"Drive carefully!," Captain Laughton called out, as we started from Norton. "It will be the devil and all, if anything happens to you."
I did not understand this new-born solicitude until my boy Will undertook to enlighten me. And then I saw that perhaps I had been really imprudent. After a fortnight of heart-breaking discretion, I had allowed these two feather-brained creatures to drive off alone... If they failed to secure rooms and could not communicate with us in time... If for any reason we did not meet at the rendez-vous... I can assure you that I gave myself a headache, just thinking of one possible disaster after another. It would not have passed unnoticed; we had received ample evidence of that. Most dreadful misconstructions would be placed on their conduct—and on mine. The King's Proctor—really, the name is so absurd; one makes a mental picture of some strange court functionary taken straight from the pages of that delightful Lewis Carroll book—I became haunted by visions of the King's Proctor intervening to stay the divorce proceedings. And then, as Will said so lucidly, Spenworth and Kathleen would be tied to each other for the rest of their lives; gone would be her St. Martin's summer of romance, gone would be—no, romance is always to me a singularly beautiful word; I decline to associate it with what my boy calls Spenworth's latest shuffle of the matrimonial pack. The worst thing of all was that we should be held responsible.
"I wonder what Spenworth would do if the positions were reversed," said Will. "If the guv'nor were elder brother and wanted an heir, if he had the chance of stopping it and keeping the inheritance for himself... I wonder if he'd be able to resist."
"Temptation only seems strong to those who do not wish to withstand it," I said.
Our arrival at the Hall was hardly auspicious, as my head-ache had been growing so steadily worse that I had to ask my sister-in-law Ruth to let me lie down if there was to be any question of my driving on to Rugely. And, though I felt better after a cup of tea, the pain returned when I was left for a moment with Phyllida. I sought an opportunity for my little speech. Phyllida... It would be absurd to feel resentment against a mere child whose nerves were obviously unstrung, but I wondered then and I wonder now what my dear mother would have said if I had spoken, looked, behaved in such a way to any older woman. When she had slammed her way out of the room, I sank into a chair, trembling. You know whether I am a limp, nervous woman; when Ruth came in to ask—without a spice of welcome—whether we would not stay to dinner, I was too much upset to speak; I just nodded... If I had been stronger, I would not have remained another moment in the house; but Will had disappeared, and I was unequal to returning alone.
Brackenbury had the consideration to ask if I would not stay the night. I explained the very delicate position in which we had left Kathleen and Captain Laughton.
"Well, go if you feel up to it," said Brackenbury in what I thought was an off-hand manner to adopt to his sister. "Or send Will, if anybody can find what's happened to him. So long as they've some one to chaperon them, they're all right."
I would have stayed if Will could have stayed with me. I would have gone if that had been the only means of keeping by his side. Do you know, I had the feeling that in the length and breadth of that house he was the only one who cared whether I was well or ill, whether I lived or died ... almost...
"I'm not sure that I care to leave my mother while she's like this," said my boy rather timidly, when he was fetched in to join the council. It is unfashionable, I believe, for the modern son to shew his mother any overt tenderness...
"Well, some one's got to go," said Brackenbury with unnecessary impatience. "It's all up, if you leave those two without any one to keep them in countenance."