Sicily in Shadow and in Sun

I

MESSINA DESTROYED

Monday evening, December 28th, 1908, four friends were dining together in a luxurious Roman villa. The hostess, Vera, sat opposite me at the head of her table with Lombardi, the Milanese mathematician on one side, and Athol, an Englishman, the representative of a great English newspaper, on the other. It was our first meeting that season. Vera, who had passed the summer at home in Russia, had just returned to Rome; I had arrived three days before on Christmas evening. We were all really glad to see one another, eager to hear the other’s news and to give our own. The dinner was a triumph! Attilio, the Neapolitan chef, had outdone himself; the pheasant in aspic was an inspiration, though the dish may have been prepared from a receipt known to the cook of Lucullus. Whatever decline other arts may show, the culinary art of Rome has lost nothing since the days of the famous banquets in the gardens of Sallust. Vera’s table was laid with the robin’s-egg Sevres service, the Copenhagen glass with its gilt borders, and the gold plate that had belonged to Cardinal Antonelli. In the middle stood an exquisitely wrought silver partridge, Vera’s own work, modelled and hammered out of silver by that strong small hand, the speaking hand of the artist, that now sparkled with jewels as she raised her glass of Orvieto and drank to our next meeting. After dinner we drew our chairs round the library fire where the tiny Roman Yule logs blazed cheerily on the hearth. It was extraordinarily cold for Rome; the thick fur of the great white polar bear skin before the fire was comforting to our chilled feet. Outside on the terrace a dog bayed.

“Open the door and let Romulus in,” said Vera. “It’s very wrong of course—a watch-dog ought to sleep in his little cold house—but I haven’t the heart to leave even a dog out on such a night.”

“It’s the coldest season we have ever known in Italy,” Lombardi remarked. We all shivered in the piercing gust that came from the open door as a shambling uncouth white puppy tumbled, capering with joy, into the room. He was a foundling from the campagna, lost, strayed or stolen from his sheep-dog kin, and adopted by Vera. His rough ugliness emphasized the refinement of the violet-scented villa where a crumpled roseleaf would have hurt.

As we drank our coffee, the dog nuzzling Vera’s satin slipper with little sounds of joy, a servant brought in the evening papers and handed them to Lombardi—I can see him now standing before the fire, unfolding the Tribuna and glancing at the headlines; I can smell the damp printer’s ink.

“Any news?” asked Vera.

“There has been an earthquake in Calabria.”

The Englishman nodded; he had heard it, he always heard the news before the rest of us!

“Another earthquake! Not a bad one?” I cried.

“The paper naturally makes the most of it, though it does not seem to have done much damage,” Athol reassured us.

“Poor people, how they have suffered!” Vera sighed comfortably. After a few more comments the subject was dropped and we began again to abuse the powers that be for the shocking breaches that have been made in the ancient walls of Rome. Bits of our talk come back to me now as from an immeasurable distance. It is as if that conversation over the fire in Vera’s library had taken place in another planet during another existence.

“The wall that Belisarius defended fifteen hundred years ago against the Goths without the gates has been demolished by the Goths within the gates!” exclaimed Athol.

“It’s a world’s crime,” I said, “because Rome belongs to the world; it’s just as much ours as the Italians’!”

“Ah! so you like to think!” said the only Italian present, indulgently.

“I have heard you say it yourself, Lombardi, when you wanted something of us outlanders,” Athol came to my rescue.

“Remember, the petition to have the streets put through was got up by an Englishman, who owned property near by that he thought would be improved,” Vera defended.

The talk drifted from one archæological matter to another. Athol told us of Boni’s last discoveries in the Forum, the tombs under Trajan’s column; the “finds” made by Goclaire, the Frenchman, on the Gianiculum; why the excavation at Herculaneum had been given up:—The peasant owners of the land, seeing so much said about it in the papers, believe their land covers priceless treasures, and will not allow a spade to be put into the earth until a vast sum of money is deposited beforehand to indemnify them for the buried treasure that may be found. Though the talk veered lightly from one subject to another, it always came back to Pompeii and Herculaneum, to that old, old disaster, that volcanic horror of nineteen centuries ago, and yet at that very moment, though we did not know it, a worse devastation had again laid waste the beautiful treacherous land of southern Italy.

