The Charwoman's Shadow
by Lord Dunsany
XV: Ramon Alonzo Talks of Technique and Muddles His Father
Ramon Alonzo ran on in the night, then dropped to a walk, and soon he no more than sauntered along the road, whose greyness before him seemed the only light on earth. Above him the whiteness of the Milky Way seemed to suggest other roads, and his thoughts rambled awhile through the mazes of this idea until they were quite lost in it, then they came back bitterly to earth. The charwoman had been right! All this ridiculous fuss about a trifle, and not a trifle that they even set any store by themselves; for who prizes his shadow, who compares it with that of others, who shows it, who boasts of it? A trifle that they knew to be a trifle, the least useful thing on earth; a thing that nobody sold in the meanest shop and that nobody would if they could, and that nobody would buy, a thing without even a sentimental value, soundless and weightless and useless. Far more than this Ramon Alonzo thought, and believed he had definitely proved, to the detriment of shadows. No doubt he exaggerated a shadow’s worthlessness. And yet the folk of that village that had turned out sword in hand had by their action exaggerated the other side of the argument, and extremes are made by extremes. Nor was Ramon Alonzo in any way checked in his furious exposure of shadows by any wistful yearning that he had often felt for his own since the day that he lost it, and was often to feel again. Logic indeed had been flouted upon either side in this business, and it is for just such situations as these that swords are made. Ramon Alonzo had used his well, and he wiped it now on a handful of leaves and returned it to the scabbard.
How late it was he did not know, but it was full time for sleep, so he lay down by the road; but without his cloak he found it too cold, even in the summer night, so he rose and sauntered on. On the way he met a stream and drank from it, and noticed the vivifying effect of water, perhaps for the first time.
Neither his lonely walk nor his lonely thoughts are worth recording, until a faint colour from the coming dawn began to brighten his journey, and the approach of another day turned his thoughts to the future, and a memory that he had the vial that his sister needed came to brighten his mind.
And then the false shadow appeared again on the ground, scarce noticeable had he not chanced to see it the evening before at a time when his eyes were downcast, less noticeable than the faintest of earthly shadows that will sometimes fall from a small unsuspected light, but enough to warn Ramon Alonzo that he must hide and slink and follow the ways of outlaws. Not far from him now was the forest that sheltered his home, and above a dark edge of it he could see a gable upon his father’s house beginning to gleam in the morning. Yet not now could he seek his home: he must wait till the long shadows that were about to roam the fields had shrunk to a length that was somewhat less than man’s. He hastened on to reach the nearest part of the forest before the sunrise should expose his deficiency to whomever might be abroad in the clear morning. So he left the road and took his way to the forest.
The sun rose before he gained the shade of the trees, but no man was yet abroad, and only a dog from a sleeping cottager’s house saw the man with the short shadow hurrying over the grass upon which no other shadow was less than its master. Among shadows more enormous than the sound solid rocks the dog came up with him, its suspicions well aroused, probably by the queer unearthly appearance that the short shadow gave Ramon Alonzo rather than by any exact observation that his shadow was not the right length; but this we cannot know, for neither the wisdom of dogs nor the wisdom of men is as yet entirely understood by the other, though great advances have already been made: one has only to mention such names as Arnold Wilkinton, Sir Murray Jenkins, Rover, Fido, and Towser.
The dog followed at first sniffing; then he came up close and took one long sniff at Ramon Alonzo’s left leg, and stopped and sat down satisfied. Presently he thought to bark, and gave four or five short barks as a matter of duty; but that human scent that he got had been enough, and he showed none of that fury of suspicion and anger that men had shown in the village of Aragona. Ramon Alonzo was enormously heartened by this, for he saw that whatever magic there had been, and although he was able to cast no natural shadow, yet his body was still human: he trusted the dog for that. And then the dog, feeling that he had not perhaps quite given warning enough against this stranger that strolled by his master’s house so early, barked three or four times again. But this in no way checked Ramon Alonzo’s newly found cheerfulness; for the dog might have howled. The young man went on and came to the shade of the forest, while the dog got up and walked slowly back to his barrel, whence he had first been attracted by the curiously spiritual figure that Ramon Alonzo cut in the landscape at that hour, which had not seemed at first sight satisfactory.
Through the forest Ramon Alonzo hastened towards his home; and yet haste was of no use to him, for he came as near to the garden’s edge as it was safe to come long before he dared show himself. Hungry, though watching the windows of his own home, in hiding even from his own parents and sister, he lay on some moss in the forest near the end of the white balustrade, waiting for the hour in which all human shadows would be a little bit shorter than men. And as he waited he saw Mirandola coming into the garden: he saw her walk by paths and shrubs that they both knew so well, and past small lawns on which they had played, as it seemed to him, almost forever. He longed to call to her to come to the forest; and yet he would not, for he knew not what to say, and would not let her know the price he had paid to obtain the vial she needed. And he durst not come to her, so he stayed where he was, and the slow shadows shortened.
