In Old Kentucky Part 16

She shrank back like a startled fawn, when his foot was almost on the bridge that spanned the chasm between them and her cabin.

"Don't you dare to touch me!" she said fiercely.

She sped back upon the little bridge, and, when he would have followed, held her hand up with a gesture of such native dignity, offended womanhood, that he stopped where he was, abashed.

"No--no, sir; you can't cross this bridge," said she. "No man ever can, unless--unless--"

Almost sobbing, now, she left the sentence incomplete; and then: "Oh, you wouldn't dared act so to a bluegra.s.s girl! But I know what's right as well as them. It don't take no book-learnin' to tell me as how a kiss like that you planned for me would be a sign that really you care for me no more than for the critters that you hunt an' kill for pastime up hyar among the mountings."

He would have given much if he had never done the foolish thing. He stood there with lowered eyes, bent head, abashed, discomfited.

"An' I 'lowed you were my friend!" said she.

Now he looked up at her and spoke out impulsively: "And so I am, Madge, really! I was ... wrong. Forgive me!"

She dropped her hands with a weary change of manner. "Well, I reckon I will," said she. "You've been too kind and good for me to bear a grudge ag'in you; but ... but ... Well, maybe I had better say good-night."

She walked slowly back across the bridge without another word, pulled on its rope and raised it, made the rope fast and slowly disappeared within her little cabin.

"Poor child!" said he, and turned away. "I was a brute to wound her."

As he went down the trail, darkening, now, as the moon slid behind the towering mountain back of him, his heart was in a tumult. "After all,"

he reflected, "education isn't everything. All the culture in the world wouldn't make her more sincere and true. She has taught _me_ a lesson I shan't soon forget."

His thoughts turned, then, to the girl who would come up with the party on the following day.

"I--wonder! Was there ever, really, a time when I loved Barbara?... If so, that time has gone, now, never to return."

CHAPTER IX

His visitors took Layson by surprise, next morning. They had started from the valley long before he had supposed they would.

Holton saw him first and nudged his daughter, who was with him. They were well ahead of Miss Alathea and the Colonel, who had been unable to keep up with them upon the final sharp ascent of the foot-journey from the wagon-road. The old man grinned unpleasantly. He had rather vulgar manners, often annoying to his daughter, who had had all the advantages which, in his rough, mysterious youth, he had been denied.

"Thar he is, Barb; thar he is," he said, not loudly. Miss Alathea and the Colonel, following close behind, were a restraint on him.

The girl's face was full of eagerness as she saw the man they sought. He was busy polishing a gun, but that his thoughts were occupied with something less mechanical and not wholly pleasant the slight frown upon his face made evident. "Mr. Layson! Frank!" she cried.

The young man turned, on hearing her, and hurried toward her and her father with his hands outstretched in welcome. He was not overjoyed to have the old man visit him, just then; he was even doubtful of the welcome which his heart had for the daughter; but he was a southerner and in the gentle-born southerner real hospitality is quite instinctive.

"Mr. Holton--Barbara," said he. "I am delighted. Welcome to the mountains." He grasped their hands in hearty greeting. "But where are Aunt Alathea and the Colonel?"

Holton tried to be as cordial as his host. That he was very anxious to appear agreeable was evident. "Oh, them slow-pokes?" he said, laughing.

"We didn't wait for them. We pushed on ahead. We reckoned as you would be glad to see us."

"And so I am."

"One in particular, maybe," Holton answered, with a crude attempt at badinage. He glanced archly from the young man to his daughter.

"Father!" she exclaimed, a bit annoyed, and yet not too unwilling that the fact that she and Layson were acknowledged sweethearts should be at once established.

"Oh, I ain't been blind," said Holton, gaily, going much farther than she wished him to. "I've cut _my_ eye-teeth!"

Then he turned to Layson with an awkward lightness. "Barbara told me what pa.s.sed between you two young folks afore you come up to the mountings," he explained. And then, with further elephantine airyness: "I say, jest excuse me--reckon I'm in the way." He made a move as if to hurry off.

Layson was not pleased. The old man was annoying, always, and now, after the long revery of the night before about Madge Brierly, this att.i.tude was doubly disconcerting. "Not at all, Mr. Holton," he said, somewhat hastily. "I'm sure we'd rather you'd remain. Are you sure the others are all right?"

"Close behind us."

"I'll go and make sure that they do not lose their way."

Holton looked at his daughter in a blank dismay after the youth had started down the hill. "I say, gal," said he, "there's somethin' wrong here!"

She was inclined to blame him for the deep discomforture she felt. "Why couldn't you let us alone?" she answered angrily. "You've spoiled everything!"

The old man looked at her, with worry on his face. "Didn't you tell me 't was as good as settled? You said you were dead sure he meant to make you his wife."

She was still petulant, blaming him for Layson's unexpected lack of warmth. "Yes, but you needn't have interfered!"

Holton was intensely puzzled, worried, almost frightened. He was as anxious to have this young man for a son-in-law as his daughter was to have him for a husband. Her marriage into such a celebrated bluegra.s.s family as the Laysons were, would firmly fix her social status, no matter how precarious it might be now, and the match would be of great advantage to him in a business way, as well. He stood there, thinking deeply, very much displeased.

"There's somethin' more nor me has come between you," he said finally, his face flushing with a deep resentment. "I tell you, gal, what I believed at first, deep in my heart, air true. He was only triflin' with you. Them aristocrats down in the bluegra.s.s don't hold us no better than the dust beneath their feet, even if we have got money. It's _family_ that counts with them. Didn't he lay his whip acrost my face, once, as if I was a n.i.g.g.e.r?" His wrath was rising. "And now he shows that he was only triflin' with you with no real intentions of doin' as we thought he would!" The man was tremulous with wrath. "Oh, I'll be even with him!"

Barbara was greatly worried by the situation. All her life, despite the fact that she was beautiful, despite the fact that her father was a rich man--richer, by a dozen times, than many of the people for whose friendship she longed vainly--she had vaguely felt that there was an invisible gulf between her and the girls with whom she came in contact at the exclusive schools to which she had been sent, between her and the gentlefolk with whom, in some measure, she had mixed since she had left school-walls. "Father," she asked anxiously, "why do people look down on us so?"

He faced her with a worried look, as if he feared that she might guess at something which he wished should remain hidden. "They say I made my money tradin' in n.i.g.g.e.rs," he replied, at length. "Well, what of it?

Didn't I have the right?"

"Are you sure there's nothing else?"

He seemed definitely startled. "Girl, what makes you ask?"

"Because sometimes memories come to me."

"Memories of what?"

"Of--my childhood," she said slowly, "of pa.s.ses among mountains--mountains much like these."

He regarded her uneasily. "Oh, sho, gal!" he exclaimed, trying to make light of it. "Reckon you've been dreamin'. You were never hyar before."

But she looked about her, unconvinced, and, when she spoke, spoke slowly, evidently trying to recall with definite clarity certain things which flitted through her mind as vague impressions only. "Why does everything seem so familiar, here, then, as if I had just wakened in my true surroundings after a long sleep in which I had had dreams?" There was, suddenly, a definite accusation in her eyes. "Father, you are trying to deceive me! I was once a child, here in these very mountains!" She stared about intently.

The speech had an amazing effect on the old man. He stepped close to her. "Hush!" said he, imperatively. "Don't you dare speak such a word ag'in!"