Christmas Holiday Read Online Free PDF Page B

grew excited often rose to shrillness.
    Charley, restraining his natural impulse to run to the door and wring his hand with the eager friendliness of his happy nature, received him coolly. When there was a knock he called “Come in,” and went on filing his nails. Simon did not offer to shake hands. He nodded as though they had met already in the course of the day.
    “Hulloa!” he said. “Room all right?”
    “Oh, yes. The hotel’s a bit grander than I expected.”
    “It’s convenient and you can bring anyone in you like. I’m starving. Shall we go along and eat?”
    “O.K.”
    “Let’s go to the Coupole.”
    They sat down opposite one another at a table upstairs and ordered their dinner. Simon gave Charley an appraising look.
    “I see you haven’t lost your looks, Charley,” he said with his wry smile.
    “Luckily they’re not my fortune.”
    Charley was feeling a trifle shy. The separation had for the moment at all events destroyed the old intimacy there had so long been between them. Charley was a good listener, he had indeed been trained to be so from early childhood, and he was never unwilling to sit silent while Simon poured out his ideas with eloquent confusion. Charley had always disinterestedly admired him; he was convinced he was a genius so that it seemed quite natural to play second fiddle to him. He had an affection for Simon because he was alone in the world and nobody much liked him, whereas he himself had a happy home and was in easy circumstances; and it gave him a sense of comfort that Simon, who cared for so few people, cared for him. Simon was often bitter and sarcastic, but with him he could also be strangely gentle. In one of his rare moments of expansion he had told him that he was the only person in the world that he gave a damn for. But now Charley felt with malaise that there was a barrier between them. Simon’s restless eyes darted from his face to his hands, paused for an instant on his new suit and then glanced rapidly at his collar and tie; he felt that Simon was not surrendering himself as he had to him alone in the old days, but was holding back, critical and aloof; he seemed to be takingstock of him as if he were a stranger and he were making up his mind what sort of a person this was. It made Charley uncomfortable and he was sore at heart.
    “How d’you like being a business man?” asked Simon.
    Charley faintly coloured. After all the talks they had had in the past he was prepared for Simon to treat him with derision because he had in the end fallen in with his father’s wishes, but he was too honest to conceal the truth.
    “I like it much better than I expected. I find the work very interesting and it’s not hard. I have plenty of time to myself.”
    “I think you’ve shown a lot of sense,” Simon answered, to his surprise. “What did you want to be a painter or a pianist for? There’s a great deal too much art in the world. Art’s a lot of damned rot anyway.”
    “Oh, Simon!”
    “Are you still taken in by the artistic pretensions of your excellent parents? You must grow up, Charley. Art! It’s an amusing diversion for the idle rich. Our world, the world we live in, has no time for such nonsense.”
    “I should have thought …”
    “I know what you would have thought; you would have thought it gave a beauty, a meaning to existence; you would have thought it was a solace to the weary and heavy-laden and an inspiration to a nobler and fuller life. Balls! We may want art again in the future, but it won’t be your art, it’ll be the art of the people.”
    “Oh, Lord!”
    “The people want dope and it may be that art is the best form in which we can give it them. But they’re not ready for it yet. At present it’s another form they want.”
    “What is that?”
    “Words.”
    It was extraordinary, the sardonic vigour he put into the monosyllable. But he smiled, and though his lips grimaced Charley saw in his eyes for a moment that same look of