| Tasker, Sir Richard, 3rd Bart.; “The Brear,” Ludlow | Lennard, “Old John,” “Spurrs,” Montgomery | |||||||||||||||||
| (“Good old family? I don’t know about the ‘good,’ but they’re certainly old.”) | (“Can’t say I like the striking family resemblances you meet up and down the valley; when you ask at a cottage-door for a glass of milk and see that nose——”) | |||||||||||||||||
| Lucy | Arthur | Noel, | = | Grace | Susan | Dick; | Emily; | Trixie; | Eliza; | |||||||||
| (“The Brear was always open to her, but of course if she preferred to stay away——”) | (“Don’t ask me how he got into the India Office!”) | 4th Bart.; d. 1900 | (Lady Tasker) | m. Ada Polperro: Woods and Forests, 1873; d. 1886 | m. Tony Woodgate, P.F.F. | m. Sid Dealtry (“The groom, my dear, and far too good for her.”) | unmarried (“Black pugs.”) | |||||||||||
| No Issue | ||||||||||||||||||
| Hard-up young captains and subalterns | (“Those children of Trixie’s: colonies, assisted passages: I rather like the chauffeur one: hope he marries well”) | |||||||||||||||||
| Stanhope | Dorothy | |||||||||||||||||
| 1. Noel | Crowds of Anglo-Indian babies, Lady Tasker’s charges | (“Can’t keep count. I remember all the birthdays, I can, but——”) | ||||||||||||||||
| (“They called him that to please me: innocents!”) | ||||||||||||||||||
| 2. Jack | ||||||||||||||||||
| 3. (See page [448]) | ||||||||||||||||||
You see how it was, and had to be. Not only was Lady Tasker insular, arrogant, and of opinion that Saint Paul made the mistake of his life when he set out to preach the Gospel to all nations, but she made a virtue of her narrowness and defect. Show her a finger-nail with a purple half-moon, and you no longer saw a charming if acid-tongued old English lady, who cut timber in order to pay for governesses for those grand-children of Emily’s and sent, under guise of birthday gifts, useful little cheques to the descendants of her brother-in-law the groom. Babu or Brahmin, all were the same to her. No defence is offered of an attitude so indefensible. Such people do still exist. Let us sigh for their narrowness of mind, and pass on.
The smile of the first Hindoo was for Mrs. Pratt, who had got her row with the carman over and had reappeared behind Lady Tasker and closed the door of The Witan again. Her face, pretty and finished as a miniature, and the great chestnut-red helm of her hair, showed over the slant of the box in her arms. “Do excuse me, just one moment!” she said, smiling at Lady Tasker as she passed; and she ran off into the house, her mistletoe-berry white robe with its stencilling of grey-green whipping about her heels as she did so. And fortunately, as she ran in at the door, Cosimo Pratt came out of the French window, saw Lady Tasker, and strode to her. He broke into rapid and hearty speech.
“You here! How delightful!—Amory!—I didn’t hear you come! So kind of you!—Amory, where are you?—How are you? Do let me get you some tea!—Amory!——”
Lady Tasker spoke faintly.—“I should like,” she said, “to go into the house.”
“Rather! Hang on to my arm.—Amory! Where is that girl?—Sure you won’t have tea outside? I can find you a nice shady place under the beech——”
Lady Tasker closed her eyes.—“Please take me in.”
“Tube headache? I hate the beastly thing. I thought you were in Ludlow. Charming of you——”