The Charwoman’s Shadow

own shadow. He recognized it immediately. He put it to his heels. The shadow ran to them, and the instant that it had fastened there, never again, as Ramon Alonzo swore, to be removed as any fee or for any bribe whatever, it grew long in the early morning. At that moment they danced together as though they had been equal in the sight of matter, both of them ponderable and tangible things, both of them having thickness. And indeed for some while Ramon Alonzo could not feel any of that superiority that matter feels towards shadows; he only felt that there had been restored to him here the proud place that humanity holds amongst solid things, and hereafter salvation: they danced as equals, not as master and shadow. Round and round the floor went Ramon Alonzo dancing, and round and round the walls the shadow pranked behind him. Past every material shape in that room he went rejoicing knowing that with whatever dull feeling matter has, these shapes had scorned him as being less than them, remembering that he had marked himself their inferior by envying all that had shadows. The fatigue of the night and his dread had fallen away and he danced in sheer joy, and a wildness and fantasy about his leaping shadow seemed to show that it also had a joy of its own. As he watched its silent leapings following his merry steps, he began to understand how a soul might follow a shadow, as here on the solid Earth a shadow followed heels. He danced till a new fatigue overtaking happy muscles, not the fatigue of dread and monotony, began to weight his steps. Then he and his shadow rested. Again he went to the box, and the very next shadow he drew from it was the lithe shadow of a slender girl, with curls that seemed just now shaken by a sudden turn of the head, which showed in profile with young lips slightly parted. There was a grace about this young shadow as though Spring had come all of a sudden to one that had waited, wondering, at dawn while her elders slept. A maiden in Spring. And, as Ramon Alonzo looked long at that delicate profile, his fancies began to hear birdsong and distant sheep-bells, and all happy sounds of lost seasons that had made that wondering look. Who was she, he wondered, that could be so fair? Where was she: what fields lent such beauty? He was a man now, with a shadow. He could face the world. He need envy nothing among material things. He would search all Spain for the girl with the curly shadow. And his thoughts ran on into golden imagined days.

It was some while before he came back from those thoughts and remembered his quest and the promise he gave to the charwoman. He returned then to the shadow-box; but he would not weight down the shadow that had the waving curls, and it floated lightly about the room, while he took more from the box. The sun was not yet up to the tops of the trees, but was shining between the trunks when Ramon Alonzo took out the last of the shadows. There were shadows of two plump old women, there was the sweet curly shadow; all the rest were the shadows of men. No shadow was there that could possibly belong to the charwoman.

Before he imprisoned the shadows again in the box he made sure that he should be able to free them again. So he shut the box and put the padlock on, and said the spell to it; and it opened again. He did this two or three times. Then he picked up the shadows again in his finger and thumb, and put them back one by one. Last of all he went up to that slender curly shadow that was wandering free round the room, and it ran away from him and he ran after; but soon he caught it, for it ran no faster than it had learned to run when it ran at the heels of a young girl straying along the fields in Spring. This also he put back into the box, although he wept to do so. His own shadow only he kept. Then he fastened the padlock and hastened away from the room, for there was much to do. He had first to find the charwoman and to tell her of the failure of his quest, and to offer her the protection of his sword wherever she wished to go, if she desired to flee away from that house: this much he was bound to do when he could no longer hope to find the shadow that he had promised to rescue. Next he must return to the room in which the shadow-box lay, before the Master came, and wait in the gloomiest corner, so that the Master should not see that he had robbed the box of his shadow. And then he must part from the Master upon such terms that he could return to his house one happy day, when he had found the girl that had lost the curly shadow. This shadow he meant to rescue and give to her, and so to restore to her her lawful place among material things, and to marry her and forsake magic forever. But his sword was still in the service of the charwoman, and already he had planned another quest; and he had not yet escaped from that house. Were the magician to see his shadow before he went, or to go to the shadow-box and find it missing, it was unlikely that any of his impetuous plans or golden hopes of youth would ever come to fulfilment. He would perish upon that red flash of lightning, or under some frightful spell, and the Master would have his fee.

He ran to find the charwoman. Morning grew older with every step that he