And he led Lady Tasker into the house.
This was a low building of stucco, with slatted window-shuts which, like the sashes of the slightly bowed French window and of the two windows beyond, were newly painted green. This painting seemed rather to emphasize than to mitigate a certain dogseared look the place had, not amounting to dilapidation, but enough to make it probable that Cosimo Pratt had taken it on a repairing lease. The copper beech, the high privet hedge and the willows beyond it, shut out both light and air. The fan-lighted door had two electric bell buttons, with little brass plates. The upper plate read, “Mr. Cosimo Pratt”; the lower one “Miss Amory Towers (Studio).”
But Lady Tasker noticed none of these things. In the hall she sank into the first chair she came to. “Tea, please,” she said faintly; and Cosimo dashed out to get it. He returned, and began to murmur something sympathetic, but Lady Tasker made a little movement with her hand. She didn’t want him to “send Amory.” She only wanted to rest her tired legs and to collect her dispersed thoughts.
An eight-foot hedge, not to shut the populace out, but to shut Indians in! And she, Lady Tasker, had been kept standing while some parcel or other had been taken into the house—standing, and watching a still-moving hammock with a smiling Invisible Man bending over it! Was this England, or a Durbar?... And even yet her hostess didn’t come to ask her if she felt better!... Not that Lady Tasker was greatly surprised at that. She knew that Mrs. Pratt was quite capable of reasoning that the greatest respect is shown to a tired old lady when no fuss is made about her tiredness. The Pratts were like that—full of delicacies so subtle that plain folk never noticed them, but jumped instead to the conclusion that they were bad-mannered. And it would not in the least surprise Lady Tasker if, presently, Mrs. Pratt allowed her to leave without a word about her indisposition. Of course: Lady Tasker had a little forgotten the Pratts at Ludlow. That would be it: “Good-bye—and do come again!” She could see Mrs. Pratt’s pretty brook-brown eyes did anybody (say a Japanese or an Ethiopian) point out this so-called omission to her. She could see the surprise in them. She could hear her earnest voice: “Say these things!... Why, does she suppose I was glad then?”...
Yes, Lady Tasker had a little forgotten her Pratts.
It was an odd little hall in which she sat. It appeared to be an approach to the studio of which the electric bell gave notice, for it was continued by a narrower passage that led to a garden at the back; and either the studio “properties” were gradually thrusting the hatstand and hall table out of the fan-lighted front door, or else these latter ordinary and necessary objects were fighting as it were for admission. Thus, the chair on which Lady Tasker sat was of oak, but it had a Faust-like look; beyond it stood a glass-fronted cupboard of bric-à-brac, with a trophy of Abyssinian armour hanging over it; and the whole of the wall facing Lady Tasker was hung with a tapestry which, if it had been the only one of its kind in existence, would no doubt have been very valuable. And two other objects not commonly to be seen in ordinary halls were there. One of these stood on the narrow gilt console table next to Lady Tasker’s cup of tea. It was a plaster cast, taken from the life, of a female foot. The other hung on the wall above it. This also was a plaster cast, of the whole of a female arm and shoulder, ending with a portion of the side of the neck and the entire breast—of its kind an exquisite specimen. Many artists make or buy such things, but Brucciani has nothing half so beautiful.
It was as Lady Tasker finished her tea that her gaze fell on the two casts. Half negligently she raised her glass and inspected, first the foot, and then the other piece. It is probable that her first remark, uttered in a casual undertone to the air about her, was prompted by mere association of ideas; it was “Hm! I wonder if Mrs. Pratt nursed those twins herself!” Any other reflection that might have followed it was cut short by a sudden darkening of the doorway by which she had entered. Mrs. Pratt stood there. Lady Tasker had been wrong. She had come to ask if she felt better. She did ask her, gathering up long swathes of some newly unpacked white material she carried over her arm as she did so.
“Sorry you were done up,” she remarked. “Won’t you have some more tea?”
Already Lady Tasker was rising.—“No more, thank you.—I was just looking at these. What are they?” She indicated the casts.