“That will not make our country go to war,” remarked Geppe; “I tell you that we remain neutral.”
“Per Bacco! You lie!” shouted outraged Rocca.
“Let us try to keep calm,” said Nerone unexpectedly; “I would hear what the boy has to say.”
Rocca glared round the room. “Must I sit here and listen?” he demanded; but as nobody troubled to answer, he was forced to listen or go.
Geppe, lounging grandly in his chair, began to give all of a hundred reasons why Italy would not come in. He talked loudly in order to cheer himself up. He kept racking his brain for convincing arguments that he himself could believe. Fabio was relieved, and even Nerone was gradually being persuaded, when Rocca got slowly on to his feet and held up his hand for silence. They all turned to stare in surprise at his face, which had suddenly grown very grave. His voice when he spoke was very grave too, not blustering as was its wont.
“I am only a miserable butcher,” said Rocca, “and one who, alas, has grown old. To our young men the glory, to our old men the patience—because they are past the time for glory. But we who are old have heard many things, and some who are still alive have seen them; and those who have seen can never forget, and those who have heard remember. We have heard of the White Coats swarming in Milan; we have heard of our women flogged in the streets and our patriots hung from the lampposts. We have heard of the glorious Risorgimento—of Mazzini, and the martyr Menotti, and of many a youth much younger than Geppe who died that Italy might live. And this I say to you all this night, if my country stops out of the war, I disown her—I who have fought in the second Custozza, I who have seen the Austrian’s blood, and the blood from my own three wounds; I who have known our father Garibaldi—yes, even I, Rocca, will cast off my country, I will take her no more for my mother. The ghosts of her patriots shall walk through her streets, wailing and wringing their hands; the spirits of her virgins whom the Austrians deflowered, shall come back and proclaim their deflowering; and Rocca will go in sorrow to his grave, because he will be as a man without a country. May the saints put a sword into Italy’s hand, and may Italy use that sword!”
Then Nerone struck the floor with his wooden leg. “Amen,” he said huskily. “Amen.”
And Fabio, forgetting his naturalization, forgetting the debts of the Casa Boselli, stumbled over to Rocca and gripped his arm; and they both tried to stand very straight, like the young.
Rosa looked at her only son and through him and beyond him at her country, and at all those mothers long since dead and gone, and at all their sons who had laid down their lives, whom she seemed to see living again in Geppe—
“Our country will use that sword,” she said quietly, “and Geppe shall help her to use it. My Geppe is brave, he is anxious to fight.”
“Of course I am anxious to fight,” murmured Geppe, staring down at his cigarette.
V
That winter the nations settled in grimly to their struggle of life and death; while at home, in familiar, foggy old London—grown oddly unfamiliar somehow in those days—men and women struggled fiercely and almost as grimly to keep the business flag flying.
Millo, in his office, sat long into the night scheming, calculating, foreseeing. How to maintain the prestige of the Doric at a time when his world was falling to pieces, that was Millo’s great problem. He sent for the heads of departments and addressed them as a field-marshal might address his generals.
“We are face to face with disaster—” said Millo, “not financial disaster, for our company is rich, but something even worse, a total collapse of our splendid organization. Each of you will have many arduous new duties for which no money can pay. Already we have lost our most skilled French chefs, only old men and boys are left in the kitchen, but the boys must grow wise and the old men young, for it shall not be said that because there is war we no longer know how to cook. I foresee a coming shortage of food, yet somehow food we must find; if it is not precisely what we have been used to, we must aim at keeping this fact from our clients; we must coax it, disguise it, dress it up in fine clothes, so that they eat it gladly. I foresee a coming shortage of waiters—for Italy will soon be at war—but waiters we must have; I shall aim at getting Swiss, failing them we must do with the unfit English and the ageing—those rejected by the army. Several of you headwaiters will go; Riccardo, Giovanni, Roberto for instance; but you Giuliano, are well over age, I can count on you for the grillroom. The Swiss are a fairly hardworking people, your trouble will lie with the English, who, even when perfectly sound, make vile waiters; in my long experience I have only known one who was all that a waiter should be, but then he had lived among us for years—I remember we called him Luigi—you may have to put up with very many things, but do not come grumbling to me. Gian-Luca, here, will be able to help me; he is only Italian by blood it seems—he is English, he tells me, in the eyes of the law, but so far he does not feel called upon to enlist, and for this I cannot but be thankful. And now,” he concluded, “just one last word; let there be no small jealousies among you. Away with such things! The times are too momentous; we must concentrate our energies entirely on our clients, and through them on the prestige of the
