Tongues Of Fire And Other Sketches

Front matter

Livats \

WARRAS heeSotankak Senet

WHAT THIS BOOK IS ABOUT

Contents

PAGE ToNGUES OF FIRE .. ; , , ; 9 THE LITTLE BEGGAR : : ‘ : ; ; 24 MALAHIDE AND FORDEN . ' ; ; ‘ : 3f PLAYING CATCH ‘ : : ; ; ; ; 73 THE PIKESTAFFE CASE . ; . : ; ; 88 ALEXANDER ALEXANDER . i , ; ‘ « 20 Lost ! 137 THE OLIVE 143 A CONTINUOUS PERFORMANCE 158 THE WoRLD-DREAM OF MCCALLISTER 164 THE OTHER WOMAN 182 PICKING FIR-CONES 187 THE OPEN WINDOW 206 PETERSHIN AND MR. SNIDE 211 THE MAN wHO was MILLIGAN 229 THE FALLING GLASS ; ‘ ; ; ; . 243 THE SPELL OF EGypT 254 A MAN oF EarTH 263 THE LAUGHTER OF COURAGE 273 SO. « 277 NEPHELE. 287

TONGUES OF FIRE AND OTHER SKETCHES

I

II

Played about them, over them, these thoughts did lovingly rather, and directed by a flair, so to say, of understanding that was new in me....

Neither would ever see forty again, yet to me they seemed young, their careers still in front of them: and each, though without much energy, groping a way honestly toward some ultimate meaning in life that neither, I fancied, was ever likely to discover. If not dilletantists, both shrank from the big sacrifices. They were married, and each, in this fundamental relationship, unsatisfied, though each, outwardly at least, had mastered that dissatisfaction. Accepting, that is, a responsibility undertaken, they played the game. There was fine stuff in them. And both sought elsewhere, though without much energy as I have said, an outlet marriage had accordingly failed to provide. Not immorality, of course ; but a mental, maybe a spiritual, outlet. They sought it, I now abruptly judged, without success. Their stream of yearning, whatever its power, went lost among the stars and unremunerative dreams. The point, however, remains: this yearning did exist in each. Its power, I conceive, was cumulative.

Similarly, in their daily work as actors, and uncommonly good actors, one with a streak of fine inspiration, the other, Malahide, with a touch of fiery genius, both accepted an art that both held, mournfully, and secretly rather, was not creative. They were merely interpreters of other men’s creations. And, here again, lay deep dissatisfaction. Here, indeed, lay the root and essence of a searching pain both shared

—since, God knows, they were gifted, honest beings— that a creative outlet, namely, was denied to creative powers.

This fundamental problem—the second one—lay unsolved in both; hence both were open to attack and ready for adventure. But the lesser adventures, refuge of commonplace fellows, they resolutely declined. Were they, perhaps, worthy then of the greater adventure that circumstances, at length, with inexplicable suddenness, and out of the least likely material, offered to them. ...? .

Somewhat thus, at any rate, I saw my companions, as the train jolted us that sparkling April morning, many years ago, towards Stanton, Malahide humming his mood idly through the open window, Forden lying at full length, reading the papers with listless eye. But I saw another thing as well, saw it with a limpid clearness my description may not hold: something ahead—an event—lay in waiting for them, something they knew about, both not desiring, yet desiring it, something inevitable as sunrise.

We move towards and past events successively, calling this motion time. But the event itself does not move at all. It is always there. We three, now sitting in the jolting Carriage, were approaching an event about which they knew, but about which I did not know. I received, that is, an imperfect lnpression of something they saw perfectly. And i some way the accumulated power of their combined yearnings, wasted as I had thought, made what happe 1ed possible,

i It was an extraordinary idea to come to me with sch conviction, and with this atmosphere of pro- Phecy. I glanced at the two men, each like myself the victim, I remembered, of a strange, unha

i appy weakness. These weaknesses, too, I realised, contributed as well: un-balance, instability, were eyj. dently necessary to the event. To steady, heroic types it never could have happened.

