Mrs. Hallam's companion; and The Spring Farm, and other tales

Thea is here, and has brought her wheel and her banjo and her pet dog, besides three trunks of clothes. The dog, whom she calls Cheek, has conceived an unaccountable dislike to Aunt Kizzy, at whom he barks so furiously whenever she is in sight that Thea keeps him tied in her room except when she takes him into the grounds for exercise. Even then he is on the lookout for the enemy, and once made a fierce charge at her shawl, which she had left in the summer-house and which was not rescued from him until one or two rents had been made in it. Thea laughs, and calls him a bad boy, and puts her arms around Aunt Kizzy’s neck and kisses her and tells her she will send Cheek home as soon as she gets a chance, and then she sings “Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay,” which she says is all the rage, and she dances the skirt dance with Grant, to whom she is teaching a new step, which shows her pretty feet and ankles and consists mostly of “one-two-three-kick.” And they do kick, or Grant does, so high that Aunt Kizzy asks in alarm if that is quite proper, and then Thea kisses her again and calls her “an unsophisticated old darling who doesn’t know the ways of the world and must be taught.” Her banjo lies round anywhere and everywhere, just as do her hat and her gloves and parasol, and Aunt Kizzy, who is so particular with me, never says a word, but herself picks up after the disorderly girl, who, with Grant, has turned the house upside down and filled it with laughter and frolic. Her wheel stays at night in a little room at the end of the piazza, with Grant’s, for he has one, and with Thea he goes scurrying through the town, sometimes in the street and sometimes on the sidewalk, to the terror of the pedestrians. Thea has already knocked down two negroes and run into the stall of an old apple-woman, who would have brought a suit if Aunt Kizzy had not paid the damages claimed.

What do I think of Thea? I love her, and have loved her from the moment she came up to me so cordially and called me Cousin Doris, and told me Grant had written her all about me, and that because I was at Morton Park she had come earlier than she had intended doing, and had left her old Gardy and Aleck Grady disconsolate. “But,” she added, quickly: “Aleck is coming soon, and then it will be jolly with four of us, Grant and you, Aleck and me, and if we can’t paint the town red my name is not Thea.”

I don’t suppose she is really pretty, except her eyes, which are lovely, but her voice is so sweet and her manners so soft and kittenish and pleasing that you never stop to think if she is handsome, but take her as she is and find her charming. She occupies the guest-room of course, and I share it with her, for she insisted at once that my cot be moved in there, so we could “talk nights as late as we pleased.” Aunt Kizzy, who does not believe in talking late, and always knocks on the wall if she hears me move in the Glory Hole after half-past nine, objected at first, saying it was more proper for young girls to room alone, but Thea told her that propriety had gone out of fashion with a lot of other stuff, and insisted, until the Glory Hole was abandoned and used only for toilet-purposes.

“Just what it was intended for,” Thea said, “and the idea of penning you up there is ridiculous. I know Aunt Kizzy, as I always call her, and know exactly how to manage her.”

And she does manage her beautifully, while I look on amazed. The first night after her arrival she invited me into her room, where I found her habited in a crimson dressing-gown, with her hair, which had grown very long, rippling down her back, and a silver-mounted brush in one hand and a hand-glass in the other. There was a light-wood fire on the hearth, for it was raining heavily, and the house was damp and chilly. Drawing a settee rocker before the fire, she made me sit down close by her, and, putting her arm around me and laying my head on her shoulder, she said, “Now, Chickie,—or rather Softie, which suits you better, as you seem just like the kind of girls who are softies,—now let’s talk.”

“But,” I objected, “Aunt Kizzy’s room is just below, and it’s nearly ten o’clock, and she will hear us and rap.”

“Let her rap! I am not afraid of Aunt Kizzy. She never raps me; and if you are so awfully particular, we’ll whisper, while I tell you all my secrets, and you tell me yours,—about the boys, I mean. Girls don’t count. Tell me of the fellows, and the scrapes you got into at school.”

It was in vain that I protested that I had no secrets and knew nothing about fellows or scrapes. She knew better, she said, for no girl could go through any school and not know something about them unless she were a greater softie than I looked to be.

