Have I Not More Than Once Been
Useful To Her, Nay, Indispensable?
I therefore climb, not without
trepidation, those ninety-three stairs to the very summit of the old
palace, and presently find myself ushered into the familiar twilight.
Nothing has changed since I was here some little time ago to announce my
arrival in Italy (solemn occasion), when I had to amuse myself for an
hour or so with Baudelaire in the library, Mrs. Nichol being engaged
upon "house-accounts." This time, as I enter the studio, she is playing
cards with a pretty handmaiden, amid peals of laughter. She often plays
cards. She is puffing at a cigarette in a long mouthpiece which keeps
the smoke out of her olive-complexioned face and which she holds
firm-fixed between her teeth, in a corner of the mouth, after the perky
fashion of a schoolboy. I have interrupted a game, and at once begin to
feel de trop under a glance from those smouldering grey eyes.
"It is not a trifle. It is a matter of life and death. Will you please
listen for half a minute? Then I will evaporate, and you can go on with
your ridiculous cards. The fact is, I am being assassinated by inches.
Do you know of a place where a man can get eatable macaroni nowadays?
The old kind, I mean, made out of pre-war-time flour...."
She lays her hand on the cards as though to suspend the game, and asks
the girl in Italian:
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