



Produced by Al Haines








  TEN DEGREES
  BACKWARD


  BY

  ELLEN THORNEYCROFT FOWLER

  AUTHOR OF "HER LADYSHIP'S CONSCIENCE,"
  "CONCERNING ISABEL CARNABY," ETC., ETC.



  NEW YORK
  GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY




  Copyright, 1915,
  BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY




  CONTENTS

  I. I, Reginald Kingsnorth
  II. Restham Manor
  III. Frank
  IV. Fay
  V. The First Miracle
  VI. St. Luke's Summer
  VII. The Gift
  VIII. Love Among the Ruins
  IX. Things Great and Small
  X. A Birthday Present
  XI. In June
  XII. Shakspere and the Musical Glasses
  XIII. The Garden of Dreams
  XIV. Annabel's Warning
  XV. Darkening Skies
  XVI. A Sorrowful Springtime
  XVII. Desolation
  XVIII. The New Dean
  XIX. A Surprise
  XX. Isabel, Née Carnaby
  XXI. The Great War
  XXII. The Last of the Wildacres
  XXIII. The Peace of God
  XXIV. Conclusion




TEN DEGREES BACKWARD



CHAPTER I

I, REGINALD KINGSNORTH

"Reggie, do you remember Wildacre?"

It was with this apparently simple question that Arthur Blathwayte rang
up the curtain on the drama of my life.

That the performance was late in beginning I cannot but admit.  I was
fully forty-two; an age at which the drama of most men's lives are
over--or, at any rate, well on in the third act.  But in my uneventful
existence there had been no drama at all; not even an ineffective
love-affair that could be dignified by the name of a "curtain-raiser."

Of course I had perceived that some women were better looking than
others, and more attractive and easier to get on with.  But I had only
perceived this in a scientific, impersonal kind of way: the perception
had in nowise penetrated my inner consciousness or influenced my
existence.  I was the type of person who is described by the populace
as "not a marrying sort," and consequently I had reached the age of
forty-two without either marrying or wishing to marry.

I admit that I had not been thrown into circumstances conducive to the
cultivation of the tender passion; my sister Annabel had seen to that;
but no sister--be she even as powerful as Annabel herself--can prevent
a man from falling in love if he be so minded, nor from seeking out for
himself a woman to fall in love with if none are thrown in his way.
But I had not been so minded; therefore Annabel's precautions had
triumphed.

Annabel was one of that by no means inconsiderable number of women who
constantly say they desire and think they desire one thing, while they
are actually wishing and working for the exact opposite.  For instance,
she was always remarking how much she wished that I would marry--and
what a mistake it was for a man like myself to remain single--and what
a pity it was for the baronetcy to die out.  And she said this in all
sincerity: there was never any conscious humbug about Annabel.  Yet if
by any chance a marriageable maiden came my way, Annabel hustled her
off as she hustled off the peacocks when they came into the
flower-garden.  My marriage was in theory one of Annabel's fondest
hopes: in practice a catastrophe to be averted at all costs.

My sister was five years my senior, and had mothered me ever since my
mother's death when I was a boy.  There were only the two of us, and
surely no man ever had a better sister than I had.  In my childhood she
stood between me and danger; in my youth between me and discipline; and
in my manhood between me and discomfort.  As far as in her lay she had
persistently shielded me from all life's disagreeables; and a great
deal of shielding power lay in Annabel.  Of course she ought to have
been the son and I the daughter: my mother said it when we were
children, and my father never tired of saying it when we were grown up,
and I myself fully realised the force of the remark.  But I didn't see
that I could do anything, or that it was in any way my fault, though my
father always spoke as if he thought it were: as if in some occult way
Annabel's unselfishness and my carelessness were responsible for this
mistake in sex: and as if she had deliberately stood on one side in
order that the honour of manhood should fall upon me.

I consider that my father was in many ways a really great man.

Of comparatively humble origin, he raised himself by his own efforts
into a position of commercial importance--amassed a considerable
fortune--threw himself heart and soul into political life, serving his
party and his country with both zeal and efficiency--and died at last,
full of days and honours, beloved and admired by his friends, and
revered by the country at large.

And I cannot help seeing that--through no fault of my own--a
disappointment I, his only son, must have been to him.  I say
advisedly, "through no fault of my own," though I have faults enough,
Heaven knows!  The great tragedy of my life came through my own folly,
as I now at last realise: but I cannot see that the disappointment I
caused my father was my own doing, though the far greater
disappointment I caused to one dearer than my father most undoubtedly
was.  But of that later.

I was exactly the sort of son that my father ought not to have had: in
modern parlance he had no use for me.  His son should have resembled
himself, and should have been able to go on where he left off.  As for
me, I was of no good at the business, and of