The bowman bore the pardon back to the Duke, who gave it to Ramon Alonzo. Thenceforth it became treason to speak of the low birth of Anemone, nor may historians allude to it to this day: that pardon had annulled it; she became of illustrious lineage. And in their loyal avoidance of any reference to Anemone’s occupation the Spanish people let drop into disuse the very name of charwoman, lest inadvertently they should ever apply it where it was treason to do so. Still they speak there of broom-lady, woman of the pail, crockery-breaker, floor-warden, scrub-mistress, but never of charwoman, unless a light and unreliable spirit blown over the Pyrenees by a south wind out of Spain has grossly misinformed me.
What more remains to be told of the fortunes of Ramon Alonzo and of the allied House of the Duke of Shadow Valley? Of the wedding of Mirandola good old books tell, in words whose very rhythms dance down the ages with a stately merriment and a mirthful march that are well worthy of their most happy theme. To them I leave that chronicling. In London alone the lucky wayfarer going north by the Charing Cross Road, and taking fortunate turnings, will find in the Antiquareum at the end of Old Zembla Street sufficient of these to his purpose. There, if the old curator dreams not too deeply of bygone splendours of the enchanted days, as may happen on long dark Saturdays, he will find the books that he needs. For there sleep in their mellowed leather on those shelves, and laugh in their sleep as they dream of the Golden Age, such books as Fortunate Revelries, The Glorious Waning of the Golden Age, The Sunset of Chivalry, and Happy Days of the Illustrious. And all these tell of that wedding, illumining the event with a dignity and a splendour such as our age considers presumptuous for any affair of man. I make no mention of such books as may be stored in Madrid, nor such as pedlars are likely still to be selling in hamlets of unfrequented valleys of Spain. Suffice it that no full tale is told of the Golden Age that does not revel happily over that day. Of the wedding of Ramon Alonzo and Anemone the good and glorious books tell a briefer tale, for no archbishops performed the holy rite, and the King’s self had returned to the burden of his dominion. Yet were they well wed; for Father Joseph did this with his own hands, and blessed them out of the store of his kind old years. And she, with the years of magic cast away, aged as we all age, slowly and mortally. And all those golden books agree on one quaint exaggeration, and record, sometimes with curious and solemn oath, that she and Ramon Alonzo lived happily ever after.
And what of the magician: he whose strange threads have run so much through all the web of this story? He sent no spell to follow after Anemone and her lover, as for a while they had feared, but went all alone to his room that was sacred to magic, and took from the dust and darkness of a high shelf a volume in which he had written all he had learned about boar-hunting; and indeed no more was known of that art in any land, for he that had taught him had followed the boar well. In this he read all that day and all the night, assured that therein was the manifest way to happiness that all philosophers sought. But about the third day, when none returned to him, and he was quite alone, and he felt it was vain to look for another now who should be worthy to receive from him the tremendous secrets of old, he rose from his book and said, “The years grow late.” He went then to his tower and quaffed one gulp of that fluid that was named elixir vitae, and, carrying the bottle to that passage that for so long Anemone scrubbed, he cast it heavily down upon the stone. And then he took from a box a flute of reed, and cloaked himself and went out of his magical house.
He went a few paces into the wood, then raised the reed to his lips. He blew one bar upon it of curious music, then waited listening eagerly. And there came to his ears the scurry of little things, nimble, elvish, and sprightly, over dead leaves of the wood. At that he strode away, going swiftly northwards, and there followed him all manner of magical things: fays, imps, and fauns, and all such children of Pan.
In the open lands he raised his pipe again and blew on it two strange notes, which seemed for a while to haunt the air all round him, then they drifted slowly afar. And to that call responded the things of the world, tiny enchanted folk from many an elf-mound and many a fairy ring; they joined the fantastic group that had come from the deeps of the wood, and followed after the Master. And with him went old shadows, some taken from earthly folk, and some that seemed cast upon other fields than ours by other lights than our Sun. He led them on through all the beauty of Spain. On the high hills he blew those two notes once more; and all that had their sole dwelling in moonlight and river-mist, or in the deep romance that overflows from old tales,
