The lad looked thoughtfully out of the window near. His mother waited eagerly. She had decided to abide by his advice whatever it might be. At last he turned toward her. “Knowing Gwynette’s supreme selfishness, I fear that whatever love she may have for you, mother, would be turned to very bitter hatred. She would feel that you were hurling her from a class, of which she is snobbishly proud, down into one that she considers very little better than serfdom. I hardly know how she would take it. She might do something desperate.” The boy regretted these words as soon as they were spoken. The woman’s eyes were startled and because of her great weakness she began to shiver as though in a chill. The repentant lad knelt and held her close. “Mother, dear, leave it all to me, will you? Forget it and just get well for my sake.” Then with a break in his voice, “I wouldn’t want to live without you, dearest.” A sweet calm stole into the woman’s soul. Nothing else seemed to matter. She rested her cheek against her son’s head as she said softly: “My boy! For your sake I will get well.”
Harold, upon leaving his mother, went at once to his room, and, throwing himself down in his comfortable morris-chair, with his hands thrust deep into his trouser pockets, he sat staring out of a wide picture-window. He did not notice, however, the white-capped waves on the tossing, restless sea. He was remembering all that had happened from his little boyhood, especially all that associated him with the girl he had long realized could not be his own sister.
Had he been to her the companion that he might have been, indeed that he should have been, even though he knew she was not his father’s child? No, he had really never cared for her and he had avoided her companionship whenever it was possible. Many a time he had known that she was hurt at his lack of devotion. Only recently, when he had so much preferred taking Sunday dinner at the farm, and had actually forgotten Gwyn until the haughty girl had reminded him that it was his duty to take her wherever she would like to dine, he had recalled, almost too late, that it would be his mother’s wish, and now, that his father was gone, his mother was the one person whom he loved above all others. His conclusion, after half an hour of relentless self-examination, was that he was very much to blame for Gwynette’s selfishness. If he had long ago sought her confidence, long ago in the formative years, they might have grown up in loving companionship as a sister and brother should. This, surely, would have happened, a thought tried to excuse him to himself, if she had been an own sister. But he looked at it squarely. “If my mother wanted Gwynette enough to adopt her and have her share in all things with her own son, that son should have accepted her as a sister.” Rising, he walked to the window, and, for a few moments, he really saw the wind-swept sea. Then, whirling on his heel, he snapped his fingers as he thought with a new determination. “I shall ask our mother (he purposely said ‘our’) to give me a fortnight to help Gwyn change her point of view, before the revelation is made to her. The fault, I can see now, has not been wholly her own. Mother has shown in a thousand ways that I am the one she really loves. Not that she has neglected Gwyn, but there has been a difference.” He was putting on his topcoat and cap as he made the decision to take a run up to the seminary and see how his sister was getting on.
As he neared his mother’s room, the nurse appeared, closing the door behind her so softly that the lad knew, without asking, that the invalid was asleep. Miss Dane smiled at the comely youth.
“My patient is much better since you came home. I believe you were the tonic, or the narcotic rather, that she needed, for she seems soothed and quieted.”
The lad’s brightening expression told the nurse how great was his love for his mother. She went her way to the kitchen to prepare a strengthening broth for the invalid to be given her when she should awaken, and all the while she was wondering why a son should be so devoted and a daughter seem to care so little. It was evident to the most casual observer that Gwynette cared for no one but herself.
Harold was soon in his little gray speedster and out on the highway. He thought that, first of all, he would dart into town and buy a box of Gwyn’s favorite chocolates. She could not but greet him graciously when he appeared with a gift for her. On the coast highway, near Santa Barbara, there was a roadside inn where motoring parties lunched and where the best of candies could be procured. As he was about to complete his purchase, a tall, broad-shouldered young man, with the build of a college athlete, entered carrying a suitcase. He inquired when the next bus would pass that way, and, finding that he would have to wait at least an hour, he next asked how far it was to the farm of Silas Warner. Harold stepped forward, before the clerk could reply, and said, “I am going in that direction. In fact I shall pass the farm. May I give you a lift?”
“Thanks.”
Together they left the shop and were soon speeding along the highway, neither dreaming of all that this meeting was to mean to them.