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She had convinced him of the peril. But what could he say? He could not say, "Do not despair. You are indispensable; therefore you will not be dispensed with. These crises have often arisen before, and they always end in the same manner. And are there not the big hotels, the chic cinemas, certain restaurants? Not to mention the clientèle which you must have made for yourself?"
Good food, clean cooking, civilised dining-rooms, excellent sanitation the base provides them all. It provides, too, whatever else Tommy Atkins wants, and close at hand; wet and dry canteens, libraries, recreation huts, tea and coffee huts, palatial cinemas, concerts. And what are the results?
As he went down the hall again to the front door he gave an imitation of a man walking with extended arms across a plank spanning a chasm. "Picture mad," commented Crewe, as he watched him. "I didn't quite understand you, sir," replied the butler. "Spends all his spare time in cinemas," said Crewe, "and when he is not there he is acting picture dramas.
You may put your money into roller-skating rinks and find that cinemas have become the rage with the fickle public; sometimes "the market" may decline for causes which remain obscure but with consequences which are disagreeably plain. But while risk is always present in some degree, the degree varies enormously from one industry to another.
He was set apart from the idle crowd. He would tell the crowd nothing. In a minute he was going westwards on the left side of Coventry Street again. The other side was as populous with saunterers as ever. The violet glow-worms still burned in front of the theatres and cinemas. Motor-buses swept by; taxis swept by; parcels vans swept by, hooting. A newsman was selling papers at the corner.
And there had crept in on a small scale an exploitation of beauty by those who profited by the receipts at the prize-fights, the cinemas, and the bars. The French or part castes who owned these attractions were copying the cruder methods of the Chinese. Llewellyn, David, and McHenry were habitués of these resorts, and I not an infrequent visitor.
I'll go back a bit to an earlier chapter in my career, the way novels and cinemas do, after they've given the public a good, bright opening. It was true, what I said about my voice. I've lost everything but my middle register. I had a fortune in my throat. At present I've got nothing but a warble fit for a small drawing room and that, only by careful management.
The cinema boasts of being a substitute for the tavern, but I think it a very bad substitute. I think so quite apart from the question about fermented liquor. Nobody enjoys cinemas more than I, but to enjoy them a man has only to look and not even to listen, and in a tavern he has to talk. Occasionally, I admit, he has to fight; but he need never move at the movies.
These merry men attended to business affairs for a few hours of mornings, unless the night before had been devoted too arduously to Bacchus, and the remainder of the day they surrendered to clinking glasses, converse, Rabelasian tales, and flirting with the gay Tahitian women in the cinemas or at dances.
They didn't come to see me again together. Vera came twice, kind and good as always, but with no more confidences; and Nina once with flowers and fruit and a wild chattering tongue about the cinemas and Smyrnov, who was delighting the world at the Narodny Dom, and the wonderful performance of Lermontov's "Masquerade" that was shortly to take place at the Alexander Theatre.
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