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 houseboy. 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 coöperative 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 archexperts 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 signalled 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.
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’s Funeral Oration.
The girls and mistresses smiled half-heartedly 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 dormitory 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 curlpapers.
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 anyone who made a turn towards 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 those words from the dark corner of the cellar where he was holding his mother’s hand.
The stair rod is loose … someone will brea
k 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 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 cheerful and 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 simply 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.
She started down. He watched in a kind of appalled fascination.
Then there was a metallic rattle of stair rods. A scream … a crash … as she fell forward and hurtled down the stairs, landing on the tiles of the front hall.
A little moan … then silence …
For a moment Branny stood motionless. One impulse urged him to move forward, another held him back. A sense of triumph warred with a feeling of fear for what he had done.
In the dim light from the gas by the front door he could see the dark figure lying still—very still—at the foot of the stairs.
He felt nothing—only the certainty that Aunt Hilda was there—dead.
Then he heard a sound that made his blood turn to ice. There were heavy footsteps above him and a voice came from the upstairs landing: “Good God, what has happened? Did you have an accident?”
It was a horribly familiar voice. Aunt Hilda’s voice! He became conscious that his aunt, holding her candle high above her head, was making her way down the stairs, skirting the perilous third and fourth steps.
Aunt Hilda was coming down the stairs. Then it could not be Aunt Hilda who was lying there, a dark pool on the tiles of the hall.
Through his agony of remorse and terror Branny heard Aunt Hilda’s voice again: “Constance, Constance, are you hurt?”
There was no need for Branny to move closer. In the nearing light from his aunt’s candle, he could make out quite clearly the outlines of that figure lying there, could see the aureole of dark hair framing the beloved face, paler now than death.
“Mother!”
The word came in a groan of agony. Then Branny turned away and disappeared into the darkness.
There is a degree of suffering beyond which the human mind cannot go, even in childhood where suffering is so acute. It is beyond the realm of sanity and verges on the outer darkness beyond which there is no thought, no reason.
Luckily for Branny he reached that point of narcosis immediately. His only instinct was a blind desire to hide—somewhere far away, to fade and quite forget. Up in the attic there was a cupboard whose door he could lock from the inside. It was musty and dirty but he didn’t care. It was dark and as far away from the front hall as possible.
For hours he crouched there in the darkness, his mind mercifully blank. If any conscious thought came to him it was simply that he had killed his mother and if he stayed hidden up there long enough he’d die too and that would be that.
Somewhere in the house were voices and footsteps, the girls returning from their cellar and trooping back to their dormitories. And then someone was calling his name: “Branny … Branny …”
But he didn’t move. He’d never come out of his hiding place … never … and when they found him, if they ever did, he’d be dead and they could bury him by his mother.
He sat there, dry-eyed, and immobile as a rock. He had no sense of time or place any more. He slept. He was dimly conscious of that when he awoke. He was dimly conscious too of faint light creeping through the cracks in the door which told him it was day. Then the daylight went again. It never occurred to him that he might be hungry. He did not even feel the aching of his body. Noises sounded occasionally, infinitely remote. He heard them but he di
dn’t try to interpret them. He slept again and awoke again to his stubborn grief.
At some point, it might have been aeons later, he heard Aunt Nellie’s voice and he knew that she was near, actually in the attic.
“The cupboard, Miss Snellgrove. When Miss Foster searched up here yesterday, she never thought of the cupboard. It is just possible …”
And then Miss Snellgrove’s tearful voice. “Oh, Mrs. Delaney, hasn’t there been any new word from the police station?”
“Not a word, but it’s hopeless. They have searched everywhere, all over the countryside. I am convinced, Miss Snellgrove, that the boy is …”
At that moment the door handle of the cupboard was vigorously shaken.
“See? It’s locked. Branny.” Aunt Nellie’s voice was kind but strained with anxiety. “Branny, I know you are there. Do come out, there’s a good boy.”
Branny crouched deeper into the cupboard and pulled some musty curtains over him. They were not going to get him out by any trick of kindness or anxiety.
They were both tugging at the unyielding door.
“He must be there. Oh, Branny, do come out….”
At last they went away. It seemed a long time before anyone came again, and then there was the sound of footsteps and a man’s voice. Branny recognized it at once as that of the doctor who had attended his father during his final illness.
“Branny—” this time it was Aunt Hilda speaking—“Dr. Berry is here to talk to you. He has something to tell you.” She added hurriedly: “I’m going away so you can talk to him alone.”
Branny heard her heavy footsteps departing and the doctor’s voice:
“Branson, my boy, won’t you come out? I want to talk to you about your mother.”
Branny did not answer. They were speaking softly and gently to him now, but as soon as they got him out, they’d be harsh with him. Perhaps they had guessed what he had done on the stairs and he would be sent to prison.
The Ordeal of Mrs. Snow Page 13