VII
Ramon Alonzo Follows the Art
So fast the magician came striding back to his room with the letter he had from Peter, that Ramon Alonzo’s eye had scarce time to rove, and had not found the long thin box for which it began to seek. One thought alone, to rescue the charwoman’s shadow, was filling his generous young mind, when the magician gave him the letter that came from his father. The letter he read alone though the magician proffered his aid, but Ramon Alonzo was eager to use his new learning; the magician therefore watched his face as he read, and learned thereby as much of the letter as Father Joseph had guessed of its purpose, for the thoughts of men were much the concern of them both.
When Ramon Alonzo had read the letter he sighed. Farewell, he thought, to his shadow. He began to think of it as he had never thought before. A mood came on him such as comes on us sometimes at sunset, when shadows are many and long; yet we never think of shadows as he then thought of his: wistful pictures of the slender intangible thing were brooding in his mind: he too was learning how one may love one’s shadow. Such fancies as we may sometimes have for swallows when we see them gathering to leave us, such feelings as men may have for far-off cliffs of a native land they are losing, such longings as schoolboys have for home on the last day of holidays, all these Ramon Alonzo felt for the first time for his shadow.
And then he thought of his sword and reflected that it could not be for him as it was for that poor old woman; men had not the need, as women had, of the protection of common things that the vulgar set store by; if any would not speak with him because he had lost his shadow the matter could be argued courteously with the sword; and, as for stones, he esteemed that none would dare to throw them, nor he care if they threw. So he looked up at the magician and, with some echo of sorrow touching his tones, said: “Master, I fain would learn the making of gold.”
The Master glanced at a magic book, for a moment refreshing his memory: “The fee is your shadow,” he said.
And once more Ramon Alonzo thought of the grace of his shadow, and the years they had been together: he remembered its lightness, its pranks, its patient followings; he thought of long journeys together, returning at close of day, he growing wearier at every step and the shadow stronger and stronger. He hesitated and the magician saw him. Then, to close his finger and thumb upon that young shadow, and add it to the band of which he was master, the Master of the Art made a sudden concession, and so closed the bargain. “Out of the gratitude I bear to your grandfather,” he said, “I will give you a false one to wear at your heels in its place.”
One shadow were as good as another, thought Ramon Alonzo, unless it had any evil or sinister shape.
“Will it be even as mine?” said he.
“I will shape it exactly so; as artists make their pictures.”
It was enough: who would not have made such a bargain? How could he have guessed the truth of that duplicate shadow?
“Before I receive my fee,” said the magician, “I will make the copy. Stand now in the light of the window that the copy may be exact.”
And Ramon Alonzo stood where he was told.
Then the Master, with eyes intent on the young man’s shadow, cut a copy from out of the gloom that hung in the air, using a blade that he held between finger and thumb, too tiny for earthly uses; while with his left hand, by tense signs and beckonings, he held Ramon Alonzo rigid so that his shadow might make no stir. Then he cut from the gloom a shadow so like to the human one that when he carefully laid it out on the floor side by side with the true one none could have guessed which was which, except that the new one’s heels as yet were attached to nothing mortal. A space of light like the shape of Ramon Alonzo hung for a while in the dark of the air from which the shadow was cut; then the gloom fell gradually in on it.
“See,” said the magician, pointing to the two shadows, and the young man turned his head: certainly no one that wished to part with his shadow could have desired a better copy.
“The likeness,” said Ramon Alonzo, “is admirable.”
Then the magician went to the young man’s heels and severed his shadow with the same curious instrument with which he had cut the other out of the gloom; and, holding it tight in one hand, he picked up the copy in the other and placed it nearer; and as soon as the false shadow came near Ramon Alonzo’s heels it ran to them.
He moved from his place and the false shadow moved with him; there was no appreciable change; and yet he had paid his fee to the magician, and was about to receive that learning that had been the goal of so many philosophers. And now the magician, still holding the shadow tight, leaned over a crocodile, and after a moment’s rummaging, picked up a long thin box from the dark of the cobwebs. By its great length and narrowness and lightness, for the magician lifted it easily with one hand, Ramon Alonzo knew it for the
