The Charwoman's Shadow
by Lord Dunsany
III: The Charwoman Tells of Her Loss
As Ramon Alonzo supped that tall figure of magic stood opposite without moving, and spoke no more; so that the young man ate hastily and soon had finished. He rose from the table, the other signed with his arm, and passed out of the room, Ramon Alonzo following. Soon they came to a lantern which the Master of the Art took down from its hook on the wall; he turned then away from his green door and led his visitor on to the deeps of his house. And it seemed to Ramon Alonzo, with the curious insight of youth, as he followed the black bulk of the Master of the Art looming above the wild shadows that ran from the lantern, that here was the master of a band of shadows leading them home into their native darkness. And so they came to an ancient stairway of stone, that was lit by narrow windows opening on the stars, though tonight the Master brought his lantern to light it in honour of his guest. And it was plain even to Ramon Alonzo from the commotion of the bats, though he had not the art to read the surprise in the eyes of the spiders, that the light of a lantern seldom came that way. They came to a door that no spell had guarded from time; the magician pushed it open and stood aside, and Ramon Alonzo entered. At first he only saw the huge bulk of the bed, but as the lantern was lifted into the room he saw the ruinous panels along the wall; and then the light fell on the bedclothes, and he could see that blankets and sheets mouldered all in one heap together and a cobweb covered them over. Some rush mats lay on the floor, but something seemed to have eaten most of the rushes. Over the window a draught flapped remnants of curtains, but the moth must have been in those curtains for ages and ages. The Master spoke with an air of explanation, almost perhaps of apology: “Old age comes to all,” he said. Then he withdrew.
Left alone with the starlight, to which the work of the moth allowed an ample access, Ramon Alonzo considered his host. The room was ominous and the house enchanted and there might well be spells in it more powerful than his sword, yet if his host were friendly it seemed to him he was safe amongst his enchantments, unless some rebel spirit should trouble the night, who had revolted from the spells of the magician. He generously accepted the Master’s explanation of the state of the room, shrewdly considering him to be a man so absorbed in the perpetuity of his art that he gave no attention to material things; so trusting to his host’s expressions of goodwill, and of gratitude to his grandfather, he lay down on the bed to sleep, untroubled by fear of spells or spirits of evil, but he took off none of his clothes, for against the risk of damp he felt there was none to guard him.
Either he slept or was in that borderland where Earth is dimmed by a haze from the land of sleep, and dreams cast shadows yet on the shores of Earth before they glide afar, when he heard slow steps come up the stairway of stone. And presently there was a knock, to which he answered, and a crone appeared in the door, holding the lantern that the magician had lately carried. Age had withered her beyond pity; for whatever pity there be for sickness and hurts, youth feels little pity for age, having never known it, and the aged have little pity to give to their fellows, because pity is withering in them with many another emotion, like the last of the flowers drooping all together as winter nears the garden. She stood there feeble and wasted, an ancient hag.
And before the young man spoke she quavered to him, with an earnest intentness the fervour of which not even her age could dim, stretching out a withered right hand to him as she spoke, the left hand holding the lantern: “Young master, give him nothing! Give him nothing, whatever he ask! His prices are too high, young master, too high, too high!”
“I have little money to give,” said Ramon Alonzo.
“Money!” she gasped, for her vehemence set her panting. “Money! That is naught! That’s a toy! That’s a mousetrap! Money indeed! But his prices are too high: he asks more than money.”
“More than money?” said Ramon Alonzo. “What then?”
“Look!” she cried lamentably, and twirled the lantern about her.
The young man saw first her face, and a look on it like the look on the face of one revealing a mortal wound; and then, as she swung the lantern round, he suddenly saw that the woman had no shadow.
“What! No shadow?” he blurted out, sitting suddenly up on his heap of cobwebs and sheets.
