The Charwoman's Shadow
by Lord Dunsany
IV: Ramon Alonzo Learns a Mystery Known to the Reader
When the crone had revealed the mean and trivial purpose for which the Master of the Art had cast her helpless upon the ages, she voiced her regrets no more; but, once more warning the young man against the magician’s prices, she turned about with her lantern and went shadowless out of the room. Ramon Alonzo had heard and disregarded tales of men that had paid their shadows as the price for certain dealings within the scope of the Art; but he had never before considered the value of shadows. He saw now that to lose his shadow and to come to yearn for it when it were lost, and to lose the little greetings that one daily had from one’s kind, and to hear no more tattle about trivial things; to see smiles no more, nor to hear one’s name called friendly; but to have the companionship only of shadowless things, such as that old woman, and wandering spirits, and dreams, might well be to pay too much for the making of gold. And, well warned now, he decided that come what may he would never part with his shadow. In his gratitude he determined to ask the magician for some respite for that poor old woman from scrubbing his floors through the ages.
And then his thoughts went back to his main purpose, to what metals were suited best for transmutation, and whether he could turn them into gold himself if the magician’s price were too high: other men had done it; why not he? And, led towards absurdity by this delightful hope, his thoughts grew wilder and wilder till they were dreams.
The sun coming through the upper branches of trees fell on that spidery bed and woke Ramon Alonzo. He perceived then a great gathering of huge oaks, seemingly more ancient than the rest of the forest, and the house was in the midst of them. It was a secret spot. He saw, now, that there was in his room a second window, but the little twigs had so pressed their leaves against it that no light entered there but a dim greenness; it was like hundreds of out-turned hands protesting against that house.
By such light as came through the southeastern window he tidied himself, brushing off with his hands such cobwebs as he could. He did not draw back the curtains, deeming that if he took hold of a portion of one it would come away from the rest; nor did enough material remain to obstruct much of the light that came in through the trees. Then, being dressed already, he opened his door and descended the stairs of stone. Every narrow slit that lighted those dim stairs continued to show vast gathering of oaks that pressed close on the house, so close that Ramon Alonzo saw now, what he had faintly heard overnight and not understood, that here and there great branches had entered the tower and been shaped as steps amongst the steps of stone, making two or three hollower sounds amongst the tapping footsteps of such as used that stair. Upon stormy nights the wooden steps swayed slightly.
When Ramon Alonzo had descended those steps he came to passages amongst a darkness of rafters which were like such nooks as children find under old stairs, only larger and stranger and dimmer, running this way and that; and, guided by glimmers of light that shone faintly from a far window, he came at length to the hall, at whose other end was the old green door to the forest. And there in his black silk cloak in the midst of the hall the magician awaited him.
He was standing motionless, and as soon as the young man saw him the Master of the Art said: “I trust you slept in comfort.” For his studies allowed him leisure for courtesies such as these, but were too profound to permit of such intercourse with common material things as lifting the cobwebs to see the state of the bedclothes that had mouldered so long upon his visitor’s bed. As for the charwoman, she had sorrows enough watching the ages beating upon her frame to trouble what a mere thirty or forty years might do to the sheets and blankets.
“I slept admirably, señor,” Ramon Alonzo said, with a grace in his bow that is sometimes only learnt just as the joints and the muscles have grown too stiff to achieve it.
“I rejoice,” said the magician.
“Master,” said Ramon Alonzo, “would you deign to show me some unconsidered fragment of your wisdom, some saw having naught to do with the deeper mysteries, some trifle, some trick of learning, perhaps the mere making of gold out of other dross, that I may learn to study now, and so in time be wise.”
“For this,” said the magician, pointing the way with a gesture, “let us go to the room that is sacred to the Art. Its very dust is made of books I have studied, and is indeed more redolent of lore than any dust in this wood; and if echoes die not at all, as some have taught (though others urge finality for all things), the spiders in its corners, whose ears are attuned to sounds that are lost to ours, hear still the echoes of my earlier musings whereby I unravelled mysteries that are not for the ears of man. There we will speak upon the graver matters.”
He led, and the young man followed. And again he was amongst beams of age-darkened oak, and twisty corridors leading into the gloom, which the shape of the magician before him rendered unnaturally blacker. They came to a black door studded with wooden knobs, upon which the magician rapped, and the door opened. They entered, and Ramon Alonzo perceived at once that it was a magician’s workroom, not only by the ordinary appliances or instruments of magic, but by the several sheets of gloom that seemed to come down from the roof through the midst of the air, across the natural dimness of the room. The appliances of magic were there in abundance; stuffed crocodiles lying as thick as on lonely mud-banks in Africa, dried herbs resembling plants that blossom in wonted fields, yet wearing a look that never was on any flowers of ours, great twinkling jewels out of the heads of toads, huge folios written by masters that had followed the Art in China, small parchments with spells upon them in Persian, Indian, or Arabic, the horn of a unicorn that had slain its master; rare spices, condiments, and the philosopher’s stone.
These Ramon Alonzo saw first as he came through the doorway, though what their purposes were he scarcely wondered, and these were the things that always came to his memory whenever in after years he recalled that sinister room. As his eyes became accustomed to the dimness, more and more of the wares and tools of the magical art came looming out of the dusk, while the magician strode to a high-backed chair at a lectern, on which a great book lay open showing columns of Chinese manuscript. In the high-backed chair the magician seated himself before the Cathayan book, and taking up a pen from an unknown wing, he looked at Ramon Alonzo.
