The Strange Experiences of Tina Malone

Front matter

A VICTIM OF MIND READING. | The Strange | Experiences of | Tina Malone: | The Girl Who Heard VOICES. | {| align="center" | “Oh! Tina Malone! Don’t you know YET who it is ?”

By

Ethel C. M. Paige. |}

Prologue

PROLOGUE.

Has it been all a dream?

If you want an account of a wonderful unbelievable experience, just listen.

People don't believe in ghosts—will they believe in this? For this has truly happened:

I was lonely—God alone knows how lonely—for we had broken up our home only three months before. I had to earn my own living for the money that was left to me when my father died was not enough to pay for more than my rent. So I lived as so many single women do now—I "batched."

It all began with the "Woman in the Mask."

She was fascinating in a way, with the fascination one finds in a Sorceress. There was something in the way she let her eyelids droop over her eyes while she looked at you that suggested "spells"—I don't know why. She gave me that impression anyway.

She was rather beautiful to look at. Her eyes were deep blue and curiously shaped, rather like a Jap's. She wore her hair drawn back from a forehead that was singularly beautiful, few women can wear their hair like that and look beautiful, Her voice was low and sweet. Yet there was something—I don't know what—just something—that puzzled. You felt that she never showed her real self; that she wore a mask and dared not let it fall.

The night I found Chester House I was tired and miserable.

The trip across the Harbour comforted me somewhat. It was already growing dark and the harbour lights twinkled through a misty gleam. It was like a dream of fairyland and I made up my mind that I would find rooms on that side of the harbour even if those in question did not suit just for the sake of the boat trip.

A light drizzle of rain began to fall. I was hungry and tired and longed for a home of some sort, dreading to return to the Metropole where I had been living for the last week.

The narrow street was dark. There were only one or two houses and these were back from the road.

At last, with relief, I found myself outside the queer little building known as Chester House.

"Does Miss Perkins live here?" I asked a wierd-looking creature who opened the door.

"No, two doors down!"

A queer little building was the one she directed me to and when Miss Perkins opened at my knock I felt as if I were in a book.

She was quaintly dressed in white—a small person with sloping shoulders and a vague hesitating manner.

"Well, I don't know that I can let you have rooms," she said with a long-drawn emphasis on the "rooms," "but there's a flat next door that will be empty to-morrow. The people are in now but they might let you look at it."

When I found that it was not very much more than I had been paying for my room in town I admitted that I should like to see it and we went together.

"The lower floor is already let," said Miss Perkins, "but that is underground. You would not care for it."

She led the way walking lightly—almost on tip-toes as if she were afraid of being heard.

I followed her through the hall and to the small balcony room in front and the view that burst upon me there took my breath away it was so beautiful—the harbour lights twinkling through a mist.

I then and there decided to take it and soon afterwards I moved in.

And Naomi was in the flat below.

Chapter I

CHAPTER I.

THE OCCULT SCHOOL.

THEY always did attract me—second-hand bookshops. This morning I began at the windows, then at the boxes of books outside, then at those hanging at the doors till, at last, I gave way to temptation and went inside.

It was only the books I noticed and I walked along by the tables, scanning the titles till at last I found "The Drama of Love and Death," by Edward Carpenter, and pulled it out.

I opened it at "The Return Journey" and was just finding out that it was all about me, when I felt someone standing at my elbow.

I had noticed somehow without seeing or caring that there was a girl at the far end of the shop looking up at the books. I knew it was Sybil Armstrong, but I did not want to talk so I hardly noticed that she was there.

But, although I was interested in my new-found treasure, I was conscious that she was moving towards me and, when she stood quietly by my side in that mysterious way I knew it was she and purposely did not at once look up.

When at last I did she smiled at me in a meaning way. What she meant I did not know then, except that she was up to some devilment.

She was a fair little thing. She and I had always been drawn to one another through our love of books. There was a sort of fascination about her that made me like to talk to her and to sit next to her, and though I never courted it she would always move from her seat in trams or boats to come and seek me out.

So I looked down now into her blue eyes and wondered what form the devilment was to take and whether she knew that I was quietly watching and enjoying her tactics.

"Well!" she said.

"Well?" said I.

"What wonderful treasure have you found? Can you bear to touch those dirty books? Think of the occult influence they carry! You don't know what wicked old man may have hugged and fingered them."

