The human touch : a tale of the great Southwest

Front matter

She raised her light riding-cane and cut him once across the face. (See page 34 6. )

A Sab of

EDITH M. NICHOLL

Chapter I

The speaker shrugged his shoulders slightly, and knocked the ashes from the end of a remarkably fine cigar.

"Agreed. But that's not precisely this native's idea of domestic bliss."

" That the wife should achieve nervous prostra tion, writ large, and demand a year in Europe in order to rest up from social duties, leaving you to business cares — and other matters less fatiguing? Perhaps not, my boy — but you have your consola tions. Your wife is in the way of conferring on you — indirectly, of course — letters patent of nobility ; that is, of the Four Hundred. What further can a Western cattle-king desire?"

The individual thus addressed threw himself back in his chair and raised a hand, rather small, but strong and shapely, as was his entire person, to pull at the time-honoured resource of troubled man ; but it was gone — at her command — a sacrifice to Style. He

2 THE HUMAN TOUGH

laughed bitterly, looking suddenly old and hard, his clear young eyes narrowing under their dark brows.

"Oh, you're too primitive, my dear fellow!" con tinued his mentor, glancing at him quizzically.

Now Buckley had known Kingdon for a consider able period, as clubmen know one another, but the conversation that had taken place between them to-day had revealed impulses and cravings in the latter's nature the existence of which the older man had never before suspected. He had always found Kingdon an eminently satisfactory person. His good looks were of the kind to appeal to the artistic dilettante; for it was rare indeed to find such richness of flesh colouring in combination with hair of so peculiar a shade of brown, and features well-nigh perfect. In short, to Buckley the young Westerner represented a delightfully human type — perfectly harmonious, joy ous and joy-giving.

" When a fellow finds the everlasting old round becoming stale," he would assert, "David's the chap to renew his capacity to take it all in again."

While this cultured man of the world was familiar with his companion's marked business ability, he had felt toward him much as one feels toward a charming boy gifted with enough brains not to be a bore. But of bitterness, irony, strong passion, or in fact any

THE HUMAN XUUCH 3

emotion other than that of a superficial nature, he had not deemed him capable. And yet he might have been aware that he had not fully understood Kingdon, for the latter was secretive to an extraordinary degree, and his faculty for avoiding personalities was nothing short of the marvellous.

At length Buckley spoke again.

"No kids, I suppose?"

"Children? No!"

The changeful face of the speaker was dark with emotion. Buckley was becoming interested, but stuck to his characteristically indifferent drawl, fearful of scaring so shy a bird.

"How did it come about?"

" What ? The marriage ? "

David sprang up with one of his alert movements, plunging his hands deep down into his pockets.

"Propinquity, I guess," he said, with unwonted bitterness. " Style, a fine figure "

" Oh, yes, we all know you're a bit of a fool where a fine woman's concerned, old man!"

"I may have been once, but I am not now," was the brusque retort. "That's where you're all out."

"Oh, come now," said Buckley, smiling indul gently, " can we forbear conducting ourselves prettily to a pretty woman — eh, David?"

He was surprised to find how pleased he was to receive once more the responsive smile which, until this day, had never failed to greet his gentle gibing.

" Propinquity," repeated David, " mixed with ambition, the entree into the best society I then knew of — that which groans and struggles in the agonies of the Correct Thing. In the second-rate cities of the Middle West we take the disease in a more aggra vated form than you do ; it goes harder with us. Ah, we were in the swim then, Buckley, I can assure you ! " His smile flashed and died again. " My wife did not like New Mexico, and I did not think, when I married, that I should have to continue to stick so closely to the Territory; but circumstances arose which made sticking necessary."

"Circumstances?" put in the other man9 with deliberate derision ; " I shouldn't have believed that circumstances could exercise compulsion over such a spoiled son of fortune as yourself, David."

David looked down, and for a while answered nothing.

" There are things a fellow has to do," he remarked, at length, with more brevity than elegance.

