The Key to Yesterday Part 5

"What was his name?" she suddenly demanded.

"He called himself--at that time--George Carter," Ribero said slowly, "but gentlemen in the unrecognized pursuits quite frequently have occasion to change their names. Now, it is probably something else."

After the dinner had ended, while the guests fell into groups or waited for belated carriages, Saxon found himself standing apart, near the window. It was open on the balcony, and the man felt a sudden wish for the quiet freshness of the outer air on his forehead. He drew back the curtain, and stepped across the low sill, then halted as he realized that he was not alone.

The sputtering arc-light swinging over the street made the intervening branches and leaves of the sidewalk sycamores stand out starkly black, like a ragged drop hung over a stage.

The May moon was only a thin sickle, and the other figure on the darkly shadowed balcony was vaguely defined, but Saxon at once recognized, in its lithe slenderness and grace of pose, Miss Filson.

"I didn't mean to intrude," he hastily apologized. "I didn't know you were here."

She laughed. "Would that have frightened you?" she asked.

She was leaning on the iron rail, and the man took his place at her side.

"I came with the Longmores," she explained, "and their machine hasn't come yet. It's cool here--and I was thinking--"

"You weren't by any chance thinking of Babylon?" he laughed, "or Macedonia?"

She shook her head. "Mr. Ribero's story sticks in my mind. It was so personal, and--I guess I'm a moody creature. Anyway, I find myself thinking of it."

There was silence for a s.p.a.ce, except for the laughter that floated up from the verandah below them, where a few of the members sat smoking, and the softened clicking of ivory from the open windows of the billiard-room. The painter's fingers, resting on the iron rail, closed over a tendril of clambering moon-flower vine, and nervously twisted the stem.

With an impulsive movement, he leaned forward. His voice was eager.

"Suppose," he questioned, "suppose you knew such a man--can you imagine any circ.u.mstances under which you could make excuses for him?"

She stood a moment weighing the problem. "It's a hard question," she replied finally, then added impulsively: "Do you know, I'm afraid I'm a terrible heathen? I can excuse so much where there is courage--the cold sort of chilled-steel courage that he had. What do you think?"

The painter drew his handkerchief from his pocket, and wiped his moist forehead, but, before he could frame his answer, the girl heard a movement in the room, and turned lightly to join her chaperon.

Following her, Saxon found himself saying good-night to a group that included Ribero. As the attache shook hands, he held Saxon's somewhat longer than necessary, seeming to glance at a ring, but really studying a scar.

"You are a good story-teller, Mr. Ribero," said Saxon, quietly.

"Ah," countered the other quickly, "but that is easy, senor, where one has so good a listener. By the way, senor, did you ever chance to visit Puerto Frio?"

The painter shook his head.

"Not unless in some other life--some life as dead as that of the pharaohs."

"Ah, well--" the diplomat turned away, still smiling--"some of the pharaohs are remarkably well preserved."

CHAPTER IV

Steele himself had not been a failure at his art. There was in him no want of that sensitive temperament and dream-fire which gives the artist, like the prophet, a better sight and deeper appreciation than is accorded the generality. The only note missing was the necessity for hard application, which might have made him the master where he was satisfied to be the dilettante. The extreme cleverness of his brush had at the outset been his handicap, lulling the hard sincerity of effort with too facile results. Wealth, too, had drugged his energies, but had not crippled his abilities. If he drifted, it was because drifting in smooth seas is harmless and pleasant, not because he was unseaworthy or fearful of stormier conditions. In Saxon, he had not only recognized a greater genius, but found a friend, and with the insouciance of a graceful philosophy he reasoned it out to his own contentment. Each craft after its own uses! Saxon was meant for a greater commerce. His genius was intended to be an argosy, bearing rich cargo between the ports of the G.o.ds and those of men. If, in the fulfillment of that destiny, the shallop of his own lesser talent and influence might act as convoy and guide, luring the greater craft into wider voyaging, he would be satisfied. Just now, that guidance ought to be away from the Marston influence where lay ultimate danger and limitation. He was glad that where people discussed Frederick Marston they also discussed his foremost disciple. Marston himself had loomed large in the star-chart of painting only a dozen years ago, and was now the greatest of luminaries. His follower had been known less than half that long. If he were to surpa.s.s the man he was now content to follow, he must break away from Marston-worship and let his maturer efforts be his own--his ultimate style his own. Prophets and artists have from the beginning of time arisen from second place to a preeminent first--pupils have surpa.s.sed their teachers. He had hoped that these months in a new type of country and landscape would slowly, almost insensibly, wean Saxon away from the influence that had made his greatness and now in turn threatened to limit its scope.

