But she pronounced it “Bait-hoaffen.”
There was just the merest possible suggestion of rebuke, of self-assurance, of superiority in that....
§ 2
And now all these things were stale by three months.
By this time she had got used to having tea on Sundays at the Trants’ house. She was so much at home there that she could say: “Oh, do you mind if I shift this Taj Mahal thing while I play? It rattles so.” After a little while they learned her fancies, and had it always removed when she came.
And she was used to George. Everything of him she now knew. His hopes, his dreams, his peculiarities, his vices and virtues, the colours of all his neckties—all had been exhaustively explored during the course of many a hundred hours together. He kissed her now every time they met—he expended much ingenuity in arranging times and places suitable for the ritual. Sometimes, after he had seen her home from the theatre, his kisses were hurried, stereotyped, perfunctory, as purely a matter of routine as putting two pennies into the machine and drawing out a tube ticket. On other occasions, as for instance when they strolled through country lanes at dusk, she could sense the imminence of his kisses long before they came. When they turned down Cubitt Lane towards the Forest at twilight it was tacitly comprehended between them: “We are going in here to be sentimental....” When they returned the mutual understanding was: “We have been sentimental. That ought to last us for some time....”
People deliberately left them alone together. They looked at the two of them as if they were or ought to be bliss personified. They seemed to assume that an engaged couple desires every available moment for love-making. At meal times, for example, it was always contrived that George should be next to Catherine. Once when Mr. and Mrs. Trant had made the excuse that they would stroll round the garden, Catherine, noticing that Helen was about to follow unobtrusively, said sharply:
“Please don’t go, Helen. I want you to try over a few songs.”
Catherine wondered if Helen understood.
The fact was, being engaged was deadly monotonous. It had no excitement, no novelty. Everything was known, expected, unravelled. When she met George at a concert she did not think: “I wonder if he has come here on my account.” She knew beyond all question that he had. When at some social function she saw him chatting amongst his male friends she did not think: “Will he come up and speak to me or not?” She knew that his very presence there was probably on her account, and that he would leave his male friends at the first available opportunity. And when they had ices at a tiny table in some retiring alcove it was not possible to think: “How funny we should both have met like this! How curious that we should be alone here!” For she knew that the whole thing had been premeditated, that the alcove itself had probably been left attractively vacant for their especial benefit. There was no point, no thrill, no expectancy in asking the question: “Is it really me he comes to all these places for?”