The Confessions of a Well-Meaning Woman/Chapter 3

by Stephen McKenna

III

LADY ANN SPENWORTH TOUCHES RELUCTANTLY ON DIVORCE

LADY ANN (to a friend of proved discretion): I have been brought up in a different school, that’s all. “Whom God hath joined. . .” I don’t ask any one to share my feelings and I’m not so foolish as to say I won’t receive people who have taken a step which is at least legal, however much one may deplore the present ease of divorce. I do indeed try to differentiate in my attitude towards the guilty party, but in this I am more than ever “ploughing a lonely furrow,” as my boy Will rather picturesquely expresses it. . .

Nowadays it is unfashionable to heed the teachings of religion; but I should have thought that the least consideration for patriotism, stability. . . My father’s maxim was that family life is the basis of the state and that, when once you sanction the principle of divorce, you are undermining the foundations of the commonwealth. So I have at least been consistent. . .

That is perhaps more important than you think. The cynic cannot see that one’s principles are independent of personal considerations. If they ever have the ill fortune to coincide even in appearance. . . Indeed yes! I happen to know what I am talking about. . . Forgive me if I spoke sharply; but one’s nerves are not of iron, and it is not pleasant to be charged with conspiracy by the members of one’s own family. Oh, not Spenworth! We have hardly met for years, I am thankful to say, though my husband has more than once tried to bring about a reconciliation. I have no personal animus; but, if the head of an honoured family chooses to drag his name in the mire, he shall at least not say that he has had countenance or support from even so humble a person as his sister-in-law. I was referring to the other side, my own people; I have an unforgiving little enemy, I fear, in my niece Phyllida; I should mind that less if Brackenbury and his poor wife did not seem to aid and abet her. Loyalty to the family, I should have thought. . . But, once again, I was brought up in a different school. I have told my brother, until I am tired, he ought to send her right away. It was a disappointment. . . Goodness me, it is a disappointment when one cries for the moon; and, though I thought this Colonel Butler a decent, manly fellow, he was really nobody. He saw, without my telling him, that every one would say he was marrying her for her money. . . I won’t call it an escape for Phyllida, because that always sounds so spiteful. But I will allow no one to say I made him throw her over so that I might keep her for my own boy!

I want you to tell me frankly how much you have heard. Literally nothing? Then you will—the very next time you go to the Hall. Not satisfied with inventing this abominable story, Phyllida feels it her duty to inflict it upon any one who will listen. But you must have seen about the divorce? Not even that? Well, you are wise; these things are unsavoury reading. The case was tried in the summer—“Spenworth’s washing-day”, as my boy called it—, and the decree will be made absolute in a few weeks’ time.

It is the fashion to say that my brother-in-law was more sinned against than sinning. Does not that formula always put you on your guard, so to say? He was a mere boy when he succeeded to the title; an immense estate like Cheniston offered too many temptations; his good looks made him a prey for all the harpies; he was too kindly ever to say “no” even to the most dissolute of his associates. And so forth and so on. . . Goodness me! Arthur—my husband—was two years younger; and, if his old father’s iniquitous will did not leave him enough money to tempt the hangers-on, at least he did not play ducks and drakes with what he had. It is more a question of character than of income. And Arthur had his share of good looks, as you can see from Will. No! Whatever Spenworth did, he could always buy indulgence. Establish for yourself the reputation of “a good fellow”— whatever that may mean—; and you will walk on roses all your life. . .

One must assume that he thought the marriage would be a success, but I am sure no one else did. I knew Spenworth, you see. It is ancient history now, but it was only when I destroyed his last hope by marrying Arthur that he turned in desperation to Kathleen Manorby . . . after remaining disconsolate for nearly ten years. For her and her like my Will coined the description “chocolate-box beauty.” She is still attractive after twenty years. . . I tried to warn her, so far as one could without having one’s motives misconstrued; but she was glamoured by the money and the title. She had several offers, I believe, from men rather more in her own milieu, but it was a case of not being able to afford the luxury of marrying a poor man. Otherwise her first love, young Laughton, who broke his heart over her and transferred to the Indian Army. . . I warned her that Spenworth would be unfaithful before they had been married a year, but she was too sure of her own charm and power.

