Sisters

The girl asked, “How many children are there, Miss Dearborn? I remember you said one girl had been named after you.”

“Yes, then there is a boy, a year or two older, and this baby, the one that has just come!” She took up the suitcase, but Jenny held out her hand. “Please let me carry it.” The teacher did so, as she had to close and lock the front door. Harold sprang from the wagon. “Miss Dearborn,” the girl said, “you have heard me speak of our neighbors, the Poindexter-Jones. This is my friend Harold.” The lad, cap under his arm, took the outstretched hand, acknowledging the introduction, then reached for the suitcase.

Sounds of an automobile laboring up the rough hill-road assured them, before they saw the small closed car, that the taxi was arriving.

Jenny held her teacher’s hand in a close clasp and her eyes were again brimmed with tears. This time for the mother of the little new baby.

“Good-bye, dear girl.” The woman turned to the boy and said, “Take good care of my Jeanette. Even she does not know what a comfort she is to me.”

The boy had replied something, he hardly knew what. Of course he would take care of Jenny. With his life, if need be. When the taxi was gone he took the girl’s arm and led her back to the wagon. He saw that she was almost crying and he knew that her dear friend must be starting on some sad mission, but Jenny merely said, when they were driving down the canyon road, “Miss Dearborn has a college friend living in Carmel and she is very ill and has sent for her.”

After a time he spoke aloud his own thoughts. “Jeanette, that is what your teacher called you. It reminds me of my sister’s name somewhat.” He hesitated. He was on dangerous ground. He must be very careful of what he said. The girl turned toward him glowingly. “How lucky you are, Harold, to have a real sister. She must be a good pal for you. Is she to be at home soon?”

“Yes, tomorrow.” The boy hesitated, then he said slowly, thinking ahead: “Jenny, Mother and I feel that we haven’t brought Gwyn up just right. We have helped her to be proud and selfish. I’m going to ask you a favor. Will you try to win her friendship and be patient and not hurt if she seems to snub you just at first? Will you, Jenny?” The boy was very much in earnest, and so the girl replied, “Why, Harold, I will try, if you wish, but I know that your sister does not want my friendship, so why should she be forced to have it?”

“Because I wish it,” was all the lad would reply. Jenny knew better than the boy did how difficult it would be.

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE HAUGHTY GWYNETTE

True to his promise, Harold took Charles to the “big house” just before five, the hour of his mother’s appointing.

“You have a beautiful home,” the visiting lad remarked as he was led along box-edged paths and paused to gaze into the mirror-clear, sun-sparkled water in the pond lily garden. Lotus flowers were lying on the still blue surface, waxen lovely and sweetly fragrant.

They went up the marble steps, crossed the portico and entered a long wide hall which led directly to the front door through the windows of which the late afternoon sun was streaming.

“The library is my favorite room,” Harold said. “I will leave you there while I go up and see if mother is ready to meet my new friend.”

They were nearing a wide door where rich, crimson velvet portiers hung, when Harold heard his name spoken back of him. Turning, he saw Miss Dane beckoning to him. After speaking with her he said: “Charles, wait in the library for me. I won’t be gone long. Mother wishes to speak to me alone for just a few moments.”

Charles stopped to look at a very beautiful painting before he stepped between the velvet portiers. At once he saw that the room was occupied. “Pardon me!” he exclaimed. A girl had risen and was staring at him with amazement, but her momentary indignation was changed to interest when she saw how good-looking and well-dressed he was. With a graciousness she could always assume when she wished, Gwynette assured him: “Indeed you are not intruding. I heard my brother tell you to wait here until he came. Won’t you be seated? I am Gwynette, Harold’s sister. He may have told you about me?” The lad was amazed. Even while he was assuring the girl that he had indeed heard of her his thought was inquiring, “How could Harold find it hard to care for such a graceful, beautiful sister, even though she was adopted.”

Gwynette had resumed the seat she had occupied formerly, a deep softly upholstered leather chair drawn close to the wide hearth on which a drift log was burning with flames of many colors.

“And I,” the lad sat in the chair on the opposite side of the hearth to which she motioned him, “since Harold is not here to introduce me, will tell you who I am and how I happen to be here.” Then he hesitated, gazing inquiringly at the girl whose every pose was one of grace. “You probably know my sister, Lenora Gale, since she was at the Granger Place Seminary for a time.”

