Chapter 12

Gila Dare, in her very most startling costume, lavishly plastered with costly fur, and high-laced, French-heeled boots, came tripping down her father's steps to the limousine. She carried a dangling little trick of a hand-bag and a muff big enough for a rug. Her two eyes looked forth from the rim of the low-squashed, bandage-like fur hat like the eyes of a small, sly mouse that was about to nibble somebody else's cheese.

By her side a logy youth, with small, blue fish-eyes fixed adoringly on her, sauntered protectingly. She wore a large bunch of pale-yellow orchids, evidently his gift, and was paying for them with her glances. One knew by the excited flush on the young man's face that he had rarely been paid so well. His eyes took on a glint of intelligence, one might almost say of hope, and he smiled egregiously, egotistically. His assurance grew with each step he took. As he opened the door of the luxurious car for her he wore an attitude of one who might possibly be a fiancé. Her little mouse-eyes--you wouldn't have dreamed they could ever be large and wistful, nor innocent, either--twinkled pleasurably. She was playing her usual game and playing it well. It was the game for which she was rapidly becoming notorious, young as she was.

"Oh, now, _Chaw_-! _Ree_-ally! Why, I never dreamed it was that bad! But you mustn't, you know! I never gave you permission!"

The chauffeur, sitting stolidly in his uniform, awaiting the word to move, wondered idly what she was up to now. He was used to seeing the game played all around him day after day, as if he were a stick or a stone, or one of the metal trappings of the car.

"Chawley" Hathaway looked unutterable things, and the little mouse-eyes looked back unutterable things, with that lingering, just-too-long-for-pardoning glance that a certain kind of men and women employ when they want to loiter near the danger-line and toy with vital things. An impressive hand-clasp, another long, languishing look, just a shade longer this time; then he closed the door, lifted his hat at the mouse-eyed goddess, and the limousine swept away. They had parted as if something momentous had occurred, and both knew in their hearts that neither had meant anything at all except to play with fire for an instant, like children sporting at lighting a border of forest that has a heart of true homes in its keeping.

Gila swept on in her chariot. The young man with whom she had played was well skilled in the game. He understood her perfectly, as she him. If he got burned sometimes it was "up to him." She meant to take good care of herself.

Around another corner she spied another acquaintance. A word to the automaton on the front seat and the limousine swept up to the curb where he was passing. Gila leaned out with the sweetest bow. She was the condescending lady now; no mouse-eyes in evidence this time; just a beautiful, commanding presence to be obeyed. She would have him ride with her, so he got in.

He was a tall, serious youth with credulous eyes, and she swept his soulful nature as one sweeps the keys of a familiar instrument, drawing forth time-worn melodies that, nevertheless, were new to him. And just because he thrilled under them, and looked in her eyes with startled earnestness, did she like to play upon his soul. It would have been a bore if he had understood, for he was a dull soul, and young--ages young for Gila, though his years numbered two more than hers. She liked to see his eyes kindle and his breath come quick. Some day he would tell her with impassioned words how much he loved her, and she would turn him neatly and comfortably down for a while, till he learned his place and promised not to be troublesome. Then he might join the procession again as long as he would behave. But at present she knew she could sway him as she would, and she touched the orchids at her belt with tender little caressing movements and melting looks. Even before she reached home she knew he would have a box of something rarer or more costly waiting for her, if the city afforded such.

She set him down at his club, quite well satisfied with her few minutes. She was glad it didn't last longer, for it would have grown tiresome; she had had just enough, carried him just far enough on the wave of emotion, to stimulate her own soul.

Sweeping away from the curb again, bowing graciously to two or three other acquaintances who were going in or out of the club building, she gave an order for the hospital and set her face sternly to the duty before her.

A little breeze of expectation preceded her entrance into the hospital, a stir among the attendants about the door. Passing nurses apprized her furs and orchids; young interns took account of her eyes--the mouse-eyes had returned, but they lured with something unspeakable and thrilling in them.

She waited with a nice little superb air that made everybody hurry to serve her, and presently she was shown up to the door of Bonnie Brentwood's room. Her chauffeur had followed, bearing a large pasteboard suit-box which he set down at the door and departed.

"Is this Miss Brentwood's room?" she asked of the nurse who opened the door grudgingly. Her patient had just awakened from a refreshing sleep and she had no notion that this lofty little person had really come to see the quiet, sad-eyed girl who had come there in such shabby little garments. The visitor had made a mistake, of course. The nurse grudgingly admitted that Miss Brentwood roomed there.

"Well, I've brought some things for her," said Gila, indicating the large box at her feet. "You can take it inside and open it."