“I was always getting into a scrape, or out of one,” she said, “and it was such fun. Why, I never learned a blessed thing,—I didn’t go to learn, and I kept the teachers so stirred up that their lives were a burden to them, and I know they must have made a special thank-offering to some missionary fund when I left. And yet I know they liked me in spite of my pranks. And to think you were stuffing your head with knowledge at Wellesley all the time, and I never knew it, nor Grant either! I tell you he don’t like it any better than I do. And Aunt Kizzy’s excuse, that you would have neglected your studies if you had known he was at Harvard, is all rubbish. That was not the reason. Do you know what the real one was?”

I said I did not, and with a little laugh she continued, “You are a softie, sure enough;” then, pushing me a little from her, she regarded me attentively a moment, and continued, “Do you know how very, very beautiful you are?”

I might have disclaimed such knowledge, if something in her bright, searching eyes had not wrung the truth in part from me, and made me answer, “I have been told so a few times.”

“Of course you have,” she replied. “Who told you?”

“Oh, the girls at Wellesley,” I answered, beginning to feel uneasy under the fire of her eyes.

“Humbug!” she exclaimed. “I tell you, girls don’t count. I mean boys. What boy has told you you were handsome? Has Grant? Honor bright, has Grant?”

The question was so sudden that I was taken quite aback, while conscious guilt, if I can call it that, added to my embarrassment. It was three weeks since Grant came home, and in that time we had made rapid strides towards something warmer than friendship. We had ridden and driven together for miles around the country, had played and sung together, and walked together through the spacious grounds, and once when we sat in the summer-house and I had told him of my father’s and mother’s death and my life in Meadowbrook and Wellesley, and how lonely I had sometimes been because no one cared for me, he had put his arm around me, and, kissing my forehead, had said, “Poor little Dorey! I wish I had known you were at Wellesley. You should never have been lonely;” and then he told me that he had seen me twice in Boston, once at a concert and once in a street-car, and had never forgotten my face, which he thought beautiful, and that he had called me his Lost Star, whom he had looked for so long and found at last. And as he talked I had listened with a heart so full of happiness that I could not speak, although with the happiness there was a pang of remorse when I remembered what Aunt Keziah had said about my not trying to win Grant’s love. And I was not trying; the fault, if there were any, was on his side, and probably he meant nothing. At all events, the scene in the summer-house was not repeated, and I fancied that Grant’s manner after it was somewhat constrained, as if he were a little sorry. But he had kissed me and told me I was beautiful, and when Thea put the question to me direct, I stammered out at last, “Ye-es, Grant thinks I am handsome.”

“Of course he does. How can he help it? And I don’t mind, even if we are engaged.”

“Engaged!” I repeated, and drew back from her a little, for, although I had suspected the engagement, I had never been able to draw from my aunts any allusion to it or admission of it, and I had almost made myself believe that there was none.

But I knew it now, and for a moment I felt as if I were smothering, while Thea regarded me curiously, but with no jealousy or anger in her gaze.

“You are surprised,” she said at last. “Has neither of the aunts told you?”

“No,” I replied, “they have not, but I have sometimes suspected it. And I have reason to think that such a marriage would please Aunt Kizzy very much. Let me congratulate you.”

“You needn’t,” she said, a little stiffly. “It is all a made-up affair. Shall I tell you about myself?” And, drawing me close to her again, she told me that at a very early age she became an orphan, with a large fortune as a certainty when she was twenty-one, as she would be at Christmas, and another fortune coming to her in the spring, if she did not marry Grant, and half in case she did. “It’s an awful muddle,” she continued, “and you can’t understand it. I don’t either, except that one of my ancestors, old Amos Hepburn, of Keswick, England, made a queer will, or condition, or something, by which the Mortons will lose their home unless I marry Grant, which is not a bad thing to do. I have known him all my life, and like him so much; and it is not a bad thing for him to marry me, either. Better do that than lose his home.”

“Would he marry you just for money?” I asked, while the spot on my forehead, which he had kissed, burned so that I thought she must see it.

