“Ay—’appen—if somebody started it.”
And so it was that James was inoculated with the idea of starting a cinema on the virgin soil of Lumley. To the women he said not a word. But on the very first morning that Mr. May broached the subject, he became a new man. He fluttered like a boy, he fluttered as if he had just grown wings.
“Let us go down,” said Mr. May, “and look at a site. You pledge yourself to nothing—you don’t compromise yourself. You merely have a site in your mind.”
And so it came to pass that, next morning, this oddly assorted couple went down to Lumley together. James was very shabby, in his black coat and dark grey trousers, and his cheap grey cap. He bent forward as he walked, and still nipped along hurriedly, as if pursued by fate. His face was thin and still handsome. Odd that his cheap cap, by incongruity, made him look more a gentleman. But it did. As he walked he glanced alertly hither and thither, and saluted everybody.
By his side, somewhat tight and tubby, with his chest out and his head back, went the prim figure of Mr. May, reminding one of a consequential bird of the smaller species. His plumbago-grey suit fitted exactly—save that it was perhaps a little tight. The jacket and waistcoat were bound with silk braid of exactly the same shade as the cloth. His soft collar, immaculately fresh, had a dark stripe like his shirt. His boots were black, with grey suède uppers: but a little down at heel. His dark-grey hat was jaunty. Altogether he looked very spruce, though a little behind the fashions: very pink faced, though his blue eyes were bilious beneath: very much on the spot, although the spot was the wrong one.
They discoursed amiably as they went, James bending forward, Mr. May bending back. Mr. May took the refined man-of-the-world tone.
“Of course,” he said—he used the two words very often, and pronounced the second, rather mincingly, to rhyme with sauce: “Of course,” said Mr. May, “it’s a disgusting place—disgusting! I never was in a worse, in all the cauce of my travels. But then—that isn’t the point—”
He spread his plump hands from his immaculate shirt-cuffs.
“No, it isn’t. Decidedly it isn’t. That’s beside the point altogether. What we want—” began James.
“Is an audience—of cauce—! And we have it—! Virgin soil—!