The Charwoman's Shadow
by Lord Dunsany
XXVI: The Wonderful Casting
They felt that they were safe in that honest sunlight. And Ramon Alonzo, sitting near the old crone while she rested, looked longingly at that young and delicate shadow which he had not thought to see for so long as this. He held it still in his hands, but now the time was come to give it up, for his old companion was shadowless, and to this he had pledged her his word. He must give it up to take a wizened shape; for shadow and substance must be alike in outline, as all the world knows. He must give it up and end his love-story that was not three hours old. He would see that profile change; he would see those curls scatter to thin wisps; he would lead the old woman back to her Aragona; and then go forth alone to join the forlorn companionage, that he felt sure there must somewhere be, of men that had loved a shadow. Meanwhile the old woman rested; she could spare him a little longer that shadow on which all his young dreams were builded, dreams that he knew, as youth so seldom knows, would soon come tottering down.
He turned from dark thoughts of his future to think of hers. What would the old thing do, back in a world again that had gone so far without her? Her parents would be dead, who knew how long? None would know her in Aragona. How would she fare there?
He turned to her to make again that offer that he had made once before. “If ever you weary of Aragona,” he said.
“Ah, Aragona,” she interrupted. “How could one weary of it?”
“If you wish for a warm house,” he said, “for light work, for little comforts, I know my father will give you employment.”
Again that strange smile that he had seen amongst her old wrinkles when he had offered this before. He had intended to say much of his home; telling of the comfort of it, its quaint old nooks, its pleasant rooms, the mellow air about it; and how a charwoman might saunter there with none to vex her, dusting old tapestries slowly and resting when she would, doing easy work to keep just ahead of the spider, dusting as quietly and leisurely as he spun, till the rays came in all red through the western windows; sitting and watching then the faces of olden heroes reddening to life in the rays, and all the tapestries wakening in the sun’s moment of magic. No, he would not have used that word, for she was weary of magic. He would have spoken of the sun’s benediction, which truly those rays would have been, on that old face in the evening in the happy quiet of his home. But his words all halted before that smile, and he said no more at all.
“Then I will take you to Aragona,” he said after a while.
“As you will,” she said.
He did not understand such listless words about her loved Aragona; he did not understand her smile. But she was more rested now; the end was near; she must have back her shadow. He gazed again at the young curly head, the happy lips and slender shape of that sweet shadow; then looking up he saw that the end which was near was now. For a man was coming towards them along a track that wound across the hill outside the wood, driving before him a donkey that bore a green heap of merchandise. If Ramon Alonzo waited any longer to fulfil his knightly word the man would see she was shadowless.
He sighed once.
“I pray you stand up,” he said.
He stood up himself.
She arose without a word, and stood as he said, a calm, serene over her agitation, as the calm of lakes that freeze amongst the mountains in the midst of winter’s violence. Then he carried the shadow to her and kneeled down on the grass near her heels. He turned his back to her as he laid the shadow down, to look his last on the form that he so much loved, before it should be a shadow cast by a substance on which time had wrought its worst. He knew that from these last moments there is nothing to be had but sorrow, and that it were better to have turned away towards the charwoman, looking, at it were, time full in the face. Yet he gazed long at the shadow. And now the shadow was to the charwoman’s heels. It slanted a few degrees to its left, to be right with the sun: the lines of its clothing fluttered a little. But his eyes were only on the merry head, to see the last of the curls. Still the curls crinkled there; still the lips parted in wonder. He kneeled gazing there silent and motionless, as a prophet might kneel and listen before a revelation, whose words were dying away. And still the shadow had not taken the shape of the old substance that cast it.
Then he heard a soft laugh behind him; and its tones were akin, if there be any meaning in tones and any speech in mere merriment, to the tones of streams to which Spring has suddenly come, rushing down Alpine valleys, unknown as yet to the violets, and unbound them from months of ice. And the shadow, the young shadow with wondering lips, responded. It was the shadow of one that laughed under swinging curls.
And as he gazed, as lost mariners gaze at sails, he saw the little curls move backwards and forwards, and the parted lips shut. Still he waited for the change that he dreaded; still no change came. And a wonder came on him greater even than his unhappiness. How could this thing be? How could a withered substance cast such a shadow? Again that low laugh.
He looked round then and saw her, saw the form that cast that shadow, saw the young girl he loved; for the shadow was stronger than the magician’s gift. That weary immortality was gone; and the ravages of those years that magic had given had all fallen away; wrinkles and lank hair were gone at the touch of the shadow; for, although weaker than all material things, yet, amongst spiritual things and the things that war against them, the shadow, for the sake of its shape and its visibility, is accounted as substance; and it was stronger than magic. She had had magical years for a shadow: now the shadow was back and the evil bargain over, and the work of all those dark years was brushed away at the sudden touch of reality; for the shadow was real and had its rightful place amongst our daily realities, while magic was but the mustering of the powers that are in illusion.
Ramon Alonzo wondered to see substance taking the shape of a shadow, for he had become so accustomed to the withered shape that magical years had fastened upon the charwoman that he thought it her own true shape. But her true shape was laughing gently at his wonder, with blue eyes, in the sun, while golden curls were bobbing with her laughter. One wistful look she took at her fair young shadow, and her laughter ceased as she looked on it; then those blue eyes turned again to Ramon Alonzo, and Anemone smiled again.
“Well?” she said.
“Did you know?” were his first words to her.
“Yes,” she answered.
“How?” said he.
“By the long time I have lived with magic,” she answered ruefully.
“Can magic come and go like this?” he asked.
“That is the way of it,” she said.
And still he could hardly believe what he saw with his eyes.
“The bargain is over,” she said, “and my shadow is back.”
“But your shadow is casting a body,” he said in amazement, “not your body a shadow.”
“It was only a shape of illusion, that body,” she said.
“But you? Where were you?” he said.
“It was not my true self,” she said slowly.
He asked her more of this wonder, but she answered more slowly still, and with confused words and fatigue of mind. She was forgetting.
The dark house, the magician, the evil bargain, the long long corridors, and the peril of soul, were all slipping away towards oblivion, after those lank wisps of hair and the long deep wrinkles. Her efforts to recall them became harder and harder; and soon the flowers, the gleaming grass-blades, the butterflies, or any youthful whim, turned her so easily away from effort that Ramon Alonzo saw he would learn no more from her about the ways of illusion, and perhaps never quite understand the power that shadows held amongst shapeless invisible forces such as magic. And while her memories of magic waned his own interest in the things of illusion was waning too, for he had found the one true illusion; and in the light of love all other illusions were fading out of his view; aye, and substantial things, for the man and his donkey passed by them, and the high load of green merchandise, and neither Anemone nor Ramon Alonzo saw anyone go by, or any donkey or merchandise, and though they answered the greeting that the man gave to them, they did not know they had answered. But in a haze that was made of golden sunlight and many imagined things, and that moved with them and shut them from what we call the world, they wandered together slowly away from the wood.