But she was brushing her long hair and twisting it into braids, and did not look at me as she went on rapidly: “No, I don’t think he would marry me for my money unless he liked me some. Aleck wouldn’t, and Grant thinks himself vastly superior to Aleck, whom he calls a bore and a crank; and perhaps he is, but he is very nice,—not handsome like Grant, and not like him in anything. He has reddish hair, and freckles on his nose, and big hands, and wears awful baggy clothes, and scolds me a good deal, which Grant never does, and tells me I am fast and slangy, and that I powder too much. He is my second cousin, you know, and stands next to me in the Hepburn line, and if I should die he would come in for the Morton estate, unless he finds the missing link, as he calls it, which is ahead of us both. I am sure you will like him, and I shall be so glad when he comes. I am not half as silly with him as I am without him, because I am a little afraid of him, and I miss him so much.”

As I knew nothing of Aleck, I did not reply, and after a moment, during which she finished braiding her hair and began to do up her bangs in curl-papers, she said, abruptly, “Why don’t you speak? Don’t you tumble?”

“What do you mean?” I asked, and with very expressive gestures of her hands, which she had learned abroad, she exclaimed, “Now, you are not so big a softie as not to know what tumble means, and you have been graduated at Wellesley, too! You are greener than I thought, and I give it up. But you just wait till I have coached you awhile, and you’ll know what tumble means, and a good many more things of which you never dreamed.”

I said I did not like slang,—in short, that I detested it,—and we were having rather a spirited discussion on the subject, and Thea was talking in anything but a whisper, when suddenly there came a tremendous knock on the door, which in response to Thea’s prompt “Entrez” opened wide and disclosed to view the awful presence of Aunt Kizzy in her night-cap, without her false piece, felt slippers on her feet, a candle in her hand, and a look of stern disapproval on her face as she addressed herself to me, asking if I knew how late it was, and why I was keeping Thea up.

“She is not keeping me up. I am keeping her. I asked her to come in here, and when she said we should disturb you I told her we would whisper, and we have until I was stupid enough to forget myself. I’m awfully sorry, but Doris is not to blame,” Thea explained, generously defending me against Aunt Kizzy, towards whom she moved with a graceful, gliding step, adding, as she put her arm around her neck, “Now go back to bed, that’s a dear, and Doris shall go too, and we’ll never disturb you again. I wonder if you know how funny you look without your hair!”

I had never suspected Aunt Kizzy of caring much for her personal appearance, but at the mention of her hair she quickly put her hand to her head with a deprecatory look on her face, and without another word walked away, while Thea threw herself into a chair, shaking with laughter and declaring that it was a lark worthy of De Moisiere.

Four weeks have passed since I made my last entry in my journal, and so much has happened in that time that I feel as if I were years older than I was when Thea came, and, as she expressed it, “took me in hand.” I am certainly a great deal wiser than I was, but am neither the better nor the happier for it, and although I know now what tumble means, and all the flirtation signs, and a great deal more besides, I detest it all, and cannot help feeling that the girl who practices such things has lost something from her womanhood which good men prize. Old-maidish Thea calls me, and says I shall never be anything but a softie. And still we are great friends, for no one can help loving her, she is so bright and gay and kind. As for Grant, he puzzles me. I have tried to be distant towards him since Thea told me of her engagement, and once I spoke of it to him and asked why he did not tell me himself. I never knew before that Grant could scowl, as he did when he replied, “Oh, bother! there are some things a fellow does not care to talk about, and this is one of them. You and Thea gossip together quite too much.”

After that I didn’t speak to Grant for two whole days. But he made it up the third day in the summer-house where he had kissed me once, and would have kissed me again, but for an accident.

