The Strange Experiences of Tina Malone/Chapter 17
CHAPTER XVII.
THE UNDERGROUND PASSAGES.
All kinds of different people seemed to be in the underground passages behind me at different times and each one who was there made me see things in a different light, and each time more clearly.
One night I heard a laugh behind me and some nonsensical talk.
"Who are you?" I asked. "I know what you're up to down in that passage. You're writing—What are you writing?"
From the back somewhere, without leaving his writing came the voice:
"I'm catching things as they come, Bunty Blue. They float down and I catch them and get 'copy.'"
"What! You're a reporter?"
"Yes, and if you like to claim half profits, you can," he threw at me as he sat there by the light of a lantern.
I imagined him there.
"Yes, I know you've got me there," I said, "but I couldn't rob a reporter of half his money. I just about know what he gets."
He laughed and went on writing.
Then there was Goliath.
I called him that.
Soon after I went to Dr. Weston I was coming home one day and I heard:
"That's where it is—And that's where it isn't—And that's where it is—And that's where it isn't—I'm coming there—And I'm coming too—You know me—And I know you"—in two-step rhythm and in all different voices.
I was on the ferry-boat, sitting outside, watching the sunset at the time the voices came. It was so quaint. The first would begin and another would take it up, then another, then another, as if linking up in an underground passage—so quaint and amusing to listen to.
I seemed to know that Dr. Weston was hunting in the underground passages—all in two-step rhythm, for his followers. I used to feel strength coming through to me and a feeling of happiness. I always knew it was he and I called him "Goliath" because he was so strong—no one could suppress him but David.
David could send him to sleep.
One night the voices were troubling me very much and I heard Goliath's voice expostulating with them and telling them to leave me alone.
"Is that you, Goliath?" I asked. "Aren't you asleep?"
"No, Bunty Blue."
"Can't you get to sleep? I always did think you couldn't spare all that strength of yours. I knew it must be too much for you. Does it make you sleepless?"
"Yes, I'm not a good sleeper," came Goliath's voice. He was never very far away, and was always ready to protect me.
"Then I'll tell David to send you to sleep. Get your stone, David, and send him to sleep."
For I knew David too, who had that power was somewhere near.
Then David spoke, and Goliath answered, and soon Goliath was quiet for David had sent him to sleep.
Then one day came another voice to my aid. The cruel ones were worrying me when I heard a charming one in broken English, saying "Leave it to me, I will help you." And then she said with a pretty rhythm:
"If mon mari is good for me
He is good for you.
If he is good for you
He is good for all the world."
And so she went on, her voice growing fainter and then coming close again, then growing fainter till she had drawn me with her right out to sea.
I called her Patapouf, the French fairy, and she seemed to float over the city and was always ready to help those who were in trouble and carry them out to sea away from the taunting voices. I called her the French fairy and she said:
"Then Bunty Blue is the Australian fairy."
Then would come children's voices saying form somewhere in the distance:
"Bunty Blue! I can hear you speaking, Bunty Blue—Are you there?"
"Yes, I live in a garden, all among the stalks of the flowers," I would say. "And my horse is a beautiful blue butterfly."
The little voices would often catch and call to mine. They thought me a fairy I really think and I could hear their mothers telling them I was.
And then a sweet little Dutch voice in broken English.
First his mother from somewhere in the distance:
"Listen Hans! You hear that little fairy, Bunty Blue say something to you?"
"Where do you look for fairies, little boy?" I called.
Then would come in the little voice while I imagined him there, his little face full of listening wonder, while his mother watched him.
"She say 'Where you look for fairies, litter boy?'"
"You tell her, Hans."
But Hans was evidently listening for more evidence of the fairy.
"Watch the blue butterflies and they'll bring me to you some day," I said.
A listening pause, then:
"She say, 'Watch dose boo butterflies, she kom soon—I not see her mine farter."
I had so many friends in these underground passages, though I did not always know who they were.
One day I was going to a meeting at my club—I did not feel inclined to go and one of the voices said:
"Put on your things and go out—Go out—Get away from your rooms."
It said it so often that it gave me enough firmness to carry out my idea of going.
I was too early for the meeting and as I passed a picture show I saw—
"The Sins of Rozanne."
I went in to put in time and as I watched the picture I saw, to my surprise, that it was something like my case. An ayah threw her personality into that of her little charge and all her life this girl had a dual personality and had to fight that of her ayah's when she wanted to gain back her own.
I had been very bad myself that day. The voices had been terrible, and I had felt all confusion, only held up by the one who urged me to go into town.
When I walked into the room I saw a man looking over at me with an amused twinkle in his eyes.
I crossed the room to him presently. I had met him before but did not expect him to remember me. He was a student of the occult I knew, and I thought he might be able to give me help.
To my surprise he remembered me but said:
"I thought you were someone else when first you came in."
When I left that afternoon he left too and as we passed the picture show about Rozanne, I said:
"Do you believe in black magic?"
"Why?" he said.
"Oh, please tell me—do you?" I asked.
He looked at me kindly then and saw I was in trouble.
"Yes, but there's White Magic, too," he said.
He just touched my arm to help me across the tram-line and we parted at the wharf.
I felt he was trying to help me, but all through these experiences I had been cautioned so much not to say this or that, that I felt I must not speak quite openly about them so that I had not been able to ask him all I wanted to—So when in after days I called to him, I called him "White Magic."
When I told Tony about him, he said:
"Has he power?"
"I don't know," I said, searching Tony's face for the reason of the question. But Tony wouldn't say more.
"Power to help," I said.
Then there was someone else I counted a friend.
One day in the midst of the medley of voices I heard:
"Moi je me carre
Moi je me parre
Moi je suis belle et blue
Ma tetè"
"Yes, I know you, Pip McMillan," I cried. "Your French is about as good as my brother's—You learnt it out of McMillan's French course—You only got as far as irregular verbs."
"I've not got time to waste on you, Bunty Blue," he said.
"I don't want you to," I said. "I know you—you belong to the Farm-yard group—I know you—You're one for creeping through the fences. And now you're doing a strut."
"Not I," he said, "I'm flying over the tops of them, after Brer Rabbit all the time."
"Oh! Then it's time you caught him. He's putting his little head up just behind a tuft of the grass. Don't you see him?"
"Not yet, Bunty Blue. I'll take your hand and give you a run after him when I do and we'll be in at the death."
"Not death, Pip—Don't say that—not death. I couldn't bear that poor little rabbit to die. Let him have a chance to get away again. We don't want him quite to go. If he would only let us know who he is. If he would only reform his ways."
"Now you be quiet. I'm working hard," he said.
He was always most off-hand and short with me but I felt at home with him and never resented what he said.
There was yet one other picture-show that threw a light on my trouble at this time—a terrible light.
It showed me that Tony and I were pawns in a game and the chess-player was so ruthless and his power so terrible and so hard to get away from that as I sat there, my heart beating hard at the horror and wickedness there is in the world that allows "mind-throwing" to be practised and people to be made tools of, I gave a mental cry.
"Oh, Miracle Man! Miracle Man! No one but you can help. No one but you, if we can't break through the bad with that White Light, there's no hope of freedom."
It was all the same, Good against Bad, Ruthless against Pitiful, this horrible driving of one mind by the other who tried in vain to burst through the shackles and gain its freedom. Could this be allowed in the twentieth century, this taking possession of another's mind and using it as a tool?