Ragtime
If there was one thing more than another that the girls of the Dower
House considered a particular and pressing grievance it was a wet
Saturday afternoon. They were all of them outdoor enthusiasts, and to be
obliged to stop in the house instead of tramping the moors or roaming on
the sea-shore was regarded as a supreme penance. On the Saturday
following the mapping expedition there was no mistake about the rain--it
seemed to come down in a solid sheet from a murky sky, which offered
absolutely no prospect of clearing.
The overflowing gutter-pipes emptied veritable rivulets into a temporary
pond 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 film
covered banisters, furniture, and woodwork, and the wall-paper on the
stairs distinctly changed its hue. In VB classroom the girls hung about
disconsolately. There was to have been a special fossil foray that
afternoon under the leadership of a lady from Perranwrack, who took an
interest in the school, and who had thrown out hints of a fire of
driftwood and a picnic tea among the rocks.
"It's so particularly aggravating, because Miss Hall has to go up to
London on Monday and won't be back for weeks, so probably she won't be
able 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 the
basket-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 generally
tell your course of reading from your poses. These present airs and
graces suggest some such title as 'Lady Rosamond's Mystery' or 'The
Earl's Secret'. Confess, now, you're imagining yourselves members of the
aristocracy."
"I believe the penny novelettes are invariably written in top garrets by
people who've never even had a nodding acquaintance with dukes and
duchesses," said Barbara. "The real article's very different from the
'belted earl' of fiction. The Clara-Vere-de-Vere type is extinct now. If
you were a genuine countess, Deirdre, you'd probably be addressing
hundreds of envelopes in aid of a philanthropic society, instead of
lounging 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 and
insistent hands pulled her forcibly out of her chair and flung away the
cushion.
"I tell you we're sick of 'Lady Isobel' or whoever she may be. For
goodness' sake be somebody more cheerful if you won't be yourself. Can't
you get up an Irish mood for a change? A bit of the brogue would hearten
up this clammy afternoon."
"Oh, isn't it piggy and nasty!" exclaimed Annie, stretching out her arms
in the agony of an elephantine yawn. "I want my tea! I want my tea! I
want 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 a
triscuit."
"What on earth is a triscuit?"
"Oh, you're not bright or you'd guess. It's a biscuit toasted nicely
brown 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 to
reason."
"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, who
was a Mrs. Ewing enthusiast, and quoted Dame Datchet with relish. "Half
a pound of cream crackers, and I mean to be generous and share 'em
round. 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 was
certainly more entertaining than doing nothing. Deirdre forgot for the
time that she was a heroine of fiction, and plumped down by the fender
with a lack of high-born dignity that would have scandalized "Lady
Isobel".
"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 the
fire. 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 the
tongs 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's
burning!"
"What a Johnnie-fingers you are! It's done for."
In the end--and it was Gerda's quiet suggestion--the tongs were placed
over the fire like a gridiron and the biscuits successfully popped on
the top and turned when one side was done. Everybody appreciated them
down to the last crumb, and awarded Betty a vote of thanks for her
brilliant idea.
"The worst of it is, they're finished too soon," sighed Evie, "and we've
nothing else to fill up the gap till tea-time. I want to do something
outrageous--break a window or smash an ornament, or damage the
furniture! What a nuisance conscience is! Why does the 'inward monitor'
restrain me?"
"Probably the wholesome dread of consequences my dear. You might cut
your hand in a wild orgy of window smashing and there'd be bills to pay
afterwards 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 and
shake 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 the
occasion.
"Going--going--going--a first-rate opportunity for mirth-provoking----"
"Could we get them into the passage and one of us hide behind the
curtain 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 was
awfully angry last time."
Duly squashed, Romola subsided, and the silence which followed resembled
that 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 the
word I want. With dinner plates, you know."
Apparently nobody knew, for all looked interested and intelligent, but
unenlightened.
"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's
to 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. Only
with fourteen of you it would have been so----"
"Betty Scott, give us your word this instant that you won't play tricks
on 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 the
kitchen door and cajole Cook into lending us seven dinner plates. Say
you'll pledge your honour not to break them. And purloin a candle from
the lamp cupboard. Be as quick as you can! Time wanes."
Barbara executed her errand with speed and success. She soon returned
with the plates and set them down on the table. Betty lighted the
candle, laid one plate aside, then held each of the others in turn over
the flame till the bottoms inside the rims were well coloured with
smoke. The girls watched her curiously.
"Now, I'm ready!" she announced, "but I want a messenger. Elyned, you go
and tap at VA door and say we shall be very pleased if they care to come
and try a most interesting experiment. Mind you put it politely, and for
your life don't snigger."