I looked down at my "Drama of Love and Death," that was telling me such wonderful things at four and ninepence a copy, and looked back into her eyes.

"Don't you know that those books hold thoughts and feelings that may be passed on to you?" she went on.

"I know they hold thoughts and feelings I want to hear about," I said, and hugged my book with a finger in the place. I knew then that four and ninepence or not, the book was going home with me.

"Have you read any Eastern books?" she said, "I've been reading a lot lately."

"Eastern?" I said, puzzled.

"Yes, the philosophy of the East. It would interest you I am sure—I believe you are very psychic."

She lowered her voice to a sort of dramatic mystery, half-bantering as if speaking to a child. She was always conscious of everything she did and she was trying to impress me, I knew.

"How do you mean psychic?" I asked.

"Don't you know what psychic means? You come with me to a lecture at my "School of New Thought" on Sunday and see what it means. Will you come?"

"Yes, thank you very much," I said, feeling more interested in the book under my arm than in the "School of New Thought." But she looked pretty under her blue hat, with a dancing mischief in her eyes and her half-cynical sideways smile.

"Are you going to take that book?"

"Yes," I said. "Listen to this, and I read the lines beginning:—

"'We all feel that at best much of our real selves remains in life-long defect of expression, and that there are great deeps of the under-self, which, though organically related to our ordinary consciousness, are still, for the most part, hidden and unexplored. All, in fact, points to the existence within us of a very profound self, which, so far, we may justifiably conclude to be much greater than any one known manifestation of it, which requires, for its expression, the forms of a lifetime, and still stretches on and beyond; which perhaps belong to another sphere of being—as the ship in the air and the sunlight, belongs to another sphere than the hull, buried deep in the water. It seems indeed probable that the human soul, at death, does at first pass, with its cloud-vesture of memories and qualities, into some intermediate region, and for a long period, does remain there quiescent, surveying its past, recovering from the shocks and outrages of mortal experience, knitting up and smoothing out the broken and tangled threads, trying hard to understand the pattern. It seems probable that there is a long period of digestion and reconcilement and slow brooding over the new life which has to be formed.

"'When one thinks of the strange contradictions of our mortal life, the hopeless antagonistic elements, the warring of passions, the shattering of ideals, the stupor of monotony, the soul like a bird shut in a cage, or with bright wings dragged in the mire; the horrible sense of sin which torments some people, the mad impulses which tyrannise over others; the alternations of one's own personality on different days, or at different depths and planes of consciousness—when one thinks of all this one feels that if there is to be any sanity or sequence in the conclusion, it must mean a long period of brooding and reconciliation and of re-adjustment and even of sleep.

"'At first it may well be a troubled period of nightmare—like confusion; but at last there must come a time when harmony is restored. The past lifetime is spread out like a map before one—all its events fall into their places, composed and clear. The genius, rising from the depths, throws a strange light upon them. 'This was necessary—That could not have been otherwise—And that again which seemed so fatal, do you not now see its profound meaning?' The soul, surveying, gradually redeems the past. It comes to understand. Tout comprendre est tout pardonner.'"

"Yes, well that's what I say—the submerged self—get your book and come. Here," she called back into the shop, "Mr. Sefton, this is a friend of mine, Miss Malone—Mr. Sefton and I are old friends."

I turned then and saw Tony.

He was standing at the back of the shop. He was a little man with a shock of fair hair and deep, dark eyes that, at this moment, were fixed on Sybil with a look that I could not understand. It was deep and fierce and his arms were folded as if he were keeping back some deep feeling. I felt somehow that he had been watching us both for some time and was somehow stirred and displeased.

He came forward and took his introduction, but with his eyes still more on her than on mine. She seemed to be conscious of the fact, but to be wickedly rather delighting in it.

He was the assistant in the shop and, having taken my book from me, wrapped it up and handed it to me, keeping silence all the while.

Sybil was conscious of him I know, as she passed along the bookshelves, as I fumbled for my money; but she hummed and pretended not to see.

"Come along," she said, and tucked her arm into mine as she drew me out of the shop and nodded good-bye to Mr. Sefton.

So that was how I was led to the "Occult School."

For some time I only attended lectures but by degrees Sybil persuaded me to join one of the classes.

Tony was there—or Mr. Sefton, as I then called him.

He was a figure you could not help noticing. Everyone seemed to want to have something to say to him and at first I just looked on.

