Ten Degrees Backward

by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

"And not big sleeves, you are sure?"

"Quite. Deans do not burn the candles at both ends, so to speak, as Bishops do: they are content to take care of the legs, and leave the arms to take care of themselves."

Annabel smiled the tolerant smile of elder-sisterhood. "How funny you are, Reggie! It is nice to hear you making jokes again."

And she went out of the room happy in the conviction that I was what she would have called, "getting over it."

Arthur came over to the Manor in the afternoon, and confirmed what Annabel had said. He had indeed been offered the Deanery of Lowchester: but had not yet decided, as Annabel had, that he should accept it. I was amazed at his hesitancy, considering what a splendid offer it was for a man still comparatively young, and also—as Annabel had pointed out—what a grand scope it would give him for his hitherto wasted powers of organisation: but slowly the reason for this hesitancy dawned upon me.

"To put it in plain English, old man," I said, after we had discussed the question in all its bearings, and light was beginning to penetrate the mists of my confusion, "the only reason you really have against accepting this offer is me."

Arthur blushed: a rare indulgence with him. "Well, I don't know that I should put it as bluntly as that, Reggie——" he began in his deliberate way.

I interrupted him. "But I should. It is always best to put things in the bluntest way possible, and to look at them as they really are. I learnt that from Fay. She taught me to have a horror of everything that she designated by the inclusive term 'flapdoodle.'"

I made a point of bringing my wife's name into a conversation now and again: it seemed somehow to narrow the gulf between us. Nobody, except Ponty, ever voluntarily mentioned Fay's name to me (and perhaps that was the reason why I still found a certain amount of comfort in Ponty's society, and why I allowed my old nurse to take such egregious liberties with me): so that unless I spoke sometimes of my lost darling, she would have been altogether put away out of remembrance.

In the same way I have always hated the custom which obtains amongst many people, of never speaking at all of those who have "crossed the flood," or else of speaking of them in an entirely unnatural tone of voice, and making use of such prefixes as "dear" or "poor." Such a custom, to my mind, gives the indirect lie to all Christian teaching as to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come, and is only fit for those who sorrow without hope. I maintain that those whom we falsely call our dead should be spoken of as naturally and as frequently as those whom we—making a distinction without a difference—choose to call our living. It always irritates me when Annabel says "dear Papa" and "poor Mamma": she would never have dreamed of using either adjective in the days when our parents were still with us at Restham: and to do it now creates a sort of artificial atmosphere about them, which I, for one, resent.