The Strange Experiences of Tina Malone/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV.
THE WEEK IN MY FLAT.
IT was a "toss up" as to whether the people would come or not. Naomi did not seem to be very hopeful. She had had to launch out in supplying sheets and cutlery, and the idea that this may have been for nothing made her worry.
It was quite late when they did come and we had to play the good Samaritan and supply them with tea and candles and things they could not buy on Saturday night.
"I'm going to see if they are all comfortable, Naomi," I said in the morning. "Shall I?" for she did not seem to think it the least bit necessary.
"Yes, dear, if you like. You would perhaps know better than I would what they want."
I ran down and found the old lady ready for a chat and quite comfortable and satisfied with her new lodgings. Her husband had been suffering from heart and was glad to find a resting place in a flat of his own for a week for he had been travelling and staying in hotels.
So the linen and cutlery were not for nothing after all. They were going to pay well and Naomi's worries were at rest.
"What's the matter?" I said to her one day.
She had been downstairs in answer to a note from Mrs. Smith.
She stood with a hunted look on her face and looking far away.
"I hope they won't stay more than the week," she said.
"Why not?"
She rubbed her hands together as if washing them, her eyes still looking far beyond me.
"I don't like that man. The woman's right enough. But that man doesn't like me?"
She was always full of the most unaccountable fears.
I stopped my laugh suddenly and looked at her, puzzled, but said no more.
It was a week of mystery, the one that passed in my rooms.
Naomi had her own room and was most independent in her ideas of using only her own little Primus and tried to burn candles until I insisted on lighting her gas.
There was a little woman named Helen Morton living next door.
One day as Naomi and I were going out together this little woman was standing on her step. She had often been in after a wandering fowl.
"Oh, you've got a chum," she said to me as if she envied me a precious possession. "I had once when my sister was here."
She said it with a smile that looked so sad that I vowed to draw her into our companionship.
So we used to ask her in in the evening.
"If you don't talk 'Occultism,'" she said, "no spirits for me except the Johnny Walker ones. I have a ginger-beer allowance and a champagne appetite. But no dreams and superstitions or occult talks or I wont come."
We promised, laughing.
But in spite of disliking occultism Miss Smith liked to discuss the occultists.
She didn't like their hats. She could not understand their life. She brought up an old scandal about one of the members.
Naomi joined in.
"Oh, let the past go," I said, "why shouldn't he poor man be allowed to forget it. It's a horrible way society has of never letting people up once they're down. Why not. At sunrise every soul is born again?"
A curiously quick flush spread over Naomi's face, and she ducked her head. I thought of it afterwards—that flush—I wondered at it then.
We went on to talk of many things and I described a christening party to which my sister and I had once been asked when we were just out of our 'teens, and our horror at finding a room full of people who were drinking and smoking while we sat like two little girls from Sunday School.
"But you liked it?" said Naomi.
The exclamation was like an agonised cry.
"No, not really," I said, "I never really feel at home in that kind of thing."
The same quick flush spread over her face.
She was most extraordinary that week.
We began as friends and had some innocent fun in smoking cigarettes and playing, talking and laughing together like Bohemians.
She was a curious mixture.
"Do you feel inclined to go to a lecture at the Occult School?" she asked one day. "It's on 'The Invisible World.'"
"Sounds nice," I said, "let's go."
Tony was there and I called him over to speak to Naomi.
I could see at once that they were antagonistic as he shook hands—lightning darted at her from Tony's usually sleepy eyes, and Naomi, when she came home, rushed to her basin to wash her hands.
All the occultists were there in great form and the White Priestess led us to the part where we should be within the circle of the purest vibrations.
Whether the vibrations were counteracted by Tony's hand-shake or not, I don't know, but Naomi was full of questions about him afterwards.
"Life's just a clearing-up and sweeping out and going on again, isn't it, Naomi?" I said.
I was sitting on my heels with a dust pan and small broom in my hands, for little bits of philosophy always came to me when I was doing things.
"How do you mean?" asked she.
She was standing there looking very artistic in an old rose-coloured dressing-gown and I looked up at her, thinking what a picture she made.
"Well, it's just growing out of interests and putting them aside and looking round you for new ones," I said. "It cost me a lot to put aside my dolls but I knew I had to when I was a good deal more than twelve, then I had to wait till something else came to take their place."
"And what took their place?"
"I don' know"—I looked back on my life, on the grey of it when the bright lights faded and left it commonplace—"I don't know—I think we generally long and long for a thing and don't get it, and then after a time we do get it when the longing is dead."
"Is the longing ever dead?" she said, and I knew she was thinking of herself.
"Yes, it goes," I said, "it is just that—I've got most things after I've stopped longing for them. But I wouldn't give up the power to want them, would you? It's the one thing in the whole world I wouldn't part with—imagination—the power to live in a world of my own—the love of romance."
"Yes, the love of romance. It's a dangerous love, little girl, and sometimes costs us dear."
"Its worth it," I said, "the thing is to want hard enough, but it's a lovely feeling to want things—generally it's so grey that life isn't worth living. All my life I've wanted something stronger than myself to lean on, and do you know where I've found it?"
