But since there were no cliffs and no crocodiles at the Oaklawn School, little that was productive could be gleaned from this lurid reminiscence. Satisfying themselves with a last dribble in the eau de cologne bottle, the two boys stole away to safety.
Apparently nothing was suspected and the conspirators exchanged ecstatic grins every time Aunt Hilda took out her handkerchief and a faint whiff of eau de cologne assailed their nostrils.
Not long content with past triumphs, Marmalade’s fertile mind soon conceived a new plan of attack. Pleading scientific experiments, he made a surreptitious deal with Ruby, the most amenable of the scullery maids, whereby for the sum of one half-penny apiece she would hand over to him every live mouse caught in the kitchen traps. They soon had quite a flourishing family which they kept in a biscuit tin and fed on crusts from their supper.
At last the hour to strike came. Aunt Hilda’s only real self-indulgence was an hour of “forty winks” after tea. It was an immutable law and one could absolutely count upon it. Plans were duly laid. Branny was to stand guard at the foot of the front stairs while Marmalade stole up the back way with his biscuit tin and planted the mice in Aunt Hilda’s bed.
Branny waited breathlessly at his post. He could hear the clink of cups where his mother and aunts were taking their tea. Everything was running smoothly. Marmalade reappeared, his golden face beautiful with anticipation.
“Right between the sheets, man. All four of ’em. I bet the old—”
“Cave,” whispered Branny, for at that moment the study door opened and Aunt Hilda appeared. They withdrew into the shadows where they could not be seen but from whence they could watch the broad black back as it camelled its way ponderously upward over the drugget and stair rods.
The two children waited in the darkness, hardly daring to breathe.
At last it came — that faint scream which was probably the most feminine act ever perpetrated by Aunt Hilda. They heard her door open, they saw her appear, clad in a gray woolen dressing gown, at the top of the stairs.
Then, for all her bulk, Aunt Hilda ran down the front stairs as swiftly as a young doe, calling to no one in particular.
“The cat, quick! Mouse in my bed!”
The cat was duly obtained and shut in Aunt Hilda’s room where it allegedly left a half-eaten carcass under the bed.
Though the two boys hovered around, they never discovered the fate of the other mice. Whether they were squashed by the bulk of Aunt Hilda or whether they escaped to plague her further was forever shrouded in mystery.
But the reason for the mice’s presence in her bed did not long remain a mystery to the astute Aunt Hilda. The truth was made plain after a rigorous cross-examination of the scullery maid, Ruby, and Branny and Marmy received the Wages of Sin.
They were ordered to spend the rest of the day locked in their room, where they were to write one hundred times in their best copperplate hand the laudable sentence:
“Do unto others as you would be done by.”
No food would be served until Aunt Hilda was satisfied with their task.
They wasted considerable time trying to tie two nibs on to a single pen and thus do two lines at once. Finally they abandoned this and settled to their work, which they finished about an hour after their normal dinner time. They were, of course, ravenous, but they were too proud to signal their distress. However, they had a friend at court, for a faint rustling under the door attracted their attention and they saw six thin bars of milk chocolate appear under the crack. They fell on them and devoured them avidly without speculation as to their source.
It was typical of Branny’s love for his mother that he never subsequently caused her embarrassment by thanking her. In some respects he was a very tactful and gallant gentleman.
As the afternoon lengthened with no sign from their jailer, Satan inevitably entered to find mischief for idle hands. He started innocently enough goading Marmalade to write a number of lyrics all beginning with the line of their impositon.
But after a while this palled and the poet turned artist. Since they had used up all their paper, Marmalade adorned the end-leaves of Branny’s copy of Black Beauty with caricatures of Aunt Hilda’s ample figure, which became increasingly anatomical. By the time they heard Aunt Hilda’s footsteps on the stairs, the end-papers of Miss Sewell’s innocuous little opus were in a condition which would have caused the cheeks of its authoress to turn deep scarlet. Quickly Black Beauty was hidden behind the other books on the shelf and forgotten.
Although Marmalade remained the only male boarder, Oaklawn School for Girls prospered financially — an undeniable fact of which the aunts made capital, attributing it, of course, to their own efficiency and overlooking the geographical and chronological aspects of the case.
Branny, as far divorced as ever from his mother, dreamed of the holidays for which he and his mother had secretly planned a trip to Weston-Super-Mare.
But when the holidays came his dreams were shattered, for Aunt Nellie’s Anglo-Indian connection had been all too successful and there were several unwanted, homeless girls who had nowhere to go and had to remain under the school scare.
So Constance was required to stay at home and Branny stayed too, eating the same uninteresting food as during term time and denied even the use of the front stairs.
But life was not too impossible — at least not until the day that Aunt Hilda started, unbeknown to anyone else, to collect items for a local Church bazaar for the Belgian Refugee Fund. During the course of her probings, she came upon Branny’s books and it was not long before Black Beauty was discovered. Unfortunately there was a duplicate copy and she picked on the one in which Marmalade, now vacationing with an aunt in Chapstow, had made his recognizable drawings.
It went to the vicarage along with other books, a faded lampshade, two broken parasols, a wilted pair of chintz curtains, and a supernumerary pair of andirons.
Branny was in the garden the next day when the vicar’s wife arrived. With the sure instinct of childhood, he knew that there was trouble brewing even before he saw Black Beauty clasped to an indignant bosom.
He gave her one of his slowest, sweetest smiles, but she hardly responded. Then his heart went sick because he saw what she was carrying.
She was shown to the drawing-room to see Aunt Hilda, and soon Branny’s mother and Aunt Nellie were sent for. Branny hovered around but acoustically the drawing-room was poor — that is, for people listening outside the door. He heard nothing but later, when the vicar’s wife left and the conference was transferred to the study, his eavesdropping was more successful.
“It’s entirely your fault, Constance,” Aunt Hilda was speaking. “You’ve raised the child without the first principles of discipline.”
“He needs a good whipping,” this from Aunt Nellie.
“It’s not his fault and you’re not to touch him.” Branny could hear his mother’s voice, tearful but determined. Then he caught the mention of Marmalade’s name.
“That degenerate imp... he’ll have to go... wouldn’t have had Mrs. Jackson... for the world... scandal... ruin the school... of course, Branny must go too.”
It was more than Branny could bear. He pushed open the door and marched in.
The three women were sitting around the center table. His mother held a handkerchief up to her face. Aunt Hilda’s arms were folded across a broad intransigent chest. Aunt Nellie drummed jeweled fingers. On the table lay Black Beauty, open at the end-pages, the broad caricatures glaringly displayed.