“I don’t care. He shouldn’t—”
She got up, rubbed her cheeks with her hand because they were burning, and, with a glance at Philip’s photograph (someone she had known years ago and would never know again), went out. The house was silent, and she met no one. As she crossed the lawn she thought: “How absurd! We’ve quarrelled—a real quarrel”—then—“It wasn’t my fault. He shouldn’t—” She held her head very high indeed as she walked down the road to the Bridge, but she saw no one, felt no rain upon her cheek, was not conscious that she was moving. At the door of the Schools she saw Mrs. Smart, and heard someone say quite sensibly and happily:
“We’re early. There won’t be many this afternoon, I expect.”
“Mrs. Douglas has told me that she won’t be able to come—I wonder, Katie, whether you’d mind taking—”
“Why, of course.”
Mrs. Smart was little and round and brown like a pippin. She was always breathless from having more to wrestle with than she could grasp. She was nervous, too, and short-sighted, and the one governing motive of her life was to bear her husband a son. She had now four daughters; she knew that her husband felt it very deeply. She had once unburdened herself to Katherine, but, after that, had been shyer with her than before. Katherine, against her will, had been often irritated by Mrs. Smart—she had wondered at her restlessness and incapacity to keep up with the business in hand, but to-day, out of the sinister gloom of that horrible afternoon, the little woman seemed to Katie suddenly sympathetic, eloquent, moving. Katie could hear her voice, rather husky, rather uncertain, on that afternoon of her confession: “... and we did really hope that Lucy would be a boy, we really did. He would have been called Edward. Harold has such plans for a son—we have often thought together what we would do ... and now, I’m afraid....”
Inside the schoolroom door Katie paused, looked at the room with the bare benches arranged in squares, the shining maps of the world and Europe, the case with beetles and butterflies, the hideous harmonium.
She suddenly caught Mrs. Smart’s hand and pressed it through the damp little glove. She knew that Mrs. Smart would be surprised—she had never been demonstrative to her before.... She moved to her part of the room, three only of her class were present, and to these were added two small boys from another division.
“Now, children,” said Mr. Smart’s cheerful voice (he always spoke to boys as though he were luring animals into a cage), “let us start with hymn No. 436, shall we?” After the hymn, a prayer, and then, for an hour that subdued, restrained hum which belongs to the Sunday School only; being religious as well as disciplined, persuasive as well as obedient. Katherine now was very proud—as she said: “Well, Robin, and what did Moses do then?” she was thinking—“But he must come to me—that’s fair. It was not my fault. He blamed me first for not speaking, and afterwards when I did speak.... Besides, if it’s all over and finished, why should he mind?” She looked very young as she sat there, her mouth hard and set and her eyes full of trouble. Her sensation was as though she had been suddenly marooned; the desolation, the terror, the awful loneliness came, as the evening fell, creeping up towards her. “Suppose he never makes it up—Suppose he goes away and leaves me.” She caught her hands tightly together on her lap and her breath suddenly left her.
“Yes, Johnny. His name was Aaron. That’s right.”