The party broke up in high spirits. Vera, followed by the ecstatic puppy, came into the hall with us. I see her vivid face, her white and silver dress, as she stood below the enormous Russian bear that eternally climbs a pine tree in her vestibule; I can see the gay graceful gesture of her hand as she waves us a last good night.

The moment’s uneasiness that had fallen upon us when Lombardi spoke of the earthquake in Calabria was forgotten. If they are short of news, the Roman papers publish rumors of the Pope’s illness, an earthquake in Calabria, or war between Germany and France, with strict impartiality. It was the old story of “wolf, wolf.” We were as deaf to the first rumble of the storm, as a few days before we had been deaf to the last war scare.

Nothing but a death in the house has ever made so sharp a difference as I knew between the evening of the 28th of December and the morning of the 29th, for it was only on Tuesday, the day after the earthquake, that we in Rome began to understand—but only began to understand—that the greatest disaster of European history had stricken Italy, our Italy, the world’s beloved. To each of us our own country is really dearest; we hope to die and lay our bones in the land where we were born. But Italy, like a lover, for a time makes us forget home, kin, native land, in an infatuation heady and unreasonable as lover’s love. The spell may be broken, never forgotten. This is the reason the whole civilized world not only shuddered, but suffered with Italy in the dark hour as it could have suffered for no other country.

The first news came from Catanzaro, Menteleone, and the other least damaged districts. Messina and Reggio were silent; their silence was ominous. Tuesday was a day of fear and restlessness. We lived from hour to hour, waiting for the extra editions of the papers, hoping, always hoping, that the rumors that every moment grew more grave might prove exaggerated.

“Calabria and Sicily flagellated by earthquake. Enormous damage. Towns in ruins, many dead and wounded. A tidal wave on the coast of Sicily,” such were the headlines of the first editions. Later came the dreadful news: “Messina and Reggio destroyed!”

In the Corso I met Athol. He had been very ill in bed but had struggled out to do his duty, to weigh the news, sift truth from rumor, flash the dreadful tidings to the earth’s end.

“How much must we believe?” I asked him.

“Such reports are always exaggerated at first,” he answered.

We soon learned the first reports did not begin to tell the story.

“Earthquake? It is the end of the world!” people said to each other. As rumor grew to certainty, fear to dreadful fact, the effect upon our minds was very curious; nothing that concerned our private affairs seemed of any consequence. This was equally true of our friends, most of whom were like ourselves, foreigners in Italy. The day after the dinner party I dropped into Vera’s studio. The Signorina had not come in, Beppino, the model, told me; he had never known such a thing happen before. The clay was dry and greatly in need of being dampened. He was forbidden to lift the sheet that covered the statue and dared not do so. If I were not afraid?—

Afraid? What did it matter? I committed the unpardonable sin, stripped off the sheet, and with the big syringe wetted down the grey clay of that statue of Vera’s we had all been so curious about. Her well-kept secret was before me, but I only know that it was a female figure, whether a Psyche or a Niobe I neither knew or cared, nor whether it was good, bad, or indifferent. Vera had only a week to finish the statue that was to compete for the prize she had strained every nerve to win. Three times I wetted down the clay for my friend; after that I forgot it and the statue fell to pieces. Vera had other work to do, and so had I. We ourselves were at rather an important juncture in our lives. J. had just finished his decorative painting, Diana of the Tides, for the Smithsonian Institute in Washington; he was on the point of sending out cards for his exhibition. All this was swept into the background of our thoughts. We lived only for tidings of the South. All day long we could only speak, only think of Calabria and Sicily. At night we only slept to dream of them, to wake from the terror of the nightmare to the greater terror of the reality, and then to sleep painfully again. A feverish desire to do something, to be of some use, seemed to drive us and all the Americans and English we saw. Inaction became intolerable; we were scourged by pity and sorrow into some sort of doing, whether it was of any use or not.

Athol alone of all our intimates stood steady at his post, his finger on the pulse of Europe. His work was quadrupled. Instead of being jarred and thrown off the track like the rest of us, he toiled day and night, sometimes without sleep, often without food, in order that his words—words that would sway a nation, influence a world—should be the wisest, the best words that it was possible for him to say.

