78CHAPTER VIIThe Crystal Gazers
It was about this time that a wave of the occult passed over the school. It began with Daphne Johnson, who happened to read a magazine article on “The Borderland of the Spirit World,” and it spread like an epidemic of influenza. The supernatural was the topic of the hour. Ghost stories were at a premium, and any girl who could relate some creepy spiritual experience, which had happened to the second cousin of a friend of a friend of hers, was sure of a thrilled audience. This taste for the psychic was particularly strong among the girls of the Sixth Form, who leaned towards its intellectual and scientific aspects. They despised vulgar apparitions, but discussed such abstruse problems as phantasms of the living, thought transference, will power, hypnotism, and clairvoyance. Meta Wright dabbled a little in palmistry, and examined the hands of her schoolmates, prophesying startling events in their future careers. Lois Barlow sent half-a-crown to a ladies’ newspaper to have her horoscope cast, and was terribly dejected at the gloomy prospects offered her by the planets, till she fortunately discovered that she had put the date of her birth wrong by three hours,79which would, of course, completely alter the aspect of the heavenly bodies, and cause the best of astrologers to err. Veronica Terry talked darkly of experiences in the psychic world, of astral bodies, etheric doubles, elemental entities, and nature spirits. She went to sleep at night with her thumbs and big toes crossed, in the hope of bringing back the adventures of her dreams into her waking consciousness. She was a little hazy on the subject, but yearned for further instruction.
“It’s called ‘Yoga’,” she confided to her particular chum, Barbara Rowlands. “You concentrate your mind before you go to sleep, and then you’re able to function in the astral body. My cousin Winnie told me of a girl at College who did it, and she was seen standing in the room of a friend at the other side of the hostel, while all the time she was asleep in bed.”
“I hope you won’t do that!” shuddered Barbara nervously. “It would give me a fit if I woke up and found you staring at me, and knew it wasn’t really you. Promise you won’t!”
“It may be rather difficult to regulate one’s movements, once one is out of the body,” returned Veronica guardedly.
Barbara did not crave for spiritual excursions, and secretly preferred the old days, when her chum talked tennis instead of psychology; but the occult was paramount, and she was obliged to follow the fashion. The atmosphere of the Grange was certainly conducive to superstition. The dim passages and panelled walls looked haunted. Every accessory of the old mansion seemed a suitable background for a ghost. The juniors were frankly80frightened. They did not dare to go upstairs alone. They imagined skeleton fingers clutching their legs through the banisters, or bodiless heads rolling like billiard balls along the landings. Having listened, awestruck, to Veronica’s accounts of a séance, they were apprehensive lest the tables should turn sportive and caper about the rooms rapping out spirit messages, or boisterous elementals should bump the beds up and down and fling the china about.
“That only happens if there’s a powerful medium in the house,” Veronica had assured them, and the girls devoutly hoped that none of their number possessed the required mystic properties.
“Look here,” said Raymonde one day to Ardiune, “I’m getting rather fed up with this spook business.”
“So’m I,” agreed Ardiune. “I thought it was fun at first, but it’s got beyond the limit now. The sillies can talk of nothing else. I’m sick of sitting on Veronica’s bed and hearing about mediums and messages. I’d like a potato race for a change. I vote we get up some progressive games.”
“It would be more jinky! I fancy a good many are tired of ghosts, only they don’t like to say so. Ardiune! I’ve got an idea! While the school’s still mad on these things, why shouldn’t we have some fun out of it? Play a rag on them, you know.”
“Dress up in a sheet and rub wet matches on one’s hands?” suggested Ardiune.
“THE PASSAGE WAS VERY DARK, BUT MORVYTHHAD BROUGHT HER ELECTRIC TORCH”
“THE PASSAGE WAS VERY DARK, BUT MORVYTHHAD BROUGHT HER ELECTRIC TORCH”
81
“No, no! Nothing so stale as that! Why, it would hardly take in the juniors for more than a minute. I’m angling for bigger fish. I want to hook the Sixth!”
“H’m! Not so easy, my good girl!”
“It needs craft, of course, and one must have a suitable bait. The common or garden ghost trick would be useless. I want something subtle. If I could have developed mediumistic powers, now, and gone into a trance!”
“Couldn’t you?” queried Ardiune eagerly.
Raymonde shook a regretful head.
“Veronica knows too much about séances. She says the great test of the trance is to stick pins into the medium. If she doesn’t utter a groan, then her conscious entity is suspended, and a spirit is about to materialize. I couldn’t stand being a living pin-cushion. I know I’d squeal.”
“But we might pad you with cushions. Séances are always held in the dark, so they wouldn’t find out.”
