Christmas Holiday

Somerset Maugham

Description

For Christmas, Charley Mason's father granted him a trip to Paris, all expenses paid. It should have been a lark, but on his first night Charley meets a woman whose story will forever change his life.

For Lydia has seen tragedy. The Russian Revolution displaced her family, left her homeless, fatherless. And for reasons that elude Charley, Lydia pines for a man half a world away–a dope dealer and murderer whose sins Lydia seeks to absolve through her own self- destruction. Haunting, erotic, deeply effecting, Christmas Holiday explores two souls capsized by compassion–and the confusion that engulfed a generation in the days between the Great Wars.

Sujets

• Romance historique
• Fiction
• Romance
• Historical
• 20th Century

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 29 janvier 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781456636357
• Langue: English

Extrait

Christmas Holiday
by W. Somerset Maugham
Subjects: Fiction -- Crime.

First published in 1939
This edition published by Reading Essentials
Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and Germany
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except in the case of excerpts by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Christmas Holiday





W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

CHAPTER I
With a journey before him, Charley Mason’s mother was anxiousthat he should make a good breakfast, but he was too excited toeat. It was Christmas Eve and he was going to Paris. They had gotthrough the mass of work that quarter-day brought with it, and hisfather, having no need to go to the office, drove him to Victoria.When they were stopped for several minutes by a traffic block inGrosvenor Gardens, Charley, afraid that he would miss the train,went white with anxiety. His father chuckled.
“You’ve got the best part of half an hour.”
But it was a relief to arrive.
“Well, good-bye, old boy,” his father said, “have a good timeand don’t get into more mischief than you can help.”
The steamer backed into the harbour and the sight of the grey,tall, dingy houses of Calais filled him with elation. It was a rawday and the wind blew bitter. He strode along the platform asthough he walked on air. The Golden Arrow, powerful, rich andimpressive, which stood there waiting for him, was no ordinarytrain, but a symbol of romance. While the light lasted he lookedout of the window and he laughed in his heart as he recognised thepictures he had seen in galleries: sand dunes, with patches of grassgrey under the leaden sky, cramped villages of poor persons’houses with slate roofs, and then a broad, sad landscape ofploughed fields and sparse bare trees; but the day seemed in ahurry to be gone from the cheerless scene and in a short while,when he looked out, he could see only his own reflection andbehind it the polished mahogany of the Pullman. He wished hehad come by air. That was what he’d wanted to do, but his motherhad put her foot down; she’d persuaded his father that in themiddle of winter it was a silly risk to take, and his father, usually soreasonable, had made it a condition of his going on the jaunt thathe should take the train.
Of course Charley had been to Paris before, half a dozen timesat least, but this was the first time that he had ever gone alone. Itwas a special treat that his father was giving him for a specialreason: he had completed a year’s work in his father’s office andhad passed the necessary examinations to enable him to followusefully his chosen calling. For as long as Charley could remember,his father and mother, his sister Patsy and he had spentChristmas at Godalming with their cousins the Terry-Masons; andto explain why Leslie Mason, after talking over the matter with hiswife, had one evening, a smile on his kindly face, asked his sonwhether instead of coming with them as usual he would like tospend a few days in Paris by himself, it is necessary to go back alittle. It is necessary indeed to go back to the middle of thenineteenth century, when an industrious and intelligent mancalled Sibert Mason, who had been head gardener at a grand placein Sussex and had married the cook, bought with his savings andhers a few acres north of London and set up as a market gardener.Though he was then forty and his wife not far from it they hadeight children. He prospered, and with the money he madebought little bits of land in what was still open country. The cityexpanded and his market garden acquired value as a building site;with money borrowed from the bank he put up a row of villas andin a short while let them all on lease. It would be tedious to gointo the details of his progress, and it is enough to say that whenhe died, at the age of eighty-four, the few acres he had bought togrow vegetables for Covent Garden, and the properties he hadcontinued to acquire whenever opportunity presented, werecovered with bricks and mortar. Sibert Mason took care that hischildren should receive the education that had been denied him.They moved up in the social scale. He made the Mason Estate, ashe had somewhat grandly named it, into a private company and athis death each child received a certain number of shares as aninheritance. The Mason Estate was well managed and though itcould not compare in importance with the Westminster or thePortman Estate, for its