The nurse opened the door a little wider, looked at the small, imperious personage in fur trappings, and then down at the box. She hesitated a moment in a kind of inward fury, then swung the door a little wider open and stepped back:

"You can set it inside if you wish, or wait till one of the men comes by," she said, coolly, and deliberately walked back in the room and busied herself with the medicine-glasses.

Gila stared at her haughtily a moment, but there wasn't much satisfaction in wasting her glares on that white-linen back, so she stooped and dragged in the box. She came and stood by the bed, staring down apprizingly at the sick girl.

Bonnie Brentwood turned her head wearily and looked up at her with a puzzled, half-annoyed expression. She had paid no heed to the little altercation at the door. Her apathy toward life was great. She was lying on the borderland, looking over and longing to go where all her dear ones had gone. It wearied her inexpressibly that they all would insist on doing things to call her back.

"Is your name Brentwood?" asked Gila, in the sharp, high key so alien to a hospital.

Bonnie recalled her spirit to this world and focused her gaze on the girl as if to try and recall where she had ever met her. Bonnie's abundant hair was spread out over the pillow, as the nurse had just prepared to brush it. It fell in long, rich waves of brightness and fascinating little rings of gold about her face. Gila stared at it jealously, as if it were something that had been stolen from her. Her own hair, cloudy and dreamy, and made much of with all that skill and care could do, was pitiful beside this wonderful gold mane with red and purple shadows in its depths, and ripples and curls at the ends. Wonderful hair!

The face of the girl on the pillow was perfect in form and feature. Regular, delicate, refined, and lovely! Gila knew it would be counted rarely beautiful, and she was furious! How had that upstart of a college boy dared to send her here to see a beauty! What had he meant by it?

By this time the girl on the bed had summoned her soul back to earth for the nonce, and answered in a cool, little tone of distance, as she might have spoken to her employer, perhaps; or, in other circumstances, to the stranger begging for work on her door-sill--Bonnie was a lady anywhere--"Yes, I am Miss Brentwood."

There was no noticeable emphasis on the "Miss," but Gila felt that the pauper had arisen and put herself on the same level with her, and she was furious.

"Well, I've brought you a few things!" declared Gila, in a most offensive tone. "Paul Courtland asked me to come and see what I could do for you." She swung her moleskin trappings about and pointed to the box. "I don't believe in giving money, not often," she declared, with a tilt of her nasty little chin that suddenly seemed to curve out in a hateful, Satanic point, "but I don't mind giving a little lift in other ways to persons who are truly worthy, you know. I've brought you a few evening dresses that I'm done with. It may help you to get a position playing for the movies, perhaps; or if you don't know rag-time, perhaps you might act--they'll take almost anybody, I understand, if they have good clothes. Besides, I'm going to give you an introduction to a girls' employment club. They have a hall and hold dances once a week and you get acquainted. It only costs you ten cents a week and it will give you a place to spend your evenings. If you join that you'll need evening dresses for the dances. Of course I understand some of the girls just go in their street suits, but you stand a great deal better chance of having a good time if you are dressed attractively. And then they say men often go in there evenings to look for a stenographer, or an actor, or some kind of a worker, and they always pick out the prettiest. Dress goes a great way if you use it rightly. Now there's a frock in here--" Gila stooped and untied the cord on the box. "This frock cost a hundred and fifty dollars, and I never wore it but once!"

She held up a tattered blue net adorned with straggling, crushed, artificial rosebuds, its sole pretension to a waist being a couple of straps of silver tissue attached to a couple of rags of blue net. It looked for all the world like a draggled butterfly.

"It's torn in one or two places," pursued Gila's ready tongue, "but it's easily mended. I wore it to a dance and somebody stepped on the hem. I suppose you are good at mending. A girl in your position ought to know how to sew. My maid usually mends things like this with a thread of itself. You can pull one out along the hem, I should think. Then here is a pink satin. It needs cleaning. They don't charge more than two or three dollars--or perhaps you might use gasolene. I had slippers to match, but I couldn't find but one. I brought that along. I thought you might do something with it. They were horribly expensive--made to order, you know. Then this cerise chiffon, all covered with sequins, is really too showy for a girl in your station, but in case you get a chance to act you might need it, and anyhow I never cared for it. It isn't becoming to me. Here's an indigo charmeuse with silver trimmings. I got horribly tired of it, but you will look stunning in it. It might even help you catch a rich husband; who knows! There's half a dozen pairs of white evening gloves! I might have had them cleaned, but if you can use them I can get new ones. And there's a bundle of old silk stockings! They haven't any toes or heels much, but I suppose you can darn them. And of course you can't afford to buy expensive silk stockings!"