“Trust Veronica to find my vulnerable spot! She detests me, and she’d just enjoy prodding me up with pins. No, we must have something less painful than that, please.”
“Table-turning might be possible?”
“The Sixth did it, and the table was beginning to go round quite nicely when they discovered that Linda was pushing the leg. I think pretty nearly everything occult has been tried here lately, except just one. We’ve not had any crystal gazing.”
“How d’you do that?”
“Don’t you remember that chapter inZilla, the Sahara Queen? How she goes to the Coptic magician, and he pours some ink into a little boy’s hand, and sees all her future in it?”82
“Ink would stain horribly,” commented Ardiune.
“Yes, I don’t mean to use ink. What I want is a crystal. There’s something on Gibbie’s chimney-piece that would do jolly well. I believe I’ll borrow it! I know just how to manage, because Mabel and Sylvia went to consult a psychist in Bond Street, and they told me all about it, and everything she said and did. As a matter of fact she described Mabel’s fiancé quite wrong, and pretended she saw him sitting in a dug-out, while all the time he was on a battleship; but they thought it great fun, because they hadn’t really intended to believe her.”
“Would the girls believe you?”
“Certainly not as Raymonde Armitage. I don’t mean them to know me. We’re going to disguise ourselves, so that our very mothers wouldn’t own us.”
“Whew!”
Ardiune looked decidedly sceptical.
“Wait till I’ve done telling you before you pull faces, you old bluebottle! Can’t you trust me by now to get up a decent rag? Yes, I’m offended! All right, I’ll accept apologies. Now if you’re really listening, I’ll explain. You know the gipsies are camping down by the river. Everybody in the school has noticed their caravans, and realizes they’re there. Now what’s more natural than for a couple of these gipsies to stroll round by the barn some evening during recreation time, and offer to predict the future? Katherine and Ave could be in the secret, have their fortunes told first, and then bring others. We’d install ourselves in the old83cow-house; it’s so dark, no one would see us very plainly.”
“Ray, you’ve enough imagination for a novelist!” murmured Ardiune admiringly.
Having settled their plan of campaign, the next step was to carry out details. The question of costume loomed largest.
“We must look real gipsies, not stage ones,” decreed Raymonde. “The thing’s got to be done properly, if it’s done at all.”
They ransacked the property box used for school theatricals, and having selected some likely garments, set to work on an ideal of realism. Two skirts were carefully torn on nails, artistically stained with rust and mud, and rubbed on the barn floor to give them an extra tone. Some cotton bodices were similarly treated. Shoes were a knotty problem, for gipsies do not generally affect trim footgear, yet nobody at the Grange possessed worn-out or dilapidated boots. In the end Raymonde carefully unpicked the stitches in her oldest pairs to give them the requisite burst appearance, and with the aid of a file rubbed the respectability from them. A dip in the mud of the moat completed the transformation. Some cheap beads and coloured handkerchiefs, and a faint wash of Vandyke brown over face and hands, gave the finishing touches.
In the interval between preparation and supper, when several members of the Sixth Form were pursuing carpentry and other industrial occupations in the barn, Aveline Kerby entered to borrow a screw-driver. She conversed casually on the topics of wood-carving, photography, pressed flowers,84and kindred hobbies; then, just as she was leaving, turned back and remarked, apparently as an afterthought:
“Oh, by the by, do you know there are two gipsies in the cow-house? They’re from the caravan by the river. They came in through the back gate, begging, and Morvyth happened to meet them. They offered to tell her fortune, so she took them into the cow-house, so that Gibbie shouldn’t see them. She says they’re marvellous. They described her mother exactly, and her brother at the front. Isn’t it wonderful now they can do it?”
“Are they there still?” asked Veronica, swallowing the bait.
“I believe so. At least they were, five minutes ago. Elsie Moseley and Cynthia Greene had gone to see them. I’d go myself, but I’ve spent all my allowance, and of course one has to cross their palms with the orthodox piece of silver, I suppose. It’s hard luck to be stony-broke. Ta-ta! Thanks for the screw-driver!”
Aveline beat a judicious retreat, and left her words to work. As she had expected, the news of the arrival of the occultists was received with interest.
“It’s an extraordinary thing that gipsies are so often gifted with psychic powers,” commented Meta.
“They’re children of nature,” returned Veronica. “I suppose our ultra-civilization blunts our astral perceptions. One finds marvellous things among the hill tribes in India—things that can’t be explained by any known rules of science.”
“I suppose these ancient races have inherited secrets that we can’t grasp?”85
“Yes, they follow forgotten laws of nature. Some day, no doubt, science will rediscover them.”
