Part 3

Such as--in land of Taj Mahal and mugger, Where girls book weeks ahead their supper dances-- Screens some pale flirt, some lad who yearns to hug her, From the brown _khitmatghar’s_ averted glances. (Who knows thy secrets, darkling _Kala-juggah_-- The orbs downcast, the fingers’ coy advances, The swiftly stifled sob that hooks the stripling-- Save I, Victoria Cross, and Rudyard Kipling!)

And there, beneath the new-sponged potted palm-tree, That mid-day brought and morning shall remove-- Mayfair’s own wind-unruffled, ever-calm tree, Whose drooping branches shield Mayfairies’ love-- She lisps of Waller parts, and thy dead charm, Tree (Twin stars now shining in the “flies” above!); While he admits he has or hasn’t seen them ... Till a shy sudden silence falls between them, A cloud across the sun of lightling banter.

O Jill, my gold-spoon cake-and-Moët miss! Hast thou not dreamed, since thy first tam-o’-shanter, Of soldier boy, of dance-night such as this? Faintly they catch the polka’s throb, the canter Of homing hansom-cab where lovers kiss: And “Oh,” thinks he, “what eyes, what lips, what hair, too!” And “Oh,” thinks she “the ninny doesn’t dare to.”

Voiceless, they sit: but now her eyes, upturning, Seek his: and now, beneath the lashes’ veil, Leaps a quick flame to set youth’s pulses burning; And now she feels her resolution fail: And now gains strength anew the curious yearning For love’s adventure: now, her fingers frail Tighten about the kerchief’s lacy tissue: And now, at last, he says, “Jill, I _must_ kiss you.”

“Bobbie, you mustn’t.” “Jill--just one.” Her shoulder Stiffens; resists the half-encircling arm. Hands fend away the hand that seeks to hold her. Lips murmur. Lashes flutter in alarm. “No, Bobbie. No.” My foolish boy, be bolder; The moment’s fear is half the moment’s charm.... Alas! His missed and amateurish peck Grazes the ear-lobe; lands upon the neck.

Readers, both kissed and kissless, chide not; pity These withered fruits from Jill’s dead seas of dreaming. Think--or in France, or in this barraged city, How many a dear one owes his brass hat’s gleaming, How many a husband thanks his safe Committee, To some fond woman’s sound strategic scheming! Ponder--can crafts which men from want to plenty ship, Be steered without an arduous apprenticeship?

Ponder! Nor blame my Jill if she disguises Love’s disappointment in disapprobation. If, Artemis in judgment now, she rises-- The outraged goddess, armed for flagellation-- And, with a voice whose every note comprises Disgust, revolt, pain, virtue, indignation, Drives from her father’s chaste, offended portals The meekest of apologising mortals.

And blame not me, her bard--whose verses weave her This coronal of memory’s budding-hours, Who loved her long ago, yet now must leave her Lorn ’mid the dance’s _débris_, and the flowers Which fade as day-dreams of that first deceiver-- Because, while War yet ravens and devours, While still the blind guns thunder out in Flanders, I sing the type which cozens and philanders.

For, young as Spring and old as Cleopatra, Certain as Nature’s self, this type endureth: On Skindles’ lawn, in jungles of Sumatra, She blooms--a wax-white weed that no rake cureth: From Westminster to _wats_ of Pura Chatra, Her false lips smile, her gladsome optic lureth: WAAC’s may be WREN’s; wars, peace; to-day’s full Colonel, To-morrow’s clerk ... but Jill is sempiternal.

VI.

_Continues--symptomatically terse-- This first of serials in doggerel verse._

O Jill, my peerless, perfumed, powdered darling; Quintessence of all fairies I’ve adored In London’s lanes, by Devon Budleigh’s farling, At Berkeley’s, Kettner’s, Ritz’s, Carlton’s board; Jill whose white hands ne’er knew roughhouse-work’s gnarling; Whose clothes not twenty Coxes could afford! How shall man sing the seasoned cee-sprung carriage In which you rolled from that first kiss to marriage?