Buckley was reduced to a contemplative silence. Associating duty with a sober demeanour and an aver sion to feminine society, he found difficulty in connecting it with Kingdon's charming personality and frank enjoyment of the good things of life.

" Clairette — I'm not responsible for the highfaluting name, my dear fellow; such is considered chic in our circle — had not been raised in the lap of luxury, anyway, and she could have anything she wanted, in reason; it was only for part of the year, moreover, that she had to live in the Territory. But her little world was everything to her. Home, and those other things, meant nothing in comparison. To me they have always meant a good deal. Buckley, I really believe I could meet any decent woman half way."

Seriously, questioningly, he raised his eyes — clear and rounded as those of a very young boy, of a brown many shades lighter than his sombre brows, and with childish, up-curling lashes. It was these eyes, a cer tain pathetic droop noticeable at times in the flexible lips and a grieved lifting of the eyebrows, to which was probably due his intermittent air of extreme youthfulness.

Buckley with difficulty restrained himself from bursting into a laugh; but he rejoined with a serious ness equal to that of his companion:

" But your wife is evidently an especially and par ticularly decent woman, David."

" Hang it all — yes ! It's domestic affection and all that kind of thing that I mean."

" Well, my dear fellow, if you do not care for each other, you have the remedy in your own hands. You settle these matrimonial unpleasantnesses with great dexterity and despatch in your section, I have always understood. Write and suggest to her that you agree to differ. One divorce or divorcee more or less —what's the odds?"

Kingdon's glance fell again, and the elder man noted — not for the first time, but now with amused and affectionate interest — the childlike pathos in that downward look. Presently an idea struck him in regard to the matter, and he said :

"Perhaps she cares a little for you still, David?"

" She claims to do so," he replied, voice and face grown suddenly old and stern.

"Yet she leaves you for a year at a time to your business cares, and other amusements, two or three trips to this gay village included ? "

" Business trips," emphasised Kingdon, grimly.

" Oh, yes, my dear boy ; business trips, of course — with the side issues." He arose and stretched him self. Both men laughed. Then Kingdon reached for his overcoat.

" Well, I'm off down-town. Have to make one of the ravening crowd in a department store — stuff needed for the ranches."

" The gods defend you, then ! Oh, by the bye," and Buckley took a card from the rack, " have an invite for you here — swell affair, to-night — dancing. How will that suit you ? "

" First-rate ! So-long, for the present."

It was fashionably late that evening when Kingdon and Buckley made their way toward the spot where Mrs. Newman and her oldest daughter stood, receiv ing their guests. As David's eyes fell upon the younger woman, he uttered a low ejaculation.

A form of rounded slenderness, possessing the exquisite grace with which birth and breeding have as much to do as art; a face of somewhat irregular yet high-bred beauty, holding probably no appeal in it for the masses ; a charming, rippling mouth ; a firm little chin ; a delicate, slightly arched nose ; deep, soft eyes whose colour it was hard to determine; a low, square forehead, dazzlingly white, from which the hair was swept in a shining, gold-dusted mass — all this formed a picture which a man, sensitive to a certain order of beauty, having once seen, was not likely to forget.

And David had already seen — that very afternoon. Habituated as he was to a coarser mould of women, he had recognised this one, at once, as a being from another sphere.

The episode in which she had figured had been a brief one; the scene, the department store with its usual selfish, greedy-eyed, feminine crowd; a baby nearly killed by a swinging door, and saved only by the intervention of Miss Newman's slender arm, rein forced by David's never failing alacrity; a package dropped and promptly recovered by him; a smile of acknowledgment — that was all.

Buckley, observing that his friend's eyes were fixed with interest upon the girl, explained:

"Fine young woman, Miss Newman, but guilty of the Unpardonable Sin: she's shy. A virtue of the most distinguished, I call it, in this age. It is also affirmed that she is cold and proud."

