The Charwoman's Shadow
by Lord Dunsany
V: Ramon Alonzo Learns of the Box
Before that day had passed Ramon Alonzo had learned the alphabet. He did not master it in one lesson; yet when the magician ceased all in the midst of his wonders, in order that Ramon Alonzo should have the midday meal, he felt that the pathway was already open that led to the boundless lands made gay by the thoughts of the dead. And in those lands what spells might he not unravel; and amongst them the formula for the making of gold. If the magician ate he ate secretly. But Ramon Alonzo, going by his bidding to the room in which he had eaten and drunk overnight, found hot meats once more that awaited him.
As he entered the room he heard a small scurry of feet near the far door, but saw nothing. He ate; then guided by an impulse of youth, which is always curious until it is sure it knows everything, he began to roam through the darknesses of the house in order to find who it was that served those meats. And the further he went, the lower the corridors ran, till he had to bend low to avoid the huge dark beams above him.
Sometimes he came on towering doors in the darkness, and opened them and found great chambers, wanly lit by such daylight as came through the leaves of the forest, which everywhere were pressed against the windows. In these chambers were tapestried chairs set out for a great assemblage, with ancient glories carved upon their frames; and dim magnificencies; but the cobwebs went from chair to chair and covered all of them over, and, descending in huge draperies from the roof, cloaked and festooned the splendours that jutted out from the wall. He went from door to door, but found no kitchen. And all his quest was silent but for the sound of his own feet.
At last, as he turned back by the wandering corridors, he heard in the distance before him the work of the charwoman. She had ceased her sweeping and was scrubbing on stone. He walked to the sound of the scrubbing, and so found her, the only living thing that he had met since he left the magician. She was in a passage scrubbing at one stone, upon which, as Ramon Alonzo could see, she had often worked before, for it was all worn with scrubbing. There was blood on the stone, but though years of scrubbing had hollowed it, the blood had gone deeper than the hollowing; so deep that Ramon Alonzo asked her why she toiled at it.
“It was innocent blood,” she answered.
The young man did not even ask for that story; the house was so full of wonder. He asked instead what he had sought to find: “Who serves the dinner?”
“Imps,” she said.
“Imps?” said Ramon Alonzo.
“Imps that he catches in the wood,” she said, looking up from her work on the floor.
“How does he catch them?” he asked.
“I know not,” she said. “With his spells, like as not. He says they are no use in the wood, and so he catches them.”
“Are there imps in the wood?” asked Ramon Alonzo.
“It is full of them,” she said.
Turning to a more profitable matter he said: “I am learning a mystery from the Master.”
“For what price?” she asked quickly. “What price?”
“Only half my eyesight,” he told her.
“Oh, your bright eyes!” she sighed.
“I can see so far,” he said, “that that is a little matter. One must needs pay something for learning.”
But she only looked wistfully at his eyes.
“When I have learned that mystery I can find others for myself,” he said cheerfully. “You know those jars of dust on his shelf with their names in writing upon them: I shall be able to read what dust they are.” And he would have told her many of the mysteries that seemed to lie open to him. But she interrupted him when he spoke of the jars, saying: “I know nothing in that room. He has put a spell against me across the lintel, so that I may not enter.”
“Why?” he asked, remembering the cobwebs and the great need of tidying.
“He has my shadow,” she said, “in a box in that room.”
“Your shadow!” he said, perturbed by the grief in her voice.
“Aye,” she said, “and he’ll have yours there too!”
“Not he,” said Ramon Alonzo.
“And the light of your eyes,” she said sorrowfully.
But Ramon Alonzo, who already knew half the alphabet, was far more concerned with the unravelling of new wonders than he was with any price he should have to pay, and he turned from the charwoman’s talk with a certain impatience to be once more engaged upon serious things. She sighed and went on with her work on the bloodstained stone.