If there was a stiffening on the part of the girl, it was not perceptible. If her thought was rather disdainfully “another farmer”, she did not lessen her apparent interest. Her reply, though not enthusiastic, was in the affirmative, modified with, “I really cannot say that I knew your sister well, however. She was not in my classes and our rooms were far apart.”

Then, with just the right amount of seeming solicitude, “She is quite well now, I hope. I understand that she went to stay at my mother’s farm with our overseer’s family.”

Charles glanced up at her quickly. Gwyn could not long play a part without revealing her true self. “Very wonderful people, the Warners,” was what the young man said. “It has been a privilege to meet them. Lenora, I am glad to say, is daily becoming stronger and within a fortnight we will be able to travel to our far-away home.”

He paused and the girl said, now with less interest, “A ranch, I understand.”

“Yes, a ranch.” Silence fell between them. Gwynette gazed into the fire, torn between her scorn for her companion’s station in life and her admiration of his magnetic personality. Suddenly she smiled at him and Charles felt that he had never seen any girl more beautiful. “Do you know,” she said with apparent naivete, “it is hard for me to believe that you are a farmer; you impress me as being a gentleman to the manner born.”

The lad, who was her senior by several years, smiled. “Miss Gwynette,” he retorted, “I am far more proud of being a rancher than I would be of inheriting a title.”

Harold returned just then to say that his mother was ready to receive their guest. The younger lad was amazed at the graciousness with which his usually fretful sister assured Charles Gale that she was indeed glad he was to be with them for dinner.

When the two boys were quite out of hearing, Harold gave a low whistle. Clapping his friend on the shoulder, he said softly: “Charles, you’re a miracle worker. I haven’t seen such a radiant smile from Gwyn in more days than I can remember.” The other lad replied in a low voice, “I’m glad you took me into your confidence. I may be able to help you solve your problem.”

Harold asked with sincere eagerness, “You think that perhaps Gwyn can be changed without taking the extreme measure of telling her that she is Jenny Warner’s own sister?”

Charles nodded. “The ideal thing would be to so change Gwynette that she would be glad to learn that she had a sister all her very own.” Harold shook his head. “Can’t be done, old man, unless that sister proved to be an heiress or an earl’s daughter.” The boy laughed at a sudden recollection. “Poor Gwyn had a most unfortunate experience and sort of made herself the laughing stock of her crowd over at the seminary,” he confided. “She heard that there was a girl in the school whose father was a younger son of English nobility who might some day be Lady Something-or-other. Gwyn decided that that girl should be cultivated, but, unfortunately, the young lady had requested that her identity be kept a secret. No one but Miss Granger knew it. The principal had been proud, evidently, of the fact that a member of a noble English family attended her school, and had let that much be known.” Charles smiled. “I thought America was democratic and cared nothing for class,” he said.

They had stopped on the circling, softly-carpeted stairway while they talked. Being far from the library, they had no fear of being overheard by Gwyn. Harold replied: “Well, there are some of us who care nothing at all for class, but every country has its snobs and Gwyn is one, unfortunately.”

Charles appeared interested. “Did she manage to identify the girl who might some day have a title?”

Again Harold laughed. “Poor Gwyn, it really was very funny. She selected a big, handsome blonde who ordered the maids about in an imperious manner and, more than that, she gave a dance at The Palms, inviting her to be the guest of honor. I brought down a bunch of cadets from the big town and it happened one of them hailed from Chicago, and so did the handsome blonde. He told us that she was a Swede and that her father had made a fortune raising pigs!”

Charles could not refrain from smiling. “That was hard on your sister, wasn’t it?” he said.

The other lad nodded. “I wouldn’t dare refer to it in Gwyn’s hearing, but come on! Mother will wonder where we are all this time.”

Mrs. Poindexter-Jones was as much pleased with Harold’s new friend as Gwynette had been, and, in the brief ten moments that the boys stayed with the invalid, she became convinced that he was just the lad she would like to have in the cliff cabin with her son. When the nurse appeared with a warning nod at Harold, the boys at once arose, and the woman, reclining among her pillows, smiled as she held out a frail hand. “Charles Gale,” she said kindly, “we are glad indeed to have you with us. Remain as long as you can, and, when your sister is stronger, I would like to have that dear little Warner girl bring her to call upon me.”