The train was stopping, and Malahide already haq the door half-open. Forden, in his turn, sprang up,

“Stanton !’”’ cried the former, as though he spoke a line of tense drama on the stage. ‘“ Here we are, Come on, you fellows!’’ And he was on the platform before the train drew to a standstill. His vehemence was absurd. He used it, I knew, to help him make the start, the fear I have mentioned prompting it. And Forden, like a flash, was on his heels. I followed, pausing a moment to collect the papers in case Malahide should ask for them, and then, thank heaven, as we stood on that ugly platform and asked the porter the way to Barton, my own strange feelings, heightened perception with them, dropped back with a jerk into the normal again. The uncomfortable insight was suddenly withdrawn. It had seemed an intrusion into their privacies; I was relieved to see them again as two friends merely, two actors, out for a country walk with me to a village called Barton-in-Fabis on a_ brilliant April morning.

One last flash only there was, as I followed them out, one final hint of what I have called “ seeing a ” of everything, seeing “ differently,’’ ratl-er. perio “ . left the carriage as described, in <'e illogical eae re acne plete thougm one was g¢ y one got out. Not that ae gone and two were left, but that the three

S got out as one, simultaneously. One bein}z

MALAHIDE AND FORDEN 4I left that carriage. The fingers of a hand, thus, may move and point in several directions at once, while the hand, of which they form parts, moves forward in one direction only, asa whole. The simile occurred to me.... I perceived it, moreover, through what I can only call a veil of smoke.

III

“Oh, about three to four mile, maybe,” the porter was telling Malahide, “ an’ you can pick up the Midland at Attenborough to get back. ... Yes, it’s a nice day for a walk, I dessay. .. .”

The name made us laugh, but the instructions as to paths, stiles, signposts, turnings, I, personally, did not listen to. JI assumed, as most do, an air of intelligent comprehension. Forden, I saw, wore a similar expression, from which I knew that he, too, was not listening properly, but was leaving it to Malahide, wondering, like myself, how the latter could carry in his great slumbering mind so many intricate details whereas, actually, he was doing nothing of the sort. Malahide was merely acting, intent upon some other matter that was certainly not here and now.

We started off, therefore, with but a few details of our journey secure :—‘ a mile and a half down the road, and bearin’ to the right, you'll see a signpost to Barton across the fields, and if you foller that a little way, bearin’ to the left a bit now, you'll sce a gate on the right just past some trees, but you don’t go through that gate, you go straight on, bearin’

to the right always, till you come to a farm, and then, through another Pate x as There was a definite relation between the length

A2 MALATIIDE AND FORDIEN of description and a tip in the porter’s mind, upon which Morden commented wittily, as we swung down the road, each relying upon the other two, and then exclaiming confidently, but with blurred minds, as we reached a signpost: “Ah! Here we are!” while we scrambled over a stile into enticing fields of gold.

We spoke little at first. “We must bear to the left, remember,’’ mentioned Malahide once, to which orden and I nodded agreement, adding however : “4il] we reach the gate,” with Malahide’s firm reminder: “which we do not go through,’’ followed by my own contribution ; “ past some trees, yes, to another gate,’—and then Malahide’s conclusive summing up: ‘always bearing to the right, of course .

We jogged on happily, while the larks sang overhead, the cuckoos called and the brilliant sunshine flooded a country-side growing more and more remote from signs of men and houses. Not even a thatched cottage or a farm-house broke the loneliness from humankind. . .

We spoke little, I have said ; but my companions, presently, fell into a desultory conversation about their own profession, about present and future conditions on the stage, individual talent, rents of theatres, and so forth, to all of which, being an intcrloper merely, I listened with slight interest. It was the odd smell of burning, I think, that held my curious attention during this preliminary period, for I saw no cause for it, no smoke of rubbish being consumed, no heath-fire certainly. Malahide, I remember, coughed a little once or twice, and Forden sniffed like an animal that scents an untoward clement in the atmosphere, though very faintly. They made no comment, I offered none. It was, obviously, of no importance. The beauty of the day in its fresh spring brilliance absorbed me wholly, so that my thoughts ran on of their own accord, floating on a stream of happy emotion, careless as the pleasant wind. The sentences I caught from time to time did little more than punctuate, as it were, this stream of loveliness that poured through me from the April morning. Yet at intervals I caught their words, a phrase or a sentence would arrest me for a second ; and cach time this happened, I noticed what I can only call a certain curious change, a change—in distance. Their talk, I mean, passed gradually beyond me.

