Ten Degrees Backward

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 thi...

The village of Restham--where I was born and brought up, and where later I sinned and suffered and repented--lay in a hollow in that long, low range of Kentish hills known as th...

One afternoon a few days after the foregoing conversations, when Annabel and I were seated round (as far as it is in the power of two persons to sit round anything) the old gate...

The intimacy between Frank Wildacre and myself developed apace. We discussed everything from Shakespeare to the musical glasses (whatever that may mean), and found ourselves won...

In the first place I threw up the role of uncle which Annabel has so thoughtfully cast for me, and played the part of Romeo instead: that is to say, for the first time in all my...

It was a bright autumn morning, and the central hall of the Manor House was given up to a Moloch worshipped by Annabel and described by her as the "Ladies' Needlework Guild." I...

"I am afraid Fay is very ill: Dr. Jeffson is most anxious about her," said Annabel to me, as I came in rather late for luncheon one foggy November day. I had been busy all morni...

Fay recovered rapidly, to the surprise of the doctors and the nurses, but not to mine. After that ineffable moment by what seemed to be her dying bed, I had no further anxiety a...

The time of our engagement was a very happy time for me. It was so heavenly to be continually with Fay, and not to feel myself bound in honour to dissemble my love. And the more...

Fay and I were married early in the year, which always appears to me the proper time for marrying and giving in marriage. It seems so appropriate for the new heaven and the new...

Frank came home from Oxford early in June--nominally to read with Blathwayte during the Long; and then we had indeed a merry time at Restham, the maddest, merriest time I ever h...

"For one thing, I can't think how to raise a little money for the Parish Nurse Fund this year: we always have an entertainment of some kind every three or four years, you know,...

After the excitement of the Pastoral Play had subsided into calm satisfaction with the handsome sum of money which it had provided for supplying the future needs of the Parish N...

We had a very quiet and peaceful autumn after Frank went back to Oxford. But that Fay missed him I am sure, as she was not nearly so gay and light-hearted as she had been during...

Although I had made up my mind to ignore Annabel's warning as far as action went, I could not altogether ignore it in thought, and I was convinced in my own mind that she was ri...

It goes without saying that I forgave my darling, for the good reason that I had nothing to forgive. That part of the business was easy enough. It also goes without saying that...

I cannot remember what happened immediately after Fay's letter shattered my life at one blow. I only know that Annabel found me lying unconscious on the dining-room floor when s...

The days grew into weeks, and the weeks into months, but nothing occurred to lessen my misery. As I look back upon that hideous time, I can recall nothing but one long dreary st...

So Arthur Blathwayte was made Dean of Lowchester, and at once began his preparations for vacating Restham Rectory; while his promotion gradually subsided from a nine days' wonde...

Arthur and Annabel were married very quietly at Restham Church; and, after a short honeymoon, took up their abode at The Deanery of Lowchester--a beautiful old house which fulfi...

Isabel Chayford came over to see me in the early spring, and immediately after Easter, Annabel, Arthur and I went for a short trip to the Canary Isles. Now that she was Dean and...

I wrote to Isabel that I had changed my mind, and that I consented to have Frank at Restham for his convalescence: but I asked her to make it quite clear to him that I felt it a...

Or, rather, I had come to the knowledge that there was nothing to forgive: that the man whose insensate folly had spoilt my life and Fay's was not Frank at all, but myself.

This then is the story of the drama of my life; the story of how in my case the greatest miracle of all was accomplished, and the shadow on the dial was brought ten degrees back...