After dinner the next day she addressed the whole school, including the staff and servants, allotting specific duties.
She tried, unsuccessfully, to give to the project an air of holiday or treat — a special amusement designed by herself for the delectation of the whole school. While attempting to make light of any possible danger, she managed to make her discourse sound like Pericles’ Funeral Oration.
The girls and mistresses smiled halfheartedly as they trooped out of the dining-hall.
However, the actual practice alert did prove to be more fun than had been expected. Aunt Hilda scheduled it for the second hour of afternoon school. She handled it with impressive thoroughness. Girls, governesses, even the servants were instructed to go upstairs to their rooms, to undress and get right into bed, just as if it were their normal bedtime. At the sound of the whistle, things were to begin.
It was far, far better than the algebra or French of afternoon school.
The girls loved it, especially the little ones. And how they giggled when — the whistle having sounded — Aunt Nellie appeared in a cerise peignoir and lighting the candle in broad daylight, advised them, half in English and half in French: “Look sharp, children, and prenny garde.”
Squeaking and tittering could be heard from every room, particularly from the senior domitory where Miss Earle — who had a flair for the dramatic — had appeared in a Japanese kimono with her hair actually done up in a full panoply of curl papers.
Branny enjoyed it all, too. He had, as the only possessor of a flashlight, been given a special assignment. His job was to stand at the top of the back stairs, flashing on his light when needed and shooing off any one who made a turn toward the front stairs. He entertained himself by flashing his light into the girls’ eyes as they scuttled down the stairs with a “boo, look out for the zeppelins” or a surreptitious pinch for those with whom he knew he could take liberties.
After the last girl and junior staff member had been shepherded down, Branny stood at his post and watched, fascinated, as Aunt Hilda emerged from her room in a snuff-colored dressing gown and conscientiously went through the motions of turning out the unlighted gaslights in each passage. Then, carrying a lit candle, she made her portentous way down the front stairs towards the gas bracket in the hall. She was moving fast and purposefully but on the last stair but one she stumbled and the candle fell from her hand.
As Branny scurried away to join the others in the cellar he suddenly knew what was going to happen.
A minute later, when Aunt Hilda came down, he heard her say to Ruby: “One of the rods is loose on the front stairs. See to it at once or someone will break her neck.”
Branny’s pulses were racing as he heard these words from the dark corner of the cellar where he was holding his mother’s hand.
The stair rod is loose... someone will break her neck...
Next time, perhaps, it wouldn’t be daylight. A stair rod might be loose at the top of the stairs rather than at the bottom. Then someone going down hurriedly in the darkness might easily fall all the way from the top and — break her neck...
That night, when going through the stereotyped formula of his prayers: “And bless mother and all kind friends and make me a good boy. Amen,” he added a rider:
“And please, God, make the zeppelins come here soon.”
During the ensuing days while he was waiting for his prayers to be answered, Branny was a model boy. He was good, so obedient, that everyone thought he must be sickening from some infectious disease.
He was particularly polite to Aunt Hilda, for he had inspected the front stairs very carefully. The carpet was overlaid by a drugget of thick, patterned linen. This was held in place by stair rods which fitted into rings at both ends. By pushing the rod an inch or two out of its rung on the banister side and by loosening the drugget, he found he achieved a surface almost as slippery and hazardous as a toboggan slide. Only a quick grab at the banister with the right hand could save anyone. And Aunt Hilda had held the candle in her right hand during the practice. After the fall, when the drugget would automatically be more loosened, no one could ever guess that the stair rods had been deliberately pushed out of their ring-sockets.
He decided on loosening the rods on two stairs — the third and fourth from the top — and practiced several times, even doing it with his eyes closed, since the final deed would have to be done in darkness.
With a child’s implacability he trained himself to the task as thoroughly and impersonally as a guerrilla, but he never really assessed what he was doing. There was going to be an accident. That was all.
Waiting was hard, especially at night when he lay sleepless in bed, his senses tingling in expectation of the sound of the church bell. That there might be any real danger from Zeppelins to himself or to his mother never even occurred to him. Branny feared no straightforward menace.
He was asleep when the church bell finally sounded at two o’clock on a bitter cold night in early December. He jumped out of bed shivering, put on his trousers and jersey, picked up his flashlight, and made his way to his appointed place between the front and back stairs.
From the girls’ bedrooms he could hear twitterings, less gay and giggly now that the real thing had come. He watched the governesses moving, candles in hand, from dormitory to dormitory. Then he slipped to his mother’s room and escorted her to the servants’ wing, whence she was to conduct the maids down the kitchen stairs into the distant safety of the cellar.
Before the procession started was his time for action. Very quickly, and quite calmly, he ran to the front stairs and loosened the rods and the drugget on the third and fourth stairs.
Soon afterwards the girls and governesses began to troop from their dormitories. The children, for the most part, looked frightened and bewildered. Branny didn’t tease them or pretend to be a zeppelin this time, but — as befitted the only male in the house — said encouraging things.
“The old zeps won’t get this far. We’ll shoot ’em all down over London. You see if we don’t...”
Then, when everyone had dispersed — including Aunt Nellie in her cerise wrap — Branny made his way down the back stairs and to the far end of the hall where he could keep the front stairs under observation.
He did not exactly want to witness Aunt Hilda’s downfall. There was no element of sadism or gloating in his scrutiny. It was simple a ruthless sense of efficiency which made him wish to reassure himself that the accident would happen.
The church bell had stopped tolling and the minutes seemed endless. In the near-darkness he could hear the grandfather clock near him ticking off the seconds like drum beats.
Then there was the opening of a door upstairs and he recognized Aunt Hilda’s heavy tread as she moved along the upstairs passages, turning out the gas. As he waited breathless, he heard another sound. Someone was running with light, swift tread up the back stairs. It must, he reflected, be one of the governesses who had forgotten something. He heard Aunt Hilda’s voice saying:
“Forgotten your coat? Well, hurry up and get it. It’s very cold in the cellar and I hope none of the girls...”
The sound of the light scurrying footsteps retreated. A door opened and closed. For a second or two there was no sound except the rhythmic ticking of the grandfather clock and the pounding of Branny’s own heart.
Then footsteps again and — as he peered unseeingly into the darkness upstairs — Branny was conscious of someone approaching the top of the front stairs. Aunt Hilda must be coming down, but without her candle.
Now he could see her dimly as she moved. She had reached the small landing at the crest of the stairs.