well occupied in looking after
you in Charleston and trying to prevent
your marrying any one of those nice south-
ern boyhood friends of yours. What an
extraordinary number of boys you must
have known when you were a little girl,
Nona. You could not have played with
boys exclusively, and besides you always
told me you led a remarkably lonely life
as a child. Yet each young fellow I met
insisted I was to trust you with him, since
you had played together as children. That
is one of the real reasons why I came away
with you; I want to keep you to myself a
little while longer, and you know you have

The New Day

13

promised me not to consider an Italian.
I do not wish the American Red Cross
girls to make so many international mar-
riages; Eugenia and Mildred are quite
enough.”

Nona laughed, nevertheless she flushed
slightly.

‘‘I don’t think you should talk in so
frivolous a fashion, Sonya, when we are
going to Italy on such a serious mission.
Besides, it was nonsense to pay any atten-
tion to my few old friendships In Charles-
ton. You need not worry over me. You
see, I am not so attractive as the other Red
Cross girls. It is simply that you don’t
understand American society and the free-
dom to which American girls are accus-
tomed.”

Nona turned so as to face her companion.

‘^I do wish, Sonya, you would not be so
difficult about the young Italian fellow on
board ship with us — Carlo Navara — hasn’t
he a charming name.? He is a very boyish
fellow, yet as soon as I begin to talk to
him you manage to send word that you
wish to see me. I am not used to such

14

With theTtalian Army

a very severe chaperon, Sonya. You see,
Eugenia had to divide her attention be-
tween three of us. Besides, don^t you
think Signor Navara^s story delightfully
romantic. I told you he had confided to
me that he came to the United States when
he was only a tiny boy and used to sing in
the streets. Then, one day some one over-
heard him and began giving him lessons.
He hopes to become a great artist some day,
if he is not killed in Italy. Yet he felt it
his duty to give up his career and return
to fight for his country. I don’t understand
your prejudice, Sonya; his seems to me a
charming story.”

Sonya shrugged her shoulders, which was
a frequent gesture with her, and char-
acteristic of her foreign birth.

‘‘Charming, but not original, Nona! Yet,
let us not quarrel about your first Italian
hero. The young fellow is simply not a
gentleman, which means I feel one could
not trust him in a critical situation. Other-
wise he is agreeable and very good looking.
But one can never anticipate the future of
a traveling acquaintance; one may not see

The New Day

15

him again, or he may turn up constantly.
Personally I rather hope, when Signor
Navara reaches the front, we may be
through with him.”

The young girl looked as if she disagreed,
but before replying glanced up and down
the long deck.

Until then she and Sonya had believed
they were alone. But within the last few
moments several other passengers had ap-
peared. Among them was the young man
whom they had been discussing. He wore
a student’s hat and a military cape.

“You are not very democratic, Sonya,
in spite of all your views of freedom and
democracy,” Nona expostulated. “But I
have known a good many other persons who
talked one way and behaved another.”

“Just say I am not consistent,” Sonya
laughed, “I prefer that charge.”

But they ceased talking. Nona’s new
acquaintance had leaned over the side of
the ship at no great distance from where
she and Sonya were standing.

Unconsciously their gaze must have fol-
lowed the direction of his.

16

With the Italian Army

The water was placid and blue, with
tiny flourishes of foam curling along the
edges of the waves. The air blew so sweet
that their ship must be nearing one of the-
Italian islands and have caught the fra-
grance of blossoming fruits.

Then, at a distance of some hundreds of
yards, and in the midst of the blue tran-
quillity, a strange oily substance — not very
large, and yet shimmering in the sunlight
— shone on the top of the water. At the
same time a little column of foam shot
straight up in the air.

The young man turned.

In her life Nona believed she had never
seen a face so frightened — never in any of
the tragic experiences of her past years
of Red Cross nursing. But the young
singer did not look at her. He turned to
Sonya, and something in her answering
glance may have helped him.

At the same instant one of the lookout
men on the ship’s bridge must have sighted
the same spectacle, for immediately there
was a deep roar from one of the ship’s guns
and then a second explosion. However,.

The New Day

17

the little oily substance and the small
upright column of water had disappeared^
so that the guns seemed to be firing only
into the blue, far-off space. Before this
moment the ship had been going rapidly
through the quiet sea, but now her speed
increased until she could move no faster,
and seemed in danger from her own engines.

Perhaps five minutes passed; probably
only two or three; then from beneath the
placid surface of the water a long ripple
showed. Almost instantly there was a
grinding, tearing noise; the great ship
lurched forward, and her engines ceased to
move.

It all happened so quickly, while Nona
and Sonya were arguing over a trifle, and
while the greater number of the ship’s
passengers were having an afternoon sleep.

^‘We have been struck by a torpedo,
haven’t we.^” Nona asked as quietly as if
this were an ordinary question.

Sonya nodded.

‘‘Stay here, Nona; I’ll return in an
instant.”

Then Nona also heard her murmur to

2

18

With the Italian Army

the young Italian, of whom she had been
so scornful a short time before.

‘‘Hold on to your courage; there is no
great danger.’’

Sonya disappeared among the passengers
and crew who quickly crowded the deck.
Almost by magic the officers and men stood
in their appointed places while orders were
given for the lowering of the life boats.

Sonya was right in saying there was no
great danger because the day was calm and
the sea quiet.

Moreover, there were not many pas-
sengers, for people were not traveling
except for urgent reasons. Besides Nona
Davis there were three other Red Cross
nurses; perhaps a dozen young Italians
going home to join the colors; Nona’s
acquaintance; several doctors and a num-
ber of business men.

There was one Italian woman with a
little girl of three or four crossing to join
her husband, who had gone to Italy before
the beginning of the submarine danger.

It really seemed to Nona Davis that she
was almost too interested in what was tak-

The New Day

19

Ing place to feel especially frightened; be-
sides, it was all so brief.

One of her American friends aboard came
up to her.

‘‘Don’t be frightened; I’ll look after you
and Madame Valesky when the right mo-
ment comes. Remember Admiral Farra-
gut’s ‘damn the torpedo.’”

And Nona positively had courage to
smile!

Dr. Latham was another one of her
acquaintances concerning whom Sonya was
not enthusiastic. But there was no pos-
sible criticism of Dr. Robert Latham except
that she did not like his brusque manners.
For Dr. Latham was a distinguished sur-
geon accustomed to giving orders and to
being obeyed, and on leaving New York
Nona had been placed under his especial
care. But in spite of her democratic prin-
ciples, although entirely unaware of the
fact herself, Sonya had also been accustomed
to rule. There had been no difficulty
between her and Dr. Latham beyond the
fact that they did not seem to like each
other, and Sonya had avoided him when-
ever it was possible.

20

With the Italian Army

She came back now with the three other
Red Cross nurses who were crossing to
nurse under the Italian flag.

^‘Dr. Latham, will you look after the
young soldier?’^ she asked. ‘‘We can take
care of ourselves, and he seems almost
in a state of collapse. ”

Again Nona looked toward the young
man whom she had been defending, but
whom she had since forgotten, while Sonya
remembered.

He was leaning over the ship’s rail —
just as he had when he first came on deck —
with his face deathly pale and his large
dark eyes fixed on the same faraway place
on the water.

“I shall do nothing of the kind,” Dr.
Latham answered abruptly. “The young
man can look after himself. This is a case
of artistic temperament, fine material for
a soldier. I’ll see every woman aboard in
the first lifeboat.”

“I shall go last,” Sonya answered.

But that instant an order was given by
some officer and, before she had time to
protest, Sonya found herself following the

The New Day

21

other women into the first lifeboat, and
being assisted down the ladder by Dr.
Latham.

The next instant the young Italian was
also with them, he being the first man, by
Dr. Latham’s aid, to leave the ship.

When the command came to pull away
it may have been curious, but neither Nona
nor Sonya were alarmed. The sea was so
calm and blue; it was still early afternoon
and the coast of Italy could not lie very
far away.

CHAPTER II

The Night

“I will die cheering, if I needs must die;

So shall my last breath write upon my lips
Viva Italia! when my spirit slips
Down the great darkness from the mountain sky;
And those who shall behold me where I lie
Shall murmur — ‘Look you! how his spirit dips
From glory into glory! The eclipse
Of death is vanquished! Lo, his victory cry.’ ”

IT seemed strange to hear this new song
of victory ring out over the waters of
the Mediterranean Sea at the darkest
hour of the night, and yet every human
being aboard the lifeboat listened and was
helped by it.

It was Sonya who had persuaded the
young Italian to sing, and his voice was very
clear and very beautiful.

Nona found herself listening with eyes
half closed, as she was worn out with
anxiety and fatigue. For, at last, all the
(22)

The Night

23

other voices of fear, bitterness and repining
were stilled.

If, without any particular sensation of
fear, Nona had found herself aboard a
small boat being rowed by sailors after the
torpedoing of their vessel the afternoon
before, she had just been passing through
what she believed was the longest and
hardest night of her life. And yet she
remembered the night when she had gone
with the Russian army in their retreat
across ruined villages and frozen fields.

For the Mediterranean, which had been
so blue and friendly at the hour of their
accident, about sundown had changed, as
it frequently does.

Suddenly the sky and sea had both dark-
ened until they were no longer blue but
black; the sun had quickly vanished and
afterwards a cold mist arose.

But until this occurred the passengers in
the lifeboat with Nona and Sonya had made
every effort to remain cheerful.

Nona had suggested that. In ancient days
men and women often crossed the seas in
galleys rowed by strong oarsmen, so why

24

With the Italian Army

not pretend they were captives being
brought to Rome under a guard of sailors?
Actually she and Mollie Drew — one of the
other Red Cross nurses — and one with a
real Irish ancestry — argued the question as
to which of them was the ‘‘Captive Prin-
cess.’^

It was not that the two girls intended
being frivolous, or that they failed to ap-
preciate the gravity of the situation, but
that they wished to show good courage.
For a little later, when they had moved
a safe distance from their ship, but
were still near enough to watch her go
down, Mollie collapsed and with true Irish
suddenness hid her face In the folds of
Sonya’s coat.

However, the torpedoed ship did not sink
as soon as her officers had expected. When
she did, each man and woman who saw her
would like to have followed Mollle’s ex-
ample, although most of them simply
remained silent.

There is no more beautiful or perhaps
tragic sight than the sinking of a great ship.
Even at a considerable distance she could

The Night

25

be seen to plunge, struggle and then right
herself as if she were human. Then, just
before the water closed above her, it seemed
as if she uttered a forsaken cry.

^‘Another misfortune ofwar,’^ Dr. Latham
exclaimed to Nona, but in an unsteady
voice.

Nona made no effort to reply.

At the last moment Dr. Latham had
come aboard their lifeboat. There was
one more seat to be filled and it was well to
have a few men aboard beside the sailors.

Nevertheless it was not Dr. Latham who
took command, but in an unconscious
fashion it was Sonya.

In the past year, living with her Russian
friend, Nona Davis had made the dis-
covery that Sonya was now and then apt
to be* difficult when things were going
smoothly, but showed her real courage and
sweetness in misfortune.

You see, she had led so strange a life.
When she was a little Russian girl, with a
family of wealth and distinction, she had
been feted and adored. The little Sonya
was a great beauty and would one day

26

With the Italian Army

inherit great wealth. Then she had gone
away to school, where secretly she had
come in contact with principles of life
wholly new to her — the belief that there
should be no Czar; that Russia should be
free, and that all men were brothers. Then
Sonya had read Tolstoy’s writings and had
begun to study his principles of universal
peace. She had traveled in many lands,
still preaching her doctrine, and had re-
turned to Russia during the war, only to be
exiled to Siberia. But when her reprieve
came through an unexpected influence, and
Sonya returned to the United States with
the three Red Cross girls, she seemed
suddenly to have grown tired of all the
sorrows and arduous work of her past life.
After she and Nona had settled down in the
exquisite, peaceful old southern city of
Charleston, Sonya appeared to care only
to rest and to read. She had money
enough to make herself and Nona both
comfortable in a quiet fashion.

As a matter of fact, she had not wished
to return to any part of the European war
zone. Sonya was weary of tragedy and

The Night

27

felt she had earned the right to a more
placid existence. It was only Nona Davis’
determination to continue her Red Cross
nursing in Italy which had finally influenced
her friend. But, even then, Sonya had
insisted she would do nothing but take a
small villa in Italy, where she would be
near enough to Nona to be of service to
her, if necessary.

Nevertheless, on board the lifeboat it
was Sonya who was doing more than any
one else to encourage her fellow travelers.

From the first Nona’s friend — the young
Italian, Carlo Navara, whom Sonya had
disliked — had depended upon her in an
almost absurd fashion.

Dr. Latham had been right. If the
young artist was going home to be a soldier,
he made a poor showing in his first contact
with danger.

The women — except Sonya — as well as
the men, made no effort to hide their scorn
of him, because the moment he took his
place along with the others he covered his
face with his hands, shaking as though he
were physically ill. And when the boat

28

With the Italian Army

lurched he would take his hands down to
cry out in terror.

He had such an unfortunate effect on the
others who were trying to be brave that
he might have been roughly treated if
Sonya had not been present.

Several times Dr. Latham shouted at
him, kindly at first.

“See here, young fellow, don’t you know
we are pretty fortunate.^ What’s the
trouble with you.^ Aren’t we all in life-
boats without the loss of a life? And isn’t
the sea calm? This isn’t the Atlantic
Ocean, where there might be oreason for
alarm.”

But this was not the kind of conversa-
tion that ever comforts anyone, although
there are people who believe one is happier
in remembering that some one else is more
wretched. Yet it seems a poor consola-
tion always.

At any rate. Carlo paid no attention to
the doctor’s brusque efforts, and had it not
been for Sonya would probably have
gone to pieces altogether.

Several times Nona felt sorry that she

The Night

29

had ever made friends or championed the
young Italian. But she was really almost
asleep, with her head resting against the
big doctor’s great shaggy coat, when Carlo
began to sing.

It must have been about two or three
o’clock in the morning. For six or eight
hours the small boat had been tossed by the
choppy waves which had followed the sink-
ing of the sun. There was food and water
aboard, nevertheless by this time Nona and
most of the other women felt too ill to
think of touching food. Sonya and Dr.
Latham, working together, had forced all
of them to have a little food at midnight
as well as at the dinner hour the night
before.

It was Sonya, also, who asked Mollie
Drew to take care of the one child aboard,
so the mother could sleep. Thus Mollie
was kept from thinking too much about
herself.

Then, when everybody’s courage was
going — and when the sailors were too weary
to do more than keep the lifeboat afloat —
Sonya had commanded the young Italian
musician to see if a song would be of service.

30

With the Italian Army

He had insisted that it would be useless,
but Sonya had been determined and, as
he had yielded to her influence before, he
must do so again.

Then, as he sang, his self-respect came
back to him.

It was a wonderful experience Nona felt
— even in the midst of her discomfort and
suffering. For she was stiff and aching
from so many long hours in a cramped
position. She was also cold and wet
through her heavy coat and was beginning
to believe they would never be rescued.

“Live, thou, upon my lips, Italia mine.

The sacred death-cry of my frozen clay!

Let thy dear light upon my body shine
And to the passerby this message say:

Ecco! though heaven has made my skies divine,
My deep love sanctifies my soul for aye.”

More beautiful than before was the voice
which rang out over the waters, with a
triumphant note closing this last verse. |

When the song ceased Nona must have
fallen into a real sleep.

For, when she awoke It was almost dawn.

The Night

31

and it seemed to her the sea was growing
quieter. Except for the sailors, who were
on watch, everybody in the lifeboat ap-
peared to be either wholly asleep or in a
stupor.

Nona could hear the big doctor, who sat
beside her, making strange noises.

Only Sonya, sitting alone and at some
distance off, Nona found to be still awake.

She must have been very tired, and yet
it seemed to Nona that she had never seen
her friend more beautiful.

Sonya wore a long, severely plain blue
coat, and the heavy veil which had been
bound about her head had become un-
loosened and was now floating backward in
the morning mist. Out of the pallor of her
face, her blue eyes showed with extraor-
dinary depth of beauty and color, while her
mouth wore an expression of infinite wist-
fulness and sympathy.

Yet it was Sonya and one of the sailors
who almost at the same instant sighted a
little Italian fishing boat.

It had come forth early from Naples,
risking the dangers in order to be first at

32

With the Italian Army

the fishing. For food was dear in Italy, as
elsewhere, and fish one of the things upon
which the poor depended.

The first pink hue had begun to show
very faintly in the pearl of the sky, yet
the sails of the small fishing boats were of
a deep rose color.

Certainly they looked rose color, indeed,
when the little smack, hearing the signal of
distress before she caught sight of the life-
boat, came into view of the shipwrecked
men and women with all her little sails
bravely flying.

Some hours later Nona Davis had her
first vision of Italy, and felt almost as if
it repaid her for what she had just passed
through.

The water of the bay of Naples was blue
once more; the city a glory of color shin-
ing by this time in the midday sun, and
beyond lay Mount Vesuvius forming a kind
of amethyst, brooding cloud above the city.

Nona was standing by the tall doctor,
who seemed in a measure to have adopted
her in the last twelve hours, when their
sail boat rode into the bay with its unex-

The Night

33

pectedly large number of passengers. But,
somehow, the news had preceded the boat,
as the shore was lined with friendly, sympa-
thetic Italian faces, with a waving of Italian
and one or two American flags.

Sonya had been with some other people,
but came up at this instant to join Nona
and the doctor.

‘‘Remember what Goethe says, Nona
dear, whatever befalls us, ‘He who can
remember Naples can never more be quite
unhappy.”^

CHAPTER III

Italia '

The next afternoon at four o’clock
Sonya and Nona and the three new
Red Cross nurses were having tea
on the broad terrace of the Bertolini, which
overhangs Naples. Below them lay the
city and the bay, and in front, wrapped in
her usual amethyst cloud, stood Vesuvius.

Although it was only late February,
spring was soon coming to southern Italy.
Already the quiver of her arrows had been
felt in the gardens and woods, as the shrubs
and the branches of the trees were green;
the almond and cherry buds were begin-
ning to open; and their fragrance filled the
air with a wonderful perfume.

The manner in which the girls were
drinking tea and eating strange Italian
sweets would have suggested to no one the
peril through which they had just passed.
But then there was no sign of gloom or

(34)

Italia

35

of war among the Italian visitors at the
garden. There were a few soldiers wearing
uniforms, but this would have been true
in times of peace in Italy.

I declare it is worth everything we have
suffered to spend just this one afternoon in
such an enchanted place!” Mollie Drew
exclaimed with true Irish abandon to the
emotion of the moment. “I never dreamed
Italy was so lovely. In coming over here
to nurse, one feels as if Italy would do
more for us than we can ever do for her.”

‘‘Open my heart and you will see graved
inside of it, ‘Italy’,” Nona responded,
holding her tea cup in her hand and gazing
at the wonderful panorama about them.

Not far off, down the slope of the terrace,
stood a beautiful Cedar of Lebanon, its
green branches spreading forth like a canopy
with the deeper green tone beneath, while
half-way up its trunk a cluster of young
cherry trees were covered with white mists
of blossoms.

Sonya Valesky had not been paying
much attention to the conversation of the
four girls, but she now glanced toward Nona
Davis and smiled.

36

With the Italian Army

‘‘Nona, do I have to hear you quote
poetry from the time we start for Italy
until we return home? Because it seems to
me you break into rhyme with almost every
other sentence. I trust you will try Italian
poetry upon the Italian soldiers when you
are nursing. I wonder if you girls know
more of the language than Nona and I do?
We have been studying for the past few
months, and long ago I thought I knew a
little Italian.”

In finding herself apparently acting as
chaperon for four Red Cross girls instead of
oney Sonya was surprised, and had not yet
had an opportunity to make up her mind
whether she were altogether pleased. At
present, however, she appeared to have no
choice in the matter.

When she and Nona had finally concluded
to come to Italy, Nona had written to
several friends engaged in Red Cross work
in New York City and through them had
made their plans for the trip to Italy. At
the time Nona was told that three or four
other Red Cross nurses would probably be
going over on the same steamer, and a

I

Italia

37

prominent New York physican as well, but
there had been no meeting between any of
them until they had found one another on
the ship.

But, even then, as Sonya had preferred
to spend a good part of each day in her
stateroom, she had left most of the friend-
liness to Nona, and had only talked to the
other Red Cross girls a few times, and with-
out any suggestion of a future intimacy.

But the night they had passed together
in danger appeared to have altered their
relation.

The morning after their safe arrival in
Naples, Mollie Drew had come into Nona’s
and Sonya’s room, first to thank Sonya for
her kindness the night before and also to
apologize for what she chose to call her
own lack of self-control Afterwards she
said frankly:

‘‘I don’t know whether either of you is
interested to know anything about me, but
if you don’t mind I’d like to have you
know. I have just taken the nurse’s train-
ing for the past two years in order to help
with the war nursing. My father used to

38

With the Italian Army

be an Irish politician in New York City
and we had considerable money. But as
he has lost most of it and married again, and
there are a good many children in our
family, I thought I should learn to take
care of myself.’’

Mollie must have been about eighteen or
twenty. She was not very aristocratic in
appearance, but she was all the prettier for
this. Indeed, she was what one is apt to
consider a typical Irish girl. Her eyes were
very big and gray, with thick dark lashes
and brows, and with soft shadows under
them. She had a wealth of bright, reddish
hair and the delicate skin with the few
freckles which usually accompany it.

So far in their acquaintance Mollie had
appeared entirely demure and sweet-tem-
pered, but Sonya wondered if these char-
acteristics would continue under different
circumstances. For the present Mollie had
taken a great fancy to her and wished to
make a good impression.

On board the steamer, Dolores King —
the second of the new Red Cross girls — had
exchanged confidences with Nona Davis.

Italia

39

Dolores was from New Orleans and belonged
to an old Creole family. So, as she and
Nona were both southerners, a bond had
straightway been established between them.
Even on board the steamer they had spent
a good deal of time together and planned
to work together if possible, since Nona
dreaded the loneliness without the former
Red Cross girls.

As a matter of fact, the two girls formed
a really charming picture together. Nona
Davis was as tall and delicately fair as the
proverbial fairy princess, while Dolores
King’s Spanish name suggested her appear-
ance. She was a dainty little thing, very
vivacious and daring, yet dark and vivid
as a tropical flower.

The third new girl — ^Agatha Burton —
had light brown hair and eyes, a quiet
manner, and although friendly with the
others, so far had not considered it neces-
sary to say much concerning herself. She
also was a New York girl who had been
trained in a New York City hospital.

But it was Sonya who had allowed her
fellow travelers to know nothing of her

40

With the Italian Army

past history. In agreeing to come abroad
with Nona Davis, whom she had adopted
and regarded almost as a younger sister,
Sonya had made Nona promise to keep her
story a secret. For Sonya was weary of
the curiosity and the interest and question-
ing which any knowledge of her life always
excited among strangers. Her foreign name
was enough to make people curious, and
Sonya still continued to be called Madame
Valesky, although she had never married.
She had decided that she preferred to be
regarded merely as a society woman who
had spent a conventional life. As she had
sufficient money for herself and Nona to
live upon quietly, and as her own beauty
and rather unusual social distinction gave
this impression, Sonya had no difficulty in
establishing the reputation.

‘H know Italian fairly' well and will be
glad to be of assistance at any time,” Agatha
Burton now replied. “I suppose we will
travel a part of the distance to the north of
Italy together.”

But no one paid much attention to her
answer, because just then Nona began to

Italia

41

wave her hand and cause a mild disturbance
among the groups of people at the tea tables,
who were always prepared to be amused by
American girls.

‘‘There is Dr. Latham wandering about
and looking like a shabby old bear among
all these handsome Italians. Suppose I
ask him to join us.^”

But, without waiting for an invitation, the
big doctor came lumbering up.

He must have been about forty, but
appeared much older, as his hair was gray
and his eyebrows shaggy over his fine keen
eyes. Since the war began he had made
several discoveries of great importance to
the care of the wounded and his journey
to Italy was being made for the purpose of
explaining his discoveries to the Italian
medical profession.

Now, without revealing the fact, he
quietly observed the entire group of women
and knew how they were feeling with one
apparently casual glance.

The four girls he saw had entirely re-
covered from the night of stress through
which they had all so recently passed. But

42

With the Italian Army

the good-looking woman, whose name was
too difficult to remember and who was not
disposed to be pleased with him, appeared
much the worse for wear.

“Well, that is natural enough, as she is
older than the others,’’ Dr. Latham con-
cluded, while Nona and Dolores — the two
girls for whom he had showed a decided
liking during their crossing — made a place
for him between them.

However, Dr. Latham had confessed to
himself that Sonya’s courage and self-
possession the night of their disaster had
amazed him, as his particular bhe noir
was the type of idle, society women whom
he believed she represented.

To be idle, or to care for society at any
time, Dr. Latham considered an evidence
of mental weakness. But to be either of
those things, with almost the entire world
at war, showed a moral weakness as well.

Yet, for some reason, which she could
scarcely have explained to herself, Sonya
rather enjoyed encouraging the “good doc-
tor’s” poor opinion of her. She had asked
Nona particularly not to undeceive him.

Italia

43

If Dr. Latham had known she had spoken
of him as the ‘‘good doctor” he would
have liked her even less.

“May I give you some tea.^ Did you
ever see any place in your entire life so
beautiful and so romantic as Naples.^ Of
course I have to quote poetry in Italy,
when Italy is the home of romance and
beauty!” Nona ejaculated, not waiting for
a reply to any of her rapid-fire questions.

However, Dr. Latham shook his head
over the suggestion of tea.

