When the more important things in the establishment had been clucked into a state of dull efficiency, Aunt Hilda turned her attention to Branny, who, she decided, was a shockingly coddled child. First of all she banished him once again to the fear-inhabited attic bedroom. Having neither the strength of will nor the command of vocabulary to defy her sister-in-law, Mrs. Foster tried at least to soften this blow for her son by providing him with a night light. But Aunt Hilda snapped: “Nonsense, Constance, stop pampering the child. Besides, it’s unpatriotic to waste tallow in wartime.”
It was unpatriotic, apparently, to waste quite a few things on Branny. The teas stopped almost immediately and his diet was rigidly overhauled. Meat, which he loved, was almost forbidden. In place of warm slices from a new cottage loaf with butter or jam, he had to make out with thick slices of yesterday’s bread scraped by Aunt Hilda’s own hands with a thin film of margarine. And at breakfast, even in holiday time when there were no pupils to consider, he had to endure the agony of lumpy porridge swimming in hot milk while his aunts, good trencherwomen both, partook liberally of ham, sausages, or poached eggs and bacon.
Exasperated one morning when Constance furtively slipped a sausage to Branny from her own plate, Aunt Hilda pronounced the dreaded words:
“Constance, you are hopeless with that child. There is only one thing to do. He must go to a boys’ boarding school. He needs the discipline of boys of his own age. You are turning him into a milksop.”
There followed a heated argument, at the end of which Constance was dissolved in tears and Branny, goaded beyond endurance, called his aunts “Two fat old pigs.”
Oddly enough in this impasse it was Aunt Nellie who came forward with a solution which more or less proved satisfactory to all parties. She approached Constance some hours later in her bedroom where she had taken her poorliness and Branny after the storm in the breakfast teacups. Aunt Nellie argued with sweet persuasiveness. No one wanted to get rid of dear Branson, of course, but Constance must admit it was not good for a child to be the only little boy in a school for girls. Now she, Aunt Nellie, had been writing to her friends in Mysore; indeed, she flattered herself she had worked up quite a neat little Anglo-Indian connection for the school. In some cases parents had not wanted their children to be separated, it being wartime and India being so far away, and several girls could be snared for the school provided their little brothers could also be admitted. The introduction of boys into the school would not only solve the problem of Branny, it would bring the sisters proportionate financial benefits.
It was this last consideration which won the nod of approval from Aunt Hilda, and the winter term was not too far advanced by the time Branny was sharing his attic—now pretentiously called the boys’ dormitory—with the first harbinger of the male contingent.
Branny might almost have been at boarding school, so far had he been severed from his mother. They had to scheme for their meetings like guilty lovers. Since Branny could do nothing, it was Mrs. Foster who developed craft. She persuaded one of the junior governesses that she was not “strong” enough and substituted herself as director of the younger children’s afternoon walk. She imagined ailments for the solitary male boarder so that she could sneak up to the dormitory for a surreptitious squeeze of Branny’s hand before “Lights out.”
These were, however, frugal crumbs of comfort for Branny. Life had become even bleaker than in the most flourishing days of the moustache. And with the stubborn simplification of the very young, Branny viewed the causes of this new régime and affixed all the blame for it on Aunt Hilda.
From then on he hated Aunt Hilda with a hatred that was the more bitter because there was no one with whom he could share it.
Although the admission of boys to Oaklawn had brought him no positive advantages, it did bring him a friend and ally who influenced him profoundly. This was the male boarder, a youngster of Branny’s own age, who was afflicted with the name of Marmaduke Cattermole. His father was the Vice-vice something-or-other of something-or-other in India and the son was Vice and Sophistication personified. A degenerate imp, as Aunt Hilda was to call him later, not without a certain approximation to essential truth.
Branny was a trifle overawed when this angelic-looking child first appeared. In fact, everyone was overawed by Marmalade, as he himself chose to be called. Aunt Hilda, observing his ethereal complexion and remembering the alphabetic distinction following his father’s name, decreed an extra blanket for him and a glass of milk at midday.
This milk, intended by Aunt Hilda as a special mark of favor, produced an unexpected result. For Marmalade had a passionate and whimsical hatred for milk and when it became plain that milk was to be forced upon him willy-nilly, this hatred transferred itself to Aunt Hilda as the instigator of his misery. In a short time his loathing outrivalled and outshone even that of Branny.
Indeed, Marmalade was obsessed with Aunt Hilda. He brewed malice against her with every breath and being a talented boy both with pencil and in doggerel rhyme, he mightily convulsed Branny with his verses and sketches. Outwardly he was honey-sweet to her but behind her back the angel was transformed into a monster. He invented innumerable names for her, among which the few printable ones were “blackbeetle,” “hellwitch,” and “the female gorilla.”
There is nothing like hatred to breed hatred in others. Branny and Marmalade fanned each other to a pitch of frenzy and in this new alliance with a boy of his own age against the Archenemy, Branny forgot some of his hunger for his mother.
Gradually and imperceptibly Marmalade led the more timid Branny into action. It started with a terrifying, tiptoed investigation of Aunt Hilda’s bedroom. The yield was less exotic than that of Aunt Nellie’s room. There were some severe black dresses with whalebone collar supports which Marmalade promptly removed; a coroneted handkerchief sachet, doubtless the gift of the titled lady whose declining years had been cheered; some entrancing thick bloomers over which the two boys giggled; and several pairs of formidable stays.
The nearest approach to feminine daintiness was a bottle of eau de Cologne. Following Marmalade’s lead, Branny spat into it long and dribblingly.
The most intriguing object was a key hidden in a small drawer. After frantic detective work it was found to open a small medicine closet on the shelf above Aunt Hilda’s bed. Its contents were disappointing, too. Apart from a few household medicaments, there was an enema tube, whose purpose was unknown even to the sophisticated Marmalade, and a small bottle labelled brandy.
Marmalade pointed to it in delight. “Look, man. I bet the old blackbeetle guzzles brandy all night. Bet she gets drunk as a geyser, man.”
This allegation, though fascinating, was incidentally quite unfounded. Aunt Hilda was the soberest of mortals and kept a small supply of brandy as an emergency measure against sickness in others of less iron constitution.
Marmalade pointed excitedly to another bottle of approximately the same size and shape. It was labelled TINCTURE OF IODINE—POISON, and there was a red skull and crossbones.
“Coo, man, let’s pour some of that into the brandy,” he said daringly, “so next time the old witch takes a swig—”
“Gosh, no, man. You’d get put in prison or hanged.” Branny’s voice was awestruck. He had a wholesome terror of the forces of law and justice.
Marmalade snorted. “Who cares for the rotten old police? If old blackbeetle was out in India, we’d do her in easy, man. One of my dad’s houseboys pushed his wife off a cliff into the river and a crocodile ate her. Never found out either till someone killed the crocodile and found her bracelet inside. He didn’t get into any kind of a row.” Marmy’s saintlike face puckered in a simian grin. “Pity the poor crocodile that ate old hellwitch.”
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.
Ap
parently 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 halfpenny 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 upwards 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 grey woollen 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 mouse’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 onto 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 imposition.
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 holiday 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’s care.
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 jewelled fingers. On the table lay Black Beauty, open at the end pages, the broad caricatures glaringly displayed.
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 towards 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.
“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. “He must have 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.
The Ordeal of Mrs. Snow Page 12