Veronica spoke seriously. During the holidays she had studied the subject by the aid of books borrowed from the Free Library.
“I should like just to go and have a look at these gipsies,” she added. “Will you come with me?”
She voiced the feelings of the others. They rose with one accord, and went in the direction of the cow-shed. They met Cynthia Greene and Elsie Moseley coming out, half-awed, half-giggling. At the sight of monitresses they dived round the corner of the building, and escaped into the orchard.
“It’s certainly our duty to investigate,” propounded Meta.
It is pleasant when duty and inclination coincide. The girls walked forward briskly. The interior of the cow-house was dark as an Eastern temple. The gipsies had established themselves in the dimmest corner, and were squatting on bundles of straw under a manger. Obviously they were extremely dirty and dilapidated. Their hands and faces appeared to be unacquainted with soap and water, their clothes were tattered, their shoes seemingly in the last stage of decrepitude.
“Tell your fortunes, my pretty ladies?” pattered one of the Romanys. Her voice was hoarse but conciliatory. Possibly she had a cold—tents are notoriously draughty sleeping-places.
“We don’t care about vulgar fortunes, we are really interested,” commenced Veronica. “What we’d like to know is how you get your powers. Where does your knowledge of the future come from? I’ve always wanted to ask this.”86
The gipsy woman shook her head pityingly.
“Ah, lady! We don’t know ourselves! It comes to us suddenly. Like a flash of light we see your future—then it fades. It’s a sixth sense that’s given to the poor gipsies. They’re born with it, and they can’t explain it any more than you can explain the breath of your body.”
“I’ve often heard of this sixth sense,” whispered Daphne to Lois.
“Sometimes we feel what’s going to be, and sometimes we see it,” continued the gipsy, fumbling with something in her lap. “We can’t tell beforehand which way the knowledge will come.”
“What’s that you’ve got there?” asked Veronica sharply. “Is it a crystal?”
“You’re right, lady. It is a crystal, and a wonderful one too. My grandmother got it from—but no! I’d best not be telling that. I wouldn’t part with it, lady, if the Queen offered me her crown in exchange. Take it in your hand! Look how it sparkles! It doesn’t often shine like that—only when someone with the sixth sense holds it.”
“I’ve sometimes suspected that I possess psychic powers!” murmured Veronica complacently.
“Would you like to learn the future, lady?” queried the gipsy. “Then hold it so, in your hands, for a minute. Now it has felt you and known you, and it will tell—oh, yes! it will tell!”
She took the crystal again, and turned to the companion who squatted beside her on the floor.
“Zara! Look what is coming to the lady,” she commanded softly.
Zara, who had apparently been in a deep reverie, roused herself with a start, placed the crystal in her87lap with the first finger and the thumb of each hand lightly touching it, and stared fixedly into the magic glass. For a moment or two the future seemed obscured, then evidently it cleared. She began to speak in a deep, monotonous voice, as if talking in her sleep.
“I see the sea—waves—waves—everywhere. There is a ship—oh! it has changed. I see sand, and a white house, and palm trees. A soldier in khaki is coming out of the house. He stops to speak to a servant—a black man in a turban—he is angry—he frowns—he goes again into the white house. Oh, it is fading—it is gone!”
“My brother Leslie’s in Egypt!” gasped Veronica, much impressed.
She would have requested a continuance of the vision, but at that moment the dressing-bell clanged loudly. It was plainly time to go and tidy up for supper.
“If you could come again to-morrow about five,” she suggested, pressing a coin into the gipsy’s ready hand.
“Yes, lady, if we’re still in the neighbourhood. We never know when we’ll be moving on, you see. But we’ll try to oblige you if we can.”
Raymonde’s and Ardiune’s toilets that evening would have done credit to quick-change variety artistes. With clean faces and hands, and their dresses at least half fastened, they slipped into their places at the supper-table just in time; a little flurried, perhaps, but preserving an outward calm. So far their scheme had succeeded admirably. The Sixth appeared to have no suspicions.
They repeated their performance on the following88day, installing themselves in the cow-house, and receiving relays of enquirers who came to consult them as to their future. Knowing somewhat of the private history of each member of the school, they got on excellently, and their reputation spread till more than half the girls had paid surreptitious visits to their retreat. All might have gone well, and their secret might have remained undiscovered, had it not been for Veronica’s friendship with Mademoiselle. Veronica was so impressed with the value of the crystal’s information that she could not help confiding the news, and bringing the impressionable Belgian to consult the seer for herself.
