It was no good, Venetia simply couldn’t like him.
He was harsh, cynical and unscrupulous.
It exasperated her to see how much Charley admired him; Charley thought him brilliant and anticipated a great career for him.
Even Leslie was impressed by the extent of his reading and the clearness with which even as a boy he expressed himself.
At school he was already an ardent socialist and at Cambridge he became a communist.
Leslie listened to his wild theories with good-humoured tolerance.
To him it was all talk, and talk, he had an instinctive feeling, was just talk; it didn’t touch the essential business of life.
“And if he does become a well-known journalist or gets into the House, there’ll be no harm in having a friend in the enemy’s camp.”
Leslie’s ideas were liberal, so liberal that he didn’t mind admitting the Socialists had several notions that no reasonable man could object to; theoretically he was all in favour of the nationalization of the coal-mines, and he didn’t see why the state shouldn’t run the public services as well as private companies; but he didn’t think they should go too far.
Ground rents, for instance, that was a matter that was really no concern of the state; and slum property; in a great city you had to have slums, in point of fact the lower classes preferred them to model dwelling-houses, not that the Mason Estate hadn’t done what it could in this direction, but you couldn’t expect a landlord to let people live in his houses for nothing, and it was only fair that he should get a decent return on his capital.
Simon Fenimore had decided that he wanted to be a foreign correspondent for some years so that he could gain a knowledge of Continental politics which would enable him when he entered the House of Commons to be an expert on a subject of which most Labour members were necessarily ignorant; but when Leslie took him to see the proprietor of the newspaper who was prepared to give a brilliant young man his chance, he warned him that the proprietor was a very rich man, and that he could not expect to create a favourable impression if he delivered himself of revolutionary sentiments.
Simon, however, made a very good impression on the magnate by the modesty of his demeanour, his air of energy and his easy conversation.
“He was as good as gold,” Leslie told his wife afterwards.
“He’s got his head screwed on his shoulders all right, that young fellow.
It’s what I always told you, talk doesn’t amount to anything really.
When it comes down to getting a job with a living wage attached to it, like every sensible man he’s prepared to put his theories in his pocket.”
Venetia agreed with him.
It was quite possible, their own experience proved it, to have a real love for beauty and at the same time to realize the importance of material things.
Look at Lorenzo de’ Medici; he’d been a successful banker and an artist to his finger-tips.
She thought it very good of Leslie to have taken so much trouble to do a service for someone who was incapable of gratitude.
Anyhow the job he had got him would take Simon to Vienna and thus remove Charley from an influence which she had always regarded with misgiving.
It was that wild talk of his that had put it into the boy’s head that he wanted to be an artist.
It was all very well for Simon, he hadn’t a penny in the world and no connections; but Charley had a snug berth to go into.
There were enough artists in the world.
Her consolation had been that Charley had so much candour of soul and a disposition of such sweetness that no evil communications could corrupt his good manners.
At this moment Charley was dressing himself and wondering, forlorn, how he should spend the evening.
When he had got his trousers on he rang up the office of Simon’s newspaper, and it was Simon himself who answered.
“Simon.”
“Hulloa, have you turned up?
Where are you?”
Simon seemed so casual that Charley was taken aback.
“At the hotel.”
“Oh, are you?
Doing anything to-night?”
“No.”
“We’d better dine together, shall we?
I’ll stroll around and fetch you.”
He rang off.
Charley was dashed.
He had expected Simon to be as eager to see him as he was to see Simon, but from Simon’s words and from his manner you would have thought that they were casual acquaintances and that it was a matter of indifference to him if they met or not.
Of course it was two years since they’d seen one another and in that time Simon might have changed out of all recognition.
Charley had a sudden fear that his visit to Paris was going to be a failure and he awaited Simon’s arrival with a nervousness that annoyed him.
But when at last he walked into the room there was in his appearance at least little alteration.
He was now twenty-three and he was still the lanky fellow, though only of average height, that he had always been.
He was shabbily dressed in a brown jacket and gray flannel trousers and wore neither hat nor great coat.
His long face was thinner and paler than ever and his black eyes seemed larger.
They were never still.
Hard, shining, inquisitive, suspicious, they seemed to indicate the quality of the brain behind.
His mouth was large and ironical, and he had small irregular teeth that somewhat reminded you of one of the smaller beasts of prey.
With his pointed chin and prominent cheek-bones he was not good-looking, but his expression was so high-strung, there was in it so strange a disquiet, that you could hardly have passed him in the street without taking notice of him.