One by one Gila had pulled the things out of the box, rattling on about them as if she were selling corn-cure. She was a trifle excited, to be sure, now that she was fairly launched on her philanthropic expedition; also the fact that the two women in the room were absolutely silent and gave no hint of how they were going to take this tide of insults was somewhat disconcerting. However, Gila was not easily disconcerted. She was very angry, and her anger had been growing in force all night. The greatest insult that man could offer her had been heaped upon her by Courtland, and there was no punishment too great to be meted out to the unfortunate innocent who had been the occasion of it. Gila did not care what she said, and she had no fear of any consequences whatever. There had not, so far to her knowledge, lived the man who could not be called back and humbled to her purpose after she had punished him sufficiently for any offense he might knowingly or unknowingly have committed. That she really had begun to admire Courtland, and to desire him in some degree for her own, only added fuel to her fire. This girl whom he had dared to pity should be burned and tortured; she should be insulted and extinguished utterly, so that she would never dare to lift her head again within recognizable distance of Paul Courtland, or she would know the reason why. Paul Courtland was _hers_--if she chose to have him; let no other girl dare to look at him!

The nurse stood, starched and stern, with growing indignation at the audacity of the stranger. Only the petrification of absolute astonishment, and wonder as to what would happen next, took her off her guard for the moment and prevented her from ousting the young lady from the premises instantly. There was also the magic name of the handsome young gentleman that had been used as password, and the very slight possibility that this might be some rich relative of the lovely young patient that she would not like to have put out. The nurse looked from Bonnie to the visitor in growing wrath and perplexity.

Bonnie lay wide-eyed and amazed, startled bewilderment and growing dignity in her face. Two soft, pink spots of color began to bloom out in her cheeks, and her eyes took on a twinkle of amusement. She was watching the visitor as if she were a passing Punch-and-Judy show come in to play for a moment for her entertainment. She lay and regarded her and her tawdry display of finery with a quiet, disinterested aloofness that was beginning to get on Gila's nerves.

"You can have my flowers, too, if you want them," said Gila, excitedly, seeing that her flood of insult had brought forth no answering word from either listener. "They're very handsome, rare ones--orchids, you know. Did you ever see any before? I don't mind leaving them with you because I have a great many flowers, and these were given me by a young man I don't care in the least about."

She unpinned the flowers and held them out to Bonnie, but the sick girl lay still and regarded her with that quiet, half-amused gravity and did not offer to take them.

"I presume you can find a waste-basket down in the office if you want to get rid of them," said Bonnie, suddenly, in a clear, refined voice. "I really shouldn't care for them. Isn't there a waste-basket somewhere about?" she asked, turning toward the nurse.

"Down in the hall by the front entrance," answered the nurse, grimly. She was ready to play up to whatever cue Bonnie gave her.

Gila stood haughtily holding her flowers and looking from one woman to the other, unable to believe that any other woman had the insufferable audacity to meet her on her own ground in this way. Were they actually guying her, or were they innocents who really thought she did not want the flowers, or who did not know enough to think orchids beautiful? Before she could decide Bonnie was speaking again, still in that quiet, superior tone of a lady that gave her the command of the situation:

"I am sorry," she said, quite politely, as if she must let her visitor down gently, "but I'm afraid you have made some mistake. I don't recall ever having met you before. It must be some other Miss Brentwood for whom you are looking."

Gila stared, and her color suddenly began to rise even under the pearly tint of her flesh. Had she possibly made some blunder? This certainly was the voice of a lady. And the girl on the bed had the advantage of absolute self-control. Somehow that angered Gila more than anything else.

"Don't you know Paul Courtland?" she demanded, imperiously.

"I never heard the name before!"

Bonnie's voice was steady, and her eyes looked coolly into the other girl's. The nurse looked at Bonnie and marveled. She knew the name of Paul Courtland well; she telephoned to that name every day. How was it that the girl did not know it? She liked this girl and the man who had brought her here and been so anxious about her. But who on earth was this huzzy in fur?

Gila looked at Bonnie madly. Her stare said as plainly as words could have done: "You lie! You _do_ know him!" But Gila's lips said, scornfully, "Aren't you the poor girl whose kid brother got killed by an automobile in the street?"

Across Bonnie's stricken face there flashed a spasm of pain and her very lips grew white.

"I thought so!" sneered Gila, rushing on with her insult. "And yet you deny that you ever heard Paul Courtland's name! He picked up the kid and carried it in the house and ran errands for you, but you don't know him! That's gratitude for you! I told him the working-class were all like that. I have no doubt he has paid for this very room that you are lying in!"

"Stop!" cried Bonnie, sitting up, her eyes like two stars, her face white to the very lips. "You have no right to come here and talk like that! I cannot understand who could have sent you! Certainly not the courteous stranger who picked up my little brother. I do not know his name, nor anything about him, but I can assure you that I shall not allow him nor any one else to pay my bills. Now will you take your things and leave my room? I am feeling very--tired!"

