“I’m glad of that,” I said. He lit his cigar, and relaxed beneath the folds of the loose coat.
“Well, sir, having secured my leet-motifs and Sex-balances, the whole of the footage coverin’ the downfall of the Red Man was as good as given me by a bust Congregational Church that had been boosting Prohibition near Texarkhana. That was why I’d gone there. One of their ladies, who was crazy about Our National dealin’s with the Indian, had had the details documented in Washington; an’ the resultant film must have cost her any God’s dollars you can name. It was all there—the Red Man partin’ with his lands and furs an’ women to the early settlers for Rum; the liquor-fights round the tradin’-posts; the Government Agents swindlin’ ’em with liquor; an’ the Indians goin’ mad from it; the Black Hawk War; the winnin’ of the West—by Rum mainly—the whole jugful of Shame. But that film failed, sir, because folk in Arkansaw said it was an aspersion on the National Honour, and, anyway, buying land needful for Our inevitable development was more Christian than the bloody wars of Monarchical Europe. The Congregationalists wanted a new organ too; so I traded a big Estey organ for their film. My notion was to interweave it with parallel modern instances, from Monte Carlo and the European hotels, of White American Degradation; the Main Caption bein’: ‘The Firewater of the Paleface Works as Indifferently as Fate.’ An’ old Rum-in-the-Cup’s close-up shows broodin’—broodin’—broodin’—through it all! You sense my Concept?”
He relighted his cigar.
“I saw it like a vision. But, from there on, I had to rely on my own Complex for intuition. I cut out all modern side-issues—the fight against Prohibition; bootlegging; home-made Rum manufacture; wood-alcohol tragedies, an’ all that dope. ’Dunno as I didn’t elim’nate to excess. The Revolt of the Red Blood Corpuscules should ha’ been stressed.”
“What’s their share in it?”
“Vital! They clean up waste and deleterious matter in the humane system. Under the microscope they rage like lions. Deprive ’em of their job by sterilisin’ an’ virg’nising the system, an’ the Red Blood Corpuscules turn on the humane system an’ destroy it bodily. Mentally, too, mebbe. Ain’t that a hell of a thought?”
“Where did you get it from?”
“It came to me—with the others,” he replied as simply as Ezekiel might have told a fellow-captive beside Chebar. “But it’s too high for a Democracy. So I cut it right out. For Film purposes I assumed that, at an unspecified date, the United States had become virg’nised to liquor. The Taint was out of the Blood, and, apparently, the Instinct had aborted. ‘The Triumph of Presumption’ is the Caption. But from there on, I fell down because, for the film Appeal, you cannot present such an Epoch without featurin’ confirmatory exhibits which, o’ course, haven’t as yet materialised. That meant that the whole Cultural Aspect o’ that Civ’lisation of the Future would have to be built up at Hollywood; an’ half a million dollars wouldn’t cover it. ‘The Vision of Virg’nised Civ’lisation.’ A hell of a proposition! But it don’t matter now.”
He dropped his head and was still for a little.
“Never mind,” I said. “How does the idea work out—in your mind?”