On the way down the wide circling flight of stairs Charles said softly, “Your mother seems to like Jenny Warner.” The other nodded. “Yes, she does. She wonders if, had she chosen Jeanette, as she calls her, and the Warners had taken Gwynette, the girls would have been different. Susan Warner declares that if her Jenny had been brought up as a princess she would still have been simple and loving, going about doing good as she does now. She is the bright angel to a family of Italians living in Sycamore Canyon.”

Soft chimes from the dining-room told them that the dinner hour had arrived, and so Harold went to the library to escort his sister, Charles following. Again the bright smile greeted them. Rising, the girl said, “Brother, Ma Mere told me, when I arrived from the seminary this afternoon, that I need not remain here this summer unless I so desire.”

To Charles she explained, “I did feel so neglected when Mother sent me to this out-of-the-way country school. I wanted to be with her in France. The resort where she was staying is simply charming, and one meets people there from the very best English families. For some reason, however, I had to be buried out here.” Then, after an expressive shrug, she added with renewed interest: “Ma Mere has heard of a select party sailing from San Francisco next week, and if I wish, I may join it.”

While Gwyn had been talking, they had sauntered to the dining-room and were seated in a group at one end of the long, highly-polished table. Charles, listening attentively, now realized how truly selfish the girl was. He was recalling another girl in a far-distant scene. When their mother had been ill, Lenora could hardly be persuaded to leave her bedside long enough to obtain the rest she needed, and that illness had lasted many months. Indeed, it was not until after the mother had died that the girl could be persuaded to think of herself, and then it was found, as Charles and his father had feared, that she had used up far more vitality than she could spare and she had not been strong since. He tried not to feel critically toward the beautiful girl at his side. Purposely he did not glance at Harold. That boy had flushed uncomfortably, and, at, last, he spoke his thoughts, which he evidently had tried to refrain from doing. “Gwyn, don’t you suppose, if you stayed at home, you might make our mother’s long hours in bed pleasanter for her?”

The girl’s tone was just tinged with irritation. “No, Harold, I do not. Mother does not find my companionship restful and Miss Dane surely does for her all that is humanly possible.” Gwyn was distinctly uncomfortable. She felt that the conversation was not putting her in an enviable light and she had truly wished to impress Charles Gale, for the time being, at least. She had no desire to have the admiration a lasting one, since he was merely a rancher’s son.

Gwynette had one ambition and that was to make a most desirable marriage soon after her eighteenth birthday, which was not many months away. She was convinced that, after her debut into San Francisco’s most select “Younger Set”, she would soon meet the man of her dreams. She never doubted but that he at once would love her and desire to make her his wife. But just now it would be gratifying to her vanity to have so handsome a young giant as Charles Gale admire her. Poor Gwyn at that moment was far from having accomplished this. Charles did admire beauty, and thought how charming she would be, were she not so superlatively selfish.

Harold changed the subject. “Gwyn, we boys are going to the farm after dinner. Will you go with us? Charles naturally wishes to spend the evenings with his sister.”

Both boys waited, though not appearing to do so, for the girl’s reply. Her brother well knew that she would not want to go to the farm and associate with her mother’s servants, as she called Susan and Silas Warner and their granddaughter, but, on the other hand, Harold could easily see that his sister was much impressed with Charles Gale and might wish to accompany them for the sake of his companionship if for no other reason.

Gwyn did accept, after a moment’s thought. She knew that, all alone in the big house, she would be frightfully bored. And so, half an hour later, the three started out across the gardens, under the pines and along the cliff, where in the early twilight a full moon, rising from the sea, was sending toward them a path of silver. Gwynette paused and looked out across the water for a long silent moment. When she spoke, it was to her brother. “Harold, I’ve never before been along this cliff. In fact,” this to Charles, “all of my life has been spent either in San Francisco or abroad. This is the first year that Mother has seemed to want to come to Santa Barbara. I always supposed it was because it reminded her of our father, who died here so long ago.”

