CHAPTER VI
Ragtime
If there was one thing more than another that the girls of the DowerHouse considered a particular and pressing grievance it was a wetSaturday afternoon. They were all of them outdoor enthusiasts, and to beobliged to stop in the house instead of tramping the moors or roaming onthe sea-shore was regarded as a supreme penance. On the Saturdayfollowing the mapping expedition there was no mistake about the rain--itseemed to come down in a solid sheet from a murky sky, which offeredabsolutely no prospect of clearing.
The overflowing gutter-pipes emptied veritable rivulets into a temporarypond on the front drive; the lawn appeared fast turning into a morass;and even indoors the atmosphere was so soaked with damp that a dewy filmcovered banisters, furniture, and woodwork, and the wall-paper on thestairs distinctly changed its hue. In VB classroom the girls hung aboutdisconsolately. There was to have been a special fossil foray thatafternoon under the leadership of a lady from Perranwrack, who took aninterest in the school, and who had thrown out hints of a fire ofdriftwood and a picnic tea among the rocks.
"It's so particularly aggravating, because Miss Hall has to go up toLondon on Monday and won't be back for weeks, so probably she won't beable to arrange to take us again this term," grumbled Romola.
"It's too--too _triste_!" murmured Deirdre in a die-away voice,arranging a cushion behind her head with elaborate show of indolence.
"Weally wetched!" echoed Dulcie lackadaisically, sinking into thebasket-chair with an even more used-up air than her chum.
"Good old second best!" laughed Betty. "Whom are you both copying now?Have you been gobbling a surreptitious penny novelette? I can generallytell your course of reading from your poses. These present airs andgraces suggest some such title as 'Lady Rosamond's Mystery' or 'TheEarl's Secret'. Confess, now, you're imagining yourselves members of thearistocracy."
"I believe the penny novelettes are invariably written in top garrets bypeople who've never even had a nodding acquaintance with dukes andduchesses," said Barbara. "The real article's very different from the'belted earl' of fiction. The Clara-Vere-de-Vere type is extinct now. Ifyou were a genuine countess, Deirdre, you'd probably be addressinghundreds of envelopes in aid of a philanthropic society, instead oflounging there looking like a dying duck in a thunderstorm. Don't glare!I speak the solemn words of truth."
"You make my he--head ache," protested Deirdre with half-closed eyelids,but her complaint met with no sympathy. Instead, several strong andinsistent hands pulled her forcibly out of her chair and flung away thecushion.
"I tell you we're sick of 'Lady Isobel' or whoever she may be. Forgoodness' sake be somebody more cheerful if you won't be yourself. Can'tyou get up an Irish mood for a change? A bit of the brogue would heartenup this clammy afternoon."
"Oh, isn't it piggy and nasty!" exclaimed Annie, stretching out her armsin the agony of an elephantine yawn. "I want my tea! I want my tea! Iwant my tea! And I shan't get it for a whole long weary hour!"
"Poor martyr! Here, squattez-ici on the hearth-rug and I'll make you atriscuit."
"What on earth is a triscuit?"
"Oh, you're not bright or you'd guess. It's a biscuit toasted nicelybrown and eaten hot. Don't you twig? A biscuit means 'twice cooked';therefore if it's cooked again it must be a triscuit. That stands toreason."
"Is it to be a barmecide feast? I don't see your precious biscuits."
"'"I've got 'un here," sez she, quite quiet-like,'" returned Betty, whowas a Mrs. Ewing enthusiast, and quoted Dame Datchet with relish. "Halfa pound of cream crackers, and I mean to be generous and share 'emround. Don't you all bless me? Now the question is, how we're going to'triscuit' them."
The girls crowded round with suggestions. Toasting biscuits wascertainly more entertaining than doing nothing. Deirdre forgot for thetime that she was a heroine of fiction, and plumped down by the fenderwith a lack of high-born dignity that would have scandalized "LadyIsobel".
"You'll smash them up if you try sticking your penknife through them,"she observed. "It'll burn your fingers too to hold them so close to thefire. Try the tongs."
"Some of them might be tilted up in the fender," volunteered Gerda,whose rare remarks were generally to the point. "They'd be getting hot,and we could finish them off afterwards."
"Right you are! Stick them up in a row. Now if I take this one with thetongs and hold it just over that red piece in the fire----"
"Be careful!"
"Remember it's fragile."
"There, I knew you'd smash it! Oh, pick the other half out, quick! It'sburning!"
"What a Johnnie-fingers you are! It's done for."