“Doris,” he said, as he took my face between his hands and bent his own so close to it that I felt his breath on my cheek,—“Doris, don’t quarrel with me. I can’t bear it. I——”

What more he would have said I do not know, as just then we heard Thea’s voice near by calling to Aleck Grady, who has been in town three weeks, stopping at the hotel, but spending most of his time at Morton Park, and I like him very much. He seems very plain-looking at first, but after you know him you forget his hair and his freckles and his hands and general awkwardness, and think only how thoroughly good-natured and kind and considerate he is, with a heap of common sense. Thea is not quite the same when he is with us. She is more quiet and lady-like, and does not use so much slang, and acts rather queer, it seems to me. Indeed, the three of them act queer, and I feel queer and unhappy, although I seem to be so gay, and the house and grounds resound with laughter and merriment all day long. Aleck comes early, and always stays to lunch, if invited, as he often is by Thea, but never by Aunt Kizzy, who has grown haggard and thin and finds a great deal of fault with me because, as she says, I am flirting with Grant and trying to win him from Thea.

It is false. I am not flirting with Grant. I am not trying to win him from Thea, but rather to keep out of his way, which I cannot do, for he is always at my side, and when we go for a walk, or a ride, or a drive, it is Aleck and Thea first, and necessarily Grant is left for me, and, what is very strange, he seems to like it, while I——Oh, whither am I drifting, and what shall I do? I know now all about the Morton lease and the Hepburn line, for Aunt Kizzy has told me, and with tears streaming down her cheeks has begged me not to be her ruin. And I will not, even if I should love Grant far more than I do now, and should feel surer than I do that he loves me and would gladly be free from Thea, who laughs and sings and dances as gayly as if there were no troubled hearts around her, while Aleck watches her and Grant and me with a quizzical look on his face which makes me furious at times. He has talked to me about the missing link and the family tree, which he offered to show me, but I declined, and said impatiently that I had heard enough about old Amos Hepburn and that wretched condition, and wished both had been in the bottom of the sea before they had done so much mischief. With a good-humored laugh he put up his family tree and told me not to be so hard on his poor old ancestor, saying he did not think either he or his condition would harm the Mortons much.

I don’t know what he meant, and I don’t know anything except that I am miserable, and Grant is equally so, and I do not dare stay alone with him a moment, or look in his eyes for fear of what I may see there, or he may see in mine.

Alas for us both, and alas for the Hepburn line!

CHAPTER XI.—The Author’s Story.
THE CRISIS.

It came sooner than the two who were watching the progress of affairs expected it, and the two were Kizzy and Dizzy. The first was looking at what she could not help, with a feeling like death in her heart, while the latter felt her youth come back to her as she saw one by one the signs she had once known so well. She knew what Grant’s failure to marry Thea meant to them. But she did not worry about it. With all her fear of Keziah, she had a great respect for and confidence in her, and was sure she would manage somehow, no matter whom Grant married. And so in her white gown and blue ribbons she sat upon the wide piazza day after day, and smiled upon the young people, who, recognizing an ally in her, made her a sort of queen around whose throne they gathered, all longing to tell her their secret, except Doris, who, hearing so often from her Aunt Keziah that she was the cause of all the trouble, was very unhappy, and kept away from Grant as much as possible. But he found her one afternoon in the summer-house looking so inexpressibly sweet, and pathetic, too, with the traces of tears on her face, that, without a thought of the consequences, he sat down beside her, and, putting his arms around her, said:

“My poor little darling, what is the matter, and why do you try to avoid me as you do?”

There was nothing of the coquette about Doris, and at the sound of Grant’s voice speaking to her as he did, and the touch of his hand which had taken hers and was carrying it to his lips, she laid her head on his shoulder and sobbed:

“Oh, Grant, I can’t bear it. Aunt Kizzy scolds me so, and I—I can’t help it, and I’m going to Meadowbrook to teach or do something, where I shall not trouble any one again.”

“No, Doris,” Grant said, in a voice more earnest and decided than any she had ever heard from him. “You are not going away from me. You are mine and I intend to keep you. I will play a hypocrite’s part no longer. I love you, and I do not love Thea as a man ought to love the girl he makes his wife, nor as she deserves to be loved; and even if you refuse me I shall not marry her. It would be a great sin to take her when my whole soul was longing for another.”

“Grant, are you crazy? Don’t you know you must marry Thea? Have you forgotten the Hepburn line?” Doris said, lifting her head from his shoulder and turning towards him a face which, although bathed in tears, was radiant with the light of a great joy.

