Part 27 (2/2)
”You deny the accusations they bring against your good name?” Barbara said, with some surprise.
”Of course I deny them,” she snapped. ”I've got to have some fun, haven't I? I can't help it that a dozen boys come to see me and n.o.body ever sees the old tabbies who lie about me, can I? I can't help it that they are old and ugly, can I?”
Barbara had ceased to listen to the glib tongue, whose lying chatter tired her. She looked about the room with increasing amazement. It was stuffed with presents of every conceivable description. Costly rugs adorned the floor. Soft pillows filled the couch by the window. Dainty and expensive works of art adorned her mantel, and the richest and most beautiful underwear lay in a smoothly laundered pile on her luxuriant bed.
”And how did you get all these costly and beautiful things, my dear?”
Barbara asked, with a touch of sarcasm.
The big blue eyes opened wide again with wonder.
”Why, the boys who are in love with me gave them. Why shouldn't they?
I can't help it that they are foolish, can I? G.o.d made them so.”
”And you accepted these rich and costly things in perfect innocence of the evil meaning others might put on them?”
”Of course! How can I keep their tongues from wagging? Life's too short. I have but one life to live. I can't waste it worrying over nothing.”
For the first time in her career Barbara stood face to face with naked evil--with a liar to whom a lie was good--a radiantly beautiful girl to whom shame was sweet.
For a moment the thought was suffocating. She looked out of the window at the infinite blue sea until the tears slowly blinded her. The first doubt of her theory of life crept into her heart and threw its shadow over the ideal of the new world she had built.
She took the girl's hand, slipped her arm around her neck, kissed the soft, s.h.i.+ning hair, and sobbed:
”Poor little foolish sister! I'm afraid you've broken my heart to-day.”
”I haven't done a thing! Honestly, I haven't!” the l.u.s.ty young liar rattled on and on, in a hundred silly, vain protests, which Barbara never heard.
She left the room at length with a sickening sense of defeat, though the girl had promised her on the honour of her soul never again to give the slightest cause for complaint.
Many a day she had trudged through the streets of the great city, after hours of nerve-racking struggles with sin and shame and despair in the old world, but she had always come home at night with a heart singing a battle-hymn of victory. She knew the cause of all the pain, and she had given her life to right the wrong. Nothing daunted her, nothing disconcerted her. In the end triumph was sure, and while she felt this there could be no such thing as failure.
She stood before the full meeting of the executive council, honestly reported the case, and for the first time tasted the bitterness of defeat, helpless, complete, and overwhelming. While she was talking a peculiar expression in Wolf's cold gray eyes suddenly caught her attention and fixed her gaze on him with a curious fascination and horror. Wolf was quick to note her look, recovered himself and smiled in his old fatherly, friendly way.
”Don't worry, comrade. We've got to meet and settle such questions.
They are merely the inheritance of civilization. It will take a little time, that's all.”
But as Barbara's gaze lingered on the heavy brutal lines of Wolf's ma.s.sive figure and she caught again the gleam of his gray eyes a sickening sense of foreboding gripped her heart.
CHAPTER XXII
THE FIGHTING INSTINCT
As questions of discipline became more and more pressing old Tom refused to sit as an active judge in the executive council.
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