The Strange Experiences of Tina Malone. Ethel C. M. Paige

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

      Naomi

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      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 СКАЧАТЬ