The cabin to which he brought his guest was itself a reflection of Steele's whim. Fashioned by its original and unimaginative builders only as a shelter, with no thought of appearances, it remained, with its dark logs and white "c.h.i.n.king," a thing of picturesque beauty. Its generous stone chimneys and wide hearths were reminders of the ancient days. Across its shingled roof, the sunlight was spotted with shadows thrown down from beeches and oaks that had been old when the Indian held the country and the buffalo gathered at the salt licks. Vines of honeysuckle and morning-glory had partly preempted the walls. Inside was the odd mingling of artistic junk that characterizes the den of the painter.

Saxon's enthusiasm had been growing that morning since the automobile had left the city behind and pointed its course toward the line of k.n.o.bs. The twenty-mile run had been a panorama sparkling with the life of color, tempered with tones of richness and soft with haunting splendor. Forest trees, ancient as Druids, were playing at being young in the almost shrill greens of their leaf.a.ge. There were youth and opulence in the way they filtered the sun through their gnarled branches with a splattering and splashing of golden light. Blossoming dogwood spread cl.u.s.ters of white amid endless shades and conditions of green, and, when the view was not focused into the thickness of woodland interiors, it offered leagues of yellow fields and tender meadows stretching off to soberer woods in the distance. Back of all that were the hills, going up from the joyous sparkle of the middle distance to veiled purple where they met the bluest of skies. Saxon's fingers had been tingling for a brush to hold and his lids had been unconsciously dropping, that his eyes might appraise the colors in simplified tones and values.

At last, they had ensconced themselves, and a little later Saxon emerged from the cabin disreputably clad in a flannel shirt and briar-torn, paint-spotted trousers. In his teeth, he clamped a battered briar pipe, and in his hand he carried an equally battered sketching-easel and paint-box.

Steele, smoking a cigar in a hammock, looked up from an art journal at the sound of a footstep on the boards.

"Did you see this?" he inquired, holding out the magazine. "It would appear that your eccentric demi-G.o.d is painting in Southern Spain. He continues to remain the recluse, avoiding the public gaze. His genius seems to be of the shrinking type. Here's his latest sensation as it looks to the camera."

Saxon took the magazine, and studied the half-tone reproduction.

"His miracle is his color," announced the first disciple, briefly.

"The black and white gives no idea. As to his personality, it seems to be that of the _poseur_--almost of the sn.o.b. His very penchant for frequent wanderings incognito and revealing himself only through his work is in itself a bid for publicity. He arrogates to himself the attributes of traveling royalty. For my master as the man, I have small patience. It's the same affectation that causes him to sign nothing. The arrogant confidence that no one can counterfeit his stroke, that signature is superfluous."

Steele laughed.

"Why not show him that some one can do it?" he suggested. "Why not send over an unsigned canvas as a Marston, and drag him out of his hiding place to a.s.sert himself and denounce the impostor?"

"Let him have his vanities," Saxon said, almost contemptuously. "So long as the world has his art, what does it matter?" He turned and stepped from the low porch, whistling as he went.

The stranger strolled along with a free stride and confident bearing, tempted by each vista, yet always lured on by other vistas beyond.

At last, he halted near a cl.u.s.ter of huge boulders. Below him, the creek reflected in rippled counterpart the shimmer of overhanging greenery. Out of a tangle of undergrowth beyond reared two slender poplars. The middle distance was bright with young barley, and in the background stretched the hills in misty purple.