“Don’t believe in stimulants, though I
suppose tea is the best of the lot ! See here,
Miss Nona, it is all very well for girls to
talk about the romance of Italy, but I
wonder how much you American girls
know of her history? Are you familiar
with the story of the new Italy, Madame?

So unexpectedly did Dr. Latham now
turn upon Sonya that she started, as she
was scarcely listening to him.

Why, no, I’m afraid not. But perhaps
information is not so important to me, as
I’ve no knowledge and no idea of doing
Red Cross work.”

44

With the Italian Army

Sonya’s tone was intentionally careless.
She did not desire the American doctor to
consider that he had any interest in her or
authority over her. He might feel he
possessed both with regard to the American
Red Cross nurses.

But that instant Nona frowned with evi-
dent annoyance upon Sonya. They were
devoted to each other, but this did not
prevent them from having occasional quar-
rels. Few people who live together escape
entirely, but more particularly they do not
when they happen to be two girls or women.

Nona really liked and admired the cele-
brated New York physician immensely and
did not intend that Sonya should be rude
to him.

“But the rest of us are going to nurse
and would like you to tell us something of
recent Italian history very much indeed,”
she insisted warmly, becoming more an-
noyed by Sonya’s slow teasing smile.

“You see, I have been wondering why
one always speaks of Italy as a democracy
when Italy has a king.”

The big doctor grunted.

Italia

45

‘‘Yes, that is true; but you’ll soon be
finding out there are no more truly demo-
cratic people in the world in spirit than these
same Italians. And their king, I hear, has
only been away from the front for two days
since Italy’s war began. A great, little
man, this Vittorio Emanuele III! Do you
realize Italy is the only country in history
that has ever had a rebirth of greatness
and that there have been only three kings
since the new Italy began?”

Dr. Latham smiled good-naturedly at
Sonya.

“I hope I am not boring everybody too
much, but this story of modern Italy is
rather a passion with me. My grand-
father fought with Garabaldi to free Italy
from Austria in 1848 and to create a united
country. Now I am also trying to fight in
the way I hope to be of most value for the
Italia Irredenta.”

The American doctor paused as if he
were a little embarrassed by his own
enthusiasm.

But before any one else could reply,
Mollie Drew leaned over the tea table and
said:

46

With the Italian Anny

‘‘I am a very ignorant Irish person, big
Doctor, so please do not tell on me. I have
never had the courage to make this con-
fession until now. But, honestly, I don’t
know what ‘Italia Irredenta’ means, al-
though I have been hearing the expression
ever since Italy entered the present war.”

Dr. Latham laughed, pleased with Mol-
lie’s honesty.

“Probably a good many other persons
are in the same state. Miss Drew, but will
not confess. Nevertheless, as we are going
to nurse the wounded from the neighbor-
hood of this same Italia Irredenta, we ought
to understand. You see, when Italy was
freed by her three great patriots — Cavour
her political, Mazzini her spiritual, and
Garabaldi her fighting patriot — and when
all the little kingdoms in which Italy was
then divided were transformed into the
present Italy, the Italians wished the high
border of the Alps for the natural border
of their country. This was true before the
time of Christ. Yet, in the last revolu-
tion, they succeeded in securing only a
small portion of their beautiful white chain

Italia

47

of hills. Austria still controls the highest
summits of the Alps and some of Italy’s
oldest cities. These are the provinces on
the Austrian frontier — the Italia Irredenta
— ^which Italy is striving to win back.
Italy also is fighting for peace and the future
of civilization. There was never before
so single a cause in all the world’s history!”

Then the big doctor made an awkward,
shamefaced bow.

^^But I’m not a German professor in dis-
guise. In future I promise to swallow all
the information I may be able to find
concerning Italy, or anything else, if you
will say you forgive me for making my one
historical lecture. In future I’ll stick to
my own subjects.”

Nona Davis nodded and then sighed.

‘‘As long as the lecture is over there is
nothing else we can do, though a ‘little
learning is a dangerous thing,’ please re-
member.” Then she lowered her voice a
little.

“But don’t talk about being a ‘German’
please. Doctor — even in fun — ^when we are
in an enemy country.' I suppose, because

48

With the Italian Army

I have been doing Red Cross nursing so
long and have had so many queer experi-
ences, I have grown to believe no one can
be too careful. One never can guess, and
the most unlikely person is often suspected.
Besides, I know you will think I am only
self-conscious, or worse, but I have had a
sensation as if we were being watched
pretty carefully ever since we arrived in
Naples.’’

The big doctor shook himself and laughed.

‘‘American girls are fairly apt to be
noticed in Italy — or watched, if you like
the word better — at all times. I don’t
think you will be the exception. But if
you are thinking of returning to your hotel
I should like to see you safely there. More-
over, I should like to speak to you alone,
Madame.”

He turned to Sonya and arose.

Mystified, she got up, the four girls fol-
lowing her example.

It was impossible to imagine what the
American doctor could have to tell her which
he did not wish her companions to hear.
She had certainly made every effort to

Italia

49

discourage any possible intimacy or even
further acquaintance between them. But
plainly he was not easily to be discouraged
or set aside from any purpose he might
have in mind. Sonya was accustomed to
having men admire her; yet she realized
the American doctor not only did not
admire, but even distrusted and disliked
her. Therefore his confidence could have
nothing to do with himself. However, she
had to acknowledge to herself that he had
a force that was difficult to disregard.

Walking on ahead with Dr. Latham, she
did not observe, although Nona Davis did,
that two young men, who had been at one
of the tea tables not far away, kept their
party in sight, by following them at a
respectful distance.

But this was because Dr. Latham began
on his subject without wasting any time in
preliminaries.

^Ht is about that young musician who
crossed with us that I wish to speak. I
might as well tell you, Madame Valesky,
I may understand sick bodies, but not sick
minds. And that is what I presume is at

50

With the Italian Army

present the trouble with this young Italian.
In any case, I had a note from him this
morning bidding me come to him as soon
as possible. I thought the boy might be
ill with a sore throat or some other ailment
from that nonsense of singing in the damp
air of the night. But his voice seems un-
affected, for he told me a long story. He
seems to feel he eternally disgraced him-
self by his cowardice and so never dares
trust himself to become a soldier. I was
to say a great deal to the various signoritas,
to beg their forgiveness and their prayers
in a hundred different ways and ask them
to remember him kindly. Oh, stuff and
nonsense, the end of the boy’s confidence
was that he was planning to do away with
himself in a fit of remorse and dread of the
future. I told you his was a bad case of
artistic temperament.”

Sonya felt her head swimming a little.
She had not liked Nona’s intimacy with
the young Italian on board ship; neverthe-
less, he was a strangely gifted boy and
somehow his weakness and dependence on
her in the night of their common danger

Italia

51

had changed her feeling to one of interest.
She seemed to hear the boy’s magical voice
again singing so gallantly:

“I will die cheering, if I needs must die;

So shall my last breath write upon my lips
Viva Italia.”

‘‘And you left him alone, knowing that
he might — ”

But the gruff doctor interrupted her.

“Yes, I left him alone, but asleep from
a powder I gave him. Perhaps I am not
such a brute as you think, and maybe I
understand talented, wayward boys better
than you dream. Also, he promised me
not to carry out his threat until he had a
talk with you. You suddenly appear to
have been transformed into his Madonna
of Rescue and of Pity,” the big doctor
ended grimly the moment before he assisted
Sonya into her carriage, followed by Mollie
Drew and Dolores King. And then he
deliberately entered the second carriage
with Nona Davis and Agatha Burton.

But Sonya was scarcely conscious of what
became of him. She was fearing their new

52

With the Italian Army

acquaintance would not wait to talk with
her. Better than other people could im-
agine she knew what it was to feel one-
self a coward at a time when one longed to
be a hero.

CHAPTER IV

Villa Felice

SONYA and Nona drove out of the
Roman gate toward the hill country
surrounding Florence.

They had arrived in Florence only a
week before when the four Red Cross girls
had immediately become members of the
staff of the American Red Cross Hospital.

Sonya, however, had been living alone
in a quiet pension, from whence most of the
usual English, American and German guests
had vanished at the entrance of Italy into
the great war.

But now, on Nona’s first afternoon of
freedom, she and Sonya were on their way
outside the city to search for a small villa
which Sonya wished to rent for a few
months.

Nona leaned back in the rickety carriage.
She looked a little pale, but her blue eyes
were wide open and shining.

(53)

54

With the Italian Army

“Italy is rather overwhelming, the more
one sees of it, don’t you think, Sonya?”
she demanded, gazing backward at the
wide, clear arch of the gate through which
they had just passed, and then at the high-
walled lane through which their carriage
was slowly moving.

Sonya leaned over and took her compan-
ion’s hand. She seemed a good deal more
rested than the younger girl.

“It has been a trying week for you, I
have no doiibt, Nona, attempting to get
settled and to begin your nursing at the
hospital and I suppose to see as much of
Florence as possible in your walks. That
is why I have left you alone, and also to
allow you to become more intimate with
the other American nurses. I must not be
selfish, but I rather wish you were to spend
the next few months in idleness with me,
instead of so hard at work. It is the coun-
try in Italy that is so enchanting; once one
has seen all the great pictures and churches
one can appreciate.”

Nona laughed.

“I never knew any one so determined

Villa Felice

55

upon idleness, Sonya. But I must con-
fess I would not mind doing what you are
planning, if I did not feel that Red Cross
nursing was my duty. Besides, I have
already missed you dreadfully this past
week and have hundreds of questions to
ask you ? For one thing, whatever became
of my — of your young Italian singer.^ For
apparently he threw me over altogether
for you after our arrival in Naples. Did
he decide to go back to the United States
after his inglorious beginning as a hero.^’^

Sonya had been watching the landscape
as they drove out toward the exquisite hill
country surrounding the city of Florence,
which is said to be like a lily in the midst
of a garden gay with flowers. Beyond them
were the gray olive-clad hills and nearer,
the sloping vineyard country. Over the
walls clambered the thin, pale-green vines
of the roses that a little later were to make
Italy a glory of bloom.

Sonya frowned.

‘‘Don’t take that superior tone, Nona.
You have acquired it from your friend Dr.
Latham, who may be an excellent physician,

56

With the Italian Army

but whose sympathy I should never count
upon in any disaster. You should have
had enough experience with your nursing
to know by this time that temporary
cowardice means nothing, and particularly
when one has the nervous temperament of
an artist. Your young musician — not mine
— is a soldier by this time, I have no doubt.
He and I had a talk the morning before he
left Naples., I told you he sent farewells,
I assured him that we would be here in
Florence for the summer — you girls at
work, and I taking advantage of my age
by doing nothing. He has promised to let
me hear from him later on, but only in case
he distinguishes himself. Poor Carlo, I
presume vanity is another sign of the artis-
tic temperament, but I rather fear if he
waits for fame as a soldier we shall never
hear of him! However, I don’t wish to
talk of Carlo, Nona, but of my villa.”

‘‘Your villa.?”

Nona smiled. She was not accustomed
to seeing her companion appear so young
or so gay as this past week in Italy seemed
to have made her.

Villa Felice

57

‘‘I did not dream you had acquired a
villa so soon, Sonya. I thought we were
going only to look at one which is to let.
What is the use of my being taken along to
offer advice if you have already decided
what you intend doing?’’

Sonya opened her pocketbook to look
at a card.

“But I have not acquired anything yet,
Nona, except the name of the villa and
of the family who appear disposed to allow
some one else to occupy their place. I
don’t know why, I am sure, except that
people tell me since the war in Italy began
all the foreigners have been running away
to their own countries, until Italian pro-
perty is about half its former value.”

“Then, why this particular villa, Sonya,
instead of another?” Nona inquired
drowsily, not because she cared for any
definite answer from her companion, but
because it amused her to go on talking
idly, when she was in a lovely state of
relaxation from the strain of her work at
the hospital, and happy to be again with
Sonya.

58

With the Italian Army

There is no emotion of admiration and
affection keener than the one a young girl
is able to feel for an older woman, provided
the older woman has charm and a wide
experience of the world.

“Oh, for one reason, because I am charmed
with the name of this villa — the Villa
Felice, House of Happiness would be the
English translation. I wonder if that is
a good omen for me.^ I have not lived in
a House of Happiness since I was a tiny
girl and too young to realize what happi-
ness meant.” Perhaps that is why I am
allowing myself to be lazy for a little while,
when I ought of course to be helping, in-
stead of loafing in lovely Italy.”

Nona slipped her hand inside the older
woman’s caressingly.

“Oh, I am not in the least sure you are
going to be so idle as you plan, Sonya. I’d
like to bet with you a lovely string of coral
I saw today in a shop in the Ponte Vecchio.
that before many weeks you will be more
occupied with some kind of work for Italy,
even though it is not nursing, than any of
the rest of our party.”

Villa Felice

59

Sonya shook her head.

‘‘Don’t try to excuse me in that way.
But I do wish I knew how much English
the Italian woman who is caretaker at the
Villa Felice will know. It may be difficult
for us to come to an agreement.”

Then, for another ten or fifteen minutes,
neither of the two friends attempted to
speak, except for an occasional ejaculation.

It was a warm day of the blue and gold
of Italy.

By and by the ancient cabman, who wore
a top hat that looked as if it were used as
a footstool or a trash basket when it was
not serving as a hat, and a long blue coat
down to his heels, turned from the long
white lane through which he had been
driving and entered a white stone gate.

Rising on a row of terraces in front of
them, Nona and Sonya could see the gray
turrets of the villa which had been described
as the Villa Felice.

It was not a large house, but its size was
what had particularly commended it to
Sonya.

She and Nona got out of their cab, ask-

60

With the Italian Army

ing the driver to wait for them, and walked
up the white path to the house.

The little villa had rather a pathetic,
mysterious air, as if it had been deserted
without understanding the cause.

In the nearby garden there were small
clumps of cypress trees and tall vases of
beautiful Italian pottery — the Signa pot-
tery— in which were growing small orange
and lemon trees.

Sonya and Nona stood for a moment in
silence on the piazza, almost as if they were
listening for some unexpected noise. Then
Sonya raised the knocker and, letting it
fall again, the sound made both of them
involuntarily jump. It was almost as if
the noise echoed through an empty house.

Sonya knew almost nothing in regard to
the place she had come to see with the idea
of renting it. A woman in the pension
where she was boarding in Florence had
recommended the villa to her. It had been
the property of an acquaintance of hers,
who had died just before the outbreak of
the war. Later Sonya had seen the agent,
who explained that the house was in charge

Villa Felice

61

of a caretaker, and made an appointment
for her visit.

Therefore, as a matter of fact, the house
could not be so deserted as it appeared.

Moreover, the moment after her knock-
ing, Sonya, and of course Nona, heard the
reverberation of footsteps along the hall.

Sonya had been told that the caretaker
was a woman — an old servant who had
lived for many years with the former mis-
tress— but the footsteps sounded as if they
belonged to a man.

Both the newcomers felt a little nervous.
Italy was an unknown country to both of
them, and there was no one in sight. Even
their former cabman, whom they had left
at the bottom of the hill, had disappeared.
Moreover, these were war times and, al-
though they seemed at this moment far
removed from any kind of conflict, there is
not the same sense of security in any
country engaged in war.

Nona, who did not feel herself particu-
larly courageous in spite of her Red Cross
experiences, put her hand lightly on her
companion’s arm, perhaps with the idea of

62

With the Italian Army

mutual protection, just as the front door
opened.

However, they need not have been fright-
ened, for the figure they now beheld behind
the open door was a woman’s, and yet as
like a man’s as her footsteps had suggested.

In a land where most of the peasant
women were small and plump, Nannina
was nearly six feet high, lean and flat of
chest. She had deep-set dark eyes and a
prominent nose, like a Caesar’s.

She did not appear like an ordinary ser-
vant. Both Sonya and Nona were im-
mediately impressed by her strange manner
and bearing.

She spoke a little English and gave her
name, announcing that the two visitors
were expected.

Then, without wasting more time, she
started on a sight-seeing pilgrimage of the
house.

‘‘Yes, I have been living here twenty
years,” she replied in answer to a question
from Nona, “the Donna Elizabetta, who is
now dead” (and Nannina crossed herself),
“she and I were girls at the same time.”

Villa Felice

63

But if the Italian serving woman was at
present living in the Villa Felice there was
nothing about the looks of the house, except
its cleanliness, to suggest the fact. Every-
where it seemed dark and empty and cold.

Nevertheless when Nannina unbolted and
opened the windows of the drawing-room,
both Nona and Sonya uttered exclamations
of pleasure.

Neither one of them had ever seen a
room of just the same character.

The windows were leaded and arched and
had low iron railings outside. The room
itself was long and narrow, with a high
ceiling, and the walls were of plaster, pale
yellow in color, and hung with old pieces of
tapestry. There was an oval mirror with
a Florentine frame above the white Italian
marble mantel, and on either side hung a
portrait of a young girl. One picture must
have been painted when she was about six-
teen; the other when several years older.
Then, upon the mantelpiece, in heavy-
bronze frames — one under each of the por-
traits— were the photographs of two Italian
boys.

64

With the Italian Army

Nona found herself studying the two
portraits and the two photographs, while
Sonya made a more careful survey of the
ancient beautiful furniture of the drawing-
room.

“Could you imagine any more lovely
place to rest and dream than this little
house, Nona ^ ” Sonya Insisted, walking over
and glancing out the window at the
cypress-crowned row of terraces below her
and at the blue rim of the Apenines in a
far circle beyond. “But, of course, one
must allow more air and sunshine to enter
the house.”

Nona frowned, not altogether sympa-
thetically. She was tired and fighting a
certain amount of envy, almost of condem-
nation, of Sonya for planning to enjoy the
peace of this quiet villa, instead of being
engaged in some form of relief work. It
was true she had agreed with Sonya that
she had earned a right to rest, while she
herself kept on with her Red Cross work,
but at present Nona could not help feeling
that she was being the more virtuous in
refusing Sonya’s invitation to give up nurs-

Villa Felice

65

ing and work in some quieter, less strenuous
fashion here at the Villa Felice.

For it seemed to both of them a foregone
conclusion that Sonya would rent the villa
as soon as they started up the terrace and
had the first view of the house.

‘‘But aren’t there any members of the
Italian family left who formerly owned
this place Nona inquired, almost as if
she resented its desertion. “Surely your
beautiful Donna Elizabetta did not live here
alone before her death!”

The tall woman, who looked more like a
grenadier than a maid, was drawing her
hand softly over a carved table to see if it
held a speck of dust, but at Nona’s inquiry
she nodded toward the mantel.

“Yes, there are two sons — the Signor
Paulo, and the Signor Eugino Zoli. I
look after this place for them. It is they
who wish it rented.”

Isn’t there a girl in the family.^ Whose
portraits are these.?” Nona demanded, glanc-
ing up over the mantel, her curiosity still
unsatisfied.

There was no reason why her question

66

With the Italian Army

should make any one angry, unless the
Italian woman resented any curiosity in
regard to her family. For in Italy there
is so strong a feudal feeling that the ser-
vants of a house, if they have been a part
of it for sufficiently long, feel themselves
members of the same family.

Nona was continuing to gaze toward the
portraits after her speech, so she did not
notice that the peasant woman turned a
deep crimson and that her eyes flashed with
unexpected temper. But Sonya did ob-
serve her.

‘‘The portraits are of the Donna Eliza-
betta. There are no daughters in the fam-
ily,” she returned sullenly.

Apparently Nona was not to be dis-
couraged.

“What has become of the sons, then.^
Why do they wish to give up so charming
A place she queried, showing more in-
terest than good manners by her continuing
questions.

The serving woman crossed herself again.

“They are at the war; where else should
they be.^” she returned. But this time.

Villa Felice

67

although she spoke good-naturedly, Nona
appreciated that her question had been
both unnecessary and absurd. But then
she had imagined the two boys whom she
had seen in the photographs were of the
ages their pictures represented.

As she followed the two older women out
of the drawing-room to look over the other
part of the villa, Nona made up her mind
to remain quiet during the rest of their
investigation of the house. After all, the
villa was to be Sonya’s and not hers!

Afterwards they went together into the
dining-room and later up-stairs into three
bed-rooms. These rooms were not attrac-
tive; the rugs were old and the curtains
faded and colorless and the furniture dilapi-
dated. Two of the rooms had evidently
belonged to the young men in the family;
the third, which was the largest, was evi-
dently the apartment of the former mis-
tress of the villa.

‘‘I think I will have this room for mine,
Nona,” Sonya whispered. ‘T’ll not be
extravagant, but it will not take much
money to make these bed-rooms at least

68

With the Italian Army

ordinarily pretty and livable. Which do
you wish for yours ? ’’

As Sonya made this remark she chanced
to be standing at the entrance to one of the«
rooms. Across the small hall was another
door, which had not been opened.

Nannina was Inside one of the further
rooms, adjusting a fallen curtain.

Without appreciating that she was doing
anything she should not and, of course,
supposing the house to be empty, Sonya
suddenly stepped across the hall and turned
the knob of the unexplored room.

Then she moved back with an exclama-
tion of surprise and apology.

Nona was Immediately behind her, but
Sonya stood still.

This room was also a bed-room, but
utterly different in its furnishings from the
others. The walls of this room were
painted a deep rose color, there were little
white curtains at the odd-shaped windows,
the bed had a fine white cover over it and
the little table and dresser had tall brass
candlesticks filled with fresh white candles.
And standing in the center of the room, in a

Villa Felice

69

quaint, old-fashioned dress, Nona saw one
of the prettiest girls she had ever beheld
in her life.

She looked as if she were only about
fourteen or fifteen. Instead of being dark,
as one imagines all Italians to be, she had
long, fair hair, as light as Nona’s, but her
eyes were very soft and black with shadowy
lashes.

She made a little curtsy to Sonya.

‘‘I am sorry if I frightened you,” she
began, speaking perfect English, but look-
ing very shy and frightened herself. “My
mother told me to remain in here. She
said the American ladies would not look
into this room and later, if they took the
villa, I could move away without troubling
them.”

“Your mother?” Nona found herself re-
peating stupidly. They had seen no one
who could possibly be the mother of this
exquisite girl.

CHAPTER V

Bianca

But by this time the Italian woman,
Nannina, had joined the little group.
Both Nona and Sonya observed that
she seemed oddly disturbed.

Nevertheless she bowed respectfully to
Sonya.

‘‘This is my daughter’s room,” she began
half sullenly and half apologetically. “I
thought it would not matter if people look-
ing over the house should not see this one
room. I intended to tell you it was not
to be shown to visitors. You may think
it strange that my daughter should be
living in this part of the house, now that
the mistress and the masters are no longer
at home, but this has been her room always.
The Donna Elizabetta, having no daughter
of her own, treated my child almost as if
she were her own.”

All the while this explanation was taking

(70)

Bianca

71

place, Nona found her eyes turning from
the figure of the Italian peasant woman to
the girl. To Nona she appeared like a
child — she was so small and delicately made
and her manner was so timid and appeal-
ing. Really the idea that the girl could be
this gaunt, fierce woman’s daughter seemed
ridiculously like a fairy story — the story of
some lovely Princess being hidden away
by a bad fairy.

“Bianca, will you show the ladies down
to the piazza.^ I will bring them tea in a
few moments,” Nannina added in a per-
fectly matter-of-fact tone the next moment,
when Sonya had apologized for her own
impulsive action.

Then the two girls found their way to
the piazza together, while the two older
women lingered for the further discussion
of the renting of the villa. i

Nona felt a little nervous over what she
and her unexpected acquaintance could have
to say to each other. As she was so much
the older, it seemed that the responsibility
ought to be hers. Moreover, Bianca,
whose first name was all she at present

72

With the Italian Army

knew, was evidently too shy to take the
initiative.

However, Nona was mistaken. Even if
the younger girl were shy, she had been too
well brought up not to do whatever was
proper.

She led Nona to a little collection of
chairs at one end of the piazza, overlooking
the terraced garden. She pointed out the
best view, asked her guest if she were
fatigued by her drive and then sat with her
hands folded in her lap, as if she considered
her duty entirely accomplished.

Nona felt both interested and amused by
her companion. She could scarcely im-
agine an American girl with so much manner
and at the same time so little. It was
exactly as if Bianca had rehearsed a part,
which she played as prettily as she knew
how, but as if her real self were hidden.

Had she not been so pretty and the con-
ditions of her life so unusual, Nona could
not decide that she would npt have been
annoyed by her. American girls, above all
other things, like other girls to be natural.
They can even forgive their being crude

Bianca

73

and making mistakes, so long as they are
honest and genuine. But Bianca was a
kind of puzzle; one could not understand
her personality easily.

“It is very pleasant to find you speak
English so well; we Americans are dread-
fully stupid about foreign languages,” Nona
volunteered, by way of making conversa-
tion.

The Italian girl’s lips parted. She had
small, perfect white teeth.

“Oh,” she returned politely, “that can-
not be true! We are always told that the
American girl is the cleverest and the most
charming in the whole world. I speak
English because the Donna Elizabetta was
also an American woman. She taught us
to speak her language from the time we
were tiny children.”

It occurred to Nona to wonder why the
Italian girl spoke of “us” and of “we?”
Then she remembered that Bianca prob-
ably included the two Italian boys, with
whom she had grown up in a peculiar
relation. It must have been as if they
were the little Italian girl’s brothers and

74

With the Italian Army

at the same time were no relation to her.
Nona had a sudden vision of how hard the
future might be for a girl as pretty as this
one and brought up in the queer way she
must have been.

‘‘You are nursing the wounded Italian
soldiers, are you not?” Bianca asked sud-
denly. “We Italians were so surprised at
first by the American ladies coming over
to help us. You see, in Italy, before this
present war began, the Italian ladies did
not nurse the sick. They left nursing to
the peasants and to the Sisters of Charity.
But now, since the English and the Ameri-
cans and the French ladies have assisted
in the care of the wounded, the Italian
ladies are also working for them. I have
told my mother this, for I wish I could be
allowed to help.”