There was incoherence, due partly, of course, to the gaps I missed ; and once or twice, it seemed to me, they were talking at cross-purposes, although tone and demeanour betrayed nothing of the sort. Il remember that this puzzled me, that I registered the fact vaguely, at any rate; also, that an occasional comment of my own won no rejoinder from either Malahide or Forden—almost as though, momentarily, they had forgotten my existence and seemed unaware that I was with them.

Deeper and deeper into my own sensuous enjoyment of the day I sank accordingly, glad that I might take the beauty in my own little way. One thing only pierced my personal mood from time to time: the picture of Malahide’s great head thrust forward a little when I glanced at him, the eyes turned upwards, carrying in them still that odd soft blaze, the glare, as I called it, now wholly gone; and that upon Forden’s delicate face was a gentle expression, curiously rapt, yet with a faint brush as of bewilder ment somewhere among the peering features. Th i impression, however, came back to me later, teh than held my attention much at the actual Soman We moved on deeper and deeper into the lonely country-side. With the exception of a man ine fields ahead of us, I saw no living soul.

Ly

Our path, meanwhile, crossed a lane, and a little later a road, though not a high-road since no telegraph poles marred it, and then Malahide remarked casually : “But, I say! It’s about time, isn’t it? ’’ He stood still abruptly, staring round him. “It’s about time —eh?”’

‘For what ?”’ enquired Forden gently, not looking at him, a touch of resignation in his voice.

“That signpost, I mean. We should have come to it by now.”

“Oh, that signpost,” echoed the other, without interest.

Neither of them included me in this exchange, which had broken in upon a longish conversation, and I found myself resenting it. They had not so much as glanced in my direction.

“ Signpost |” I exclaimed bluntly, looking straight at Malahide. ‘Why, we passed it long ago.” And as I said it, my eye again took in the figure of the man three fields away, the only living being yet seen. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him merely, and a breath of sharper air, or something like it, passed quickly over my skin. “It said ‘To Barton,’” I added, @ flavour of challenge in my tone. I purposely kept My gaze hard on Malahide.

He turned slowly, with a look as though, casually, he picked me up again; our eyes met ; that sharper air seemed in my mind now. ;

‘We passed a signpost,’’ he corrected me; “ but it merely said ‘Footpath.’ And it pointed over there —behind us. The way we’ve come.” .

Forden, to my amazement, nodded in consent. “Over there, yes,” he agreed, and pointed with his stick, but at right angles to the direction Malahide had meant. “And it said: ‘ From Barton.’ ” _

This confusion, produced purposely and in a spirit of play though of course it was, annoyed me. I disliked it, as though somewhere it reached a sad, uneasy region in my mind.

It was Malahide’s turn to nod in consent. ‘ Then we're all right,” he affirmed with unnecessary vehemence in his deep voice. And that vehemence, again, I did not like. ‘ Besides,” he added sharply, pointing ahead, ‘‘ there he is!”

A wave of vague emotion troubled me : for an instant I felt again that sharper air—and this time in the heart.

“Who?” I asked quickly.

He replied carclessly: ‘The man.”

“ What man?”

Malahide turned his eyes full upon my own, so that their soft blaze came over me like sunshine, almost with a sense of warmth in them. On his great face lay asingular expression. I heard Forden, who stood just behind me, laughing gently. There seemed a drift of smoke about them both. I knew a touch of goose-flesh,

“What man do you mean?” T asked with louder emphasis, and this time, I admit, with a note of exasperation that would not be denied, f sense, I thought, had gone far cnough | nis the a flavour in it that set my nerves on a —_

Malahide’s reply came easily and atures a man who plants them,” he said without a mn J he sticks them into the ground, that fellow. - — He about with an assortment of signposts ‘ To Barton,’ and every now and again he plan us, non- Was

He’s 80ing and From ts one for

“We're standing under one now,” Forden breathed behind me in his purring way, and looking up I saw that this was true. I read in black lettering upon a white background: ‘To Barton.” It indicated the direction we were taking.

