Part 20 (2/2)

How familiar her voice was on that note,--caressing, drawing him on.

He said, ”I'll tell you, Nona. I'm unsatisfactory because I've got the most infernal habit of seeing things from about twenty points of view instead of one. For other people, that's the most irritating thing you can possibly imagine. I've no convictions; that's the trouble. I swing about from side to side. I always can see the other side of a case, and you know, that's absolutely fatal--”

She said gently, ”Fatal to what, Marko?”

He was going to say, ”To happiness”; but he looked at her and then looked away. ”Well, to everything; to success. You can't possibly be successful if you haven't got convictions--what I call bald-headed convictions. That's what success is, Nona, the success of politicians and big men whose names are always in the papers. It's that: seeing a thing from only one point of view and going all out for it from that point of view. Convictions. Not mucking about all round a thing and seeing it from about twenty different sides like I do. You know, you can't possibly pull out this big, booming sort of stuff they call success if you're going to see anybody's point of view but your own. You must have convictions. Yes, and narrower than that, not convictions but conviction. Only one conviction--that you're right and that every one who thinks differently from you is wrong to blazes.” He laughed. ”And I'm dashed if I ever _think_ I'm right, let alone conviction of it. I can always see the bits of right on the other side of the argument.

That's me. Dash me!”

She said, ”Go on, Marko. I like this.”

”Well, that's all there is to it, Nona. These conviction chaps, these booming politicians and honours-list chaps, these Bagshaw chaps--you know Bagshaw?--they go like a cannon ball. They go like h.e.l.l and smash through and stick when they get there. My sort's like the footb.a.l.l.s you see down at the school punt-about. Wherever there's a punt I feel it and respond to it. My sort's out to be kicked--” He laughed again. ”But I couldn't be any other sort.”

She said, ”I'm glad you couldn't be, Marko. You're just the same as you used to be. I'm glad you're the same.”

He did not reply.

VII

She sat briskly forward in the big armchair in which she faced him, making of the motion a movement as though throwing aside a turn the conversation had taken. ”Well, go on, Marko. Go on talking. I'm not going to let you stop talking yet. I love that about how people get success nowadays. It's jolly true. I never thought of it before. Yes, you're still a terribly thinky person, Marko. Go on. Think some more.

Out loud.”

Caressing--drawing him on--just as of old.

He said thoughtfully, ”I tell you a thing I often think a lot about, Nona. You being here like this puts it in my mind. Conventions.”

She smiled teasingly. ”Ah, poor Marko. I knew you'd simply hate it, my coming in like this. Does it seem terribly unconventional, improper, to you, shut up with me in your office?”

He shook his head. ”It seems very nice. That's all it seems. But it does bring into my mind that you're the sort of person that doesn't think tuppence about what's usually done or what's not usually done; and that reminded me of things I've thought about conventions. Look here, Nona, this really is rather interesting--”

”Yes,” she said. ”Yes.”

Just so he used to bring ideas to her; just so, with ”Yes--yes,” she used to receive them.

But he went on. ”Why, convention, you know, it's the most mysterious, extraordinary thing. It's a code society has built up to protect itself and to govern itself, and when you go into it it's the most marvellous code that ever was invented. All sorts of things that the law doesn't give, and couldn't give, our conventions shove in on us in the most amazing way. And all probably originated by a lot of Mother Grundy-ish old women, that's what's so extraordinary. You know, if all the greatest legal minds of all the ages had laid themselves out to make a social code they could never have got anywhere near the rules the people have built up for themselves. And that's what I like, Nona--that's what I think so interesting and the best thing in life: the things the people do for themselves without any State interference. That's what I'd encourage all I knew how if I were a politician--”

He broke off. ”I say, aren't I the limit, ga.s.sing away like this? I hardly ever get off nowadays and when I do!--Why don't you stop me?”

She made a little gesture deprecatory of his suggestion. ”Because I like to hear you. I like to watch your funny old face when you're on one of your ideas. It gets red underneath, Marko, and the red slowly comes up.

Funny old face! Go on. I want to hear this because I'm going to disagree with you, I think. I think conventions, most of them, are odious, hateful, Marko. I hate them.”

VIII

He had been strangely affected by the words of her interruptions: a contraction in the throat,--a twitching about the eyes.... But he was able, and glad that he was able to catch eagerly at her opinion.

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