Page:O Genteel Lady! (1926).pdf/242

 liminary grunts he launched upon a story of seasick people. His Lincolnshire dialect grew so broad that the New England girl could not follow, but, judging by Mrs. Tennyson's frightened glances and futile attempts to stop him, Lanice decided that she was understanding quite enough for a delicate female. At the end came the Laureate's loud guffaw of approval, and a certain insecure sense of comfort descended.

By eight they were seated again in the drawing-room under the scornful Dante mask. The Poet, with some preliminary comments and a few words of sincere praise for 'my Queen,' at last began to read. Black and tousled and rough he looked, brooding over his clay pipe, sucking heartily at his port. As he read, his vowels lengthened prodigiously, and Lanice noticed his hollow o ' s and a ' s and the breadth and drawl of his mighty voice.

'Bury the greaaaat Duke with an Empire's lamentaaaaation,' he read, 'To the nooise of the moooorning as a mighty naaaation.'

'Now,' he said at last, 'I will read you "Maude." You will never forget it.'

The red drawing-room, the delicate lady upon the couch, the scowling grandeur of the Presence, and through it the powerful majestic voice of the Poet and the surging beauty of his lines. 'You will never forget it.'