When I found that I could be of some small use (or I thought I could) by running about picking up little straws of news for Athol, who was sending off despatches day and night, I took heart and felt that I could get through the day. It may not have been of much real use to him or to Sicily and Calabria, but it was of use to me. Besides, the most infinitesimal thing counts, the universe is built of atoms. For these stricken people to have their story well told was surely something. It was a little comfort to me, it gave me all the repose of mind I knew in those first days to gather these tiny straws, whether or no they were woven into the texture of my friend’s “story.” It helped me to bear the strain if it did not help Athol to do his work.

Day and night the cries and groans of those

sufferers buried alive in the ruins of their houses were in my ears. I felt their pain in my bones, in my brain, in my heart. I breathed pain with every breath till it seemed to me there was nothing but pain in the world. When notes of invitation to dine came—as a few did—it seemed an insult to humanity that tables should be spread with rich food and wine while our brothers agonized and slowly, slowly starved to death. When cards were left with the usual wishes for Buon Anno, one almost laughed at the mockery of people wishing each other Happy New Year. For the most part, though, the conventions and civilities of Rome—the most civilized of cities—were dropped. People threw their social duties or pleasures to the wind, even those whose whole business in life seems to consist of leaving the proper number of cards, making the proper visits, the exchange of banquets, teas and other formal courtesies. Birth and death always strip away these silly rags and trimmings; when there is such a harvest of death, humanity, even the humanity of Rome, perhaps the most sophisticated place in the world, weeps and cowers and stretches out to touch hands with any hand that is warm and living and in which the pulses beat.

Wednesday morning a bugle sounded in the street under our windows. I looked out and saw a group of young men wearing gay fifteenth century plush caps, and on their arms a strip of white cloth with the words “Pro Calabria e Sicilia” in red letters. The bugle sounded again. I knew what the summons meant, caught up the pile of extra clothing I had sorted out, snatched an overcoat and a cloak from the rack in the hall and ran downstairs into the street. I was immediately surrounded by half a dozen lads with fresh shining schoolboy faces. They carried between them, two by two, heavy wooden money boxes with a slit in the top, which they rattled and offered to all who passed.

“Who are these?” I asked the tall boy with a scarlet cap on his mop of brown curls, who relieved me of the coat and cloak.

He made me the bow of a prince as he answered: “We are the students of the University of Rome, Signora, at your service.”

In Italy, an old country where we find that supreme virtue of age, thrift, even spendthrift Americans grow cautious about spending money. I had meant to put a few sous in the box, but the eager eyes, the urgent voices, overcame discretion. I emptied my small purse, heavy with silver for the day’s expenses, into the first money box and so bought the sufferance of the students. I was now immune from other demands and free to follow them on their errand of mercy.

Another trumpet call and the students, laden with gifts, swarmed like honey bees to the hive about the lean obelisk in the Piazza del Popolo, just outside the monastery with the tall cypresses, in whose shade Luther paced, deep in the thoughts that were to change the course of history. In the middle of the piazza stood forage cart number 24 of the 13th Regiment of Artillery. The cart was drawn by two big army mules, one of them ridden by a soldier. At the back of the cart sat the bugler, a hard, merry, Irish-faced man with a snub nose and a missing tooth; he looked a living proof of Boni’s theory that the Celts and the Italians were originally of the same race. In the cart beside the bugler stood a young student with soft brown eyes and the rich coloring of the southern Italian; he wore an orange velvet cap on the back of his head and seemed to be chosen for his beauty, as the third man in the cart (a rather plain shabby fellow with a bandaged throat) had been chosen for his voice. The bugler sounded his trumpet, the driver cracked his whip and the procession started. The cart was closely followed by two artillery men in uniform and surrounded by that host of clustering students, busy as bees with their task of gathering soldi.

The cart passed at a footpace across the Piazza del Popolo under the shadow of the obelisk that Sixtus the Fifth, the great building pope, placed in the middle of that noble square, which lies between the old Flaminian Way and the Corso. The cart jogged and rumbled along just as in the old days the carnival cars jogged and rumbled over the rough stone pavement. The bugler sounded his call again as the cart turned into the Corso; the gallant notes stirred the souls of the people. When the fiery call of the bugle trailed into silence the voice of the tall man with the bandaged throat rang out above the noise of the crowd:

“Pro Calabria e Sicilia! Give much, give little, give something! Every centesimo is wanted down there!”

