Now I shall sing you something else, said 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 wall 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.
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 singers voice, the old gentleman looked up and saw how the young people lay in one anothers arms. Then he rose and said:
You have found your Island you have found it in one anothers hearts.
Then he tiptoed from the room, wiping his eyes.
6
ICHABOD
in a city where all the houses were built of steel.
BOOK 3
THROUGH DARKEST ZEITGEISTHEIM
And every shrewd turn was exalted among Men and simple goodness, wherein nobility doth ever most participate, was mocked away and clean vanished.
THUCYDIDES
Now live the lesser, as lords of the world, The busy troublers. Banished is our glory, The earths excellence grows old and sere.
ANON
The more ignorant men are, the more convinced are they that their little parish and their little chapel is an apex to which civilisation and philosophy has painfully struggled up.
SHAW
1
ESCHROPOLIS
The poetry of the Silly Twenties The Courage and mutual loyalty of Artists
Then I dreamed that he led John into a big room rather like a bathroom: it was full of steel and glass and the walls were nearly all window, and there was a crowd of people there, drinking what looked like medicine and talking at the tops of their voices. They were all either young, or dressed up to look as if they were young. The girls had short hair and flat breasts and flat buttocks so that they looked like boys: but the boys had pale, egg-shaped faces and slender waists and big hips so that they looked like girls except for a few of them who had long hair and beards.
What are they so angry about? whispered John.
They are not angry, said Gus; they are talking about Art.
Then he brought John into the middle of the room and said:
Say! Heres a guy who has been taken in by my father and wants some real hundred per cent music to clean him out. We had better begin with something neo-romantic to make the transition.
Then all the Clevers consulted together and presently they all agreed that Victoriana had better sing first. When Victoriana rose John at first thought that she was a school-girl: but after he had looked at her again he perceived that she was in fact about fifty. Before she began to sing she put on a dress which was a sort of exaggerated copy of Mr Halfways robes, and a mask which was like the Stewards mask except that the nose had been painted bright red and one of the eyes had been closed in a permanent wink.
Priceless! exclaimed one half of the Clevers, too Puritanian.
But the other half, which included all the bearded men, held their noses in the air and looked very stiff. Then Victoriana took a little toy harp and began. The noises of the toy harp were so strange that John could not think of them as music at all. Then, when she sang, he had a picture in his mind which was a little like the Island, but he saw at once that it was not the Island. And presently he saw people who looked rather like his father, and the Steward and old Mr Halfways, dressed up as clowns and doing a stiff sort of dance. Then there was a columbine, and some sort of love-story. But suddenly the whole Island turned into an aspidistra in a pot and the song was over.