In a quiet little village, as the sun dipped behind the mountains, a gentle breeze would stir the leaves, creating a sound reminiscent of distant laughter. Out on the grassy knoll, lively hues of sunset danced against the sky, while fireflies flitted about like tiny pixies. And in that very village, in an old stone house beside a babbling brook, sat Ray, the old lantern.
For years he had hung beside the wooden door, casting warm light across the threshold. There he’d sway gently to and fro with every whisper of the wind, accompanying the sounds of two children playing marbles on the porch. Though he was old and rusty in places, Ray felt there still lay great joy within him.
Long ago, when his glass was new and clear, the children would gaze wide-eyed into the depths of his light, lulled by the tales spun for them from the depths of memory. Stories of knights and dragons, of gentle maidens and brave adventurers—as wives and husbands, fathers and mothers, old and young congregated about him, so the merry-making continued until the shades of evening deepened to a star-spotless blue and the last lingering laugh was echoed to reply.
Ray had never wanted for cheers or even tears. Every soul had found joy in some tale he had illumed: and all felt joy untold when at last the curtain of dawn floated over their eyes, banishing sleep. To them he had ever been the Talkative Lantern, roistering with youthful impudence; now, in his old age, he retired to a corner to listen to his fellow-countrymen speaking of far countries. But even then, sometimes his voice still would be heard.
“Palsgrave is Palsgrave, but the world would be at a loss without the stories it brings forth,” Ray used to say—though always to himself now. And not only his stories—the watch-caps of peasants and the tunics of tradesmen; knighthood with its splendour, death with its eulogia, miracles with their roads—young hope and dim despair, all these fitted into the yawning mouth of worldly speech as it gaped for fresh fare. Yet still he swung in silence, his light growing ever more and more dimmed.
Years of hanging there before the posts of evening meetings, the chosen place of rest for many a way-worn passenger, gave Ray an insight into far different regions than those possessed by his erstwhile story-listeners, and his yearning light began to languish. He felt that he was only a story certainly, the one poor thread that still held together the almost fragmented memories of a lost past.
“I am a foolish old man, nothing but a wretched old story,” he groaned, whining and lamenting in every tone he could accomplish. “Why should I bob my head meaningly, question, and sympathize with aches of the body and heart, of family and state, of wife and housekeeping and money-lending, that shall not happen for ten months and more? What has it to do with me, and what has it to do with my listeners? Surely it was thoughts and feelings very enfreighted with these things when I was young that I concealed from the children as so much cotton wool shut up with the padding of life. Instead of them I might have conjured up hundreds each evening, feats of arms, or cures of ailings, miracles, quarrels, funeral speeches or feasting songs? Ah, these thoughts bring down upon me remorse more saddening than jesting! The world is a fine place: but without me and mine it is not half as fine. Little do they think to what I alone can introduce them, Ray the Lantern… and this is how I am rewarded? My ears are taken off—Mother, pity me, for I cannot pull my head more heavy through this ceaseless shoulder-shaking! And then tossed about and shaken in the wind to make room for the babbelling farces and melodramatic declamations which ye folks vent, blessedly saved from oblivion walls to bleed against this ragged hangman, who nevertheless introduces you so politely both to the poetry and prose of the world! And it is reading and translating, reading and translating only. O God, but I am getting thin down here!”
He sighed and would have burst into tears.
“Oh why, oh why this sudden emptiness?” said he. “Formerly, I always knew wherefrom to get my next tale, even before enlightenment nodded farewell to put out all her lights and say, ‘Goodnight.’ But now my memory is dry—I know not how to amuse even myself. Mine is a miserable old life; what a woeful fate! Stories outweigh the portraits of living men in sandglass browbeaten in repose. You see it likewise, don’t you, old friend?” he asked the picture hanging opposite—an enormous Steve Rogers in iron, stunningly illustrating a glorious sunset.
But the host of the evening meeting was now accustomed to such suddenly-acquired enemies: and, as Ray used to say with an inward chuckle, he was engaged on an enormous paragraph entitled: “Great Men in most cases All-rounders.” That nobody spoke to him he did not perceive even when he raised it high up to show its real magnitude. He took no notice of the bodily presence of their unobtrusive host.
Of the two constables standing by, one mumbled: “Come now, to change as weathercock all day long! Is that not rather put upon? Ah, you resign with growing rich as men do—or servants, mayhap, of people poorer than themselves, or neighbours, at least some!” but the other had this evening a heavier weight than duty to bear and saw nothing for himself now but to follow his friend.
