Tongues of Fire and Other Sketches/The World-Dream of McAllister

by Algernon Blackwood

Certain people, it would appear, are favoured with occasional dreams of so vivid a character that they leave on the mind an impression that lasts for hours, often, it may be, for the whole of the following day, while the dream itself is forgotten almost entirely upon waking. “Almost entirely”; for, possibly, some remnant is retained or half-retained, caught by the tail, as it were, in the act of plunging out of sight to rejoin the major portion⁠—a fragment of glowing scenery, a voice, perhaps a sentence, halts long enough to be seen or heard (at any rate, to be remembered) before it is withdrawn swiftly from the consciousness.

Such remnants, moreover, though faint as moonlight⁠—they vanish with extreme and urgent hurry, as though they had unduly lingered and were not intended to be more fully known⁠—yet share this in common: that they pertain to some experience that has seemed infinitely desirable, since a peculiar yearning is awakened for their continuance or for their completion. Vague though the details have been, the emotion left is powerful and strangely haunting; and this emotion invariably seems due to a sense of having been in some familiar and enchanting place, and that a rarely privileged companionship has been interrupted by the act of waking. Life would be sweeter, bigger, indubitably more worth living⁠—this is somewhat the feeling left behind⁠—could the experience be entirely recaptured. The dream, at any rate, has been broken off before its end.

The emotion is so strong, so exquisite, indeed, that the mind makes a quick and vigorous effort at recovery⁠—only to find that it is vain, and that such experiences are not recoverable at all. The dream is gone, and the more vigorous the effort, the more complete the disappearance. The remnant, moreover, soon vanishes as well: memory focuses it each time with less success; it grows blurred, confused, then artificial: a counterpart, half-invented, is erected in its place; and each attempt at recovery conceals the original more and more, while giving body to the substitute that mocks it. In the end the mind retains chiefly the emotion that filled it upon waking, and with that memory it must remain content.

This emotion, however, remains, according to circumstances, for a longer or a shorter time. It crops up unexpectedly at odd moments later; sometimes it haunts at intervals during the entire day, curiously persistent, eagerly, almost passionately desired, although each time a little weaker, a little fainter, than before. Rarely may it survive the twelve daylight hours of which the first announced its welcome birth and presence. The following night’s sleep sets a term to its existence. Its loss is final. The sense that it has been alone remains. It has become the memory of an exquisite Memory.

And, since so little of the actual dream is caught, it would seem to be this accompanying emotion that lights the heart so strangely with the sense of elusive and enchanting glamour. For the emotion is, indeed, of an unusual kind: deep and tender, evasive yet profoundly real, a vague but persistent certainty that it refers to an experience more packed with life, more intense, more piercing, above all more joyous, than anything known in waking hours. It stands to the dreamer as full sunlight compared to palest moonlight⁠—the most vivid emotions of his daylight life seem thin and temporary besides its permanent, though lost, reality. Almost it has suggested another order of existence, a richer state of consciousness, and hence the yearning in his heart for full recovery. He wonders, and he⁠—sighs. He has touched a state that, to say the least of it, was satisfactory. Could he recall that state, the perplexities of his daily life would surely be explained; for, in some fashion beyond him to elucidate, that lost, happy dream pertained to a completer consciousness of which ordinary existence is but a broken, troubled shadow. He was then lit up and shining; he moves now in darkness.⁠ ⁠…

Dreams of this kind, though rare, are known to many; the physiologists have, doubtless, a careful explanation of their origin, as of the effects which they produce. Upon their occurrence is possibly based that kind and ancient fantasy that persuades a few the spirit travels while the body sleeps, that things are then shown to it which the brain might scarce discover for itself; of which things, moreover, the intense or awful sweetness⁠—as the case may be⁠—were more than physical memory could retain without disaster to commonplace days and duties afterwards. To remember a state so perfect, yet so impossible of achievement, would involve a disappointment with the routine of normal difficulties that must border upon despair.⁠ ⁠… To deal satisfactorily with such delicate splendours, one should be, presumably, either fanatic or poet, the latter’s hint, perhaps, remaining the sweetest hint we have: “Some say that dreams of a remoter world visit the soul in sleep⁠ ⁠…”⁠—and McCallister, at any rate, felt rather pleased that Shelley’s line recurred to him during the day that followed his own particular experience.

