“Yet it is almost certainly one’s own fault if one is bored,” said Catherine. “To be bored only shows that a bore is present—probably oneself. Yet, Maud ... if I tell him about the bazaars, and sales, and speeches, and so on, he is bored; and they do make up a big part of my life.”
“On the surface,” said she, “since we are being frank.”
“No, not on the surface, since we are contradicting each other. The deepest and most real part of me that I know is sorry for poor devils, and it expresses itself in these ways. And it is exactly that which gets on his nerves. If I get up from lunch because I have got to go somewhere, he is irritated. He thinks I am restless. Well, so I am. I want to be doing things, not eating stupid cutlets. What do you want me to do? What does he want me to do? Eat opium instead?”
Maud gave a long sigh.
“Oh, Cathy, that was a pity!” she said.
Catherine gave a little hopeless gesture.
“Oh yes; it was a pity. Lots of things are. Our attitude towards each other is a pity. But I’m sorry I said that. Oh, do help me! Let’s be practical. Remember, I am at home when I am doing things. And I want to know what to do about a hundred things.”
Catherine got up again. She was, as she said, always practical, and she was always restless. This afternoon in particular, after the inconclusive wakefulness of the night before, she longed to map out plans, rules of conduct, a line to take about all these complications. Yet, since all her life she had been chary of emotion, apt to regard it as useless, if not dangerous, stuff to have on board; now, when it was certainly there, either through her will or in opposition to it, she found herself—she, the ready speaker—destitute of words to deal with it to Maud. And in her silent search for expression again she paced up and down the busy bee-travelled flower-beds. Then there came a crisper note—the sound of crunched gravel—and a dog-cart drew up at the front-door, some fifty yards only from where they sat. There was only one person in it, a young man, who dismounted and rang the bell, and stood at the pony’s head waiting for it to be answered. But apparently the servants were drowsy too, as befitted Sunday afternoon, and after a pause he rang again.
No definite process of reasoning went on through Catherine’s mind, but somehow her heart sank. This was no caller, no one who would need entertainment; but there was something dimly familiar in that cart, and in the tradesman-like young man, that reminded her of medicines, of the time when the children had the measles. Yes; it was a man from the chemist’s ... and next moment she knew why her heart sank.
“I will see who it is,” she said to Maud. “The servants seem to be asleep;” and she went across the grass to the front-door.