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

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      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."

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