It occurred to me suddenly now that we had already walked at least four miles, yet had seen no farm, no trees, no garden. I had been sunk too deep in my own mood to notice things perhaps. This signpost I certainly had not noticed until Forden drew my attention to it. Malahide was tapping the wooden arm with the point of his stick, reading the lettering aloud as he did so:

“Footpath From Barton,’”’ I heard him boom. And instantly my eyes fixed tightly on it with all the concentration that was in me. Yes, Malahide had read correctly. Only, the arm now swung the other way. It pointed behind us! And I burst out laughing. Sight and memory had, indeed, fumbled badly. I felt myself for a moment “ all turned round,” as the saying is. Malahide laughed too; we all laughed together. It was boisterous, not quite spontaneous laughter, but at any rate it relieved a sense of intolera aici that in myself had reached a climax.

Is fooling had been overdone, I felt.

“So, you see, we ave all right,’’ Malahide exclaimed, and swung forward over the meadow, already plunged again in the conversation with Forden which he himself had interrupted. They had enjoyed their little game about the signposts, Malahide, in particular, his touch of fancy about “‘ the man who planted them.’ It all belonged to the careless, happy mood of a holiday expedition, as it were—the nonsense of high spirits. This, at least, was the ready explanation my mind produced so glibly, knowing full well it would not pass the censor of another kind of understanding, a deeper kind, that sought hurriedly, even passionately, for the true explanation. It was not nonsense ; nor was it acceptable. It alarmed me.

I repeat: this confusion about directions, the two men agreeing that opposite directions were one and the same, was not the nonsense that it sounds; and I affirm this in view of that heightened perception, ~ already first experienced in the train, which now came back upon me in a sudden flood. It brought with it an atmosphere of prophecy, almost of prevision, and certainly of premonition, an atmosphere that accompanied me, more or less, with haunting persistence to the end.

And its first effect was singular : says, I now became aware, and not merely one. as though it were whi air. There is the lite there is the meanij there is the meanin in which the whole ing, that is, which —the greater pa all that a man has three meanings, The revelation arrived as clearly spered to me through the shining Tal meaning of the actual words ; ng of the sentence itself: and 8, above and beyond both these, of the utterer is concerned, a meanthe unconscious secret part in him rt—tries and hopes to say. This last, the most significant of all three cause as well as result, makes of ever os a legend and a parable. Gesture, aero: Sentence its trend; what is omitted, or aca Voice betray betrays still more. Its full meaning baie the lines to unknown categories, is usually hidden * Telation utterer and hearers. It deals alain from the past, the present and—the future. I na wit . ° : R €Came aware of this Third Meaning in the most comm e place remarks of my companions. al It was an astounding order of perception to occur to me, and the difficulty of reporting it must be obvious from this confused description. Yet it seemed to me at the time so simple, so convincing, that I did not even question its accuracy and truth. Malahide and Forden, fooling together about the contradictory signposts, had betrayed this third meaning in all they said and did. Indeed, that it appeared impossible, absurd, was a proof, perhaps the only possible proof, of its reality. Momentarily, as it were, they had become free of unknown categories.

ince 3+: ce it INCludes

- My own attitude contained at first both criticism and resistance; it was only gradually that I foun ntly, swept myself caught in the full tide that, appate my companions along so easily. A first eddy of i had touched me in the train, when my feet felt a little a = bats ” » now I was already in the bigger with Ga ore long I had become entirely submers” rapidly a +++ Fields and lanes, meanwhile, slipp™’ the + aa us, but no farm, no trees, N° gate ze We were 10°"

it seemed Pa ba had been seen. ; , the heart of the sparkling April day dew, light and gentle airs our only guides. The day contained us.

I made efforts to disentangle myself.

“ Barton’s not getting any nearer,” I expostulated once.

““ Barton-in-Fabis,’’ mentioned Malahide with complete assurance, that no longer held a trace of vehemence, “is there—where it always is,’”’ while Forden’s breath of delicate laughter followed the flat statement, as though the larks overhead had sung close beside my ear.