David took in, with his usual acuteness, the contra diction in the constant variation of colour in her delicate cheek to the quiet dignity of her bearing; and remembering also a certain flash in those soft eyes, exclaimed:

" If that girl's cold, then " and paused

expressively.

"Then all indications fail, eh? You're right, my boy. I've known her since she was two foot nothing, and she's not cold. Shy, that's all — overweighted by that tremendous mother and those sisters of hers. See her in her own element, and she's the brightest creature! Needs encouragement, congenial sur roundings, and all that sort of thing."

" How did she come by a special * element ' ? " " The father. He was a scholar as well as a very fastidious gentleman of the old school ; educated this girl himself. He was of the critical, sensitive kind — lacking in the power of expression unless his environ ment were favourable. Sylvia is her father over again. He stood immensely high in appreciative circles."

"Where does the Four Hundred come in?"

" Both sides ; the mother was a Miss " Here

he mentioned a name before which the One Hundred and Fifty bows the knee.

Kingdon was introduced, and passed on. ' That Miss Newman had recognised him he was positive, for the slight hesitancy of her manner, and a sudden wave of colour upon his presentation, had not escaped his keen perceptions.

Buckley was promptly swallowed up in the social whirlpool, drawing his Western friend with him. Buckley soon perceived that he could safely cast him loose, and, not being a dancing man himself, he soon lost sight of his protege. Later, as he was making his way out with another man, he caught sight of David once more, in the act of saving his partner from a bad fall. His partner was Miss Newman. Both men involuntarily smiled as they observed the dex terity with which he deposited her in precisely the right place, possessed himself of her fan, and pro ceeded to use it for her benefit in precisely the right manner.

"Knows the ropes, doesn't he?" commented Buck ley's acquaintance. " Have you led him around much? "

" Not into this kind of thing before. But, you see, he's so very presentable."

"Presentable? Lord, yes! Has the dollars, too. But although he's deuced good company, I've a notion he has also the deuce of a temper laid away somewhere, and that the girl he finally takes up with had better know him pretty well first."

" The girl he takes up with ? " echoed Buckley, with a laugh. " Why, he's been married for years ! "

The other man gave vent to an expletive, then asked :

"Where's his wife?"

" On the usual European trip."

"More fool she! Well, what do you say to the Union League and a rubber? "

But whether Kingdom's wife were a fool or no appeared to be of no pressing consequence to that young man. His gaiety was as infectious as that of an attractive boy. Although perfectly realising his environment and all that it implied, he seemed to be beatifically unaware of the fact that, as a rank out sider, he was being very specially favoured; and his absolute naturalness and unfeigned enjoyment in the midst of so much boredom were, to others beside Sylvia Newman, as the wind from his own "bald prairie" blowing through jaded streets.

Chapter II

MRS. NEWMAN, in spite of her long assured position in society, was one of those restless women who are not content with being what they are, but are forever strain ing after what they never can be. Thus she spent her days and a large portion of her nights mentally on tiptoe, in order that she might be sure of catching every winged fad and fancy of fashion in its passing. Her two younger daughters were handsome girls, after the approved modern style, adopting always, with a beautiful docility, any form of pleasure ordained by the whim of the hour, no matter how ugly, inconvenient, or ill-suited to its environment. In short, these girls were all that they ought to be, had their mother only been willing to let well alone. But she was not. She had arranged certain careers for them before they left school. She had sedulously cultivated the delusion that Etta possessed histrionic talent ; and the girl, pleased with the notion, figured extensively in private theatricals, was described in the Society columns as " the talented Miss Newman," and had oven dreamed of herself as a coming Langtry or Potter. But mother and daughter were secretly wearying somewhat of the flattery of satellites, when a diversion was afforded just in time to enable Mrs. Newman to sigh, " Only think what a future my Etta has thrown away for Mr. Van Schoolen ! " Van Schoolen was one of the finest cross-country riders connected with the Long Island Hunt, and a member of the Tuxedo Club.

