Ten Degrees Backward

by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

I could testify to the truth of this. "Far from it," I muttered.

"The fact that I am fond of Frank does not prevent my seeing that he is volatile and flighty and lacking in any sense of responsibility: any more than the fact that I am fond of you prevents my seeing that you are over-sensitive and over-indulgent, and have so exaggerated a sense of responsibility that you are frightened of it, and therefore inclined to shirk it."

"Pray, don't mind me!" I interrupted, with a harsh laugh. The fact that I knew my sister was speaking the truth in no way added to my relish for her remarks.

"Reggie, don't be foolish! I am not thinking about either you or Frank just now, but about Fay: and I feel bound to say that I do not think it does her any good to be so much under Frank's influence."

"He provides the only bit of young life she sees, and I want her to have as much youthful society as she can get. Does it never strike you that you and I are somewhat old and dull companions for a girl of nineteen?" I still struggled against my own inclinations.

"Of course it strikes me," replied Annabel in her smooth and even tones: "it struck me so forcibly at one time, if you remember, that I tried to dissuade you from marrying her. I thought she was much too young for you, and said so; and I think so still. But that's all over and done with. You have married her, and you've got to take the consequences, just as she has got to take the consequences of marrying you. You knew you were taking a young wife, and she knew she was taking a middle-aged husband; and it is nonsense now to be struck all of a heap with surprise to find that you and she are not identical in tastes and interests. I knew you wouldn't be, and you ought to have known it too."

"But it so happened that we loved each other," I retorted drily.

"Of course you did: otherwise you wouldn't have been so foolish as to marry each other. But marrying one another hasn't altered your own selves. It always amazes me to see how people imagine that a quarter-of-an-hour's service in church will entirely change the characters of a man and a woman. How could it? Especially as they are generally quite opposite characters, or they wouldn't have fallen in love with one another at all. You and Fay had the idea that the minute you put the wedding-ring on to her finger you would become eighteen and she would become forty-two."

"In which case we should have been exactly as far apart as we are at present. I cannot see that the fulfilment of that idea would have mended matters at all."

"Oh, Reggie, how tiresome you are in always tripping people up! You know perfectly well what I mean. My point is that having persisted, in opposition to my advice, in marrying a young girl, your duty is to make her as happy and contented as possible."