There, he set up his easel, and, while his eyes wandered, his fingers were selecting the color tubes with the deft accuracy of the pianist's touch on the keys.

For a time, he saw only the thing he was to paint; then, there rose before his eyes the face of a girl, and beyond it the sinister visage of the South American. His brow darkened. Always, there had lurked in the background of his thoughts a specter, some Nemesis who might at any moment come forward, bearing black reminders--possible accusations. At last, it seemed the specter had come out of the shadow, and taken the center of the stage, and in the spotlight he wore the features of Senor Ribero. He had intended questioning Ribero, but had hesitated. The thing had been sudden, and it is humiliating to go to a man one has never met before to learn something of one's self, when that man has a.s.sumed an att.i.tude almost brutally hostile from the outset. The method must first be considered, and, when early that morning he had inquired about the diplomat, it had been to learn that a night train had taken the man to his legation in Washington. He must give the problem in its new guise reflection, and, meanwhile, he must live in the shadow of its possible tragedy.

There was no element of the coward's procrastination in Saxon's thoughts. Even his own speculation as to what the other man might have been, had never suggested the possibility that he was a craven.

He held up his hand, and studied the scar. The bared forearm, under the uprolled sleeve, was as brown and steady as a sculptor's work in bronze.

Suddenly, he heard a laugh at his back, a tuneful laugh like a trill struck from a xylophone, and came to his feet with a realization of a blue gingham dress, a girlish figure, a sunbonnet and a huge cl.u.s.ter of dogwood blossoms. The sunbonnet and dogwood branches seemed conspiring to hide all the face except the violet eyes that looked out from them. Near by stood a fox terrier, silently and alertly regarding him, its head c.o.c.ked jauntily to the side.

But, even before she had lowered the dogwood blossoms enough to reveal her face, the lancelike uprightness of her carriage brought recognition and astonishment.

"Do you mind my staring at you?" she demanded, innocently. "Isn't turn-about fair play?"

"But, Miss Filson," he stammered, "I--I thought you lived in town!"

"Then, George didn't tell you that we were to be the closest sort of neighbors?" The merriment of her laugh was spontaneous. She did not confide to Saxon just why Steele's silence struck her as highly humorous. She knew, however, that the place had originally recommended itself to its purchaser by reason of just that exact circ.u.mstance--its proximity.

The man took a hasty step forward, and spoke with the brusqueness of a cross-examiner:

"No. Why didn't he tell me? He should have told me! He--" He halted abruptly, conscious that his manner was one of resentment for being led, unwarned, into displeasing surroundings, which was not at all what he meant. Then, as the radiant smile on the girl's face--the smile such as a very little girl might have worn in the delight of perpetrating an innocent surprise--suddenly faded into a pained wonderment, he realized the depth of his crudeness. Of course, she could not know that he had come there to run away, to seek asylum. She could not guess, that, in the isolation of such a life as his uncertainty entailed, a.s.sociates like herself were the most hazardous; that, because she seemed to him altogether wonderful, he distrusted his power to quarantine his heart against her artless magnetism. As he stood abashed at his own cra.s.sness, he wanted to tell her that he developed these crude strains only when he was thrown into touch with so fine grained a nature as her own; that it was the very sense of his own pariah-like circ.u.mstance. Then, before she had time to speak, came a swift artistic leaping at his heart. He should have known that she would be here! It was her rightful environment! She belonged as inherently under blossoming dogwood branches as the stars belong beyond the taint of earth-smoke. She was a dryad, and these were her woods. After all, how could it matter? He had run away bravely. Now, she was here also, and the burden of responsibility might rest on the woodsprites or the G.o.ds or his horoscope or wherever it belonged. As for himself, he would enjoy the present. The future was with destiny.

Of course, friendship is safe so long as love is barred, and of course it would be only friendship! Does the sun shine anywhere on trellised vines with a more golden light than where the slopes of Vesuvius bask just below the smoking sands? He, too, would enjoy the radiance, and risk the crater.