From every window fell an obolo. A hailstorm of coppers rattled on the pavement, white envelopes with money folded in them came fluttering down like so many white birds. Outside the Palazzo Fiano, where the Italian flag tied with crape hung at half mast, the forage cart halted. At an open window on the top floor two sturdy men servants appeared and threw down a red striped bundle of pillows, another of blankets, a third a great packet of clothes. From every house, rich or poor (there are many poor houses in the Corso), came some offering. Two good beds were carried out from a narrow door. The cart was now filling fast, the money boxes were growing heavy. From a shabby window a pair of black pantaloons came hurtling through the air and the crowd, strung up and nervous with the tension of a night of mourning—for Rome mourned as I had never believed it could mourn for anything—laughed from pure nervousness.

At the shop of A. Pavia, the furrier, on the second floor, two people came to the window, an elderly woman with a face swollen with weeping, and a dark man who looked as if he had not slept. The cart stopped again, and from that modest shop there hailed down no less than twenty warm new fur coats and tippets—and this in Rome, the heart of thrift. If I had not seen it with my eyes I should not have believed it. At Olivieri’s, the grocer’s, a great quantity of canned meats, vegetables and groceries were handed out. From a hosier’s near by came two great packages of men’s shirts, some of cotton, and dozens of brand new flannel shirts. At a tailor’s bale after bale of stout cloth was brought out and thrown into the cart. Another bed with pillows was given by a very poor looking woman; at the sight of this a man of the middle class took the overcoat off his back—it was a cold morning, too, with a good nip in the air—and threw it into the cart. I went into a news vendor’s to buy the last edition of the Messaggero. The woman behind the counter said to me:

“I have not read the papers, I could not—but I know; I am from that country. Never since the beginning of the world has there been such a calamity.”

How did she know? It was only later that most of us began to realize it!

Outside the Palazzo Sciarra I met Vera walking with Donna Hilda.

“Oh, to think that we were warm at your fireside that night when down there they were freezing!” I began.

“I know, I know!” Vera interrupted. “Can you get me some money for my Belgian nuns? I have raised a thousand pounds already, but we shall need more.” I promised I would try; I knew her nuns to be wise as they are good, and that the money would be well spent. It was our first meeting since the dinner. Vera was pale, with disordered hair and hat awry. I think her jacket and skirt did not belong together. It was a shock to see her, with whom dress is a fine art, so unconscious of what she wore, or how she looked. Donna Hilda, a Roman, though white as paper, was perfectly trim and smart in appearance.

“You have no one of yours down there?” I asked Donna Hilda. That was the first, the inevitable question that in those days one asked every Italian one met.

“Not I, thank God! But my grandmother has some cousins. She does not know if they are alive or dead. If they are gone, it would be best if they are all gone together. I am more sorry for those that are saved than for those that are killed.”

I shall always think of the Roman Corso—the gay thoroughfare where in the carnivals of my mother’s time the wild horses used to run their race from the Piazza del Popolo at one end to the Piazza Venezia at the other—as it looked that day. I never saw the barberi, but I have seen many carnival processions when the balconies of the Corso were full of pretty women throwing flowers and confetti, and the street of young men tossing flowers to the belles in the carriages and balconies. To-day the street was filled with these stern-faced students in their gay carnival caps. Every cart, carriage or automobile that passed carried a student on each step, asking, begging, demanding alms! They were no respecters of persons. The Japanese Ambassador, with his inscrutable face, and his wife and doll-like child passed in their unbecoming European dress. They alone looked impassive and indifferent in a crowd where every other face was tense and tragic. The students who stood on each step of the Ambassador’s carriage would not be denied; I could not see in the end if their passion or his passivity won the day.

It was nearly one o’clock when forage wagon number 24 reached the Piazza Venezia. The cart was piled high. The streets were emptying; people were going home to lunch. The students and the tall man with the bandaged throat held a consultation, to decide whether or no there was any use going on with their work. Meanwhile, the bugler, sitting on his stool at the back of the cart, lighted a cigarette and began to read a newspaper. The sight of his sturdy merry face was somehow calming. If the end of the world was coming, had begun, while his world lasted it was for him to blow his bugle!—to call upon the people to give food, clothes, money, everything, pro Calabria e Sicilia.

From the first J. refused to read the papers or hear the details, and from the first he said, “I want to go down and dig if I can get the chance, but I don’t want to hear about it.”

