The Key to Yesterday Part 6

She stood, not angry, but a trifle bewildered, a trifle proud in her att.i.tude of uptilted chin. In all her little autocratic world, her gracious friendliness had never before met anything so like rebuff.

Then, having resolved, the man felt an almost boyish reaction to light-hearted gayety. It was much the same gay abandonment that comes to a man who, having faced ruin until his heart and brain are sick, suddenly decides to squander in extravagant and riotous pleasure the few dollars left in his pocket.

"Of course, George should have told me," he declared. "Why, Miss Filson, I come from the world where things are commonplace, and here it all seems a sequence of wonders: this glorious country, the miracle of meeting you again--after--" he paused, then smilingly added--"after Babylon and Macedonia."

"From the way you greeted me," she navely observed, "one might have fancied that you'd been running away ever since we parted in Babylon and Macedon. You must be very tired."

"I _am_ afraid of you," he avowed.

She laughed.

"I know you are a woman-hater. But I was a boy myself until I was seventeen. I've never quite got used to being a woman, so you needn't mind."

"Miss Filson," he hazarded gravely, "when I saw you yesterday, I wanted to be friends with you so much that--that I ran away. Some day, I'll tell you why."

For a moment, she looked at him with a puzzled interest. The light of a smile dies slowly from most faces. It went out of his eyes as suddenly as an electric bulb switched off, leaving the features those of a much older man. She caught the look, and in her wisdom said nothing--but wondered what he meant.

Her eyes fell on the empty canvas. "How did you happen to begin art?"

she inquired. "Did you always feel it calling you?"

He shook his head, then the smile came back.

"A freezing cow started me," he announced.

"A what?" Her eyes were once more puzzled.

"You see," he elucidated, "I was a cow-puncher in Montana, without money. One winter, the snow covered the prairies so long that the cattle were starving at their grazing places. Usually, the breeze from the j.a.panese current blows off the snow from time to time, and we can graze the steers all winter on the range. This time, the j.a.panese current seemed to have been switched off, and they were dying on the snow-bound pastures."

"Yes," she prompted. "But how did that--?"

"You see," he went on, "the boss wrote from Helena to know how things were going. I drew a picture of a freezing, starving cow, and wrote back, 'This is how.' The boss showed that picture around, and some folk thought it bore so much family resemblance to a starving cow that on the strength of it they gambled on me. They staked me to an education in ill.u.s.trating and painting."

"And you made good!" she concluded, enthusiastically.

"I hope to make good," he smiled.

After a pause, she said:

"If you were not busy, I'd guide you to some places along the creek where there are wonderful things to see."

The man reached for his discarded hat.

"Take me there," he begged.

"Where?" she demanded. "I spoke of several places."

"To any of them," he promptly replied; "better yet, to all of them."

She shook her head dubiously.

"I ought not to begin as an interruption," she demurred.

"On the contrary," he argued confidently, "the good general first acquaints himself with his field."

An hour later, standing at a gap in a tangle of briar, where the paw-paw trees grew thick, he watched her crossing the meadow toward the roof of her house which topped the foliage not far away. Then, he held up his right hand, and scrutinized the scar, almost invisible under the tan. It seemed to him to grow larger as he looked.

CHAPTER V

Horton House, where Duska Filson made her home with her aunt and uncle, was a half-mile from the cabin in which the two painters were lodged. That was the distance reckoned via driveway and turnpike, but a path, linking the houses, reduced it to a quarter of a mile. This "air line," as Steele dubbed it, led from the hill where the cabin perched, through a blackberry thicket and paw-paw grove, across a meadow, and then entered, by a picket gate and rose-c.u.mbered fence, the old-fas.h.i.+oned garden of the "big house."

Before the men had been long at their summer place, the path had become as well worn as neighborly paths should be. To the gracious household at Horton House, they were "the boys." Steele had been on lifelong terms of intimacy, and the guest was at once taken into the family on the same basis as the host.

"Horton House" was a temple dedicated to hospitality. Mrs. Horton, its delightful mistress, occasionally smiled at the somewhat pretentious name, but it had been "Horton House" when the Nashville stage rumbled along the turnpike, and the picturesque little village of brick and stone at its back had been the "quarters" for the slaves.

It would no more do to rechristen it than to banish the ripened old family portraits, or replace the silver-laden mahogany sideboard with less antique things. The house had been added to from time to time, until it sprawled a commodious and composite record of various eras, but the name and spirit stood the same.

Saxon began to feel that he had never lived before. His life, in so far as he could remember it, had been varied, but always touched with isolation. Now, in a family not his own, he was finding the things which had hitherto been only names to him and that richness of congenial companions.h.i.+p which differentiates life from existence.

While he felt the wine-like warmth of it in his heart, he felt its seductiveness in his brain. The thought of its ephemeral quality brought him moments of depression that drove him stalking away alone into the hills to fight things out with himself. At times, his canvases took on a new glow; at times, he told himself he was painting daubs.

About a week after their arrival, Mrs. Horton and Miss Filson came over to inspect the quarters and to see whether bachelor efforts had made the place habitable.

Duska was as delighted as a child among new toys. Her eyes grew luminous with pleasure as she stood in the living-room of the "shack"

and surveyed the confusion of canvases, charcoal sketches and studio paraphernalia that littered its walls and floor. Saxon had hung his canvases in galleries where the juries were accounted sternly critical; he had heard the commendation of brother artists generously admitting his precedence. Now, he found himself almost flutteringly anxious to hear from her lips the p.r.o.nouncement, "Well done."

Mrs. Horton, meanwhile, was sternly and beneficently inspecting the premises from living-room to pantry, with Steele as convoy, and Saxon was left alone with the girl.

As he brought canvas after canvas from various unturned piles and placed them in a favorable light, he found one at whose vivid glow and masterful execution, his critic caught her breath in a delighted little gasp.

It was a thing done in daring colors and almost blazing with the glare of an equatorial sun. An old cathedral, partly vine-covered, reared its yellowed walls and towers into a hot sky. The sun beat cruelly down on the cobbled street while a clump of ragged palms gave the contrasting key of shade.

Duska, half-closing her eyes, gazed at it with uptilted chin resting on slender fingers. For a time, she did not speak, but the man read her delight in her eyes. At last, she said, her voice low with appreciation:

"I love it!"

Turning away to take up a new picture, he felt as though he had received an accolade.

"It might have been the very spot," she said thoughtfully, "that Senor Ribero described in his story."

Saxon felt a cloud sweep over the suns.h.i.+ne shed by her praise. His back was turned, but his face grew suddenly almost gray.

The girl only heard him say quietly:

"Senor Ribero spoke of South America. This was in Yucatan."

When the last canvas had been criticized, Saxon led the girl out to the shaded verandah.