W. Somerset Maugham - Christmas Holiday (W. Somerset Maugham) (Literary Thoughts Edition)

“It was a damned unscrupulous thing to do,” said Charley. “After all, I dare say they were just a lot of ordinary, decent fellows who were only wanting to do what they thought was the right thing, and what’s more they were probably prepared to put their hands in their pockets to prove the sincerity of their convictions.”

“You would think that. In point of fact more money was raised for whatever the damned cause was than had ever been raised before at one of their meetings and the organisers told my chief it was entirely due to my brilliant speech.”

Charley in his candour was distressed. This was not the Simon he had known so long. Formerly, however wild his theories were, however provocatively expressed, there was a sort of nobility in them. He was disinterested. His indignation was directed against oppression and cruelty. Injustice roused him to fury. But Simon did not notice the effect he had on Charley or if he did was indifferent to it. He was absorbed in himself.

“But brain isn’t enough and eloquence, even if it’s necessary, is after all a despicable gift. Kerensky had them both and what did they avail him? The important thing is character. It’s my character I’ve got to mould. I’m sure one can do anything with oneself if one tries. It’s only a matter of will. I’ve got to train myself so that I’m indifferent to insult, neglect and ridicule. I’ve got to acquire a spiritual aloofness so complete that if they put me in prison I shall feel myself as free as a bird in the air. I’ve got to make myself so strong that when I make mistakes I am unshaken, but profit by them to act rightly. I’ve got to make myself so hard that not only can I resist the temptation to be pitiful, but I don’t even feel pity. I’ve got to wring out of my heart the possibility of love.”

“Why?”

“I can’t afford to let my judgment be clouded by any feeling that I might have for a human being. You are the only person I’ve ever cared for in the world, Charley. I shan’t rest till I know in my bones that if it were necessary to put you against a wall and shoot you with my own hands I could do it without a moment’s hesitation and without a moment’s regret.”

Simon’s eyes had a dark opaqueness which reminded you of an old mirror, in a deserted house, from which the quicksilver was worn away, so that when you looked in it you saw, not yourself, but a sombre depth in which seemed to lurk the reflections of long-past events and passions long since dead and yet in some terrifying way tremulous still with a borrowed and mysterious life.

“Did you wonder why I didn’t come to the station to meet you?”

“It would have been nice if you had. I supposed you couldn’t get away.”

“I knew you’d be disappointed. It’s our busy time at the office, we have to be on tap then to telephone to London the news that’s come through in the course of the day, but it’s Christmas Eve, the paper doesn’t come out to-morrow and I could have got away easily. I didn’t come because I wanted to so much. Ever since I got your letter saying you were coming over I’ve been sick with the desire to see you. When the train was due and I knew you’d be wandering up the platform looking for me and rather lost in that struggling crowd, I took a book and began to read. I sat there, forcing myself to attend to it, and refusing to let myself listen for the telephone that I expected every moment to ring. And when it did and I knew it was you, my joy was so intense that I was enraged with myself. I almost didn’t answer. For more than two years now I’ve been striving to rid myself of the feeling I have for you. Shall I tell you why I wanted you to come over? One idealises people when they’re away, it’s true that absence makes the heart grow fonder, and when one sees them again one’s often surprised that one saw anything in them at all. I thought that if there were anything left in me of the old feeling I had for you the few days you’re spending here now would be enough to kill it.”

“I’m afraid you’ll think me very stupid,” said Charley, with his engaging smile, “but I can’t for the life of me see why you want to.”

“I do think you’re very stupid.”

“Well, taking that for granted, what is the reason?”

Simon frowned a little and his restless eyes darted here and there like a hare trying to escape a pursuer.

“You’re the only person who ever cared for me.”

“That’s not true. My father and mother have always been very fond of you.”