For McCallister had such a dream one night, and in the morning behaved strictly according to precedent regarding it: that is, he registered the intensity and sweetness of the accompanying emotion, strove vigorously for full recovery, then went about his duties of the day with occasional moments when the emotion was hauntingly revived, and at the same time with a flickering consciousness⁠—almost a memory⁠—that he had been with someone in an enchanting place, and that this someone had told or shown him things of an authentic and privileged kind. Life had been full and rich and deeply splendid; but, more than that⁠—it had been explained, because he understood it whole, instead of seeing it in broken fragments.⁠ ⁠…

In his case the remnant caught by the tail was very slight indeed; many would have deemed it trivial, some ridiculous: perhaps it was both trivial and ridiculous. Only it shared the joyous and enchanting glamour of the whole, which yet remained obstinately hidden; and in this sense, while it teased him with unsatisfied yearning, it also blessed and comforted him with the feeling that Life was all right, could he but see it whole. For the fragment had in some fashion revealed an Entirety, to which his waking consciousness was stranger, yet to which desire and belief, half-buried, had, in moments of uplifting, bravest hope, distinctly pointed. Accordingly, he felt blessed and comforted; and, since these results assist a yet more valuable state of mind, he felt also⁠—strengthened.

The remnant of the dream he retained was, indeed, but a fading sentence, consisting of seven commonplace words in daily use, uttered, moreover, by a voice of no particular calibre, yet of such happy and immense authority that he was instantly persuaded of its ultimate truth:

“So, you see, it is all right⁠ ⁠… !”

Such was the detail memory retained, no more, no less. And, on waking, he yearned for its continuance, for its completion, struggling for a long time to recover the place, the person and the conditions which might reconstruct the entire dream and so explain it. For he had the delightful feeling⁠—especially strong during the first ten minutes after waking⁠—that, were it recoverable, he would be master of a point of view that must solve the perplexities of his life and make the puzzle of his somewhat muddled existence satisfactory. “If I could only get it all back,” as he put it to himself, “I should get things straight⁠—face everything happily⁠—because I understood the lot!”

The remembered sentence, however, contained the essence of the vanished dream⁠—“So you see⁠—it is all right!”⁠—but the dream itself had disappeared.⁠ ⁠…

He went, therefore, as already mentioned, about his duties of the day; and, doing so, he experienced⁠—also according to precedent⁠—those brief, flickering moments when the Emotion revived in haunting flashes, and was gone again as soon as recognised⁠—unfulfilled, unrealised⁠—yet each time leaving behind it a hint of that comfort and that blessing pertaining to its origin. With each flash, as it were, and with each haunting repetition, he recovered for that fleeting instant a singular consciousness of the splendid Whole to which the fragment still belonged.⁠ ⁠… He was lit up and shining.

As the day advanced, these moments of return became less vivid, though never less convincing. The first authority remained; it was the memory that faded.

These moments were as follows:

It was upon the one day in the seven that his work in the Censor’s Office left him the afternoon free, and he went to tea with Her in the Enchanted Square. He was neither invited nor expected; he just dropped in. Later the husband dropped in, too, and all three talked together easily and naturally. The guest was obviously made welcome, there were no signs of restraint or awkwardness, far less of friction. Perhaps the husband guessed, perhaps he did not; possibly She knew⁠—indeed, probably⁠—though assuredly not from anything McCallister had ever said, or done, or betrayed.⁠ ⁠… Neither he nor she troubled themselves about an after-existence: to McCallister, therefore, the one chance of possessing her was lost forever. Although brains, as well as worldly success, had both been denied him, he had the great gifts of strength and loyalty and truth. He was known as a worthy, if perhaps an uninteresting, man. Occasionally he went to call, like any other casual member of her circle⁠—that and no more than that. His secret was a genuine secret, entirely his own and safely, honestly kept. He owned⁠—and deserved⁠—the friendship of the husband, too. And the position, while never beyond his strength, was the more difficult in that he was aware she felt for her husband affection, but not love.

