“No pity?” said Ramon Alonzo, moved deeply to pity, himself, by the old crone’s sorrow, though unable to credit that her loss could matter so much as she said.
“No pity! No sufferance!” she said. “The children run from me screaming. Those that are large enough to throw, throw stones at me; and their elders come out with sticks when they hear them scream. At evening they all grow angrier. They come out with their long big faithful shadows, if I dare go near a village, and stand just beyond the strip where my shadow should be, and jeer at me and upbraid and there is no pity. And all the while they jeer there’s not one that loves his shadow as I love mine. They do not gaze at their shadows, or even turn to look at them. Ah, how I should gaze at mine if it could come back, poor shadow. I should go to a quiet place alone in the open country, and there I should sit on the moss with my back to the sun, and watch my shadow all day. I should not want to eat or drink or think; I should only watch my shadow. I should mark its gentle movement that it makes in time with the sun, I should watch till I saw it grow. And then I would hold up my hand and move every finger, and each joint of my arm; and see the shadow answering, answering, answering. And I should nod to it and bow to it and curtsey. And I would dance to my shadow alone. And all this I would do again and again all day. I would watch the colour that every flower took, and each different kind of grass, when my shadow touched them. And this is not telling you one hundredth part of it. It is this to love one’s shadow!
“And what do they know of their shadows? What do they care whether their shadows lie on green grass or rock? What do they know what colours the flowers turn when their shadows go amongst them? And they won’t let me live with them, speak with them, or pass them by, because forsooth I have been unkind to my shadow. Ah, well, perhaps the days will come when they too will love something too late, and love something that is gone, as I love my shadow; cold days and long days those.”
“How did you lose it?” asked Ramon Alonzo, all wonder and pity.
“He took it,” she said. “He took it. He took it away and put it in his box. What did I know of the need one has of a shadow: that they would not speak to me, would not let me live? They never told me they set such store by their shadows. Nor do they! Nor do they!”
The young man’s generous feelings were moved by this wrong as though it had been his own.
“I will go there with my sword,” he exclaimed, “and they shall speak with you courteously.”
For the first time that night the old woman smiled. She knew that jealousy united with fear could not be made to forgive such a loss as hers. She had not known at first that it was jealousy, but had learned it at length by her lonely ponderings. The villagers saw that in some curious way she had stepped outside boundaries that narrowed them, and had escaped from one rule from which they had never a holiday. They could never be rid of the hourly attendance of shadows, but one that could should not triumph over them. She knew, and she smiled.
“Young master,” she said, more than ever moved to help him by his outburst of generosity, “give him nothing.”
“But you,” he said, “did you give it to him?”
“Fool! Fool that I was!” she said. “I did not know I needed it.”
“But for what did you give it?” he asked.
“For immortality of a sort,” she said, and said so ruefully, with a look that told so much more, that the young man saw clearly enough it had been the gift of Tithonus.
“He gave you that!” he exclaimed.
“That,” she said.
“But why?” asked Ramon Alonzo.
“He wanted a charwoman,” she said.
IV
Ramon Alonzo Learns a Mystery Known to the Reader
When the crone had revealed the mean and trivial purpose for which the Master of the Art had cast her helpless upon the ages, she voiced her regrets no more; but, once more warning the young man against the magician’s prices, she turned about with her lantern and went shadowless out of the room. Ramon Alonzo had heard and disregarded tales of men that had paid their shadows as the price for certain dealings within the scope of the Art; but he had never before considered the value of shadows. He saw now that to lose his shadow and to come to yearn for it when it were lost, and to lose the little greetings that one daily had from one’s kind, and to hear no more tattle about trivial things; to see smiles no more, nor to hear one’s name called friendly; but to have the companionship only of shadowless things, such as that old woman, and wandering spirits, and dreams, might well be to pay too much for the making of gold. And, well warned now, he decided that come what may he would never part with his shadow. In his gratitude he determined to ask the magician for some respite for that poor old woman from scrubbing his floors through the ages.
And then his thoughts went back to his main purpose, to what metals were suited best for transmutation, and whether he could turn them into gold himself if the magician’s price were too high: other men had done it; why not he? And, led towards absurdity by this delightful hope, his thoughts grew wilder and wilder till they were dreams.
The sun coming through the upper