Within a year! Within three months. . . Kathleen is a fool, but one may feel for any woman who has had to put up with so many sordid humiliations. If she had borne him a son, it might have been different, but one girl after another. . . Four of them, and no heir to Cheniston. Superstitious people would tell you that it was a judgement on Spenworth for his past life and on her for her treatment of poor young Laughton. . . And, little by little, Spenworth seemed to lose all regard for human decency, until one was tempted to forget poor Kathleen’s disappointment and to feel that Providence had decided that no son of his should ever reign in his stead. I am utterly free from superstition myself; but it did seem curious. . . He, I fancy, never quite gave up hope; as I felt it my duty to tell him, he was on such good terms with this world that he could not imagine another world in which his behaviour might be less leniently regarded. When the fourth girl was born and we realized that Will must ultimately succeed, I suggested that something might now be done to enable our boy to live in a manner befitting the heir to an historic title. Spenworth gave one of his great laughs and begged me to wait until he was dead before I cast lots for his raiment, adding that he had no intention of dying yet awhile. The usual blend of arrogance and blasphemy. . .

Yes, my husband is the only brother. It is a matter of rather less than no interest to either of us, for Spenworth will last our time. His constitution is proof against even his own assaults on it. Besides, one would hate the idea of waiting to step into a dead man’s shoes. . . So really the heir is Will, but he is in no hurry; Cheniston is a night-mare to him, he does not desire the place. Perhaps he dreads having to cleanse the Augean stable. You have never stayed there, of course; I can say without unkindness that, wherever a naked savage could have made one error in taste, poor Kathleen has made three. . .

It was Will who brought the news that a divorce was pending. One guessed that Spenworth and Kathleen were living apart, but she had let slip so many opportunities. . . One asked oneself what new provocation could have roused her.

“Oh, it’s a put-up job,” said Will. “As Aunt Kathleen hasn’t produced a son, Spenworth wants to get free of her and marry some one else. A man at the club told me that he was allowing her twenty thousand a year for his liberty.”

Really and truly, the interest that total strangers take in other people’s affairs the moment that sinister word “divorce” is pronounced. . . Within two days the story was on every one’s lips : Spenworth was the one topic of conversation, and everything was known. I think it is called a petition for restitution. Alas! for twenty years it would always have been easy to produce evidence of Spenworth’s vagaries; now, I gathered, he was to “desert” Kathleen and then refuse to obey some order to come back. I don’t profess to understand the subject; it is wholly distasteful to me. . .

“And what then?,” I asked.

“A decree nisi,” Will told me. “I gather my next aunt has been chosen already.”

I will not mention her name. She who marries a man that has been put away. . . Perhaps I take too lofty a view of human nature, knowing my brother-in-law as I do; but, until he actually marries her, I shall continue to look for a sign of grace.

“And now perhaps Cheniston is going to have an heir after all,” said Will.

I confess that I was thinking not at all of Cheniston at this season, though a second marriage may revolutionize everything. The shame of seeing my husband’s elder brother, the head of an historic family, in the Divorce Court. . . And already thinking of another union with goodness knows who; and, once he begins, there is no reason why he should ever stop. I am told that there are more than two thousand cases waiting to be tried. The war! I always felt that you could not have an upheaval on that scale without paying for it afterwards. There are moments when I feel glad that my dear father did not live to see this bouleversement. . . Mere beasts of the field. . .

“I cannot discuss this,” I told Will.

My husband had heard the story too and was so much shocked that I dared not allude to it. We could do nothing. . .

I did make one effort. I tried to persuade my brother to reason with her. The opinion of an outsider—and Brackenbury has the reputation, not perhaps very well-founded, if you consider his own life, of being a man of the world. . . He would only say that, though “dear old Spenworth” was “no end of a good fellow”, he was also “no end of a bad husband” and that, if Kathleen had had sense or spirit, she’d have divorced him a dozen years ago. Then, against my own inclinations, I went to see Kathleen and literally begged her to reconsider her decision before it was too late. One might as profitably have spoken to the dead. . .

