# The Strange Experiences of Tina Malone/Chapter 16

CHAPTER XVI.
THE NOTE-BOOK AND THE VOICES THROUGH THE WALL.
Once, when I was feeling a very wicked little girl, in disgrace for having given way to a fit of temper, alone in my own room, I meditated on my sins. I knew there could have been no one who had been quite so detestable as I had. After having told home-truths to all the family I had rushed away, feeling that there was no place for me in the world—in fact, too disgusted with myself to feel that I had any right there.
Then, as the storm cleared away, there crept in a comforting thought.
"The bad imp! Yes—of course—the bad imp who comforts the other bad people by letting them know that there's someone else as wicked as themselves in the world. If the bad imp hadn't gone through that sorrowful time when she despised herself for being so utterly horrid she would never be able to tell them "Yes, I know how you feel—Isn’t it dreadful? Never mind, get up and begin again. I've been there too, so now you know you're not the only one because I understand. There is a use for me—I'll be the bad imp."
​Just as in those days I found a use for the bad fairy so now I found the comforting thought that I could be of vital help to others.
Someone I had known to have been suffering from nervous breakdown and to have been under treatment for many years, lent me her note-book to read some of her notes on a great project she wanted to carry out.
"It's very precious," she said. "There's a lot in it you won't understand because I put all kinds of things in it, but that doesn't matter—All the first part you'll be able to read."
This was all said to me in a mysterious whisper—she was always mysterious. She told me all kinds of queer things about "voices of scouts down the harbour," and this kind of thing.
But when, left alone with the note-book, I turned the leaves, something struck me that I thought of often afterwards. They were all her own notes, but in disconnected jerks—both in the matter of thoughts and handwriting—the handwriting changed with each thought and the mode of expression, the phrasing, the language.
I thought it peculiar then, and afterwards, many times, the cruelty of it came back to me. Here then was the same suffering that I was going through which she had tried in vain to make others understand—the many minds in hers—the confusion through which her own poor, helpless mind must struggle to free itself and claim its individuality.
For how long had she suffered in this way, misunderstood, unlistened to, save by careless, indifferent people?
Minds thrown into hers, she powerless to prevent it, being treated for "nerves" and being given all these extra minds to carry.
Was it psycho-analysis? And if so, how cruel! How pitiless!
And was mine the same? And who was daring to do this thing, to take this liberty, unasked, with a woman, in a free country?
How many people were suffering in this way with no one to understand them?
There seemed to be voices coming to me then through the wall, saying:
"Don't forget us little Bunty Blue! Don't forget us."
All the voices called me "Bunty Blue" now.
I pictured them as patients in mental hospitals, lying there quietly till the doctors had time to spend the thought that each one needed.
The voices never left me, cruel, incessant, taunting. What could it all mean?
Tony did not know.
But there was someone there who was like Tony. I ​called him David. He always seemed to be taking care of me.
My pupils left me one by one. I wondered if, perhaps, they heard the voices too. These used to bother me as I sat at the piano, suggesting pieces that I would never want to teach, and even, I could see, trying to make the pupil put down wrong notes in the bass.
"David" was with me one night when I was very miserable. I had had to refuse an invitation to Iolanthe because I did not know if these afwul molestations would leave me in peace. So I had refused, and when my teaching was over, I wandered through the twilight streets, taking consolation by haunting the second-hand bookshops. It was that night I decided on calling this friendly voice David—"Just David," he said to me.
So "Just David" and I wandered together. He was only a voice and no one knew that there was anyone but "just me" there walking along the streets, but we were talking together all the time and he comforted me greatly. I did so long for the lovely fairy music of Iolanthe and the sweetness of it haunted me and I had to gulp down a great feeling of disappointment when I thought of it.
I told David all about it. I think he had tried to protect me all the afternoon from the cruel people who pressed their consciousness into mine. It had been quieter and more easy to bear, but I had refused the invitation and could not go.
So "David" I called my protector, and the voices through the wall called him "David," too—they had great faith in David and took an interest in him.
I still confused him with Tony—and when Tony used to come and have tea with me I used to try and catch him out.
He would say something.
"I'm not alone, you know," I said, nodding my head in warning, "there's someone there."
"Oh, is Patrick there still?"
"Er—yes—Patrick—well no, I'm not sure if it is Patrick—it's David—just David," and I know I looked very searchingly into Tony's eyes.
But he only laughed and said I believed in fairies or something.
When Tony was in town he always came to see me on Sunday afternoons. His visits were never very long but just long enough for me to tell him little things about what was occurring and to hear from him how his collecting of books was going on.
I knew he was careless of his meals so I generally tried to have sandwiches or something a little more than afternoon tea for him.