“Oh, you are too young,” Nona answered
good natu redly and condescendingly. Nat-
urally after two years of Red Cross nurs-
ing, she had a somewhat superior attitude
toward any suggestion of amateur nursing,
knowing as she now did just what expert
care and skill the wounded soldiers re-

Bianca

75

quired, and how much they had suffered
from the well-meant but unskilful efforts
at the beginning of the war.

‘‘I am not so young as you think,” the
Italian girl returned; ‘‘I am already six-
teen. Most persons believe I am younger.
Of course I know I could not be a real Red
Cross nurse, but there must be some work
I can do. I get very tired remaining
always idle, unless I am at work with my
music or books. You see, my mother will
not allow me to help her.”

Nona had been permitting her mind to
wander a little while the younger girl was
talking. As a matter of fact, almost every
girl she had met recently had confided her
wish to become a Red Cross nurse, until
Nona was weary of hearing them. Some
might be in earnest, but most of them
could not imagine the sacrifices and dangers
and the being so deadly tired a good part
of the time, that the business of nursing
required. It was the romance — not the
real work — which made the appeal.

Now Nona was not in the least interested
in Bianca’s expressed desire, but she was

76

With the Italian Army

interested in the girl’s own history, which
her few words had unfolded. Evidently
the peasant woman was endeavoring to
bring up her daughter to occupy a position
entirely different from her own.

Nona could not help wondering just why
she desired this, and how she expected to
be successful. She would like to have
known if there were any money for the
girl’s education, or if the friend who had
been kind to her had made any plans for
her future.^ But, of course, there was no
way of finding out these things from a
stranger, since good taste forbade one asking
such intimate questions. Moreover, Nona
did not feel that she understood enough of
Italian society to appreciate how successful
Nannina’s efforts for her child might be.
Even in the United States Bianca might
have a difficult time, although now and
then a girl of unusual beauty or ability was
able to accomplish almost anything she
desired with sufficient earnestness.

But did Bianca desire anything unusual
for herself, or was the ambition only her
mother’s for her?

Bianca

77

Nona was again glancing at the younger
girl more curiously than one ordinarily
does toward a stranger, when suddenly she
saw her expression change.

A moment before she had been shy and
serious; now her face flushed and she
jumped up with unexpected animation.

^^Gino and Paulo are coming!’’ she ex-
plained. “They promised, if it were pos-
sible, they would come to see if the American
ladies desired to rent the villa. You will
pardon me.”

Nona watched the little girl run lightly
down the stone walk between the terraces.
For Bianca was so small it was difficult to
remember or to believe she was sixteen
years old.

At almost the same time Nona also dis-
covered two young men approaching.

They were unlike in appearance; one
of them tall and slender with the dark hair
and eyes and the well-cut features one
expects in an Italian of gentle breeding.
The other, who held his cap in his hand, had
gold-brown hair and a small, closely trim-
med beard. He was probably the older.

78

With the Italian Army

although there did not appear to be much
difference in the ages of the two brothers.
But it was to him Bianca evidently ad-
dressed her story, and she came up to the
house with her hand in his.

Both young men were dressed in the
khaki service uniforms of the Italian sol-
dier. But Nona recognized that the older
one of them was an aviator.

Almost at once they walked up on the
piazza to speak to her, Bianca having evi-
dently explained her presence. And, for-
tunately, Sonya joined them, while Blanca
was introducing her two foster brothers.

The older of the two men, whom Bianca
called Gino, was the one to whom Nona
felt attracted, although he was less hand-
some than his brother. But on closer
observation she saw that he had wide-open,
warm, steel-gray eyes with a humorous
expression. Also his manner was friendly
and charming.

He and Sonya did the greater part of the
talking.

“I am sure my brother and I shall be
most happy to have two Americans occupy

Bianca

79

our home if you are pleased. My mother
was also an American and we therefore
feel ourselves partly so,” he added, looking
so unlike an American at the moment that
Sonya smiled.

^^But I am not an American and, although
Miss Davis is. I’m afraid she is not going
to live here with me, although she has
promised to be with me whenever it is
possible. You see, she has come to Italy
to help with the nursing at the American
Red Cross Hospital in Florence.”

‘‘Then one of us may some day have the
good fortune to have you as a nurse,” the
younger of the two young men interrupted.
Bianca spoke to him as “Paulo.” He
seemed to Nona to show more gallantry
than common sense.

She shook her head in a disturbed fashion.

“I hope not. You see, I have been
nursing since the early part of the present
war and I often wonder why nearly all
soldiers speak so lightly of being wounded.
I am afraid they don’t know what we nurses
do.”

She turned to the older brother.

80

With the Italian Army

“You are an aviator, Signor Zoli?’’

But Paulo again interrupted. Either
he was very talkative, or else he did not
intend having the American girl’s atten-
tion turned solely upon his brother.

“Oh, Gino chose the air for his soldiering
because it is the easiek job in Italy these
days. You see, he is an artist when he is
not a soldier and, whatever he may tell
you, he does not like roughing it. I wonder
if you realize that the war between the
Italian and Austrian soldiers is being fought
at present in the Trentino in the highest
altitude that war has ever been known.”

“Yes, and Paulo belongs to the Alps
Brigade — the Hunters of the Alps. Gara-
baldi’s grandsons are in the same brigade,’^
the older brother answered, smiling with a
kind of good-natured carelessness.

It seemed to Nona that this good-natured
carelessness was a marked characteristic of
his. She noticed it in his manner toward
Bianca, who in spite of her reserve did not
fail to reveal her preference for him. He
treated her as one might a younger sister,
but showed her no special attention or
affection.

Bianca

81

As a matter of fact, it seemed to be Paulo
who was more interested and fonder of the
little girl. Several times during the general
conversation he would lean over and say
something which was intended only for her.
Once, when he supposed no one to be observ-
ing them, he drew out a little box and
handed it to her. Later Nona saw the
girl’s delicately fair cheeks flush as she
opened the box and pinned a tiny spray
of pink coral in her old-fashioned muslin
dress.

When Nannina finally appeared with the
tea tray, Nona and Sonya were both in-
terested to see how the little girl would
behave, and if she would make any effort
to assist her mother.

But Bianca behaved exactly as if she were
the real daughter of the house. She took
her place behind the tea table, serving the
tea as only a well brought up foreign girl
could. Whatever she wished she asked
Nannina for politely but did not attempt
to relieve her in any way.

And the two young men seemed to take
her attitude as entirely a matter of course.

82

With the Italian Army

They were evidently accustomed to having
Bianca behave exactly as she did behave.

Nona Davis was not at all sure that she
liked or approved of the situation.

On the way back to Florence, Sonya
remarked carelessly:

‘‘Oh, Nona, I did not have the oppor-
tunity to tell you, but the Italian woman,
Nannina, has promised to stay on at the
Villa Felice as my housekeeper. It will be
splendid for me to have some one who knows
the neighborhood and the customs of the
country. Besides, I suppose she would
feel rather desolate to be turned out of a
place in which she has lived so long. I
spoke of her staying to the two Signors and
they appeared much relieved. I presume
Nannina’s future has been a problem for
them.”

“Nannia’s future? I should think Bianca’s
future would be more serious,” Nona an-
swered a little irritably. “I wonder, Sonya,
if you have thought just what you will do
having Bianca in the same house with you
under the peculiar conditions in which she
lives. Are you also going to adopt her as
your daughter?”

Bianca

83

— f

There was no doubting the fact that
Nona was jealous of the possible situation
ahead. Not in the least did she enjoy the
idea of Sonya’s having another girl living
with her, as she had been doing since their
return from Russia. Moreover, Bianca
was extraordinarily pretty and appealing.
She was the gentle, exquisite type of girl
for whom most people do a great deal
under the impression that a girl of this
character can do little except be lovely.
Nona was too American to like this idea.

But Sonya must have understood, for
she put her arm about the younger girl.

Don’t be silly, Nona! Yes, Bianca may
be a problem. I think I had scarcely
thought of how much of a one she might
be, I was so anxious to have the service of
her mother. Still, there must be a plan
of some kind for the girl’s future. She
cannot go on living as she has in the past.
Now that I think of her, I really feel ex-
tremely sorry for the child.”

CHAPTER VI

Guests at Sonya’s Villa
the days passed, Nona and the

three American girls who had crossed

on the steamer with her, became
even more deeply interested in their work
at the American Hospital.

Naturally at first many things in Italy
appeared foreign and unusual to them. But
a little later on, Nona, who had more
European experience than the others, began
to appreciate that there was actually a
greater degree of the real American atmos-
phere in Florence than in any city in
Europe in which she had so far nursed.
And this was because so many of her own
country people ordinarily live in Florence.
As a matter of fact, in time of peace Flor-
ence is one of the most cosmopolitan cities
in Europe.

Many persons beside Americans, Eng-
lish and Germans as well — lovers of the

(84)

Guests at Sonya’s Villa

85

arts of the past more than of those of the
present, and possessing small incomes of
which they wish to make the most — have
for many years chosen Florence as their
home, the city of Boccaccio, of Dante and
Michael Angelo, and later of the beau-
tiful married life of Elizabeth and Robert'
Browning.

However, when Italy cast in her fortunes
with the Entente Allies, the greater number
of foreigners departed from her cities, and,
as Germany had become an enemy coun-
try, it was presumed that all the Germans
were scattered.

But Nona was pleased to discover that at
least there remained in the city of Florence
a sufficient number of her own countrymen
to make her feel remarkably comfortable
and at home, and they were also wonder-
fully hospitable and cordial to all the
newcomers. The hospital where she was
nursing was of course entirely run by
American funds and had a distinguished
American physician at its head.

Moreover, each day Nona used to watch
charming American women coming into the

86

With the Italian Army

hospital with gifts of books and flowers and
food for the wounded soldiers. Now and
then entering a room unexpectedly to take
a temperature or to administer a dose of
medicine, it struck Nona that she might
possibly be interrupting a romance. What
she would see would have represented a
romance in the United States or in Eng-
land, or in any Anglo-Saxon land, for the
dark eyes of the soldier would be gazing
ardently toward his woman or girl visitor,
and his entire expression would represent
admiration, if not something approaching
adoration. But Nona was yet to learn to
understand the Latin temperament, to know
that Italians are natural flatterers of women,
and that it is not possible they can mean
all that they may say.

But at present Nona learned that one of
the greatest hardships which the war had
brought upon Florence was the increasing
poverty of the city. As Florence depended
so largely upon her foreign population,
their disappearance meant for her a heavy
loss. So once or twice Nona wrote Sonya
not to worry over failing for the present to

Guests at Sonya’s Villa

87

assist with the war work, since at least she
was aiding the cause a little by spending
her money in Italy.

Nona also endeavored to persuade Dr.
Latham to this same point of view in order
to disarm his criticism of her friend. But
apparently he was obdurate.

The big doctor, as the American girls
continued to call him, had also established
himself temporarily at the American Hos-
pital in Florence. He was working there
with the other surgeons, interesting them
in his new discovery for the treatment of
infected wounds. Later he intended to
go to other hospitals nearer the Italian
front. '

It chanced that Sonya had never come
in contact with Dr. Latham since their
accidental meeting in the tea gardens in
Naples; therefore she had never spoken
to him of the conversation she had with the
young Italian singer. Carlo Navara, at
his suggestion.

Nevertheless, Sonya was delighted to
hear, through Nona, of the American phy-
sician’s presence at the same hospital. For,

88

With the Italian Army

however brusque and disagreeable his man-
ner had been to her in their few meetings,
she knew that he would watch over Nona
and the new Red Cross girls with especial
interest.

She was grateful for this, because until
recently she had not been separated from
Nona in more than a year, and now, while
Nona continued her Red Cross nursing in
Florence, it might be possible to see but
little of her.

For a few days after her first visit to the
Villa Felice, Sonya had taken the house and
moved out there. As a matter of fact, she
had not been into the city a single time
since.

However, in Sonya’s surmise that the
American doctor would be particularly
interested in the four new Red Cross nurses,
apparently she had been correct. There
were times when Nona was almost sur-
prised by the interest he seemed to take in
her. Whenever she had a free hour he
appeared to like to be allowed to spend it
with her, either in sightseeing, or in visit-
ing new acquaintances who asked them in

Guests at Sonya’s Villa

89

for afternoon tea. But Nona decided that,
although Doctor Latham was almost old
enough to be her father, nevertheless he
must be lonely and wished some one to
amuse him. However, there were times
when she would rather have preferred his
finding some one beside herself. For Flor-
ence contains probably the two greatest
picture galleries in the world — the Ufizzi
and the Pitti Galleries — and, as Nona was
intensely interested in pictures, she would
have liked to spend many of her free hours
in them. But unfortunately Dr. Latham
was as scornful of artists as he was of the
idle rich. The fact that their work hiad
been preserved through the centuries and
represented many hundreds of thousands
of dollars did not alfect his opinion in the
least. Artists — ancient or modern — he an-
nounced to be ^‘a poor lot.”

However, one morning when Sonya had
been settled at her Italian villa for about
ten days, Nona received a note from her.
The note asked, if it were possible, for Nona
and the three girls — Dolores King, Mollie
Drew and Agatha Burton — to drive out to
spend the afternoon with her.

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With the Italian Army

The note further explained that the two
young Italian owners of the Villa Felice,
whom Nona had previously met, having a
leave of absence from the front, were then
visiting friends in the same neighborhood.
As they were anxious to know American
girls, they were coming to tea, and were
to bring several of their friends.

Immediately on reading Sonya’s letter,
the invitation struck Nona as extremely
agreeable. She was, of course, anxious to
see Sonya as soon as possible and to find
out how she had arranged her small but
not altogether simple household, since it
was formed of so strange a combination as
Bianca and Bianca’s mother. Moreover,
Nona frankly confessed to herself that she
had enjoyed meeting the two Italian sig-
nors and that she had particularly liked the
older one, whom she had since thought of
as the artist-soldier.

Moreover, she knew that the three other
girls would be pleased by the opportunity
of an afternoon of freedom and the experi-
ence of an Italian tea party. Several times
Mollie Drew had remarked lately that she

Guests at Sonya’s Villa

91

hoped Sonya, whom she called ‘‘The Beauti-
ful Lady,” had not forgotten them.

As soon as it was possible to leave her
work, Nona slipped away on a pilgrimage
to find the other three girls and to deliver
Sonya’s message.

She was passing the open door of one of
the wards when unexpectedly Dr. Latham
stepped out into the hall.

Nona thought he looked uncommonly
grave even for the big doctor, whose ex-
pression was usually serious. However,
his expression changed when he caught
sight of her.

“You are the very person I was thinking
of,” he announced unexpectedly.

Fortunately Nona had no idea of how
pretty she appeared in her Red Cross uni-
form, which is, however, an extremely be-
coming costume for most girls and women.

And Nona had grown much prettier in
the last year of her return to her old home
in South Carolina with Sonya. For the
first time since she could remember there
had been another woman in her home whom
she could love and who also cared for her.

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With the Italian Army

For Nona had almost no recollection of her
own mother, who had died under strange
circumstances when she was a little girl.
The rest also had been good for her and the
freedom from care, for Sonya still had
sufficient mouv^y invested in the United
States for tbeni to live upon comfortably.

Therefore Nona had lost the too ethereal
l^ok which she had revealed upon the day
of her first meeting with the original Red
Cross girls, Barbara, Mildred and Eugenia.
Her pallor had disappeared, so that now
she often had real color in her cheeks, and
her thinness could be called slenderness.

Moreover, she had more vivacity and
self-assurance, for Sonya’s influence and
affection had done much for her.

Nona stopped, of course, when Dr. Lat-
ham spoke to her, although showing that
she was in a hurry to move on as soon as
possible again.

‘T want you to promise to spend your
free time in the Boboli Gardens with
me this afternoon. These warm Floren-
tine spring days are so enchanting they
even affect an old fellow like me,” he
continued.

Guests at Sonya’s Villa

93

Nona shook her head.

‘‘ Sorry, but I have another engagement,”
she answered, careless at first. Then
noticing his disappointment, she was more
sympathetic. After all, why not take Dr.
Latham along with them to Sonya’s? It
might be pleasant to have a masculine
escort. Moreover, she liked and admired
the big doctor so much ; it was nonsensical
that he and Sonya should continue to be
prejudiced.

As a matter of fact, Nona knew that
Sonya’s feeling against Dr. Latham was
not very deep one way or the other. He
had not attracted her and at present she
did not wish to be annoyed by strangers.

She had been forced to know so many
people in her crowded life that now she
wished to be alone whenever it was possible
and to take a holiday from them.

But Dr. Latham might not be so easy
to influence.

However, Nona made up her mind to
ask him to go with them.

He was obstinate at first.

‘‘But I don’t like your friend and she

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With the Italian Army

does not like me, and as she has not asked
me and I don’t drink tea, just why should
I go?” he demanded.

But Nona only laughed.

“Why, to please me.”

And although Dr. Latham growled some-
thing or other none too polite to Sonya in
return, Nona knew he intended to do what
she wished.

“I’ve got one condition,” he added.
“I’m going to make another effort to make
that friend of your’s useful to us in our
Red Cross work.”

As Nona was anxious to be off she nodded
her head.

“Oh, persuade Sonya to anything you
like, if you think that you can manage her.
But I wish she would let me tell you her
real history. Then you would not do her
the injustice to think she is merely idling
in Italy for no reason.”

Without waiting for any more conversa-
tion, Nona then disappeared.

It was a task to find the other three girls
and to deliver Sonya’s invitation at a
moment when they were not too busy to

Guests at Sonya’s Villa

95

listen. However, after this was accom-
plished, the superintendent of the hospital
was kind enough to allow the four new Red
Cross girls a holiday for the entire after-
noon. She wished to make their stay in
Florence as agreeable as possible without
interfering too much with their work, and
just at present the hospital was not crowded.

During her second drive to the Villa
Felice, Nona felt as if she were already
familiar with the landscape and enjoyed
pointing out its beauties to her four com-
panions.

As they walked up the path, they found
Sonya, whose other guests had already
arrived, sitting with them on the green
slope of lawn before her villa and surrounded
by its ornamental lemon and orange trees.

There were four Italian soldiers present
this afternoon and another girl. Nona
could not be sure of her age, as she was
wearing a big, flopping Leghorn hat which
partly concealed her face.

Bianca was with them, too, but she was a
little back from the others, with her hands
folded in her lap in the demure fashion
which seemed characteristic of her.

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WiSb the Italian Army

Sonya came quickly forward to meet her
new guests. She was especially cordial to
Dr. Latham, as Nona guessed she would
be under the circumstances. One can
never be rude to a guest in one’s own house
under any circumstances, and, moreover,
Sonya had really almost forgotten her atti-
tude toward the American doctor in their
earlier acquaintance.

Nona noticed that Bianca waited quietly
until the other introductions were accom-
plished and then came forward to greet her
and to meet the others. Her manners were
just as self-possessed and she seemed as
much at home as during their first meeting.
However, when the introductions were
over, she went back to her place and sat
down quietly again, attempting to take no
part in the general conversation. Yet
Nona could not help glancing curiously
toward the younger girl now and then and
wondering why she seemed so unlike any
American girl of her age whom she had
ever known.

However, she could not give much atten-
tion to Bianca.

Guests at Sonya’s Villa

97

Nona was also entertained by the pleasure
Dr. Latham showed in Sonya’s unexpected
cordiality to him. He thawed as most men
do under a charming woman’s influence.

Indeed, Sonya saw that the entire com-
pany made much of the American doctor.
And although he laughed and protested
somewhat brusquely at the compliments
which were paid him, no one really objects
to being treated as a hero.

Of course, during the first part of their
visit, the conversation among Sonya’s guests
was general. However, Nona was pleased
because, as soon as it was possible. Signor
Zoli came over and quietly took the chair
next to hers.

She thought he looked more agreeable
than ever and unlike what she had expected
of an Italian, with his tiny pointed beard,
his golden-brown hair and his skin almost
the same color.

If Nona had not seen so much of the
soldiers of the Allied nations during the
present war she might have been surprised
at Signor Eugino’s apparent gayety. But
this seems ever a part of the soldier’s

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With the Italian Army

strange profession, that, when not engaged
in actual service, they are ever the merriest
and most sweet-tempered of men.

‘‘It is good to see you again,” he said
at the first opportunity to speak to Nona
without the others hearing. ‘‘My brother
and I have been again to call on your
friend, and our villa seems more like home
than it has since my mother’s death. We
chance to be having a leave of absence
from the front and are staying with the
Princess Carnia, who is an old friend.”

Nona must have looked a little surprised,
because her companion laughed.

“Oh, the Princess comes from Chicago,
but she is a Princess nevertheless. Her
husband, who was very much older, is
dead.”

The Princess Carnia was Sonya’s other
guest, whom Nona had first thought to
be a girl.

She realized now that she was a little
older than she had seemed at first, although
she could not be much over twetity.

“The Princess has a large fortune in
sausage or something,” the young Italian

Guests at Sonya’s Villa 99’

artist went on explaining good-naturedly
for Nona’s benefit. ‘‘So her mother, who
was a very ambitious American lady,
married her to the Prince when Laura was
not eighteen. Forgive my using her first
name, but our mothers were old friends
and my brother and I have known her
ever since she first came to Italy.”

Nona looked across at the stranger with
greater interest. She did not think she
was either pretty or attractive in her
manner. She had rather small dark eyes
and a large nose and a restless fashion of
talking.

However, her companion went on talking
and attracted her attention again.

“I wonder, if you have the opportunity
later, if you will come to look at my studio
with me some time this afternoon. I have
been spending a few hours there every day
during my leave. It is not far away. You
see, I had a tumble out of my airship a
short while ago and I’ve been waiting
around until I was thoroughly mended.
So I have been working in my studio, now
and then, as much to kill time as for any
other reason.

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With the Italian Army

Nona nodded.

‘‘I’ll come with you with pleasure, I
should like very much to see an Italian
studio,” she returned cordially.

But at this moment Nannina, the Italian
housekeeper, appeared with the tea tray.
She placed it before Sonya, who began
acting as hostess.

But before Nona could suggest that she
be allowed to assist, Bianca had stepped
quietly forward and Nona saw that Sonya
seemed to enjoy the younger girl’s deft
helpfulness. She was a little annoyed, but
made no effort to take Bianca’s place.

Yet Nona wondered a little jealously
what Sonya’s feeling toward Bianca had
grown to be, after living in the house with
her for a number of days.

When tea was finished, fortunately Paulo
Zoll suggested that they all walk about the
grounds for a time.

He and Dolores King already appeared
to have taken a decided fancy to each other.
But then Dolores was the type of vivacious
southern girl who is always attractive to
men. One could also readily imagine that

Guests at Sonya’s Villa

101

Paulo had the usual Latin temperament,
which means he was a natural admirer of
all attractive girls.

Nona felt that his older brother had a
different nature, and was more like an
American. For, in all Nona^s experiences
among foreigners, she had remained true
to the idea that she could never really care
seriously for any man, except one of her
own countryman.

She had been surprised by Eugenia’s
marriage to a Frenchman and more, perhaps,
by Mildred Thornton’s engagement to a
Russian General. Personally she had, of
course, always liked Dick Thornton, so
that Barbara had once believed she had
been half-way in love with him. But,
although Nona had quite recovered from
any fancy for Dick, Barbara’s marriage to
Richard Thornton was the one of the mar-
riages of the original three Red Cross girls
which she could understand and approve.

Therefore, Nona’s promise to Sonya that
she would not allow herself to become
interested in an Italian was certainly made
in entire good faith.

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With the Italian Army

The moment following Paulo’s suggestion
the four American Red Cross girls and the
four young soldiers started off toward the
left of the villa.

The Princess chanced to be talking to
Sonya and Dr. Latham. They insisted
they had no desire to be disturbed.

Nona glanced toward Bianca, feeling as
if it were unkind to leave the younger girl
sitting there alone, without asking her to
accompany them. Would she not feel
wounded by the neglect?

However, Bianca did not even glance
toward them and, as her foster brothers
made no effort to include her, Nona went
on without knowing exactly what to do.

Ten minutes later she found herself
standing alone with Eugino Zoli outside
his studio.

How he had managed to separate her
from the others she was not sure.

Nona had an instant of thinking that
Sonya might not be pleased. But, then,
Sonya was unnecessarily particular, and
besides she was no longer a child. More-
over, Sonya must like the two brothers or
she would not be so friendly with them.

Guests at Sonya’s Villa

103

Outside, the studio building was of cheap
wooden boards, but wild vines had been
trained over it so as almost entirely to
cover the framework.

However, Nona was scarcely prepared
for the charm of the room on the inside.
It must have been forty feet long, with a
high arched ceiling, and had a great north
window facing the light.

For furniture there was an immense
divan covered with worn but exquisite
pieces of tapestry; a table and tall chairs
carved with the heads of cherubs and the
insignia of old Florentine families. There
were half a dozen easels standing about,
with the painted side of the canvas turned
away. But on the walls were a number of
paintings which looked like old masters to
Nona, except that they did not bear the
magic names of the great artists.

But the greatest charm of the room was
the glow of deep yet subdued color. It
seemed to have a strange influence upon
Nona. She felt as if she were moving in
a pleasant dream.

‘‘But won’t you show me some of your

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With the Italian Army

own work now?” she asked, after her com-
panion had pointed out what he considered
the best things in his collection.

“I got them all for a song,” he had
explained boyishly, ‘^and some of them
really are rather good.”

