Ten Degrees Backward

by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

But good Heavens, how it hurt!

"Yes," replied Frank, quite unconscious of my pain, "she told me everything. And it was only after she had told me everything, and I saw how miserable you were making her by setting Miss Kingsnorth above and before her that I began to urge her to run away and begin life over again. Of course I see now it was wicked of me to do so, although I was so furious with you for thinking more of your sister than of your wife; and besides being wicked, it was useless. Fay loved you so much that being away from you didn't seem to mend matters at all, but only to make them worse. But I thought that when once she'd got away from you and your treatment of her, she'd begin to forget you, and be happy again as she was before she and you had ever met. But unfortunately I was wrong."

I groaned. I couldn't help it.

"Then another time," Frank went on, the Wildacres never having been denied freedom of utterance, "she was almost mad with joy because you came all the way from Restham to Liverpool Street to meet her on her way home from Bythesea. It looked as if you really were as much in love with her as she was with you. And then you went and spoilt it all by saying that you had come to please your sister. Now, I ask you, what wife could stand that? I'm sure you wouldn't have liked to feel that Fay married you in order to please me: and in the same way she didn't like to feel that you had married her to please Mrs. Blathwayte."

"But it was absurd of her to feel like that! She must have known that I worshipped the very ground she walked on, and that the only fly in my ointment was that I felt I was too old and dull to make her happy."

Frank still had me on the hip. "Then that was equally absurd of you! Fay wasn't the only absurd one apparently. You see all the time that you were inventing trouble by thinking that you were too old and dull for her, she was inventing trouble by thinking that she was too young and silly for you, and that you were comparing her with your sister, and finding her inferior. And you know how mad a woman gets when she thinks her husband likes anybody else more than he likes her. There's nothing she wouldn't do to punish him and hurt herself at the same time! And that is how Fay got. She was so wild at finding you thought more of Miss Kingsnorth than you did of her, that she didn't care what happened. She thought you despised her, and that simply finished her off altogether. And when she was unhappy she tried to drown her unhappiness in theatricals and fallals of that kind, which didn't really do her the slightest good: but when husbands fail, women set up all sorts of ridiculous scarecrows in their place. It's the way they're made, I suppose. And when the theatricals turned out to be no good in helping her to forget, she took to travelling, and that was how we came to be in Belgium when the war broke out. But travelling didn't really help her either, though she had an idea that the old cities of Flanders might be rather soothing. But as things panned out they were quite the reverse, and we'd far better have remained in Australia!"

"It is all incredible to me," I said.

But Frank had no mercy. "The long and the short of it is you were so busy worrying yourself about the relations between Fay and your sister, that you let the relations between Fay and yourself slide. And that was really the only thing that mattered. Then Fay got it into her head that you regretted having married her when you compared her with Miss Kingsnorth and saw how young and silly she was in comparison: and so she decided to leave you and your sister once more alone together, as she believed that that was what really could make you happy. And even now I can't help admitting that Miss Kingsnorth is far more your sort than Fay was."

I was silent for a time. The solid earth seemed slipping away beneath my feet. Then I said: "Do you mean to tell me, on your word of honour, that to the best of your belief neither you nor Annabel tried to come between my wife and me?"

Without hesitation the answer came: "Certainly I do. I am positive that I never did, and in my own mind I am equally certain that Mrs. Blathwayte never did either. But where I was to blame was that when I saw matters had gone wrong, I tried to set them right in my own way: and I think probably that is what Mrs. Blathwayte tried to do also. But there was some excuse for us. The happiness of her brother and my sister mattered more to us than anything else in the world. Of course I see now that you asked Miss Kingsnorth here on Fay's account, though it was a ridiculous thing to do: but I own now you did it from a right motive. But Fay believed you did it because you thought you would find her too young and silly to be enough for you by herself, and so you wanted your sister and me to relieve the tedium, and make things more cheerful for you. That was Fay's idea, and I agreed with her. And naturally I resented your putting your sister before mine. Any fellow would."