Branny’s eyes were riveted on them in horrified fascination. Then some strange impulse seized him and he started to laugh, helplessly, hysterically.
“Branson Foster.” Aunt Hilda’s voice thundered through the room. But it was Aunt Nellie’s ringed hand that delivered the sharp slap to the boy’s face.
“Stop it — at once!”
Branny’s laughter ended as abruptly as it had begun.
He moved toward his mother, seeking her face. But it was hidden behind her handkerchief.
Aunt Hilda demanded: “Branson, did you — er — perpetrate these... these—?”
Branson was still looking at his mother, paying no attention to Aunt Hilda.
“Speak up, you wicked child,” rapped Aunt Nellie.
But Branny did not answer. The aunts started talking, both at once. Branny had found his mother’s hand and was squeezing it. His touch seemed to give her courage because she spoke at last.
“Hilda, Nellie,” she faltered. “Leave us alone, will you, please?”
“Very well, Constance. He’s your son.” Aunt Hilda rose ponderously. “But if you find he isn’t innocent — and I can’t believe he is...”
“Innocent,” snorted Aunt Nellie.
“What he must have is a good whipping.”
Aunt Hilda took a ruler from the desk and pushed it across the table towards Constance. The two aunts withdrew.
Alone with his mother, Branny did not speak for a moment. His eyes turned again to the dreadful book on the table. Then suddenly, almost fiercely, he picked it up and threw it in the fire. The sight of the flames curling around the images of Aunt Hilda gave him a strange satisfaction.
His mother’s large brown eyes were staring at him inquiringly.
“Oh, Branny, did you... Oh, if only I knew what to do... if your father were alive.”
His eyes downcast, Branny said:
“I didn’t do it but... but I don’t want Them to know I didn’t.”
“But Branny...”
“I’ll take a whipping.” He took the ruler from the table and held it out.
“But Branny... if you’re innocent—”
“I’ll take a whipping,” he repeated doggedly.
“Oh, Branny, I know what it is. You don’t want to tell on Marmy.”
Still Constance did not move. Her large brown eyes filled with tears. With sudden determination Branny seized the ruler from her with his right hand and brought it down on his own left palm with hard, painful whacks. After each blow he uttered a realistic howl. He changed hands, striking at his right hand. With the sixth blow he gave vent to a burst of caterwauling which, for all its violence was almost sincere.
Then he rushed from the room, past his listening aunts who looked at each other and nodded in satisfaction. He could almost hear them saying:
“I didn’t know poor Constance had it in her.”
He ran up the front stairs to his room and stayed there almost all day.
When next he saw his mother alone, he learned that Aunt Hilda was adamant about his going away to a boys’ boarding school next term. Marmy would have to leave, too.
And when he went up to bed in his lonely attic, Aunt Hilda forbade him once again the use of the front stairs. That night he dreamed of Marmy’s Indian crocodile, but the woman toppling over the cliff into the reptile’s jaws was not the houseboy’s wife, it was Aunt Hilda. And when he awoke, a strange quivering of excitement was in him. If Aunt Hilda were gone, life could be golden again. Accidents did happen. Why couldn’t an accident happen to Aunt Hilda?
Once his mind had leaped this terrific hurdle, the idea was never out of his thoughts. He nursed it like a secret joy. An accident had happened to the wife of Marmy’s father’s houseboy and nothing had happened to the house-boy. Marmy had said so. The profundity of Marmy’s influence on him was beginning to show. Timid, unassertive, he would never have imagined what he was imagining if the other boy had not taught him that one can fight even the most formidable foe.
His dreamings were at first thrilling but vague. He remembered the blue bottle of iodine in Aunt Hilda’s room with its red skull and marked with the word POISON, and wondered what would happen if by chance some of it got into Aunt Hilda’s brandy. Iodine tasted bad. Branny knew that because he had licked some off once after it had been applied to a cut finger. Probably Aunt Hilda would taste the iodine and not drink the brandy. No, the accident wouldn’t happen that way.
Branny’s mind dwelt constantly and caressingly on Marmy’s Indian reminiscence of the unwanted wife, the cliff, and the crocodile. His days and nights were exalted with an image of Aunt Hilda falling from a high place, while below, its jaws gaping to receive its prey, squatted a monstrous but cooperative crocodile. In Branny’s secret dream world, Aunt Hilda gradually stopped being a human being. She became a symbol of Injustice. If something happened to her, it would not be something happening to a real person of real flesh and blood.
He brooded more and more, yearning for the old days of closeness and safety with his beloved. He grew so pale with brooding that his mother became quite worried about him. However, she ascribed his vapors to his dread of going away to boarding school, for arrangements were already being made with a gentlemanly but inexpensive establishment in Kent and his departure was scheduled for the beginning of the Easter term.
It was the Germans, those arch-experts in murder, who brought Branny’s secret desire out of the realms of dream and into reality. The zeppelin raids had now begun in earnest and it was rumored that they would not concentrate upon London alone but were planning to destroy the industrial cities of the midlands, even the nearby city of Bristol. These rumors were confirmed by a solemn visit from the vicar who, in his role of special constable, was responsible for seeing that all regulations were observed concerning the safety of Littletonians.
England was not yet blacked-out as it was to be later in the War and the street lamps had not yet been painted that bluish purple which, though picturesque, was to make the towns and villages so gloomy at night. The menace from the air — especially in the west — was nowhere near as great as in the Second World holocaust. Nevertheless, each little town in England was beginning to take itself seriously as a target especially picked by the Kaiser himself, and black cloth for curtains was at a premium.
The menace, however inconsiderable, was there. And the vicar, a resourceful and conscientious man, felt responsible for the safety of his flock, in particular for the young lambs entrusted to the care of the principals of Oaklawn School for Girls.
Consequently, he evolved a plan and called on Mrs. Foster and the Aunts for a solemn conference.
It had been arranged by the local authorities that the approach of Zeppelins should be signaled by the ringing of the church bell. At the first peal it behooved everybody to extinguish all lights and betake themselves to the security of their cellars. But the vicar realized that in a house of some sixty or seventy persons — mostly young persons — there might be panic or confusion resulting in serious accidents.
He suggested that the three Principals should divide up the duties among themselves or their appointees and having decided on their battle stations, they should hold a practice or two during daylight hours. In this way the girls and mistresses would get accustomed to the routine and then — when the fatal hour struck — they would hurry to the safety of the cellar like trained soldiers with the minimum of disorder. He further suggested that an air of jollity or “larkishness” should be given to the whole proceeding so that the children would not be unduly intimidated or alarmed.
“If I can be of any service,” he concluded mildly, “you can count on me.”
But that was sending coals to Newcastle. Aunt Hilda had grasped the idea perfectly. And her superb generalship was more than equal to it. In fact, it was exactly the task she relished.