The English Review/Tongues of Fire

by Algernon Blackwood

I

The friendly little dinner party was over, and Cecilia Lance had thoroughly enjoyed it; the Lindleys were kindly, simple people; the gramophone had been turned on and her dancing partner, Harold Sharpe, had been there. Cecilia and Harold knew one another’s steps as intimately as they knew one another’s minds.

“Odd that Cecilia doesn’t marry,” Lindley remarked, half to himself, half to his wife, as they sat over a cigarette when the last guest had driven away. “She’s still pretty. Eveiybody likes her. And such a cheery soul.” He puffed his cigarette reflectively. “She has charm, too⁠—eh?” he inquired presently, as his wife offered no comment. He glanced up affectionately at her.

“Always full of life, yes,” came the belated reply. “I think she enjoyed herself tonight. I think they all did. They liked the new records, too.”

Her husband smiled and nodded. The new records had cost money. “I wish we could do it more often,” he mentioned, sighing ruefully. The Lindleys were hospitably inclined, but they were poor, and even a dinner party had to be calculated. “Now, that fellow Sharpe”⁠—he went back to his first line of thought⁠—“I thought at one time⁠—they seemed to understand each other pretty well.”

His wife hesitated a moment, gazing into the gas fire. “They still do, I think,” she said. “Their views of life are the same”⁠—then, after a second’s pause, as though the words slipped out against her kindlier judgment⁠—“and of people.”

Her husband, however, discerned neither the hesitation nor the effort at restraint that caused it. Both had their tongues well under control, he by a natural good nature, she by education. They were an affectionate, devoted, faithful couple to whom none but the most determined could impute deliberate evil. A little later, as they tidied away the records before going to bed, he remarked casually;

“Sharp as a needle, though, isn’t she? By Jove, yes!” He laughed. “They both are, for that matter,” and he chuckled again.

“They don’t mean to be. I’m sure,” was his wife’s charitable comment.

Again, apparently, he did not notice anything. It was her usual way of talking, anyhow. The Lindleys invariably were kindly in their judgments of people. They did not criticise others⁠—nastily.

“I’ll put the lights out, Dolly,” he said presently. “You pop up to bed. It’s late, and you must be tired.” He kissed her, patting her on the shoulder. Fifteen minutes afterwards the room, so lately filled with music, whirling couples and merry voices, had darkness and the atmosphere of faded scent and stale cigarette-smoke to itself.

Meanwhile Cecilia Lance and Harold Sharpe were also talking in their taxi as he drove her to the widowed sister she lived with in Chester Street. They were in merry mood, satisfied with the evening just over. They discussed it in their usual way. Both voted it “ripping.”

“Yet I never really care for a gramophone,” Cecilia mentioned.

“It’s better than nothing, though,” her dancing partner agreed, while he qualified.

“Yes, I suppose so,” she submitted, “only the records were so rotten, weren’t they?”

“Putrid,” said Sharpe.

“Why don’t they get a few good ones, I wonder.” She mentioned a few names. “If people use a gramophone for dancing, the least they can do is to have the latest tunes.” To this her companion also gave assent. They both felt aggrieved. In a few minutes there was nothing bad enough left to say about the music, the floor, the cooking of the little dinner, and the heat of the room. They selected all the least favourable points and emphasised them, yet in their easy, natural way and without calculated motives.

Next they turned their attention to the other dancers, Cecilia leading the way, as before, with faint praise. “Not a bad lot,” observed Harold patronisingly. “Quite nice,” Cecilia qualified, “only I wonder where in the world they pick up such people.” Her companion, while agreeing, mentioned that a certain girl “looked all right, I thought.”

“What! That dowdy creature!” Whereupon he swore he had really only noticed one girl, whose name was Cecilia, and so remedied his mistake. The criticism of the dresses which followed was largely a monologue, since Harold Sharpe merely approved her verdict with “awful, perfectly awful”; but when the taxi arrived after a drive of six minutes, the entire evening, including dinner, dance and dancers, had been so damned that no Recording Angel would have thought it worth even entering in his Book. The names of the destroyers, however, he possibly might have entered.