“D’you think we’re going right?’’ I ventured another time. ‘‘ Our direction, I mean? ”’

Again, with that ghostly laughter, Forden met me: “It’s the way we have to so,”’ he replied half under his breath. “It’s always a mistake to trouble {oo much about direction—actual direction, that is.” And Malahide was singing to himself as tho ing mattered in the w least of all... .

SO moving, that I paused in thou breath a little. For the field befo into the dist l e sh: cream of a million yellow b Rivers of Gold |”

and at the same m

In a single leap and TAF, uttercups.

I exclaimed involuntarily, oment Forden was over the stile running across the brilliant grass. D

‘Look out !”’ he cried, a bewitched ex his face, ‘it’s fire! ’’—and he was gone

It was as though he swam to the neck in gold. He peered back at me a second thr shining flood—and it was in this instant ne gh the caught his turning face, that Malahide was ites rh He passed me like a wave, still singing ; there tee rush of power in his speed. I followed at once oni : to resist. The three of us ran like one man aver oa through that flood of golden buttercups, passing, as we did so, every sign the railway porter had told us to look out for : the farm, the trees, the gate, the second gate—everything. Only, we passed them more than once. It was as though we swung in a rapid circle round and round the promised signs, always passing them, always coming up to them, always leaving them behind, then always seeing them in front of us again, yet the entire sequence right, natural and— possible.

Now, I noticed this. I was aware of this. Yet it caused me no surprise. That it should be so seemed quite ordinary—at the time... .

We brought up presently, not even breathless, some half-way down that golden field.

“Nothing to what I expected,” exclaimed Malahide, interrupting his singing for the first time. _

“ There was no pain,” mentioned Forden, his voice soft and comforting, as though he spoke to 4 little child. a,

There was an instant of most poignant emotion - me as they said it; a certainty flashed through ™ that I could not seize; a sudden wave, as it were, © tears, of joy, of sorrow, of despair, swept past © an was gone again before I had the faintest chance t°

Pression oy

Sleaming snatch at any explanation. Like the memory of some tremendous, rather awful dream, it vanished, and Malahide’s quick remark, the next second, capped its complete oblivion :

‘And there he goes again!’ Iheard. “ He’s stuck another one in!”’

He was pointing to a hedge at the bottom of the field where, behind the veil of its creamy hawthorn, I just made out the figure of a man ambling slowly along, till the hedge, growing thicker, finally concealed him. But the signpost, when we reached it a few minutes later, showed an arm rotten with age, and only the faded legend on it, hardly legible: ‘‘ Footpath.” It pointed downwards—into the ground.

vi

We swung forward again, without a moment’s delay, it seemed, my companions talking busily together as before, their meaning, also as before, far, far beyond me. They were talking, too, on several subjects at once. The odd language they had just used, the way we swung forward instantly, without comment or explanation, touched no sense of queerness in me— then. No comment or explanation were necessary ; it was natural we should go straight on. Their talking on “several subjects simultaneously,’’ however, did occur to me—yes, as marvellous.

Foolish, even impossible, as it must sound, it yet did happen; they talked on more than one subject at the same time. They carried on at least a couple of conversations at once without the slightest difficulty, without the smallest effort or confusion. My own admission into the secret was partial, I think ; hence my trouble and perplexity. To them it was easy and natural. With me, even the str ing made the head swim. The effort to was certainly a physical one, for I was a definite physical reaction more than ae 0 of a ‘ndeed of a kind of dizziness akin to Sansen almost

To report it is beyond my power. For bie th; I cannot remember, for another, the concentr ae necessary left me a little stupefied. I can a ion ‘nstance only, and that a poor one. They a: “+hird meanings,’’ too. 7"

Malahide, thus, while voluble enough in his norma] state, was at the same time usually inarticulate. His verbosity, that is, conveyed little. The tiny vital meaning in him fumbled and stammered through countless wrappings, as it were. These wrappings smothered it. Now, on the contrary, he talked fluently and clearly. It was I who was puzzled— at first—to find the subject he discussed so glibly. And Forden, usually timid and hesitating in his speech, though never inarticulate, now also used a flow of fearless words in answer. Yet not precisely “in answer,” for both men talked at once. They uttered simultaneously—on two subjects, if not on three:

“We all deserve, maybe,”’ Malahide’s deep volce thundered, “a divine attention few of us receive— ee rey. We are not, alas, whole-hearted. ‘ se a oa another compliment due

Ge, wen. . evil’s admiration. , -celf: coascieee, tee. once, was entirely natural, UD nd belief in what a was the stress of real feeling

“T for one.” * — he whole-hearted es vos in “T take my hat off to th of such stuff hoe : er in so-called good or evil.

