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Transcriber's Note
Image captions in {curly brackets} have been added by the
transcriber for the convenience of the reader.
THE KEY TO YESTERDAY
by
CHARLES NEVILLE BUCK
New York
Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers
Copyright, 1910, by
W. J. Watt & Company
[Illustration: {Saxon and Duska with her portrait}]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I 1
CHAPTER II 22
CHAPTER III 37
CHAPTER IV 55
CHAPTER V 70
CHAPTER VI 88
CHAPTER VII 102
CHAPTER VIII 119
CHAPTER IX 134
CHAPTER X 156
CHAPTER XI 172
CHAPTER XII 186
CHAPTER XIII 207
CHAPTER XIV 221
CHAPTER XV 238
CHAPTER XVI 255
CHAPTER XVII 270
CHAPTER XVIII 285
CHAPTER XIX 304
CHAPTER XX 315
CHAPTER XXI 333
The Key to Yesterday
CHAPTER I
The palings of the grandstand inclosure creaked in protest under the
pressure. The shadows of forward-surging men wavered far out across
the track. A smother of ondriving dust broke, hurricane-like, around
the last turn, sweeping before it into the straightaway a struggling
mass of horse-flesh and a confusion of stable-colors. Back to the
right, the grandstand came to its feet, bellowing in a madman's
chorus.
Out of the forefront of the struggle strained a blood-bay colt. The
boy, crouched over the shoulders, was riding with hand and heel to the
last ounce of his strength and the last subtle feather-weight of his
craft and skill. At his saddleskirts pressed a pair of distended
nostrils and a black, foam-flecked muzzle. Behind, with a gap of track
and daylight between, trailed the laboring "ruck."
A tall stranger, who had lost his companion and host in the maelstrom
of the betting shed, had taken his stand near the angle where the
paddock grating meets the track fence. A Derby crowd at Churchill
Downs is a congestion of humanity, and in the obvious impossibility of
finding his friend he could here at least give his friend the
opportunity of finding him, since at this point were a few panels of
fence almost clear. As the two colts fought out the final decisive
furlongs, the black nose stealing inch by inch along the bay neck, the
stranger's face wore an interest not altogether that of the casual
race-goer. His shoulders were thrown back, and his rather lean jaw
angle swept into an uncompromising firmness of chin--just now
uptilted.
The man stood something like six feet of clear-cut physical fitness.
There was a declaration in his breadth of shoulder and depth of chest,
in his slenderness of waist and thigh, of a life spent only partly
within walls, while the free swing of torso might have intimated to
the expert observer that some of it had been spent in the saddle.
Of the face itself, the eyes were the commanding features. They were
gray eyes, set under level brows; keenly observant by token of their
clear light, yet tinged by a half-wistful softness that dwells
hauntingly in the eyes of dreamers.
Just now, the eyes saw not only the determination of a four-furlong
dash for two-year-olds, but also, across the fresh turf of the
infield, the radiant magic of May, under skies washed brilliant by
April's rains.
Then, as the colts came abreast and passed in a muffled roar of
drumming hoofs, his eyes suddenly abandoned the race at the exact
moment of its climax: as hundreds of heads craned toward the judges'
stand, his own gaze became a stare focused on a point near his elbow.
He stared because he had seen, as it seemed to him, a miracle, and the
miracle was a girl. It was, at all events, nothing short of miraculous
that such a girl should be discovered standing, apparently
unaccompanied, down in this bricked area, a few yards from the paddock
and the stools of the bookmakers.
Unlike his own, her eyes had remained constant to the outcome of the
race, and now her face was averted, so that only the curve of one
cheek, a small ear and a curling tendril of brown hair under the wide,
soft brim of her Panama hat rewarded him for the surrender of the
spectacle on the track.
Most ears, he found himself reflecting with, a sense of triumphant
discovery, simply grow on the sides of heads, but this one might have
been fashioned and set by a hand gifted with the exquisite perfection
of the jeweler's art.
A few moments before, the spot where she stood had been empty save for
a few touts and trainers. It seemed inconceivable, in the abrupt
revelation of her presence, that she could, like himself, have been
simply cut off from companions and left for the interval waiting. He
caught himself casting about for a less prosaic explanation. Magic
would seem to suit her better than mere actuality. She was sinuously
slender, and there was a splendid hint of gallantry in the unconscious
sweep of her shoulders. He was conscious that the simplicity of her
pongee gown loaned itself to an almost barbaric freedom of carriage
with the same readiness as do the draperies of the Winged Victory.
Yet, even the Winged Victory achieves her grace by a pose of
triumphant action, while this woman stood in repose except for the
delicate forward-bending excitement of watching the battle in the
stretch.