In the end--and it was Gerda's quiet suggestion--the tongs were placedover the fire like a gridiron and the biscuits successfully popped onthe top and turned when one side was done. Everybody appreciated themdown to the last crumb, and awarded Betty a vote of thanks for herbrilliant idea.
"The worst of it is, they're finished too soon," sighed Evie, "and we'venothing else to fill up the gap till tea-time. I want to do somethingoutrageous--break a window or smash an ornament, or damage thefurniture! What a nuisance conscience is! Why does the 'inward monitor'restrain me?"
"Probably the wholesome dread of consequences my dear. You might cutyour hand in a wild orgy of window smashing and there'd be bills to payafterwards for reglazing and medical attendance."
"But can't we do anything interesting?"
"Let's play a trick on VA," suggested Annie. "It would do them good andshake them up. My conscience gives me full leave."
"It's celebrated for its well-known elasticity!" chuckled Evie.
"But what could we do?"
"Oh, just rag them a little somehow. It would be rather sport."
"Plans for sport in ragtime wanted! All offers carefully considered.Now, then, bring on your suggestions."
Everybody stared hopefully at everybody else, but no one rose to theoccasion.
"Going--going--going--a first-rate opportunity for mirth-provoking----"
"Could we get them into the passage and one of us hide behind thecurtain of the barred room and act ghost?" proposed Romola desperately.
Her suggestion, however, was received with utter scorn.
"Can't you think of anything more original than that?"
"We're fed up with that ghost trick. Nobody even calls it funny now."
"Besides, Miss Birks said she'd punish anyone who did it again. She wasawfully angry last time."
Duly squashed, Romola subsided, and the silence which followed resembledthat of a Quakers' meeting.
"I've got it!" shouted Betty at last, clapping her hands ecstatically."The very thing! Oh, the supremest joke!"
"Good biz! But please condescend to explain," commented Evie.
"Oh, we'll try thing-um-bob--what d'you call it? Mesmerism--that's theword I want. With dinner plates, you know."
Apparently nobody knew, for all looked interested and intelligent, butunenlightened.
"Do you mean to say you've never heard of it? Oh, goody! What luck!"
"Look here," interposed Annie, "you're not going to rag us as well. It'sto be for the benefit of VA if there's any sell about it."
"All right! They'll really be enough, and you shall act audience. Onlywith fourteen of you it would have been so----"
"Betty Scott, give us your word this instant that you won't play trickson your own Form."
"I won't--I won't--honest, I won't!"
"And tell us what you're going to do."
"No, that would spoil it all. You must wait and see. Barbara, go to thekitchen door and cajole Cook into lending us seven dinner plates. Sayyou'll pledge your honour not to break them. And purloin a candle fromthe lamp cupboard. Be as quick as you can! Time wanes."
Barbara executed her errand with speed and success. She soon returnedwith the plates and set them down on the table. Betty lighted thecandle, laid one plate aside, then held each of the others in turn overthe flame till the bottoms inside the rims were w
ell coloured withsmoke. The girls watched her curiously.
"Now, I'm ready!" she announced, "but I want a messenger. Elyned, you goand tap at VA door and say we shall be very pleased if they care to comeand try a most interesting experiment. Mind you put it politely, and foryour life don't snigger."
Now VA had been spending an even duller and more wearisome afternoonthan VB, for they had not had the diversion of toasting biscuits. Theywere yawning in the last stages of boredom when Elyned arrived anddelivered her message. Usually they considered themselves far too selectto have much to do with the lower division, but to-day anything to breakthe monotony was welcome. They accepted the invitation with alacrity,and came trooping in to the rival classroom with pleased anticipation intheir faces.
"It's a most curious experiment," began Betty. "I learnt it from acousin who's been out East. He saw it practised by some Chinese priestsat a josshouse. I believe it's one of the first steps of initiation inEsoteric Buddhism. My cousin's not exactly a Theosophist, but he'sinterested in comparative theologies, and he went about with a lama, andfound out ever so many of their secrets. He wrote down the formulary ofthis for me."
"What's it about?" asked the elder girls, looking considerablyimpressed.
"It's a species of mesmerism--or animal magnetism, as some people preferto call it. You make certain passes, and repeat certain words after me,and then you all get into the hypnotic state. Of course it depends howpsychic you are, but anybody with even undeveloped mediumistic powerswill sometimes give replies to questions they couldn't possibly answerin the normal state."
"I suppose it won't hurt us?" asked Agnes Gillard rather gravely.
