CHAPTER II.

Life in London had great attractions for me during the first year of my residence in that wonderful city. Not because of the gaieties of the metropolis, for of those I knew nothing, while of its more solid attractions my ignorance was equally great.

So long as my books retained their charms I had no appetite for other recreations or attractions.

The busy crowds which in my homeward journey pressed past me on all sides, callous as to my welfare and heedless of my existence, delighted me because they gave me, with a sensation which thrilled me like a passion, the enchantment of an isolation and seclusion greater than those of the unpeopled desert.

When I arrived at home I gave myself up unreservedly to the enjoyment of my library.

My rooms were comfortably and even richly furnished, and the apartments themselves were of imposing dimensions. Before the tide of fashion had rolled westward from Russell Square, the house in which I lived had been a mansion of considerable pretensions; and this, to suit the more modest requirements of the new class of tenants now occupying the square, had been divided into two good-sized houses.

The cutting of the house in two had resulted oddly at some points, and in my rooms signs of new walls, foreign to the original design of the building, were discernible; as were also two massive oaken doorways which had apparently at one time communicated with the opposite house, but had since been closed up.

Of these two doors more hereafter.

The bright fire, the softly-shaded light, the dainty surroundings and the book I loved, suggested something of a Sybaritish existence during my evenings, and sometimes my conscience pricked me about yielding so unreservedly to what certainly was a most pleasant enjoyment.

I need not, however, have fretted at the slender dissipation, since the hour was already on the wing which was to shatter the repose of my life into fragments, and to tarnish for evermore the gold with which these earlier days were being perhaps over-gilded.

Life, however pleasant, had seemed tame beside the dramas of Literature; soon Fiction was to pale before the tragedies of Fact.

Pasquale called upon me immediately on his return, and as I found him then he continued without change until the end. Bright, cheery, brilliant and debonair, his sun suffered no eclipse until it sank forever.

Our acquaintance soon ripened into the warmest friendship, and ere long the wonderful charm of his manner began to wean me from the books which had hitherto enslaved me.

When at no lengthy intervals he came to “rout me out” and carry me off for a long walk through the crowded streets I closed my volume with ever lessening regret.

His powers of perception, naturally great, had been trained until they had all the acuteness of the most delicate sense, and allied to a mind accustomed to reason inductively they filled his brain with scenes lost to the ordinary observer.

At the first glance he seemed to penetrate the mask which disguised the true character of those he was brought in contact with. The various hand-writings which mark the human visage, as well as the influences which mould the actions of the body, seemed alike familiar to him, and when the pros and cons were duly weighed in his logical brain the real character of the individual, and not the outward pretence, lay mapped out before him with wonderful accuracy and promptness considering the inexactness of the science which he cultivated.

Hence it was that, to myself, wrapped up in my books and blind to the outer world, his analysis of the individuals who passed us in our nightly walks, seemed marvelous in the extreme.

Occasionally we went to the music halls, but I think that, catching the infection from my friend, I studied the onlookers rather than the somewhat offensive and vulgar display on the boards.

Truth to tell, I relished Pasquale’s company a great deal more without such tawdry surroundings. It was at that time a source of considerable wonder to me what attraction my brilliant friend could find in my dull society, and I sometimes endured the passing and humiliating reflection that he simply used me as a species of human target into which he could shoot the sharp arrows of his fancy, or may be, as a very rough commonplace file against which to edge them.

Occasionally I called upon my friend by way of acknowledgment of his many visits to myself, but I must have been very unfortunate, for the answer given unhesitatingly was invariably: “Mr. Pasquale has gone out.”

Once indeed his landlady, who was an American by birth, told the servant to go up to the third floor and see whether her lodger was in, but the answer received was the same--“He is not at home.”

Strange to say, my friend, who was so communicative on impersonal topics, was so reticent about his own affairs, that this was the first intimation I had received as to the floor on which he lived.

“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.

“You have never seen the Thames by moonlight,” I remarked to him, “and I am told that it is lovely beyond description. On Thursday next it will be full-moon; will you come?”

I had spoken warmly in my anxiety to secure his company, but he answered me coldly, “I cannot accompany you--I am full of sympathies and antipathies; I love you, Wyndham, as much, I think, as life itself, but I hate and loathe the moonlight worse than death. Don’t stare at me, dear boy, it is constitutional and cannot be helped.”

Rather than go alone or leave my friend I gave up the intended trip on the river, but for the next week I, nevertheless, saw nothing of him. He was reported “not at home.” When he returned he informed me, in reply to my inquiry as to his absence, that he had been called out of town. He had often been absent in a similar way before and the occurrence occasioned me no surprise.

Shortly after this I was sent to the United States by the firm I represented, to deliver certain papers of importance to a client in Chicago.

As I was about to leave, my friend Pasquale somewhat surprised me by saying, “Wyndham, I can’t stand this place without you, so I think I shall go off for a time too; my father has been urging me for a long while to take a two months’ holiday, and has recommended Norway salmon-fishing as a soothing and pleasant recreation. Sport of the kind would be worse than death to me with my hatred of seeing suffering: so, as he leaves the choice to me, I am thinking of going over to Paris. I happen to know the Chief of Police there, and I want to master their wonderful detective system and to see whether I am right in supposing that I know more than others do about the peculiarities of the human mind, more especially in its relation to the perpetration of crime; and, so, dear old friend,” he concluded, “if you hear of any wonderful captures during your absence, look out for my name!”

And so we parted with, on my side, many a yearning heartache for the friend I was leaving behind me.

As the stately Cunarder carrying me on board steamed out from Liverpool, the same day a channel boat bore Pasquale from Dover to Calais.