The man was not, by nature, susceptible. Women as sex magnates had
little part in his life cosmos. The interest he felt now with
electrical force, was the challenge that beauty in any form made upon
his enthusiasm. Perhaps, that was why he stood all unrealizing the
discourtesy of his gaping scrutiny--a scrutiny that, even with her
eyes turned away, she must have felt.
At all events, he must see her face. As the crescendo of the
grandstand's suspense graduated into the more positive note of climax
and began to die, she turned toward him. Her lips were half-parted,
and the sun struck her cheeks and mouth and chin into a delicate
brilliance of color, while the hat-brim threw a band of shadow on
forehead and eyes. The man's impression was swift and definite. He
had been waiting to see, and was prepared. The face, he decided, was
not beautiful by the gauge of set standards. It was, however,
beautiful in the better sense of its individuality; in the delicacy of
the small, yet resolute, chin and the expressive depth of the eyes.
Just now, they were shaded into dark pools of blue, but he knew they
could brighten into limpid violet.
She straightened up as she turned and met his stare with a steadiness
that should have disconcerted it, yet he found himself still studying
her with the detached, though utterly engrossed, interest of the
critic. She did not start or turn hurriedly away. Somehow, he caught
the realization that flight had no part in her system of things.
The human tide began flowing back toward the betting shed, and left
them alone in a cleared space by the palings. Then, the man saw a
quick anger sweep into the girl's face and deepen the color of her
cheeks. Her chin went up a trifle, and her lips tightened.
He found himself all at once in deep confusion. He wanted to tell her
that he had not realized the actuality of his staring impertinence,
until she had, with a flush of unuttered wrath and embarrassment,
revealed the depth of his felony ... for he could no longer regard it
as a misdemeanor.
There was a note of contempt in her eyes that stung him, and presently
he found himself stammering an excuse.
"I beg your pardon--I didn't realize it," he began lamely. Then he
added as though to explain it all with the frank outspokenness of a
school-boy: "I was wishing that I could paint you--I couldn't help
gazing."
For a few moments as she stood rigidly and indignantly silent, he had
opportunity to reflect on the inadequacy of his explanation. At last,
she spoke with the fine disdain of affronted royalty.
"Are you quite through looking at me? May I go now?"
He was contrite.
"I don't know that I could explain--but it wasn't meant to be--to
be----" He broke off, floundering.
"It's a little strange," she commented quietly as though talking to
herself, "because you _look_ like a gentleman."
The man flushed.
"You are very kind and flattering," he said, his face instantly
hardening. "I sha'n't tax you with explanation. I don't suppose any
woman could be induced to understand that a man may look at her--even
stare at her--without disrespect, just as he might look at a sunset or
a wonderful picture." Then, he added half in apology, half in
defiance: "I don't know much about women anyway."
For a moment, the girl stood with her face resolutely set, then she
looked up again, meeting his eyes gravely, though he thought that she
had stifled a mutinous impulse of her pupils to riffle into amusement.
"I must wait here for my uncle," she told him. "Unless you have to
stay, perhaps you had better go."
The tall stranger swung off toward the betting shed without a backward
glance, and engulfed himself in the mob where one had to fight and
shoulder a difficult way in zigzag course.
Back of the forming lines of winners with tickets to cash, he caught
sight of a young man almost as tall as himself and characterized by
the wholesome attractiveness of one who has taken life with zest and
decency. He wore also upon feature and bearing the stamp of an
aristocracy that is not decadent. To the side of this man, the
stranger shouldered his way.
"Since you abandoned me," he accused, "I've been standing out there
like a little boy who has lost his nurse." After a pause, he added:
"And I've seen a wonderful girl--the one woman in your town I want to
meet."
His host took him by the elbow, and began steering him toward the
paddock gate.
"So, you have discovered a divinity, and are ready to be presented.
And you are the scoffer who argues that women may be eliminated. You
are--or were--the man who didn't care to know them."
The guest answered calmly and with brevity:
"I'm not talking about women. I'm talking about a woman--and she's
totally different."
"Who is she, Bob?"
"How should I know?"
"I know a few of them--suppose you describe her."
The stranger halted and looked at his friend and host with
commiserating pity. When he deigned to speak, it was with infinite
scorn.
"Describe her! Why, you fool, I'm no poet laureate, and, if I were, I
couldn't describe her!"
For reply, he received only the disconcerting mockery of ironical
laughter.
"My interest," the young man of the fence calmly deigned to explain,
"is impersonal. I want to meet her, precisely as I'd get up early in
the morning and climb a mountain to see the sun rise over a
particularly lovely valley. It's not as a woman, but as an object of
art."