Ardiune’s visions of smoking ruins and rescued refugees left Mademoiselle almost speechless. She in her turn felt impelled to seek a confidante, and imparted the wonderful revelations to Miss Gibbs.
That worthy lady immediately set off for the cow-house. As she entered there was a scuttling of juniors, who sought safety behind the partition. Raymonde stared for a moment aghast, then whispered to Ardiune: “Bluff it out!”
Miss Gibbs proceeded in an absolutely business-like manner. She requested a consultation, and listened while the gipsy, decidedly nervous, gave a rambling description of a dark gentleman and an Indian temple.
“Thank you,” she said at last. “I think it only fair to warn you that you can be prosecuted and fined twenty-five pounds for telling fortunes. I should like to know where you got that crystal! It’s remarkably like the ball of glass that was broken off my Venetian vase. I missed it yesterday from my mantelpiece. By the by”—stooping89down suddenly, and pulling aside the handkerchief from Zara’s swarthy neck—“you are wearing a locket and chain that I know to be the property of one of my pupils. It is my duty immediately to put you in the hands of the police.”
The game was up! The disconcerted gipsies rose from their alcove, and came back from the psychic to the material world. It was a hard, exacting, unsympathetic world as mirrored in Miss Gibbs’s keen grey eyes. She told them briefly to go and wash their faces and change their attire, then to report themselves in the class-room, where she would be at work correcting exercises.
“You can bring with you the money that you have collected over this business,” she added.
Half an hour later, two clean, tidy, but dejected pupils entered the class-room, and placed the sum of thirteen and ninepence upon her desk. Miss Gibbs counted it over scrupulously.
“Any girls who were foolish enough to give you this, deserve to lose it,” she remarked, “and I shall send it as a contribution to the Red Cross Fund. You will each learn two pages of Curtis’sHistorical Notesby heart, and repeat them to me to-morrow after morning school. I may mention that I consider it a great liberty for any girl to enter my bedroom and remove ornaments from my mantelpiece.”
That evening, after preparation and supper, the entire school, instead of being allowed to pursue fancy work, was summoned to the lecture hall, and harangued by Miss Beasley upon the follies and dangers of superstition. She touched upon ancient beliefs in witchcraft, and modern credulity in clairvoyance90and spiritualism, and placed an equal ban upon both.
“In these enlightened times, with all the advantages of education to dispel ignorance,” she concluded, “it is incredible to me that anybody can still be found ready to believe in such nonsense. I beg you all, and especially those elder girls who should be leaders of the rest, to turn your thoughts and conversation to some healthier topic, and to let these morbid fancies sink into the obscurity they deserve.”
“It was a nasty hit for the monitresses!” whispered Ardiune to Raymonde afterwards. “Did you see Veronica turning as red as beetroot? We’ll have to wake early to-morrow morning, and swat at those wretched dates. It was grizzly bad luck Gibbie found us out!”
“But on the whole the game was worth the candle!” proclaimed Raymonde unrepentantly.
91CHAPTER VIIIThe Beano
After the events related in the last chapter, the monitresses suddenly awakened to a sense of their responsibility as leaders of the school. Particularly Veronica. She had a sensitive disposition, and Miss Beasley’s reproof rankled. She determined to set an example to the younger ones, and to be zealous in keeping order and enforcing rules. She held a surprise inspection of the juniors’ desks and drawers, and pounced upon illicit packets of chocolate; she examined their books, and confiscated any which she considered unsuitable; she put a ban upon slang, and wrote out a new set of dormitory regulations. Her efforts were hardly so much appreciated as they deserved. The girls grumbled at this unanticipated tightening of the reins.
“We’ve always bought sweets and kept them in our desks,” declared Joan Butler. “I believe Veronica used to do it herself.”
“Life wouldn’t be worth living without chocolates!” mourned Nora Fawcitt.
“And we always used to scramble for the bathroom in the mornings, ever since I’ve been here,” groused Dorothy Newstead. “It’s no fun to wait in a queue.”92
The Fifth fared no better than the Fourth, and being older, their indignation was even hotter.
“Veronica took awayAdam Bede, and said it wasn’t ‘suitable’!” fumed Aveline. “She told me I might read Scott and Dickens instead. And I’d just got to the interesting part! It’s too idiotic!”
“I can’t see why Veronica need act censor to all our reading,” agreed Katherine bitterly. “Why should we be allowed Jane Austen and not Charlotte Brontë?”
“Little girls mustn’t read love stories!” mocked Raymonde.
“But they’re all love stories—Scott’s and Dickens’s and Jane Austen’s and everyone’s! How about Shakespeare? There’s heaps of love-making inRomeo and Juliet, and we took that with Professor Marshall!”