And so he sat there in the enchanted house, silent and rather dull as usual, but blessed by her presence and therefore very happy. The only signs by which he persuaded himself she kept him in her thoughts during the longish intervals between his visits were that she divined his exact requirements when he came. She never asked. It was always sweet to him, and wonderful⁠—such little yet enormous things: one lump of sugar in his tea; cream, but no milk; the hard chair with the stiff, upright back; the glaring lights turned out, leaving a single globe at the far end of the room to help the firelight; and⁠—the fragments of Russian music that he loved.⁠ ⁠…

“I just want to try over this bit of Scriabin, if you don’t mind,” she would suggest, going across to the instrument without waiting for his answer. Or⁠—“the piano’s just been tuned; I really must play a chord or two”⁠—and then, without further words, the pieces that he so particularly loved⁠ ⁠… while he sat listening by the fire, watching, absorbed, strangely at peace and happy. There was no formality; he felt blissfully at home; the warmth of the fire, the shaded lights, the delicate sense of her perfume, her presence, her very thoughts, as he believed, brushing against his secret, and her music entering his inmost soul to phrase his dumb desire⁠—all this filled him with strength and beauty that would help him in the long, long interval of loneliness to follow.

And then the door would open, and the husband enter with a clatter, bringing the atmosphere of the street and latest news of rumour thick about him.

“Jack, old boy! It’s only you! Good. I was afraid it was a caller!”

But the husband did not care for music; he preferred the room well lit; and he was always ready for a hearty tea. He saw first to these three requirements, therefore, then kissed his wife while she put away the scores, and all three sat talking over the fire, the husband gulping his tea with audible satisfaction and munching his buttered toast as though he had earned it every bit⁠—talking loudly with McCallister, whom he liked, and obliquely with his wife with whom he was so supremely satisfied that she could be neglected somewhat. His ownership of her, at any rate, was very manifest, and McCallister found these moments rather trying, especially when the music was interrupted earlier than necessary, perhaps in the middle of a piece.⁠ ⁠…

They chatted happily for twenty minutes or so, and then, a natural pause presenting itself, McCallister rose to go. He said goodbye. For him it was a real goodbye⁠—God-be-with-you, dear; for he could not know what might happen in the interval to follow, and, as with all real goodbyes, the sense of separation was keen with possibilities that would leap into the mind and burden it. This moment of goodbye was always full of pain for him. But this time it was different. There was a smile in his eyes that many husbands must have noticed. For, suddenly, into that pause had flooded the motion of the vanished dream. It was, perhaps, but the memory of an unrecoverable Memory, yet with it an intense delight, a joy, a peace, swept over him. He was lit up and shining. He was not lonely. It seemed he knew more⁠—far more⁠—than he could quite remember. The very words came back:

“So, you see, it is all right.⁠ ⁠…”

The haunting emotion flashed and flickered like a swallow’s wing, then vanished, yet left behind an instant of superb realisation that took his heart and blessed it. A high, sweet privilege he knew of, yet had somehow forgotten among smaller, troubling emotions of imperfect kind, was there to gladden life forever⁠—now. The instant’s joy enthralled him, then was gone again. It was as if some absolute, some spiritual, possession of Her had been granted to him. He had amazingly overlooked it. Or, rather, having stupidly misunderstood this blazing fact, he now recovered it, complete and glorious⁠—for the flashing instant. Their love was pure and flawless; they belonged to one another in the actual present: they were one. The emotion, evanescent though it was, involved the bliss of certain joy.