As a matter of fact, Nona was beginning
to realize that the young Italian was
younger than she had at first thought, from
his manner and appearance. He was actu-
ally twenty-two, but his close-cut foreign
beard did make him look older; then, as
the eldest son, he had been in a measure
the head of the house after his father’s
death.

‘H’ll show you my work with pleasure.
I really do want you to see it. I suppose
that is one of the reasons why I asked you
to come here to the studio with me. Of
course, it seems absurd for any one to
attempt to be an artist in Florence today,
but, after all, that is the work I love best,
however poorly I may succeed,” he con-
cluded, with what Nona considered an
attractive modesty.

However, it seemed to Nona that Eugino

Guests at Sonya’s Villa

105

Zoli^s work was charming, although she
realized that she was not an altogether
competent or unprejudiced judge. But his
paintings represented interiors of old
churches in Italy, odd bits of the Floren-
tine landscape, such as a fragment of wall
covered with a vine, and a figure of' a
nymph or faun standing in the foreground.

^‘This is my last sketch, which I made
one day when I was loafing back of the line
in the Trentino,” the young man said
finally, leaning over and pulling a sketch
out of a large portfolio which was lying
carelessly upon the floor.

He handed the sketch to Nona and she
saw the outline of a tall, blue mountain
with its crown covered with snow. Above
it the sky was of the wonderful Italian blue.
Caught up almost in the clouds was what
looked like a giant white bird pausing for
an instant before swooping lower toward
the valley. But Nona, of course, recog-
nized the outline of an airship.

^Ht is a sketch of a friend of mine, re-
connoitering over the Austrian lines. He
was killed later that same day,” the artist
explained.

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With the Italian Army

Nona was embarrassed by her own emo-
tion, because of course in these war times
the first thing each one of us should learn
is self-control. And, unexpectedly, her eyes
had filled with tears.

“It is a beautiful piece of work; I should
think you would value it very much,” she
said slowly. “I don’t know why, but it
makes me recall a song I have always loved,
‘The Wings of a Dove,’ It is as if your
friend had flown away into his eternal rest.”

Nona was not looking at her companion,
but she was surprised to hear him say
suddenly:

“I wonder if you would care to keep this
sketch. If it pleases you I would like you
to have it. Perhaps you may remember
me by it, because it happens to suggest the
two things I am most interested in at the
present time.”

Nona flushed, partly with surprise, but
more with pleasure in her gift. She did
not know when anything had pleased her
more.

“You are wonderfully kind, but do you
think I ought to have anything so valuable,”

Guests at Sonya’s Villa

107

she was saying, when she heard a slight
noise at the open door.

Glancing up Nona saw that it was Bianca.

Today she was wearing a white dress
which was really suitable for a much younger
girl and made her look more like a child
than ever. It was of sheer white muslin
and lace, with a short waist and a deep full
skirt. Her hair, curled in half a dozen big,
loose curls, was caught back with a black
velvet ribbon. She was extraordinarily
pretty, and yet it seemed to Nona Bianca
could not be so old as she had said.

She made her little curtsy as if she were
yet a child.

“The Signora says will you please return
to the villa at once. It is growing late,”
she declared, as if she were repeating
Sonya’s exact words.

Nona got up hurriedly. She was not
surprised by the message, nor did she stop
to wonder how Sonya could have known
of her presence in the studio.

Indeed, she was suddenly worried as to
whether Sonya would be really angry.
After all, she knew nothing of Italian cus-

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With the Italian Army

toms. Perhaps she had been wrong to
spend this quarter of an hour alone with
so new an acquaintance. However, as
Nona held firmly to her picture, she could
not altogether regret her indiscretion. She
had had a pleasant talk and a lovely gift,
and there was really nothing to regret.

However, she was glad that Sonya had
no opportunity to speak to her alone or to
ask questions.

Sonya happened to be too much occu-
pied with her farewells to her other guests.

Evidently Dr. Latham had carried out
his threat, for she was laughing and at the
saiiiv-^ tiTDe protesting over something he
must have lately said to her.

“But I told you, Dr. Latham, that I had
come to Italy to rest— not to help with the
relief work among the soldiers for the
present. If you turn my house into a
convalescent home, it seems to me I may
have rather more to do than the rest of
you. And, though you may not believe
me, I have earned a holiday.”

“Just the same, if I find a few Italian
boys who need a place just like the Villa

Guests at Sonya’s Villa

109

Felice, where they can rest and grow strong,
I’ve half an idea you will not turn them
away,” Dr. Latham added obstinately.

But Nona saw that his opinion of Sonya
had altered for the time being, at least.
However much he might decide to dislike
her tomorrow, he was under the influence
of her charm at this moment.

‘‘By the way, whatever became of the
young Italian boy — the singer — ^whom I
turned over to you in Naples? Did he
return to the United States, or did you
transform him into a real soldier by a few
words of encouragement?” he continued.

But Sonya had no opportunity to reply,
for other farewells had to be said at this
instant.

So far as Nona and Sonya were concerned,
their only private talk with each other was
when Sonya whispered at parting:

“Am I never to see you alone, dear?
There are so many questions I want to
ask — so many things I have to tell you.
But please don’t overwork. I am missing
you dreadfully.”

CHAPTER VII

The Italian Singer

IT was night in the Trentino. The
Italian soldiers had been told that an
attack was to be made by them at
dawn.

Ten thousand feet above, in their nests
amid eternal snows, the Austrian and Ger-
man soldiers were to be forced into the
open.

In his dugout behind the Italian in-
trenchments, the young Italian singer, who
had crossed on the torpedoed ship with the
Red Cross girls, lay awaiting the summons
to charge up the Alpine passes with the
breaking of the day.

Some of the soldiers slept with their guns
in their hands, but Carlo had no idea of
being able to sleep during the long night.
For the morning was to bring the great test
of his life — his first experience in fighting.
Sooner than he anticipated. Carlo Navara,
(110)

The Italian Singer

111

whose plan had been to become a great
artist — never a soldier — had been sent to
the Italian front.

However, for almost two years, while
struggling to make up his mind to return
to Italy and offer his services to the gov-
ernment, Carlo had been at work in his
free hours learning all that he could of the
uncongenial tasks of soldiering.

For many men and boys, beside Carlo
Navara, hate the life and the work of a
soldier; it is idle to believe they do not,
or that all men are equally fitted for it.
Only they must — as Carlo had — learn to
fight from a sense of duty and a sense of
loyalty. For so long as there are nations
and men in the world who still believe in
war, so long even those who believe in
peace must offer themselves for universal
service. For no man can allow another
man’s courage and devotion to make the
world a safe place for the shirker.

Now Carlo had time for considering
many things.

In the first place, why had he regarded
himself as an Italian rather than an Ameri-

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With the Italian Army

can? It was true he had been born in
southern Italy and lived there as a small
boy. But, almost ever since he could
remember clearly, his home had been in
New York City. And he loved the United
States best.

Tonight he recalled the tiny Italian fruit
shop over which he and his mother and
father lived in New York. He had some-
times been ashamed of the neighborhood,
since he had made new friends among
fashionable people and had started upon
his career as an artist. But tonight Carlo
would have given a great deal to have been
under the little tenement shelter — to have
breathed again the mingled odors of oranges
and pineapples and bananas rising from
the shop below. At home he used to dream
of the day when his voice would make him
a great fortune, when he would move the
little old mother and father to some sump-
tuous place, where, although he might never
know it, they would probably be perfectly
miserable. But now he feared that not
only might he never attain the rich home,
but that he might never see the humble one
again.

The Italian Singer

113

Carlo shifted his position; the night was
cold — so cold that it made him think of the
evenings when he had first begun singing
in the New York City streets and waiting
for the showers of pennies and nickels and
dimes to fall from the windows of apart-
ment houses and hotels. For they had
always followed his songs. But this was,
of course, before his discovery by the friend
who had made a splendid musical future
possible for him.

For, since then. Carlo had taken the
greatest possible care of his voice; never
exposing himself to damp air when it was
avoidable; never singing except when his
master gave permission and then only the
songs he chose for him.

Yet here he was tonight so cold that his
voice felt frozen in his throat. Even
should he escape other injury, perhaps he
might never be able to sing again. Yet the
greatest living Italian tenor had called his
‘^a golden voice” and had predicted that
some day he. Carlo Navara, would fill his
high place in the world of great singers.

So it was small wonder, and perhaps not

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With the Italian Army

so reprehensible, that the young soldier felt
himself beaten by waves of self-pity, and
now and then by regret. He had not been
forced to come to Italy. He had chosen
the duty voluntarily, for he had always
intended becoming a United States citizen.
And he still intended to do this if he ever
got safely back to America.

Nevertheless Italy had called him and
he had answered the call.

So tonight Carlo in the darkness trying
to fortify his courage repeated softly to
himself the words of a great French writer
— ^Anatole France:

“Beautiful Italy, which I have loved all
my life — loved for her nature and her
genius — loved for her cypress-crowned hills,
her mountains of terebinthine shade, or,
bare under the sun that gilds them — those
other mountains whose very names set
generous hearts a-throb.”

Then, looking up at those mountains
where, on the farther side, other boys like
himself lay thrusting out of mind their old
dreams, Carlo allowed himself to cry softly
in the dark.

The Italian Singer

115

He was ashamed; he hated himself for
his tears, but no one would know!
Everything about them at present was so
deadly quiet.

Carlo lay in the second line of trenches;
the artillery which was to clear the ground
ahead at daybreak was behind the third
line.

Then, suddenly, in the midst of his shame
and of his self-pity. Carlo recalled the final
words a stranger had said to him a few
weeks before in Naples.

‘‘You must remember that many people
— and usually the finest ones — are fright-
ened before the great moments of their
lives. You are ashamed because you are
fearful over the thought of facing your first
battle. Will you not also suffer equally
when you face your first great audience as
a singer.^ And yet you will not be ashamed
of this, because you can say that will be
a spiritual, not a physical, fear.

“But there is no reason why you should be
more ashamed of one than of the other, so
long as you master it.’’

“ She was a wonderful woman — this Sonya
Valesky!”

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With the Italian Army

Ever since first seeing her on board ship,
Carlo had been attracted by her.

It was for this reason he had tried to make
friends with the young southern girl — Miss
Davis — in order that he might through her
come to know her friend.

However, the older woman had appar-
ently not wished to make acquaintances
on ship board. For it was not until the
night of their disaster, when his timidity
had filled the other passengers with dis-
like, that she had been so extraordinarily
kind to him.

Afterwards there had been only the hour
when they had talked together alone in the
little pension in Naples. It was there that
Madame Valesky had told him more of her
own history than she wished any of their
fellow travelers to know, trusting him to
keep her secret. For she wished him to
realize that, in her own past days in Russia,
when she had been fighting with her small
powers against the autocratic might of the
Russian government, she too had frequently
been afraid — had longed to give up and
turn her back upon the mission she had
set out to accomplish.

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117

In the darkness Carlo remembered the
friendliness of her final hand clasp and her
voice at parting.

‘‘Remember, if you have it in you to
become a great artist, it is necessary that
you feel more deeply and suffer more
intensely than other men. But the artist
who allows these emotions to conquer him
never becomes truly great.”

Then Carlo dozed a little. Yet in his
sleep he seemed to be singing the song that
had restored his courage on that black
night in the open sea.

“I will die cheering, if I needs must die;

So shall my last breath write upon my lips
Viva Italia.’^

Then, once later — it must have been In
the last hours before daybreak — the young
Italian believed he heard, although through
a kind of stupor, the song of the Italian
nightingale. Yet this was scarcely possible,
for the nightingale belongs to the south,
and this was northern Italy.

However, before the first real light in
the sky. Carlo was fully awakened by the

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With the Italian Army

noise of the first guns of the Italian artillery
firing from the rear.

They boomed and thundered and
shrieked, until all life became only a vast
combination of impossible noises, and all
the senses only the one sense of hearing.

With such an awakening Carlo had no
return of the fear which had haunted him
through the night.

In rigid silence he waited like all the
other soldiers, feeling himself only a human
machine. Any instant a common com-
mand would come, then, just as if a finger
had touched the trigger of his life, he would
spring forward to follow its bidding.

Now the captain of his brigade, passing
along the line of his soldiers, with his
watch in hand, whispered words of en-
couragement to his boys, preparing them
for their moment of action.

The boys from the first line of trenches
ahead were already struggling up the steep
hill, while back in the mountains the Aus-
trian cannon was returning the cannon-
ading, crashing like the thunder among Rip
Van Winkle’s haunted' hills.

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119

Then, when Carlo’s order to charge
came, climbing out of his hole, he, too, gal-
lantly ran forward up the long incline
together with his companions.

Truly there was a rain of bullets from
the mountain top above. And now and
then a piece of shrapnel bursting fell, dig-
ing a deep cave in the side of the hill.

However, the Italian airmen had located
the enemy’s lines in many days of flying
over the Austrian intrenchments.

Therefore the charge of the Italian bri-
gades up the mountain side was not the
madness it appeared. Unprepared for
their attack, and taken by surprise, the
Austrians many times fired over their heads.

But Carlo, no longer remembering his
past fears, and thinking nothing of his
danger but only of his work as an individual
soldier, plunged bravely up the mountain.
Half-way up he began firing at the descend-
ing Austrian soldiers who were returning
his charge.

Several times in the steep climbing he
stumbled; once he fell. At intervals Carlo
would kneel to reload his rifle, but never

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With the Italian Army

once did he falter, or feel the least desire
to hide or to turn back.

Instead, shouting and singing ‘‘Viva
Italia;” with his dark head thrown bravely
up, he kept gallantly ahead. Other young
soldiers in his neighborhood following him,
took up his battle cry.

Then, all of a sudden, and of course with
no warning, a gray bullet struck Carlo.
At the instant he had not much sense of
pain — only a burning, stinging sensation in
his throat and a sudden loss of breath. But
this was because his time of consciousness
was so short.

Almost immediately the young Italian
boy reeled backward and, sliding down the
hill, his body rested in a deep hole made
by a bursting shrapnel.

There was no opportunity for his soldier
companions to stop to see if he were dead.
For not until nightfall did the fighting
cease. Then the Italians had taken many
hundred prisoners.

It was after this' that the ambulance men
went out to do their work of rescue. They
found Carlo, but for a moment they stood

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121

arguing whether it were worth while to
carry him back behind the lines.

‘‘There isn’t one chance in a hundred,”
one of the men said.

“Well, if there is that, we’ll give the
poor fellow a show,” the other answered.

So they carried Carlo gently down the
steep hill. But they need not have been
so careful, since he felt nothing.

They left him at the nearest emergency
hospital, but when they went away again
were still unaware whether he were living
or dead. There was not time to find out.
Other wounded men were waiting up on
the hill.

CHAPTER VIII

A New Patient

SOME new patients had arrived at the
American Hospital during the night,
who had been assigned to the care of
Nona Davis.

They had been sent to Florence from
one of the hospitals nearer the front, in
order that they might have more attention
showed them.

These soldiers were ordinarily expected
to recover. Therefore they were usually
difficult patients, and because Nona Davis
had a reputation for keeping the convales-
cent men more cheerful and more content
than most of the other nurses, she was fre-
quently assigned to this duty.

However, Nona did not particularly en-
joy the task, nor did she think she was so
well fitted for it as her hospital superiors
considered her.

It was now summer, and the heat in
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A New Patient

123

Florence was growing difficult to bear
when one must be on their feet and at work
the greater part of each day.

Nona had not slept very well the night
before. But this morning, as she came
into her ward at about nine o’clock when
her day’s work began, she tried to appear
as if her own health were a thing no nurse
ever had to consider.

The poor fellows who had just arrived
would probably be worn out from their
journey, and some of them dissatisfied with
their change of environment.

Their particular ward was a long room
with beds on either side. But it happened
that there were only six new patients who
had come in the night before.

From one of the new beds to the other
Nona moved quietly. In reality she was
introducing herself and trying to find out
as much as she could of the characters of
the wounded men and the extent of their
injuries, before starting upon her actual
work.

Another nurse, who had since gone off
duty, had given the wounded men their

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With the Italian Army

breakfasts. One of the volunteer male
nurses had helped them with whatever
toilets they were able to make before the
morning visit from the doctor.

So most of the new patients were sitting
up and appeared remarkably cheerful.

In her weeks in Florence, Nona had suc-
ceeded in learning a little more Italian than
she had known on her departure from New
York. Nevertheless her efforts to speak
Italian properly still afforded many of her
soldier patients so much amusement that
Nona felt it would be a mistake to learn
to speak really correctly.

‘‘Buon giorno, Signora,” was always her
morning’s greeting from each one of the
men, and yet Nona had never become so
well accustomed to this simple expression,
which only means, ‘‘good morning,” that
she failed to be conscious of its musical
sound.

Lying over at the farthest end of the
room, with one side of his bed alongside the
wall, Nona had immediately discovered one
of the newcomers among the wounded, who
must be in a worse condition than the rest.

A New Patient

125

For he was not sitting up and his back was
turned so that he faced the wall. But
she did not go to him until she had spoken
to the other men.

However, at her ‘‘Buon giorno, Signor,”
he moved so that he could look at her. He
turned listlessly, and yet not as if the move-
ment caused him any especial pain.

For an instant Nona stared rather too
closely for politeness.

Then she said so tactlessly that she was
ashamed of herself at the same moment.

‘‘Why, is it you, Mr. Navara.^ I didn’t
know you for a second. Still, although I
am awfully sorry you have been hurt, I
am glad you are here in Florence where my
friends and I can help to care for you.”

“Oh, I am — not so — very — badly off; I
shall soon cease — to give — a great — deal of
trouble, but it — is pleasant — to find — you
her,” the young Italian answered slowly.

Nona noticed that his voice was hoarse
and that he spoke with painful difficulty.

“I am glad of that,” Nona returned
cheerfully. “I shall tell Madame Valesky;
I know she will be interested. She is living

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With the Italian Army

in a villa near Florence and, perhaps you
would allow her to come to see you.”

But Carlo shook his head.

‘‘It will — not be — ^worth while. You see,
I cannot — ^talk to — any one — except — for a
little time. It is — my voice, — you — under-
stand, that is gone!”

At this the boy — ^he was not much more
than a boy, pulled open his shirt, which
had been fastened close about his throat.
Then Nona saw, zigzagging across his neck
and chest, a long white scar.

Moreover, Carlo looked at her with his
brown eyes wide open and staring, but
without a tremor of his eyelids or a quiver
of his boyish mouth.

Yet Nona did not answer him. For
suddenly she felt that she could endure the
sorrow which this terrible war had brought
and was hourly bringing into the world
not a moment longer.

She had seen worse things in these past
two years, perhaps heard sadder stories
than Carlo’s. But today it may be her
nerves were worn out or she was more tired
than usual.

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127

For she now found herself fighting the
impulse to cry out in rebellion against the
news which this poor boy had just confided
to her. Why should his hurt come in the
one place that would make all his future
desolate for him ^

Nona knew she murmured something
about hoping he might be mistaken and
that surely something could be done for
him later. Then she knew that she turned
quickly away and almost ran out of the
ward into the comparative seclusion of the
hall.

Once out there, she allowed the rebel-
lious tears to run unchecked down her face.
Yet remembering where she was, she
clenched her hands together, so that she
would make no outward sound.

It was thus Dr. Latham found her.

‘^What is the matter. Miss Davis?” he
demanded more brusquely than he often
spoke to Nona. ‘‘If you are having an
attack of nerves you had best go to your
room. I have been telling you recently
that you were overworking and must rest.
We have too much on our hands here to
have our nurses break down.”

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With the Italian Army

Which speech made Nona just sufficiently
angry to brace her up, and this was prob-
ably what Dr. Latham intended.

However, she told him what she had just
heard.

‘Ht seems so terrible to me that the boy
must keep on living. Dr. Latham, with his
wonderful gift gone. He once told me that
his mother and father kept a little Italian
fruit shop in New York. I suppose that is
all Carlo has left to look forward to now —
tending the little shop — instead of fame
and wealth and happiness.’’

‘‘There are many of us who must give
up our dreams. Miss Nona,” the big doctor
answered grimly, but Nona did not feel
that he was unsympathetic.

“I’ll see the young fellow,” he added the
next instant. ‘T am sorry I was a bit hard
on him all for nothing but an attack of
nerves. Certainly he has given his best
to his country. But the"^ main thing just
now. Miss Nona, is that you must have a
rest. A few weeks ago we would not have
had you breaking down over one boy’s
story, no matter how tragic! Better get

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129

your belongings- together. I am going to
see about your being allowed a holiday
and telephone out to your friend, Madame
Vales ky, to expect you.’’

“But I am not willing to leave. I have
just told Carlo Navara I wanted to help
take care of him. Perhaps I could be just
a tiny bit of help to him right now,” Nona
protested.

Dr. Latham frowned.

“Wait until I have seen the young fellow.
Perhaps we may be able to arrange for
his comfort as well. If he can be moved,
don’t you think your friend would take
him in?”

But Nona could only shake her head in a
kind of faint-hearted protest at the doctor’s;
unexpected program. It really did sound
too agreeable for her to feel sure that it
would not mean unfaithfulness to her duty.

However, forty-eight hours afterwards,
Nona found herself comfortably settled at
Sonya’s lovely villa and occupying the bed-
room adjoining her friend’s. Such details
as securing her holiday from her work at
the hospital — even to the Informing of

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With the Italian Anny

Sonya when to expect her — ^had been carried
out by the doctor.

Moreover, he also appeared to have in-
fluenced Sonya to consent that the young
Italian musician be sent out to the Villa
Felice as soon as he was able to be moved
from the hospital.

As a matter of fact, Sonya had not the
heart to refuse this second request. She
was too deeply distressed by hearing of
the boy’s tragedy not to wish to do what-
ever was in her power to help. That in so
short a time Carlo should accidentally have
made so many appeals upon her, made
him seem in a way her responsibility. But
it would be little that an outsider could do
to make him happier.

To Carlo Navara the loss of his exquisite
voice and all that it would have meant
toward securing a great future, was a mis-
fortune too great for any stranger to offer
consolation.

However, Sonya realized that, as she
was to have Nona with her at the same
time, the two of them together could
surely make life a little pleasanter for Carlo
than if he were left at the hospital.

A New Patient

131

But she was glad to have Nona to her-
self for a few days, before admitting any
one else into her oddly complicated house-
hold.

CHAPTER IX

An Odd Household

ONE morning about a week later, a
little before noon, Nona, seeing the
door of the drawing-room at the
villa partly open, slipped quietly in.

She was warm and a little exhausted and
this room, with its dark old walls, its faded
colors and soft lights, was always restful
both to one’s nerves and body.

Nona felt much better since her visit to
Sonya, but not yet so well as she ordinarily
did. Perhaps she had been more worn out
than she or any one else, except Dr. Latham,
had suspected; or perhaps her stay with
Sonya had been slightly disappointing.

For one thing, three days after her own
arrival. Carlo Navara had also appeared
at the villa. He was not supposed to have
been sent out so soon and was hardly well
enough to leave the hospital, but Dr. Lat-
ham had telephoned that the boy’s de-

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An Odd Household

133

pression had gotten on everybody’s nerves
— even at a hospital where one was supposed
to become accustomed to other people^s
sorrows.

But, except to answer questions in mono-
syllables, Carlo had never spoken since
Nona’s conversation with him.

He had talked very little since his arrival
at Sonya’s. However, since talking was
so difficult for him, neither Sonya nor Nona
were anxious for him often to make the
attempt until he grew stronger.

But otherwise he appeared entirely pa-
tient and grateful, and, whatever he may have
been feeling, for the present made no com-
plaints. He spent most of the time in his
own room, lying quietly upon the bed with
his face to the wall, as he had when Nona
first discovered him. Only now and then,
because Sonya insisted, he would permit
himself to be wheeled out on the piazza of
the villa and lie there in his chair with his
eyes closed, or else staring with no expres-
sion of interest at the enchanting summer
landscape.

Dr. Latham had insisted that he be kept

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With the Italian Army

in the sunshine as much as possible, for he
had been a number of weeks in a hospital
nearer the frontier before being sent on to
Florence.

For the past hour Nona had been in the
kitchen of the villa trying to cook some-
thing to tempt Carlo’s appetite. In help-
ing to take care of him she felt that she was
still going on in a small measure with her
work, even while supposedly taking a
holiday.

Of course Sonya did not wish her to do
such tiresome work at such a time and
when the heat was so great. But there
seemed no one else. Sonya did not know
how to do invalid’s cooking, and Nona had
taken the training as a part of her Red
Cross work. And while Nannina — Sonya’s
housekeeper — ^was an excellent cook after
the Italian fashion, the dishes she prepared
were not what Nona considered the proper
ones for an invalid.

So Nona was trying to make herself believe
that it was the fact that she was continuing
to keep busy, when she was not feeling
well, that kept her half-way depressed and
half-way cross.

An Odd Household

135

Nona really knew the truth. It was not
the presence of Carlo in Sonya’s household
who annoyed her, but Bianca’s. For two
days after her own arrival Nona had made
up her mind that she did not like Bianca —
nor did she like Sonya’s interest, almost
her affection, for the younger girl.

This morning, entering the sitting-room
at the villa, and expecting to find it empty,
Nona was immediately aggravated to be-
hold Bianca already there.

She was seated in a high, carved chair,
dressed in a delicate pink muslin and em-
broidering on a square of white linen.

She looked so cool and serene it was small
wonder that Nona, who was hot and tired,
became irritated.

Surveying Bianca she had a mental pic-
ture of herself, with a big apron over her
cotton dress — for she was not wearing her
nurse’s uniform at the villa — ^her face
flushed and perspiring and her hair flying.

Then she knew that Sonya was trying to
induce Carlo to allow her and the young
Italian peasant boy, who came to help him
dress and undress, to take him outdoors.