“I don’t think Gibbie ever quite approved of it. She thought it indiscreet of the Professor, I’m sure, and likely to put ideas into our heads!”
“Does she expect we’ll go eloping over the garden wall? Perhaps that’s why she keeps such a vigilant look-out with the telescope!”
“It’s quite bad enough to have Gibbie always on our trail,” said Ardiune gloomily, “but when it comes to Veronica turning watch-dog as well, I call it an outrage!”
“I think Fifth-Form girls have responsibilities as well as monitresses,” grunted Raymonde. “It’s not good for Veronica to take life so earnestly! She’ll grow old before her time. The Bumble’s always rubbing it into us to make the most of our girlhood, and not be little premature women, so I vote we live up to her theory. It’s Veronica’s93last term here. She ought to be bubbling and girlish, and carry away happy memories of her light-hearted school-days when she goes out into the wide world to be a woman. I consider it’s our duty to look after this. The Bumble says the value of school life consists in its ‘give and take’. We’re taking a good deal from Veronica at present, so we must give her something back. Let’s teach her to be kittenish and playful.”
The chums exploded. The idea of the serious-minded Veronica developing a bubbling or kittenish manner was too much for them.
“We did pretty well when we took Maudie Heywood in hand,” urged Raymonde. “She’s wonderfully improved. Never exceeds the speed limit in her lessons, and if she writes extra essays she keeps them to herself, and doesn’t flaunt them before the Form. And there was Cynthia Greene, too! We don’t hear a word about The Poplars now, or her wretched bracelet. It may be difficult, perhaps, but we’ll do our best with Veronica. We must regard ourselves as sort of missionaries.”
Having decided that it was their vocation to cultivate a spirit of artless happiness in the school, the Mystic Seven set to work on Veronica. She did not respond to their efforts; on the contrary, she seemed to resent them. When they attempted to introduce lighter veins of conversation, she reproached them with being frivolous. She frowned on riddles, limericks, and puns. One day she so far forgot herself as to murmur “Cheeky kids!”
Raymonde, with a shocked and grieved expression, looked at the illuminated card deprecating the use of slang, which had lately been hung in the94lecture hall, and Veronica flounced out of the room.
That night, when the monitress went to bed, her sponge, nail-brush, tooth-brush, and cake of soap were missing, and it was only after a long search that she found them at the bottom of her emptied water-jug. On the next evening it was impossible for her to strike a light, owing to the fact that both her candle and matches had been carefully soaked beforehand in water.
Veronica felt it was high time to lay the matter before her fellow-monitresses. They decided that such flagrant cases of insubordination must be promptly dealt with. In order to catch the offenders they laid a trap, Linda and Daphne concealing themselves in Veronica’s bedroom, while Veronica herself walked ostentatiously in the courtyard.
As they had expected, it was not long before two stealthy figures came tiptoeing in, and were taken red-handed in the very act of constructing an apple-pie bed. The vials of wrath which descended upon the would-be practical jokers were enough to damp the spirits of even such madcaps as Raymonde and Aveline. After all, monitresses are monitresses, and to affront them is rather like twisting a lion’s tail. Miss Gibbs herself could not have been more scathing in her sarcasms than Linda. For once the Mystics retired crushed, and with a due respect for their seniors.
It was not in the nature of things, however, for Raymonde’s spirits to remain long below zero. After a decent period of immersion they once more rose to the surface. The occasion of their revival was sufficient to awaken enthusiasm in the most95down-trodden and monitress-ridden of school-girls.
A report was rumoured through the Grange; nobody seemed to know quite where it started, or what was the fount of information, but everybody said it was perfectly true, and girl whispered to girl the astounding secret.
“The Bumble and the Wasp are going out to dinner on Thursday, and are to stay the night, only we’re not supposed to get a hint of it, so don’t breathe a word, or let on you’ve heard.”
Circumstantial evidence seemed to confirm the statement. Emily, the sewing-maid, had been seen in the linen-room employed on some renovations to Miss Beasley’s best evening dress; Miss Gibbs’s suit-case had been brought down from the box-room to have its lock and handles polished; and Dorothy Newstead, concealed behind a laurel bush during a game of “Hide-and-seek,” had overheard the Principal give instructions to the gardener to order a conveyance for Thursday evening at half-past six. Certainly nothing could be more conclusive. Excitement was rife. Never in all the annals of the school had Miss Beasley and Miss Gibbs together taken a night off!
“It seems a shame to waste such a golden opportunity!” said Raymonde enthusiastically. “Gibbie was talking to us only to-day about seizing our opportunities.
