Charles Buck - The Key to Yesterday

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.