​As I prepared them in the kitchen I used to hear the voices through the wall as if people were interested and happy at watching me—as if I were a vision, and they, perhaps patients in a hospital, were watching me with a happy interest that was almost childish.
They worried me sometimes but not like the others. They used to talk to me like friends.
"Who are you expecting to-day?" they asked.
"David—just David," I said.
"We know who David is," they said.
"No you don't."
"Yes, we do."
Then would come a spiteful angry voice: "You old hen! As if anyone wants to talk to you. You give back that Rosary."
But the other voices would say:
"Is David very wonderful?"
"Yes," I said, "he can give you strength. He always makes me feel stronger when I am near him."
"We want to know David, Bunty Blue," they said. "Do you think he would help us?"
"He helps everybody," I said.
"Is he your Miracle man?"
"He's one of them," I said.
Why they spoke of the Miracle Man was this:
I had a habit, whenever I felt miserable or lonely or depressed, of going to a picture-show. I always loved them. It was always there that you saw life as it was at that moment—a picture of to-day.
One day I went to one called "The Miracle Man." It was the most beautiful picture I had ever seen—the story of a hermit, old, dumb, almost blind and deaf, but able to read the souls of those with whom he came in contact, those who came to him with their troubles. And as they stood near him, he would call forth all that was best in them and make them ashamed of all that was bad. He could heal them if they came to him with the faith and trust of a little child.
As I sat in the theatre and watched it I thought all the time of Tony and the power he had in him to give strength to me and to call into life the old self and the old ideals that had been so long lost and buried. Just one other person had had that power before. It was a Frenchman, an artist who had taught me drawing when I was a little girl, who had called up all that was best in my nature and taught me never to be untrue to my ideals. Then the everyday commonplaces of life, the feeling that there was no one to understand, made me cover them up and bury them so deep that no one but I knew they were there. But when I met Tony he seemed to dig round the roots and let in the ​light, till, as if with a laugh at finding that they were wanted and alive, they shone out again with all their old purity.
I had told Tony the picture had made me think of him.
I bought a photograph and hung it on my wall where I could always see it.
And so now these people asked me if he was David and if he was the Miracle Man.
I had called him David because I did not want these people to know he was Tony because Tony had said this Invisible Friend was not he. It was always confused, that idea of who it was.
Tony used to come and we had our little afternoon tea together but I always had to tell him that Patrick was there.
"Oh, bother Patrick," he said and turned his shoulder to me for a moment, looking annoyed.
I used to think the voices followed Tony when he left, sometimes because things would be much more quiet.
But nearly every Sunday, just as he had gone I found my eyes filling with tears and a feeling as if I must cry.
There was someone in trouble somewhere near me I was sure. Every Sunday it happened just as Tony left.
I often wondered.
Then one day I heard the newspaper boys calling about the trial of a tragedy that had occurred.
I bought the paper and my heart began to beat and a feeling of preplexed wonder came to me.
It was the case of a woman who had shot a man in a moment of madness.
As I read the date of the tragedy, I saw that it was on one of those days when I was so strangely made to feel I must not move and stayed all day long on my bed and in a corner of the sofa afraid to stir in case I should hurt someone.
Something made me think that the person in trouble who made me cry when Tony left me was that woman.
Then one Sunday the tears turned to sobs and I found myself on my knees crying as if my heart would break.
And then the thought came to me that I would send that woman something to comfort her, something to let her know on the day of the trial that there was someone who knew and understood.
I looked round my bookcase and found a tiny Longfellow—Longfellow, I knew, was so full of strength and comfort for those who had to find strength to bear their trouble—I thought of "Light of Stars" and the verse—
   "And thou too, whosoe'er thou art That readest this brief psalm As one by one thy hopes depart Be resolute and calm.
   O fear not in a world like this, And thou shalt know ere long Know, how sublime a thing it is To suffer and be strong."—
and wrote in it.
"From an unknown Friend," and posted it to care of her poor husband to be given to her.
They always called me "Bunty Blue," those voices through the wall, and they used to go shopping with me with great delight and what was very annoying sometimes, suggest things for me to give David for his tea and then I found David didn't like them and couldn't eat them. And then they used to suggest things David might do to add to his income. And David did not like it and wouldn't take any of the suggestions.
But Tony was very funny himself sometimes.
After I had told him a little about myself we would have tea and while he was talking one night he ate the egg I had put for him on his plate, and when he had finished it he stretched across the table and took mine.
He was quite absent-minded I could see, and I didn't like to say anything, though I looked across in horror at seeing my meal taken from me.
Poor Tony! he was always trying to find the cause of my "voices" and to help me to lose the trouble.