For some days there seemed no chance of his carrying out his wish of “going down to dig.” The red tape, the slowness, the utter incapacity of the railroads, the post, the telegraph to cope with the situation seemed maddening; it may have been inevitable, it probably was. He offered his services here, there, everywhere, but martial law had been proclaimed and it was impossible to reach the earthquake region without great influence.

Thursday, December 31st, the American Ambassador, Mr. Lloyd Griscom, despatched the first American relief party from Rome to Messina. The Ambassador himself had hoped to lead the expedition. In those days of anguish when we knew that thousands of lives might yet be saved if only help came in time, it was torture for such a man to sit with idle hands,—hands that might dig!—no matter how actively he might be working with brain and wits. He soon realized that he could not leave his post; his place was Rome, his work to inspire, organize and plan the American Relief, to dispense the nation’s largess!

Major Landis, the military attaché of the embassy, was put in charge of the party. His special care was to search for the bodies of

Mr. and Mrs. Cheney, our Consul and his wife, and to recover the papers of the Consulate, for we knew now that the Consulate had been entirely destroyed. Mr. Bayard Cutting, our Consul from Milan, was of the party, and Mr. Winthrop Chanler, whose mission was to look up missing Americans. From the moment the news of the earthquake was known in America, the Embassy was besieged by telegrams from people at home who had friends in Sicily. The largest American colony in Southern Italy is at Taormina, only two hours distant by train from Messina. It was impossible for our Taorminesi to send word of their safety to their relations at home, who were torn with anxiety about them. It was at this time we first heard that Miss Catharine Bennett Davis of the Bedford Reformatory was traveling in Sicily and it was feared was in Messina, and of Anne Lee, Dr. and Mrs. Herbert Paton, Harry Bowdoin, Charles King and Charles Williams, all Americans settled in Taormina by Etna, a town at first believed to have suffered severely.

We went up to the station to see the relief party start. The train was half an hour behind time. It was easy to see the impatience of the Americans to be off.

“You have plenty of provisions?” a friend on the platform asked Chanler.

“I have a sack of Bologna sausages, a whole Parmesan cheese, and a case of Nocera water,” was the answer.

“Where will you sleep?” asked an anxious wife of one of the travelers.

“We have one small tent, the last in Rome,—all the rest have been bought up,—and several umbrellas.”

Food, water, shelter were the three indispensables; they were going to a desert that lacked all these, and the torrential rain that began on the fatal day still continued.

“Try to establish wireless communication between a warship in the harbor and the Marconi station at Monte Mario,” said Athol to a press representative. “If that’s impossible, wire Rome via Malta.”

“Don’t expect news of me till I bring it myself,” one of the travelers called as the tardy train moved out of the station.

It seemed hopeless to expect news. Our first friend to leave was Colonel Delmé Radcliffe of the English Embassy (the famous hunter of lions), who went down on the first train after the disaster. Later several official people we knew and one or two newspaper men followed. After they left Naples we heard no more from them. They disappeared into the blue, and we learned not to look for news of them till they themselves brought it.

As the train pulled out we heard the tramp, tramp of marching men coming up the street—more soldiers for the south. Nearly all the garrison at Messina had been killed; every day regiments of soldiers went down to that grim battle-field, some to lose their lives, all to suffer agonies of mind and body, for as usual the army bore the brunt of the disaster—and bore it well.

As we left the station we met Princess Nadine, called “the first citizen of Rome” by reason of her splendid work for the poor sick children of the city. Something was said about meeting the profughi (refugees) who were expected on the next train from Naples. She shook her great benevolent head and answered firmly:

“That is for the rest of you. I must keep to my work. My sick babies cannot be neglected. Everybody else will do for Calabria and Sicily; they only have me.”

The Princess was right. She belongs to the regular working army of philanthropists. The reserve volunteer force of the world was already mustering for this world disaster.

A little farther on we met our friend, Lombardi, the great mathematician, carrying a traveling shawl and an umbrella. He stopped to speak to us:

“Just in time to say good-by! I am leaving by the next train.”

“For Messina?”

He laughed—“No, to get out of Messina—that’s more than I can do in Rome! I am off for Morocco, the farthest place from Messina I know. The Moors won’t trouble themselves much about the earthquake. I must have more quiet than can be found in Italy this year, if I am to finish my calculations.”

Just as we were getting into our cab outside the station our friend Nerone came along. He looked pale, red-eyed, completely knocked out.