"Oh, not at all! It's wonderful sometimes to find how people who'venever even suspected they possessed psychic gifts bring out absolutelyunaccountable pieces of information. It really would be quite uncanny,except for the latest theory that it's merely utilizing a natural poweronce cultivated by man, but long forgotten except by a few priests inthe Tibetan monasteries. The Theosophical Society, of course, is tryingto revive it."
"I'm afraid I don't know anything about Theosophy," murmured HildaMarriott.
"It's akin to the Eleusinian mysteries and the cult of Isis," continuedBetty unblushingly. "You have to understand 'Karma' (that'sreincarnation) and 'Yoga' (that's flitting about in your astral bodywhile you're asleep), and--and--" But here both memory and inventionfailed her, so she hurriedly changed her point. "Oh! it would take meyears to explain, and you couldn't understand unless you'd beeninitiated. Let's get to the experiment. Will you all stand in a row?"
"Aren't any of you going to try?" asked Irene Jordan, addressing themembers of VB, who, solemn as judges, stood slightly in the background.
"We can only do it with seven, the mystic number--and there are eight ofthem, and they can't agree who's to be left out," said Betty hurriedly."It's always done with six neophytes and one initiated. If you're ready,we'd best begin, and not waste any more time."
She arranged her neophytes in a line, and gave to each a plate, tellingher to hold it firmly in the left hand. Then, taking her stand facingthem, she raised her own plate to the level of her chest.
"Now you must do exactly as I do!" she commanded. "All fix your eyes onme, and don't take them off me for a single instant. The concentrationof the seven visual currents is of vital importance. Put the middlefinger of the right hand beneath the plate exactly in the centre, thendescribe a circle with it on the under side of the plate. Be sure thecircle follows the same course as the sun, or we may break the mesmericcurrent. Watch what I'm doing. Now describe a circle on your face in thesame manner, beginning with the left cheek. Copy me carefully. And nowwe must repeat the cabalistic formulary (the oldest in theworld--Solomon got it from El Zenobi, the chief of the Genii): 'Om manipadme hum'. Let us say it slowly all together seven times, performingthe orthodox circles at each."
The neophytes played their parts admirably. They never removed theirgaze from the face of their instructress; they copied her everymovement, and repeated the mystic words to the very best of theirability. "Om mani padme hum" rolled from their lips seven times, andseemed to suggest the dreamy atmosphere of the occult.
"The mesmeric current is forming! I can feel it working!" declaredBetty. "It only requires further visualization for the hypnotic state tofollow. To complete the magnetic circle, will you all kindly turn andface each other?"
Still holding the plates, the obedient six swung round, stared at oneanother, then gasped and shrieked. And well they might, for, one andall, their countenances were besmirched with black in a series ofconcentric rings which caused them to resemble Zulu chiefs orAmerican-Indian warriors on the warpath.
"Oh! oh! oh!" came from the members of VB, who, having been stationedbehind the neophytes, had been in equal ignorance of the trick that wasbeing played on them. Then everybody exploded.
"Oh, you look so funny!"
"Is the magnetic current working?"
"Is it the cult of Isis?"
"Oh, my heart! Oh! ho! ho!" gurgled Betty. "You didn't twig your plateswere smoked and mine wasn't! Oh, I've done you! Done you brown,literally!"
"You p-p-p-pig!" spluttered the victims.
"Don't break the plates! Here, put them on the table! Oh, don't look soindignant, or you'll kill me! I've got a stitch in my side withlaughing. Here, don't stalk off like offended zebras! I'll apologize!I'll go down on my bended knees! It was a brutal rag--yes--yes--I own upfrankly! I'll grovel! _Peccavi! Peccavi! Miserere mei!_"
"I've got some chocolates here," murmured Annie Pridwell. "I was keepingthem for Sunday, but do have them," handing the packet round among theoutraged upper division.
The occasion certainly seemed to warrant some form of compensation. Eviehastily followed Annie's example, and sacrificed a private store oftoffee on the altar of hospitality. Blissfully sucking, the six seniorsallowed themselves to be mollified. As connoisseurs of jokes, they wereready to acknowledge the superior excellence of the trick played uponthem; moreover, they found one another's appearance highly diverting.
"Betty Scott, you'll be the death of me some day," remarked RhodaWilkins. "Oh, Agnes! If you could only see yourself in the glass!"
"It's the pot calling the kettle! Look at your own face!"
"Do you think we could possibly work it on the Sixth?"
"No, they'd smell a rat."
"I want my tea," said Annie. "Oh, cock-a-doodle-doo! There's the firstbell! Hip-hip-hooray! I say, you six, if you don't want to give MissBirks a first-class fit, you'd best be toddling to the bath-room, andapplying the soap-and-water treatment to your interestingcountenances."