“You live on the third floor, I live on the second,” I remarked on the occasion of his next visit, anxious to furnish something new to the conversation.
“Indeed!” he remarked by way of reply, giving me, I fancied, a sharp glance and adding quickly, “How did you discover that, Wyndham?”
When I told him he smiled, and then added, “I go out a great deal. I love long walks and am quite unable to bury myself in books as you do, my friend; I wish you would come with me more frequently.”
This implied-craving for my society was entirely unintelligible to me, for Pasquale’s marvelous brightness and gaiety rendered my own stolidity more apparent to myself day by day. No discouragement seemed to daunt him, no business cares worried him. From the first moment that he joined me till he left, his language and his expression were radiant with humor and buoyant light-heartedness.
Of money troubles he had, or appeared to have, none, and he explained to me in a moment of exceptional confidence that his father, who was an Italian wine-grower, had sent him to London to learn the wine-business there, in order that he might eventually open a branch establishment in the English metropolis.
“I have no extravagant tastes,” he added, “and my father is wealthy and generous, so that I am usually well in funds; so, Wyndham, if ever you are hard up, you must make me your banker.”
Little by little this strange, bright creature woke me from my old-world dreams, until at length, for the first time since my arrival in London, I felt the evenings drag when he failed to put in an appearance. His sunny nature had become to me a panacea for all the dull and oppressive cares of my own life, and I craved for his company, in which nothing sordid or gloomy could live.
Pasquale, in spite of his apparently volatile nature, was a great reader of a certain class of books, as well as a close student of human nature, and now and again he would astonish me by his information on all questions touching the phenomena of mind and matter.
“My friend,” he remarked one day, “you traverse all roads at intervals, and therefore cross the same parallels of thought again and again; I only travel one for the most part untrodden, and on that lonely and fearsome path I am leagues beyond your utmost thought and that of, I think, every other human being. In fact I imagine that I must be close to the pole of human search; anyhow,” he broke off merrily, “I feel cold enough for such a northern latitude, and am glad to warm myself by your beautiful fire.”
Shortly after this I felt a great inclination for a moonlight sail on the Thames, and having received an invitation to join a boating party I asked permission to bring my friend.