Ten Degrees Backward

by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

"Isn't it glorious?" exclaimed Fay, absolutely skipping by my side in the sheer joy of living and drinking in great draughts of the sun-warmed air. St. Martin is another of the saints who are famous for manufacturing imitation summers, but I believe his little affair does not come off till November so I think this must be St. Luke's after all, a bit before the time. He may have got confused, you see, and thought it was a movable feast, like Easter. Even saints make mistakes sometimes."

"The Ladies' Needlework Guild isn't a movable feast. The saints may be unpunctual, but Annabel never is. The first week of every October finds the scent of unbleached calico rising like incense from our house to heaven."

Fay fell in with my mood at once. That was one of the reasons why she attracted me so much: she was always so adaptable. And adaptability was such a change to me after forty-two years of Annabel. "Not exactly a movable feast, perhaps, but a very recurrent one. And as when you fall under the spell of the lotus-flower it is always afternoon, so when you fall under the spell of the Needlework Guild it is always the first week in October. No sooner is one October finished, than another comes close on its heels, crying out for its fill of garments."

"But how do you know that?" I asked. "This is the first October that you have been here."

Fay shook her head. "That has nothing to do with it. The Needlework Guild is one of those things that ought to be called Pan, don't you know!—meaning they are everywhere all at once. It existed at school, just as it does here; and the first week of October came as often then as it does now. But we can't grumble at however many Octobers we may get, provided they are as warm and fine and summery as this one."

Now seemed the appropriate moment for my word in season. "But they are not summer after all—at least they are only as you say, summery. These saints' affairs may be very good imitations, but they aren't the real thing, you know. When once the summer has gone, it has gone, and neither St. Luke nor St. Martin can bring it back again. And it is the same with ourselves. We may look young and feel young and all that sort of thing, but we are only really young once, and when once our youth is gone, it is gone for ever."

Fay looked up into my face with her wonderful eyes, and she was so near to me that even I could see their depth and their beauty, though I still refused to follow Annabel's advice and disfigure myself, and indirectly my friends, by wearing spectacles. "You are very gloomy this morning, Sir Reggie." ("Sir Reggie" was the name that she and Frank had invented for me, as being a compromise between the stiffness of "Sir Reginald" and the familiarity of "Reggie.") "I'm afraid St. Luke's kindness is wasted on you, and it is really very ungrateful of you, as he is doing his best to make things pleasant."

"No, I'm not gloomy, I'm only truthful. I can't see any use in pretending that things are different from what they are," I said.

"But there is great use in proving that things are different from what they seem," replied Fay enigmatically.

By this time we were standing by the old sundial. "Look at that," I said, laying my hand on the grey stone pedestal; "no one nowadays can turn the shadow on the dial ten degrees backward. It simply isn't done. When morning is past it is past, and when summer is past it is past, and when youth is past it is past, and not all the saints in the calendar can bring them back again."