situation was modest and it had long ceasedto have any value as a residential quarter, shops, warehouses,factories, slums, long rows of dingy houses in two storeys, madeit sufficiently profitable to enable its proprietors, through nomerit and little exertion of their own, to live like the gentlemenand ladies they were now become. Indeed, the head of the family,the only surviving child of old Sibert’s eldest son, a brotherhaving been killed in the war and a sister by a fall in the hunting-field,was a very rich man. He was a Member of Parliament and atthe time of King George the Fifth’s Jubilee had been created abaronet. He had tacked his wife’s name on to his own and wasnow known as Sir Wilfred Terry-Mason. The family had hopesthat his staunch allegiance to the Tory Party and the fact that hehad a safe seat would result in his being raised to the peerage.
Leslie Mason, youngest of Sibert’s many grandchildren, hadbeen sent to a public school and to Cambridge. His share in theEstate brought him in two thousand pounds a year, but to this wasadded another thousand which he received as secretary of thecompany. Once a year there was a meeting attended by suchmembers of the family as were in England, for of the thirdgeneration some were serving their country in distant parts of theEmpire and some were gentlemen of leisure who were oftenabroad, and, with Sir Wilfred in the chair, he presented the highlysatisfactory statement which the chartered accountants hadprepared.
Leslie Mason was a man of varied interests. At this time he wasin the early fifties, tall, with a good figure and, with his blue eyes,fine grey hair worn rather long, and high colour, of an agreeableaspect. He looked more like a soldier or a colonial governor homeon leave than a house agent and you would never have guessed thathis grandfather was a gardener and his grandmother a cook. Hewas a good golfer, for which pastime he had ample leisure, and agood shot. But Leslie Mason was more than a sportsman; he waskeenly interested in the arts. The rest of the family had no suchfoibles and they looked upon Leslie’s predilections with anamused tolerance, but when, for some reason or other, one ofthem wanted to buy a piece of furniture or a picture, his advicewas sought and taken. It was natural enough that he should knowwhat he was talking about, for he had married a painter’s daughter.John Peron, his wife’s father, was a member of the Royal Academyand for a long time, between the ’eighties and the end of thecentury, had made a good income by painting pictures of youngwomen in eighteenth-century costume dallying with young mensimilarly dight. He painted them in gardens of old-world flowers,in leafy bowers and in parlours furnished correctly with the chairsand tables of the period. But now when his pictures turned up atChristie’s they were sold for thirty shillings or two pounds.Venetia Mason had inherited quite a number when her fatherdied, but they had long stood in a box-room, covered with dust,their faces to the wall; for at this time of day even filial affectioncould not persuade her that they were anything but dreadful.The Leslie Masons were not in the least ashamed of the fact thathis grandmother had been a cook, indeed with their friends theywere apt to make a facetious point of it, but it embarrassed them tospeak of John Peron. Some of the Mason relations still had ontheir walls examples of his work; they were a mortification toVenetia.
“I see you’ve still got Father’s picture there,” she said. “Don’tyou think it dates rather? Why don’t you put it in one of the sparerooms?”
“My father-in-law was a very charming old man,” said Leslie,“with beautiful manners, but I’m afraid he wasn’t a very goodpainter.”
“Well, my governor gave a tidy sum for it. It would be absurdto put a picture that cost three hundred pounds in a spare bedroom,but if you feel like that about it, I’ll tell you what I’ll do, I’llsell it you for a hundred and fifty.”
For though in the course of three generations they had becomeladies and gentlemen, the Masons had not lost their businessacumen.
The Leslie Masons had gone a long way in artistic appreciationsince their marriage and on the walls of the handsome new housethey now inhabited in Porchester Close were pictures by WilsonSteer and Augustus John, Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell. Therewas an Utrillo and a Vuillard, both bought while these masterswere of moderate price, and there was a Derain, a Marquet and aChirico. You could not enter their house, somewhat sparselyfurnished, without knowing at once that they were in the movement.They seldom missed a private view and when they went toParis made a point of going to Rosenberg’s and the dealers in theRue de Seine to have a look at what there was to be seen; theyreally liked pictures and if they did not buy any before the culturedopinion of the day had agreed on their merits this was due partlyto a modest lack of confidence in their own judgment and partly toa fear that they might be making a bad bargain. After all, JohnPeron’s pictures had been praised by the best critics and he hadsold them for several hundred pounds apiece, and now whatdid they fetch? Two or three. It made you careful. But it was notonly in painting that they were interested. They loved music; theywent to Symphony Concerts throughout the winter; they hadtheir favourite conduc