Had Grant been in the habit of swearing, he would probably have consigned the Hepburn line to perdition. As it was, he said:

“Confound the Hepburn line! Enough have been made miserable on account of it, and I don’t propose to be added to the number, nor do I believe much in it, either. Aleck does not believe in it at all, and we are going to look up the law without Aunt Kizzy’s knowledge. She is so cursed proud and reticent, too, or she would have found out for herself before this time whether we are likely to be beggared or not. And even if the lease holds good, don’t you suppose that a great strapping fellow like me can take care of himself and four women?”

As he had never yet done anything but spend money, it seemed doubtful to Doris whether he could do anything or not. But she did not care. The fact that he loved her, that he held her in his arms and was covering her face with kisses, was enough for the present, and for a few moments Aunt Kizzy’s wrath and the Hepburn line were forgotten, while she abandoned herself to her great happiness. Then she remembered, and, releasing herself from Grant, stood up before him and told him that it could not be.

“I am not ashamed to confess that I love you,” she said, “and the knowing that you love me will always make me happier. But you are bound to Thea, and I will never separate you from her or bring ruin upon your family. I will go away, as I said, and never come again until you and Thea are married.”

She was backing from the summer-house as she talked, and so absorbed were she and Grant both that neither saw nor heard anything until, having reached the door, Doris backed into Thea’s arms.

“Hello!” was her characteristic exclamation, as she looked curiously at Doris and then at Grant, who, greatly confused, had risen to his feet, “And so I have caught you,” she continued, “and I suppose you think I am angry; but I am not. I am glad, as it makes easier what I am going to tell you. Sit down, Grant, and hear me,” she continued authoritatively, as she saw him moving towards the doorway, opposite to where she stood, still holding Doris tightly. “Sit down, and let’s have it out, like sensible people who have been mistaken and discovered their mistake in time. I know you love Doris, and I know she loves you, and she just suits you, for she is beautiful and sweet and fresh, while I am neither; I am homely, and fast, and slangy, and sometimes loud and forward.”

“Oh, Thea, Thea, you are not all this,” Doris cried.

But Thea went on: “Yes, I am; Aleck says so, and he knows, and that is why I like him so much. He tells me my faults straight out, which Grant never did. He simply endured me because he felt that he must, until he saw you, and then it was not in the nature of things that I could keep him any longer. I have seen it, and so has Aleck; and this morning, under the great elm in the far part of the grounds, we came to an understanding, and I told the great, awkward, ugly Aleck that I loved him better than I ever loved Grant; and I do,—I do!”

She was half crying, and breathing hard, and with each breath was severing some link which had bound her to Grant, who for once felt as awkward as Aleck himself, and stood abashed before the young girl who was so boldly declaring her preference for another. What could he say? he asked himself. He surely could not remonstrate with her, or protest against what would make him so happy, and so he kept silent, while brushing the tears from her eyes, she continued, “I don’t know when it began, or how, only it did begin, and now I don’t care how ugly he is, nor how big his feet and hands are. He is just as good as he can be, and I am going to marry him. There!”

She stopped, quite out of breath, and looked at Doris, whose face was very white, and whose voice trembled as she said:

“But, Thea, have you forgotten the lease?”

“The lease!” Thea repeated, bitterly. “I hate the very name. It has worked so much mischief, and all for nothing, Aleck says, and he knows, and don’t believe it would stand a moment, and if it does we have arranged for it, and should the Morton estate ever come to me through Aunt Kizzy’s foolish insistence, I shall deed it straight back to her, or to you and Grant, which will be better. It is time old Amos Hepburn was euchred, and I am glad to do it. Such trouble as he has brought to your grandfather, your father, and to me, thrusting me upon one who did not care a dime for me!”