While Cora, the youngest, desired greatly to be a fine actress, she was cajoled into the belief that she was a musical prodigy. It was contrary to Mrs. Newman's tenets that her daughters should possess similar tastes and talents, and " Violin solo by Miss Cora Newman, piano obligato by Miss Newman " was conspicuous on the programmes of numerous concerts given for fashionable charities. Meantime, nature had designed Etta and Cora primarily as compo nent parts of her regular annual output of common place women of fashion, and she pursued her original intention, undismayed by maternal vagaries.

And Sylvia? Mrs. Newman had planned for her future also. The girl had inherited a remarkably fine intellect from her father, and from this rock of assurance Mrs. Newman had launched her highest hopes. She had dreamed glorious dreams of this daughter's success in general scholastic attainment, literature, and what not. She would form a salon — • a real Parisian salon — of which Sylvia should be the bright, particular star. The best intellects of both hemispheres should be drawn to frequent it. As for matrimony, that should not be included in Sylvia's role. She should be cast for one whose conditions were to be of greater distinction, and which held out finer possibilities than marriage.

When the year of mourning, spent in Europe, came to an end, Mrs. Newman launched her gifted young daughter upon society with a blatant flourish. Sylvia faithfully endeavoured to fulfil her mother's expecta tions, but she was hampered by a hopeless lack of selfconfidence. Until she was seventeen, she had had no audience but her father — an audience as sympathetic as it was critical. In the life which was now hers, discouragement or uncomprehending criticism smote her like a freezing blast, benumbing her faculties and making endeavour doubly difficult. Even her ex quisite voice never happened to be at its best on show occasions.

To complete Mrs. Newman's despair, Sylvia's mind was critical and reasonable to a degree which the poor lady, had she not felt the expression to be out of date, would have described as " unfeminine." She revolted from false enthusiasms and shams of nil kinds, and the methods pursued by the anxious mother in accom plishing her purposes with the younger daughters proved ineffectual with this one. Had she not per sisted in her scoldings, warnings, exhortations, and flatteries, she might not so signally have failed in her efforts to make of Sylvia a desirable ornament to her own coterie. As it was, her touch upon the girl's life had the effect of a rough, blunt-fingered hand on a sensitive plant.

But notwithstanding her disappointment, Mrs. Newman was obliged to acknowledge in her own heart that for unselfish helpfulness and sound common sense Sylvia was her most reliable standby. Her bluestocking propensities did not seem to impair her usefulness in matters pertaining to the management of the household and other practical affairs, in which Etta and Cora took little interest and would assume no responsibility; for Sylvia was decidedly domestic in her tastes.

And the family was affectionate in its relations, when it had leisure for any. But in a life such as that led by the Newmans and hundreds of others, family affections suffer, and outside intimacies are apt to be stifled at birth. Existence is conducted in reception-rooms, so to speak.

Sylvia longed for a fuller response, a deeper recognition than was afforded her nature by the life with which her mother surrounded her, and it was only when, upon rare occasions, she could be spared to go amongst her father's chosen friends — that charming, semi-Bohemian, yet eminently select society upon which New York with justice prides herself — the society of brains, little leisure, and moderate to small means — that she was able to free herself of the restraint that usually hampered her, and scintillate in her full brilliancy. Here she was able to sustain sincere relations, without paying the penalty of being misunderstood.

It was probably the same relief, found in David Kingdon's intense humanity and apparent simplicity, that sent her upstairs that night with the light of girlish laughter still in her eyes. That part of her being which was as replete with human impulses, sympathies, and affections as his own, sprang to meet him in the unconscious attraction of resemblance. Long repressed by her mother's exhausting demands in directions from which her critical sense revolted, they turned toward the newcomer as the sunflower turns to the sun.

