Page:O Genteel Lady! (1926).pdf/240

 Lanice, recalling with shame the tree-climbing opera-glass intrusions of her countrymen, was thrown into confusion. She gazed tongue-tied upon this swarthy, shambling man upon whose brow lay a Stygian darkness extraordinary for an Englishman.

'You have come a long way to see me,' he grumbled. 'Do you find what you expect?'

It was almost impossible to see in her host the author of 'Lady Clare' or 'The Talking Oak,' or even of airy 'Lillian.' The memory, the cadence of Ulysses, yes, this man looked like the author of 'Ulysses'; but not like any of his other poems that she could recall. She murmured some inappropriate thing about supposing him to be very fair, 'like a poet.'

'Oh, no,' he said in his cloudy way, 'we Tennysons are all foreign to look at, black-browed, black-blooded, too. ('Alfred!') Some even think we have gipsy blood, it may be Semitic.' ('Alfred!') The Poet shook his impressive head, half sternly, half playfully, at his wife who, after her two attempts to stop the turgid flow of language, relaxed again, invalid-wise, upon her sofa. A pause ensued which ached throughout the red room; even the Dante mask in plaster seemed to feel the horror of that hiatus and to be endeavoring to think of something to say. Lanice was dampened by an inelegant sweat and rendered inarticulate. The Laureate inquired for his dinner and his wife meekly slid from the room to urge on the servants.

'I have never heard of Mr. Fox,' he said abruptly.