“Thea, Thea, you are mistaken. I did care for you until I saw Doris, and I care for you yet,” Grant said, and Thea replied:

“In a way, yes. But you were driven to it by Aunt Kizzy, and so was I. Why, I do not remember a time when I did not think I was to marry you, and once I liked the idea, too, and threw myself at your head, and appropriated you in a way which makes me ashamed when I remember it. Aleck has told me, and he knows, and will keep me straight, while you would have let me run wild, and from a bold, pert, slangy girl I should have degenerated into a coarse, second-class woman, with only money and the Morton name to keep me up. You and Doris exactly suit each other, and your lives will glide along without a ripple, while Aleck’s and mine will be stormy at times, for he has a will and I have a temper, but the making up will be grand, and that I should never have known with you. I am going to tell Aunt Kizzy now, and have it over. So, Grant, let’s say good-bye to all there has been between us, and if you want to kiss me once in memory of the past you can do so. Doris will not mind.”

There was something very pathetic in Thea’s manner as she lifted her face for the kiss which was to part her and Grant forever, and for an instant her arms clung tightly around his neck as if the olden love were dying hard in spite of what she had said of Aleck; then without a word she went swiftly up the walk, leaving Grant and Doris alone.

CHAPTER XII.—Doris’s Story.
THE MISSING LINK.

How can I write when my heart is so full that it seems as if it would burst with its load of surprise and happiness? Grant and I are engaged, and so are Thea and Aleck, and of the two I believe Thea is happier than I, who am still so stunned that I can scarcely realize what a few hours have brought to me,—Grant, and—and—a fortune! And this is how it happened.

Grant was saying things to me which I thought he ought not to say, when Thea came suddenly upon us and told us she loved Aleck better than she did Grant, whom she transferred to me in a rather bewildering fashion, while I accepted him on condition that Aunt Kizzy gave her consent. She did not appear at dinner that night, and the next morning she was suffering from a severe headache and kept her room, but sent word that she would see Thea and Grant after breakfast. This left me to Aleck, who came early and asked me to go with him to the summer-house, where we could “talk over the row,” as he expressed it. Love had certainly wrought a great change in him, softening and refining his rugged features until he seemed almost handsome as he talked to me of Thea, whom he had fancied from the time he first saw her.

“She is full of faults, I know,” he said, “but I believe I love her the better for them, as they will add variety to our lives. She and Grant would have stagnated, as he did not care enough for her to oppose her in any way. Theirs would have been a marriage of convenience; ours will be one of love.”

And then he drifted off to the Morton lease and Hepburn line and family tree.

“You have never seen it, I believe,” he said, taking from his pocket a sheet of foolscap and spreading it out upon his lap. He had offered to show it to me before, but I had declined examining it. Now, however, I affected to be interested, and glanced indifferently at the sheet, with its queer looking diagrams and rows of names, which he called branches of the Hepburn tree. “I have not made it out quite ship-shape, like one I saw in London lately,” he said, taking out his pencil and pointing to the name which headed the list, “but I think you will understand it. You have no idea what a fascination there has been to me in hunting up my ancestors and wondering what manner of people they were. First, here is Amos Hepburn, the old curmudgeon who leased that property to your grandfather ninety years ago. He married Dorothea Foster, and had three daughters, Octavia, Agrippina, and Poppæa.”

“Octavia, Agrippina, and Poppæa,” I exclaimed. “What could have induced him to give these names to his daughters?”

“Classical taste, I suppose,” Aleck said. “No doubt the old gentleman was fond of Roman history, and the names took his fancy. If he had had a son he would probably have called him Nero. Poppæa, the youngest, is my maternal ancestress. I inherit my beauty from her.”

Here he laughed heartily, and then went on:

“Agrippina, the second daughter, was Thea’s great-grandmother, and called no doubt after the good Agrippina, and not the bad one, who had that ducking in the sea at the hands of her precious son. As to the eldest daughter, she ought to have felt honored to be named for the poor little abused Empress Octavia; and then it is a pretty name.”

“Yes, indeed,” I said, “and it is my middle name, which my grandmother and my great-grandmother bore before me.”

