“Well, I sold it; and the price of course belongs to you.”
“What? Who’d print a thing like that?”
“It isn’t printed. It’s been made into a film--super-film, they call
it.”
His hand came to a pause on the cat’s back, and he glared at me. I
hastened on:
“I ought to have told you what I was doing, but you’re so prickly, and
you’ve got such confounded superior notions. I thought if I did you’d
be biting off your nose to spite your own face. The fact is it made a
marvellous scenario. Here’s the contract, and here’s a cheque on my
bank for the price--three thousand pounds. If you like to treat me as
your agent, you owe me three hundred pounds. I don’t expect it, but I’m
not proud like you, and I shan’t sneeze.”
“Good God!” he said.
“Yes, I know. But it’s all nonsense, Bruce. You can carry scruples to
altogether too great length. Tainted source! Everything’s tainted, if
you come to that. The film’s a quite justified expression of modern
civilisation--a natural outcome of the age. It gives amusement; it
affords pleasure. It may be vulgar, it may be cheap, but we _are_
vulgar, and we _are_ cheap, and it’s no use pretending we’re not--not
you, of course, Bruce, but people at large. A vulgar age wants vulgar
amusement, and if we can give it that amusement we ought to; life’s not
too cheery, anyway.”
The glare in his eyes was almost paralysing me, but I managed to
stammer on:
“You live out of the world--you don’t realise what humdrum people want;
something to balance the greyness, the--the banality of their lives.
They want blood, thrill, sensation of all sorts. You didn’t mean to
give it them, but you have, you’ve done them a benefit, whether you
wish to or not, and the money’s yours and you’ve got to take it.”
The cat suddenly jumped down. I waited for the storm to burst.
“I know,” I dashed on, “that you hate and despise the film----”
Suddenly his voice boomed out:
“Bosh! What are you talking about? Film! I go there every other night.”
It was my turn to say “Good God!” And ramming contract and cheque into
his empty hand, I bolted, closely followed by the cat.
1923.