“Then you do not know the beautiful spots that are everywhere around your own home,” Charles said, and his voice was more kindly than it had been. He was sorry for the girl who had been brought up among people who thought that ascending the social ladder was the one thing to be desired. He knew, for Harold had told him, how sincerely the mother regretted all this, but now that the girl’s character was formed, they feared that only some extreme measure, such as revealing to her who she really was, could change her. Charles, who was a deep student of human nature, felt that the girl’s sincere joy in the loveliness of the path of silver light on the sea was a hopeful sign. Harold was thinking, “That is the first resemblance to Jenny Warner that I have noticed. She loves nature in all its moods.” At their first tap on the front door, it was flung open and Jenny, in her yellow dress, greeted them joyfully, pausing, however, and hesitating when she saw by whom the boys were accompanied. One glimpse into the old-fashioned farm “parlor”, with its haircloth-covered furniture, its wax wreath under a glass, its tidies on the chairs, its framed mottoes on the walls, beside chromo pictures of Susan and Si Warner made when they were married, filled Gwynette with shuddering dread. She couldn’t, she wouldn’t associate with these people as equals. Had she not been an honored guest in the homes of millionaires in San Francisco and abroad? But, distasteful as it all was to her, she found herself advancing over the threshold when Charles stepped aside to permit her to enter ahead of him. Jenny, remembering her promise to Harold, held out her hand, rather diffidently, but Gwynette was apparently looking in another direction, and so it was Harold who took it, and, although his greeting was the customary one, his eyes expressed the gratitude that he felt because Jenny had tried to fulfill her promise to him. “Don’t bother about it any more,” he said in a low voice aside, “it isn’t worth it.” Of course the girl did not know just what he meant, but she resolved not to be discouraged by one failure.

CHAPTER XXX.

GWYN’S AWAKENING

“Wall, wall,” it was Silas Warner who entered the parlor five moments later, rubbing his hands and smiling his widest, “this here looks like a celebration or some sech. ’Tain’t anybody’s birthday, is it, Jenny-gal, that yer givin’ a party for?”

“Oh, don’t I wish it were, though,” Harold exclaimed, “then Grandma Sue would make one of her famous mountain chocolate cakes.” He looked around the group beseechingly. “Say, can’t one of you raise a birthday within the next fortnight. It will be worth the effort.”

Lenora flashed a smile across the room at her brother. “Charles can,” she announced. “He will be twenty-one on the twenty-fifth of June.”

“Great!” Then turning to the smiling old woman who sat near Jenny in the most comfortable rocker the room afforded, “Grandma Sue, I implore that your heart be touched! Will you make us a cake twenty-one layers high, with chocolate in between an inch thick? I’ll bring the candles and the ice cream.”

Jenny, who for the first time was surrounded by young people, caught Harold’s holiday spirit and clapping her hands impulsively, she cried, “Won’t that be fun! Grandma Sue, you’ll let us have a real party for Charles’ birthday, won’t you?”

Of course the old woman was only too happy to agree to their plans. While she and Jenny were talking, Harold sat back and looked at the two girls, the “unlike sisters” as he found himself calling them. Gwynette sat on the edge of a slipper haircloth chair, the stiffest in the room. There was an unmistakable sneer in the curve of her mouth, which was quite as sensitive as Jenny’s but lacking the sweet cheerful upturn at the corners. Nor was Harold the only one who was thinking about this very evident likeness, or unlikeness.

Farmer Si, chewing a toothpick (of all plebeian things!), stood warming his back at the nickel-plated parlor stove, hands back of him, teetering now and then from heel to toe and ruminating. “Wall,” was his self-satisfied conclusion, “who wants her can have ’tother one. Ma and me got the best of that little drawin’ deal.”

“But that birthday is a whole week away,” Harold was saying, “and here is a perfectly good evening to spend. The question before the house is, how shall we spend it?”

“O, I know,” Lenora leaned forward eagerly. “Let’s make popcorn balls. Brother and I used to call that the greatest kind of treat when we were children.”

Gwynette’s cold voice cut in with: “But we are not children.”

Harold leaped up exclaiming, “Maybe you are not, Gwyn, but the rest of us are. Grandma Sue, may we borrow your kitchen if we leave it as spotless as we find it?”

