Ten Degrees Backward

by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

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 still less in politics: I could neither turn his thousands into tens of thousands, nor his baronetcy into a peerage; for I was endowed with a fatal capacity for sitting still. If that above-mentioned mistake of Nature had not been made, and Annabel had been the boy, imagination fails to depict the heights to which she might not have risen with her father's wealth and position for a leaping-board: for, like her father, Annabel was dowered with the gift of Success, whilst I had the gift of Failure.

It is strange how some people, of whom I, alas! am one, possess the capacity to fail in whatsoever they undertake. I do not think it is altogether a fault, as we cannot help it: it seems rather an inherent quality, such as height or size or complexion. Even in childhood Annabel's things always turned out well, and mine turned out badly. Her garden blossomed like the rose, while mine was more or less a desert place, though I worked in it quite as hard as she: her white mice were ornaments to society, while mine grew into rats and had to be destroyed; her birthdays were invariably fine, while mine, equally invariably, turned to rain.

When I was young this quality of failure terribly distressed and depressed me; but age—or rather middle age—brings, in exchange for the many things it takes away, the gift of philosophy; and by the time I was forty I accepted the fact that I was a failure with much the same resignation that I accepted the facts that I was short-sighted and too narrow in the shoulders for my height. True, I was now and again haunted by the feeling that I had lived in a backwater, and had never tasted the living waters, nor felt the fierce swirl of the river of life as it rushed by on its headlong course, and that I was getting too old now ever to taste and to feel these things; but this regret was soon smothered by the beauty of my backwater, and my contentment in the lot which had been ordained for me.

Now that I am older I can see that though this quality of Failure is very trying to those who are so unfortunate as to possess it, it is also very irritating to all the successful people round about. And this fills me with wonder and gratitude when I remember the patience that my father and Annabel always showed towards me, who was so differently constituted from themselves. In spite of his disappointment in me, my father always showed me the greatest kindness and affection, and it is a comfort to me to remember that though I was not a son of whom he could be proud, I was never one of whom he could feel ashamed. I could not do the things that he would have had me do: but I studiously left undone anything of which I knew he would have disapproved. That seemed the only reparation I could make for having been the boy and allowed Annabel to be the girl.

My father did not marry until late in life; and my mother, though considerably his junior, was by no means young at the time of her marriage. This, perhaps, accounts for the fact that Annabel and I seem always to have been middle-aged. Our home was a happy one, but there was no element of youth in it. We were surrounded by every comfort and luxury, but enjoyed less actual pleasure than did most young people of our age and generation. My mother was a woman of good family, and as poor as she was proud, and I always think she must have had her romance with some one of her own age and rank before ever she met her middle-aged husband, but that the quality of failure, which she handed on to me, doomed that romance to disappointment.

It was after he had received his baronetcy that my father bought the Restham estate and married Lady Jane Winterford; so Restham Manor has always been my home—surely one of the loveliest and dearest homes that man ever had.

I was considered a delicate boy, and so was educated (mistakenly, as I now think) by tutors at home; thus I missed the inestimable advantage of public-school life, a loss which can never be made up in after years. It is to this loss, perhaps, that I owe the shyness and sensitiveness which I have never been able to outgrow; and there is no doubt that my home education fostered the feminine side of my character—a side already too much developed.

I went to Magdalen College, Oxford, and took a third in Mods. and Greats; and then—to please my father—was called to the Bar, but never to a brief. And before I had waited long for the brief that never came, my father died, and I inherited his title and estates, and I then settled down to the life of a country squire—to my mind the most delightful lot in the world for an unambitious man like myself—with Annabel to keep house for me, as she had done for my father.

It was not long after this that the old rector of Restham died, and I presented to the living my college friend, Arthur Blathwayte. Since then he had well and wisely attended to the spiritual needs of the parish, under the ægis of Annabel, who had from her childhood ruled over the whole village of Restham.