“Never again,” she said, “never again. It lay over the fields once; it used to make the grass such a tender green. It never dimmed the buttercups. It did no harm to anything. Butterflies may have been scared of it, and once a dragonfly, but it did them never a harm. I’ve known it protect anemones awhile from the heat of the noonday sun, which had otherwise withered them sooner. In the early morning it would stretch away beyond our garden right out to the wild; poor innocent shadow that loved the grey dew. And in the evening it would grow bold and strong and run right down the slopes of hills, where I walked singing, and would come to the edges of bosky tangled places, till a little more and its head would have been out of sight: I’ve known the fairies then dance out from their sheltered arbours in the deeps of briar and thorn and play with its curls. And, for all its rovings and lurkings and love of mystery, it never left me, of its own accord never. It was I that forsook it, poor shadow, poor shadow that followed me home. For I’ve been out with it when the evenings were eerie and all the valleys haunted, and my shadow must have met with such companions as were far more kin to it than my gross body could be, and nearer to it than my heels, folk that would give it news direct from the kingdom of shadows and gossip of the dark side of the moon, and would whisper things that I could never have taught it; yet it always came home with me. And at night by candlelight in our cottage in Aragona it used to dance for me as I went to bed, all over the walls and ceilings, poor innocent shadow. And if I left a low candle to burn away he never tired of dancing for me as long as I sat up and watched: often he outtired the candle, for the more wearily the candle flickered the more nimbly he leaped. And then he would lie and rest in any corner with the common shadows of humble trivial things, but if I struck a light to rise before dawn, or even if I should light my candle at midnight, he was always there at once, erect on the wall, ready to follow me wherever I went, and to bear me that companionship as I went among men and women, which I valued, alas, so little when I had it, and without which now I know, too late I have learned, there is no welcome for one, no pity, no sufferance amongst mankind.”
“No pity?” said Ramon Alonzo, moved deeply to pity, himself, by the old crone’s sorrow, though unable to credit that her loss could matter so much as she said.
“No pity! No sufferance!” she said. “The children run from me screaming. Those that are large enough to throw, throw stones at me; and their elders come out with sticks when they hear them scream. At evening they all grow angrier. They come out with their long big faithful shadows, if I dare go near a village, and stand just beyond the strip where my shadow should be, and jeer at me and upbraid and there is no pity. And all the while they jeer there’s not one that loves his shadow as I love mine. They do not gaze at their shadows, or even turn to look at them. Ah, how I should gaze at mine if it could come back, poor shadow. I should go to a quiet place alone in the open country, and there I should sit on the moss with my back to the sun, and watch my shadow all day. I should not want to eat or drink or think; I should only watch my shadow. I should mark its gentle movement that it makes in time with the sun, I should watch till I saw it grow. And then I would hold up my hand and move every finger, and each joint of my arm; and see the shadow answering, answering, answering. And I should nod to it and bow to it and curtsey. And I would dance to my shadow alone. And all this I would do again and again all day. I would watch the colour that every flower took, and each different kind of grass, when my shadow touched them. And this is not telling you one hundredth part of it. It is this to love one’s shadow!
“And what do they know of their shadows? What do they care whether their shadows lie on green grass or rock? What do they know what colours the flowers turn when their shadows go amongst them? And they won’t let me live with them, speak with them, or pass them by, because forsooth I have been unkind to my shadow. Ah, well, perhaps the days will come when they too will love something too late, and love something that is gone, as I love my shadow; cold days and long days those.”
“How did you lose it?” asked Ramon Alonzo, all wonder and pity.
“He took it,” she said. “He took it. He took it away and put it in his box. What did I know of the need one has of a shadow: that they would not speak to me, would not let me live? They never told me they set such store by their shadows. Nor do they! Nor do they!”
The young man’s generous feelings were moved by this wrong as though it had been his own.
“I will go there with my sword,” he exclaimed, “and they shall speak with you courteously.”
For the first time that night the old woman smiled. She knew that jealousy united with fear could not be made to forgive such a loss as hers. She had not known at first that it was jealousy, but had learned it at length by her lonely ponderings. The villagers saw that in some curious way she had stepped outside boundaries that narrowed them, and had escaped from one rule from which they had never a holiday. They could never be rid of the hourly attendance of shadows, but one that could should not triumph over them. She knew, and she smiled.
“Young master,” she said, more than ever moved to help him by his outburst of generosity, “give him nothing.”
“But you,” he said, “did you give it to him?”
“Fool! Fool that I was!” she said. “I did not know I needed it.”
“But for what did you give it?” he asked.
“For immortality of a sort,” she said, and said so ruefully, with a look that told so much more, that the young man saw clearly enough it had been the gift of Tithonus.
“He gave you that!” he exclaimed.
“That,” she said.
“But why?” asked Ramon Alonzo.
“He wanted a charwoman,” she said.