Ten Degrees Backward

by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

Yet though it was unthinkable, the certainty of it crushed me to the earth. I could not believe—I felt I never could believe—that Fay was dead: yet on the other hand I felt as if she had been dead for years and years, and that I had always known it. Sorrow is always so old. The moment that its shadow touches us we feel that it has enshrouded us for ages.

As long as I live I shall never forget the agony of that moment. The sun shone through the dining-room window as I sat at the breakfast-table, and I hated it for shining. It seemed as if it ought never to shine again now that Fay was dead. And all the familiar objects around me—the furniture and the flowers and the breakfast-things—suddenly became charged with a terrible and sinister meaning, as if they were all part of a grotesque and unspeakably horrible dream.

I sat for what seemed an eternity trying to realise, though in vain, that Fay was dead; and yet feeling that I had realised it, from the foundation of the world, in every fibre of my being.

So it was all over, the joy and the pain of my married life! The breach between Fay and myself could never now be healed. There was now no longer any hope of her coming back to me, and asking me to let bygones be bygones and to begin our life together afresh. The bygones were bygones indeed, and there was no beginning again for my darling and me. Everything was over and past, and there was nothing left—not even a happy memory. She could never again weigh me in her balance, and this time more mercifully; nor could she ever cross out that Tekel she had written against my name. It must stand for ever to my eternal undoing. The anguish of this thought was almost more than I could bear, and yet live!

And across the intolerable anguish there came another feeling—an intensity of hatred against him who had destroyed the happiness of my life; and who now came back to complete the havoc he had wrought, by the news of my darling's death. If I had found it impossible to forgive Frank while Fay was alive, I found it still more impossible now!

After an eternity of such agony as I trust never to go through again, it occurred to me to finish reading Isabel's letter. There was nothing in it that could matter: nothing could ever matter any more now that Fay was dead: but I felt I might as well read it. I had a dim feeling that Isabel sympathised and was sorry, but I did not care whether she was sorry or not. Neither she nor anybody else could ever help me any more. Still she meant to be kind; and though her kindness was of no use to me, I thought I might as well finish her letter. I owed that much to her. So I went on with the reading of the letter that I had begun to read ages ago, in that dim, far-off past before I knew that Fay was dead.

"It appears," the letter continued, "that Fay and Frank had come over for a trip through Belgium when the war began, as Fay was rather overdone by acting and wanted a thorough rest and change: and instead of trying to get away at once, they stayed on at Louvain in order to help to look after the wounded. During the deliberate destruction of the town, Fay rushed out of cover to save a child that had run into the street by itself; and in so doing was struck by part of a shell, which killed her. So she died to save another, which is the most splendid death of all.

"Frank was so prostrated by the shock that he could no longer help to nurse the wounded, so he got away, and came over to England with a lot of Belgian refugees. I found him among these immediately after his arrival in London, and knew him at once from his strong resemblance to Fay. I brought him home with me to Prince's Gate, as he looked far too fragile and delicate to be left among strangers; and he is here now—an absolute wreck.

"Of course I shall only be too glad for Fay's sake to keep him here and nurse him back to health: but he doesn't want to stay here: he wants to go back to you.

"I have told him how you blame him—and justly so—for all that has happened, and how impossible you find it to forgive him. I haven't spared him at all. But in spite of all that I have said he still persists that he wants to go back to Restham. He is dreadfully sorry for what he has done: but of course that doesn't mend anything.