The Strange Experiences of Tina Malone/Chapter 14
CHAPTER XIV.
THE SPIRITS.
I asked my brother-in-law all I could about Spiritualism. He took an interest in psychical research, but my condition did not seem to suggest anything of that kind to him. They had quite decided, all of them, that I heard voices because I was suffering from nervous breakdown and that I must do all I could to forget them. They always took care to change the subject in a cheerful voice when I referred to it.
I wandered wearily into the cool drawing-room at my sister's and took up a book of my brother's-in-law, on Spiritualism.
"They can't tell me. No one can tell me," I whispered to Patrick who was still there.
"Give me a sign," I said to him.
I opened the book as people do sometimes when they take the Bible for a text-book. I closed my eyes and put my finger on a line.
I looked down.
"We know," the book said. It was a chapter on psychical phenomena.
I asked for another sign and this time took up a magazine.
I opened it and found the word "Carpenter," his favorite author, in evidence.
I tried again and found my finger on "..ton I.."
"Tony!" I cried. "But are you Tony?"
No, the voice would never say right out.
So again I called it "Patrick."
But there was something like magic abzout it.
One day I could not find my bag. I looked all round everywhere for it.
I heard a voice say:
"Look there, my child, on the chair by the piano"—I had my back to the piano.
And there it was.
But Patrick and I were alone with our knowledge. No one else seemed to know.
In despair of being understood I sat and sat sometimes in the twilight when I was again back in my rooms, and wondered.
And then one day as I stood up I found my back gradually bending, my face taking on it a gentle smile, and I knew mother was there with me.
It was the first time she had come like that.
When the automatic writing had come and when I felt her there before she was just "a spirit," but now I seemed to become her, with her personality.
She seemed to take possession of my body. I did not call her and it was not until I found my shoulders bent and began to walk with a slow walk—mother's own—and found my face settling into her placid smile, that I knew what was happening.
Slowly, I found myself walking into my front room and looking round the walls and at the furniture with the interest of one coming back to an old home.
I was dumb with surprise. It was mother herself.
She stayed a little while and then someone knocked at the door and she seemed to go.
But the next morning when I woke, her smile was on my face and my hands, like hers, made little movements as she used when she was ill and could not speak, as she did sometimes when in pain.
She begged me to tell the others she was there. She wanted to know about them all. She had tried to find them and she could not.
I told her of the new homes of those who had moved, and where she could find them.
She shook her head sadly and said she was all alone. She told me she would try to find the others—she wanted so to see them again.
She must have wanted it and I could not help believing she was there.
One day, I went to Bessie's rooms and she was out.
While I was waiting for her to come home again the bent shoulders, bowed head and old familiar smile descended on me and I knew that mother was with me again.
I felt her causing me to get up and then, with the old slow step, she walked along the passage to Bessie's room, looked all round it with the old sweet smile, as if looking with pleasure at the well-remembered things, and when she saw the arm-chair where she had so often sat in those days not so long ago, she wrung her poor old hands and held her lips tight as she did when suffering.
She begged me to tell Bessie and let her speak to her.
When Bessie came home I told her. I called again to mother.
But Bessie would not believe and told me not to talk such nonsense.
Once more she came to me but it was some months later.
I was forced to leave those rooms.
Once more I packed my books and took down my pictures.
As I sat, tired out, the last day, I felt the consciousness of my mother's spirit once more. My head began to move sadly to and fro and the old well-remembered smile came on my face. But she did not want to come.
"Why do you do it, Tina? Why do you do it?" she said in reproach. "You know it's not right—You know it's not right."
"I didn't do it, mother," I said. "I don't know why they made you come again. I don't want you to come."
And then, from somewhere in space, I heard, in my father's voice, a duet they had once sung together in the first days of their married life.
And then my mother's voice went happily to meet it in answer and I listened to the two in silence and heard them meet and once more I was alone.
Alone and rather desolate I found myself in my new rooms and sitting by a clumsily put together fire in the grate, which, somehow, I could not persuade to burn.
I heard the voice which, of all others, had been the most gentle—I felt it belonged to a Roman Catholic priest. Never once, through all my raging resentment and the furious epithets I threw sometimes at this church, sometimes at that, never once had it met me with anything but gentleness and patience and a feeling of peace that brought me help.
"Are you there, little girl?"
"Yes, Father, I'm here," I said with the old custom of my childhood at a convent school.
"Are you all right then?"
"Not yet. I can't get my fire to burn and my furniture is all upside down—but I don't feel lonely. Patrick is here and all the others—too many of the others, but just now they're quiet."
"Remember I am always there within call, and this is the time I'll come. Try not to talk—Try not to answer them."
He never stayed long but was always anxious for my well-being.