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;
bringing out the unsurpassable curves of the cathedral dome, and the
squatter lines of that of St. Lorenzo, where the Medici moulder in
their marble tombs; lingering on the graceful sturdiness of the Palazzo
Vecchio; touching the spires of the church of St. Croce and of the
Bargello where prisoners once pined. It was that hour before the actual
sunset when the city, lying languidly amid the encircling hills, seems
consciously to breathe out the suavity by which she captures her lovers
and holds them to her in life-long thraldom. And two of us had been
long away from our mistress; the spirit of the time and the place was
upon us; confidences of loves and sorrows rose naturally to our lips.
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 got drowned in such a way that you cannot tell
whether it was a homicide or a suicide, and are afraid of misleading
justice? Has a supposed corpse come to life again and objected to being
dissected?”
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 her all the
more profound. She had married unfortunately; a man who had ill-treated
and neglected her in every possible way. After a couple of years she
fled from her husband, left the stage, and changing her name, lived by
giving singing lessons; and, when I first knew her, was making a brave
struggle not only to support herself and her boy, but to obtain and
hold such a position in the world as should enable her to launch him in
his career. Then she fell ill; more from exhaustion of vital force than
anything else; and I never saw anything like the spirit with which she
bore up. She was almost too weak to teach, and held her pupils together
with the greatest difficulty; yet she managed always to wear a bright
smile, and she refused absolutely to give up hope. ‘Why, it is the most
stimulating of medicines,’ she would say. ‘If I give up that, I shall
collapse immediately. I consider that, given the conditions in which I
live, self-deception, on the right side of course, is a distinct duty.’
“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. We might have been hundreds of miles away from any town: yet
Florence was close at our feet. I had left it only a couple of hours
ago, and should be down there again breathing the phenic acid of the
hospital that same afternoon. Never shall I forget the morning of chat
and reading (I had taken up a volume of poems—her gift), with the bees
booming in the ling, the gorgeous green of the pine needles, intense
unchangeable, against the brilliant sky, and the mingled scents of
pine, cypress, honey-flowers, and aromatic herbs. As we were starting
to go down she stopped. ‘We must keep vivid the remembrance of this,
Neri,’ she said, and caught my hand. I turned and looked into her eyes,
whose deep earnest gaze remains with me yet. We clasped hands, and so
parted.
“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_ on me
when I have said good-bye to this life: it would be too painful for
you.’ Still I did not think she would ever really commit suicide; not
because she had any fear of death, but because I knew she looked on the
proceeding as cowardly; and also because she had a power of the most
intense enjoyment and interest in all the beauties of life, whether
physical or intellectual. Hers was the most elastic nature I have
known. I said what one could say, and it’s precious little, in such
circumstances: and she seemed to recover tone.
“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. The second evening I came to myself. I was without fever and
fell quietly asleep. Towards morning I awoke. She was there standing by
my bed with the same pitifully pleading expression I had felt in the
hospital. She caressed my cheek, then bent over me and touched my lips.
“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.”