But the Occultists made me impatient. They were the funniest lot of people I had ever met. It was the first time I had ever found myself in a community and I was interested. But I kicked like anything when they tried to convince me that I was anything but a materialist.

They had all lived before. They all remembered their Past Lives. No one cared a thought for anyone but themselves, they were all interested each in his own evolution.

Sybil was most bizarre.

She always liked bossing. There were two girls there, younger than herself who were her great friends. It was not long before I dubbed them her "body-guard"—she lived under the fallacy that she was so delicately constituted psychically, that she must be protected. No strange person of the street must be allowed to sit next to her in trams or boats. She could not go in crowds, she told me. She used to linger near when the "Great One," as they called the lecturer, strode down from the platform that she might mingle in his aura and carry the influence home with her.

At that time I did not know what an "aura" meant.

Tony mystified me. He said very little, and held aloof. Yet although he seldom spoke to her I felt he was almost always conscious of Sybil.

The sight of those girls' hanging about and pretending to be busy talking to each other till the Great One should march past them, disgusted me. I stood apart, and one day found myself by Tony's side.

I began to talk of Carpenter and the "Drama of Love and Death." In no time I was entranced. Here was enthusiasm. He was at home with every book I mentioned.

We soon became good chums, for when we talked of books we forgot everything else; so that while Sybil was waiting to have the aura of the Great One showered over her we were talking so hard that we used to wander off and walk home together, before we noticed that she had not followed.

This made Sybil furious—Anyone might have thought it was jealousy because Tony was her friend and she did not like to share him—but it was not that; she felt I was her property—it was rivalry she felt with Tony—I was her proselyte and she was furious with him for intervening.

She began to talk about me to the others—I felt she was doing it. Tony used to look on and say nothing and try to save me from her. I used to see his eyes glaring, as he stood with folded arms, just as he had stood when first I met him. He did not appear to watch her, but I knew he was conscious of her all the time, and disapproving.

The Occult School was made up of Classes. What they did in the higher classes which Sybil attended I don't know. They were very mysterious about it and were not supposed to answer questions. What they did in the class I attended I can't quite say. They seemed to talk for ever about atmospheres and auras and former lives and life after death and mentality till I longed to turn the subject to books and pictures and art and the world I was accustomed to.

They never really accepted me, and I never really accepted them.

No one ever thought of bowing to anyone. If you were introduced one day, they turned away from you the next just as you were going to bow. They tried to be your friend; but their idea of friendship was to put an arm across your waist and try to do you good. That you might be doing them good, too, by coming into contact with them, never seemed to enter their minds. If you had not been there to practice on, life would have lost half its savour.

Sybil was up to some mischief with me, I knew it. She was doing me good with a vengeance; and Tony, with dark eyes full of meaning, always fixed on her, was always coming to my rescue.

"This is Miss Malone," she said, introducing me one day to one of the teachers, "I am just telling her she must not be so emotional."

Up came Tony, and just as I was bowing to the man introduced, thrust a picture of Christ in front of me where it was seen by all of us.

"This is what I found to-day," he said.

I felt, and perhaps Sybil knew too, that he had purposely interrupted.

What it was they were up to I did not in the least understand then. It was later that I knew.

Chapter II

CHAPTER II.

NAOMI.

NAOMI had been out all day. I had stayed at home to attend to various little household duties.

There was a glorious view from my front window. Across the harbour the sky was still flooded with the reflection of the sunset—the aftermath—in delicate colours of mauve and pink with little clouds all tipped with golden light; the ferry boats' lights, already lit, made them like fairy boats as they glided silently past one another, far away, while the lights of the city twinkled through a mist.

She called up to me from the flat below—evidently she knew I was standing at the window—perhaps she stood below, to look for a moment at the wonder of the world-picture I was watching.

"Are you there?" she called.

"Yes," I answered.

"If I come up in about half an hour's time will you be at home?"

Her voice was low and melodious, with rising amid falling inflections that somehow were unlike other people's.

"Yes," I said, "Come."

I hurried to put things a little straight. We were both Bohemians in the matter of furniture, using kerosene cases for cupboards and sofas, and sundry other little make-shifts. It was furniture that would move easily and serve as packing-cases in time of need. Books and papers scattered about were a thing we neither of us bothered about much, for they were daily necessaries to us both, and we left them lying where they were, or gathered them into a careless heap. So I left them strewn about, knowing that such confusion would be accepted by her as a matter of course.

