Then they spoke of trifles as folk often do that are at the moment of parting. He told of the imps in the wood, that he had never seen, but whose feet he had heard following. And she told him how to see an imp, which was easy. For a man can see three sides of a tree, and whatever comes the imp will go to the fourth side; and there he will wait till he is sure of being able to peep round without being seen. “But throw your hat past the right side of the tree,” she said, “and he will clamber round at once on to the left side, and you will see the imp.”
Of such trifles they spoke. But fearing now to see at any moment the dark form of the Master, or to hear his stride along the booming corridors, Ramon Alonzo made his farewells; and one last message of good cheer he gave her before striding away with his cloak and his sword to the wood.
“When I have rescued your shadow,” he said, “I will take you away from this house, and you shall be charwoman at my father’s tower, and the work will be light there and you may do it slowly, and none shall molest you and you may rest when you will and you shall have long to sleep.”
Some glance of gratitude he looked for; but a smile so strange lit her face and haunted her eyes, that he went from the sombre house and into the wood, and all the way to the open lands, still wondering.
XIV
The Folk of Aragona Strike for the Faith
When Ramon Alonzo came out of the wood he saw that the shadows were already shortening. He saw then that he had delayed too long with the charwoman, and should have started while shadows were long, and so gone through the dark of the wood while his own was unnatural, and come to frequented ways while it was as other men’s. And he felt ashamed of his dalliance. For had he been delayed by some radiant girl her beauty would have so dazzled him that he could not have seen his folly; but to come under the fascination of a most aged charwoman seemed a thing so unworthy of his knightly ambitions that he hung his head as he thought of it, and yet all the while remained true to his chivalrous plan to rescue her poor old shadow.
A little way he went; but, soon seeing men in the distance in the fields, he thought it better not to go beyond the last of the oaks that stood outside the wood, until other men’s shadows should be a little longer, and so avoid the ill-informed foolish pother that folk seemed to make when all shadows were not exactly evenly matched. Already he had come to feel a vigorous scorn for the absurd importance that others attached to shadows. For youth argues rapidly, and—in a way—clearly, from whatever premises it has, not often tarrying to enquire if more premises be needed. These were some of the premises from which Ramon Alonzo argued: a shadow is of no possible value to anyone, nor does anyone ever suppose that it is; and, if it were, the poor old woman that lost hers should have been pitied; and he himself actually possessed a shadow, and, if it were too short, their own shadows had all been just as short an hour or two ago; and the same folk that called it too short in the evening would doubtless call it too long at noon. There is indeed a great deal of futility amongst the human race which we do not commonly see, for it all forms part of our illusion; but let a man be much annoyed by something that others do, so that he is separated from them and has to leave them, and looks back at what they are doing, and he will see at once all manner of whimsical absurdities that he had not noticed before; and Ramon Alonzo in the shade of his oak, waiting for the noon to go by, grew very contemptuous of the attitude that the world took up towards shadows.
Nobody passed him and, if any saw him far off, they only saw him keeping a most honoured observance of Spain, which is the siesta, or pause for the heat of the day to go by.
And, when shadows had grown again, he left the shade that had sheltered him against the heat of the sun and the persecution of men and walked boldly down the road, protected by as good a shadow as was to be found in attendance on any man. He had little thought to set such store by so light a protection, or to consider at all the attendance of a thing so slight and vain; but he was learning now the value that the world attached to trifles, and that there were some the neglect of which had no more toleration than sacrilege.
And then, before he had come to Aragona, a glance at the landscape showed that the hour had come when shadows were longer than material things. It was not by any measurement that he saw this, but by a certain eerie look that there is over all things when shadows have become greater than their masters, so that shadowy things seem to influence earthly affairs instead of good solid matter. This eerie hour he had known of old, and often felt the influence of it, yet never before had his conscious thoughts noted it, or told him as they did now that this was the turn of shadow-tide, when each shadow surpassed the stature of its master; so much do our own affairs sharpen our observation. Had he gone on perhaps none would have