* * * * *
On other and meaner days, the track at Churchill Downs may be in large
part surrendered to its more rightful patrons, the chronics and
apostles of the turf, and racing may be only racing as roulette is
roulette. But on Derby Day it is as though the community paid tribute
to the savor of the soil, and honored in memory the traditions of the
ancient regime.
To-day, in the club-house inclosure, the roomy verandahs, the
close-cropped lawn and even the roof-gallery were crowded; not indeed
to the congestion of the grandstand's perspiring swarm, for Fashion's
reservation still allowed some luxury of space, but beyond the numbers
of less important times. In the burgeoning variety of new spring gowns
and hats, the women made bouquets, as though living flowers had been
brought to the shrine of the thoroughbred.
A table at the far end of the verandah seemed to be a little Mecca for
strolling visitors. In the party surrounding it, one might almost have
caught the impression that the prettiness of the feminine display had
been here arranged, and that in scattering attractive types along the
front of the white club-house, some landscape gardener had reserved
the most appealing beauties for a sort of climacteric effect at the
end.
Sarah and Anne Preston were there, and wherever the Preston sisters
appeared there also were usually gathered together men, not to the
number of two and three, but in full quorum. And, besides the Preston
sisters, this group included Miss Buford and a fourth girl.
Indeed, it seemed to be this fourth who held, with entire
unconsciousness, more than an equal share of attention. Duska Filson
was no more cut to the pattern of the ordinary than the Russian name
her romantic young mother had given her was an exponent of the life
about her. She was different, and at every point of her divergence
from a routine type it was the type that suffered by the contrast.
Having preferred being a boy until she reached that age when it became
necessary to bow to the dictate of Fate and accept her sex, she had
retained an understanding for, and a comradeship with, men that made
them hers in bondage. This quality she had combined with all that was
subtly and deliciously feminine, and, though she loved men as she
loved small boys, some of them had discovered that it was always as
men, never as a man.
She had a delightfully refractory way of making her own laws to
govern her own world--a system for which she offered no apology; and
this found its vindication in the fact that her world was
well-governed--though with absolutism.
The band was blaring something popular and reminiscent of the winter's
gayeties, but the brasses gave their notes to the May air, and the May
air smoothed and melted them into softness. Duska's eyes were fixed on
the green turf of the infield where several sentinel trees pointed
into the blue.
Mr. Walter Bellton, having accomplished the marvelous feat of escaping
from the bookmaker's maelstrom with the immaculateness of his personal
appearance intact, sauntered up to drop somewhat languidly into a
chair.
"When one returns in triumph," he commented, "one should have chaplets
of bay and arches to walk under. It looks to me as though the
reception-committee has not been on the job."
Sarah Preston raised a face shrouded in gravity. Her voice was
velvety, but Bellton caught its undernote of ridicule.
"I render unto Caesar those things that are Caesar's--but what is
your latest triumph?" She put her question innocently. "Did you win a
bet?"
If Mr. Bellton's quick-flashing smile was an acknowledgment of the
thrust at his somewhat notorious self-appraisement, his manner at
least remained imperturbably complacent.
"I was not clamoring for my own just dues," he explained, with
modesty. "For myself, I shall be satisfied with an unostentatious
tablet in bronze when I'm no longer with you in the flesh. In this
instance I was speaking for another."
He did not hasten to announce the name of the other. In even the
little things of life, this gentleman calculated to a nicety dramatic
values and effects. Just as a public speaker in nominating a candidate
works up to a climax of eulogy, and pauses to let his hearers shout,
"Name him! Name your man!" so Mr. Bellton paused, waiting for someone
to ask of whom he spoke.
It was little Miss Buford who did so with the debutante's legitimate
interest in the possibility of fresh conquest.
"And who has returned in triumph?"
"George Steele."
Sarah Preston arched her brows in mild interest.
"So, the wanderer is home! I had the idea he was painting masterpieces
in the _Quartier Latin_, or wandering about with a sketching easel in
southern Spain."
"Nevertheless, he is back," affirmed the man, "and he has brought with
him an even greater celebrity than himself--a painter of international
reputation, it would seem. I met them a few moments ago in the
paddock, and Steele intimated that they would shortly arrive to lay
their joint laurels at your feet."
Louisville society was fond of George Steele, and, when on occasion he
dropped back from "the happy roads that lead around the world," it was
to find a welcome in his home city only heightened by his long
absence.
"Who is this greater celebrity?" demanded Miss Buford. She knew that
Steele belonged to Duska Filson, or at least that whenever he returned
it was to renew the proffer of himself, even though with the knowledge
that the answer would be as it had always been: negative. Her
interest was accordingly ready to consider in alternative the other
man.
"Robert A. Saxon--the first disciple of Frederick Marston," declared
Mr. Bellton. If no one present had ever heard the name before, the
consequential manner of its announcement would have brought a sense of
deplorable unenlightenment.