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With the Italian Army

Fortunately there was a small sitting-room
on the ground floor which Sonya had
adopted as a bed-room for her invalid guest.

Finally Nona recalled the vision of Nan-
nina — Bianca’s mother — ^when she had last
seen her in her kitchen a few moments
before. Nannina had been scrubbing and
was in the state to which this occupation
ordinarily reduces one. Moreover, she was
preparing luncheon at the same time;
which meant that she kept getting up from
her knees on the back porch and coming
into the kitchen to hang over the stove for
a moment and then go back to her task.

No wonder Nona felt the contrast so
keenly.

She had never before spoken to Bianca
in the least disagreeable fashion, although
she had several times felt inclined to do so.

Now she said rather sharply:

‘‘Well, Bianca, it seems to me that you
might And something more useful to amuse
you — at least during the morning — than
embroidering, considering how busy the
rest of us must be.”

In reply Bianca merely glanced calmly

An Odd Household

137

up with that quiet, detached air, which
Nona was finding constantly more aggra-
vating.

‘‘I don’t know what I could do that is
more useful. Eugino is needing new linen.
His has worn out while at camp. I have
always marked his things ever since I was
a little girl. Besides, I have told you that
my mother will not allow me to assist in
the rough work. And your friend, Madame
Sonya, understands this and has agreed
that I go on living here as I have done in
the past, otherwise my mother would not
remain with her.”

Bianca spoke very gently and politely,
but somehow this did not make Nona feel
any differently. Moreover, what Bianca
said was entirely true. And this was one
of Nona’s secret grievances.

Some days before, Sonya had told her
about the same thing. However, after
being in the house twenty-four hours, no
one need be told.

Bianca occupied the same pretty bed-
room across the hall from Sonya’s, which
had been hers in the days of the Donna

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With the Italian Army

Elizabetta, ate her meals at the table with
Sonya, waited upon by her own mother,
and accepting the situation as though it
were a matter of course.

Somehow the whole situation jarred upon
Nona. It was not that she felt herself
superior in any possible way to Bianca.
This was not the question. What Nona
resented most was Bianca’s cool acceptance
of her mother’s self-denial and unreason-
able devotion.

Nona spoke of this fact to Sonya, and
Sonya agreed with her.

‘‘But, dear,” she explained, “we have to
excuse Bianca a little because she has never
known anything else. It seems that her
mother has insisted that she occupy a
different position from herself ever since
the child’s babyhood, and the family here
at the villa must have agreed. The fact
is that Bianca really is so different it is
hard to believe Nannina is her own mother.
But I’m sorry you do not like the child’s
living here so intimately with us. I didn’t
know, Nona, that you were ever to be with
me, when I allowed it, and Bianca is really

An Odd Household

139

very sweet and helpful to me in a good
many ways.”

But, because all of this speech of Sonya’s
was so true, this did not make it the more
agreeable to Nona.

She had noticed almost at once just how
useful Bianca made herself to Sonya in the
gentle, most subtle, fashion.

She always appeared to know what book
Sonya wished to read; what chair she
might like to occupy, and where it should
be placed. She brought the older woman
flowers and arranged them in a lovely
fashion in every room in the villa. Besides,
she was as fragrant and as ornamental as a
flower herself, and was never out of temper,
or impatient. Moreover, Bianca seemed,
without obtruding the fact, grateful to
Sonya and deeply admiring of her.

By contrast Nona could not but appre-
ciate her own deficiencies in her relation
to her friend.

There were so many things Bianca did
for Sonya which she had never thought to
do in the past year they had lived together.
Moreover, she and Sonya had more than

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With the Italian Army

once had differences of opinion and Nona
had made no effort to hide her point of
view. She was devoted to Sonya, of course,
and expected her to understand it; but,
after all, Sonya owed her no possible obliga-
tion, except that their mothers had once
been friends. If she wished to care for
Bianca as much — or more than she cared
for her — she had every right.

It was true that Nona had done all she
could for Sonya in those tragic days in
Russia, when Sonya’s liberty and life were
both in danger. But no one wishes to
secure affection through the remembrance
of past favors.

There was another point concerning
Bianca in which Nona and Sonya also
failed to agree. This struck Nona as
serious, but evidently Sonya felt there
must be a possible simple explanation.

Soon after her arrival at the villa, Nona
had apologized to her friend for having
gone alone with Eugino Zoli to look at his
studio.

But Sonya had appeared surprised.
When Nona spoke of Bianca’s having come

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141

with the message that she return to the
villa immediately, Sonya shook her head.

‘‘Dear, you must have misunderstood in
some way what Bianca said to you. How
could I have had any way of knowing where
you were since I had not stirred from the
lawn and none of the others came back
before you did? However, I am just as
glad you did misunderstand Bianca, for I
do not like your having been in the studio
alone. Italy is not the United States and,
even there, you should have had a chap-
eron.”

As Nona did not wish to argue this ques-
tion, she said nothing more. Nevertheless
she was not at all convinced that she had
misunderstood Bianca’s message. As a
matter of fact, she was sure she had not.
But what reason could Bianca have for
wishing her to come back to the villa?
And how did she know where to look for
her, when she had remained on the lawn
with Sonya and Dr. Latham and the
Princess ?

The circumstance was something of a
mystery to Nona, but she had made up

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With the Italian Army

her mind that Bianca might prove a mystery
in more ways than one. Just because she
looked so gentle, and suggested such entire
simplicity, all the more difficult she might
be to fathom.

‘‘You seem very fond of Signor Eugino,”
Nona remarked at this moment.

She was annoyed at this, too, because
she had no idea of making this speech to
Bianca at this moment.

The younger girl looked up.

“Of course I am. I am more fond of
him than of any one in the world, now the
Donna Elizabetta is gone.’^

“More than of your own mother?”
Nona expostulated.

And this time Bianca did flush slightly.

“Oh, the case is different. It has been
my mother’s choice that I should have as
little as possible to do with her. I do not
understand the reason any better than you
do. But it has been like this ever since I
could remember.”

Nona had dropped down in a chair and
was idly turning over the pages of an Italian
newspaper.

An Odd Household

143

‘‘I don’t suppose it has been so very
difficult for you, has it, Bianca? But it
must be a pleasure to you that your foster
brother is having so long a leave. If he
comes this afternoon, suppose you see him
alone. You may tell him that I am too
tired for a walk. It is not necessary, I
presume, for me to act as your chaperon.
It is only best that you should be mine.”

“I have not meant to annoy you,”
Bianca answered slowly, her face now
almost concealed by being bent toward her
sewing.

“Oh, you have not annoyed me,” Nona
returned carelessly; “only I have not been
able to help noticing that you preferred
being with Signor Zoli more than with
Paulo. I suppose that is why you came
to seek for us that afternoon at the studio.”

But before Bianca could reply, Nona
became conscious that Sonya was standing
in the doorway and frowning upon her.

“I am surprised at you, Nona,” she
said slowly. “I could not help overhear-
ing your last speech. Please don’t quarrel.
Then she turned to the other girl. “I

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With the Italian Army

wonder, Bianca, if you would mind going
out and reading to Carlo for a little while.
Your Italian must be a pleasure to him
after Nona’s and mine, which is so im«
possible.”

Then, when Blanca had gone quietly
away, Sonya lingered as if she expected
Nona to say something in answer to her
reproach.

However, Nona pretended not even ta
see her.

A little later, going on up-stairs to her
room, Nona made up her mind that she
would not remain long at the Villa Felice
unless a number of things were altered.

CHAPTER X

A Conversation

Bianca went down the stone path-
way and out on to the road which
ran along in front of the villa.

She was wearing the same pale pink
frock and a large hat encircled with a
wreath of pink flowers. She also had on
gloves and carried a white parasol.

Perhaps to most American girls Bianca’s
care of her personal appearance would
have seemed an absurd vanity. But the
little Italian girl had been brought up in
this fashion. She had been taught that,
to keep her delicate skin from the hot sun
and wind, to wear pretty clothes and to
preserve her little air of daintiness and
aristocracy, was her chief business in life.
For, while her peasant mother asked npne
of the natural things of her which most
mothers might reasonably expect of a
daughter, she had been very insistent that

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L 10

146

With the Italian Army

the particular rules, which she had deter-
mined upon, be obeyed.

And Bianca was secretly a little afraid
of the dark, gaunt woman, who had never
taken her into her confidence in any way,
and seemed so much less like her own
mother than the Donna Elizabetta who
had been only her friend.

Bianca commenced walking in the direc-
tion which she expected her foster brother,
Eugino, to take. For the road she had
chosen lay between the Villa Felice and the
home of the Princess Carnia, where he and
Paulo had been guests.

As Paulo’s leave was over he had re-
turned to the Italian army on the upper
Isonzo. But Eugino had not sufficiently
recovered from his injury to resume his
aerial work and was staying on from day
to day, hoping to be told by his physician
that he might return to the Italian front.
He had been injured internally by a fall,
so that his recovery must of necessity be
slow'. But there was nothing to prevent
his going about his ordinary affairs.

Therefore Eugino had been in the habit

A Conversation

147

of walking to his studio, not far from his
own old home, and working there each
afternoon for as many hours as he felt in
the mood.

Occasionally he would stop along the
way and have tea with Sonya and Bianca,
for tea is almost as established a custom
in Italy as in England.

However, Bianca had observed that,
since Nona’s arrival at the Villa Felice
about a week before, Eugino had come to
the villa every day for some reason or
other. Bianca was sure of this because, as
Nona had said, she had been careful to
remain with Eugino during each visit.

She noticed him now at some distance
away, walking slowly.

Eugino would be surprised on seeing her,
as she was not allowed to leave the grounds
of the villa, unless an older person were
with her.

Eugino seemed to be thinking deeply.
He looked very old and impressive to
Bianca. He had always seemed so, but
more especially in the last year since the
Donna Elizabetta’s death, and since he had

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With the Italian Army

developed the small foreign beard and been
away at the war front for a year.

As a matter of fact, Eugino was one of
the few persons for whom Bianca had any
deep feeling.

‘‘Why this honor, Bianca?” he now
asked, with his usual careless good nature,
when he at last caught sight of her.

“I was going up to the villa, in any case,
to ask Miss Davis if she would walk down
to the studio with me and stay until tea
time.”

“Miss Davis told me to tell you, if you
should ask for her, that she would be busy
this afternoon. Besides, Eugino, I don’t
think Madame Sonya would like her to
be in the studio alone with you,” Bianca
answered, in her gentle but self-possessed
fashion.

“What reason have you for thinking
that, Bianca? If it were true. Miss Davis
is quite capable of telling me herself. Be-
sides, you could be with us, if Madame
Sonya prefers. It seems to me that you
are with us most of the time anyway,” the
young man said, as if the fact had just
occurred to him.

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149

He began walking a little more rapidly,
but Bianca kept beside him.

Suppose we go straight to the studio
then, Eugino, as Miss Davis does not wish
to see you,” Bianca went on with the de-
termination of most quiet people. Indeed,
this was her real purpose in coming out to
meet her foster brother. She wished a
talk alone with him.

“I can pose for you, if you like. You
used to like me to pose for you very often.”

“I like it now, Bianca,” Eugino replied,
glancing at the little girl, with a kind of
critical, brotherly affection. ‘‘You know
you are an extraordinarily pretty child,
Bianca.”

Bianca flushed slowly. Her face rarely
betrayed much expression, but she did not
look so pleased as one might expect at this.

“I am not a child, Eugino; I wish very
much that you and everybody else would
stop thinking of me as one. I am nearly
sixteen, and because I happen to be small
does not make me young. I suppose I
shall never be very large.

“A Princess in Miniature, Bianca.^”

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‘^No, I am not a Princess, Gino; I wish
I were, because, then, if I were only rich
enough, you might marry me.’’

Eugino Zoli stopped and turned around.

‘^What an amazing thing for you to say
to me, Bianca! If you were not a child it
would be perfectly inexcusable. Of course
you do not know what you are talking
about, but, nevertheless, never say a thing
like that again.”

The young man spoke as severely as he
knew how, but was really too surprised to
be as forcible as he felt Bianca’s extraor-
dinary remark justified.

Nevertheless she went on with perfect
serenity.

‘‘I don’t know why you should be so
surprised, or so amazed, Gino. The Donna
Elizabetta used to tell me that she hoped
either you or Paulo would marry me some
day, if only one of you could get hold of
a fortune. She said it might be very hard
for me to marry well with Nannina for a
mother and knowing nothing of my own
history. But she thought that you and
Paulo would not care, as you both knew
how much she loved me.”

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151

‘‘Well, she certainly did that, Bianca,’’
Engine agreed, “more, I have sometimes
thought, than she did either Paulo or me.
But that was because she always wanted
a daughter. I presume that is why she
, wished to hold on to you,” he ended more
leniently, as if he really were talking with
a child. For to Eugino there seemed no
other explanation, except that Bianca had
not realized what she had said.

She walked on now for a short time with-
out speaking, appearing just as delicate and
flower-like and untroubled as before.

Eugino had a moment of feeling a trifle
sorry for Bianca. Her position was difficult
and he and Paulo had been pretty careless
concerning her since his mother’s death.
But, somehow, the war made one forget
one’s smaller duties. Moreover, he had
never been in sympathy with this whole
business concerning Bianca. Yet, after all,
she was as delicately pretty as a Dresden
picture. One could scarcely imagine the
child in anything except refined surround-
ings.

Then Eugino began thinking of another

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person who interested him more than his
foster sister.

However, Bianca appeared determined
not to be ignored today.

Ordinarily she was quiet and unobtru-
sive, but evidently something had aroused
her to unexpected expression.

^‘Gino, if you know anything about me,
I think you ought to tell me about myself.
It isn’t fair. No one supposes I have any
brains, or ever think about anything, when
I really think' a great deal. So much of the
time there seems nothing else for me to do.
Nannina talks about getting a lot of money
for me some day, when everything will be
just as I wish it. But I can’t imagine
where she expects to get money, doing the
kind of work she does. Then I shall not
always meet people so kind as the Signora
Sonya. She is very wonderful and kind,
but other people don’t understand and
don’t like me, because of the way I treat
Nannina and — and for other reasons.”

Bianca hesitated an instant just as she
concluded her speech.

She and her foster brother had left the

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153

road which led up to the villa and were
going along an enclosed path which was
more direct to the studio.

Certainly Bianca had delivered Nona’s
message faithfully, so that the young man
had given up the idea of trying to see her
for this afternoon at least.

‘‘Oh, you think entirely too much about
yourself, Bianca. Most of us do, for that
matter. But these things, which worry
you — ^you had better talk over with your
mother. She is the proper person to decide
what should be done about you. But I’ll
try to have a talk with her myself before
I go back to the front,” Eugino replied.

As a matter of fact, Eugino Zoli felt a
little conscience smitten as well as sorry for
Bianca. It was true his mother always had
seemed exceptionally fond of her, and had
not only expected, but requested, that he
and Paulo do all that was possible for her.
But Eugino had no idea of anything he
might be able to do. If he had money that
would of course be another matter. But
he and Paulo were both ridiculously poor.'
And there was really no way for him to

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With the Italian Army

acquire money except in the fashion Bianca
had suggested. This question of marrying
money did not strike the young Italian
artist as it would most Americans. Foreign
marriages, which were an exchange of
money for something else supposed to be
of equal value, were far too common.

Moreover, Eugino had no illusion about
his profession. He knew that compara-
tively few artists ever make a comfortable
living, and that only now and then one of
them makes a fortune — and that usually
after he is dead. Most of the money in
art these days goes to the repurchasing of
pictures by old masters — not to the buying
of masterpieces by the young artists.

But because Eugino had been disap-
pointed at not seeing Nona, and because
Bianca had herself made the suggestion and
he did not wish to show a lack of gratitude,
he decided to try a sketch of her.

It was a hot midsummer afternoon, so
they remained outdoors, but not far from
the studio.

Bianca sat listlessly in a tall chair against
a background of wild grape vines, her para-

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155

sol open, upon which the vines made float-
ing, soft green shadows.

Her face under its big white hat was also
partly in shadow, but one saw the tiny
point of her delicate chin, her fair hands
clasped loosely in her lap, and her slender
ankles and small feet. She also wore that
same little serious, far-away expression
which so often made people misunderstand
her.

For truly Bianca was by no means so
unconscious of the world and the circum-
stances surrounding her as she was supposed
to be.

As he painted her, Eugino continued
to become more and more impressed by
Bianca’s delicate prettiness. It was odd,
but in some way she was more grown up
than he had appreciated. It was probably
because he had grown so accustomed to
her that he had not noticed the change.

Now and then he and Bianca talked a
little while he worked.

‘H wonder why Miss Davis did not wish
to see me this afternoon?” Eugino asked.
‘‘Had she any especial engagement?”

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With the Italian Army

‘‘I think she intended to try to amuse the
young fellow who is staying with Madame
Sonya, but I am not sure,” Bianca returned.
And then, after another moment: “You
like Miss Davis very much, don’t you,
Eugino? It is funny, but you like so many
different girls. People think it is Paulo
who cares, while you are always laughing
and indifferent. Yet it was always about
you the Donna Elizabetta used to worry.”

Eugino laughed good-naturedly.

“It seems to me, Bianca, that you are
thinking and talking too much about my
affairs this afternoon. Suppose you stop
before I am annoyed. For a young lady
who has been brought up not to express
her opinions before older persons, you have
done pretty well today.”

So Bianca ceased talking and sat in the
demure silence which had always been
required of her.

She was sitting like this and Eugino was
hard at work, when suddenly they both
heard some one striding toward them.

Bianca looked up and turned a little
pale. It was her mother, Nannina.

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157

It was strange that she should always have
this little fear of her. Nannina had been
harsh, but never cruel. But Bianca was
one of the unaccountable persons one meets
now and then, who is sometimes very
timid and then unexpectedly brave.

‘‘So this is where you are,” she said
angrily to Bianca. “I thought as much
when I learned you had disappeared.”

She took Bianca by the shoulder and but
for Eugino might have been rough with her.

“Have I not told you that you are not
to go away from the villa alone?”

Then she turned to Eugino.

“The Signora told me if I found you
at the studio to ask you to come and have
tea with them. She thinks perhaps you
may help with the invalid. Why she should
worry over one young man — a stranger —
when there are so many who suffer?”

Nannina spoke with a queer indifference.
But Eugino paid no attention, except to be
pleased by Sonya’s invitation.

He had been accustomed to the queer
peasant woman all his life. He knew she
was odd and fierce and had strange ideas,

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With the Italian Army

and, moreover, that her behavior toward
Bianca seemed to be beyond explanation.
However, she had always been an excellent
servant, and he had thought very little
about her in any other connection.

“Don’t be cross with Bianca, Nannina,
although you are right; she must not go
about alone. But see what a lovely picture
I have made of her.”

Eugino picked up his canvas and as
Nannina looked at it an intense expression
of pride and pleasure crossed her face.

The next moment the three of them were
returning to the Villa Felice.

CHAPTER XI

The Same Afternoon

ON that same afternoon it is true that
Nona did offer to spend the time
after luncheon with Carlo and to
try if possible to keep him amused, in order
that Sonya might be free.

Sonya agreed and slipped away to her
own room. Soon after Nona went out on
the piazza and, sitting down near the young
soldier, began reading him the New York
newspapers, which she had received un-
expectedly from Barbara Thornton that
same morning.

For a while it appeared as if Carlo were
listening and was interested.

One had to judge by the expression of
his eyes, since he so rarely spoke.

But, after a quarter of an hour or more,
whenever Nona glanced toward him, she
could see that he was scarcely conscious
of her presence and certainly not of her
reading.

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With the Italian Army

Yet Dr. Latham had insisted that the
one thing necessary for his recovery was to
rouse the invalid from his depression.

Of her own lack of success in this direc-
tion, Nona was painfully convinced.

She stopped for an instant to rest her
voice and to wonder if there were not
something else she could do that might
prove more availing, when Carlo began
speaking to her.

He spoke in such a low voice and so
brokenly that Nona had to lean toward
him to hear.

‘‘You — are — tired. Something — troubles
— you. Go — away — to — rest. Perhaps —
I — shall — sleep, if — I — am — alone.”

Afterwards he closed his eyes and, when
Nona had watched him for a short time,
she believed he really had fallen asleep.
So, asking Nannina to look out on the
piazza every now and then to see if things
were all right, she decided to lie down for
half an hour or so. She was a little
ashamed of the mood she had been in all
day and hoped being alone and resting
might make a difference.

The Same Afternoon

161

Somehow Carlo’s patience and dignity
under his great misfortune seemed a kind
of unconscious reproach to one. It was
not that one could feel he had accepted his
affliction, but whatever he felt so far he
had been unwilling to discuss it.

Passing Bianca’s door and not knowing
she had already gone out, Nona had a
moment of thinking she would go in and
be more friendly with her.

She had been extremely cross. More-
over, the fact that Bianca was kept from
knowing anything of her own history should
have made one sympathetic with her, not
annoyed. Nona remembered how much the
mystery concerning her own mother had
troubled her girlhood, until her chance
meeting with Sonya and Sonya’s explana-
tion to her later. Yet, of course, the cir-
cumstances were in no way the same.
What she resented about Bianca was not
the facts of her history, but the cool fashion
in which she treated her own mother.

Moreover, Nona had the impression that
Bianca was not truthful and that she would
hesitate at nothing to accomplish her own

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162 With the Italian Army

ends. She knew it would be impossible to
make Sonya accept this same opinion —
or any one else, for that matter — ^because
Bianca looked so exquisitely young and
gentle. Moreover, Nona had no real
authority for her point of view, except a
quickly developed personal prejudice.

She concluded, however, not to trouble
Bianca now, but to try to be kinder and
more agreeable to her later in the afternoon.

Nona heard Sonya moving about in the
bedroom adjoining hers and called out to
her that their patient wished to sleep.

“Rest, then, until tea time, Nona dear,”
Sonya called back. “I am going down
to the drawing-room a little later and I’ll
see that Carlo is not neglected.”

So Nona lay down, intending to take
a nap.

But in the most absurd fashion she began
wondering if Eugino Zoli were coming to
make a call at the villa at any time during
the afternoon, and also if Bianca would
deliver her message.

If she really were not busy when he
came, he might think her rude. It would

The Same Afternoon

163

have been simpler merely to have left word
with Nannina that she was resting and
hoped to be excused.

To hawe referred to the fact that Bianca
had never once left her alone with her
foster brother, must have made her either
seem absurd in the younger girl’s eyes, or
else jealous, which Nona knew was worse
than absurd.

After all, why should she have wished to
be alone with the young Italian soldier,
who was still a comparative stranger to
her, in spite of his evident interest and
friendliness?

Nona felt that Bianca had rather the
best of the present situation. Then she
found herself flushing warmly at the idea
that Bianca might mention to her foster
brother what she had said. After all, had
not the little girl the right ? She had known
him all her life and was so devoted to him.

But, somehow, Nona did not feel that
Bianca’s affection was just what one might
feel for a big brother. Perhaps Nona had
recognized something about the little girl
which none of the other people about her

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With the Italian Army

had seen. Bianca was growing up; instead
of being younger than sixteen, as her ap-
pearance suggested, in some ways she was
older. But this was natural, because
Italian girls do grow old very soon. One
remembers that Juliet was only fourteen,
yet Juliet was rather uncomfortably pre-
cocious in her emotions.

Bianca was simply not so childish as
people considered her, nor was she so
unconscious of the strangeness and the pos-
sible unhappiness of her own position.

Not long after Nona spoke to her, Sonya
went down to her drawing room.

Through the open window she could see
Carlo lying back in his wheeled chair with
his eyes closed; but she knew from a slight
movement which he occasionally made that
he was not asleep.

However, Sonya decided not to disturb
him. First, she wrote several letters to
old friends in Russia. It was so wonderful
these days to be able to write freely, to
have no fear of bringing trouble upon her
friends by saying what she thought and
felt. For Russia’s old chains were broken!

The Same Afternoon

165

Now, if only she remained true to her dream
and forged no new fetters !

Then, when Sonya had finished writing,
she sat down by the piano and began
playing, at first softly, drifting from one
air to the other, as if she were merely
playing to herself.

But all the while she was conscious of
the mute figure of the boy outside her win-
dow— his listlessness and his lack of interest
in the return to a life, which had already
robbed him of the only thing for which he
greatly cared.

Sonya was a gifted musician and knew
a great deal of beautiful Russian music,
music with the passion and the vision of
the old Russia, struggling out of darkness
and oppression into the wonderful new
light of freedom. Small wonder, then, that
Russian music haunts one as no other!

Several times Sonya noticed that Carlo
opened his eyes, staring blindly at the
exquisite summer landscape of evergreens
and roses which makes the Italian country
so lovely.

Then, when another • ten minutes had

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With the Italian Army

passed and she looked again, she saw that
he had bent his head and covered his face
with his hand.

For a little while longer Sonya played
on and then went out to him.

She stood by his chair for a moment, but
when he did not look up, laid her hand
softly on his dark hair.

Carlo Navara belonged to the familiar
type of the beautiful Italian peasant. He
had the white skin, the large dark eyes,
the straight short nose and the full deeply
curved lips that one sees in Raphael’s
cherubs and in Andre del Sarto’s beautiful
children.

Sonya felt for the moment as if she stood
in the place of the boy’s mother, so strangely
she seemed to have had to offer him en-
couragement of one kind or another in each
of their meetings.

But, although she had not liked the boy
while crossing the ocean with him, had
thought him too vain, too assured that his
musical gift must make him acceptable to
everybody, she had since grown not only
to like him, but to feel an odd respect for
him.

