Again Ramon Alonzo doffed his hat. “And what brought you to me?” he said.
“Peril of your soul,” said Father Joseph jovially.
Ramon Alonzo was silent awhile. “Have I imperilled it?” he asked lamely.
“Have you had no dealings with the Black Art?” smiled Father Joseph.
“None to risk my salvation,” said the young man.
“Let us see,” said Father Joseph.
Thereupon he made the sign of the Cross before Ramon Alonzo. At which, though Ramon Alonzo did not see it, for his face was towards the sun, the false shadow fell off from his heels. Then Father Joseph took a bottle of holy water, a hollowed rock-crystal that hung on a small silver chain from his belt, and cast the holy water upon the moss round Ramon Alonzo’s heels. And the false shadow lying upon the moss got up and ran away. Ramon Alonzo saw it rush over a sunny clearing and lose itself amongst great true shadows of trees.
“Gone!” he exclaimed.
“Yes,” said Father Joseph.
Thus passed from the young man’s sight, and was lost forever, a shadow false, growthless, and magical, which none the less was all the shadow he had. A little while ago he had longed for this very thing, and had grown despondent with longing, but a new feeling came to him now as he stood there perfectly shadowless.
“What shall I do?” he said wistfully.
“Get back your own true shadow,” said Father Joseph.
“But how if I cannot?” replied Ramon Alonzo.
“At all costs get back your shadow,” said the priest.
“Is it so urgent as that?” asked Ramon Alonzo.
Then the benign red face of Father Joseph became graver than he had ever seen it yet, like strange changes that sometimes come suddenly at evening over the sun, and he said in most earnest tones: “On Earth the shadow is led hither and thither, wherever he will, by the man; but hereafter it is far otherwise, and wherever his shadow goes, alas, he must follow; which is but just, since in all their sojourn here never once doth the shadow lead, never once the man follow.”
“And what of the shadow that has gone through the wood?” asked Ramon Alonzo, awed by the priest’s tones.
“Damned irretrievably,” said Father Joseph. “And if a man died with such a thing at his heels it leads him violently to its own place. Four angels could not drag him from it.”
Ramon Alonzo had held his breath, but breathed again when he heard that death with the thing at his heels was needed for its last triumph.
“It is gone from my heels now,” he said cheerily.
“Aye, and be thankful,” said Father Joseph. “But wait! Where is your true shadow?”
“In a box,” the young man admitted.
“Such shadows darken nor grass nor flower in all the lawns of Heaven.”
“Cannot they come there?” said Ramon Alonzo.
Said the priest: “They know not salvation.”
“And I?” asked Ramon Alonzo.
“I have told you.”
“Can a mere shadow take me?”
“They are of more account than man in the Kingdom of Shadows.”
“Can one not struggle against them?” said Ramon Alonzo.
“Their power is irresistible,” said the priest, “as the power of the body over the shadow is irresistible here.”
“Alas,” said Ramon Alonzo.
“Can you not recover it?” asked Father Joseph.
“I will try,” said Ramon Alonzo.
Father Joseph smiled. He had come for no other purpose than to give this wholesome advice. And now he heavily clambered back to his saddle.
Ramon Alonzo doffed his hat and gravely said farewell, pondering all the while on the key he was making that should open the shadow-box and free his soul from the grip of a doomed shadow. But how if the magician would not read again for him? How if he did not mutter again as he saw the Cathayan syllable? In the anxiety that these queries caused him he hurried back to his mossy seat below the bole of the oak, and hastened to write that sentence in which, like a curious jewel, the crystal of some rare element, he set the second syllable of the spell. And however fantastic he tried to make the letters that he invented, that Cathayan shape still loomed from amongst the rest the most exotic, and even—as he thought—the most dreadful, upon that parchment. With this he hurried back to the house in the wood.
XXII
Ramon Alonzo Crosses a Sword with Magic
Shadowless Ramon Alonzo went through the wood, as miserable in every glade and every shaft of sunlight as a man that crept through a city after being robbed of his raiment would feel whenever he came to a busy street. Shadowless he entered the house.
Now was a time for caution; his shadow gone, his eternal soul in danger, now was the time to watch the magician warily till an hour might come that should be favourable to a request. But every circumstance that should have urged delay drove the youth onward impetuously. How if he should die that night, and the doomed shadow get a throttle-grip immediately on his soul and drag it down to Hell! He durst not wait. He must win back that shadow.
And even as he thought of the daily pains of Hell; which are far beyond the imagination of such as Ramon Alonzo, but he had been well instructed in these by good men; even as he thought of the round of pains and terrors, he remembered with chivalrous faith the charwoman’s shadow.
He hastened along the corridors: the old woman that had been Anemone, at work by her pail, saw him go by and noticed that he was running: he came to the door of the room that was sacred to magic. He entered; there had been no spell on the door of late, so that the pupil might come to the room for work; he came breathless before the magician. That learned man was sitting at his lectern alone with his own thoughts, that were beyond our needs or concern: he raised his head and looked at Ramon Alonzo.
“Master,” said Ramon Alonzo, “a script that I