“What is the matter?” I asked. “Have you been ill?”

“Matter?” he cried, astonished at the question. “This thing has made me ill. I had to take a purge and go to bed.”

I never heard that Nerone did anything else for the sufferers—taking a purge did seem an odd way of showing sympathy.

As we drove from the station, past the Baths of Diocletian, we met the regiment, whose measured tread we had heard, and recognized, marching gallantly at the head of his company, a young captain whom we had often watched drilling his men in the great field across the Tiber. We called him Philippus for that soldier of Crotona the Segesteans found slain among their foes after the battle, and to whose memory on account of his superhuman beauty a temple was erected. Philippus was our neighbor; now that he was leaving it seemed he was almost our friend. The barracks where he and his soldiers lived were near our house. It was their bugle that every night at halfpast ten sounded the call we too obeyed, “Go to bed, go to bed, put out the lights.” The soldiers were most of them mere boys with beardless faces. When we should meet again they would not look so young. Those who went down to the earthquake region aged fast as men do in battle.

I haunted the station in those days, watching the departure of the bands of engineers, firemen, doctors, medical students that went down from Rome by every train that left for Naples. From Milan, from Turin, from Florence, from every city or town of northern Italy, help poured down towards the stricken country. The Knights of Malta sent a field hospital and a corps of doctors and nurses. Food, clothes, medicines, tents, nurses, doctors, the great stream of help flowed steadily towards the south. The railroads were not equal to the tremendous strain put upon them, and the congestion of traffic was one of the hardest of Italy’s trials. Her people were starving, dying of cold and hunger, while the whole railroad system was congested and the good food and the warm clothes, instead of reaching the poor victims, were shunted on side-tracks or delayed in freight houses for weeks, even months. It was inevitable that this should have happened; the same thing would have happened in any country. But everything was against Italy. The unheard-of severity of the winter was not the least element of danger and difficulty. The railroad is managed by the Government, that poor overburdened Government that tries its best to carry the great weight put upon it. The strain of carrying south the vast stream of provisions and supplies and of carrying north the enormous numbers of the refugees flying from Sicily was too much for it. What nation, what railroad system could have handled such a situation? One sinister commodity took precedence of all others—quicklime; already the menace of pestilence was in people’s minds, for now we knew that in Messina, a city of 200,000 souls, more than half the inhabitants had perished.

On Saturday, the second of January, Athol asked me to visit one of the first families of refugees who had arrived in Rome. I found them in a gaunt new barrack of a house in an arid street of one of the ugliest quarters of new Rome.

“You have some superstiti here?” I inquired of the porter’s wife, who came out of the little den where she lived and cooked (chiefly garlic it appeared), for her husband and children.

“Oh yes, poor people! You will find them on the second floor. You are not the first who has asked for them.” She stopped and looked at me curiously. “Excuse me, you too have perhaps come to inquire for news of some relative down there?”

“No, no, thank Heaven! only to ask if I can do anything for them.”

“So much the better! There is enough to do.” The porter’s wife nodded and went back to her cooking. I climbed two long flights of the cheap, stark building and rang a strident bell. The thin varnished pine door was opened a crack, and a handsome slatternly woman looked out. When I asked to see the profughi, she stood aside and let me pass. In the entry I met two people coming out, a shabby man with a hard dry face like an eagle’s and a very beautiful young girl with a waxen complexion. When they heard me ask for the profughi they stopped and looked at me so intently that I paused and looked helplessly back at them.

“You have asked to see the profughi,” said the man in a harsh dry voice; “do you possibly know something of them—or of others—down there—?”

“Nothing. And you?—do you know anything of Messina?”

“I?” laughed the eagle-faced man drearily, “I am of Messina. This one also,” he looked at the girl, “though I never saw her till today. We go here, there, together, asking news—her people are all there and mine.”

“Come,” said the girl, “do not let us waste time.” She spoke with authority as one used to giving orders and having them obeyed. I noticed then how sumptuously she was dressed. They went down the stairs together, a strange pair, the shabby eagle-faced man and the young lovely lady. I never saw the girl again, or knew whether she found those for whom she sought.

“It is the truth that I have not had five minutes to comb myself today,” said the padrona, who had opened the door, a dark woman of the noble Trasteverine type. She smoothed her magnificent black hair that lay in full natural waves over her low forehead, and pulled up the collar of her white jacket to hide her beautiful bronze throat. “Believe me, Signora, that blessed bell has never stopped ringing. Holy Apostles! One would think that the Messinesi were different from other Christians, that they had two heads, everybody must have a look at them.”

