Nice day on the whole, but not quite right somehow. Wish mother didn’t always look so anxious when there’s a dinner party. You always expect things to happen wrong, and really Rocket knows his business by this time. All of us a little forced, I think. It seemed funny not being at Garth and Philip the first person we’ve ever had not of the family. Aunt Sarah keeps forgetting who he is, or pretends to. I wish he didn’t make up to mother quite so much. That isn’t the way to make her like him. I really do understand him much better than anyone else does—much better than Katie.
Dec. 31st. Going to the Savoy party to-night. Hope it will be fun. Never expected mother to let me, but she’s awfully sweet to me lately. She’s a darling, but we’re really always just a little afraid of one another. Of course I’m not out yet, so I’ll have to be quiet to-night. Mother never would have dreamt of letting me go six months back. End of the year—made several resolutions. Not to be snappy, nor superior, nor cynical, nor selfish. That’s enough for anyone to look after! Wonder what things will be like this year, and how Katie and Philip will turn out. Feel as though things will all go wrong, and yet I don’t know why. Bought the hat I saw a fortnight ago. Finished ‘House of Gentlefolks’. Adored it. Discussed it with Philip. Going to get all the other Turgenieffs. Think Russia must be a wonderful country. Time to dress. I know I’ll just love the party....
Only Mrs. Trenchard herself could say whether or no she had enjoyed this Christmas. She displayed the same busy placidity as on other occasions; of her fears, disappointments, surprises, she said nothing. The turkey was a success, the plum-pudding burnt with a proper glow, no one was ill, she had forgotten, in sending out her parcels, no single Trenchard relation—surely all was well.
Her brother, Timothy, who knew her better than anyone else did, had long abandoned the penetration of her motives, aims, regrets. There had been a time when she had been almost intimate with him, then something (he never knew what) had driven her in more obstinately than ever upon herself. Something he had said.... He could point almost exactly to the day and hour. She had been a stranger to him from that moment.
Her history was, however, very simple.
When she had been a very, very small child she had decided for herself that the way to give life a real value was to fix one’s affection upon someone: perhaps there had been also the fear of life as a motive, the discovery that the best way to be protected from all kinds of perils was to be so fond of someone that nothing else mattered. With a quiet, undemonstrative but absolutely tenacious hold she attached herself to her nurse, who deserted her on the appearance of a younger sister, to her mother, who died, to her father, who was always so busy that loving him was like being devoted to a blotting pad. When she was ten years of age she went to school, and clung to a succession of older girls, who, however, found, in her lack of all demonstrations, her almost cynical remarks, her inability to give any expression whatever to her emotions, something, at first, terrifying, and afterwards merely tiresome.
When she was about eighteen she discovered that the person to whom a woman should be properly attached was her husband. She waited then very calmly until she was twenty, when George Trenchard appeared, proposed to her, and was accepted. She took it so utterly for granted that her devotion to him would fill sufficiently the energy of her remaining days that it wasn’t until the end of a year of married life that she discovered that, although he liked her very much, he could do quite beautifully without her, and did, indeed, for three-quarters of every day forget her altogether. No one, except herself, knew whether that discovery hurt her. She, of course, said nothing to anyone about it. She waited for the arrival of her children. Katherine, Henry and Mildred came, and at last it seemed that Mrs. Trenchard’s ship had come into port. During their early years, at any rate, they clung to her tenaciously, did not in the least mind that she had nothing to say to them: they found her sure and safe and, best of all possible things in a parent, always the same. It was when Katherine was six years old that Timothy said to her one day:
“Look here, Harriet, don’t get so wrapt in the children that you’ll never be able to unwrap yourself again. I’ve seen it happen dozens of times, and it always gives endless trouble later on. It’s all very well now, but the time will come when they’ll break away—it must come, and you’ll suffer horribly unless you’re ready for it. I’m not married myself, it’s true, but I see all the more for that very reason.”
This was the speech that severed Mrs. Trenchard from her brother. She never forgot nor forgave it. She never forgave it because she could not forget it: his words were to haunt her from the moment of their utterance until the last conscious instant of her life. She had been born entirely without imagination, but she had not been born without the wish for romance. Moreover, the Faunder tradition (which is the same as the Trenchard tradition) taught her to believe that there was something enfeebling and dangerous about imagination, and that the more one thought about things not immediately within sight the less likely one was to do one’s daily task with efficiency. Her longing for a romantic life therefore (that is for the justification of her own personal existence) was assisted by no private dreams nor castle-building. No Faunder or Trenchard had ever built a castle in the air when there were good square manors and vicarages waiting to be constructed on good solid ground. She directed the whole of her passionate life towards her relations with her children, but never even to herself would she admit that she had any passionate life at all. Take away the children and there was nothing left for her except her religion; because the loss of them would be the one tragedy that would drive her to question the justice of her God was justification of itself for her passionate determination.