“Oh, come in for a minute and have a drink, my sister’s sure to be up,” invited Cecilia. Over his whisky and soda and her cigarette an opportunity was provided for chatting pleasantly about their late host and hostess, and without a chorus, since the sister had already gone to bed. “A good fellow, Jack Lindley,” was Harold Sharpe’s offhand opinion, “though what he sees in her I can’t imagine.” But Cecilia, feeling robbed of her accustomed right to start the line of criticism, assured him that he was quite mistaken, for Molly was the possessor of “such a good heart.”

“It’s what Molly sees in him that puzzles me! Still, she amuses herself with Sir Malcolm, the good-looking nerve specialist whom she’s always going to see without the slightest reason.”

“What! That quiet old frump Molly has a lover!”

“Why shouldn’t she?” Cecilia championed her doubtfully.

Before her cigarette was half finished, Molly Lindley’s character was demolished, and her husband, who was “gay enough when you got him alone,” was insecurely balancing on one leg, which was certainly not fit to stand on. Husband and wife, a faithful, somewhat old-fashioned, devoted couple, who had just put themselves to trouble and expense to give the speakers a happy evening, had not a rag to their backs between them. Naked to the winds, vicious, false, and stupid, they were heading full speed for that hell in which the speakers, their detractors, did not, of course, believe. There was not a nastier couple than the Lindleys apparently in all Chelsea⁠—and this result had been accomplished by faint praise, offered with a pleasant smile; by careless suggestion, presented with a shrug of the shoulders; and by a series of innocent questions sprinkled with adjectives and adverbs that carried dark hints of hidden wickedness and double lives⁠—but without a single scrap of truth to support the entire case. The Recording Angel, if he entered anything, entered it, indeed, as evidence the destroyers unwittingly gave against themselves⁠—a confession that what they had in their own hearts and minds they saw most easily in others.

The case, moreover, presented with the skill due to long practice, was completed in ten minutes at the most. Without motive, without malice, without conscious intention to do harm or wish to injure, but merely obeying a habit to say something startling perhaps, Mr. and Mrs. Lindley were left naked to the cruel winds and without a leg to stand on.

Incidentally, just before Harold took his leave⁠—in the space of two minutes or so⁠—Cecilia’s sister, asleep upstairs, lay also without covering.

“One of the best,” Cecilia replied, as he dropped a polite word of casual inquiry, “but oh, so queer and moody sometimes.”

“She’s jolly good to you, Ceci,” Harold considered, knowing of the generous allowance.

“Oh, she’s a perfect brick. It’s only her moods that I find trying sometimes.”

“Ah!” His ears were hungry at once. He glanced at her inquiringly.

Cecilia lowered her voice. “It’s drugs probably,” she mentioned.

Harold laughed, nodding understandingly. “They all do it,” he said with a shrug, swallowing a gulp of the lady’s excellent whisky, while the kindly soul they discussed lay dreaming peacefully on the floor above, a homoeopath ignorant of anything stronger than fairy doses of aconite for a cold or colocynth for indigestion. In future, however, whenever her name was mentioned in his presence, Harold Sharpe, with a looking of knowing sympathy, would say darkly, “Drugs, you know. Yes, I’m afraid it’s drugs. Oh, her sister knows it.⁠ ⁠…”

“Well, good night, Cecilia. I must be getting on. See you again soon.”

“At the Lindleys probably. Molly said they’d give another gramophone hop before long. Good night.”

An hour later both of them lay sound asleep, at peace with all the world and entirely pleased and satisfied with themselves, their hearts harbouring no malice, envy, or uncharitableness. Their tongues lay still. Their day, their evening, their conversation, had been an average sample of what occurred on the other 364 days of their year. Fallen reputations marked their course like birds before a skilful gun. These were not deliberately brought down, but when they aimed with deliberation they landed much bigger game, for they were both deadly shots.

