Claudia drew in her breath jerkily. “But it’s Pat, I tell you—Pat.”
“I am glad to hear it. I certainly thought he was in love with you. But as he can marry Pat and he cannot marry you now, I am glad to hear it.... Claudia, will you go into the room where the periodicals are kept and see if you can find a copy of the Fortnightly—some time last year—which has an article entitled ‘Labour Unrest.’ I daresay you’ve heard my father is having some trouble in Langton. The workers in the paper-mills have been threatening to strike for some time, and we want to nip it in the bud. I think the article was late last year, about October or November.”
Claudia moved across the lawn, her brain furiously and chaotically working. She thought it was the heat of the sun that made her feel confused and giddy, yet a moment before she had not felt it.
CHAPTER XXIII
AROUND THE CORNER
It was Saturday morning, and a very warm day, when Claudia started out from the house to meet her sister. The station was nearly a mile away through the fields. She had refused the offer of the dog-cart, although after she had been walking a few minutes she rather regretted her decision. The sun at half-past twelve was grilling, and there was hardly any breeze to stir the long grass, rich with big ox-eyed daisies, waving red sorrel, yellow trefoil, and all sorts of field flowers. She kept her sunshade well over her head, but it is really very tiring to walk in the heat on an August day.
She wondered why she felt so listless and depressed. Why did she feel that life was simply a barren desert? Probably it was the result of having to listen to the pompous old vicar the previous night, who had engaged in a deep but narrow discussion with Sir John on the degeneration, ingratitude and irreligion of the working-classes. The talk had been brought about by the dissatisfaction in the mills at Langton, some ten miles off, from which Sir John derived a large part of his very handsome income, and as Claudia had listened, she had wondered with a mild amusement what Colin would think of the views expressed around the Currey tablecloth.
She ought not to be depressed when Pat—jolly, good natured Pat—was coming down to see her, and she tried to be severe with herself as she swept through the grasses. She must not be gloomy when Pat was coming down to announce her engagement. True, her own experience of married life had not been ideal, but Colin was different, and anyway, one had no right to dash the hopes of the newly-engaged. Some married couples are happy. She must be glad. She was glad. If it were not that inflated windbag, the vicar, it must be the remembrance of her own happy anticipations when she had first become engaged to Gilbert that made her feel blue. The sun to-day did not seem brilliant and wonderful, but only tiresomely hot. The long, luscious grass was not an exquisitely soft carpet, but only rather long for walking. The station was not one mile away, but many miles.
At last, however, the little sleepy station was reached, and she sank with a sigh of relief on one of its wooden seats.