When Ramon returned to the room that no charwoman ever entered he saw the magician awaiting him, standing beside a book that made light the secrets of reading. Once more the young man toiled at the mystery, and by evening the alphabet was clear to him. That which a day before held twenty-six secrets for him, and was as a barrier to roving thoughts, was now as an open path for them, leading he knew not whither. To him it seemed, as he finally mastered Z, that here was the very first and chiefest of mysteries, since it opened a way for the living to hear the thoughts of the dead, and enabled the living in their turn to talk to unborn generations. Yet he shrewdly foreboded that if the magicians should spread their power too widely it might not be well for the world. With evening a natural darkness blending with the gloom of the room covered up all the mysteries, and the secrets of reading hid themselves; and with those secrets the glories of former days withdrew themselves further off, and lurked in dim nooks that they had in the dark of the ages.
Then the Master of the Art bowed, and with a wide sweep of his arm, which both opened the door and indicated the way to it, he showed Ramon Alonzo out, and followed and closed the door as magically as he had opened it. They came then once more to the room where the baked meats waited, and once more Ramon Alonzo was seated alone. It seemed as though the Master of the Art would not permit himself to be seen, at least by Ramon Alonzo, engaged on any work so mundane as that of eating. The young man expressed his great satisfaction at the wonders already revealed to him.
“It is but the due,” said the Master, “of any sprung from your grandfather. Yet the whole art of reading is naught compared with the practice of boar-hunting: so I was once assured by that great philosopher.”
He then withdrew, leaving the young man all alone with his plans. But the more he planned to make gold, the more another plan came jutting into his mind, perpetually pushing away his original purpose; a plan fantastic enough, a sentimental, generous, youthful plan, no less than a plan to find the magician’s box, and open it and get the charwoman’s shadow, and give it to her to dance once more at her heels or float away over the buttercups. Yet it was all too vague to be called a plan at all: he had not yet seen the box.
He rose then and went out to call her; but standing in the doorway remembered he knew not her name. So he went to the bloodstained stone, and she was not there, but near by he found her pail. Awhile he wondered; then he went to the pail and kicked it noisily, knowing that folks’ fears for their own property are often a potent lure, and deeming this to be well-nigh all the property the poor old woman had. Soon she came running.
“My pail!” she said, clasping her hands.
“How shall I find your shadow,” he said, “to give it back to you?”
“My shadow,” she wailed. “It is in a box.”
And she uttered the word box as though boxes never opened, and anything put in a box must remain forever.
“Where is the key?” he asked.
“The key?” she said bewildered by such a question. “It opens to no key.”
She said this so decisively that Ramon Alonzo felt he got no further here but must bide his time till some opportunity should come to that dark house. Meanwhile he must know her name, and asked her this.
“Dockweed,” she said.
“Dockweed?” he answered. “Did your godparents call you that? They were ill disposed towards your parents.”
“My godparents,” she cried. “Poor innocent souls, they did not call me that. My godparents, no: they called me by a young and lovely name, they gave me one of the earliest names of Spring. But that was long ago, I am Dockweed now.”
“Who calls you Dockweed?” he asked.
“He does,” she said.
“But it is not your name.”
“He is master here.”
“But what is your own name?” he asked.
“It was a young name,” she said.
“I will call you by it.”
“It is no use now.”
“But what name did your godparents give you?” he asked again.
“They called me Anemone,” she said.
“Anemone,” he said, “I will get your shadow.”
“It is deep in a box,” she wailed.
Shadowless then she walked away from the lantern that he had brought from its hook on the wall and left on the floor near her pail; and he began to contemplate that it was easier to utter his gallant confident words than to overcome the secrets of that dark house. Then he made many plans, which one by one appeared to be unavailing, and he was driven again to await the coming of opportunity. As he made and discarded his plans he ascended the ancient stairway of stone and branches, and so came to his room.