The voice suddenly trailed off into silence and Bonnie dropped back limply upon the pillow.

The nurse sprang like an angry bear who has seen somebody troubling her cubs. She touched vigorously a button in the wall as she passed and swooped down upon the tawdry finery, stuffing it unceremoniously into the box; then she turned upon the little fur-trimmed lady, placed a capable arm about her slim waist, and scooped her out of the room. Flinging the bulging box down at her feet, where it gaped widely, gushing forth in pink, blue, cerise, and silver, she shut the door and flew back to her charge.

Down the hall hurried the emergency doctor, formidable in his white-linen uniform. When Gila looked up from the confusion at her feet she encountered the gaze of a pair of grave and disapproving eyes behind a pair of fascinating tortoise-shell goggles. She was not accustomed to disapproval in masculine eyes and it infuriated her.

"What does all this mean?" His voice expressed a good many kinds of disapproval.

"It means that I have been insulted, sir, by one of your nurses!" declared Gila, in her most haughty tone, with a tilt of her chin and a flirt of her fur trappings. "I shall make it my business to see that she is removed at once from her position."

The doctor eyed her mildly, as though she were a small bat squeaking at a mighty hawk. "Indeed! I fancy you will find that a rather difficult matter!" he answered, contemptuously. "She is one of our best nurses! James!" to a passing assistant, "escort this person and her--belongings"--looking doubtfully at the mess on the floor--"down to the street!"

Then he swiftly entered Bonnie's room, closing and fastening the door behind him.

The said James, with an ill-concealed grin, stooped to his task; and thus, in mortification, wrath, and ignominy, did Gila descend to her waiting limousine.

There were tears of anger on her cheeks as she sat back against her cushions; more tears fell, which, regardless of her pearly complexion, she wiped away with a cobweb of a handkerchief, while she sat and hated Courtland, and the whole tribe of college men, her cousin Bill Ward included, for getting her into a scrape like this. Defeat was a thing she could not brook. She had never, since she came out of short frocks, been so defeated in her life! But it should not be defeat! She would take her full revenge for all that had happened! Courtland should bite the dust! She would show him that he could not go around picking up stray beauties and sending her after them to pet them for him.

She did not watch for acquaintances during that ride home. She remained behind drawn curtains. Arrived at home, she stormed up to her room, giving orders to her maid not to disturb her, and sat down angrily to indite an epistle to Courtland that should bring him to his knees.

Meantime the doctor and nurse worked silently, skilfully over Bonnie until the weary eyes opened once more, and a long-drawn sigh showed that the girl had come back to the world.

By and by, when the doctor had gone out of the room and the nurse had finished giving her the beef-tea that had been ordered, Bonnie raised her eyes. "Would you mind finding out for me just what this room costs?" she asked, wearily.

The nurse had been fixing it all up in her mind what she should say when this question came. "Why, I'm under the impression you won't have to pay anything," she said, pleasantly. "You see, sometimes patients, when they go out, are kind of grateful and leave a sort of endowment of a bed for a while, or something like that, for cases just like yours, where strangers come in for a few days and need quiet--real quiet that they can't get in the ward, you know. I believe some one paid something for this room in some kind of a way like that. I guess the doctor thought you would get well quicker if you had it quiet, so he put you in here. You needn't worry a bit about it."

Bonnie smiled. "Would you mind making sure?" she asked. "I'd like to know just what I owe. I have a little money, you know."

The nurse nodded and slipped away to whisper the story to the grave doctor, who grew more indignant and contemptuous than he had been to Gila, and sent her promptly back with an answer.

"You don't have to pay a cent," she said, cheerfully, as she returned. "This bed is endowed temporarily, the doctor says, to be used at his discretion, and he wants to keep you here till some one comes who needs this room more than you do. At present there isn't any one, so you needn't worry. We are not going to let any more little feather-headed spitfires in to see you, either. The doctor balled the office out like everything for letting that girl up."

Bonnie tried to smile again, but only ended in a sigh. "Oh, it doesn't matter," she said, and then, after a minute, "You've been very good to me. Some time I hope I can do something for you. Now I'm going to sleep."

The nurse went out to look after some of her duties. Half an hour later she came back to Bonnie's room and entered softly, not to waken her. She was worried lest she had left the window open too wide and the wind might be blowing on her, for it had turned a good deal colder since the sun went down.

She tiptoed to the bed and bent over in the dim light to see if her patient was all right. Then she drew back sharply.

The bed was empty!

She turned on the light and looked all around. There was no one else in the room! Bonnie was gone!