Not enough light reached him in the forest by which to judge the length of other shadows, so he tried to watch the length of Mirandola’s, still walking in the garden. But when Mirandola came to the end of the garden that was nearest the edge of the forest he could not raise his head to look without causing dried things in the thicket to crackle, so that she might have heard him; and when she turned back in her walk he was soon unable to see her shadow clearly, even when he stood up. So he watched a small statue that there was on the lawn, in marble, of a nymph, such as haunted the brake no longer, as men were beginning to say; and he saw its shadow dwindle. And when the time was very nearly come that the shadows of all things else would be as his, and already the difference was not to be easily noticed, Ramon Alonzo walked from the wood. Mirandola saw him at once coming over the open between the balustrade and the dark of the forest, and ran down one of the paths of the garden towards him. But all things are not shaped towards perfect moments; and, as they ran to meet, their father and mother appeared, coming towards that part of the garden.
“I have the potion,” said Ramon Alonzo.
And without a word Mirandola took the vial, and secreted it. So swiftly passed her hand from his to her dress that he scarcely saw her take it; and looked to her face, where all human acts are recorded, to see her recognition of his gift, but there was nothing there to show that she had just received anything. Then she smiled in her beauty and turned round to her parents. “Ramon Alonzo is home,” she said.
Then there were greetings, and questions to Ramon Alonzo, which he did not need to answer, for there were so many that he could not have answered one without interrupting the next. And when there began to be fewer, and the time was come for answers, he was able to choose the questions to which answers were easiest made. And he thought that Mirandola sometimes helped him when difficult questions were asked of the making of gold: certainly her own questions were sometimes frivolous, though whether they came of her frivolity or her wisdom he was not quite sure.
His mother asked him: “Is magic difficult?”
His father said: “Have you as yet made much gold?”
And Mirandola asked: “Can you bring up a rabbit from under an empty sombrero?”
But there were too many questions for record, and most of them were but a form of affectionate greeting and did not look for answers.
Soon, however, the Lord of the Tower and Rocky Forest sought to detach his son from the rest of the little group in order to talk with him precisely upon the matter of business. And this he achieved, though not easily, because of Mirandola. And even then Mirandola chanced within hearing, so that at last he had to say to her: “Mirandola, we speak of business.”
And to definite questions of the making of gold Ramon Alonzo found it difficult to reply now that his sister was no longer nigh to help him. He trusted her bright perceptions so much that he well believed the love-potion she had sought would better avail her than the gold that their father demanded, but he could not reveal her secret, and so found it difficult, without a sound training in business, to give exact accounts of gold that was not actually in existence. Chiefly he sheltered behind the technique of magic, withholding no information from his father on the matter of transmutation, on the contrary giving him much, yet shrewdly perceiving that these learned technicalities confused the matter in hand, and led as surely away from it as the paths in a maze that run in the right direction soon lead their followers wrong. For some while this talk continued, and though Ramon Alonzo had no skill to write a prospectus he none the less evaded the absence of gold and protected his sister’s secret. And as they spoke they drew toward the house, and it was not long before they entered the little banquet-chamber. And there, while Ramon Alonzo ate to his heart’s content, the Lord of the Tower told him of Gulvarez. “Somewhat a greedy man, I fear,” he explained. “And one that will bargain long and subtly in the matter of Mirandola’s dowry, for which reason the gold is urgent.”
Ramon Alonzo said nothing, thinking of the gross man whom he had once seen and of whom he had often heard.
“Yet if we refuse to close with him,” continued his father, “whom shall we find in these parts for Mirandola? Will one come from the forest? No. And we are not such as can go to Madrid. The worst of Gulvarez’s demands will cost us less than that.”
And he laid his hand thoughtfully on the empty silver box that he now kept in the room with him, into which they had come from the scene of Ramon Alonzo’s repast, the room where his boar-spears hung.
“Could we not wait awhile?” said Ramon Alonzo.
“No, no,” said his father smiling and shaking his head. “It is too easy to wait awhile in youth. It is thus that the greatest opportunities pass. Even as you wait youth passes. Ah well, well.”
No more said Ramon Alonzo; and his father fell to contemplating the future silently and with quiet content; and from this, the day being warm, he grew somewhat drowsy and scarcely noticed his son, who thereupon went back again to the garden while the state of the shadows allowed him to walk abroad without yet attracting notice.
There he spoke some while with his mother, unable to get away to Mirandola; and all the while the shadows were wasting. And at last his mother turned to the cool of the house and he made hasty farewells, pleading the urgency of work, promising to return soon, and leaving her before he had quite explained why he had come; while she warned him not to set too much store by magic, beyond what would be required to please his father. Then he went to Mirandola in another part of the garden. And the shadows grew shorter and shorter.
As he spoke with Mirandola he hastened with her to the edge of the forest to gain the protection of the oaks, whose mighty shadows he had come to envy. And as they went he said to her: “Our father has arranged that you marry Señor Gulvarez.”
“He hath,” she said.
“Mirandola,” he said, “is he not a trifle gross, Señor Gulvarez? Might he not, though pleasing at first, grow however slightly tedious when he grew older, and become, though never irksome, yet of less charm, less elegance, as the years went by?”
But Mirandola broke into soft peals of laughter, which long continued, until they said farewell, and Ramon Alonzo walked alone through the forest.