The Charwoman's Shadow
by Lord Dunsany
IX: The Technique of Alchemy
In the glittering morning that came even to that wood, through layers and layers of leafiness, Ramon Alonzo arose; and first he found the charwoman, at work where she mostly worked, on that deep-stained stone.
“Anemone,” he said, “I have been to Aragona.”
“Ah, Aragona,” she answered wistfully. “Was it very fair?”
And he spoke of its beauty, resting amongst its lanes and arbours; and the wide plains dreaming around it, lit with a myriad flowers; and its spires rising above the trees and the houses, taking the sunlight direct from the face of the sun, like planets out in ether. He spoke of the gladdening voices of its bells—like merriment amongst a band of grave old men—wandering through summer air. It was not hard to praise Aragona’s beauty.
And then he told her such names as he had heard of the folk that dwelt in the village, and little tales of some of the older ones that he had got from the maidens’ prattle; but to all this she shook her head mournfully and would hear more of the lanes and the arbours. So he told of these, and the pomegranate groves; but even then there often came over her that mournful look again, and she drooped her head and murmured: “Changed. All changed.” Only when he spoke of the hills far off, and of the tiny valley of the stream that tinkled through Aragona, did content descend on her like an old priest’s blessing given with outstretched hands on some serene evening, as she listened beside her pail overfull of a calm joy.
And when he saw her face as she knelt by her work, sitting back on her heels, arms limp, hands lightly folded, listening with quiet rapture to every word that he told of the old Aragona that lived in her ancient memories, he determined that she should go to her village again and should take a shadow to show in the face of all men.
So he said: “I will get you a shadow. The Master shall make you a false one.”
He had youth’s confidence that the magician would do this for him as soon as he asked it, and if not he should do it because of his grandfather who taught him boar-hunting.
But she cried out: “A false shadow! That is of no avail. A mere piece of darkness. He has my own good shadow: of what use are his strips of gloom?”
And all the while his own shadow lay full on the floor beside her, as good a shadow as any man’s. He smiled quietly and said nothing.
Then the young man hastened away to the room that was sacred to magic, for he knew the magician awaited him. And the first thing he said when he reached it, and saw the blacker mass of the magician out-darkening the gloom of the room, was, “Master, will you make me a shadow for me to give to the charwoman?”
“What should she do with a shadow?” he said.
“I know not,” said Ramon Alonzo, “but I would give her one.”
“Idleness comes of such gifts,” the magician replied. “She will go to the villages with it and flaunt it there amongst common mundane things. It will lead her towards all that is earthly, for what is commoner or more vain than a shadow?”
The young man knew not how to answer this. “I would give her a present,” he said, “of some such trifle.”
“Brooches and earthly gauds are for these uses,” replied the Master; “but the wisdom that I have drawn from so many ages is not for such as her.”
“I pray you give it me,” said Ramon Alonzo, “for the sake of what my grandfather taught you of boar-hunting.”
“The teaching that I had from that great philosopher,” said the magician, “is not to be mentioned beside the vanity of a charwoman’s shadow. Yet since you have invoked that potent honoured name I will make the shadow you seek. Bid her therefore come and stand before my door that I may copy her shadow even as artists do.”
At once Ramon Alonzo left the room that was sacred to magic to bring the good news to the charwoman, and found her still at that stone.
“He will make you a shadow,” he cried, “a fine new shadow.”
But none of his eagerness found any reflection in her wan worn face, and she only repeated with sorrowful scorn: “A piece of common darkness. I know his strips of gloom.”
Then said Ramon Alonzo: “Is my shadow common darkness? Is my shadow mere gloom?”
And he pointed towards it lying beside her pail.
“Yours!” she cried. “No! Yours is a proper shadow. A fine lithe shadow; beautiful, glossy, and young. A good sleek shadow. A joy to the wild grasses. Aye, that is a shadow. God bless us, there are shadows still in the world.”
And he laughed to hear her.
“Then this shadow of mine,” he said gaily, “is no more than what you shall have. He made it.”
“He made it?” she cried out, all with a sudden gasp.
“Yes,” he laughed. “He made it two days ago. And you’ve seen it many a time, and never knew till I told you.”
“O your shadow!” she wailed. “And I warned you. Your sweet young shadow in his detestable box. O your grey slender shadow! And I warned you. I warned you. Oh, why did you do it? I warned you. So proper a shadow. And now it drifts about beyond the world or wherever he sends it when he takes it out of his box, doing his heathen errands and hobnobbing with demons.”
“But this shadow,” he said, pointing to the one that lay now at his heels, a little pale in that house, but grey enough, as he knew, in the sunlight and on the grasses, “is not this shadow slender and grey enough? You have just said so.”