And on this young iftan from the West social laurels soon began to shower. Young men and maidens, old men and matrons, took more or less interest in him, the more because he was a rather provoking departure from the usually accepted type of West erner. The son of a mother of French Huguenot descent and a pettifogging English lawyer was liable to present some uncommon characteristics for the enlivcnmcnt of a bored world. It was vaguely rumoured that he was a married man, but if the rumour ever reached the ears of any of the numerous women on whom he danced attendance in his easy yet perfunctory manner, they were content to let the matter rest, only wishing that he were a trifle more inclined toward con centration. For all his faculties, perceptive and receptive, were centred on the one woman ; and her, owing to Buckley's absence at a country-house party, he rarely met. Thus his very popularity grew to be a source of irritation to him.

Once, by good luck, he met her at one of those studios in which congenial souls are in the habit of gathering informally. Kingdons' entree was obtained by his skill in rendering light, French chansons with the grace, vivacity, and pathos of the original; although, greatly to his surprise, he found that the interchange of ideas rather than music was the object of the so-called reception. It must be confessed that, ubiquitous and adaptive as he was, he at first found himself a little out of his element in a social gathering which amused itself very well without the assistance of the games and toys in his world considered indispen sable for the entertainment of grown people. More especially did he feel this when he perceived how entirely in her element Sylvia Newman was ; the arch and gay Sylvia of the ball was presenting herself to him in a new aspect. He stood outside of discussions in which she bore well her part, watching half jeal ously the keen play of intellect in her expressive face ; and it was not until she had been asked to sing, and he, the provincial who loathed " classical music," had had the very soul drawn out of him by the strains of Handel's "Largo," that he found his chance to approach her. When she looked up, it was with some thing of his own direct, childlike gaze, but Sylvia's dark eyes possessed the softness which results from slightty imperfect vision. For the first time David noticed that they were not entirely brown ; they made him think of rock-bound pools in the mountains, upon the face of whose waters plays the blue radiance of the unclouded Western sky. As they smiled back into his own eyes, the azure light in them was plainly to be discerned. For the moment he almost forgot his fears, his anxiety lest he should fall short of her intellectual standard. Like two happy children, they leaned upon the piano and talked, they hardly knew of what; only the words came easily, and ideas half framed found their mates ere they were uttered. It was the lightest interchange, but through it all ran the golden thread of that elusive thing called sym pathy.

And yet — afterward he realised that the easy yet courteous audacity which was his birthright, and which he could no more throw off than a handsome pigeon can help strutting and bowing in the sun, was unworthy of her to whom it was addressed; realised also that no other woman had ever so moved him, whilst making him feel that he and she belonged to spheres wide as the poles asunder. It was not his marriage that thus separated them, he would have declared, for this barrier sank into insignificance beside other things that he could neither name nor number. He recognised in her something finer than anything he had ever encountered in woman, and wished that she* in her turn could discover that there was, as he expressed it to himself, "more to him" than appeared on the surface. He felt that she must in evitably misjudge him. Secretive and inexpansive, the yearning for utterance, for complete understanding by another, had never before possessed him so strongly.

One day Mrs. De Lancey, one of New York's fashionable matrons with whom he was a particular favour ite, began to talk of the Newman girls, praising Sylvia effusively, and finally asking David if he had ever seen her on horseback.

Now David was gifted with remarkable self-control, but at the attractive possibilities suggested by this query he found it hard to keep the fire out of eyes and voice. Morning after morning he had partially satisfied his craving for freedom by throwing himself across a good horse and getting out of the city by the shortest route possible. By this means alone, he declared, could he survive late hours and close rooms.

"No?" continued the lady. "Well, then, you have never seen a woman ride. I don't care what you say about Western riding" — putting up her hand to avoid contradiction — " but "

" But," David managed to interpose, with due meekness, "I claim nothing but utility for Western horsemanship. Grace? The gods know better!"