“Now,” he said, as though he came newly to the subject or brought to it new acumen from having sat in that chair, “what branch of the Art do you desire to follow?”
“The making of gold,” responded Ramon Alonzo.
“The formulae of all material things have been worked out,” said the magician, “and they have all been found to be vanity. Amongst the first whose formulae failed before these investigations, revealing mere vanity, was gold. Yet should you wish to study the Art from its rudiments, from the crude transmutation of mere material things to the serious and weighty matter of transmigration, I am willing to give you certain instruction at first upon the frivolous topic of your choice. And it is not entirely without value, for by observing the changes in material things we chance sometimes on indications that guide us in graver studies. But the whole of the way is long, even as the masters count time. Would you therefore begin from these earliest rudiments?”
“I would,” said Ramon Alonzo.
“Know then,” said he, “that my fees are never material things, but are dreams, hopes, and illusions, and whatever other great forces control the fortune of nations. Later I will enumerate them. But while we study the mere transmutation of metals I will ask no more than that which of all immaterial things most nearly pertains to matter, at one point actually touching it …”
“My shadow,” cried Ramon Alonzo.
The magician was irked by his guest’s discovery of his fee, though he was indeed about to tell him, but he had a few more words to say first about the worthlessness of shadows, and the sudden disclosure of the point was not in accordance with his plans for conducting a bargain; and, as many a man will do in such a case, he denied that he was about to ask precisely that. He soon however came round to it again, saying: “And even so it were little enough to ask for my fee, which might well be larger were it not for my gratitude to your grandfather; for a shadow, of necessity, shares the doom that overtakes matter, and is commoner far than faith if all were known, and is of the least account of all immaterial things.”
“Yet I need it,” said Ramon Alonzo.
“For what purpose?” asked the Master of the Art.
“I shall need it when I go among the villages,” he answered, “or wherever I meet with men.”
“Learn,” said the magician, “that aught that has value is to be treasured on that account, and not for the opinion of the vulgar; and that which has no value is foolishly desired if its purpose be but to minister to the fickleness of the idle popular eye.”
“Is my shadow valueless?” asked Ramon Alonzo.
“Utterly,” said the Master.
“Why then does your Excellency demand it?”
“Address me rather as Your Mystery,” said the magician to gain time.
Ramon Alonzo apologized with due courtesy and conformed to the correct usage.
“I need it,” said His Mystery, “because there are those that serve me better when equipped with a shadow than when drifting vapidly in their native void. They have no other connection with Earth except these shadows I give them, and for this purpose I have many shadows which I keep here in a box. But you who were born on Earth have no need at all of a shadow, and lose none of our mundane privileges if you should give it away.”
And for all the wisdom of the magician the young man remained less moved by his well-reasoned arguments than by the grief and garrulity of the charwoman.
So he held to his shadow and would not part with it; and the more the magician proved its uselessness the more stubborn he became. And when the magician would not abate his fee the young man determined to stay and study there rather than to return home empty-handed; and to bide his time, perhaps to come one day on the secret of transmutation, perhaps to grow so learned through his studies that he might work out its formula for himself. Therefore he said: “Are there no other mysteries that I may learn for a different fee?”
The Master answered: “There are many mysteries.”
“For what fees?” asked Ramon Alonzo.
“These vary,” said the magician, “according to the mystery. Your faith, your hope, half your eyesight, some illusion of value: I have many fees, as indeed there are many illusions.”
He would not give his faith, nor yet his hope, for that would be nearly as bad; and he had ever clung somewhat tenaciously to his illusions, as indeed we all do.
“What mystery,” he asked, “do you impart for half my eyesight?”
“The mystery of reading,” answered the Master.
Now Ramon Alonzo had such eyesight that he could count the points on a stag’s head at five hundred paces, and deemed half would well suffice him. The magician moreover explained that it was not his custom to take that fee in advance, but that the length of his sight would diminish appreciably, as he mastered the intricacies of the mystery.
This well suited Ramon Alonzo, for he had ever wondered how the thoughts of men could lie sleeping for ages in folios, and suddenly brighten new minds with the mirth of men centuries dead; for the good fathers had not taught him this in their school, perhaps fearing that they would make their wisdom too common if they recklessly made the laity free of its source. And, believing as many do that wisdom is only a matter of reading, he thought soon to be on the track of the lore of those philosophers who in former ages transmuted base metals to gold, and so come by what he sought without losing his shadow.
“Master,” said Ramon Alonzo, “I pray you teach me that mystery.”
The magician shut the book. “To read Chinese,” he said, “I do not teach for this fee, for the Chinese script hides secrets too grave to be learnt at so light a cost. For this fee I teach only to read in the Spanish language. Hereafter, for other fees …”
“Master,” the young man said, “I am well content.”
And then, with sonorous voice and magnificent gestures, the magician began to expose the secrets of reading; one by one he stripped mysteries, laying them bare to his pupil; and all the while he taught in that grand manner, that he had from the elder masters whose lore had been handed down. He taught the use of consonants, the reason of vowels, the way of the downstrokes and the up; the time for capital letters, commas, and colons; and why the j is dotted, with many another mystery. That first lesson in the gloomy room were well worthy of faithful description, so that every detail of the mystery might be minutely handed down; but the thought comes to me that my reader is necessarily versed in this mystery, and for that reason alone I say no more on this magnificent theme. Suffice it that with all pomp and dignity due to this approach to the prime source of learning the magician began to unfold the mystery of reading to the awed and wondering eyes of Ramon Alonzo. And while they taught and learned they heard outside in the passage the doleful sweeping of the shadowless woman that minded that awful house.