Charles Buck - The Key to Yesterday

For two hours, he worked, and only once his eyes left the front. On that occasion, he glanced back to see her slim figure stretched with childlike and unconscious grace in the long grass, her eyes gazing unblinkingly and thoughtfully up to the fleece that drifted across the blue of the sky. Clover heads waved fragrantly about her, and one long-stemmed blossom brushed her cheek. She did not see him, and the man turned his gaze back to the canvas with a leap in his pulses. After that, he painted feverishly. Finally, he turned to find her at his elbow.

“What is the verdict?” he demanded.

She looked with almost tense eyes. Her voice was low and thrilled with wondering delight.

“There is something,” she said slowly, “that you never caught before; something wonderful, almost magical. I don’t know what it is.”

With a swift, uncontrollable gesture, he bent a little toward her. His face was the face of a man whose heart is in insurrection. His voice was impassioned.

“ I know what it is,” he cried. Then, as she read his look, her cheeks crimsoned, and it would have been superfluous for him to have added, “Love.” He drew back almost with a start, and began to scrape the paint smears from his palette. He had quelled the insurrection. At least in words, he had not broken his vow.

For a moment, the girl stood silent. She felt herself trembling; then, taking refuge in childlike inconsequence, she peered over the edge of the cliff.

“Oh!” she exclaimed as though the last few moments had not been lived through, “there is the most wonderfulest flower!” Her voice was disappointment-laden. “And it’s just out of reach.”

Saxon had regained control of himself. He answered with a composure too calm to be genuine and an almost flippant note that rang false.

“Of course. The most wonderfulest things are always just out of reach. The edelweiss grows only among the glaciers, and the excelsior crop must be harvested on inaccessible pinnacles.”

He came and looked over the edge, stopping close to her shoulder. He wanted to demonstrate his regained command of himself. A delicate purple flower hung on the cliff below as though it had been placed there to lure men over the edge.

He looked down the sheer drop, appraised with his eye the frail support of a jutting root, then slipped quietly over, resting by his arms on the ledge of rock and groping for the root with his toe.

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