She was not antagonistic in any way. Indeed, our meeting would have been profoundly interesting, if it had not been so painful. She was still in love with Spenworth. Men like that, dissolute and unfaithful, seem to have an animal magnetism which holds certain women in complete subjection. Kathleen was miserable at the thought of parting from her scamp of a husband.

“I couldn’t do it if I didn’t love him,” she cried.

And, if you please, I was left to understand that she was effacing herself, giving him up and making way for another woman simply because she fancied that he would be happier. I confess I should have had little patience with her, if she had not been so pitiable. Life was a blank without Spenworth.

“Then why,” I asked, “do you cut your own throat and drag the name of the family through the mire? Have you no sense of your position after all these years, no feeling for the rest of us?”

“It’s for him,” she said.

And I verily believe that, if he had told her literally to cut her throat, she would have done it. . .

I have never been greatly attached to Kathleen. These backboneless, emotional women. . . But I felt that somebody must do something for her. She came to Mount Street, and I reasoned with her again; at Cheniston I may be less than the dust, but under my own vine and fig-tree. . . In London I have a certain niche and I was bound to warn her that a divorced woman is mal vue in certain circles and among certain persons who sometimes do me the honour to dine at my house. There would be occasions on which I should be unable to invite her. You would have said that she didn’t care. . . She was staying with us when the case was tried; she stayed all through the summer, four months. No, you mustn’t give me credit to which I’m not entitled. I felt very little sympathy when she proved obdurate; but, if one could do anything to brighten her lot. . . I gave one or two little parties. . . Trying to take her out of herself. To some extent I succeeded. Kathleen has still the remains of good looks, though that fair fluffiness is not a type that I admire. When I refused to let her sit and mope in her room, she made an effort and assumed quite an attractive appearance. Several men were impressed. . .

There was one in particular. I won’t give you his name. . . And yet I don’t know why I shouldn’t; if Phyllida persuades you to listen to her story, I am sure she will spare you nothing. He was introduced to me as Captain Laughton; and the name conveyed nothing to me until some one reminded me of the old boy-and-girl attachment before Kathleen married Spenworth, when this man Laughton pretended to be heart-broken and disappeared to Central India. They had not met for twenty years, but, when he read of the divorce proceedings, I can only assume that he sought her out. Will met him at his club, I think, and the man virtually invited himself to come and dine. I was not greatly enchanted by him at our first meeting, but he was a new interest to Kathleen (I knew nothing until days afterwards when I tackled her about her really unaccountable behaviour with him). . . And I must confess that there were moments ,when poor Kathleen was a grave trial and I repented my impetuosity in asking her to stay with us. Captain Laughton came a second time and a third. By the end of a month he had really done us the honour to make our house his own. . .

There are things I can say to you that I would never breathe to a man. I, personally, never make a mystery of my age; you will find it in all the books, every one knows I am six years older than Arthur, four years older than Spenworth—why conceal it? I wished Kathleen could have been equally frank, could have seen herself as I saw her. She is within a few months of thirty-nine, with four strapping girls; one does expect a certain dignity and restraint at that age. I know what you are going to say! We of the older generation usually expect more than we receive. I have learnt that lesson, thank you! Kathleen seemed to fancy that she was back in the period of this boy-and-girl attachment to which I have alluded. She and Captain Laughton were inseparable. He took her to dances . . . as if she were eighteen! Indecent, I considered it. And I wondered what her girls thought of their mother,—if they’re capable of thinking at all. I don’t associate brains with that chocolate-box beauty. . . Dances, dinners, little expeditions. Every one was beginning to smile. . .

“If she’s not careful,” Will said to me one day, “she’ll cook her own goose as well as Spenworth’s.”

I had to ask him to express his fears in simpler language.

“There is such a person as a King’s Proctor,” he said, “though they don’t seem aware of it. If she plays the fool with Laughton, the decree won’t be made absolute; and she and Spenworth will be tied to each other for the rest of their lives. That would hardly suit their book.”

