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.