Bellton's eyes, despite the impression of weakness conveyed by the
heavy lenses of his nose-glasses, missed little, and he saw that Duska
Filson still looked off abstractedly across the bend of the
homestretch, taking no note of his heralding.
"Doesn't the news of new arrivals excite you, Miss Filson?" he
inquired, with a touch of drawl in his voice.
The girl half-turned her head with a smile distinctly short of
enthusiasm. She did not care for Bellton. She was herself an exponent
of all things natural and unaffected, and she read between the
impeccably regular lines of his personality, with a criticism that was
adverse.
"You see," she answered simply, "it's not news. I've seen George
since he came."
"Tell us all about this celebrity," prompted Miss Buford, eagerly.
"What is he like?"
Duska shook her head.
"I haven't seen him. He was to arrive this morning."
"So, you see," supplemented Mr. Bellton with a smile, "you will, after
all, have to fall back on me--I have seen him."
"You," demurred the debutante with a disappointed frown, "are only a
man. What does a man know about another man?"
"The celebrity," went on Mr. Bellton, ignoring the charge of
inefficiency, "avoids women." He paused to laugh. "He was telling
Steele that he had come to paint landscape, and I am afraid he will
have to be brought lagging into your presence."
"It seems rather brutal to drag him here," suggested Anne Preston. "I,
for one, am willing to spare him the ordeal."
"However," pursued Mr. Bellton with some zest of recital, "I have
warned him. I told him what dangerous batteries of eyes he must
encounter. It seemed to me unfair to let him charge into the lists of
loveliness all unarmed--with his heart behind no shield."
"And he ... how did he take your warning?" demanded Miss Buford.
"I think it is his craven idea to avoid the danger and retreat at the
first opportunity. He said that he was a painter, had even been a
cow-puncher once, but that society was beyond his powers and his
taste."
The group had been neglecting the track. Now, from the grandstand came
once more the noisy outburst that ushers the horses into the stretch,
and conversation died as the party came to its feet.
None of its members noticed for the moment the two young men who had
made their way between the chairs of the verandah until they stood
just back of the group, awaiting their turn for recognition.
As the horses crossed the wire and the pandemonium of the stand fell
away, George Steele stepped forward to present his guest.
"This is Mr. Robert Saxon," he announced. "He will paint the portraits
of you girls almost as beautiful as you really are.... It's as far as
mere art can go."
Saxon stood a trifle abashed at the form of presentation as the group
turned to greet him. Something in the distance had caught Duska
Filson's imagination-brimming eyes. She was sitting with her back
turned, and did not hear Steele's approach nor turn with the others.
Saxon's casually critical glance passed rapidly over the almost too
flawless beauty of the Preston sisters and the flower-like charm of
little Miss Buford, then fell on a slender girl in a simple pongee
gown and a soft, wide-brimmed Panama hat. Under the hat-brim, he
caught the glimpse of an ear that might have been fashioned by a
jeweler and a curling tendril of brown hair. If Saxon had indeed been
the timorous man Bellton intimated, the glimpse would have thrown him
into panic. As it was, he showed no sign of alarm.
His presentation as a celebrity had focused attention upon him in a
manner momentarily embarrassing. He found a subtle pleasure in the
thought that it had not called this girl's eyes from whatever occupied
them out beyond the palings. Saxon disliked the ordinary. His
canvases and his enthusiasms were alike those of the individualist.
"Duska," laughed Miss Buford, "come back from your dreams, and be
introduced to Mr. Saxon."
The painter acknowledged a moment of suspense. What would be her
attitude when she recognized the man who had stared at her down by the
paddock fence?
The girl turned. Except himself, no one saw the momentary flash of
amused surprise in her eyes, the quick change from grave blue to
flashing violet and back again to grave blue. To the man, the swiftly
shifting light of it seemed to say: "You are at my mercy; whatever
liberality you receive is at the gift and pleasure of my generosity."
"I beg your pardon," she said simply, extending her hand. "I was just
thinking--" she paused to laugh frankly, and it was the music of the
laugh that most impressed Saxon--"I hardly know what I was thinking."
He dropped with a sense of privileged good-fortune into the vacant
chair at her side.
With just a hint of mischief riffling her eyes, but utter artlessness
in her voice, she regarded him questioningly.
"I wonder if we have not met somewhere before? It seems to me----"
"Often," he asserted. "I think it was in Babylon first, perhaps. And
you were a girl in Macedon when I was a spearman in the army of
Alexander."
She sat as reflective and grave as though she were searching her
recollections of Babylon and Macedon for a chance acquaintance, but
under the gravity was a repressed sparkle of mischievous delight.
After a moment, he demanded brazenly:
"Would you mind telling me which colt won that first race?"