She shook her head.
"There."
I pointed to Tony's picture which hung on the wall.
She said nothing, but a hard look came into her eyes and she turned and examined it.
"He's such a dear! Whenever I feel miserable I go in to see him in his book shop and always come away feeling stronger."
She stood silently looking into the picture where it hung on the wall.
But the dreamy mood of philosophy soon left us.
She had a strong spirit of mischief in her—innocent enough—but it used to seize her at times and set her eyes sparkling and her tongue chipping out funny little verses and songs.
I asked Tony over one night to meet her, but she went out and would not come back until he had gone. The White Priestess claimed her.
The White Priestess did not approve of Tony. He was taking another path to heaven and their vibrations did not suit.
He left me a skit—a little pamphlet on occultists he had found, and wrote in it "To The Pagan."
I left it on the sofa. It was a skit on one of the celebrities who, to a great extent, believed in dogma. I left it lying about—a dangerous thing to do if the White Priestess had been anywhere about, but she was not.
"I'm starving for some music. Will you come, Naomi, on Thursday night to the Conservatorium," I asked.
"No, I can't, dear. I don't want to go out till I've paid some of my debts. I'll go anywhere with you as soon as that happens."
So I went alone.
The day before that Naomi and I had had a tiff. I said with a laugh:
"I'm sure I'm going to quarrel."
She looked frightened, I don't know why. My work took me out all day. I left her in the morning and had a feeling, somehow, when I came back late in the afternoon, that someone had been in my rooms.
It was nothing, of course, Naomi having received her friends there, but I picked up the little skit book from the sofa, sorry that I had left it lying about, and hoped the Priestess had not seen it. These occultists can be very nasty to one another at times, and are as revengeful as schoolgirls if their vanity is hurt.
She seemed nervous and as if she did not feel happy at meeting me. I supposed she had not forgiven me for having even suggested that I felt like quarreling.
"I'm terribly quarrelsome," I said once, laughing.
"So am I," she said, and she might have added, "and I never forgive." When we had quarrelled I remembered some stories she had told me of other women she had quarrelled with and had never forgiven. I should have taken warning but my temper is quick and soon over and somehow I expect the same of other people.
But the night of the concert saw me go out leaving Naomi in anything but a friendly mood, for we had had our tiff over a trifling thing and she had already launched out on her road of unrelenting revenge.
I came home humming the beautiful Andante of one of Beethoven's Symphonies, refreshed and exalted.
Naomi, to my great relief, was almost her friendly self again.
"Guess who has been here?" she said, "Tom Felton drove up in a motor. He brought a Mrs. Roberts with him, dear. He found out my address from the Coxes."
"Oh, Naomi! And the place was like a bear-garden."
For the minute I suppose I sounded annoyed. My annoyance was only at the dust and untidiness I saw as I looked round. Naomi and I did not mind carelessness but I did not like the thought of strangers seeing it.
"It didn't matter. He wouldn't mind. I don't know where Diana can have gone to. I can't hear her stirring in her room. She must have gone away, I think."
"I'm glad you saw him, Naomi. You must ask him to come again."
We had almost come to friendly relations again.
And then another tiff came. I said something that annoyed her. I saw I had done it, and that I seemed to be judging her for something she had told me of her past.
Her face hardened and she seemed relieved to think she was going back to her own flat.
Looking back on it now I believe it was her fear of the White Priestess and her Occult School of high thinking, and objecting to individual attentions after her visit from Dr. Felton that made her long to get away and hide herself from me.
What had she done toward me that made her long to get away?
The thought came to me as I saw that hard look in her eyes that had Fear in it too, and the hunted look of one who has done something she cannot recall.
It was the day before the concert that we quarrelled.
I had tried to kiss her good-night and she had held my hands tight and with arms crossed, drew back.
"No," she said.
"Why not?" I said and bent towards her. Her fingers tightened on mine and she stretched her arms out to hold me further away.
"I don't believe in being too fond of people or people being too fond of me," she said.
It was not herself—I could see the White Priestess behind the words—the Occult School had got at her properly.
"All right then, don't," I said. "Never speak to me again. I'll be glad when you've gone. You're the most resentful person I know."
She called out good-bye to me as I left for work next morning but I pretended not to hear, as I was half way out of the door.
When I came home at lunch time I tapped at her door and made some excuse to speak to her.
She was sitting there with her writing-pad on her lap and as she raised her face to speak to me I caught a look on it that I have ever since been longing to put on canvas.
It was "The Sorceress" in every line. With her beautiful forehead with its hair drawn straight back, eyes narrowed, lids half-dropped, and with a look in them that was alluring and full of intention, she craned her little head forward and fixed those eyes on me. The lids just made one drooping movement, and the look had in it something of the snake and a look of the East.
I seized it, all the artist in me awake and longing to put it on canvas. I knew and yet puzzled over it for a long time afterwards.
And then the concert, and her visitor in the motor-car when I was out. Had she written to ask him then? Was her revenge for me in preparation? Was I being used as a blind?