Mr. Halfways.
‘Oh, no,’ cried John, who was sobbing. ‘Sing the same again. Please sing it again.’
‘You had better not hear it twice in the same evening. I have plenty of other songs.’
‘I would die to hear the first one again,’ said John.
‘Well, well,’ said Mr. Halfways, ‘perhaps you know best. Indeed, what does it matter? It is as short to the Island one way as another.’ Then he smiled indulgently and shook his head, and John could not help thinking that his talking voice and talking manner were almost silly after the singing. But as soon as the great deep wail of the music began again it swept everything else from his mind. It seemed to him that this time he got more pleasure from the first few notes, and even noticed delicious passages which had escaped him at the first hearing; and he said to himself, ‘This is going to be even better than the other. I shall keep my head this time and sip all the pleasure at my ease.’ I saw that he settled himself more comfortably to listen and Media slipped her hand into his. It pleased him to think that they were going to the Island together. Now came the vision of the Island again: but this time it was changed, for John scarcely noticed the Island because of a lady with a crown on her head who stood waiting for him on the shore. She was fair, divinely fair. ‘At last,’ said John, ‘a girl with no trace of brown.’ And he began again to wade ashore holding out his arms to embrace that queen: and his love for her appeared to him so great and so pure, and they had been parted for so long, that his pity for himself and her almost overwhelmed him. And as he was about to embrace her the song stopped.
The rapture does not last but dwindles into technical appreciation and sentiment
‘Sing it again, sing it again,’ cried John, ‘I liked it better the second time.’
‘Well, if you insist,’ said Mr. Halfways with a shrug. ‘It is nice to have a really appreciative audience.’ So he sang it the third time. This time John noticed yet more about the music. He began to see how several of the effects were produced and that some parts were better than others. He wondered if it were not a trifle too long. The vision of the Island was a little shadowy this time, and he did not take much notice of it. He put his arm round Media and they lay cheek to cheek. He began to wonder if Mr. Halfways would never end: and when at last the final passage closed, with a sobbing break in the singer’s voice, the old gentleman looked up and saw how the young people lay in one another’s arms. Then he rose and said:
‘You have found your Island—you have found it in one another’s hearts.’
Then he tiptoed from the room, wiping his eyes.
Chapter Six
Ichabod
And would finally turn into Lust, but that in the nick of time
‘Media, I love you,’ said John.
‘We have come to the real Island,’ said Media.
‘But oh, alas!’ said he, ‘so long our bodies why do we forbear?’
‘Else a great prince in prison lies,’ sighed she.
‘No one else can understand the mystery of our love,’ said he.
At that moment a brisk, hobnailed step was heard and a tall young man strode into the room carrying a light in his hand. He had coal-black hair and a straight mouth like the slit in a pillar-box, and he was dressed in various kinds of metal wire. As soon as he saw them he burst into a great guffaw. The lovers instantly sprang up and apart.
‘Well, Brownie,’ said he, ‘at your tricks again?’
‘Don’t call me that name,’ said Media, stamping her foot. ‘I have told you before not to call me that.’
The young man made an obscene gesture at her, and then turned to John, ‘I see that old fool of a father of mine has been at you?’
‘You have no right to speak that way of father,’ said Media. Then, turning to John, her cheeks flaming, her breast heaving, she said, ‘All is over. Our dream—is shattered. Our mystery—is profaned. I would have taught you all the secrets of love, and now you are lost to me for ever. We must part. I shall go and kill myself,’ and with that she rushed from the room.
Chapter Seven
Non est Hic
‘Don’t bother about her,’ said the young man. ‘She has threatened that a hundred times. She is only a brown girl, though she doesn’t know it.’
The ‘modern’ literary movement offers to ‘debunk’ it
‘A brown girl!’ cried John. ‘And your father . . .’
‘My father has been in the pay of the Brownies all his life. He doesn’t know it, the old chuckle-head. Calls them the Muses, or the Spirit, or some rot. In actual fact, he is by profession a pimp.’
‘And the Island?’ said John.
‘We’ll talk about it in the morning. Ain’t the kind of Island you’re thinking of. Tell you what. I don’t live with my father and my precious sister. I live in Eschropolis and I am going back to-morrow. I’ll take you down to the laboratory and show you some real poetry. Not fantasies. The real thing.’
‘Thank you very much,’ said John.
Then young Mr. Halfways found his room for him and the whole of that household went to bed.
Chapter Eight
Great Promises
Gus Halfways was the name of Mr. Halfways’ son. As soon as he rose in the morning he called John down to breakfast with him so that they might start on their journey. There was no one to hinder them, for old Halfways was still asleep and Media always had breakfast in bed. When they had eaten, Gus brought him into a shed beside his father’s house and showed him a machine on wheels.
‘What is this?’ said John.
‘My old bus,’ said young Halfways. Then he stood back with his head on one side and gazed at it for a bit: but presently he began to speak in a changed and reverent voice.
‘She is a poem. She is the daughter of the spirit of the age. What was the speed of Atalanta to her speed? The beauty of Apollo to her beauty?’
Now beauty to John meant nothing save glimpses of his Island, and the machine did not remind him of his Island at all: so he held his tongue.
The poetry of the Machine Age is so very
