“He had come down here soon after breakfast, driven from the house by the strangeness of all but the outer walls, and discontented with the grounds because everything but this wet, intractable spot bore the marks of Kitty’s genius” 

After Chris’s stay in the hospital, he returns to Baldry Court to find much has changed in the last fifteen years. This moment finds Chris by a pond on the edge of the property. Chris is obviously unhappy with the work that was done to Baldry Court over the last fifteen years and finds those changes “strange.” The quote shows that he fled the house and retreated to the pond on the edge of the property because it was the one spot on the grounds that hadn’t been designed and landscaped by Kitty and instead it presumably still resembled what the property had looked like fifteen years prior. Chris finds comfort in reminders of his old life. This can be interpreted as him being “discontented” with his current life. He actively rejects the comfort of the rest of the grounds and settles for the wildest parts because he would rather be there than around anything reminiscent of his proper, upper-class life. The well-kept grounds of Baldry Court, all shaped by “Kitty’s genius,” remind him of his societal obligations as a man, which include taking care of the family business and financially providing for his wife. He is deeply unhappy and his unhappiness literally “drives him” out of the house. The wildness of the pond reminds Chris of his old life with Margaret and how times were simpler, and he was happier.