* €ventual angels wrought. .- » - ain of listen. follow them

Few

Angels! The word caught me on the raw. Its “third meaning’? caught me on the raw, that is, and with a sense of power and beauty so startling that I missed the rest. The word poured through me like a flame. Of what he spoke, to what context the strange statement was related, I had no inkling ; yet, while he actually spoke the words, I heard Forden speaking to Malahide, who heard and understood and answered—but speaking, and simultaneously, on another matter altogether. And this other matter, it so chanced, I grasped. Remote enough from what Malahide was saying, and trivial by comparison, it referred to an Alpine sojourn with his wife a couple of summers before. Malahide, too, had been with them:

“Often, after the hotel dinner,’’ Forden said contemptuously, ‘‘I heard them mouthing all sorts of lovely poetic phrases ; yet not one of them would make the slight sacrifice of personal comfort necessary to experience that loveliness, that poetry, in themselves. «2. <"

To which Malahide, though still developing ‘‘ God’s pity ’’ and the “‘ Devil’s admiration ”’ in phrases packed with real feeling, contrived somehow to answer, but always simultaneously, his friend’s remark :

“They bring their own lower world,” he boomed, “even into the beauty of the mountains, then wonder

that the beauty of the mountains tells them nothing. They would find Balham on great Betelgeuse ’”’—a tremendous laugh rang out—‘‘ and Clapham Junction on fiery Vega!”

““ Her pity,’’ came Forden’s words, talking of another matter altogether, yet uttered simultaneously with his friend’s laughing rhetoric, ‘“‘is self-pity merely. She does these out-of-the-way things, you see, without

54 MALAHIDIC AND FORDEN sufficient apparent reason. It is not a desire f¢ notoricty—that would shock her-—-but it zs a Dien, to be conspicuous. Life, which means people a not make a fuss about her in her youth. Put the law of compensation works inevitably. Late in life you see, she mcans to have that fuss... .”

It is the phraseology, perhaps, that enables me to remember this singular exchange. My head, of course was spinning. Tor Malahide made a reply to this, while still discussing the poscurs in the Alpine hotel, And while they talked thus on two subjects simultaneously, Forden managed to chat easily too with me—upon a third. ... It was as though a second dimension in Time had opened for them. Between myself and Forden, again, there was plainly some kind of telepathic communication. He had my thought, at any rate, before I uttered it aloud.

Of this I can give two instances, both trivial, yet showing that simultaneously with his Malahideconversations he was paying attention to my own remarks, and—simultaneously again—was answering them. It was absolutely staggering.

Here are the instances memory retained :

Some scraps of white paper, remnants of an untidy picnic party, lay fluttering in the thick grass some distance in front of us, and at the first glance I thought they were not paper, but—chickens. Only on coming nearer was the mistake clear. Whether I meant to comment aloud on the little deception or not, I cannot remember ; but, in any case, before I actually did so, Forden, glancing down at me with his gentle smile, observed : “I, too, thought at first they were chickens.’”’” He hit them idly with his stick as we passed.

The second instance, equally trivial, equally striking at the same time, was the gamekeeper’s cottage on the fringe of a wood. It suggested to my mind, for some reason, a charcoal-burner’s hut in a book of German fairy-tales, and I said so. This time I spoke oe thought. “But, you know, I’ve just said that, came Forden’s comment, his eyes twinkling brightly as before. And it was true; he had said it a fraction of a second before I did. During this brief exchange between us, moreover, he was still talking fluently with Malahide—on at least two subjects—and simultaneously... Now, from the fact that I noticed this, that my mind made a note of it, that is, I draw the conclusion that my attention was definitely arrested, surprise accompanying it. The extraordinariness of the matter struck me, whereas to my companions it was ordinary and natural. I was, therefore, not wholly included in their marvellous experience. I was still the observer merely... .