Now, one of the latter, wounded but not killed it so happened, traced the shot that hit him to its source. He was not only big game, he was dangerous big game, a man of personality, a man of power, a man of strange knowledge, too. And he did not bring the action for slander he was justified in bringing, yet neither did he ignore the wicked snipers who used poisoned shafts in the darkness. He merely cursed them. He cursed them both. His curse, however, was perhaps no ordinary curse.⁠ ⁠…

II

It was a lovely morning some weeks later that Cecilia sat alone in a taxi, examining her face uneasily in the narrow mirror, as she drove to Grosvenor Street. The sun shone brightly and old grimy London laughed with happiness. Flowers shone at every corner, in every buttonhole. Birds were singing gaily. The air was sweet and fresh, for it was summertime, and half-past ten was really half-past nine; but the pretty young face reflected in the taxi looking-glass betrayed no summertime. It was neither sweet nor fresh. A haunting anxiety lay in the otherwise bright eyes. The corners of the little mouth turned down. From time to time she crushed a small lace handkerchief against her lips with violence. Occasionally, removing it quickly, she drew in a deep draught of the sweet air from the open window, inhaling and exhaling with fixed concentration in her face, then swiftly placing the handkerchief on her lips again. One might have thought she suffered toothache, neuralgia; some nerve attack perhaps that affected the mouth or lips or gums. Her behaviour indicated extreme uneasiness, if not actual pain.

At the door of No. 100A she dismissed the taxi, and was admitted with scarcely a minute’s delay. The butler with the sphinx-like face bowed her smoothly into the waiting-room, closing the door behind her silently. Evidently, since he did not ask her name, he knew it already. Finding herself alone, she ran to the big mirror quickly, but had only time to catch a glance of a white frightened face before the door reopened and her name was softly spoken. Biting her lips, her hands clenched tightly at her side, she followed the sphinx into the consulting-room of Sir Malcolm, the famous nerve specialist. With an instinctive movement, as she crossed the threshold and saw the tall, dark-faced figure rising to greet her, she crushed the small lace handkerchief tightly against her lips.⁠ ⁠…

The interview was a long one. When she came out again the waiting-room was half-filled with fidgeting ladies who had been kept, they considered, unduly waiting. Her mind was too preoccupied to observe carefully, but she noticed, she fancied, one man among the women. Picking up her bag and parasol hastily, she looked into no single face. Her hands trembled, her breath came unevenly, her features were hard and aged, she kept the handkerchief pressed against her mouth. She hurried out; the sphinx called a taxi, she drove to her sister’s house, ran quickly up to her room and locked herself in. The first thing she did on being alone was to collect several hand-mirrors and arrange them in such a way before the dressing-table that she could study her face from every possible angle. She studied herself thus for the best part of half an hour, her eyes too strained with intense anxiety for tears; her heart too overloaded with a strange biting dread for her breath to behave naturally; her mind gone too far beyond control for her to remain still a single instant.

Cecilia Lance was terrified. But she had force, she had courage, her personality was not negligible; she could face anything, provided she first had time to decide upon her attitude and line of conduct. By the lunch hour, when she came down to meet her sister’s guests, she had found herself again. If the face was somewhat drawn, it was not noticeably so. Her breath was normal, her manner quiet yet not depressed, her voice betrayed no trembling. She had faced the situation and taken her line of conduct.

“Ah, there you are! You were out early, Thompson told me, I missed you.” And her sister came forward with her usual affectionate embrace.

Cecilia drew back sharply. “You mustn’t kiss me, Gerty. I’ve⁠—got a cold. Oh, it’s nothing. But I don’t want to give it to you.”