" Then you are in a proper frame of mind to appre ciate Miss Newman. Hers is riding — no Park school sham. She rides in the Park nearly every morning. I suppose you despise our Park? Well, never mind. What's more, she owns what Mr. De Lancey claims to be the finest saddler this side Mason and Dixon's line — none of your bumpety, bobtailed English imitations, but a real Southern saddle-horse with half a dozen gaits to his name. Sylvia's as proud of Vir ginia Boy's blue ribbons at the Horse Show as other girls are of their frocks. She's able to indulge her personal tastes, as her father saw to it that some of his property should be secured to her at his death. She could set up a miniature establishment of her own, if she chose, but she's too good a daughter. I don't know what Mrs. Newman would do without her, though she is the crumpled rose-leaf in that gorgeous lady's lot."

" Granted the rose-leaf, but I fail to observe the crumple."

" So do I. But some mothers are so queer ! "

After this, David frequented the despised Park, selecting for himself a gaited saddler. One dull morning, when the bridle path was almost deserted, his ear caught the light beat of horse's hoofs in his rear. He knew by the sound that the animal was not the ordinary hard-trotting beast affected by the aver age frequenter of the path, and wheeling about, found himself face to face with Sylvia Newman.

As she checked her horse to respond to his saluta tion, a wave of colour suffused her cheeks, and a frank, sweet smile irradiated her whole face. David had studied her too minutely to feel that these indications were other than the result of the sudden animation of a countenance grave in its repose. But it should have been some slight warning to him that his pulses bounded at the sight of her, and that he could scarcely maintain an ordinary demeanour. He was, however, entirely unconscious of danger, present or remote. He felt secure in his own ideas of duty, such as they were, and he was capable of cleaving to them with a tenacity surprising to the many who read his char acter amiss.

" I was told you had a real saddler, Miss Newman," he began, at once, to cover his secret exultation. " But what a splendid fellow ! "

" The American horse is good enough for me," she said, leaning over the arching neck and looking up into David's eyes, her own sparkling with more hap piness than she was in the least aware of. "I leave to my sisters the delights of being pounded to death in the interests of fashion."

And as the pair swept along at that easy, cradling gait which is the very poetry of motion, Miss New man's groom racing after them at a hand gallop, neither could have explained the exhilaration that was theirs under those lowering skies, the chill of the wet east wind in their faces. Both riders seemed to have so much to say. And why?

Sylvia had put this question to herself before, but had never yet obtained a satisfactory reply. Mr. Kingdon was assuredly very bright, in a way, but she was acquainted with several men of greater intellectual force. Neither could his attractiveness be set down altogether to his charms of person and manner, although those of course had some influence, as is inevitable, given a woman whose artistic sensibilities are keen. The attraction sprang from some deeper source.

"I think it must be 'the human touch'," she thought, is she sank into a sleepy-hollow chair that afternoon in her rooms.

David's inborn sense of the fitness of things inter posed to prevent more meetings on the bridle path; but, to his relief, Buckley returned from his outing, and with the aid of this friend he was enabled to pre sent himself often at the Newmans', and even received invitations to their various entertainments, meeting Sylvia at other houses also.

David was beginning to believe that he alone knew all her attractions, or they flashed to the sur face only when she was entirely at her ease, as he knew with secret delight that she invariably was with him. He was going away soon, and the tender, human side of his nature craved this interlude of happiness; for it was only an interlude, he told himself. Spoiled son of fortune others might call him, but he knew — as no one else did — how much the jade owed him, and with what false pretences she had put him off. If he could not force her to pay him in full, she should pay him a little ; it was his right. As for his marriage — that miserable farce — what did it matter whether Sylvia were aware of it or not? He had never made love to her. Marriage had nothing what ever to do with the situation.

Buckley's thoughts must also have been dwelling upon David and his affairs, for one day he remarked to his young friend, between the whiffs of a cigar :

" By the way, David, do the women all know you are a Benedict ? "

"Women in particular, or a particular woman?" asked David, airily.

"Either or both."

" Mrs. De Lancey knows it, I believe — also, prob ably, the Kitteridges."