“Chapel! We’re not living in the ’fifties! What’s that got to do with it?”
“No, of course—but it isn’t only that. Annabel—I must say I’m disappointed in Annabel. Oh—no real harm, but—frivolous, you know, and such a crowd of boys about her. A girl shouldn’t make herself conspicuous. Mrs. Gedge only hinted that pale blue taffeta was not suitable for a Mothers’ Meeting, and Annabel was quite rude, I believe.”
“And a jolly good thing too! What has it got to do with Mrs. Gedge? I do think women are the limit, you know—not you, Mother, of course! But imagine any man—imagine me dictating to Laura what she’s to wear or not to wear! And ‘chapel people’! Isn’t it petty?” He turned to his Echo, who always stayed to dinner on party days.
“I thought you didn’t like Annabel?” Echo failed him for once.
“Like? Never see the girl. Don’t want to. Can’t stand her. It’s the principle. Chapel!! It’s a free country. What right have you or I, or Mrs. Gedge for that matter, to dictate to Annabel Moulde? If people are to set up their personal prejudices as a standard for their neighbours——D’you see what I mean?”
Laura quite saw what he meant; but she had also seen the taffeta frock. She could not help sympathizing with Mrs. Gedge and saying so. Laura was always finding herself put into the position of defending some one to whom she was indifferent: it was depressing.... She wished she had Justin’s ready tolerance....
She was so sure of this tolerance of his that she was the more distressed by his attitude to his sister-in-law. If Justin didn’t like her there must be something radically wrong with Coral, though she herself had not detected it. She couldn’t help, guiltily, being fascinated by the vulgar little body. She liked her brisk self-confidence, her free humour, her fund of anecdote. She even liked the accent, elusive yet undeniable, lingering in her decisive public voice. It suited Coral. But it made Justin shudder behind his coffee-cup in what had once been the cloistral and dedicate silence of the breakfast-room. The most unfortunate part of the whole unfortunate business was that Coral liked Justin, liked him very much, and said so repeatedly to Laura, to Mrs. Cloud, and to Justin himself, particularly to Justin himself. He found it trying.
She called him ‘dear’ and took him for walks, and asked him to fasten her bracelets for her. She used strong scent. She got at his newspaper before he came down and told him all the news before he had time to read it for himself. He was politely conversational for the two first mornings, but by the third he was reduced to the acquiescive monosyllable which always meant, always had meant, as Mrs. Cloud or Laura could have told the woman, that he did not wish to be importuned. But Coral greeted the indication with a crow of laughter and told him that he did her good. He reminded her so of his brother. “Never saw such a likeness. It might be Johnnie himself—just like Johnnie after a night out. Grunts was all you could ever get out of Johnnie then—poor Johnnie!” And so, with the easy emotion of the profession, mopped her eyes with an imitation Brussels lace handkerchief in memory of Johnnie.
Justin looked round him with an almost passionate longing for Laura. But Laura, of course, was never at the Priory for breakfast.
Gentle Mrs. Cloud was unaccountably indifferent to Coral’s glaring misdemeanours. Mrs. Cloud, with her grandson on her knee, could forgive Coral her clothes and her manners, and—which was more—her matrimonial audacity itself: could listen with a kind of sorrowful content to the semi-cockney voice telling stories, the suitable stories—Coral was no fool—of poor Johnnie. Coral had been good to Johnnie and it had not been easy to be good to Johnnie: that appeared more clearly than Coral, so carefully no fool, could dream, or than Justin and Laura realized; though they, too, were alert, intent on shielding Mrs. Cloud from crudities. But Mrs. Cloud listened, and learned all that she was not meant to know, and was kind to Coral, and with that strange reticence of hers never said aloud: “But if he had written, if he had only written, to his own mother!” but instead, with her soft smile—