The luncheon party passed off pleasantly. No one could have said that Cecilia was not her gay and normal self, nor could anyone have guessed from her lighthearted manner the amount of nervous power she exerted to appear so. It was with difficulty, none the less, that she ate her food or swallowed her wine. She did not smoke. There was a sinking dread, a constant terror in her that required all her skill and courage to conceal successfully. That inner gnawing never ceased. The wolf of horror tore steadily at her very vitals. The handkerchief went from time to time to her mouth, but in such a way that the manoeuvre seemed quite natural. In her mind still echoed the words the specialist had used a few hours ago. Her visit that morning to Sir Malcolm was not the first. It was the tenth. And after she had left him, he made his next patient wait a little longer for her dreaded yet coveted ten minutes with him. In fact, he did a thing he rarely allowed himself to do⁠—he saw another patient in her place, a man⁠—and when the man had gone, he delayed the fuming lady still another ten minutes, while he made notes, consulted books, and looked generally more puzzled and interested, perhaps dismayed as well, than in the course of his strange practice he had ever looked before. With his subsequent visitors he was even a little absentminded, though he was certainly too skilful for this cardinal mistake to be discovered.

“It seems more than curious⁠—it’s incredible simply,” he thought to himself, as he glanced over his notes that night before going to bed. It was a thing he had never done befcwe⁠—to think of a case when the day’s work was done. He particularly examined a sheet of tissue paper which had a circular hole in it with rough uneven edges, tinged slightly yellow, red, and black. He wore an expression of bewilderment as he laid it down. He was evidently baffled. “I’ve never come across such a thing before. The books have no record of anything approaching it.” He passed into a mood of deep reflection. “I’m damned!” he said aloud finally. “It’s positively medieval. It’s⁠—it’s uncanny.” Sir Malcolm was baffled and admitted it⁠—to himself only. “And two of them, by God!”

III

It was just as the last guests were leaving that Cecilia was called to the telephone by Harold Sharpe. He asked if he might look in for tea and whether she would be alone. His voice had an odd note of seriousness in it. But Cecilia excused herself on the plea that she was resting before the Lindley’s dance that night.

“Aren’t you well?” he asked sharply.

“Oh⁠—I’m all right, yes,” with a moment’s hesitation before she said it. Then Harold insisted. He was very urgent, very determined. “I simply must see you,” he declared, “and alone, Ciss.” A quiver ran down her, making her voice tremble a little. “Oh, all right,” she yielded. “Gerty’s going out. Only you mustn’t stay long. I’m dead tired.” Her body swayed slightly. She dropped into a chair and hid her face in her hands. Ten minutes afterwards Harold was in the room with her alone.

“I haven’t seen you for ages,” he began. “What’s up?” His manner was odd, it was strained and nervous. He spoke rapidly and his eyes had a hunted look. His skin was pale. Fingers and lips twitched badly. “What’s been the matter, Ceci?” It was the form of her name he used when he was in earnest, which was not often. “You never turned up at Claridges last night either.” He coughed. The girl started, and asked quickly if he would smoke, but he declined with a gesture of impatience. He coughed a second time. His handkerchief came out. The girl started again, worse than before.

“Harold⁠—” she said abruptly, then stopped dead, and looked away. She had meant to say something else. “What does that cough mean?” she asked instead, keeping her face still turned from him. “I believe you’re not⁠—quite well. That wasn’t a real cough.”

His handkerchief was against his lips, and he did not answer.

“Harold!” she repeated, with a singular loudness, as though the word were produced by a shock. Slowly her head turned round towards him and their eyes met. “Are you?” she insisted in a tense whisper that had an ominous tremor in it⁠—“quite⁠—well?”

Instead of answering, he asked a point-blank question, staring fixedly at her: “What were you doing in Grosvenor Street this morning, Ceci?” And as he said it her memory worked vividly. She remembered. He, of course, had been the one man in the waiting-room. This flashed across her. Her hand went to her handkerchief, but she did not use it. His eye, however, she saw, detected the movement⁠—and understood it. They knew one another’s minds so intimately.