“I did not know,” she wailed, “I did not know.”
“Is any shadow better?” he asked.
But she was weeping, all bent up by her pail. He waited, and still she wept.
“Come,” he said. “The Master will make you a shadow.”
But she only shook her head, and continued weeping. And when he saw that, for whatever reason, she was weeping over his shadow, and that nothing he said could solace her, he left at last with the shadow that only made her weep. As he entered the room again that was sacred to magic he saw the magician standing all in the midst of the gloom.
“She will not come,” said the young man.
And somewhat hastily the Master of the Art passed from that topic. “We will then examine,” he said, “the differences and the kinship of various metals with gold, in order that we may choose those that with least disturbance can be transmuted to that arrangement of the element which forms the rarer metal. And this, as all men know, is accomplished by means of the philosopher’s stone, in the proper handling of which I will instruct you tomorrow, together with all spells that pertain to it; for there is a special dictology, or study of spells, belonging only to the use of this stone.”
He then lay on his lectern, in view of Ramon Alonzo, several angular pieces of metals of different kinds, of a convenient size for handling. About these he lectured with all that volume of knowledge that, in his long time on Earth, he had learned concerning the rocks that compose our planet.
“The arrangement of the element,” he said, “is most near in lead to that which it takes in forming the structure of gold. And this arrangement, the fitting together of particle into particle, is easy to be expounded, were it not for one thing; and but for one thing lead were transmuted to gold with facility. This one thing is colour. For in the final arrangement of the particles, when all else is understood, there is a certain aspect of them which produceth colour, that of all mundane things is the least to be comprehended.”
“Colour?” said Ramon Alonzo, his roving youthful fancy called back to that gloomy room by hearing the Master attribute a wonder to colour, with which he had been familiar through all the years of his life.
“Aye,” said the Master, “the outward manifestation of all material things that come to our knowledge, and yet the nature of it has baffled, and is still baffling, the studies of the most learned amongst mankind. For this reason alone there are those that have discarded the study of matter, caring little to struggle with difficulty in so trivial a business as to seek for the meaning and use of material things. To other branches of study, whatever their difficulty, we are lured by the chance of prizes beyond estimation; these however concern you not, having chosen the humble study whose lore we now consider. Colour then depends upon the arrangement of the element in its most subtle form. Were there only one colour we should esteem that it was the natural manner in which light affected surfaces. Yet are there four, and these must therefore depend on a variation of surface profoundly intricate.
“Now it is the nature of gold that wherever and however it be cut, or powdered or melted or broken, the surface presented is yellow; and the delicate arrangement of particles that in other metals presents other colours than this needs to be overcome; for, without this, transmutation is not accomplished. And but for this colour the changing of lead into gold were amongst the easiest of all the traffickings men have with material things. And if the vulgar would accept as gold what is truly gold in its essence, although it be black, the business were easy enough; but it has been ascertained that in regard to this they are stubborn.”
Then, taking up a piece of iron pyrites, he explained how by mingling various metals together the student could acquire the colour of one, the hardness or softness of another, and so blend them that the weight of the whole mass should be what was desired; and it should be in all respects most suited to undergo those changes that were to be caused by the use of the philosopher’s stone.
The lecture that he delivered that day, with all the metals before him, upon the preparations for transmutation, has probably seldom been surpassed; for he had for the material of his discourse the wisdom of those ages that had preceded him, while a few centuries later the study of the philosopher’s stone fell much into desuetude. Yet who shall estimate the relative excellence of lectures on transmutation, seeing that they have ever been given in gloom and secrecy to classes of ones and twos?
And Ramon Alonzo listened docilely; not, as might have been thought, because to learn transmutation was the object of his sojourn in that dim house, but because he awaited a favourable opportunity, an amiable mood in the magician, when he might ask for leave once more to return to the fields of frivolity. And not till evening came and the magician banished him from his sacred room, in order that, as Ramon Alonzo knew, he might play some secret game with his captive shadows, did the young man learn with shrewd intuitions of youth that he cared far more for the fee that he had in his box than for any learning he might impart as his part of the bargain.
He did not look for Anemone that evening, for he saw that the sight of his shadow troubled her, believing her overwrought by the loss of her own, and deciding to renew the magician’s offer in a few days when she was calmer. That she should have a shadow again he was determined, and walk without hurt or taunt in her Aragona.
As he went to his room that night up the stairway of stone, with a candle all blobs of tallow and ragged wick spluttering within a lantern, he had an idea for a moment on one of the steps that there was something wrong with his shadow; but he looked again, holding the lantern steadier, and the idea or the fear passed.