“So, you see, it is all right,” rose an inner voice behind the casual words he spoke aloud as he left the room.⁠ ⁠…

And this joy that was real yet inexplicable, accompanied him down the steps after the maid had closed the big front door discreetly. He went out with a radiant happiness, as of a remembered ownership and dear possession in his soul. It hovered and lingered about him for some little time, as he walked down the murky street towards the Tube Station half a mile away. And then it faded. Trying to recover the dream itself, he lost hold of the emotion. It became confused. Its authenticity grew less and less. It grew unreal. Yet the certainty of his deep tie was strengthened unaccountably. She did belong to him in some odd sense that was not now, and yet was now.⁠ ⁠… The details of a Rumour in high quarters, uttered in the husband’s decided voice, then replaced it with ringing insistence in his ears. The Memory grew very faint and died away. It was, in a few moments, quite unrecoverable. He remembered only that it had been there.⁠ ⁠…

---

The other occasion when the dream haunted him had been earlier in the day; but, though first in sequence of time, it was, for some reason, less vivid than the instance just recorded. Perhaps the incident it lighted up, being of minor importance in his life, caused a less striking reaction. Yet the same conviction was present, the same hint of a richer, completer state of consciousness which must make life beautiful and solve its tribe of little puzzles, were he but master of it always. He groped among disconnected fragments; in the dream he had known the clue that slipped these angled fragments into the mosaic of a perfect pattern.

On the way to the Office he saw⁠—in the distance but coming toward him⁠—the Man he Loathed. The loathing was mutual, the deep antipathy of ancient standing. They were, however, on speaking terms, for they lived in the same small circle of friends and duties; there had been no open quarrel: but the nod, the meeting of the eyes, above all the uttered word⁠—these were avoided whenever possible. In the language of the street, they could not “stand” one another. But now, with a stretch of empty pavement between them, growing every moment less as they approached, avoidance or decent escape was out of the question, and McCallister instinctively braced himself for the inevitable exchange of reluctant and half-hostile greeting. The conventional hypocrisy galled him. Far rather would he have dealt the man an honest blow, with a word to the effect that he was a cad and heartily deserved it.

They stopped, as such men will, talking a moment, with a bravish appearance of good-fellowship⁠—less than a moment, indeed, for it was the merest half turn of the heel in passing, just enough to show the semi-smile of good manners, so that each might produce the impression⁠—“You are the cad, not I: the fault is yours!°’ McCallister met the hated and the hating eyes, and looked deep into them. The same instant⁠—the two hostile personalities facing one another upon that patch of deserted pavement at 8:45 a.m.⁠—there flashed marvellously into his mind the emotion of the vanished dream. Born of nothing, apparently, it came and went. For a fleeting second memory recovered this Memory of a completer knowledge, and life was strangely beautiful. He was lit up and happy:

“So, you see, it is all right!” went down the morning wind like some fragrance of forgotten childhood flowers.

The gleam was there⁠—then gone again like lightning. A hint of divinity came with the accompanying emotion; it did not wholly go. For in that evanescent flash, McCallister knew suddenly a large and driving, yet somehow perfectly natural impulse⁠—that the mutual enmity was based upon an error, that in reality there was no enmity at all. This angled fragment fitted in somewhere, and fitted beautifully, could he but remember where.⁠ ⁠… Some such dazzling point of happiness, even of glory, pierced his being; peace, love and absolute comprehension bathed him, body, mind and soul. The flickering emotion blessed and comforted, even while it flashed beyond his reach. He and his enemy were one.

Another moment and he would have spoken frankly, made it up, explained, forgiven, and been forgiven. He felt positive of this; the power was in his grasp. He saw the enmity, the hatred, the latent loathing as nothing but a misunderstanding that must have suddenly dissolved in a smile of relief, born of happiness and springing out of love. The emotion of the forgotten dream was a salved fragment from some richer state of consciousness wherein the puzzles of daily life, seen from a bird’s-eye point of view, explained themselves. The word that occurred to him was Unity.

But the emotion, fugitive as moonlight upon some windblown puddle, had disappeared again. The larger mood, the generous impulse, went with the gleam. He remembered that it had been, but he could no longer understand it. The brief greeting was over; the men passed on their way in opposite directions.⁠ ⁠… Before the next lamppost was reached McCallister loathed the man as he had never loathed him before. Only the big impulse puzzled him still a little, for, equally with the present hatred, it had been deep and genuine. He felt ashamed, first of the impulse, then of having disobeyed it.