“So it was you, Harold!” She could only whisper now, it seemed. Control of her voice was gone.

Harold’s face, already pale when he came in, turned a little paler. It went a shade more grey now. They stared hard into one another’s eyes.

“I⁠—” he began, then faltered. “What were you doing there?” he asked suddenly, and as he said it his eyes wandered down her face slowly, pausing at her lips. They were fixed in a dreadful stare. Unutterable questions, she knew, lay in them. Her handkerchief again flew upwards.

“Don’t! Don’t!” she cried vehemently, her voice muffled behind the pressing lace. “For God’s sake, don’t!”

He caught at her hand and wrenched it, so that the momentary pain gave her the energy to deflect her thoughts the least little bit. He was attempting⁠—oh, she realised it quite clearly⁠—attempting to look at her handkerchief and the knowledge gave her the power to try and hide it, to prevent him seeing it, to smother it away. Only he was too strong for her.

He forced her palm open.

“You were there,” he said in a voice that was calm but oddly stupid, “for the same reason I was.” He dropped her hand, while she thrust the crumpled scrap of lace with violence into her tiny bag, yet knowing it was a useless thing to do, because he had already seen the strange, discoloured patch.

“How d‑dare you?” she cried, stammering in her fear I and pain.“You for‑g‑get yourself, Harold Sharpe!” But he made no attempt at either apology or explanation, merely sinking back with a faint sigh into his chair and leaving his f own crumpled handkerchief open for her to see in the palm of his effortless hand.

It, too, bore the same dread signature⁠—a discoloured patch.

For several minutes of silence the pair of them sat thus, each staring⁠—as though bereft of any power to move or speak⁠—at that ghastly and significant patch. It bore the appearance of having been burnt or scorched⁠—by fire.

It was the girl who first recovered her self-control, though only in a measure. She rose from her chair and stood over him.

“Harold,” she said in a very low voice, and as though it cost her enormous effort, “it’s the same with both of us. And we’ve brought it on ourselves.” Placing a hand on his smooth, thick hair, though he shrank from her touch, she continued in a whisper: “And do you realise⁠—it’s something not of this world⁠—quite?” She paused, drew back a step, and stared down at him. “It’s from the d-devil.”

He made no sign, no answer, but his whole body shivered.

“Do you understand what it m‑means?” she went on.

He sprang suddenly to his feet then, making strange gestures of futile violence with his hands.

“Ceci,” he cried, “you’re crazy! You’re talking ihe damnedest nonsense in all the world. Pull yourself together⁠—” and then his breath failed him and he collapsed in a stupid heap on his chair.

The girl shook him as though she could have struck his face for preference. There was great violence in her heart and mind. There was perhaps murder⁠—or suicide, its equivalent.

“He told you⁠—what he told me?” she asked in a voice that seemed without any emotion because its owner was beyond any feeling.

Harold nodded.

“He tried the tissue paper?”

He bowed his head.

“He told you what⁠—what we have to expect?”

The only answer, the only sign that her words were heard, was a convulsive movement of the body that somehow communicated horror more than any words could possibly have done. It was without intelligence.

“In‑c‑c‑curable,” she said in level tones that conveyed even better than his convulsive gesture her blank, ultimate despair! The stammer added a touch of unintelligence similar to his own. It was dreadful.

He looked up then with an idiotic smile, while she responded, the mind in her obviously already clouded: “Flame that never d-dies.”

“T‑tongues of f‑f‑fire,” he said with a feeble giggle. “We have t‑tongues of f‑fire⁠—you and I⁠—” He got up with a gesture as though to kiss her. In his hand fluttered his handkerchief, its awful patch apparent.

She did not move. “And afterwards, too,” she whispered, the last gleam of reason fading from her eyes, “forever and ever.⁠ ⁠…”