“Anemone,” he said, “I have opened the shadow-box.” There was a sudden catch in her breath. “It is not there,” he said.
“Was it the shadow-box?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “Look. I have found my shadow. But yours, it was not there.”
She looked, and more joy came into her face at the sight of his rescued shadow than he had ever seen there before. He told her how his false shadow was lost and how he had found his true one. He told her of the other shadows that he had found in the box, he described the shadows of the two plump old women that could not have belonged to Anemone, he described the young slender shadow a little shyly, saying little at first; but some kind of power the charwoman seemed to have, though she scarcely spoke, made him tell more and more; and soon his love of the shadow with blown curls and slightly parted lips became transparent.
“But your shadow was not there,” he said, “and I can never find it now; but if you will flee at once away from this house you shall have my sword to protect you instead of your shadow, to whatever place that you may wish to go.”
She pushed some straw together into a heap.
“Sit down,” she said.
XXV
The Release of the Shadow
“Long ago,” said the charwoman, “a long long while ago, I dwelt in my father’s cottage in Aragona. I had naught to do in all those sunny days but to tend his garden, or sing; unless in winter I sometimes fetched pails of water for my mother from the stream if the well in our garden were frozen. I think the days of those summers were sunnier than those we have now, and the Springs were more sudden and joyous; and I remember a glory about the woods in autumn, aye, and a splendour about those winter evenings, that I have not seen, ah me, this many a year. So, having naught else to do, I grew in beautiful seasons and breathed and saw loveliness, and through no merit of mine, but only through borrowing in all idleness of God’s munificence through listless years, I grew beautiful. Yes, young man,” for some expression must have changed on the youth’s face, “charwomen were beautiful once.
“I had not loved, for of those that came sometimes with guitars at twilight, and played them near our garden, none had a splendour fairer than my daydreams, and they were of Aragona.
“There came a most strange man at evening, when I was seventeen, all down the slope from the wood, walking alone. I remember his red cloak now, and his curious hat and his venerable air. He came to our village on that summer’s day at the time that bats were flying. At the edge of our garden he stopped—I saw through my window—and drew a flute or pipe from under his cloak and blew one note upon it. My father came running out at that strange sound, and saw the man and doffed his hat to him, for he had a wonderful air, and asked him what he needed. And the Master said, aye it was he, the crafty magician said that he wished for a charwoman, some girl that would mind the things in his house in the wood. My father should have said there was no such girl in his house. But he talked; and then my mother came out; and then they talked again. I know not how he satisfied them, but he had a wonderful air. There are just men with far less a presence. They were poor and looked for work for me, and gold to him was ever stuff to be given by handfuls uncounted; yet I know not how he satisfied them.
“My mother called to me and told me I was to go away with the señor to work for him in his great house in the wood, and he would pay me beyond my expectations, and soon I should come back to Aragona, a girl with a fine dowry. Aye, he paid me beyond my expectations; but I never came back, I never came back. I tried to once but they would not let me.
“He would not wait. I must pack my bundle at once. So I did as I was bade, and said farewell to my parents, and went away after the stranger through the evening. I turned my head as I went beyond the garden and saw my mother looking doubtfully after me; but she did not call me back. I was all sad walking alone after this strange man in the evening, thinking of Aragona. And then without looking round at me he drew out a reed from his cloak and blew another note upon it; and all the world seemed strange, and the evening seemed haunted and wonderful, and I forgot Aragona. I walked after him thrilled with the wonders that that one note seemed to have called from the furthest boundaries of wizardry. They seemed to be lurking just over the ridges of hills and the other side of wild bushes, things come from elfland and fancy to hear what tune he would play. But he played no more. And so he brought me to his house in the wood.
“Ah, I had eyes then not like these, not like dim pools in rain: they could flash, they were like the colour of lakes with the sunlight on them in summer. I had small white teeth, yes I. And I had little golden curls, I loved my curls; God wot it was not this hair. My figure was slender then, and straight and supple. And my face. Young man, it was not these wrinkled hollows!”
Ramon Alonzo stirred uneasily. Who
