V.
Brings life to week-old statues; makes them prance
To love’s light tune—and ends the Seymours’ dance.
Pale shapes I locked in memory’s studio,
Your draperies stir. From vein to marble vein
The life-blood leaps. Eyes gleam, and pulses glow.
Once more my octaves rap their old refrain
To re-create the weekly puppet-show.
Fond boy, to work! My Jill’s herself again,
And answers your entreaty—sideways glancing—
“Perhaps I will. It’s jolly hot for dancing.”
So they twain pass—smart sub. and flapper stately—
From the high halls of Gunter’s prank’t refection.
And out across the waxèd boards, where lately
Twirled the swift waltz to La Poupée’s “Selection.”
And on, past couples gossiping sedately;
And on, past couples screened against detection;
To a dim-shaded, fairy-lighted alcove,
Fit haunt for single maid and single tall cove:—
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.