Do you ever feel that you have strayed into a new world? The fact of divorce. . . And then this light-hearted pairing off: Spenworth with some woman who had been setting her cap at him for years, Kathleen with the love of her youth. They had lost all reverence for marriage, the family; it was a game, a dance—like that figure in the lancers, where you offer your right hand first and then your left. . . I made Will explain the whole position to me again and again until I had it quite clear in my mind. The King’s Proctor, as he described him—rather naughtily—, was “a licensed spoilsport”, who intervened in cases where the divorce was being arranged by collusion or where both parties had sinned.

“The office seems a sinecure,” I commented.

Those two thousand petitions. . . They stick in my throat.

“As a rule people don’t take risks,” Will explained. “And it’s not often to the advantage of an outsider to come in and upset the apple-cart. You or the guv’nor or I,” he said, “could do a lot of mischief, if we liked; but we’re interested parties, and it wouldn’t look well.”

I confess that I did not share his tenderness towards what is nothing but a life of premeditated sin. . . Yes, I know it’s legal, but Parliament can make a thing legal without making it right. The whole subject, however, was very distasteful, and I did not pursue it. That night I let fall a hint to Arthur, but he was not disposed to take any action.

“She’s a bigger fool than I took her for,” was all he would say. “She’s endangering her own future and Spenworth’s and playing into our hands if we chose to take advantage of our opportunity.”

Whether Arthur spoke to her or not, I cannot say; but I know that she received a very frank warning from her own solicitors. Spenworth, too, did us the honour to write and say: “For heaven’s sake keep that—” I forget the actual phrasing—“keep that man away from Katie, or he’ll do us in.” Spenworth was always noted for his elegance of diction. . . If a pawn could speak, I’m sure its feelings would be very much what mine were: pushed hither and thither in a game that I did not begin to understand. I had never asked Captain Laughton to the house; he invited himself, and by the same token I knew that it was no good telling him to stay away. My house was not my own, my soul was not my own. And I had that hopeless sense that, whatever I did, I should be wrong. . .

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.

“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.”

“We will both go,” I said.

When the car was ordered, we went into the hall and waited. . . After about twenty minutes Brackenbury rang to find out the reason for the delay. The servant came back to say that part of what I think is called the magneto was missing. I chose my word carefully: not “injured” or “worn-out,” but “missing”—as though some one had invaded the garage and removed the requisite part. . .

Brackenbury seemed to lose his head altogether.

“It’s ten o’clock,” he roared. “If you don’t get to Hugely by mid-night, can’t you see that you’ll be too late to stop a scandal? If you want to stay the divorce, say so at once, say that you’re scheming to tie up Spenworth in your own interests; and, by God, if it comes off, I’ll say it until every decent man and woman will walk out of a room when any of your gang come into it. . . Phyllida,” he shouted. “Order your car! Will can drive it. . .”

“Aren’t you afraid he may lose his way?,” asked Phyllida.

I don’t attempt to reproduce her voice. . . It was silky . . . oh, and wicked! I tell myself not to mind, I try to remember that she was overwrought and that her father was a criminal not to insist on her going away. Phyllida was deliberately charging us with a conspiracy to interrupt the divorce proceedings so that in time—goodness me, when Arthur and I are dead and buried!—our boy Will might succeed. Cheniston is a noble seat; the Spenworth title is old and was once honoured; but neither for my husband nor my son do I want them—at that cost.

I said nothing. . . I believe I murmured to myself: “You wicked child”; but, literally, I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t see . . . or hear. Brackenbury was making furious arrangements. As in a dream I saw Ruth being wrapped in a fur-coat. . . A car came to the door and drove away. . . I asked my boy to ascertain which was my room and to lend me the support of his arm up the stairs. . .

Ruth telegraphed next day from Rugely—just two words—“All well.” . . .

Will and I returned to London by train. Phyllida was in the hall, reading the telegram, as I appeared.

“It nearly came off,” she said. “I’m sorry—for your sake—that you’ve had a disappointment. Time, you will find, works wonders; and some day, perhaps, you will be more grateful than I can expect to find you now. If I were you, I would go right away. . .”

What she intended to convey I have no more idea than the man in the moon. . . The night before, her meaning was never in doubt; and I am waiting for her to put it into words, to charge Will or me or both of us with deliberately damaging our car. . .

But you will see that anything she says in her present state, poor child, must be accepted with charitable reserve. . .