Ten Degrees Backward

by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

"Kind and loving fiddlesticks!" retorted Frank, by no means respectfully; but I was so glad to see him once more a little like his old self that I rejoiced in rather than resented his impertinence. In spite of my underlying enmity against him, I could not hide it from myself that Frank had attracted and fascinated me since his return as he had never attracted and fascinated me before: and this in spite of the fact that his good looks were faded, and his brilliance was quenched. "When girls are first married they don't want kind and loving women to lean upon: they want to lean upon the husbands whose business it is to be leant upon. And they hate anybody who comes between them and their husbands."

"But remember, Frank, I asked you to live with us as well as Annabel. It isn't as if I had asked my sister, and left my wife's brother out." I appeared to be exculpating myself to Frank; but in reality I was exculpating myself to myself.

"But that only made the matter worse. Fay didn't want me any more than she wanted Miss Kingsnorth to come poking my nose in between you and her. She wanted you to herself."

"I'm afraid that she and Annabel did not get on together as well as I had hoped," I said.

Frank shrugged his thin shoulders. "They'd have got on all right together in their proper places. Fay was quite fond of Miss Kingsnorth as a sister-in-law: but when she found Miss Kingsnorth put in place of her husband, why of course she kicked. Anybody would."

"Annabel wasn't put in place of her husband," I argued.

"Yes, she was; and of course the thing didn't work. You seemed to have an idea that Fay's love was transferable, like a ticket for a concert, and that if you didn't use it your sister could. But it's no good trying to transfer other people's affections any more than it's any use trying to change other people's religions. You can take the old one away, but you can't give them a new one in its place."

"But I never attempted to do such a ridiculous thing," I argued.

But Frank was firm. "Yes, you did. Or, at any rate, Fay thought you did, which comes to the same thing as far as she was concerned, and that was what made her so mad. For instance, when she particularly asked you to give her a Prayer Book with her name written in it by you, so that religion and you might all get mixed up together in her mind, and you be part of religion and religion part of you, what did you do? You got Miss Kingsnorth to give her the Prayer Book, so that Miss Kingsnorth should become part of her religion instead of you! Now it really was absurd to expect Miss Kingsnorth—I beg her pardon, I mean Mrs. Blathwayte—to become part of anybody's religion, except of old Blathwayte's—I mean the Dean's. I suppose she's part of his religion now, right enough. But she wasn't the kind of person to be ever part of Fay's religion, and I should have thought you could have seen that for yourself."

"Did Fay tell you that about the Prayer Book?" I asked, with a stab of anguish. It was incomprehensible to me how my darling could have discussed, even with her brother, things which lay entirely between her and me. I could never have talked to Annabel about matters which concerned Fay and myself alone! I should have regarded them as too sacred. But that is where men and women are so different from each other, and where women are so much less reserved than men. I believe that good wives tell more about their husbands than bad husbands ever tell about their wives.