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