The Same Afternoon

167

The way Carlo had confessed to her his
nervous fear of himself — the terror that he
might not have it in him to make a gallant
soldier — ^had been the first thing which had
affected her attitude. It is a fine thing
sometimes to have the courage to confess
one’s own weakness, when one also has the
courage to overcome it.

And Carlo had given his all and lost so
quickly.

As Sonya stood there beside him she
thought of a few lines in a great poem by
Rudyard Kipling, called ‘‘If.”

“If we can make one heap of all our winnings,
And risk it on one game of pitch and toss
And lose and start again at the beginning
And never breathe a word about our loss.”

At least, these were the lines as Sonya
remembered them. Well, Carlo had risked
and lost, now, could he ever bring himself
to start again and still to make something
out of life from whatever was left him?
And could she in any way help him toward
some new beginning?

Sonya felt almost as hopless as Nona

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With the Italian Army

had previously, and yet she allowed Carlo
to cry on, glad at last that his stoicism,
which Nona had believed to be courage,
had broken down.

She knew that he was too young and
too emotional to go on forever in silence,
never speaking of his misfortune, nor re-
ceiving the sympathy he so badly needed.

After all, it seemed to Sonya as if Carlo
were young enough to be her son !

But, by and by he straightened up and
took his hand down from his eyes.

‘‘It was your music, dear lady, or I
should not have been such an infant.”

Carlo did not talk like an American boy.
For one thing, he had begun calling Sonya
“dear lady,” which sounded very charm-
ing when coming from him, and yet might
have been affected in some one else. But
Carlo was an Italian and an artist. One
could not expect him to be conventional,
either in his emotions or in his expression
of them.

“I know,” Sonya answered, “and I
hoped my music might have just the result
it did have upon you. There are so many

The Same Afternoon

169

worse things, Carlo, dear, than being an
infant. Besides, why should you always
hold on to yourself.^ Why should you not
express your grief over your great loss.^
If you will only break down now and then,
it will help you toward recovery.”

“But I do not wish to recover,” Carlo
replied quietly. He did not speak in any
dramatic heroic fashion, but as if he
honestly meant what he said.

“It was so hard to explain to the good
doctors and nurses at the hospital, who
worked so hard to make me well,” Carlo
went on. “But I think I can make you
see.”

Then he told his story very much as
Nona had pictured it to herself on first
learning of Carlo’s tragedy.

“I — have no — gifts, no brains — outside
— my music. I can — make nothing — of my
life — now that is gone. It will — be only —
the little fruit shop for me — always, only
— the company — of people — for whom — I
shall — never care, having known others so
different. Others, whom — I had hoped —
some day — would care for me — because of
the happiness I — could give them.’

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With the Italian Army

Sonya nodded.

think I can understand — at least in a
measure — Carlo. But no one who has not
had a great gift like your’s can wholly
appreciate what the losing of it must mean.
But there must be other things. You see,
most people have to be happy without a
great talent; sometimes without even a
little one. Then there are the little father
and mother at home, who need you.”

But Sonya could not feel that what she
was saying interested Carlo.

“I know,” he answered, quiet and self-
possessed once more, ^‘but there are other
— ^younger — children, and they — the little
— mother — and father — must — lose their
— ^wonderful pride in me. Somehow — it
made them feel — happier and more content.
You — do not know — how we Italians, even
— the humblest — of us, like I and — my
people, care for music. Besides — they —
could — not be glad — seeing — me wretched.”

‘‘But, Carlo, are you so sure your voice
may not come back to you again? Even
in these few days you have spent here with
me, it seems to both Nona and to me, that

The Same Afternoon

171

when you try you can speak more distinctly.
As you grow stronger, your voice must
improve. I do not say there is hope; I
do not know. But there is other music
in the world besides one’s voice. When you
are well enough, if you wish, you and I can
work here together. Then, when you go
back to the United States, there will be
doctors who may be able to do more for
you. They are so busy here in Italy, you
see; there are so many to be cared for.”

Carlo shook his head; nevertheless his
expression was more cheerful.

‘‘At — other times — you have — given me
courage, dear lady, but now — as you —
cannot do that, you would wish to — give
me hope.”

But Carlo appeared more animated than
he had at any time since his arrival at the
villa, so Sonya continued talking on less
personal subjects.

He spoke only occasionally in response,
but each time Sonya believed that he spoke
more easily, with less long pauses between
his words. Now and then three or four
words would come quickly and naturally.

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With the Italian Army

However, Sonya feared that she had
probably been wrong to offer the boy the
hope that he might be able to sing again.
However, how is one to live on without
hope? And it might be possible that his
gift for music would one day express itself
in some other way.

Just before tea time it occurred to Sonya
that Carlo might feel weary of so much
feminine society.

She knew that Eugino Zoli was probably
working in his studio. But she did not
know that Bianca was with him.

Nona had not yet come down-stairs.
However, Sonya asked Nannina to try and
find the young artist and to persuade him
to come to the villa for tea.

CHAPTER XII

A Lack of Caution

WHEN Nona Davis finally came
down-stairs and out on to the
piazza, to her surprise she saw
Eugino Zoli sitting there talking to Carlo.

Apparently no one had heard her ap-
proach.

She stood for a moment in the doorway
studying the little group of people.

Bianca and Sonya were a little apart
from the two young men, and Bianca
looked as fresh and fragrant in her pale
pink dress as she had at the beginning of
the warm summer afternoon.

Sonya was attired in a simple lilac muslin
and had put a big white rose into her belt.

But Nona did not look at them long.
Really she was more interested in watch-
ing Eugino Zoli.

Up-stairs in her own room, Nona had at
last confessed to herself that she really

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With the Italian Army

liked the Italian soldier and artist very
much, when one considered how brief a
time they had known each other. Also she
believed he liked her. He had said nothing,
but there had been in his voice and manner
a something vaguely flattering and appeal-
ing. Perhaps Nona did not appreciate
that there are men who have this charm in
their manner toward all women, or if she
did know, Eugino did not create this
impression.

She now wondered again if Bianca had
given him her message. Absurdly she felt
the least little bit annoyed that Eugino
had evidently been happy to remain at the
villa without the prospect of seeing her.

But he was talking to Carlo in the
kindest and most sympathetic fashion.

Certainly Eugino Zoli gave one the im-
pression of being older than he really was.
Everybody thought the same thing con-
cerning him. Nona understood that he
was only a few years older than she, and
yet he had the poise of a man of wide
experience. And Nona thought she had
grown rather tired of boys. Her two years^

A Lack of Caution

175

work in Europe in Red Cross nursing often-
times made her feel as if her own girlhood
were far behind. So much pain and so
much fortitude, so much tragedy and yet
through it all the quality of divine humor,
such as Dante must have meant to suggest
in his Divine Comedy, she had seen behind
the great battle fronts.

“But you must feel very proud and
happy to know you have given so much to
Italy, Signor Navara,” Eugino Zoli was
saying, with deeper feeling than he gen-
erally expressed. “It is very splendid to
me! You were brought up in the United
States; Italy cannot have meant so much
to you. With us who have always lived
here in Italy, the case is very different.
It is natural that we should wish to give
our lives gladly to see our country great
again; to see Italy return to the old splendor
that was once hers, but with a newer, more
democratic ideal than the Italy of the past.”

Then, when Carlo made no reply, Nona
walked out to join her friends. Immedi-
ately Eugino Zoli arose, bowing to Nona in
his perfectly courteous fashion. He showed

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With the Italian Army

not the least trace of resentment because
of her having sent him word she did not
wish to see him during the afternoon.
Moreover, as he made no reference to this
fact, Nona found herself vaguely apologiz-
ing. She could not apologize in any down-
right fashion, for she did not yet know
whether Eugino had suggested any wish
to see her on this particular afternoon.

“I think I have been feeling rather used
up by the heat. Anyhow, I have been too
cross to see any one until now. I am glad
you are here. Signor Zoli,” Nona said
frankly, after she had shaken hands; flush-
ing a little, but at the same time smiling
half humorously and half with an appeal
for forgiveness.

Eugino answered straightforwardly.

‘‘I should like to have seen you earlier.
Miss Davis. I wished you to spend the
afternoon at the studio with me if it were
possible and would not have bored you.
But Bianca told me you expected to have
something else to do.”

Before Nona could reply, hearing an
exclamation from Sonya, she glanced up

A Lack of Caution

177

and saw Dr. Latham’s large figure walking
slowly up their path.

The American doctor had again come
uninvited to the Villa Felice.

Nona had a flash of wondering if after
all he did not dislike Sonya so much as he
pretended. But, of course, he had the
excuse of desiring to see Carlo Navara, who
was still his patient, although no longer at
the hospital.

As soon as the doctor had shaken hands
with Sonya he turned directly to Carlo.
As Nona chanced to be standing near, he
simply smiled his greeting to her, and bowed
rather brusquely to her companion.

“Well, Navara, you are looking in much
better shape than when I saw you last, but
pretty tired. Have your nurses been too
devoted.^”

Carlo shook his head and smiled. He
and the doctor had become good friends
and understood each other fairly well by
this time.

“Suppose I bundle you off to your room
and have a talk with you there.”

But at this Carlo shook his head.

12

178

With the Italian Army

“If I — could stay — a little longer — until
— after tea I would not — try to — talk,”
he answered.

Dr. Latham listened with his great head
a little to one side.

“All right; only half an hour more.
But you are talking much better, boy, than
I dreamed you could in so short a time.”

‘‘You have done wonderful things for
your patient. Dr. Latham,” Eugino Zoli
said with his usual courtesy.

But Dr. Latham shook his head almost
angrily.

“I have done nothing at all. Navara
was almost healed of his wound when he
came to Florence. I mean the outside
wound. I had to send him out here to the
Villa Felice for the wound that went deeper.
That is what we doctors have been doing
ever since this war began — healing the
wounds of the body when we could and
sending our patients to women for the
healing we cannot give.”

The big doctor spoke with such earnest-
ness and sweetness that Nona felt her eyes
suddenly swimming in tears.

A Lack of Caution

179

Sonya crossed over to him.

‘‘Thank you, Doctor,” she said. “But
I wish some day men would learn not to
kill one another. We women sometimes
grow very weary trying to bind up the
wounds that war has made. Try to make
the suffering a little less. For all our
efforts are so unavailing if men will go on
fighting forever. Oh, I have tried to see —
tried to be inspired by the great lessons
this war has taught us — the great results
it has already achieved. But I still cannot
believe in war.”

“No more can I, Madame,” Dr. Latham
returned grimly. “I wonder, too, how
many of the men and women engaged in
this business of trying to heal, do believe
in it? Some day perhaps ”

But Eugino Zoli interrupted with a
sudden change of voice and manner, so
conspicuous that his companions looked at
him in surprise.

“For my own part I hope that the
making of war may never end. What else
is there except that we fight for the things
we hold dear? Death is inevitable. For
my part I should prefer the soldier’s death.””

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With the Italian Army

Again Dr. Latham shook his head.

‘‘But we were not talking of death,
young man. However, you Italians are
all alike — gallant lovers and gallant sol-
diers.^’

Sonya had made a slight movement of
her hand toward Carlo which had checked
the seriousness of the American doctor’s
argument.

The boy was sitting up with his face
white and strained. Their argument had
touched him far too closely.

Moreover, Nannina came out on the
piazza at this instant bearing the inevitable
tea tray. Cakes were a forbidden luxury
in Italy these days, but Sonya managed
to supply her guests with tiny sandwiches
and sweet crackers.

Eugino and Dr. Latham had sat down
near each other and were evidently not
prepared to give up their conversation.

“The great Italian drive will begin in a
short time. Dr. Latham, not far from Trieste.
All winter we have been preparing.”
Eugino went on, speaking with an earnest-
ness and enthusiasm which made Nona

A Lack of Caution

181

stare at him with mild amazement. He
had always seemed to her a casual person,
perhaps not very earnest about anything,
except to make himself agreeable and to
work at his art when he was in the proper
mood.

But now his eyes had become steady,
determined.

‘‘They need me at the front. Dr. Latham.
I mean they need all the fellows they can
get just now to reconnoiter over the lines,’^
he went on enthusiastically. ‘‘We have
been watching the Austrian fellows pretty
closely. You see, I don’t think the people
in the United States have ever altogether
understood how seriously we Italians have
prepared for our share in the war. There
have been reasons why we have had to
wait for our great offensive but in a short
time — ”

Sonya was pouring the tea, but she now
turned around. Nannina was still stand-
ing behind her chair and seemed to be
listening. It was but natural that she
should be interested in what Eugino Zoli
was saying.

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With the Italian Army

‘‘You can go now, Nannina,” Sonya
ordered gently. “There is no need to
trouble you to help us any further.”

But the next moment she added:

“I am sorry, but you seem to have for-
gotten the lemon. Would you mind get-
ting it for us ? ”

It was most unusual, that Nannina
should be forgetful. She must have been
worried over something this afternoon, for
she was forced to go back to her kitchen
and return a third time before the tea
service was finally complete.

However, no one minded waiting, espe-
cially as Eugino continued talking of the
Italian war plans.

“I wish you would take a look at me,
Dr. Latham, and see if you don’t think I
am fit to get back to work. My physician
in Florence is an old friend of my mother’s
and a little more careful, I think, than he
need be. It will be a great favor,” he
urged at length.

Df. Latham nodded.

“Very well, if your doctor does not ob-
ject. But I expect you are too impatient,

A Lack of Caution

183

Zoli. Fve been hearing rumors myself,
and I’ve an idea it may be several weeks
before the Italian drive begins. Do you
not intend to wait until the British Moni-
tors come to your aid ? ”

Nona stirred uncomfortably and ex-
changed a sympathetic glance with Carlo.

Evidently they both felt that Dr. Latham
and Eugino were talking far too openly.
There could be no danger in speaking freely
here at Sonya’s villa perhaps, but Nona had
been through so many unexpected experi-
ences since the war began that she believed
no one with information of any value could
be too cautious.

CHAPTER XIII

Dangerous Popularity

INSTEAD of living at her Italian villa
in peace and loneliness as she had
anticipated, as time passed on Sonya
Vales ky found her home becoming more
and more a center of a group of interested
and interesting acquaintances.

Sonya was a rarely charming woman,
possessing a wonderful gift as a hostess —
the ability to make other people talk with-
out talking a great deal herself. Then,
too, she was very beautiful and, as she had
refused to tell anything of her past his-
tory to her Italian acquaintances, a gentle
air of mystery surrounded her which is
always alluring.

However, a great many of Sonya’s new
friends developed through the increasing
intimacy of Eugino Zoli with the tenants
occupying his own and his brother’s home.
Eugino had seen Dr. Latham in regard

(184)

Dangerous Popularity

185

to returning immediately to the Italian
front. But the American physician’s ver-
dict had been the same as his own Italian
physician’s. Eugino was not to be in too
much of a hurry. Give himself time and
he would be all right for service again.
A soldier in the aviation service must be
always at his best both in body and mind.
Unlike other soldiers, he had only his own
judgment and his own initiative to depend
upon, while at his work.

As a matter of fact, Eugino Zoli was a
captain of aviation for the Italian Govern-
ment. Already on several occasions he
had distinguished himself and been rapidly
promoted, until now he was considered one
of the most talented and daring men in the
aerial squadron.

Therefore, the young man was naturally
impatient over his long inaction. Had he
been seriously invalided he might have
regarded the matter differently. But to
feel almost entirely well, to be able to go
about his ordinary affairs, and yet not per-
mitted to get back to the line was tre-
mendously irksome.

186

With the Italian Army

For Nona Davis was right in her observa-
tion. However little in earnest Eugino
Zoli might appear to be about many of the
other circumstances of life, he was tre-
mendously in earnest about his work as a
soldier.

He proved this to himself in these passing
weeks by his inability to feel the deep
interest in his art which he had felt before
Italy’s entrance into the war. It was true,
he went to his studio nearly every day for
a’ time, attempting to get back into serious
work. But, after a few hours, ^ he was
more than apt to give up and, whenever
he felt it possible, stop by for a call at the
Villa Felice.

Moreover, he did not always make his
calls alone. A number of soldiers — friends
of Eugiho’s — ^were also on leave of absence
in Florence. And these friends Eugino got
into the habit of taking to Sonya’s to tea.

Many of their own Italian friends were
extremely depressed by the war; most of
them were actually too poor to be able to
offer even the simple hospitality of tea,
except on stated occasions. So it was

Dangerous Popularity

187

pleasant to find a home always open and
agreeable, with a charming woman as
hostess and more often than not several
pretty girls willing — and even more than
willing — to make themselves attractive.

So the guests introduced by Eugino were
afterwards apt to return to Sonya’s alone.
And, although Sonya was secretly amused
by the difference between her own plan for
a quiet summer and the way fate had
changed the arrangement for her, she ac-
quiesced with entire good nature.

For one thing Nona was with her a good
part of the time and the three other Red
Cross girls, who had crossed with them,
whenever they were free from their hospital
work. And, of course, the American girls
were naturally interested in the young
Italian soldiers, whom they were not nurs-
ing just at present, although there was
always the possibility that they might be
at their mercy later on.

Then Bianca was always there. It was
difficult to guess how much the young men
guests interested her, as she was so quiet.
But, then, Bianca always managed to be

188

With the Italian Anny

most becomingly dressed and to make a
charming picture of herself, either con-
sciously or unconsciously.

It was true that the young soldiers
usually talked upon subjects outside her
knowledge. For most of their conversa-
tion was with regard to the war, as it was
being fought all over Europe, but more
especially at the Italian front, where the
preparations for the long-expected assault
were now almost completed.

So closely had the American Red Cross
girls been in touch with the war through
their nursing that they could not fail to be
interested and also to have opinions of
their own to express.

There were times when Sonya actually
felt sorry for Bianca, so set apart did the
little Italian girl seem from the other young
people. This was not only because she
was younger, but because she was evidently
so ignorant of the entire war situation.
Nannina had allowed her to do nothing to
help the war cause except to sew. But
Sonya observed that Bianca always man-
aged to have her knitting, or some piece

Dangerous Popularity

189

of Red Cross sewing, in her hands when the
young Italian soldiers were present.

However, Sonya’s guests were by no
means young men only. The Italian
country people in the neighborhood called
upon her and seemed to like her very much.

There was also the Princess Carnia,
whom Eugino Zoli had Introduced among
his first friends. He had been a guest at
her house for a time, but insisting he was
imposing upon her kindness had afterwards
gone to board with acquaintances living
in the same neighborhood. As a matter
of fact, when Eugino was not at Sonya’s
at tea time, he was usually with the Prin-
cess. She was an American girl, as he had
once explained to Nona, and an old friend.

They also came to Sonya’s together
occasionally. Yet it was just possible that
the Princess was a little annoyed by Sonya’s
popularity. She was very young and fond
of society and her home had no rival until
Sonya rented the villa. Moreover, the
Princess had no other American girl, ex-
cept herself, to offer as an attraction, while
Sonya might have any number from one
to four.

190

With the Italian Army

Nona Davis, however, was not present
at all the informal tea parties. For, as
soon as she had rested and grown a little
stronger, she began going back to Florence
to work at the hospital during the day and,
as a special favor, was allowed to return
to Sonya at night.

Sometimes it so happened that she was
able to get back to the Villa Felice before
all the guests had departed, if the work at
the hospital chanced to be a little lighter
than usual.

But one evening she drove back from
Florence to Sonya’s home nearly an hour
later than was customary with her. She
had been detained to assist at a difficult
operation.

It was already dusk as she passed by the
now familiar landscape.

Looking back, Florence was a gray city
of classic shadows, while closer by the
countryside was dim and sweet.

Nona lay back in her ancient carriage,
relaxing as completely as possible. It was
the only way in which one could do the
strenuous work which nursing required, by

Dangerous Popularity

191

learning to give up completely when the
actual strain was removed.

But Nona was congratulating herself
that Sonya’s everlasting group of Italian
admirers must have departed that after-
noon before her own return. For, neither
physically nor mentally, did she feel in the
humor for being even civil to strange
visitors. She wanted nothing so much as
a bath and a bed and a book, and Sonya to
come up after dinner to talk to her and to
tell her what had happened at the villa
during the day — ^whether Eugino had been
there and if he had left a message for her.

It was with relief that Nona discovered
the piazza at the villa was for once empty.

But as she went up the steps she could
hear the sound of the piano from the draw-
ing room.

Nona knew that Sonya often played to
Carlo at this hour. In the morning they
studied music together, but Carlo would
never play if he supposed any one near.
He knew something of the piano, of course,
having learned to accompany his own
songs, but in only a halting fashion. Be-

192

With the Italian Army

fore he had devoted all his energy and his
passion to his singing.

But it was lovely to hear Sonya, and
Nona felt just what she was in the mood
for at this time. So she slipped quietly
into the half-darkened room, hoping that
no one would be disturbed by her entrance.

Sonya did not stop playing, nor turn
around. She had on a soft old white
muslin which fitted her figure with the
peculiar elegance which was so character-
istic of her, and which the Red Cross girls
had at once noticed in their first meeting
more than two years before.

Sonya was playing from memory. Her
head with its closely coiled hair — now iron
gray, with the odd streak of pure white
across the front — ^was thrown a little back,
since in this way she was less conscious
of her audience.

Carlo Navara, who was in his wheeled
chair, had been placed in such a position
that he could look directly at Sonya.

Bianca was not far away, but sitting
beside some one whom Nona was surprised
to see.

Dangerous Popularity

193

But at once Eugino Zoli got up and
directed Nona to a place on the sofa where
he had been seated.

“I am going to be here to dinner and
I wanted particularly to see you. You
will see me for a little while alone

Nona nodded agreement.

Then, after Sonya had finished playing,
she went up-stairs and dressed for dinner,
forgetting how tired she had been a short
time before.

13

CHAPTER XIV

Uncertainty

my dear Signora, even the
severest American chaperon
would agree to this.”

Sonya looked at her guest steadfastly
for an instant and then smiled.

‘‘But I have told you many times that
I am not an American, Eugino, even if
Nona is, and you will confuse facts. Be-
sides, you know you are not an American,
even if your mother was and you like now
and then to pose as one. In many ways
you are the most Italian of persons, and I
am by no means sure I trust you,” Sonya
answered with a half humorous, half seri-
ous inflection in the tones of her voice.

She and Eugino Zoli were very good
friends to the point of Sonya’s calling the
young man by his first name. Moreover,
she understood the young Italian even
better than he enjoyed her doing.

(194)

Uncertainty

195

^‘That is an insult to my country and
to me, Signora, and only your sex protects
you after such a speech. But if you’ll do
as I ask, why — ” Eugino smiled.

‘‘Oh, Nona may go with you if you’ll
promise not to walk far away from the
villa and not to stay out too late.” Sonya
conceded. “Also, I assure you. Signor
Eugino, that it is only in matters of the
heart where I fear your countrymen are
not always to be trusted. So remember,
Nona dear, that it is moonlight in Italy
and Eugino is a gallant soldier — ”

Sonya laughed, and Nona paid no par-
ticular attention to what she was saying.
Indeed, she thought that Sonya’s and
Eugino’s somewhat stilted conversation was
the least bit silly and that Sonya’s was
not altogether in good taste.

Moreover, she was anxious to be out
of doors.

Dinner had been over half an hour at
the Villa Felice and coffee served some
time before in the drawing-room.

Carlo Navara had gone to his own apart-
ment; although much better, he was still
an invalid.

196

With the Italian Army

Nona wished that Bianca would occa-
sionally disappear as well. But Bianca was
omnipresent, never apparently thinking it
her place to retire until Sonya’s guests and
Sonya herself had withdrawn.

However, tonight the girl might serve as
a companion for Sonya, if she were lonely,
which was not probable. For even Bianca
could not arrange to accompany her foster
brother on the present occasion.

Nevertheless, Nona was a little irritated
by believing she noticed a demure smile
upon Bianca’s face at Sonya’s last words.
However, Nona realized that she was
always a little bit suspicious of the younger
girl and perhaps not always fair.

Nona also put on a white muslin dress
for dinner and wore over her shoulders an
ivory crepe shawl which belonged to Sonya.

Finally she and Eugino went out to-
gether.

The moon had passed the fullness, but
was still wonderfully brilliant with a late
summer radiance. The air was no longer
filled with the scent of roses, although in
Italy roses bloom all the year. But tonight

Uncertainty

197

there was a stronger fragrance — ^the odor
of ripening grapes. For much of the hill
country about Florence is a vineyard coun-
try and Sonya’s villa was set in the midst
of it.

Nona and Eugino first walked through
the little garden with its orange and lemon
trees, and then Eugino found a path which
at length brought them to a little marble
bench, not far from what had once been a
fountain, but was now overgrown with
vines.

‘‘This is part of our estate too, so we are
keeping our word,” Eugino said, as he
spread out his handkerchief on the stone
seat. “We have a good deal of land about
here, but were not able to take proper care
of it, so it has gone to waste. I believe
that is the present tragedy of all Italy, so
much we have that is beautiful and worth
while and so little money to turn it to
account.”

Nona and her companion were both
seated as Eugino said this.

Nona hesitated a moment and then an-
swered quietly:

198

With the Italian Army

‘‘I think I like things best as they are.
You see, in the past two years I have trav-
eled so much, having nursed in most of the
Allied countries since the war began. So
when other people told me I should be
overwhelmed by ‘the spell of Italy’ I don’t
think I quite believed them. However, I
have been, and I suppose no one can escape
its glamour. Why, tonight this place
about us seems like some wonderful dream
country. You see, I like this ruined part
of your garden better than the places
which have been carefully tended. I
admire that old fountain there with the
vines half hiding it and that charming
little boy’s figure with his arms full of real
green things, far better than I could ever
like a well-kept fountain — say one of the
ugly kind we have in so many of our
American parks. You see, you don’t know,
Signor Eugino, how inartistic we Americans
can sometimes manage to be in our coun-
try,” Nona ended.