“That’s odd,” he rejoined, looking curiously at me. “Yes, very odd. Suppose we go over Thea’s branch of the tree first, as that is the oldest line to which a direct heir can be found, and consequently gives her the Morton estate. First, Agrippina Hepburn married John Austin, and had one child, Charlotte Poppæa, who married Tom Haynes, and bore him one daughter, Sophia, and two sons, James and John. This John, by the way, I have heard, was the young man whom Miss Keziah wished your Aunt Beriah to marry, and failing in that she wished your father to marry Sophia. But neither plan worked, for both died, and James married Victoria Snead, of Louisville, and had one daughter, Dorothea Victoria, otherwise Thea, my promised wife, and the great-great-grandaughter of old Amos Hepburn. As I, although several years older than Thea, am in the third and youngest branch of the tree, I have no claim on the Morton estate; neither would Thea have, if I could find the missing link in the first and oldest branch, that of Octavia, who was married in Port Rush, Ireland, to Mr. McMahon, and had twins, Augustus Octavius, and Octavia Augusta. You see she, too, was classically inclined, like her father. Well, Augustus Octavius died, and Octavia Augusta married Henry Gale, a hatter, in Leamington, England, and emigrated to America in 18—, and settled in New York, where all trace of her is lost. Nor can I by any possible means find anything about her, except that Henry Gale died, but whether he left children I do not know. Presumably he did, and their descendants would be the real heirs to the Morton property, if that clause holds good. Do you see the point? or, as Thea would say, do you tumble?”

He repeated his question in a louder tone, as I did not answer him, but sat staring at the unfinished branch of the Hepburn tree. I did tumble nearly off the seat, and only kept myself from doing so entirely by clutching Aleck’s arm and holding it so tightly that he winced a little as he moved away from me, and said: “What’s the matter? Has something stung you?”

“No,” I replied, with a gasp, and a feeling that I was choking, or fainting, or both.

I had followed him closely through Agrippina’s line, and had felt a little bored when he began on Octavia’s, but only for an instant, and then I was all attention, and felt my blood prickling in my veins and saw rings of fire dancing before my eyes, as I glanced at the names, as familiar to me as old friends.

“Aleck,” I whispered, for I could not speak aloud, “these are all my ancestors, I am sure, for do you think it possible for two Octavias and two McMahons to have been married in Port Rush and had twins whom they called Octavia Augusta and Augustus Octavius, and for Augustus to die and Octavia to marry a Mr. Gale, a hatter, in Leamington, and emigrate to New York?”

It was Aleck’s turn now to stare and turn pale, as he exclaimed:

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” I said, “that my great-grandmother’s name was Octavia, but I never heard that it was also Hepburn, or if I did I have forgotten it. I know, though, that she married a McMahon and lived at Port Rush. I know, too, that Mrs. McMahon had twins, whose names were Augustus Octavius and Octavia Augusta. Augustus died, but Octavia, who was my grandmother, first married a Mr. Gale, a hatter, in Leamington, and then came to New York, where he died. She then went to Boston, married Charles Wilson, and moved to New Haven, where my mother, Dorothea Augusta, was born, and where she married my father. I have a record of it in an old English book, which, after my grandmother’s death, was sent to my mother with some other things.”

“Eureka! I have found the missing link, and you are it! Hurrah!” Aleck exclaimed, springing to his feet and catching me up as if I had been a feather’s weight. “I was never more surprised in my life, or glad either. To think here is the link right in Miss Kizzy’s hands! Wouldn’t she have torn her hair if Grant had married Thea? By Jove, it would have been a joke, and a sort of retributive justice, too. I must tell her myself. But first let’s be perfectly sure. You spoke of a record. Do you happen to have it with you?”

“Yes, in my trunk,” I said, and, excusing myself for a few moments, I flew to the house, and soon returned with what had originally been a blank-book and which my grandmother had used for many purposes, such as recording family expenses, names of people who had boarded with her, and when they came, what they paid her, and when they left; dates, too, of various events in her life, together with receipts for cooking; and pinned to the last page was an old yellow sheet of foolscap, with the name of a Leamington bookseller just discernible upon it. On this sheet were records in two or three different handwritings. The first was the birth in Leamington of Augustus Octavius and Octavia Augusta, children of Patrick and Octavia McMahon, who were married in Port Rush, April 10th, 18—. Then followed the death of Augustus and the marriage of Octavia to William Gale, of Leamington. Then, in my grandmother’s handwriting, the death of Mr. Gale in New York, followed by a masculine hand, presumably that of my grandfather, Charles Wilson, who married Mrs. Octavia Gale in Boston, and to whom my mother, Dorothea Augusta, was born in New Haven. I remember perfectly well seeing my mother record the date of her marriage with my father and of my birth on the sheet of foolscap after it came to her with the other papers from my grandmother, but when or why it was pinned into the blank-book I could not tell. I only knew it was there, and that I had kept the book, which I now handed to Aleck, whose face wore a puzzled look as, opening it at random, he began to read a receipt for ginger snaps.

