"That only happens if there"s a powerful medium in the house,"
Veronica had a.s.sured 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.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE Pa.s.sAGE WAS VERY DARK, BUT MORVYTH HAD BROUGHT HER ELECTRIC TORCH"]
"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 seances. 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 ent.i.ty 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. Seances 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 in _Zilla, 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?"
"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 fiance 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 old cow-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 n.o.body at the Grange possessed worn-out or dilapidated boots. In the end Raymonde carefully unpicked the st.i.tches 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 Vand.y.k.e 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, and 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?"
"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 hoa.r.s.e 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."
The gipsy woman shook her head pityingly.