“‘Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,Old Time is still a-flying,And this same flower that smiles to-dayTo-morrow will be dying!’
She quoted it most impressively.”96
“She didn’t go on to the verse about getting married while you’d the chance, though!” chuckled Ardiune.
“No, my child. Such a subject as matrimony is not supposed to be a fitting topic for a ladies’ school. Gibbie always gracefully shelves it. But you’re side-tracking, and I want to get back to my point. I was talking of opportunities, and never in the whole of our school-days shall we get such another as next Thursday. How are we going to make use of it? I vote for a beano in our dormitory.”
“What’s a ‘beano’?” demanded Fauvette’s plaintive voice. “You’re always saying things I don’t understand.”
“You’re young, child!” returned Raymonde indulgently, “and you can’t be expected to know everything. A beano is a bean-feast. Now don’t look alarmed! We’re not going to eat beans; we’ll have something far more appetizing—sardines, and tinned peaches, and biscuits, and anything else we can get. If the Bumble and the Wasp gad off to enjoy themselves, why shouldn’t we make a night of it too?”
“How about those kids?”
“They’ll join in. It shall be an affair for the whole dormitory. We’ll share the treat, for once!”
“You won’t get the monitresses to join,” interposed Katherine dubiously.
“Shan’t ask them! I’ve settled all that in my mind. You know the big oak door across the passage that leads to their rooms? Well, I’m going to fasten it after they’ve gone to bed, and lock them up in their own quarters.”97
“That would be all right, old sport, if there were a key, but there isn’t.”
“Morvyth Holmes, d’you think I’m an infant? I know perfectly well there isn’t a key. I’m going to fix a screw in the door and another in the doorpost beforehand, and then twist some strong wire across. It’ll act like a lock.”
The Mystics stared at their leader in admiration. Her resourcefulness knew no bounds. With the monitresses safely boxed up in their bedrooms, any jinks would be possible in the dormitory. Of course there remained Mademoiselle, but she slept at the other side of the house, and from past experience they judged that she was more likely to devote the evening to her own pleasure than to an over-strict attention to duty. The juniors, when sounded on the subject, responded to a girl. Even Cynthia Greene assented gleefully. Every occupant of the dormitory vowed with a solemn oath to preserve the secret at all costs. A fund was opened to defray expenses. How to get the provisions was the main difficulty. There was not a single servant in the establishment whom they felt was absolutely to be trusted.
“I believe even that new little Lizzie would go and sneak to the Bumble,” sighed Raymonde. “We shall have to go for the things ourselves. There’s nothing else for it. Who’ll volunteer? Oh! not all of you! We can’t trot off in a body. Look here, I’ll go with Morvyth.”
The village, which lay half a mile away from the Grange, was out of bounds. It would be an extremely risky proceeding for two girls, in the ordinary brown serge uniform and conspicuous98hats of the school, to enter a shop and make purchases. Some tiresome busybody would be sure to see them, and report the matter to Miss Beasley.
“It’s a case of disguising ourselves,” decided Raymonde. “The maids keep their waterproofs and hats in the passage near the kitchen. We’ll turn up our hair, borrow what garments we want, and dash off between prep. and supper. Anyone noticing us on the road will think we’re new servants from some house in the neighbourhood.”
The audacity of the project almost staggered Morvyth, but as a member of the Mystic Seven she was pledged to follow her leader, and would not for worlds have displayed symptoms of the white feather, though her more cautious soul began to calculate consequences if caught. There were so many pitfalls in the path—servants, monitresses, and mistresses must be outwitted, both in going and returning, to make their excursion a success. The juniors, however, played up nobly. At a concerted hour, they managed by cleverly concocted excuses to engage the attention of all the monitresses, and hold them busy for five minutes explaining details of lessons or fancy work. Meantime, Aveline and Valentine purloined waterproofs of a suitable length, together with appropriate hats, from the passage near the kitchen.
Raymonde and Morvyth, after a rapid toilet and a hasty review of themselves in a looking-glass, were pleased with their appearance, especially the way they wore their hats.
“Tilt yours a little more on one side,” commanded Raymonde, “and open your mouth with a sort of cod-fishy expression, as if you’d got99adenoids. Remember, you want to look as common as possible. Drop your h’s when you speak, wherever you can. Say you’re in a ’urry to get back. I shall sniff all the time, as if I’d a bad cold.”
“I shall laugh if you do!”
“No, you won’t, because we’re going to different shops. I’ll do Adcock’s, and you shall have Seymour’s. It’ll be far better than going together.”