“Don’t talk such nonsense. Your father was as indifferent to me as he is to art, but it gave him a warm, comfortable feeling of benevolence to be kind to the orphan penniless boy whom he could patronise and impress. Your mother thought me unscrupulous and self-seeking. She hated the influence she thought I had over you and she was affronted because she saw that I thought your father an old humbug, the worst sort of humbug, the one who humbugs himself; the only satisfaction I ever gave her was that she couldn’t look at me without thinking how nice it was that you were so very different from me.”

“You’re not very flattering to my poor parents,” said Charley, mildly.

Simon took no notice of the interruption.

“We clicked at once. What that old bore Goethe would have called elective affinity. You gave me what I’d never had. I, who’d never been a boy, could be a boy with you. I could forget myself in you. I bullied you and ragged you and mocked you and neglected you, but all the time I worshipped you. I felt wonderfully at home with you. With you I could be just myself. You were so unassuming, so easily pleased, so gay and so good-natured, merely to be with you rested my tortured nerves and released me for a moment from that driving force that urged me on and on. But I don’t want rest and I don’t want release. My will falters when I look at your sweet and diffident smile. I can’t afford to be soft, I can’t afford to be tender. When I look into those blue eyes of yours, so friendly, so confiding in human nature, I waver, and I daren’t waver. You’re my enemy and I hate you.”

Charley had flushed uncomfortably at some of the things that Simon had said to him, but now he chuckled good-humouredly.

“Oh, Simon, what stuff and nonsense you talk.”

Simon paid no attention. He fixed Charley with his glittering, passionate eyes as though he sought to bore into the depths of his being.

“Is there anything there?” he said, as though speaking to himself. “Or is it merely an accident of expression that gives the illusion of some quality of the soul?” And then to Charley: “I’ve often asked myself what it was that I saw in you. It wasn’t your good looks, though I dare say they had something to do with it; it wasn’t your intelligence, which is adequate without being remarkable; it wasn’t your guileless nature or your good temper. What is it in you that makes people take to you at first sight? You’ve won half your battle before ever you take the field. Charm? What is charm? It’s one of the words we all know the meaning of, but we can none of us define. But I know if I had that gift of yours, with my brain and my determination there’s no obstacle in the world I couldn’t surmount. You’ve got vitality and that’s part of charm. But I have just as much vitality as you; I can do with four hours’ sleep for days on end and I can work for sixteen hours a day without getting tired. When people first meet me they’re antagonistic, I have to conquer them by sheer brain-power, I have to play on their weaknesses, I have to make myself useful to them, I have to flatter them. When I came to Paris my chief thought me the most disagreeable young man and the most conceited he’d ever met. Of course he’s a fool. How can a man be conceited when he knows his defects as well as I know mine? Now he eats out of my hand. But I’ve had to work like a dog to achieve what you can do with a flicker of your long eyelashes. Charm is essential. In the last two years I’ve got to know a good many prominent politicians and they’ve all got it. Some more and some less. But they can’t all have it by nature. That shows it can be acquired. It means nothing, but it arouses the devotion of their followers so that they’ll do blindly all they’re bidden and be satisfied with the reward of a kind word. I’ve examined them at work. They can turn it on like water from a tap. The quick, friendly smile; the hand that’s so ready to clasp yours. The warmth in the voice that seems to promise favours, the show of interest that leads you to think your concerns are your leader’s chief preoccupation, the intimate manner which tells you nothing, but deludes you into thinking you are in your master’s confidence. The clichés, the hundred varieties of “dear old boy” that are so flattering on influential lips. The ease and naturalness, the perfect acting that imitates nature, and the sensitiveness that discerns a fool’s vanity and takes care never to affront it. I can learn all that, it only means a little more effort and a little more self-control. Sometimes of course they overdo it, the pros, their charm becomes so mechanical that it ceases to work; people see through it, and feeling they’ve been duped are resentful.” He gave Charley another of his piercing glances. “Your charm is natural, that’s why it’s so devastating. Isn’t it absurd that a tiny wrinkle should make life so easy for you?”