What days they were! What noon-times and what twilights! The whole wide earth seemed fashioned for your pleasure; Its very heavens, gold-and-crystal skylights Whereunder you picked orchid blooms at leisure. For others, shadowed gloom; for you, the high lights-- The pomp, the pride, the dance’s twanging measure ... And if one begged: “Take coin,” you’d say, “and toss it her. Poor thing! That skirt was never cut by Rossiter.”

Dear, _rotten_ days! And yet, a Jack grows wistful At thoughts of all the Jills whom he remembers, In times when he had boodle by the fist-full And fires of youth--where now are only embers.

Jack’s Jills! Why, Muse possesses quite a list full, May’s Jill, and June’s Jill, August’s, and September’s ... Yet dares no more than skim each light adventure Which followed on flirtationship’s indenture.

For there’s a tide in the affairs of flappers, Of those, at least, that West End mothers breed-- (Your Wapping matron’s more inclined to slap _hers_: A vulgar trick--yet one which serves some need!)-- A spring-time blood-tide, mounting to young nappers, Heady as wine, a mischief-making mead, Which--though a man find every known excuse for ’em-- To put it mildly, does the very deuce for ’em.

And shall my sweetest Muse, than whom none chaster E’er fluttered to console the middle-age-time Of any neurasthenic poetaster, Ope her full throat to sing Jill’s ’prentice rage-time?-- The unnerving doubts, the certainties which braced her, The follied moments and the ensuing sage time, The major and the minor bards who sung to her, The men who knelt, the “little friends” who clung to her;

The last strange morning-dreams, the tea-tray’s rattle, The letters--opened, skimmed, and tossed aside; The leisured getting-up, the breakfast-prattle, The summoning ’phone-bell and the mid-day ride; The lunch; the afternoons of tittle-tattle-- Town’s latest scandal, dance, divorce or bride; The “dear boys,” climbers, _partis_, portion-stalkers; The furtive teas at Charbonnel and Walker’s;

The Morny-scented bath before the dinner; The deft maid’s fingers in the unruly hair; The _risqué_ talk of some sweet social sinner, Half-heard across the table’s candle-glare; The Bridge, so much too high for a beginner; The Ball; the moment’s whisper on the stair: The thousand faces, phases, thoughts, books, travellings, Which whirl youth’s silk cocoon in its unravellings.

Ah no! not ours with huckstering pen to retail How slumb’rous beauties wake from girl-time’s dozing. Let Hubert Wales and D. H. Lawrence detail The purfled passion-blossom’s slow unclosing. No rainbow’s purple e’er shall tinge our she-tale, No censor’s yoke restrain its swift composing. Moreover--quite apart from Muse’s purity-- There’s nothing half so dull as immaturity.

So please imagine--(though I know it’s risky To trust in Britons for imagination, Save those rare few whom peace-time’s hoarded whisky Still fires to spiritual exaltation, Or such as stand, when questioning House grows frisky, Pat on their first inspired asseveration)-- Jill as she was in times of sugared plenty: The Bond Street goddess, _ætat_ three-and-twenty.

Goddess, indeed! These meagre days that skimp us, Poor mortals, bullied, badged, and bombed and rationed, Scarce knows that breed which once on high Olympus Flaunted in radiant raiment, Poiret-fashioned. Goddess indeed! A self-sure, jade-eyed, slim puss-- Of life’s each latest luxury impassioned; Sleek; mateless; restless; rampant; supple-sinewed; Sharp-clawed; capricious; and ... _to be continued_.

* * * * *

Transcriber’s Notes

The following apparent typographical errors were corrected.

Page 15, “enver” changed to “never.” (but for you there’s never a place)

Page 43, "cazone" changed to "canzone." (Still holds his own at sonnet or _canzone_)

Page 63, “mornnig” changed to “morning.” (That mid-day brought and morning shall remove)

End of Project Gutenberg's The Judgement of Valhalla, by Gilbert Frankau