Ten Degrees Backward

by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

"But you like me to enjoy myself, Reggie?"

"More than I like anything in the world."

"Then why interfere at all in what gives me such a ripping time?"

Then the devil entered into me under cover of my own cowardice. I couldn't bear Fay to think that it was I who was inimical to her pleasure. "Well, sweetheart, it isn't I altogether: I adore you so that if I had my own way I should give you everything that you asked for, and let you do whatever you liked. But Annabel is a woman of the world, and old enough to be your mother, and she sees that this continual theatrical excitement is not altogether good for a young girl. It hurts me to refuse you anything far worse than it hurts you: but while you are so young I cannot indulge you and myself to the extent of letting you do things that may work you lasting harm."

I had spoken to my own undoing. Fay sprang to her feet at once like an angry boy. "So Annabel disapproves of my acting, does she? Then you can tell her that I jolly well mean to go on with it! As Frank says, she and you together are choking the life and spirit out of me, and making an old woman of me before my time. And I won't stand it—I won't!"

I struggled vainly to retrieve my position; but it was too late. "It isn't so much that Annabel disapproves, darling," I lied valiantly, "but that she thinks so much excitement is bad for you."

"What rot!" retorted Fay, looking more Frank-like than ever: "I never heard such a lot of footling flapdoodle as you and Annabel concoct when you set fuzzling together—never in all my life! I've simply no use for you, Reggie, when you play the giddy old maid like this! I shall go and talk to Frank, who has got more sense than you and Annabel put together!" Wherewith she bounced out of the room, and left me lamenting over my egregious folly in having introduced Annabel into the conversation at all, especially as I did it with the unworthy motive of diverting Fay's anger from myself.

All that Eastertide stands out in my memory as a garish and lurid nightmare. I cannot recall the details of the Play, but I remember that it was considered a great success, and that Fay and Frank fairly surpassed themselves in the dance that they had prepared for the occasion. When it was over, Fay announced her intention of returning with Frank and the Loxleys to town, and staying a few days with the latter in order to attend a few pieces which were running at the London theatres.

I did not oppose her: I knew it would do no good. She refused to listen to argument, and nothing would induce me to put my foot down as my father had done with such grim success before me. But I looked forward to her return from the Loxleys, when Frank would have gone back to Oxford, and when the summer and I would have my darling to ourselves, and everything would come right again. Annabel had announced her intention of leaving Restham for a time to visit the Macdonalds in Scotland: and I was sure that when there was nobody to come between us, Fay and I would once more be all in all to each other as we had been before.

I did not trouble her with any explanations then: I felt it was not the occasion for them: I saved them all up for the happy time coming when I should have my darling to myself. And during the few days that she was at the Loxleys' I was busy devising and arranging little treats which I knew she would enjoy when once Annabel's back was turned, and we two were like a couple of children out of school.