Ten Degrees Backward

by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

"Of course," added Annabel thoughtfully, "Mr. Blathwayte, I mean Arthur, is five years younger than I am: but if he doesn't mind that, I don't see why you should."

"I don't," I hastened to assure her: "that is nobody's business but his and yours. And the experience of life has taught me that there are distinct disadvantages to a woman in having a husband older than herself. But, Annabel," I added, getting up from my seat and going across to where she sat and laying my hand on her shoulder, "although I am naturally surprised at what you have told me, and am very sorry to lose you, I am very glad as well: for I am sure it would be impossible for any woman to have a better husband than old Arthur. I hope you will be very happy, and, what is more, I am sure you will."

"Thank you, Reggie: and as for leaving you I feel I can do it more easily now than I could before you were married. I'm nothing like so necessary to you now as I was then."

I hastened to disclaim this accusation; but underneath my disclaimer I was haunted by a lurking consciousness that Annabel's common sense had, as usual, hit the mark. She was not as necessary to my happiness as she had been before my marriage: nobody was, except Fay, and I feared that she was lost to me for ever.

I cannot deny that Annabel's engagement was a tremendous surprise to me: but as I became accustomed to the surprise, I was shocked to find hidden beneath it an unholy little mixture of relief. I hated myself for the knowledge, and violently battled against it, but all the same I could not help knowing that Restham Manor without Annabel would be a much more easy and restful abode than it had ever been before. And at the very back of my mind—so far back that I was scarcely conscious of it—there sprang up a tiny and indefinite hope that—with Annabel gone—Fay might come back to me once more. But not with Frank: even though it might be possible for me sometime to forgive my wife, it could never be possible for me to forgive her brother: of that I felt certain: He had injured me far too deeply. But though the possibility of Fay's return crept into the realm of practical politics, I was too proud to ask her to come back to me. She had left me of her own free will, and she should come back to me of her own free will or not at all. And this was not entirely selfish pride on my part, though doubtless to a great extent it was. Much as I loved my wife, much as I longed for her, I did not wish her to return until she felt she could be happy with me. Once again—as before I proposed to her—I was not willing to purchase my own happiness at the cost of Fay's.

Of course the marriage of Annabel to Blathwayte was a nine days' wonder in Restham—a wonder which I shared with my humbler neighbours. However devoted to his sisters a man may be, the fact that other men want to marry them never fails to appeal to his sense of humour: and the appeal is by no means minimised if the sister happens to have attained to her fiftieth year. In spite of all the sorrow through which I had passed and was still passing, I was still sufficiently a boy at heart to laugh at the idea of good old Arthur's marrying Annabel.

I did not—I could not—believe that the attachment dated from Blathwayte's youthful days, since the difference between twenty-five and thirty is much greater than that between forty-four and forty-nine. My explanation of the phenomenon was that he was suddenly faced with the prospect of doing without Annabel, and found he couldn't stand it; and so—necessity being the mother of invention—it occurred to him to marry her instead. I think she had become as much an integral part of his scheme of things as the sun or the moon or the General Post Office; and although one might not spontaneously think of marrying the sun or the moon or the General Post Office, it is conceivable that one might even go to that length rather than do without them altogether.

But so inconsistent is human nature, although my higher self struggled against any selfish desire to keep Annabel at Restham, and my lower self was secretly relieved at the prospect of her departure, I was nevertheless hurt that she should wish to leave me. Once again I was brought face to face with the old problem, how is it that the people always behave so much better to other people than other people ever behave to them? To which I believe the real answer is that we all expect so much more of each other than we are prepared to give in return.

My unholy relief at the transference of Annabel's beneficent yoke from my shoulders to Arthur's was shared to the fullest extent by Ponty, and in her case it assumed no secret or surreptitious form.

"It'll be a good thing for Miss Annabel to have a house and a husband of her own at last," she remarked, "to order about as she pleases; and leave you and me to do what we like at the Manor, Master Reggie."