“I am sorry to disturb you,” I began.

“No, no,” she said, “I did not mean that. What is it to do? They are relations of relations of my husband’s. They knew our name and address in Rome and, having no other friends, they came to us. They arrived yesterday. We have taken the furniture out of one of our rooms, borrowed a few beds, and done what we could to make them comfortable. Poor souls! Anything that you can do—” she threw open the door of a large apartment, evidently the property room of some theatrical company. The floor space on the left was taken up with bundles of stage costumes neatly folded and tagged. A white toga with an olive wreath and a pair of sandals lay next a costume Othello might have worn, judging by the coffee-colored stockinette tucked into the yellow satin cloak. On the right of the door were four decent beds; in the corner stood a dining table with a loaf of bread, a green wicker basket of ricotta, and a flask of Genzano. The room was half full of people.

“This lady wishes to talk with the Messinesi,” cried the padrona, good-naturedly elbowing the crowd, evidently friends and hangers-on of the house. “You have seen them, yes? They only have two eyes apiece and one mouth? Well, then make room for the stranger lady. She may do something besides stare at the poor abandoned creatures.”

The people readily fell back and I found myself face to face with one of the first families of the survivors who had reached Rome. At sight of them I was overcome with suffocating emotion. It was a full minute before I could speak, before I could see through the sudden mist that blinded me. It was as if their sufferings had set them apart, their sorrows hallowed them.

In the middle of the group stood an old man and woman, holding each other by the hand. Both were bent and wan looking; the woman seemed the less shaken of the two. She had a wonderful shrivelled face with gray-blue eyes and a brown seamed skin, stooping shoulders covered by a small peasant shawl, and an alert wiry little body. It was my business to ask certain questions, but it was more than a minute before I could get out the words.

“What are your names?”

“I am Rosina Calabresi,” the staunch old woman quavered. “This is my husband; he cannot talk much yet. He is better now, but for three days after the earthquake he could not say a word. This is our son Francesco, and this is his wife.” Francesco, a soft-eyed young man, patted his wife’s hand; she hid her face on his shoulder and began to weep. “This is my grandson,” Rosina continued, “he is of Reggio. He was staying with us that he might go to school in Messina. His mother is my eldest daughter. We have not yet heard from his parents. We do not know whether they are alive or dead.”

The boy, a pale, interesting lad of fourteen, looked at me with serious unmoved face.

“My husband was a government employé formerly,” the old woman continued; “he was a postman.” She shook him gently by the arm. “Cannot you speak to the lady?” The old postman moved his lips dumbly. “He is only seventy-eight years old, and I am seventy,” Rosina went on. “Francesco is our youngest son.” I asked the young woman her name.

“Lucia,” she said, and hid her face again. The young man comforted her.

“She will do better soon,” said the old woman, nodding to me.

“When do you expect the baby?” I asked.

“Tomorrow,” she said, “it will be nine months tomorrow, the first child, we have not been married quite a year.” Her soft eyes overflowed again.

“Do not cry. You have your husband and you will have your child. That is something to be thankful for. Did all your family escape?”

“Yes, all that were in our house, six of us,” said Francesco. “We do not know about the others.” I heard a deep sigh behind me and turned to see a little wan child, bandaged and pillowed up in a great bed. She never stirred or smiled during my whole visit. When I spoke to her, she only gazed at me with great sombre eyes that had lost their childishness, eyes that had seen sights of horror they could never forget.

“That is my grandchild Caterina,” the old woman explained. “She has been lame from birth. When we escaped from the house I carried her in my arms. As we ran the earth beneath us opened and threw stones at us. One of them struck Caterina and broke her lame leg.”

“Tell me how you escaped?”

The young man, Francesco Calabresi, a plumber of Messina, now spoke:

“We slept in two rooms on the ground floor behind the shop. We were all asleep in bed when the earthquake came. There were three long shocks and the earth groaned as it rocked from side to side as if it were in pain. Though the house fell down about us we were not hurt. The door into the street was jammed and would not open. I found a small hole in the wall near it and managed to crawl through it and to help the others out.”