What tidying was possible in such a room had been done. The great cobweb had been taken away from the bed, and the bedclothes had been smoothed as far as was possible when sheets and blankets had mouldered into one. But the cobwebs amongst the curtains had not been touched, for if these had been torn away the curtains would have come with them; the great rents, however, were partly filled with light flowers; more than this the remnant of fabric could not have supported.
He found a jug and basin of crockery with clear spring water in the jug, and knew that Dockweed, who had once been Anemone, had drawn it for him in the cool of the wood. He washed with such washing as was customary near the close of the Golden Age, then with loosened clothes lay down on the mouldering bed. He did not extinguish the lantern, because the candle in it was down to its last half-inch. Instead he watched the shadows dancing with every draught, and making huge bold leaps when the wick fell down and the flame was fluttering over a pool of grease. He watched their grace, their gaiety, and their freedom, and thought of Anemone’s shadow, forlorn in the dark of the box.
Surprisingly soon the blackbirds called through the wood, and Ramon Alonzo saw that the night had passed.
That day as Ramon Alonzo sat at his work his mind was full of his plans to rescue the shadow, yet he worked hard none the less, for he thought to be a better match for the powers of the magician when he knew at least one of his mysteries. He felt at first a momentary compunction at thus arming himself with one of his adversary’s weapons, but considered that the Master was getting his price. Indeed the gloomy room seemed unmistakably lighter than it had been the day before, and the thought came to Ramon Alonzo that this slight brightness, if brightness it were, might be some of the light that was gone from his own eyes, with which the magician might be lighting his room. Yet not for this brightness could he see among the dim shapes on the floor, under cobwebs, behind the crocodiles, any sign of such a box as seemed likely to hold a shadow. So he bided his time and learned the mystery all day, and the Master taught him well.
That day he sought out the charwoman again, who was scrubbing still at the stone.
“Anemone,” he said, “how shall I know the box in which he has hidden your shadow?”
“It is long and thin,” she said.
Then she shook her head and went on with the scrubbing, for she despaired of him ever finding her shadow. He would not consult her despair, but went away to build plan after plan of his own. And next day he discerned more closely; but even if the room were again a little brighter he could not distinguish such a box as she said amongst the lumber that ran all round the wainscot; the gloom on the floor was still too thick, and there were too many crocodiles.
He worked hard during those days, and soon was able to read the short words that had only one syllable; and still he worked on to unravel the whole of that mystery, and lesser wonders gradually became clear to him from things the magician said or from what he learned from Anemone: he learned how his food was baked by imps at a fire in the wood, little creatures of two feet high that could gambol and jump prodigiously; and he knew how the Hindu chants that haunted the air above the magician’s house had been attracted from India, a wonder signifying little to us, who can hear those chants in Europe at the very moment men sing them upon the Ganges, but curious at that time, even though it took many years to lure them from India; so that all the songs that Ramon Alonzo heard had been sung in youth by folk now withered with age, or by men and women long gathered to Indian tombs. He learned that the Master’s gratitude to his grandfather was genuine; and yet he thought he taught him the mystery of reading not so much from gratitude as from a desire to lure him to further studies, and so to further fees, luring him on and on till he got his shadow!
And so the days went by; and now to read the words of only one syllable needed no more than a glance, while the many-syllabled words gave up their mysteries after little more than a brief examination; till it seemed to Ramon Alonzo that the past and the dead no longer held secrets from him. In such a mood he sought avidly for writing, beyond the big black script in the Master’s book, for he yearned to solve his own mysteries; but book there was none in the house, outside the gloomy room that was sacred to magic. And then one day as he worked at some great four-syllabled word, there came a timid knock on the door to the wood, and the Master passing out of his sacred room like a great black shadow driven along dim walls by a draught, came with long strides to his door. And there was one Peter who worked in the garden of the Tower and Rocky Forest (sweeping the leaves in autumn and trimming the hedge in spring), with a letter for Ramon Alonzo from his father. And with stammered apologies, and even tears, for thus disturbing his door, he handed the parchment at arm’s length to the magician.