There were three of us: men between youth and middle age who had gone through school and college together, had walked the hospitals and worked in the dissecting room without a break in our friendship; and, separated by the exigencies of our practice, had still, as though by some occult sympathy, kept in touch with each other across long stretches of absence and silence. We were sitting with our coffee and cigarettes on the public walk above Florence. Before us lay the great square with the colossal David: the bronze giant that looks ever to the hills beyond the town, with his sling ready to defend her from assault; while behind us rose the church from which the creator of that giant really had protected the city against the strange-speaking North-men who had poured over those very hills for her destruction. The last gleam of sunshine was, as we knew, making the gold of the mosaic glitter over the church-door there above us. It lay too on the town at our feet, lighting up the captivating grace of the bell-tower, the chastened glow of whose marbles seemed actually before our eyes; Conti flung away his cigarette and threw himself back in his chair. I glanced at his small nervous hands as he folded his arms; remembering their quick, sure movements in the most delicate operations; and then I looked into his blue eyes, whose bright sparkle the deadly habit of morphine-taking, the future ruin of that bright career, was already changing into dreaminess. “Decidedly, Neri,” exclaimed he, “you are the most changed of the three. There you sit smoking your cigarette as quietly as though we came here every day of our lives. With a line between your brows, too! You look as though you were obliged to take a wife to-morrow. What has happened? Has someone A smile flickered across Neri’s gravity. He was the handsomest of the three: one of the best made men in the town. He wore a thick, pointed beard, and the mouth under the moustache was of quite exceptional firmness and delicacy. In fact he was what the women call a bell’uomo; and but for his thorough-going solidity of character and immense variety of interests, would infallibly have had his head turned by their admiration. As it was he simply had no time to give them very much attention. And lately, so we were told, he had taken less notice of them than ever; but had gone about his work with the line between his brows, and lips that rarely relaxed except to smile encouragement to some poor patient on whom he had operated. He breathed out the smoke slowly, luxuriously, from his mouth and nostrils—he was a confirmed cigarette smoker—and answered:— “No, I am not going to be married to-morrow; and I was thinking of a post-mortem, but not of such an one as Conti imagines. I will tell you the story; but keep it to yourselves. There’s a woman in the case, of course,” he added, with a short nervous laugh. Then he hesitated again, and at last began. “Just a year ago to-day I had to make a post-mortem, and a report to the police, on the body of the one woman who has entered profoundly into my life. She was a rising operatic singer with a singular power of vivid dramatic intensity, though I do not think her impersonations were ever a full expression of her innermost powers. Her interests were extremely varied, her mind exceptionally mobile—her occupation fostering this mobility, and increasing that power of quick sympathy, of putting herself into touch with the people with whom she came into contact, which was one of her distinguishing features. She was not beautiful; but she had fine large dark eyes that looked straight at you; and she was so lithe and girl-like in all her movements (she was rather older than myself in reality) that you felt inclined just to take her in your arms and hold her fast against all the troubles of the world—and she had her share, I warrant you.” “H’m,” said Conti. “And you did it, I suppose. You seem to have been hard hit.” “No, I did not do it; although I was more than hard hit. Her position was so difficult that I had no heart to make it worse; and she had a certain dignity about her, even in her moments of most childlike abandon in talking with me, that prevented any light advances. You felt as though you must help her even against herself, for her nature was evidently passionate; and that made your feeling for “Towards the end of the summer she left town for a fortnight, and I went out to see her. She insisted on our having a little picnic together, and took me to the top of a hill hard by. There was a small pine wood up there, with a stretch of grass and ling. Opposite rose Castel di Poggio. The hills were round us ridge on ridge, and fold on fold; their bosoms veiled by draperies of mist, for it was still early. “Well, when she came back to Florence she began to lose her spirit. Money matters worried her, I fancy, though she would never trouble me with them. Then her husband accidentally found and began to trouble her, threatening that unless she went back to live with him he would take the boy (now nearly seven years old) from her. She sent the child to her people in Switzerland. ‘It would so much simplify matters if I were to die,’ she wrote me once. ‘My people would never let him go then; and my husband could urge me no longer. The struggle is too great. Only I do not want you to have to make the post mortem “Then I left Florence for nearly a month. I was obliged to return unexpectedly to the hospital; and was just leaving it to call upon her when I was told there was a post-mortem waiting for me. I went into the room. It was she; lying there on the table.... “Well, I got through somehow. It did not take very long, for I knew her well enough to guess what she had used, and had only to verify a suspicion. And while I was working it seemed as though she were looking at me, looking at me with a pitifully pleading look as though supplicating forgiveness for the horror of my position. I remember I kept her covered as religiously as though she had been alive; and I remember I arranged everything when all was over and carried her in my own arms to the bier which was to take her away. Then, I believe, Paoletti found me, got me into a cab, and drove me home in a high fever. “Oh yes, I know. Optical hallucination, subjective sensation, and all the rest of it. Hallucination; subjective as much as you like; but I saw her; and I feel her about me now just as plainly as I felt her then. I suppose the impression will fade as time goes on. I may take a wife and have children as other men do. Still (with a repetition of the little nervous laugh) it has not begun to fade yet; and I feel as though I should see her once more: on my death bed.” ????? “Decidedly,” said Conti, breaking the silence. “Nature’s irony is more scathing than man’s. It is just Neri,—- Neri who never philandered, who never sentimentalised, who would have nothing to do with what was not downright brutally real—it is just Neri whom the Fates have wedded to a phantom bride.” “Come,” said Neri, shaking himself, “it’s nearly dark; we can see neither dome nor bell-tower any longer. Shall we go to the Arena? Tina di Lorenzo is acting. And then we will finish up at the Gambrinus Halle.” |