“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 daresay 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 brainpower, 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 cliches, 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.