“That’s why some people are accused of falseness and insincerity,” occurred to him. “They get a flash like that, and act upon it without reflecting first. Or else the other person doesn’t get it at all, and so…”

There remained, at any rate, in his heart, buried but alert, some haunting yearning for a lost, enchanting happiness which he had missed. He was aware of sadness, of regret: He could not understand it.⁠ ⁠… He reached the Office, saw his table piled up with letters in three foreign languages, realised that the writers, all of them, knew difficult, perplexing lives just now⁠—and then, cutting open the first envelope with his special knife, forgot his dream, his enemy, and everything else in the world except his immediate and uncongenial duty.

---

The third and last incident⁠—late in the evening⁠—proved that the memory of the Memory was lost almost entirely. The emotion was present, indeed, but of exceeding faintness. It had faded so much that it seemed remote, unreal, not worth recovering. He had no longer any particular desire to recover it; the yearning had wholly left him. As for the words⁠—“So, you see, it is all right”⁠—he recalled them, but found them ill-placed and without meaning or conviction. Their authority was gone. They came, moreover, in an artificial form, a substitute from some forgotten book or other⁠—or was it from some advertisement upon the hoardings? His mind, clogged with the details of his work, with suspicion of certain letters and interest in others, with pity, boredom, exasperation, respectively, for the various writers, had no room for thoughts of unordinary kind. At any rate, this time he noticed the foolish words, the dying emotion, and no more: out of the corner of his tired eye, so to speak, he noticed them. But both were already centuries away.

The incident occurred in the darkened streets as he walked homewards carefully after ten o’clock, having spent the evening at his Club. He witnessed a distressing accident. The memories of the day lay somewhat jumbled in his mind, no one in particular dominating the rest. The meeting with his enemy twelve hours before had passed entirely, his work was deliberately set aside and forgotten, the Club had produced nothing to occupy his thoughts. With the latest evening paper in his pocket, still unread, he groped his way homewards, conscious perhaps, more than anything else, that the day had been of the red-letter kind because he had been to tea in the Enchanted Square. This memory wove itself softly, sweetly, in and out among his tired thoughts, when, at a certain crossing, the distressing accident occurred beneath his very eyes. A child was knocked down and killed by a passing taxicab.

Upon the sudden shock of horror that he felt, followed an abrupt paralysis of all his faculties. Every instinct in him leaped to render help⁠—to prevent was already out of the question, alas⁠—and the impotent desire to save, succeeded instantly by pity, sympathy, and pain, combined to arrest both his muscles and his breath. The affair was over with such hideous swiftness. Figures at once congregated about the dreadful spot, as though they had been lurking in the blackness, waiting for the thing to happen. Willing hands lifted the little body onto the pavement. The shadows swallowed everything.

McCallister, recovering the use of his muscles and his breath, moved on. A heavy sigh escaped him. But in moving away from the painful and unhappy scene, he moved away also⁠—so it seemed⁠—from a pause in life. Time, which had stopped a moment, flowed on with him again. Yet there had been this pause, this moment out of Time. He had forgotten himself; he now remembered himself again. And into that instant of pause, into that timeless, but also selfless moment, had poured the ghostly emotion of the vanished dream.

The emotion on this occasion, though still haunting as before, was almost too faint to be recognised; and though the familiar sentence rose scurrying to the surface of his mind, it took now another form⁠—a substitute. This substitute, moreover, belonged to his waking, not to his dreaming, life. “God’s in his Heaven; all’s right with the world”⁠—or some such words, taken if he remembered rightly, from the calendar on his walls in the Office. He had not the smallest idea whose words they were. They seemed to him rather foolish at the moment, an empty statement of some optimistic maker of phrases at the best. At the same time, the fading emotion left a vague suggestion of comfort in him somewhere: only he felt unable to accept it now; indeed, he resented and resisted it. He thougnt only of the mangled little body, of its being brought to the house, of the parents, and so forth. The cheap and facile sentence from the calendar excited his scorn, and his mind responded to it in kind with a touch of anger: “Why couldn’t God in his Heaven have prevented it⁠ ⁠… ?” He felt very near to that child⁠—almost as if the accident had happened to himself.