I had had a hurried tea when she came up.

Her eyes were shining and bright and her cheeks and lips were full of colour.

"Here you are," she said.

I started a little. There was something in her voice and walk to-night that was peculiar—a little as if she were vague and uncertain.

I was always happy when I was with her and we chatted and I showed her some sketches I had made long years ago.

She had always rather a flattering way of talking, and as usual when she got up to go, said she had not seen half enough of my work, and wanted me to take them down to show her again some time.

It was during the week that followed, I think, that, as I was coming home, I saw her coming towards me from the opposite direction. I had been thinking of past troubles. I had been to see an old friend of my mother's and the thought of my lost home was still with me.

She came towards me with a peculiar smile on her face—why it was peculiar I can scarcely tell, but it jarred just then. I was in no mood for silly sentiment.

"I've just been doing my shopping," she said, "come down after tea. By the way, your groceries came and I took them in—here they are."

As she handed them to me, she looked long and steadily into my eyes, and as I took the parcel from her, she drew her fingers lingeringly along my hand.

I noticed, without appearing to notice, but only thought of it as something strange.

It became a custom with me to go down to her flat every evening, and chat about the things that had happened. We had many tastes in common, and often, during the day, I would consciously save up any little thing that happened, with the thought of our evening chat together.

One night, as she sat holding a fan before her face, to shade it from the glare of the lamp before her, I thought what a beautiful picture she would make. She was sad—I could see it behind the mask she wore. Her eyes deepened into their bluest, and her voice, always even and sweetly modulated, showed no sign of what she was feeling.

She said she had felt tired while in town and had sat in St. Mary's Cathedral.

She seemed thoughtful, and presently, just in a few suggestions, she gave me the story of her life.

There was no self-pity, just the reminiscences of the girlhood of a woman who loved to skirt danger—half rebel, half witch.

As I said good-night, I kissed her for the first time.

"You dear," she said, placing her hands on my arms and giving them a squeeze, and she kissed me on the other cheek.

I was always romantic, and from that time she became a story-book woman to me.

We were good comrades, and if she did not call up to me, I called down to her, to share joys and troubles.

One day, as I sat with her in her rooms, the doorbell rang and I, being nearest, jumped up to answer it.

A man stood there and asked for her by name, saying he wished to talk to her on business.

I ran away but she called me back.

"Silly child," she said, "it was only from Morton Daly's for some time-payment things I had bought. I won't buy more on time-payment."

Her debts worried her, and she soon became possessed with the idea that she must let part of her flat.

From that time on we worried together—I suggesting, she sometimes complying; I offering help, she sometimes begging me to come down to give it.

We both set to work to try to find tenants.

I used to call Miss Perkins in my thoughts, "The White Priestess."

She was thin and wiry and always dressed in white. It was a belief of hers that white attracted the good spirits, and black the bad. She was a great friend of Naomi's, but she was the sort of being who believed so much in living her own life that we saw very little of her.

From one of my windows I could see her standing at hers in meditation.

One day I spoke to her, not knowing of the seriousness of this performance.

"Is your cold better?" I asked, "I heard you coughing all night."

There was a pause, in which I was made to feel that I was interrupting.

"Yes, thank you. How are you to-day?" she asked.

She very rarely said anything else than that to me. It seemed to be her stock remark and she cared nothing for the answer.

But she loved Naomi. I used to wonder sometimes if it were just ordinary everyday jealousy of my friendship with Naomi that brought the whole thing about.

They had one broom between them—this belonged to Naomi—and it would be:

"Naomi, are you using that broom?" in low, impressive tones.

"No!" Naomi would call on a high note in answer, "Do you want it?"

"Yes, if you can spare it."

Then they used one iron between them and this belonged to the Priestess.

It would be:

"Naomi, I've finished with the iron if you want to use it," and Naomi would call her thanks and go for it.

I, used to a home where there were never less than two irons on a full-flowing gas, and always two or three brooms in the corner of the kitchen ready for use, laughed at these doings—

"You can use my irons," I said, "you'll never be able to iron your things properly with one."

"Oh, no," she said, "I'm going to use Diana's."

"I don’t know how you can like her so much," I said. "She's so unsympathetic; she shuts herself up there and doesn't care for anybody."

