“Uncle Tim,” she said, speaking rapidly but quietly and firmly, “you’ve got to help me. You’ve always said that you would if I wanted you.”
“Why, of course,” he answered simply. “What’s happened?”
“Everything. Things, as you know, have been getting worse and worse at home ever since—well, ever since Phil and I were engaged.”
“Yes, I know,” he said.
“It hasn’t been Phil’s fault,” she broke out with sudden fierceness. “He’s done everything. It’s been my fault. I’ve been blind and stupid from the beginning. I don’t want to be long, Uncle Tim, because there’s not much time, but I must explain everything so that you shall understand me and not think it wrong. We’ve got nearly two hours.”
“Two hours?” he repeated, bewildered.
“From the beginning Mother hated Phil. I always saw it of course, but I used to think that it would pass when she knew Phil better—that no one could help knowing him without loving him—and that was silly, of course. But I waited, and always hoped that things would be better. Then in the spring down here there was one awful Sunday, when Aunt Aggie at supper made a scene and accused Philip of leading Henry astray or something equally ridiculous. After that Philip wanted me to run away with him, and I—I don’t know—but I felt that he ought to insist on it, to make me go. He didn’t insist, and then I saw suddenly that he wasn’t strong enough to insist on anything, and that instead of being the great character that I’d once thought him, he was really weak and under anyone’s influence. Well, that made me love him in a different way, but more—much more—than I ever had before. I saw that he wanted looking after and protecting. I suppose you’ll think that foolish of me,” she said fiercely.
“Not at all, my dear,” said Uncle Tim, “go on.”
“Well, there was something else,” Katherine went on. “One day some time before, when we first came to Garth, he told me that when he was in Russia he had loved another woman. They had a child, a boy, who died. He was afraid to tell me, because he thought that I’d think terribly of him.
“But what did it matter, when he’d given her up and left her? Only this mattered—that I couldn’t forget her. I wasn’t jealous, but I was curious—terribly. I asked him questions, I wanted to see her as she was—it was so strange to me that there should be that woman, still living somewhere, who knew more, much more, about Phil than I did. Then the more questions I asked him about her the more he thought of her and of Russia, so that at last he asked me not to speak of her. But then she seemed to come between us, because we both thought of her, and I used to wonder whether he wanted to go back to her, and he wondered whether, after all, I was jealous about her. Then things got worse with everyone. I felt as though everyone was against us. After the Faunder wedding Henry and Phil had a quarrel, and Henry behaved like a baby.