For an hour before going to bed, he read the evening paper. Friends he saw, had been wounded, taken prisoner, killed, and one was “missing.” He entered the blackness, as many times before, experiencing once again the pity, anguish, despair the War had made familiar to most people. The Collective Sense took hold of him.⁠ ⁠… For a moment, now and again, he had a curious feeling of oneness with those interrupted lives.⁠ ⁠… He was aware, too, of the strength to make any personal sacrifice in order to help, the stolid determination (as though he were himself a Field-Marshal or War Minister) to hold out until the diabolical immorality let loose upon the earth had been annihilated.⁠ ⁠… Yet, just as sleep took him, he felt another thing as well⁠—an immense, incomprehensible hope that he somehow or other knew was justified. For, though unable to seize it for definition in his drowsy state, it came to him as being more than hope: a certainty, although a hidden one. But his mind was silent. He just felt it⁠—felt sure of it⁠—no more. “So, you see, it is all right,” was as good a way of phrasing it as any other. Then thought grew hazy, curtains rose and fell. He had dreamed something very wonderful the last time he lay in bed.⁠ ⁠… Would the same dream recur, perhaps? He had not dreamed it alone either: surely the whole world had dreamed it with him. The haunting emotion touched him very faintly. A mist of forgetfulness rose over him. He was unable to think, much less to argue with himself about it. He fell asleep.

---

Next morning, his original dream, with the emotion that had accompanied it, were sponged completely from his consciousness. His egg for breakfast was not quite fresh, there was no butter, no marmalade, his fire was a column of thick, dirty smoke without flame or heat, his morning letters were unsatisfactory. He had a headache, he dreaded his day’s work; nobody could have persuaded him that anything in the world was “all right.” The war news, too, was depressing. In the newspaper he read an unflattering paragraph about his enemy, the Man he Loathed. He was delighted.

The very next second⁠—almost the same second it was indeed, and for the first time in his life⁠—he inconsequently felt sorry for him⁠—rather. The loathing, he was aware, had unaccountably weakened somewhat. He noted the curious fact, for a moment, and then dismissed it. There seemed this change of attitude in him, very slight indeed, yet distinctly noticeable. This generalisation he dismissed as well.

Yet during the day it recurred; it refused to be dismissed. The change in his attitude, though slight, was very deep perhaps; it manifested from time to time, at any rate. He summed it up in this way: that there seemed less room in him, less time too, for personal emotions. He knew, among his little daily troubles, a bigger, braver, happier feeling. It was a great relief. He could not understand it; something in him had escaped, as it were. Hidden in the depths of his commonplace being was a new sympathy which is the seed of understanding, and so of forgiveness, and so, finally, of joy. This new attitude, as the day wore on, confirmed itself; it certainly was real. Not that he actively or deliberately thought about it, but as though the process went forward in him automatically, of its own accord, springing from some hidden and forgotten source of inspiration, leading him to certain very definite conclusions; conclusions, however, that wholly evaded him when he tried to put them into words.

He found himself, that is, with a new feeling, a new point of view, rather than with a new philosophy⁠—With an approach to these, at any rate. The love he must, in one sense, renounce; the enemy he must forgive; the broken life of the little child; the killed, the maimed, the tortured, the bereaved; his own small personal difficulties and pains⁠—towards all of these he felt as towards angled fragments of some mighty pattern which, could he but see it whole, must justify what seemed cruel and terrible merely. Occasionally, he felt them all as happening in himself. This seed of divine sympathy had singularly come to birth in him. The dream was forgotten, but this seed remained. He did not, perhaps, look happier, yet a possibility of joy had been experienced by him⁠—the memory of a Memory. He was aware of a faint and childlike hope that something new was stealing down into the world.⁠ ⁠… It was all right.