It was a trying season... Their behaviour was so extraordinary! I pinched myself and said: "This is the woman who cried to you because she was losing Spenworth, because the light was being taken out of her life. She was sacrificing herself to make Spenworth happy!" I admit that I was taken in. She may have been sincere at the time, but that is only the more discreditable. To cry for Spenworth one day and for her Captain Laughton the next... I use the word literally; if a single day passed without her seeing him, she moped—for all the world like a love-sick girl who thinks her sweetheart is tiring of her. And when they met...
I have told you that people were beginning to smile, and that should have been humiliating enough to a woman who has achieved at least a dignity of position; one said that there was nothing in it, but that had no effect. Anything connected with divorce seems to breed a morbid curiosity; they were being spied on, whispered about; people who did not wait to consider that Kathleen was nearly forty assumed that she would inevitably marry again and decided no less obstinately that she would marry Laughton. Then the tittle-tattle press laid hold of her. I am told that certain women, probably known to both of us, earn a livelihood by collecting gossip at one's dinner-table and selling it at so much a scandal to these wretched papers. One is quite defenceless... I noticed for myself—and others were indefatigable in shewing me—little snippets saying that Lady Spenworth and Captain Laughton had been seen at this or that garish new restaurant. I believe that Kathleen's solicitors wrote to her a second time...
A man at such a season does occasionally contrive to keep his head, but Captain Laughton was no less blind and uncontrolled than Kathleen. Will and I had arranged to go away for a few days' motoring at the end of the summer. A car and unlimited petrol—for the first time since the war—; Sussex; the New Forest; perhaps a day in Dorset to take luncheon with the Spokeleighs; Wiltshire, Gloucestershire and up into Hereford. Delightful... We had planned it months ahead—before this unhappy divorce. The problem of Kathleen called for solution; we could not conveniently take her in the car, and, if I left her in Mount Street, I did want to be assured that there would be no unpleasantness...
"Captain Laughton," I said one night, when he had telephoned to know whether he might dine. It was on the tip of my tongue to say: "My good man, don't ask me! Refer your invitations to my cook..." He was such a boy that I never spoke to him as I truly honestly think he deserved... "Captain Laughton," I said, "will you promise that, while I'm away, you won't come here or try to see Lady Spenworth? She is in a position," I said, "where you can easily compromise her; a severer critic might say that you had compromised her already. If you have her interests at heart, you have a chance of proving your friendship to her..."
Am I unduly idealizing the past if I say that in my youth it would have been unnecessary to speak like that to any man? Captain Laughton was no longer a boy... Assuredly, in the school in which I was brought up, if one had spoken, one's word would have been law...
"Oh, Lady Ann, I've been talking to Kitty about that," he answered. I think "jaunty" is the word to describe his manner; great assurance, good humour, no thought that any one would even dream of giving him a rebuff. "We were thinking," he continued, "that it would be such fun if we could come too. I have a car, we wouldn't get in your way; but we can hardly go off unattended, and I quite agree with what you say about not compromising Kitty in London."
He took my breath away. We this, we that. Perhaps I shall take away yours if I tell you that I acquiesced in his really impudent proposal. Not without a struggle, you may be sure; and not without declaring my own terms. If there were any unpleasantness, I should be held responsible. I ordained that, if I had to play the dragon, I would be a dragon in earnest; Kathleen should come in my car, while my Will went with Captain Laughton. Can't you picture how the other arrangement would have worked out? The two of them mooning like rustic lovers, forgetful of time and everything else, the car breaking down to prolong their stolen joy... My dear, you could see it in their faces when I launched my ultimatum...
And you could see it a hundred times a day when our tour began. Any excuse to slip away and be together. When I suggested a détour to call on Sir Charles Spokeleigh, I was told at once that Captain Laughton did not know him and that Kathleen disliked his wife—or had a head-ache, I forget which. Kathleen always had a head-ache if one suggested a little constitutional before dinner. And Captain Laughton insisted on staying behind with her. There was no great harm, perhaps, in an out-of-the-way village which had escaped the contamination of the London press, but in places like Dorchester, Gloucester, Hereford... One was known; the papers would announce us among the new arrivals: "Lady Spenworth, Lady Ann Spenworth, Captain Laughton..." and so on and so forth. They could not afford to take the slightest risk. If I had yielded to their entreaties and then the car had broken down... The King's Proctor or whoever he is would never believe that it was an accident and that they were truly innocent. There would be the record in the register of the hotel...
I am thankful to say that we were spared all catastrophes; and I frankly enjoyed the tour, though it was impossible to escape a feeling of conspiracy. The only hitch occurred at the end as we came within thirty miles of Brackenbury. The roads there are not all that could be desired, and I should not have contemplated for a moment the cross-country journey, were it not that I saw an opportunity of healing the unhappy breach with my niece Phyllida. At present she is so terribly and unjustly bitter that there is nothing she will not believe and say. It occurred to me that, if I, the older woman, made the first advance... A gracious phrase or two, telling her that I could not pass her home—my old home—with the feeling that any rancour remained... You understand. It is always worth a little inconvenience to be gracious... And she had been speaking quite wickedly about me...
We lunched that day at Norton and had arranged to sleep at Rugely. I need hardly say that, when I suggested a détour to Brackenbury—an extra forty miles at most—, Kathleen discovered that she was tired out and Captain Laughton trumped up his usual excuse that he didn't know my brother and disliked "butting in" on strangers... Ridiculous! I've never met a man more completely self-possessed... For once I broke my rule and said that they might go on by themselves and order rooms for us in Rugely. They would leave a note for us at the General Post Office to say where we should meet them.