The Strange Experiences of Tina Malone/Chapter 2
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:
"Yes, I noticed that, but I think, dear, perhaps she was absent-minded."
I did not think so.
There were times when I liked her.
The first day I arrived and she showed me into my room and that beautiful view of sky and trees and harbour stretched out before us, she gave a cry of enthusiasm, "What colour! Look at the colour."
She spoke like an artist and as if seeing it for the first time—revelling in it, and drinking it in with joy.
She turned to me then and her face was aglow.
I was quiet and lonely at that minute. I could not speak.
She seemed to see just then.
"It is beautiful to think," she said quietly, "that when those we have loved have passed over, they really know us as we are. All the little misunderstandings vanish, all the little meannesses of everyday life go, and they can see and know what we are feeling."
I knew she meant that mother was not far away, and just then I thanked her in my heart, for understanding.
Perhaps it was because she was jealous of my friendship with Naomi, but we soon found that we were not congenial.
She was like a baby in her pleasure at the thought of Naomi's coming. She said she must get some new clothes, and seemed to be bustling about in her room.
But soon after Naomi's arrival she had fallen back into her old routine again. Her life was evenly parcelled out into meditations, little domestic duties, and attending her classes.
Naomi was in a difficult position. She loved Diana for her "aloofness," the very thing I was impatient at, but she and I were chums and she liked to be with me.
"I can't stand her; she doesn't care for a soul but herself; how can you, Naomi!"
"It doesn't matter to me a bit whether people care for me or not," said Naomi, "I just like her as she is. Besides," she said, "I have lived with her before. She comforted me when I was in great trouble. I was staying with friends of mine and we quarrelled. Now I come to think of it, it was because they laughed at Diana and I wouldn't stand it. I left, and went to stay, in the same house as she was. I was very miserable there and she soothed me so with her calm."
"Give me more flesh and blood," I said, "I don't like statues—Rather a storm than a calm."
"You little Pagan," she said.
But the Priestess had her queer little ways.
"Come down, Diana," called Naomi one day, "come and have some afternoon tea. I know you don't drink it but be wicked for once and do."
"Well, will you promise not to talk scandal," said the Priestess, "I can't come if you talk scandal."
"Promise?" asked Naomi, looking at me with a twinkle in her eye.
She came down and we were as good as gold, but found ourselves out of pure devilment or nervousness, we scarcely knew which, finding something scandalous popping into everything we said.
She was not often with us, for she had her own way of living and we were of the world.
Then came the time when Naomi's bills used to come in, and she had the idea of letting some of her rooms in the flat downstairs.
It was I who gave her the idea, unfortunately.
Hers was a furnished flat, and when it came hard on her to find her rent and to meet her bills, she hardened her heart against Diana, who had persuaded her to go there.
I put in a protest then for Diana's good intentions.
"No," she said, "she wanted to get me here for her own sake—just for her own ends."
Together we planned and suggested which room should be let and which kept for herself.
Then came the advertising and the making known to agents.
Diana was all out of this.
Somehow Naomi and I had drawn very near to one another. The White Priestess went her own way, and all we knew of her, was when we caught a glimpse of her at her window above. She did not approve of Naomi's letting rooms.
At last Naomi told me she had heard of some people.
"They are theatrical. They asked me if I objected to their champagne suppers, etc. I thought it would be rather nice to have those champagne suppers—They said they would ask me in—What fun Tina! for you shall come too—but don't tell Diana—she won't approve. What business is it of hers who I let to?"
But Diana had something to do with the letting of the rooms. She was part proprietress of the house. She found out, and the plan fell through.
"Let the whole thing, and come up to me," I said, "I have a spare bed and you can do just what you like."
And though at first she protested, that is what Naomi eventually did.
It was before this though, that something mysterious happened.