Eugino shook his head.

“I’m afraid I can think of nothing about
your country which is not flattering,” he

Uncertainty

199

returned. ‘‘Perhaps, because of my mother
I have always had a deep interest in the
United States. But since your entrance
into this war for the sake of an ideal, with
nothing to gain and so much to suffer, why
I don’t mind being considered an enthusi-
ast. Many other Italians also feel as I
do and are anxious to have you understand
us. I think we are even a little jealous,
because France and England and now the
new Russia seem in closer touch with you
than Italy. I wonder if you know Italy
controls more enemy territory in Europe
than all the Entente Allies combined. She
is holding a longer battle front than the
French, British and Belgian fronts. Her
long trench line is blasted from solid rock
and her guns have to be carried from moun-
tain peak to mountain peak. But forgive
me for riding my hobby like this. I’m
sorry. I didn’t come out to talk to you
about Italy tonight. I believe I came to
talk about you and perhaps about myself.”
The tone of the young man’s voice altered.

“I hope I haven’t bored you too much.
Truly I did not spend so much time per-

200

With the Italian Army

suading the Signora to let us have this
hour together to make a patriotic speech.
You will forgive me?”

Nona smiled her forgiveness.

How utterly unlike any one she had ever
known was her companion ! Yet, somehow,
his curious mixture of careless good nature
with his ardent patriotism attracted her
very much? Or was she not attracted by
Eugino himself? Is it not rather like a
girl to think she likes or dislikes certain
traits in a man’s character, when it is the
man himself she either likes or dislikes?

“You see, I am going back to the front
in a day or so and I wanted to say farewell.
I have seen my physician today and he at
last has given his consent. It may be
tomorrow that I shall go. So I may not
see you again until I come back, if I ever
return,” Eugino went on. “One does not

know ” He spoke with a soldier’s

careless fatalism.

But Nona felt a queer little stiffening in
her throat — the feeling that she cared
whether Eugino returned more than she
had any possible right to do.

Uncertainty

201

She looked very fair and sweet with her
head a little bowed and her pale yellow
hair bound in close braids shining in the
silver light with a kind of pale glow.

Now she pulled Sonya’s shawl a little
closer about her.

‘‘I am sorry to have to say good-bye to
you. Only for your sake, as I know how
much you have wished to go, I must not
be sorry.” Nona answered, needing a
little effort to keep her voice steady.

‘‘No more sorry than that.^” Eugino
returned in the voice and manner which
Nona had never been able to understand.
Was he in earnest, or was he only pretend-
ing to care for her that he might leave
with her a more charming impression?

“You see, it has meant a great deal to
me to have known you, and to have you
living in my mother’s home, more than
perhaps you dream, or than I have any
right to tell you now. But you will be my
friend and when I return ”

Eugino’s hand touched Nona’s lightly
and gently, but before she could answer,
looking up she saw two figures approaching

202

With the Italian Army

them. In a moment she discovered they
were Sonya’s and Bianca’s.

The young Italian girl was leading the
way down the same path which Eugino had
taken through the garden.

‘‘I am sorry, Eugino,” Sonya began half
apologetically, ‘‘but it is growing later than
you and Nona can realize. And you know
Nona was tired when she came in and must
be back at the hospital early in the morn-
ing. But why have I never seen this
beautiful part of the garden until tonight.^
Bianca, you might have showed it to me
before.”

Then, as Eugino and Nona had both
risen, Sonya put her arm about Nona’s
shoulder, in a kind of protecting fashion.

Then Sonya, with Nona of necessity
beside her, started back toward the villa,
leaving Eugino and Bianca to follow.

The young man would not come in
again. He preferred saying good-night out
on the piazza.

And Nona was always to remember him
as he said good-bye — not to her — ^but to
Sonya.

Uncertainty

203

Lifting Sonya’s hand he bent his head
and kissed it and then said:

‘‘To Italy and her Allies and to Peace!”

Then the next moment he had gone.

Yet Nona imagined, perhaps foolishly,
that Eugino’s final farewell had been the
look he gave her, just as he turned to go
away.

The following day he returned to the
Italian front.

CHAPTER XV

Whispers in the Air

But within a short time Nona Davis
also returned to her regular work at
the hospital in Florence.

Having entirely recovered her usual
strength and nerve, she felt that she no
longer deserved even a half holiday.

But, in order to make up for the time she
had lost, Nona now went very seldom to
the Villa Felice, hearing from Sonya more
often by letter, but scarcely ever seeing her.

Nevertheless, Nona managed now and
then to find opportunity to think of Eugino
Zoli. She was a little annoyed to find how
frequently she did think of him in the
pauses from the more strenuous moments
of her nursing, and during moments before
she dropped wearily to sleep at night.

Twice she received notes from him, but
with nothing in them of importance. The
young officer merely wrote that he hoped

(204)

Whispers in the Air

205

Nona was well and not wearing herself out
with too much work. He also said that
preparations were going on even more bril-
liantly and that the late summer drive
would be an even greater success than the
spring attack near the Gulf of Trieste. Of
himself Eugino made no mention except
to say he was busy and hopeful of many
things.

However, whether he intended it or not,
there was even a tantalizing quality within
Eugino’s short letters. Nor could one tell
whether he were speaking of his beloved
country, or of more personal desires in his
hoping for many things?”

Once Sonya also received a letter from
him and afterwards wrote Nona of it.

“The charming Eugino has written me
— ^he of the beautiful manners and the sus-
ceptible Italian heart. I believe I have
more faith in him as a soldier than as a
suitor, and have ^n idea, Nona mine, that
we will hear great things of Eugino Zoli
before the war is over.

“Nevertheless Bianca and I miss him
very much and talk of him daily. I have

206

With the Italian Army

sometimes thought the little Italian girl
cares more for her foster brother than either
of them can know. And I believe it best
if they never make the discovery. Bianca
is with me constantly these days and I
should be lonely without her. For,
although Nannina is the most faithful of
servants with regard to her work, she has
strange habits of disappearing, usually at
night, and remaining away, until I really
don’t know when she comes in, as I must
be asleep when she finally returns.

‘‘However, Nona, I have no lack of vis-
itors. Eugino’s friends are faithful, if
Eugino has gone. My tea parties con-
tinue almost every afternoon without my
volition. The Signors appear and tea
must follow. Yet we do nothing but talk
war, war, war! It seems to me the Italians
are franker than most soldiers, although
they had once the reputation for being a
secretive nation. But I think I could
almost write out the plan of the approach-
ing campaign, unless my guests are talking
of matters that they do not really under-
stand.

Whispers in the Air

207

‘‘All love and hoping each day to see you,

“Sonya.’’

What was there of so particularly disturb-
ing a character in Sonya’s letter?

Yet, somehow, nearly every line of it
vaguely worried Nona.

First she wondered if there could be
a deeper friendship between Eugino and
Bianca than she had appreciated? She
had always believed Bianca to be less a
child — to have deeper purposes and plans
than most people recognized? Nona put
this thought away from her. Eugino had
certainly treated Bianca with an entirely
careless affection. Although aware that
marriages were still occasionally arranged
by parents in Italy, Nona could not believe
it possible that Eugino’s mother would
wish him to marry the daughter of her
servant, no matter how unusual the grl
might be.

Then, more sensibly, Nona decided that
the matter was not her affair. Whatever
her own dreams, she must realize that, so
far, they had no foundation in reality.

But the latter part of Sonya’s letter.

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With the Italian Army

Nona believed, gave her real cause for
anxiety.

She might be foolish and imaginative, of
course, but it again struck her as extremely
unwise that so much talk of the war in
Italy be allowed to go on at Sonya’s house.
Sonya was a stranger in Italy and had
preferred to keep her own somewhat ad-
venturous career as a Russian pacifist, and
a sometimes Russian revolutionist, a secret
to their new Italian acquaintance.

There was no reason for this, except that
Sonya desired not to attract comment or
attention, now that Russia had shaken off
her old bonds and was finding herself in
her own way. But, if for any reason Sonya
should come under suspicion and her career
be investigated, why the story of her past
life would not be simple and might create
complications.

Simply because Sonya was a gracious,
charming woman, her Italian guests had
no right to take so much for granted.

However, it seemed incredible that there
could be anyone near Sonya at the present
time who was not entirely trustworthy.

Whispers in the Air

209

But Nona’s was a more thoughtful
than impetuous nature, and having passed
through so many odd experiences since the
beginning of her Red Cross nursing in
Europe, she saw no sense in taking unneces-
sary risks.

For a few moments Nona thought of
writing Sonya and suggesting that she give
up her tea parties. Then she wondered if
Sonya would take her with sufficient seri-
ousness and concluded to wait until she
next saw her.

Then a sudden added pressure of work
coming just at this time, Nona temporarily
allowed her intention to pass from her
mind.

She had not forgotten, however, and
subconsciously the thought was still with
her.

Only for the time being she must give
her more active attention to something else.

Then, one morning Dr. Latham unex-
pectedly asked her if she would go with
him that same afternoon to the Cascini —
the public gardens at the edge of Florence.

The doctor confessed that he had some-

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With the Italian Army

thing special he wished to say and had
therefore chosen a place where he hoped
they might be alone.

For a moment after his invitation Nona
was curious. The good doctor had looked
grave. What secret could he possibly have
to impart? Nona could not guess, having
seen but little of him recently, owing to the
pressure of hospital work upon them both.

Indeed, after her first moment of curi-
osity, Nona had no further time for reflec-
tion until the hour arrived for her usual
afternoon rest. And, even then, she was
in perfectly good spirits and looking for-
ward to her excursion.

As is often the case when the moment of
approaching disaster is actually reached,
one has forgotten the premonitions which
have oftentimes warned us.

But Dr. Latham was like his ordinary
self all the way out to the gardens.

He and Nona rode a part of the way on
the tram, known in Florence by the so
much more imposing name — the circum
vallazione. Afterwards they walked along
the Lungarno and past the beautiful Cor-

Whispers in the Air

211

sini palace until they arrived at an espe-
cially beautiful group of ilex trees near the
edge of the river.

It was Nona who then reminded her
companion :

‘‘Look here, Dr. Latham, you had some-
thing or other you said you wished to tell
me. Please don’t forget, or our time will
have slipped by and we must both be back
at work.”

The doctor frowned.

“I had not forgotten. I was trying to
decide just what to say. For I may have
something very important to tell you and
I may have something very foolish, and
for the life of me. Miss Nona, I can’t
decide. That is why I want to put the
matter up to you. I may be a stupid old
gossip. But if I am, there is no harm
done.”

The two friends continued to walk on
slowly, Nona rather wishing the doctor
would come to the point.

“It seems to me people talk a great deal
in this city of Florence, but perhaps not
more than in other places. I am not much

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With the Italian Army

accustomed to society. Neither am I so
very old, you know,” Dr. Latham an-
nounced, as if Nona had just accused him
of being. ^‘But I have devoted most of
my time to learning to be — ^well, just a
half-way good doctor. But recently, since
you seem to have had other things to do.
Miss Nona, rather than amuse me, why I
have been gadding about a good deal. I
keep meeting old American acquaintances
who had disappeared from my life to find
they have tucked themselves away here in
Florence. And, as IVe told you. I’ve
heard a lot of talk. But the talk I have
not enjoyed hearing is about that good-
looking friend of yours. I never have
made up my mind, you know, whether I
like her. But I certainly don’t want to
see her come to grief, for your sake, if for
no other reason,” and insensibly Dr. Lat-
ham’s voice altered in tone.

But Nona paid no attention to this.

‘^You mean Sonya, of course,” she re-
turned quickly, her own premonition of
trouble returning.

“Yes, I mean Sonya. People in Flor-

Whispers in the Air

213

ence are saying that she is too popular and
that too little is known of her. They also
say that news of some of the conversations
that have been taking place at the Villa
Felice is spreading to other sources than
those where it belongs. Of course it is
scarcely Madame Sonya’s fault if her
Italian guests are too outspoken. I have
said things myself out there which perhaps
had better have been left unsaid. Just the
same, if the gossip becomes serious, and
if any important information be delivered
to an untrustworthy person there might be
the devil to pay. Italy has never been
able to rid herself altogether of her Ger-
man inhabitants, I hear, she was so over-
stocked with them when this war broke
out. Not that I should worry if I were
you. Miss Nona. Personally, I don’t think
there is a thing in the world to worry over
so far. But I think I’d tell your friend
that she had best be a little more careful
of the conversation of her guests.”

‘‘I’ll go out there tomorrow,” Nona
returned, her voice shaking a little, although
determined not to let Dr. Latham know
how much his warning had frightened her.

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With the Italian Army

If she had not thought the same thing
herself before this afternoon, she would
perhaps have taken more calmly the fact
that Sonya was exciting gossip. Sonya
should have known better. However, she
seemed to be one of the persons who cannot
pass through life quietly. Try as she might,
she seemed ever the center of a drama.

CHAPTER XVI

Sonya^s Knight

SONYA was waiting in the drawing-
room at the villa for her guest. This
was the hour when she and Carlo
worked together at the piano.

He seemed to be accomplishing wonder-
ful results. Sonya insisted that she would
not long be sufficiently well educated in
music to teach him, but this, of course,
Carlo Insisted was ridiculous. He was not
in reality skilled in technic, only his feeling
for music was so strong that the music
came as if he were only a medium through
which it passed into outer harmony.

But this morning he was not on time and
Sonya wandered about the room a little
impatiently.

Carlo’s own apartment was only a short
distance down the hall. But she would not
send for him, as something of importance
must be delaying him.

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With the Italian Army

However, in another five minutes Carlo
appeared.

He was able to walk and, except that he
was thin and white, no longer behaved as
an invalid.

However, this morning when she caught
sight of his face, Sonya was startled.

‘‘What is it. Carlo What has occur-
red.^” she demanded immediately. “You
look a great deal worse than you did an
hour ago at breakfast. Nothing has hap-
pened— no one has been here to disturb
you. I must send into Florence for the
doctor.”

Sonya was more than usually excited.
But, then, she had grown fond of her
visitor.

Carlo caught hold both of her hands.

“Nothing has happened and nothing is
the matter — dear lady — at least nothing
that should disturb you. But just now in
my room, all alone, I tried very softly — to
sing.” Carlo only rarely hesitated with
his words in speaking now. “At first the
sound was very thick, very harsh, then a
few notes came. Oh, they were nothing
any one else could endure. But to me ”

Sonya’s Knight

217

Suddenly the Italian boy’s eyes filled
with tears, and Sonya’s did also.

‘‘It cannot mean anything of course, dear
lady; but some day perhaps just to myself
— or to you — I may yet be able to sing a
little.”

“You may be able to do a great deal
more. Carlo. But please let us not talk
about it now. Neither you nor I can quite
bear it. Sit down for a moment, won’t
you? I am going to ask Nannina to bring
us both some coffee before we begin to
work. I need it, Carlo, after your news,
even if you do not.”

And Sonya went away, giving Carlo time
to recover himself. For she understood
the boy’s temperament — knew how emo-
tional he was — ^how quick to change from
gayety to depression. But this was a part
of his artist inheritance.

When she returned he was sitting at the
piano, letting his long fingers wander idly
over the keys; not trying to sing, of course,
but playing, the Neapolitan Boat Song,
which was one of the songs he had cared
most to sing before his disaster.

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With the Italian Army

Then, after the coffee, for an hour he
and Sonya worked at the piano together.

At the end of that time they were both
surprised to hear the noise of footsteps out-
side on the piazza. They had heard no
one approach.

Sonya went over to the window.

“It is two strange men. Carlo. Stay
here with me, won’t you, until we find out
what they wish ? ”

Instinctively Sonya must have felt that
the men had come upon some errand not
agreeable.

Soon after Nannina opened the front
door and brought them to the drawing-
room and then promptly disappeared.

However, as they were Italians, their
manners were properly polite.

“We desire to see you upon a disagree-
able business. Signora,” one of them began.
He spoke careful English, while his com-
panion apparently knew only a limited
number of English words.

“Very well,” Sonya returned. She was
puzzled but not frightened.

Evidently a difficulty of some kind had

Sonya’s Knight

219

arisen in which she was concerned. Some
one whom she knew must be involved.

For Sonya believed that she had been
leading too quiet a life to be in touch other-
wise with any matter of importance. There-
fore, her chief interest at present was to
find out the real reason for the men’s
errand as quickly as possible.

It was not necessary for the newcomers
to explain to Sonya that they were Italian
officials in the dress of civilians. She had
recognized this as soon as they entered the
drawing room. Her experiences in Russia
had given her a peculiar knowledge which
most men and women do not have.

Carlo, for instance, at the beginning of
Sonya’s conversation with the two Italians,
w^s entirely in the dark. They appeared
to him as ordinary men upon some ordinary
errand. It was even possible that they
might be salesmen who had entered the
house under a pretense of mystery in order
to introduce themselves more successfully
and later on their wares.

However, the first statement and the
way in which Sonya responded stirred
Carlo to a sense of something unusual.

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With the Italian Army

Then immediately something was aroused
in him which he had never felt before in
his life — a protective instinct. For Sonya
might regard herself as Carlo’s mother, but
he did not think of her in this light.

“Go on, please; explain just why you
have come to speak to me and exactly
what your errand means,” Sonya went on
with an extraordinary self-possession which
surprised her small audience. ^‘You see,
I understand you have come upon official
business. In a time like this I cannot but
presume it has some connection with the
war. Yet, as I am a stranger in Italy and
have been living so quietly out here, I
cannot imagine how I can have any con-
nection with any circumstance which would
interest you.”

If Sonya spoke with perfect self-com-
posure she really felt more uneasiness than
she confessed. But not for herself. In
truth, she had not the faintest idea that
she could be involved in any difficulty,
save as an outsider. Nevertheless she was
uneasy, endeavoring to guess what possible
human being whom she knew in Italy

Sonya’s Knight

221

could have become involved in trouble
which had any connection with her.

‘‘We will do as you ask, Signora, and
not waste time, since our charge is serious,”
the Italian answered, continuing to speak
courteously. “It has come to our know-
ledge that information obtained at your
home has been given to an individual living
at present in Florence, who is under sus-
picion of being here in the service of the
German Government. The fact is the
man has been arrested and most conclusive
proof found. Without his knowledge he
has been quietly watched for some time.
Among his letters and papers, written in
a childish, unformed hand, was knowledge
secured through conversations held at your
house. ' There is no doubt of this, for no
effort was made to disguise the fact. How-
ever, there is doubt, Signora, that this
information came from you, but since this
is your home and there is some talk about
the circumstances of your past life having
been unusual, an investigation will have
to be made. In the meantime ”

Sonya had seated herself while the man

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With the Italian Army

was talking. At first her expression was
one of entire amazement and then of grow-
ing interest.

‘‘What you tell me hardly seems possible
to me,” she replied slowly, “but since you
say you have positive evidence, it would be
ridiculous for me to make an attempt to
dispute it. But I think I am more puzzled
than you can be. I have such a small
household — only my housekeeper, an Italian
woman, and her young daughter, and
Signor Navara, who is here recovering from
a wound. The other people who have
come to my villa have simply been guests
who have stayed a short time and gone
away. Also they have been Italians to
whom the cause of Italy is everything.
Certainly it is but natural that you should
prefer to suspect me. I presume you wish
me to go into Florence with you. I will
go with pleasure. I assure you that next
to your own government, I am anxious to
have this mystery explained.”

At this Sonya rose from her chair, only
to have Carlo get up at the same time.

“Wait a minute, please,” he said with
unexpected dignity and forcefulness.

Sonya’s Knight

223

He then turned to the two Italians.

“ I too appreciate and am equally puzzled
by what you have just told us. And as I
also have been living here at the Villa
Felice at the time, when a spy has evidently
been among us, you can understand that
I want to find out who the Individual was.
But the thing I am not prepared to agree
to is that you prefer to have your first
suspicion center upon Signora Valesky.
There is no possible reason for this. It
expresses a lack of courtesy to a guest in
your country and to one of your own Allies.
The Signora is a Russian, who has been
living in the United States only for a year
or more before coming to Italy. She must
not be subjected to indignity. I will not
permit it. I am an Italian soldier and
have come from the United States to fight
for the Italian cause. It is I who will go
with you into Florence instead of the
Signora. When the time comes for the
actual trial I am sure she will be glad then
to put herself at your disposal and to give
you whatever aid she can. In the mean-
time, if you will allow me a few moments — ”

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With the Italian Army

Carlo moved toward the door and for an
Instant Sonya watched him, overwhelmed
by surprise. What had become of his
usual boyishness, of his lack of self-control.^
He now spoke like a man and one with
authority, when a short time before he had
come to her with tears in his eyes asking
for her sympathy, because he believed he
had the right to a little hope for his own
future.

And evidently Carlo had impressed the
two Italian officials as well.

The one who understood English an-
swered him with respect.

understand your point of view. Sig-
nor, and am sorry not to be able to agree
with it. But we have our orders. The
Signora Is to come into Florence, and no
one else can take her place. I can assure
you that she will be treated with entire
respect and the whole affair kept as quiet
as possible. When the time of the actual
trial comes, of course it may be difficult
then to keep matters as quiet as we could
wish. The man who is involved, to whom
valuable information has been given from

Sonya’s Knight

225

more than one source, is unfortunately
married to a prominent Italian woman and
has used her name as a shelter for a long
time. If you will make your preparations,
Signora ’’

Sonya moved over toward Carlo.

‘‘You are very kind, Carlo mio,” she
whispered quietly under her breath, speak-
ing to him as a boy again. “But please
don’t make any fuss. I shall probably not
have to stay away more than a few days
and I am anxious to discover what all this
means. Take care of things here for me
and try to think who can have been the
informant. As for me, I am perfectly
hopeless. I have not the faintest idea.”

Carlo took hold of Sonya’s arm almost
roughly.

“You shall not go; I will not permit it,
after all you have done for me,” he choked
boyishly. But Sonya noticed even at this
trying moment that he spoke without any
of his usual hesitation.

“Don’t be absurd. Carlo. You know
I hate scenes, and one faces the inevitable.”

Then, without waiting for further argu-

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With the Italian Army

ment, Sonya disappeared to her own apart-
ment. Five minutes later she came back,
ready to go into Florence.

But this time Bianca was with her,
clinging to her skirts and looking more dis-
tressed than any one had ever seen Bianca,
except at the time of the death of her
great friend, the Donna Elizabetta.

That afternoon, when Nona appeared at
the Villa Felice feeling annoyed with Sonya
over the whole ridiculously unnecessary
situation, she, of course, found Sonya gone.

But Carlo did his best to explain the
situation. However, he looked so white
and ill again that Nona was almost as
much concerned for him as she was for
Sonya. All his old difficulty in speaking
appeared to have returned.

‘‘But you must not worry so. Carlo,”
Nona argued, using his first name as she
had not done before, except in speaking of
him with Sonya. “You see, it is pretty
annoying and horrid for Sonya, of course.
But the whole thing is sure to be explained
in a few days and Sonya will take it sensibly.
Afterwards people will be extremely apolo-

Sonya’s Knight

227

getic to her. Of course it is disgusting that
any of us here at this enchanting villa
should have to be mixed up with spying
and deceit. It seems perfectly incredible
to me. But one appears unable to escape
treachery.”

Carlo shook his head mournfully.

“Why, would — ^they not — suspect me.^
I could — ^for the time — have — pretended —
to be — the traitor. But — now, if I — could
— only find — some clue, I should — not be
— in — such despair.”

“Oh, cheer up. Carlo,” Nona replied
almost indignantly, “don’t be so despon-
dent. Let us talk over the whole situa-
tion. Tell me if you have thought or
noticed anything suspicious or peculiar
about any one here at the villa at any time
when I may have been away. Between us
we ought to be able to make some worth-
while discovery, or at least to get hold of
some slight information. The world now-
adays is filled with just such experiences.”

CHAPTER XVII

The Culprit

Nona remained all night at the
villa. But she was unable to
sleep.

As a matter of fact, she was more un-
happy over the situation In which Sonya
was at present placed than she was willing
to confess to Carlo.

It seemed absurd, too, that Sonya, who
had come to Italy hoping only to be left
alone and to enjoy a perfectly quiet and
undisturbed time, should now be involved
in what might become an extremely seri-
ous business.

But to Nona also it appeared impossible
that there could have been any one at the
Villa Felice capable of treachery.

There can be only two reasons for be-
trayal of a nation’s secrets in time of war —
one Is the love of country, which makes one
willing to betray any trust, take any per-
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The Culprit

229

sonal risk for the sake of aiding one’s own
land. The other is, of course, a love of
money. There have been spies who have
been bought and paid for as long as modern
war has existed.

But the guests at Sonya’s had all been
Italians, ardent and devoted to Italy’s ser-
vice. If they had been too outspoken
this was only because of their too great
enthusiasm. It was barely possible that
afterwards one of them might have said
too much of what he had heard at Sonya’s
without appreciating the seriousness of
what he was doing. But Carlo had re-
ported that actual papers had been found
with conversations, which had taken place
at the Villa Felice, written out in detail.

Nona did not believe that this informa-
tion was really so important in itself. The
important point was that some one had
been among them who was undoubtedly
in the service of the enemy.

Nona wished there was some one whose
advice she might ask in the present diffi-
culty. If only Eugino Zoli were in Flor-
ence! He was Sonya’s friend and her own.

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With the Italian Army

Carlo was almost as much a stranger in
Italy as she was and Dr. Latham was, of
course, out of the question.

Then Nona probably fell asleep for a
short time.

She was occupying her own bed-room —
the one adjoining Sonya’s.

She was awakened by hearing a faint
noise not far from her own door.

