Ten Degrees Backward

by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

Fay did not reply, so I still thought she was hurt by Annabel's refusal. Then suddenly another possible cause for her lack of enthusiasm struck me, and I hastened to say: "Would you like us to take Frank with us, darling? We certainly will if you would like it. It would be rather a good plan, I think, as it would be so much more cheerful for you." Of course that was what had vexed Fay, I thought to myself: I had asked Annabel to go with us, and had not thought of asking Frank. How stupid I had been! And I tried hard to stifle that selfish longing on my part to have Fay all to myself. "By all means let us take Frank."

"But he is supposed to be reading with Mr. Blathwayte." To my surprise Fay did not jump at the suggestion.

"Bother his reading! Frank's education doesn't matter half as much as your pleasure. I'll go and ask him at once," I said, attempting to rise from my seat.

But Fay pulled me down again. "You'll do nothing of the kind, Reggie. We won't have either Frank or Annabel, but only just our two selves, and we'll talk nonsense and make love to each other all the time."

And then that selfish longing, which I had tried to stifle so hard, rose up full grown, and I could have shouted for joy to know that my darling wanted nobody except me, just as I wanted nobody except her. There is something shockingly exclusive about love!

So Fay and I went to Bythesea together, and had a glorious time. The days were not half long enough for all we had to do and say in them. We walked by the blue North Sea, and breathed the strong North wind, and felt that it was indeed a good thing to be alive. Being left exclusively to ourselves, we grew nearer to each other, and gazed into each other's souls with no wall of partition between.

I have always loved Bythesea, ever since I first went there with Annabel, and I call it the Place of the Two Gardens, for with two gardens it is always associated in my mind.

The first garden is the Garden of Sleep. On the very edge of the cliff stands—or rather, there stood when last I was there, and for aught I know to the contrary there is still standing to-day—the tower of a ruined church. The rest of the church fell into the sea years ago, but the tower still remains, its wall on one side running down sheer with the cliff. Such of the churchyard as the encroaching sea has not yet swallowed lies to the backward of the tower, and all around it are fields, which in their season are clothed with scarlet and other delights, for it is the land of poppies.

"It was rather cruel of the sea to wake up all the sleeping people when they were resting so peacefully," said Fay with a shiver, as we sat in the sunshine on the low bank which encloses what is left of the churchyard.

I hastened to comfort her. "It didn't wake them up, sweetheart. They wakened up long ago, and had been living and serving and praising somewhere else, years before the sea washed away their worn-out, cast-off bodies."