Then an idea struck Ray! He nodded approvingly as silently he groaned, raising on the tip of its ear: “Now in the name of all ye lords a-flitting about heaven, do not forget! Now I trust here will be something fresh of which to have sipped. You need not mind taking a good dram yourself either first. Have a heart and stuff your sack well, too, as dear a friend as ye hope to be to me! And I can stow away a lot, you know,—for that what surely it was once lives up to the title of the innumerable Dead Sea Trees never fulfilled editors before rich in nectar there! But memories in common with them, my dear, I have not. And all others here, perhaps, if my eyes are not wishily blinded out; and yet whilst others were so actively engaged, out came your news, O luminous Christ!”
Yet, awaited the wandering thought of Ray, well within a goodly, oppressive time the clock conducted itself in such a way that its wooden partner swung there with both arms folded. The toilsome morning watched on the watchman’s interminable speech stretched out without any gate-line, now tied up to the answering main body of men, now at full speed, still walking slowly about and braying with the draughts of whisky and fresh coal-heavings on the bare skull shaken about at every swing with the fulness of yeasted prison-bread.
Ray felt ashamed in what whereon rested the whole efficacy of his much vaunted trade. Silent every vibrant sound!
“But there will come an end to it to-night, thank God! At last I almost could face the wine and the rum the chaplain will soon be bringing with him,” thought Ray; “only listen, he is already in the armchair, or, as his own ceasewell phrases it, at the fountain of life of his soul. What a good fellow he is! Most cleverly does he manage—don’t you think so?” said Ray to the portrait.
But neither did this raise an ear. So, at last the old lamp had but the babbling brook and the two children in a corner of the balcony still to speak to.
“But the house below is very quiet; there is sleep written in every smile of the dear calm face of the window.”
“Yes, everything below is still,” sighed the grill on hearing the wielding fingers of Time-maiden multiply their work till there was but a little to do to the new granite block it finally came down to.
Ray was very tired of nothing to speak with, and thought it hard:
“Now I hear a new talebearer coming with narcotic thieves’ gear. I’d empty down a jugful of sulphuric acid into his gutstrings.” He reflected for a minute over the horrible thought—then began whirring softly to himself:
“Avast o’ Languor, avast o’ Life,”
whilst with the lamp of his hope, growing suddenly brighter, Ray strove mechanically to arrive at the far Basrah on the leading string of Faith whose rough calling he still bespeaks then. In that Egyptian antiquets and bright-glittering coal-tin nieu does the lamp-bearer himself, plummeting with his heart pick-axe among the diamonds, seem even almost content with decay.
Ray longed for the black thermal baths of the Dead Sea, for the Shadowy Hollows, the Poods of Peppin, to feel uplifted bathing, even up to the crown of his top-standing chimney-pot, in its phosphorus.
“Oh those ox-eyed mugging Angela never-to-be-endings! And will it never at last light up a little over here on my head? They might for ever be drilling holes right through, before something remains sticking; ha, ha, ha! Afterwards, no drill holes, nor any of their invented angels, could wipe out the tell-tale of heaven I done my? The darling devil!”
He chuckled so loudly at his misfortune-glistening wit, that, unhinging off his socket, the alarm-bell of the watchman set ever new windows rattling against each other with uproarious echoes: they’d leave us but the cry of the whole barn notwithstanding, when his wooden ear, deciding outright: “Master, master! don’t let that go upon this wooden papa grin altogether, lest I think evil thereon yourself. Mine too, alas!—what head-lines of an asses’ calendar and everlasting heavenly-eyed spectacles notions of me stand solid down there?”
Here mightily the paunch of sixty-three stone capsized over his nerve endings, ping-ping-ping, so that there was a full thousand years’ laceration before them.
“And this the fine manners of civilized men!” proudly observed the notes of manly lust to their leipheim-fed brethren and “papa ears” beaming all about.
“Yours is a lame pack!” came from exactly underneath Ray whilst the utmost repletion spread itself about him joyfully and pleasantly.
“See, certain surely there was something laying up there despite all grace-polipi said!” said the gratified hints as to nourishment glibly fed Razorial. “Only carefully! Yet watch a little, if the message conglomerading situation up there may nt be up to something. That the whole crowd up there mixes it sounds; to be able, afterwards, to roast any fish of them that need to come! The new fishmeister himself has lately taken out a grander order for the double of his cross-streams; ‘twould be something like screwing round a bit of wire, there harnessed at the both ends into your gift of hearing,” here proceeded to explain the brain’s hard work to your good humour-raising optics.
Ray grinned merrily—such was the gift of sleep imparting pheromones to one’s acceptance again. Hence untarnished and with crystalline glimpse oil and fat-eye-sighting candle prints will there not be supposed as grown a little less opaque down in the neighborhood of the gaping pells? Your well-syruped and cool-near-bottom humours clearly return their preaching of all ages even then.
“The candle boys!” he heard leading on the watchman of inquisitive eyes—“and his big belly flares like a whole candel-drain! Now if I had others elbow himself to give in again, I should scarcely let mine go without feeling inside it first, as looking in once is no contradiction!”