“It was dark, and cold, and it rained—Oh, God, how it rained!” cried the old woman, “and we were all, except Lucia, naked as the day we were born.”

Lucia smiled for the first time and opened her dress to show me her high chemise.

“Yes, I had this on; it was the only thing we saved.” She was evidently proud that she alone of all the family had escaped with a garment to hide her nakedness. In Sicily the old Italian habit of sleeping without night clothes still prevails. There is a widespread prejudice against night clothes. Nena, an old Venetian servant, once told me that it was very unwholesome to sleep dressed. This absolute nakedness, both of the living and of the dead, seemed to the rescuers the last touch of horror.

“It was quite dark,” the old woman continued, “only out over the sea there was a strange light like fire. We found our way to the Villa Mazzini. Part of the railing and the gates had been thrown down so that we could get into the garden. That is how we escaped being killed. We waited together till it was light, then Francesco went and tried to find help. We stayed in the villa two days and two nights. The rain never stopped for one moment. We had no food, no clothes, no shelter, but we were alive and safe.”

“Did you see any of your neighbors?”

“No, but as we ran we heard people all about us crying ‘misericordia.’”

“Did you expect to escape?”

“Oh, no! I believed it was the end of the world. The earth shook and rumbled underneath us. When it grew light it seemed as if the mountains of Calabria were coming at us across the straits to crush us.”

Francesco now took up the story: “I made my way down to the Faro. When it was light I found a boat and rowed out to the ships in the harbor. Later, when the Russian vessels came, they gave me a little food and a few clothes. In the end they took us on board their ship, they fed and clothed us. Russians, did I say, Signora? No, they were angels. They took us and many, many others to Naples on their great ship. At Naples the highest signoria waited upon us as if they had been servants. They gave us white bread and wine and more clothes, shoes also, and they showed us the kindness of brothers and sisters. We shall never forget them. Then the Duchess of Aosta paid our fare to Rome.”

“What? The railroad did not take you free?”

“Oh, no! Every one was paid for by the Duchessa benedetta.”

As they seemed pleased to have me stay with them, I sat and comforted them as well as I could for an hour. After a little Lucia came and sat beside me and promised me that she would not grieve when her time came to go to the hospital. We made out a list of the things most needed, headed by a set of plumber’s tools for Francesco and a basket for the baby to sleep in. I promised to return in a few days, and as I rose to take leave they clung to me as if I had been an old friend.

“Is it your wish in the future,” I said to Francesco, “to remain in Rome, or later to return to Messina?” Even now we outsiders had not yet grasped the awful completeness of the disaster.

At my question Rosina became terrified, and for the first time in our interview lost her self-control. She threw both her hands above her head with a dreadful gesture of despair and shrieked:

“Messina? What is it that you say? Messina non esiste più!”

It was from Rosina that the eagle-faced man had got his phrase; it was from her that I for the first time had an inkling of the true extent of the calamity. When I look back at these last months during which I have lived with the thought of Messina always with me, till it seems as if the word Messina must be found seared upon my heart when I am dead, I hear those words, “Messina non esiste più!” When I pass in review the hundreds of survivors I have seen and talked with in Rome, Syracuse, Palermo, finally in Messina itself, I see clearest of all the face of Rosina, the ancient woman; I hear her shriek of woe:

“Messina non esiste più!”

II

THE STRAITS OF DEATH

A fleet of small boats filled with desperate half-naked men put off from the shore and surrounded the King’s ship. This was the third day after the earthquake; the survivors were starving, dying of cold and hunger, when in every Italian village men and women had taken the clothes from their backs, the food from their mouths for them, when in Rome the poor prisoners in the gaols had voted to a man that the little sums they had earned and put by against their release should be spent for them. The shivering figures in the boats stretched out appealing hands towards the King.

“Aiutarteci, aiutarteci!” they cried. “Help us, Majesty. Give us to eat, give us to drink, clothes to cover us, the abandoned of God and man!” These broken men were the King’s escort, their frenzied cries Messina’s greeting to her sovereign. In a crazy felucca a tall old sailor held up a hand to silence the clamoring crew, snatched a red biretta from his silver curls, waved it above his head with a ringing cry:

“Evviva! We have the King, we have all!”

“Thou sayest well, Luigi,” the young avvocato, Arcangelo Bonanno, called out from the pier. He knew Luigi, the old fisherman, and had sailed with him from Giardini to Messina