Gwynette rose, saying coldly, “I am very tired. I think I will go home now.” Harold was filled with consternation. He, of course, would have to accompany his sister, but, before he could speak, Charles was saying: “I will walk over with you, Miss Gwynette, if you will permit me to do so. I haven’t had nearly my usual amount of outdoor exercise today, and I’d be glad to do it.”

Gwynette flashed a grateful glance at him, and, wishing to appear well in his eyes, she actually crossed the room and held out her hand to the old woman, who, with the others, had risen. “Goodnight, Mrs. Warner,” she began, then surprised herself by ending with – “I hope you will invite me to the birthday party.” She bit her lip with vexation as soon as she was outdoors. She had not meant to say it. Why had she? It was the same as acknowledging that she considered herself an equal socially with the Warners and the Gales, who also were farmers. She knew the answer, even though she would not admit it.

“What a warm, pleasant evening it is,” Charles said when the door of the farmhouse had closed behind them. “Would it bore you terribly, Miss Gwynette, to go out on the point of rocks with me for a moment? I’d like to see the surf closer in the moonlight.”

“Oh, I’d love to.” Gwynette was honest, at least, when she made this reply. She liked to be with this good-looking young giant who carried himself as a Grecian god might have done.

Taking her arm, the young man assisted the slender, graceful girl from rock to rock until they had reached the highest point. There Charles noted the canopied rock where Lenora and Jenny sat on the first day of their visit to the point together.

“Is it too cool, do you think, to sit here a moment?” Gwynette asked somewhat shyly. For answer, the lad drew off his outer coat, folded it and placed it on the stone. “Oh, I don’t need it,” he said, when she protested. “This slipover sweater of mine is all that I usually wear, but I put on the coat tonight in honor of the ladies.” Then, folding his arms, he stood silently near, watching the truly inspiring scene. One great breaker after another rolled quietly in, lifting a foaming crest as it neared the shore, glistening like fairy snow in the silver of the moonlight.

“The surf doesn’t roar tonight, the way it does sometimes,” the lad said, dropping at last to the rock at the girl’s side. “Watch now when the next wave breaks, how all of the spray glistens.”

For a few moments neither spoke and, in Gwynette’s starved soul something stirred again, this time more distinctly. It was an intense love of nature that she had inherited, with Jenny, from a wandering poet-missionary father. She caught her breath when spray and mist dashed almost up to them. “O, it is lovely, lovely!” she said, for once being perfectly sincere and forgetting herself. “I never saw anything so exquisite.”

Charles was more than pleased. Perhaps he was to find the soul of the girl at his side. Harold did not believe that she had one. As he glanced down at her now and then her real joy in the beauty of the scene before them, he concluded that she was fully as beautiful as her sister.

“I wonder where the silver path leads,” she said whimsically.

“I wish I had a sailboat here,” the lad exclaimed, “and if you would be my passenger, we’d sail over that silver stream and find where it leads.”

The girl looked up at him. Her new emotion had changed the expression of her face. It was no longer cynical and cold. “Our father had a sailboat, but for years it has been hanging to the rafters of the boathouse. Perhaps Harold would like to take it down, now that he is to be here all summer.”

“Good. I’ll ask him!” the lad was enthusiastic. “I suppose you wonder how I, a farmer from the inland, learned to sail. It was the year before mother died that we all went to Lake Tahoe, hoping that the change of air would benefit her. A splendid sailboat was one of the accessories of the cabin we rented, and how I reveled in it. I do hope Harold will loan me his boat. It seems calm enough beyond the surf. In fact I saw several boats today evidently racing around a buoy over toward the town.”

“Yes, there is a yacht club at Santa Barbara and they have a wonderful harbor. Harold has been invited to join the club. I would like to attend one of their dances.”

The girl hesitated to ask her companion if he could dance. Probably not, having been brought up on an isolated ranch. To her relief the question was answered without having been asked.

“I believe I like skating better than dancing, but, when the music pleases me and my partner, I do enjoy dancing.” Gwyn found that she must reconstruct her preconvinced ideas about Dakota farmers. Then, after silently watching the waves for a thoughtful moment, he turned toward her as he smilingly said: “Miss Gwynette, do you suppose that you and I could go to the next Yacht Club dance?”