"You don't know her," she said, "I've lived with her before."

There was a strange mystery about the feeling between them. It was the custom of the little Priestess to go about her business of cleaning her room, which was spotless, washing her clothes, making her meditations, and going to the Occult classes or services, to which she had pledged herself, without letting any personal feeling intervene. I used to be conscious, in a cold sort of fashion, of her neighbourhood, and her light used to be put in the window, with its reflection behind it, to burn all night. It comforted me rather, when I went there, to see the reflection on the white wall from my own window till I found my own bright, beautiful star—Venus or Mars, I don't know which—which looked down on me night after night.

But she did not like me; she would have nothing to do with me at all.

She tried to persuade Naomi to join one of her occult classes.

"I'm sure you would be most psychic," she said in her impressive way, looking up at Naomi with eyes full of serious importance, "we might find we could form a class here."

"Oh, I'm not sure that I would join," I said, laughing. The occult had never appealed to me.

"Oh, I don't mean you," she said coldly, "I mean Naomi."

But Naomi was not sure either. In a way she was a believer in the occult too. She used to make me both amused and irritable with her dreams and omens. She was Irish and perhaps she owed her superstitions to her nationality. She had many talks with Diana when I was out and I used sometimes to get little glimpses of occult ideas in our long talks afterwards.

Once, Naomi had a bad cold and stayed in bed. I had called through her window to her in the morning, on my way out. When I came in the same way in the evening to ask after her, she said, "Di has been here—all my fears are gone. I'm not feverish now."

"Fears!" I thought, and wondered. How strange to have fears when you lay in bed with a cold.

She knew I laughed at her belief in omens, in palmists, clairvoyants, etc.

One day, as I came down the path towards her front door, she came forward with a newspaper cutting.

"Oh, I thought you were Diana," she said, and drew back with a hard look in her eyes. "I was going to tell her of this I had found in my newspaper—a beautiful thing about the healing of trees and plants."

"Show me," I said, and held out my hand; but she drew it back.

"No," she said, looking almost angry, "you would try to spoil my faith in it; I won't let you see it."

I used to get so tired of their silly talk about vibrations. The White Priestess would draw her skirts aside, and move further away, if she happened to meet me, and thought I stood too near. No one was ever allowed to go into her bedroom, and she told someone once, that to sleep in any bed than her own, was like using anyone else's toothbrush. She even made Naomi nearly as bad as herself, for, when I was going to pop down on the old stretcher that was out on the verandah, Naomi cried, impulsively, with her hand out:

"Oh, don't sit there, dear! I've been sitting there; you stay at that end and I'll sit at this."

The next minute she was ready to laugh at herself, for she said:

"Oh no, come along. There you are, that's comfortable," and plumped the cushions about behind me.

The Priestess was a germ hunter. By that I mean she chased them, not that she wished to investigate them.

"Oh, I can't sit very far away from the door, because you see I need a-i-r."

This was said with head bent, neck stiffened, and a look of grave importance on her face.

"You see, when you breathe, you take in all the bad germs that are given out."

I wondered if she ever thought of the people next her taking in the bad germs she was giving out herself, but this did not seem to occur to her.

I once went to a public lecture and she happened to be there. Not knowing any of the people round me and seeing that she was alone, I innocently went over and sat on the empty chair next to her.

"I thought I'd come and sit with you," I said.

She appeared not to hear me, but after some minutes, made some remark and to my astonishment, got up and walked away. She went over to talk to someone opposite, took the chair next to her and when this person left to go home, I, thinking perhaps she had been absent-minded, went over to her again.

"You won't think me very rude, will you, but I have to go," she said, and got up and went.

It was easy to see why she went, she did not care to "mix" vibrations. That was before I went to Chester House—I did not know then what they meant by "vibrations;" it was not a thing we talked about at home. She was a faddist about food too, not liking to eat fruit or vegetables that did not come straight from the garden. Such chastity, O Diana! Such a Puritan that she became a statue. If I spoke to her she paused and sometimes seemed to forget to answer. It could not always have been that she did not hear.

One day, when we three were together, and Naomi told a funny story, Diana laughed and told another. Turning to her for sympathy, I capped it with another. The Priestess shut up like an oyster. Naomi was walking in front at the time and I was at the Priestess' side. She made no sign that she had even heard. I spoke to Naomi of it afterwards and she said: