“You share your misfortune with the rest of humanity, if that’s any consolation.”
The conversation was interrupted by the entrance of Orlone. He was a huge Neapolitan with the countenance of a gigantic and swarthy Punch, who had been trying to get back to Naples for twenty years, but had been prevented at first by his passion for gambling and afterward by an unwilling wife and a numerous family. Orlone made even Toronto cheerful, and before he had come two paces into a room Sylvia always began to laugh. He never said anything deliberately funny except on the stage, but laughter emanated from him infectiously, as yawning might. Though he had spent twenty years in America, he still spoke the most imperfect English; and when he and Sylvia had done laughing at each other they used to laugh all over again, she at his English, he at her Italian. When they had finished laughing at that Orlone used to swear marvelously for Sylvia’s benefit whenever she should again visit Sirene; and she would teach him equally tremendous oaths in case he should ever come to London. When they had finished laughing at this, Orlone would look over Arthur’s shoulder and, after making the most ridiculous gestures of caution, would finally burst out into an absolute roar of laughter right in Arthur’s ear.
“Pazienza,” Sylvia would say, pointing to the outspread cards.
“Brava signora! Come parla bene!”
And of course this was obviously so absurd a statement that it would set them off laughing again.
“You are a pair of lunatics,” Arthur would protest; he would have liked to be annoyed at his game’s being interrupted, but he was powerless to repulse Orlone’s good humor.
When they returned to New York in the spring and Sylvia looked back at the tour, she divined how much of her pleasure in it had been owed to Orlone’s all-pervading mirth. He had really provided the robust and full-blooded contrast to Arthur that had been necessary. It was not exactly that without him their existence together would have been insipid—oh no, there was nothing insipid about Arthur, but one appreciated his delicacy after that rude and massive personality. When they had traveled over leagues of snow-covered country, Orlone had always lightened the journey with gay Neapolitan songs, and sometimes with tender ones like “Torno di Surriento.” It was then that, gazing out over the white waste, she had been able to take Arthur’s hand and sigh to be sitting with him on some Sirenian cliff, to smell again the rosemary and crumble with her fingers the sunburnt earth. But this capacity of Orlone’s for conjuring up the long Parthenopean shore was nothing more than might have been achieved by any terra-cotta Silenus in a provincial museum. After Silenus, what nymph would not turn to Hylas somewhat gratefully? It had been the greatest fun in the world to drive in tinkling sledges through Montreal, with Orlone to tease the driver until he was as sore as the head of the bear that in his fur coat he resembled; it had been fun to laugh with Orlone in Quebec and Ottawa and everywhere else; but after so much laughter it had always been particularly delightful to be alone again with Arthur, and to feel that he too was particularly enjoying being alone with her.
“I really do think we get on well together,” she said to him.
“Of course we do.”
And was there in the way he agreed with her just the least suggestion that he should have been surprised if she had not enjoyed his company, an almost imperceptible hint of complacency, or was it condescension?