Now VA had been spending an even duller and more wearisome afternoon
than VB, for they had not had the diversion of toasting biscuits. They
were yawning in the last stages of boredom when Elyned arrived and
delivered her message. Usually they considered themselves far too select
to have much to do with the lower division, but to-day anything to break
the monotony was welcome. They accepted the invitation with alacrity,
and came trooping in to the rival classroom with pleased anticipation in
their faces.
"It's a most curious experiment," began Betty. "I learnt it from a
cousin who's been out East. He saw it practised by some Chinese priests
at a josshouse. I believe it's one of the first steps of initiation in
Esoteric Buddhism. My cousin's not exactly a Theosophist, but he's
interested in comparative theologies, and he went about with a lama, and
found out ever so many of their secrets. He wrote down the formulary of
this for me."
"What's it about?" asked the elder girls, looking considerably
impressed.
"It's a species of mesmerism--or animal magnetism, as some people prefer
to 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 how
psychic you are, but anybody with even undeveloped mediumistic powers
will sometimes give replies to questions they couldn't possibly answer
in 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've
never even suspected they possessed psychic gifts bring out absolutely
unaccountable pieces of information. It really would be quite uncanny,
except for the latest theory that it's merely utilizing a natural power
once cultivated by man, but long forgotten except by a few priests in
the Tibetan monasteries. The Theosophical Society, of course, is trying
to revive it."
"I'm afraid I don't know anything about Theosophy," murmured Hilda
Marriott.
"It's akin to the Eleusinian mysteries and the cult of Isis," continued
Betty unblushingly. "You have to understand 'Karma' (that's
reincarnation) and 'Yoga' (that's flitting about in your astral body
while you're asleep), and--and--" But here both memory and invention
failed her, so she hurriedly changed her point. "Oh! it would take me
years to explain, and you couldn't understand unless you'd been
initiated. 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 the
members 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 of
them, 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, telling
her to hold it firmly in the left hand. Then, taking her stand facing
them, 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 on
me, and don't take them off me for a single instant. The concentration
of the seven visual currents is of vital importance. Put the middle
finger of the right hand beneath the plate exactly in the centre, then
describe a circle with it on the under side of the plate. Be sure the
circle follows the same course as the sun, or we may break the mesmeric
current. Watch what I'm doing. Now describe a circle on your face in the
same manner, beginning with the left cheek. Copy me carefully. And now
we must repeat the cabalistic formulary (the oldest in the
world--Solomon got it from El Zenobi, the chief of the Genii): 'Om mani
padme hum'. Let us say it slowly all together seven times, performing
the orthodox circles at each."
The neophytes played their parts admirably. They never removed their
gaze from the face of their instructress; they copied her every
movement, and repeated the mystic words to the very best of their
ability. "Om mani padme hum" rolled from their lips seven times, and
seemed to suggest the dreamy atmosphere of the occult.
"The mesmeric current is forming! I can feel it working!" declared
Betty. "It only requires further visualization for the hypnotic state to
follow. To complete the magnetic circle, will you all kindly turn and
face each other?"
Still holding the plates, the obedient six swung round, stared at one
another, then gasped and shrieked. And well they might, for, one and
all, their countenances were besmirched with black in a series of
concentric rings which caused them to resemble Zulu chiefs or
American-Indian warriors on the warpath.
"Oh! oh! oh!" came from the members of VB, who, having been stationed
behind the neophytes, had been in equal ignorance of the trick that was
being 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 plates
were 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 so
indignant, or you'll kill me! I've got a stitch in my side with
laughing. 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 up
frankly! I'll grovel! _Peccavi! Peccavi! Miserere mei!_"
"I've got some chocolates here," murmured Annie Pridwell. "I was keeping
them for Sunday, but do have them," handing the packet round among the
outraged upper division.
The occasion certainly seemed to warrant some form of compensation. Evie
hastily followed Annie's example, and sacrificed a private store of
toffee on the altar of hospitality. Blissfully sucking, the six seniors
allowed themselves to be mollified. As connoisseurs of jokes, they were
ready to acknowledge the superior excellence of the trick played upon
them; moreover, they found one another's appearance highly diverting.
"Betty Scott, you'll be the death of me some day," remarked Rhoda
Wilkins. "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 first
bell! Hip-hip-hooray! I say, you six, if you don't want to give Miss
Birks a first-class fit, you'd best be toddling to the bath-room, and
applying the soap-and-water treatment to your interesting
countenances."