Under cover of a guard of Form-mates the conspirators managed to slip past the barns and off the premises, secure in the knowledge that Miss Gibbs was correcting exercises in the study, so could not possibly be watching them through her too useful telescope. Before arriving at the village they separated, Raymonde going a little in advance, and Morvyth following, as if they had no acquaintance with each other. It was perhaps as well for their mutual composure that they visited separate shops, for Morvyth’s provincial accent and Raymonde’s cold might have been mirth-provoking to a fellow conspirator, though they passed muster well enough with strangers. At the end of ten minutes the two girls were hurrying back, each armed with a large parcel. These were handed at once to scouts when they reached the Grange, and their costumes were removed in the barn, and replaced without delay on their hooks in the kitchen passage by Valentine and Ardiune.
So far so good. The commissariat department had managed to run the blockade of school regulations, and secure provisions for the entertainment. No Tommies looting supplies from the enemy’s trenches could have felt prouder.100
When the eventful Thursday arrived, great anxiety was felt as to whether the Principal and her assistant were really and actually going out or not. They did not announce their intention, and gave no hint of the matter. Little Nancie Page, however, sent to Miss Gibbs’s room with a message, reported having seen that lady engaged in packing her suit-case, which was taken as proof conclusive of the contemplated expedition.
“We’ll be subdued saints all supper-time!” suggested Raymonde. “Let’s talk intelligently to the monitresses about intellectual subjects—the deeper the better. Make them think we’re going to bed with our minds fixed on Egyptology, and the wonders of the microscope, and the Bagdad railway, and the future of European politics. Be sure you go upstairs very quietly. Anyone who laughs will give the show away.”
The behaviour of the school that evening was a subject of satisfaction to Veronica and her fellow monitresses.
“I was afraid,” remarked the head girl, “that they might take advantage when they saw Miss Beasley’s and Miss Gibbs’s places empty at supper, but they seemed to feel on their honour to be steadier than usual. I really think their tone is improving. Raymonde Armitage was particularly quiet.”
“Yes,” returned Daphne dubiously. “So she was; but if Raymonde has a quiet fit like that on, I generally look out for squalls afterwards.”
When Mademoiselle went the round of the dormitory that night at 9.30, she found absolute peace and tranquillity reigning. Apparently the occupants101of the nineteen beds were already wrapt in well-earned repose. One or two were even snoring slightly. Mademoiselle heaved a sigh of relief, and went off thankfully to her own bedroom to write letters. She did not consider it necessary to interrupt herself at this occupation. Miss Gibbs had indeed urged the expediency of a surprise visit at about 10 p.m., but Mademoiselle had no vocation for enforcing discipline, and was not over-burdened with conscientious scruples. Moreover, she considered that, if her Principal took an evening off, she might be licensed to do the same.
The conspirators had decided not to begin the celebrations too early. With heroic self-restraint they remained quietly in bed until 10.30. By that hour monitresses and servants alike would probably be asleep. Mademoiselle, at the far end of the house, on the other side of the big staircase, would hear nothing.
When the charmed moment arrived, everybody sprang up and lighted candles. Raymonde hurried into pink dressing-gown and bedroom slippers, and crept up the passage to the door which led to the monitresses’ rooms. She had inserted her screws earlier in the evening, so with the aid of a pair of pliers, purloined from the wood-carving bench, it did not take her long to fix her wire and secure the door. She came back chuckling.
“If they should hear any slight sounds of revelry, and try to come upon the scenes, they’ll just find themselves jolly well locked in!” she remarked with gusto.
“Perhaps they’ll think Mademoiselle’s done it!” suggested Ardiune.102
Preparations for the feast were proceeding briskly. Two beds, pulled into the middle of the room, formed the table, and on these the comestibles were spread forth. The village shops had not offered a very wide range of dainties, but there were sardines, and canned peaches, and biscuits, and three Huntley & Palmer’s cakes, rather dry, because they had been kept in a tin box, probably since last Christmas. The drinkable was lemon kali, served in bedroom tumblers, and stirred up with lead-pencils or tooth-brush handles.
Everybody was busy. Morvyth and Valentine were opening the tins with wood-carving implements; Ardiune was performing an abstruse arithmetical calculation as to how to cut up three cakes into nineteen exactly even portions, while Katherine waited with the penknife ready. Even the hitherto irreproachable Maudie Heywood and Cynthia Greene were occupied with scissors, making plates out of sheets of exercise paper. Beds drawn up alongside the impromptu table served for seats, and the girls crowded together as closely as they could. Raymonde and Morvyth, by virtue of their expedition to the shops, were voted mistresses of the ceremonies, and dispensed the provisions. Sardines on biscuits were the first course, followed by canned peaches, the juiciness of which was a decided difficulty, as there was not a solitary spoon with which to fish them up from the tin.