Her door had been accidentally left
partly ajar, so, getting up, Nona quietly
walked to the door and peeped out.

She saw only Bianca creeping timidly
along the hall and then down the stairs at
the back of the house. She had on a little
wrapper too short for her and looked more
childish than ever.

For a moment Nona wondered what in
the world she could be doing stealing about
the house at such an hour of the night.
Then she realized that Bianca must be
going to find her mother.

Nannina slept on the lower fioor of the
villa in a room which had been built upon
the house for her use.

Naturally Bianca was worried by the

The Culprit

231

events of the day. Nona had noticed how
white and unhappy she had appeared, but
had talked to her very little during the
afternoon.

But evidently Bianca had some affection
for her mother and was seeking her now
for consolation.

Since Nona was convinced of this it was
curious that she should have instantly
slipped on her dressing gown and prepared
to follow Bianca. Yet she did this without
making a sound that could betray her
presence to the other girl.

As soon as she reached it, Bianca entered
her mother’s room without knocking; but
she did not close the door tightly after-
wards.

Outside Nona stood and waited. After
all, she had a reason which she considered
justified her in trying to hear what Bianca
could have to say to her mother at this
hour of the night. Bianca’s seeking Nan-
nina at this time might not be due entirely
to the fact that she wished to be comforted.

Yet the first thing Nona overheard was
Bianca crying softly.

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With the Italian Army

She did this — as she did most things —
In a gentle, refined fashion, but revealing
deeper emotion than Nona had believed
her capable of feeling.

Yet, instead of trying to console her
daughter for whatever was troubling her,
Nannina said something to her in response
which sounded angry and harsh.

‘‘But I didn’t know that the Signora
would have to suffer — you should have told
me,” Bianca answered with more courage
than she usually showed to her mother.
“ She' has been most kind to me and I am
fond of her.”

Bianca spoke quietly, but did not whisper,
having no idea, of course, that any one
could be listening.

Nannina’ s tones were lower, but per-
haps more from habit than from any other
reason, as she too believed that she and
Bianca were at present alone in the lower
part of the house. However, whenever
she had talked to her daughter in the past
she had always spoken in low tones, seldom
wishing any one to know what she was
saying.

The Culprit

233

‘^No; you did not know the Signora
would suffer; but, then, neither did I,”
Nannina returned, speaking a little louder
so that Nona could half hear and half guess
her words. ^‘But you knew we needed
money and that you must have it. Pretty
soon your Signora will be going away. Do
you think other people will treat you as
she has? Your Eugino and Paulo may be
killed, or they may forget you. I can’t
make any more money— Italian people are
too poor even to pay what your Signora
does. Then what is to become of you?”

‘‘I could work,” Bianca returned slowly.

Nannina laughed, but her laugh did not
express pleasure.

‘‘You work, Bianca? You do not belong
to the kind of people who know how to
work. Your father didn’t know how before
you.”

“My father?” Bianca questioned.

And for the first time Nona felt ashamed
of her own eavesdropping.

If Bianca and her mother were to talk
of their intimate personal affairs, certainly
she was doing wrong to listen. And yet

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With the Italian Army

she had already heard enough to make,
what had not been more than a vague idea
at the beginning now develop into a real
suspicion.

“You have scarcely ever mentioned my
father to me before. I think you ought to
tell me who he was and why you have
chosen to bring me up so differently from
other girls in my position.”

Bianca spoke timidly, as if she were
fearful both of her mother and of what her
mother might reply.

There was no answer for a moment.

“Oh, well; I suppose you might as well
be told,” Nannina answered sullenly, “else
you’ll be imagining more about yourself
than is true. Your father was a kind of
cousin of the Donna Elizabetta — not a
very close cousin — ^but she had been fonder
of him as a girl than her family liked. You
see, he was poor and was regarded as of no
account in the United States. Well, after
the Donna Elizabetta had been married
a little while, he sailed over to Italy and
one day came to see her. I had just come
here to work. Oh, I wasn’t so bad looking

The Culprit

235

then, Bianca, so you need not stare,
although I wasn’t a bit like your pink and
white prettiness. I was tall and dark and
strong. It is your father you look like.
He just came up to my shoulder. But he
had lovely fair hair and skin and charming
manners like the Signor Eugino whom you
like so much. And he was nice to me —
he was nice to everybody — also like the
young Signor. The Donna Elizabetta did
not know what was going on behind her
back of course, but after a little while we
were married. We did not tell anybody and
I went on working here. Your father did
not have any money, and he continued
staying at the Villa Felice because he had
no other place to go. The Donna Eliza-
betta’s husband was not too pleased. So
you see we were afraid to tell, for fear your
father would have no home, and he was
accustomed to being comfortable^and cared
for by some one.”

Nannina was not speaking with any
harshness or condemnation, but with a
kind of pride and tenderness.

Outside her door, Nona Davis felt her

236

With the Italian Army

cheeks flaming. There was no doubt she
had not the right to hear Nannina’s con-
fession; yet she made no move toward
going away.

‘‘Well, after a while we had to tell and
then your father was angry and sorry he
had ever married me. His family was
furious. They had done a little for him
now and then — given him the money to
come abroad — ^but they wrote him then that
he would have to go to work and support
his peasant wife. He had never supported
himself.

‘‘The Donna Elizabetta was angry, too,
at first — more so than any one. But she
was very kind and she also cared a great
deal for your father, Bianca.”

One could scarcely have guessed it was
the Italian peasant woman who was speak-
ing. Her voice was deep and soft, and
had the musical quality of the Italian
voice, which before had been lacking in
Nannina’s.

“So there was nothing for your father
to do but try to find work. He did try for
a little while and the Donna Elizabetta

The Culprit

237

took care of me. Then you were born.
He had no money to come back to us at
that time, as he had gone away to another
city, where the Donna Elizabetta's husband
had gotten him work. But it was too hard
for him and after a while the people he
was living with sent for me. He was ill
and I brought him back home. The Donna
Elizabetta and I took care of him in a little
house she had rented for us. But he had
taken cold and then gone on working too
long afterwards; so, after a little time, he
died. You see, everybody can’t work,
Bianca mia, although the world believes
they can. But when he died your father
made me promise that you were to be
brought up as his daughter should be.
Once or twice he said he was sorry he had
given you a peasant mother, but that he
cared for me because I was always good
to him. So I have tried to be good to you,
Bianca, although I have not tried to make
you love me. I have not wished you to
think about me too much, because I knew
you, too, would be ashamed.

‘T am sorry about the Signora, because

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With the Italian Army

she has been good to you and you care for
her. It is natural, Bianca, that you should
feel close to some one. It is not your fault
that you do not love me. You cannot
help it. But I didn’t know that what I
have been doing would ever be found out.
There was no other way I could get enough
money for you. I have thought lately,
maybe if there was money the Signora
might take you to the United States with
her when she goes and put you into a school
there. But if I had dreamed we would be
found out, do you think I would have let
you help me? I used to try to stay with
the Signora’s guests as long as I could to
find out what was being said. But I could
not always manage, so I began letting you
repeat to me what you heard and then
when I was too stupid to remember I let
you write it down. Now, Bianca, mia,
can’t you see, if we are found out — if they
discover I have been selling Italy’s secrets
— it is you who must suffer also. Oh, I
ought to have known better. I ought to
have kept you out of this.”

‘‘Yes, Nannina,” Bianca answered, her

The Culprit

239

voice shaking. ‘‘I am stupid, too, or I
might have guessed I would be endangered.
But I have always been stupid.”

Forgetting for an instant that she was
in hiding, Nona actually gasped. But not
at Nannina’s treachery. As soon as Nan-
nina and Bianca began their conversation
she had anticipated something of what
Nannina had just confessed.

Wicked and unforgivable it was that
Nannina had betrayed her country for
money in order to bestow it upon her
daughter! But at the instant it seemed
almost worse to Nona Davis, that Bianca
could accept her mother’s complete sacri-
fice of herself in the spirit in which evi-
dently she did accept it. Even now her
thought was not for her mother but wholly
for herself.

Then Nona, recalling the story which
Nannina had just told, remembering the
utter and supreme selfishness of the man
who had been Nannina’s husband and was
Bianca’s father, wondered if this did not
explain Bianca’s nature?

But there was no more reason why she

240

With the Italian Army

should linger. Already Nannina had told
more than she had dreamed of hearing.

What had taken place was self-evident.
Between them Nannina and Bianca had sold
information, which they overheard at
Sonya’s to a secret agent of the German
Government.

What Nona did not know at this moment
was what she must do with the information
she had overheard.

However, she would go to Sonya the
next day and confide in her. Then between
them they must decide what was best

CHAPTER XVIII

Nannina Solves the Problem

ON the following day Nona was per-
mitted to see Sonya.

Sonya was being made as com-
fortable as possible, only there was to be
no possibility of her getting away from
Florence until after the trial of the man
whom she was suspected of having supplied
with dangerous information.

At Nona’s revelation Sonya was more
surprised than Nona had been upon over-
hearing it. But then Sonya had always
regarded Nannina and Bianca as far more
simple and ordinary persons than Nona
had ever thought them. Naturally she
had considered their relation to each other
unusual and not pleasant; but, as a matter
of fact, Sonya had really troubled herself
very little concerning it.

Yet now the situation which Nona
brought before her was amazingly difficult
to solve.

16

(241)

242

With the Italian Army

There was no question that Nannina had
been a traitor to Italy. If her information
to the enemy was not important, this was
because Sonya’s guests had never betrayed
any news of great value. But Nannina had
not known this. She had been a traitor
in intention.

However, even while realizing the seri-
ousness of this, neither Sonya nor Nona
wished to face the penalty Nannina must
pay. Even at best she would suffer life
imprisonment. And she was only an
ignorant, peasant woman with an entirely
foolish, but utterly unselfish devotion to
her child.

Besides, there was Bianca! How far
would she be held responsible?

After all, she was a delicate, fragile
young girl, brought up with altogether
wrong ideas and principles. Certainly she
had not realized what she was taking part
in. Fear would have withheld Bianca had
she understood, even if no better motive
had restrained her. And Sonya had an
affection for Bianca and faith in her.
Better than Nona she understood how

Nannina Solves the Problem 243

human beings may be made up of good and
evil. Bianca’s selfishness toward her
mother was appalling. But some day some
one else might wake in her a finer quality;
when, through love, she would comprehend
her own selfishness.

Nona and Sonya were sitting close beside
each other while they had their talk.
Finally Nona reached over and took her
friend’s hand.

“ Sonya, I am discussing this matter
with you, but you must understand I have
no idea of your being made a victim in
order to protect the persons who are really
guilty. Whatever you decide, I have
already decided to tell what I overheard to
the proper authorities and then leave it to
them to prove whether I am mistaken.”

Sonya frowned slightly over the serious-
ness of the situation and then smiled.

‘‘Nona, you are very sweet to think I
am such an altruist. But I have no idea
of making a martyr of myself in order to
shield Nannina. For one thing, she de-
serves to be punished. She must be made
to realize the crime she has committed.

244

With the Italian Army

Don’t think I am a sentimentalist who does
not believe in a measure of retribution.
What worries me is the extent to which
Nannina must pay, and Bianca as well.
All of Nannina’s life probably, and the best
of Bianca’s. These are war times which do
not inspire people to be lenient and, least
of all, to the sin of treachery. Will you
give me just a night more, Nona dear, to
think this situation over? Come to see
me again tomorrow and promise me to say
nothing until then. I don’t think there
can be any possible harm in our delay, as
Nannina has no idea she is suspected. You
have not said anything to Carlo.”

Nona shook her head.

‘‘If I had, do you suppose he would have
waited an instant before coming into
Florence to see that you were exonerated?
No; he is moping about the villa as if there
were nothing left in life for him.”

However, although Nona would not give
her consent at first to Sonya’s suggestion
of delay, she did finally agree.

Then her work at the hospital next day
kept her so busy that it w^as impossible for
her to see Sonya.

Nannina Solves the Problem 245

But the following morning, to her amaze-
ment, Sonya herself drove up to the hos-
pital and asked for her.

‘‘You must come to the villa with me
for a few hours, Nona dear. Arrange
things in some fashion — say your presence
is imperative. I have something of the
greatest importance to tell you.”

Afterwards, on the way home, Sonya
explained what had occurred.

‘‘I waited for you all of yesterday,
Nona, yet dreading in a way to see you.
For I had made up my mind, of course,
that there was nothing for us to do but to
tell the truth to the Italian authorities.
For Nannina might go on with her treachery
and really become a menace to the country
in which we are trusted guests as well as
Allies. Well, you did not come, but about
dusk, some one else did. It was the man
who had been out to the villa and who had
actually arrested me, although I know the
Italians would use some more courteous
term, as things have turned out.

“As soon as he came into my room I saw
his manner had changed. He had been

246

With the Italian Army

polite before, now he was apologetic. More-
over, he held a letter in his hands, which
had been opened. He gave it to me, how-
ever, and I saw that my address was upon
it in an ignorant handwriting. The letter,
as you have guessed, was from Nannina.
In it she confessed to me what she had
been doing and told me she had gone away
forever.’’

Until now Nona had not interrupted.
She had been sitting, leaning a little for-
ward in the old carriage in which she and
Sonya were riding, intently listening.

‘‘But, Sonya, I don’t understand,” she
now argued. “I can’t see any sense in
Nannina writing you. She did not know
any one suspected her and she had nothing
to gain by her confession.”

“You are mistaken, Nona. Nannina is
not so stupid as you think. You know
there is only one person in the world for
whom she cares — and that is Bianca, not
herself. Remember, she did know that I
had been arrested and that the authorities
understood the information had been given
by some one living in the Villa Felice.

Nannina Solves the Problem 247

When a closer investigation came, Nannina
realized that she would in all probability
be found out. But in her letter to me she
says that she confessed in order to save
me — and here is the important point. She
asks me if I will look after Bianca and take
her to the United States when I go. She
insists that she will never be heard of
again. And she not only sent me her con-
fession, but wrote to the Italian authorities
as well. They opened my letter to see if
she told me the same story. But she had
said a great deal more to them, explaining
what she had done in greater detail, so
there could be no doubt of her guilt, and
of course not mentioning Bianca.

Don’t you see, Nona, that in this way
Nannina saves Bianca? If a trial had
taken place Bianca must have been drawn
into it. Now Nannina assumes the entire
responsibility. Then, if, by chance, I have
taken Bianca to the United States with me
before Nannina is discovered, Bianca will
escape even the disgrace.”

‘^Poor old thing!” Nona exclaimed un-
expectedly. Then she was silent a moment.

248

With the Italian Army

‘‘But are you going to take Bianca back
home with you, Sonya? Are you willing
to accept such a charge, knowing how selfish
Bianca is? You know she even tells little
lies to save herself, or to secure what she
happens to want. I don’t see how you
dare.”

Sonya turned her face away.

“I am not very enthusiastic, Nona, but
I don’t see just what else there is to do
with the child. There is a chance, of
course, that Nannina may be arrested at
any moment; she had only eighteen hours
in which to disappear — perhaps not so
long. In that case we cannot tell what
may happen. But if she is not discovered
— oh, well, I must talk over the child’s
future with her foster brothers. From
your story they are distant cousins as well
and ought to be a little interested. Really
I am intensely sorry for her. You were
quite right in predicting, Nona, that I
would not be able to hide myself from
responsibilities. I somehow feel as if I
were ‘The Old Woman Who Lived in the
Shoe,’ only all my children are grown up.”

Nannina Solves the Problem 249

For the first time Nona smiled since the
beginning of Sonya’s story.

‘^Oh, I don’t think Carlo and I are willing
to accept you in that position. But do
you know, Sonya, I have been thinking
lately that when the summer is over I want
to go back to my own country. Since we
have declared war I feel I ought to be. there
to help, or at least have them send me
back to France if I am needed there. Our
own men are fighting in the trenches in
France now. And, yet, somehow if Italy
still needs me I don’t see how I can go.”

They were in sight of the Villa Felice at
this moment — the home which belonged to
Eugino and Paulo Zoll.

So, without Nona’s realizing it, Sonya
looked closely at the younger girl. She
believed she understood why there were
moments when Nona longed to go home,
for other reasons than to offer her services
to her own country, and then at other times
felt that nothing could make her break the
tie that was now binding her to Italy.

Nona was restless for something which
at one moment she longed for and the
next feared to possess.

CHAPTER XIX

The Sign of the Cross

N ANNINA was not discovered. How
‘or where she had disappeared no
one knew. She had simply gone
away from the villa, taking only a handful
of clothes and saying nothing to any one.
She had not so much as said good-bye to
Bianca. Though mistaken and wrong as
she was, yet the peasant woman had her
own kind of heroism.

As for Bianca, she had a talk about her
mother with Sonya, but Sonya never be-
trayed what the young girl confided to her.

However, Bianca went about looking so
pallid and frightened and so childish that
even Nona pitied her. No one would ever
appreciate just what she suffered concern-
ing her mother. It was dreadful to think
that at any moment her mother might be
discovered and arrested. Yet, if she were
not discovered, what had become of her?

(250)

The Sign of the Cross

251

Then Blanca had no idea what her own
future was to be, for Sonya had not decided
what to do. She was waiting to see Bianca’s
foster brothers — Eugino and Paulo Zoli —
when they returned again to Florence.
But when this would be it was impossible
to guess.

Sonya and Bianca both had written
them of what had occurred and had received
short letters in return. However, no men-
tion was made of Bianca’s ever having had
any previous knowledge of what Nannina
was doing. Nevertheless, they both ap-
peared too angry and too horrified over
the behavior of their old servant to express
any particular sympathy or concern for
their foster sister.

Nevertheless, on the outside things went
on at the Villa Felice much as they had
been doing. A new housekeeper was ob-
tained and Bianca continued to live as if
she were a member of the family. But
she was evidently not happy.

Hour after hour, sitting with her em-
broidery or whatever plain sewing Sonya
found for her to do, she used often to long

252

With the Italian Army

to see her foster brothers. For now that
her mother was gone and she knew her
father to be dead, they were the only
friends left of her former life. Who knows
but perhaps Bianca was also disappointed
at the story her mother had told of herself.^
Perhaps in those hours when she had been
alone in her pretty room, dressed in dainty
clothes and seeing her own fair appearance,
Bianca had dreamed of a more romantic
history.

But, as the weeks went on and the fight-
ing on the Italian front grew daily fiercer
and more victorious for the Italian cause,
Sonya became almost as anxious for an
interview with one of Bianca's foster
brothers as the young girl. For, although
Nona had never referred again to return-
ing to the United States, Sonya was becom-
ing anxious to sail.

She had not cared to go on entertaining
her Italian acquaintances after her own
unpleasant experience. And, although she
had made no complaint, she had resented
the suspicion entertained of her.

Then Sonya also felt it best that Carlo

The Sign of the Cross

253

Navara return to his own people. There
were several reasons for this. For one
thing, he was not going to be able to rejoin
the Italian forces for some time, as the
shock of his accident and its consequences
had too severely shattered his nervous
system. However, Sonya did not feel that
he should go on staying at the villa with
her indefinitely. For, in some way, their
relation had changed. Carlo no longer
seemed willing to have her treat him as an
ill and rather spoiled boy. His attitude
was far more that of a grown man and
Sonya realized, although she did her best
to disbelieve it, that Carlo was growing too
fond of her.

Perhaps this was not so unnatural as
Sonya considered it. In spite of the fact
that she was so much older, Sonya was a
rarely beautiful woman, with a breeding
and distinction which were new to Carlo.
Then, for many months, she had been
exquisitely his friend — had given him hope
and courage and care.

Carlo used even to sing a little these
days to Sonya, when the two of them were

254

With the Italian Army

alone. But his voice was no longer the
perfect golden voice it had once been. So
Sonya was also anxious that he return to
the United States for more scientific treat-
ment. Indeed, her interest was much
more for Carlo than for herself, as she
wished him not to suffer the disaster of
thinking he cared for a woman more than
ten years his age. Having had so much
experience, she knew it was sometimes
harder for a boy to recover from an emotion
of this kind than most people realize.

Then, one morning at the end of the
summer Sonya came down-stairs to her
breakfast room and found she was the first
to arrive at the table, neither Carlo nor
Bianca having appeared.

The Italian newspaper was always laid
at Sonya’s plate, as she liked to glance at
the headlines before eating. She had
learned to read Italian fairly fiuently.

This morning the paper recorded another
Italian victory. The Italians had beaten
back fierce mass drives in the neighborhood
of Udine and had taken several thousand
Austrian prisoners.

The Sign of the Cross

255

Sonya was reading this news, when it
seemed to her that her eyes were impelled
to turn from the account which was deeply
interesting, to a smaller paragraph in the
next column.

The first few lines read: “Felled two
air foes in one-minute fight. Then Captain
Eugino Zoli, one of the most famous of
Italian aviators, falls to his death. Has
destroyed twenty-one German and Aus-
trian machines.”

For an instant it seemed to Sonya that
she must have been mistaken in what she
had read. Then a second time looking at
the account she re-read more slowly:

“What had happened to Captain Eugino
Zoli was merely what was happening to
brilliant and daring airmen the world over.
Only because of his unusual record was
the paper giving him special mention.

“The night before enemy aircraft having
made a raid on Udine, dropping bombs
over the village, among other airmen Cap-
tain Zoli had gone up in his airship to put
them to flight and had succeeded in destroy-
ing two machines in an incredibly short

256

With the Italian Army

time. Then his own machine was struck
by an anti-aircraft gun and started its
headlong crash to the earth.

^‘However, Captain Zoli was able so to
direct it that he fell within the Italian
lines. As a special distinction his body
would be taken to his home near Florence.
He was to be buried with military honors.’’

After this Sonya fully realized what new
difficulties she had to face.

There was of course Bianca, who cared
more for Eugino Zoli than for any one in
the world. She would be entering the
room in a moment and must be told the
news.

Yet it was not of Blanca that Sonya was
thinking most deeply at this time. Would
Nona realize now how much she cared for
Eugino Zoli? For Sonya had seen what
Nona had fought against accepting, the
fact of how greatly the young Italian officer
interested and fascinated her. In Nona’s
mind there was also the thought that when
Eugino returned again from the front, he
would say to her the things which before
he had only implied.

The Sign of the Cross

257

Well, Sonya understood that Eugino
Zoli was the type of man for whom girls,
and women always care, and who cares)
for them only slightly in return.

^ He was always gay and charming and
good tempered, making agreeable, half
loverlike speeches because circumstances
inspired him. But all the while his own
deeper feeling was for something else.
Eugino Zoli’s great emotion was the great
cause of Italy, and Sonya appreciated that
he had given his life gladly in his country’s
service. . He had died at his supreme
moment.

It is for women only perhaps that the
moment of love is the supreme moment
of life.

Fortunately for Sonya, however, Bianca
merely behaved like a little girl at the news
of her foster brother’s death. She simply
went to bed and was ill for two days. But
then she had had so much to trouble her!

Fortunately for Bianca in those days,
Sonya told her that she would take her
back to the United States when she left
Italy.

17

258

With the Italian Army

Naturally Nona Davis received the news
differently. At first she was shocked and
grieved. Then, after a little, it was almost
as if Nona had a strange sensation of per-
sonal relief. For perhaps through Eugino’s
death she may have been saved a more
real sorrow. Well, she had promised
Sonya in a light-hearted fashion not to
learn to care for an Italian and now fate
had arranged that she should keep her
word.

However, no one who attended Captain
Zoli’s funeral could ever forget it.

Paulo was given leave to bring him home.

The little Italian cemetery, filled with
cypress trees and roses and beautiful carved
stones gray with age, was not far from the
Villa Felice.

But Eugino’s funeral was unlike others,
since it was a funeral in the air.

The day was brilliant and the sky blue
with the romance that has colored all
Italian history.

Suddenly as the service was closing there
was a queer, whirring noise which seemed
to come from the clouds.

The Sign of the Cross

259

Looking up in the sky, the spectators
saw moving toward them, like a flock of
migrating birds, more than a dozen air-
planes.

They had flown out from one of the avia-
tion schools near Florence to do homage to
one of Italy’s greatest airmen.

Above the grave they hovered for a
moment and then breaking into two divi-
sions, the one intercepting the other diag-
onally, they formed a giant cross. And at
the same moment Italian roses, red and
white, showering down from them, covered
Eugino’s grave.

Then one of the aviators, who had been
a friend and comrade in the air with
Eugino, volplaned near the earth and
dropped a wreath of roses tied with Italy’s
colors, which fluttered slowly to the
ground.

Late that night — it must have been
nearly twelve o’clock, Nona — ^who was
spending the night at the Villa Felice,
slipped from her own room into Sonya’s.

Sonya was in bed but not asleep and had
a little night taper burning.

260

With the Italian Army

Nona sat down on the bed beside her.

She was glad of the semi-darkness and
glad too of the lateness of the hour. You
see, she was very tired from the strain of
the afternoon, but there was something she
felt it might be easier to say tonight than
afterwards.

Nona reached out and found her friend’s
hand.

“There is something, Sonya, I think you
have understood, although we have never
talked of it. It is all finished now and I am
glad there is nothing I wish to forget. But
I feel I want to go home to my own country,
Sonya, if you are willing. For some time
I have thought perhaps it was really my
duty to be there, rather than here in Italy
at this time. But you have known why
I could not make up my mind to leave Italy.”

“Yes, Nona, I have known,” Sonya
answered quietly.

Then, there in the darkness of the night
in Italy, she recited the last verse of the
Battle Hymn of the American Republic —
the challenge to all men and women to the
service of the right.

The Sign of the Cross

261

*‘In the beauty of the lilies Christ was bom across
the sea,

With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you
and me;

As he died to make men holy, let us die to make
men free.

While God is marching on.”

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