Ten Degrees Backward

by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

But on another score I felt that I did well to be angry. Her last remark had put my back up with a vengeance. I should have been within my rights had I allowed Annabel to leave the Manor on the occasion of my marriage—as indeed she herself had suggested: I should not have been in any way behaving shabbily to her had I adopted this suggestion: but I felt I could not do it after all the years that she and I had lived there together. But the fact that Fay and I had not the heart to turn her out in no way altered the truth that it was a favour on our part to keep her in. And she ought not to have forgotten this, I kept repeating to myself, or to have regarded our kindness as something to which she was entitled, and which—in my present fury—I considered she had abused.

It is strange how quickly a favour develops into a right. We show a kindness to some one, and the first time it is received with gratitude: the second time it is accepted as a matter of course: and the third time we are given to understand that any deviation from its accustomed rendering would be regarded as a cause of justifiable offence.

There is another problem which has always puzzled me, and which I have never been able to explain: and that is that we all behave so much better to other people than other people behave to us. It would seem as if there must be a converse to this, to set the balance right; but there isn't; or, at any rate, nobody that I ever knew has been able to find it. I have never yet met the man or the woman who, in common parlance, got as good as they gave. So I have no doubt that while I was aghast at Annabel's ingratitude to me, she was equally aghast at my ingratitude to her. Such is that queer compound which we call human nature.

And as I mused upon these mysteries my anger gradually evaporated; and when its departing mists cleared away, I tried to look at the whole matter calmly and dispassionately.

An old friend of mine used to say: "If any one says anything disagreeable to you, see what good you can get out of it. You have had the pain of it: so don't dismiss it from your mind until you have got the profit as well."

Therefore I set about seeing what profit I could derive from my sister's most unpleasant remarks.

Although she had irritated me almost beyond endurance, I knew that Annabel possessed too much sound sense for her opinion to be lightly set aside. Her words were worthy of consideration, even if consideration did not induce me to agree with them. So I considered them with as much impartiality as I could muster at the moment.

I was perfectly aware that certain kinds of men have sufficiently strong personalities to make marriage with them a profession in itself—a profession absorbing enough to occupy a wife's entire time and thoughts. But I was not that kind of man; and it was no use pretending that I was.

I hesitate before setting up my humble opinion in opposing that of Shakspere: but I cannot believe that to "assume a virtue if you have it not" is at all a wise course to pursue: for the reason that every quality has its corresponding defect, and one is so apt to assume the defect and to leave out the quality. When old women pose as young ones, they assume the follies of youth without its compensating charms: when dull men set up as wits, they indulge in the gaseousness of repartee without its accompanying sparkle. Therefore it was of no use for me to act as if I were an interesting or absorbing husband, while all the time I was only a rather dull and very devoted one. I felt it was not in me to be a profession for any lively and intelligent woman. I was only fit for a pastime—or at best a hobby.

Now if Annabel had been a man, she would have been quite different. She would have married a quiet, pliable sort of girl, and then would have moulded the girl's character, and filled the girl's thoughts, and ordered the girl's actions, until the girl's whole world would have been summed up in Annabel. And the girl would have been quite content and happy, and would have asked for nothing else. But it was out of my power to do any of these things. Again I was brought face to face with my old mistake of being the boy and letting Annabel be the girl: it seemed as if I should never outlive the consequences of that early error.