“Never mind, I’ll spear them with a lead-pencil and stick them on biscuits, and you must drink the syrup in the glasses. I dare say it’ll mix all right with lemon kali,” purred Raymonde, thoroughly in her element as hostess.103
The fun waxed furious, and it only increased when the sardine tin upset in the middle of one of the temporary tables.
“But it’s my bed!” wailed Cynthia Greene.
“Cheer up! Someone’s got to make a sacrifice for the good of the assembly, and you see the lot’s fallen on you,” said Raymonde consolingly. “You ought to be proud to have your bed chosen!”
“I’d just as soon it had been yours!” grumbled Cynthia. “I shan’t like sleeping in a puddle of oil!”
“If you grouse any more, I’ll empty the can of peaches on your pillow, so shut up!” commanded the mistress of the ceremonies. “A beano’s a beano, and we’re going to enjoy ourselves.”
“If we make too much noise, though––” suggested Maudie Heywood.
Ardiune snapped her up promptly.
“We’ll make what noise we like! What does it matter? The monitresses are locked out, and Mademoiselle will never hear. We’ve got the place to ourselves to-night, thank goodness! Just for once, Mother Soup’s room down there is vacant!”
“Empty is the cradle, baby’s gone!” mocked Morvyth.
“’Xpect she’s having the time of her life at the dinner-party.”
“Well, we’ll have ours!”
A quarter of an hour later the dormitory presented a convivial scene. An orchestra of five, seated on a hastily cleared dressing-table, were performing music with combs, while the rest of the104company waltzed between the beds, with intervals of the fox-trot. Maudie Heywood and Cynthia Greene had accepted the inevitable, and joined the multitude. Apparently they were enjoying themselves. Maudie’s cheeks were scarlet, and Cynthia’s long fair hair floated out picturesquely as she twirled round in Elsie Moseley’s arms.
“We’re certainly making the most of our bubbling girlhood!” murmured Raymonde with satisfaction. “The Bumble couldn’t call us little premature women to-night!”
The dark anti-zepp curtains swayed in the night breeze, and the candles flared and guttered, the musicians tootled at their tissue-paper covered combs with tingling lips, faster and faster whirled the dancers, the fun was at its zenith, when quite suddenly the unexpected happened. The door of Miss Gibbs’s room opened, and that grim lady herself stood on the threshold.
If a spectre had made its appearance in their midst, the girls could not have been more disconcerted. A horrible hush spread over the room, and for a moment everybody stared in frozen horror. The musicians slipped down from the dressing-table and scuttled towards their own beds.
“H’m! So this is how you are to be trusted!” remarked Miss Gibbs tartly, advancing towards the scene of the beano, and hastily casting an eye over the empty tins and crumby remains of the repast. “Move this rubbish away, and push those beds back to their places. Now get into bed, every one of you! Not a single sound more is to be heard to-night. We’ll settle up this matter to-morrow.”105
Having seen each occupant of the dormitory ensconced between her sheets (Cynthia did not dare to complain that hers were sardiny!) Miss Gibbs went back to her own room, leaving the door wide open. With an enraged dragon in such close vicinity the girls did not venture to stir, and silence reigned for the rest of the night. At the first coming of the dawn, however, Raymonde rose with infinite precaution, and stole barefoot along the passage to remove her wire and screws from the oak door. She accomplished that task without discovery, and, after hiding the screw-driver behind a wardrobe, crept back to bed.
Nineteen subdued penitents, clothed in mental sackcloth and ashes, went down to breakfast next morning. Their fears were not without foundation, for when Miss Beasley returned at ten o’clock they were summoned to the most unpleasant interview they ever remembered, from which the more soft-hearted of them emerged sobbing. They spent Saturday afternoon in the schoolroom writing punishment tasks, while the monitresses went boating on the river. It was trying to see Daphne and Hermie coming downstairs in their nice white dresses and blue ties, and to know that they themselves were debarred the excursion. They hung about the hall sulkily.
“It’s your own faults,” moralized Veronica. “After that disgraceful business on Thursday, you couldn’t expect anything else. We heard you plainly enough, and we were utterly disgusted. I’d like to know who locked that passage door. I have my suspicions,” with an eye on Raymonde.
The babyish innocence of Raymonde’s face at106that moment might have served an artist as a model for a child angel.
“Have you? It’s a pity to harbour suspicion!” she returned sweetly. “We ought to learn to trust our schoolfellows! I loathe Veronica,” she added in a whisper to Ardiune, as the monitress tripped cheerily to the door.