“What the dickens has this to do with Cæsar Augustus and Augustus Cæsar?” he asked, while I showed him the sheet of paper, which he read very attentively twice, and compared with his family tree. “You are the Link, and no mistake!” he said. “Everything fits to a T, as far as my tree goes. Of course it will have to be proven, but that is easily done by beginning at this end and working back to where the branch failed to connect. And now I am going to tell Miss Morton and Grant. Will you come with me?”

“No,” I replied, feeling that I had not strength to walk to the house.

I was so confused and stunned and weak that I could only sit still and think of nothing until Grant’s arms were around me and he was covering my face with kisses and calling me his darling.

“Aleck has told us the strangest story,” he said, “and I am so glad for you, and glad that I asked you to be my wife before I heard it, as you know it is yourself I want, and not what you may or may not bring me. Aunt Kizzy is in an awful collapse,—fainted dead away when she heard it.”

“Oh, Grant, how could you leave her and come to me?” I asked, reproachfully, and he replied, “Because I could do no good. There were Aunts Dizzy and Brier, and Thea, and Aleck, and Vine, all throwing water and camphor and vinegar in her face, until she looked like a drowned rat. So I came out and left them.”

“But I must go to her,” I said, and with Grant’s arm around me I went slowly to the house and into the room where Aunt Kizzy lay among her pillows, with an expression on her face such as I had never seen before. It was not anger, but rather one of intense relief, as if the tension of years had given way and left every nerve quivering from the long strain, but painless and restful. Thea was fanning her; Aunt Brier was bathing her forehead with cologne; Aunt Dizzy was arranging her false piece, which was somewhat awry; while Aleck was still energetically explaining his family tree and comparing it with the paper I had given him. At sight of me Aunt Kizzy’s eyes grew blacker than their wont, while something like a smile flitted across her face as she said, “This is a strange story I have heard, and it will of course have to be proved.”

“A task I take upon myself,” Aleck interrupted, and she went on to catechise me rather sharply with regard to my ancestors.

“It is strange that your father did not find it out, if he saw this paper.”

“He did not see it, for it was not sent to us until after his death,” I said, while Aunt Dizzy rejoined, “And if he had it would have conveyed no meaning to him, as I do not suppose he ever troubled himself to trace the Hepburn line to its beginning or knew that Mrs. McMahon was a Hepburn. I have no idea what my great-grandmother’s name was before she was married. For me, I need no confirmation whatever, but accept Doris as I have always accepted her, a dear little girl whose coming to us has brought a blessing with it, and although I am very fond of Thea, and should have loved her as Grant’s wife, I am still very glad it is to be Doris.”

She was standing by me now, with her hand on my shoulder, while Aunt Brier and Thea both came to my side, the latter throwing her arms around my neck and saying, “And I am glad it is Doris, and that the Hepburn line is torn into shreds. I believe I hate that old Amos, who, by the way, is as much your ancestor as mine, for we are cousins, you know.”

She kissed me lovingly, and, putting my hand in Aunt Kizzy’s, said to her, “Aren’t you glad it is Doris?”

Then Aunt Kizzy did a most extraordinary thing for her. She drew me close to her and cried like a child.

“Yes,” she said, “I am glad it is Doris, and sorry that I have been so hard with everybody, first with Beriah, and then with Gerold, whom I loved as if he had been my own son, and who it seems married into the Hepburn line and I did not know it. And I have loved you, too, Doris, more than you guess, notwithstanding I have seemed so cross and cold and crabbed. I have been a monomaniac on the subject of the Hepburn lease. Can you forgive me?”

I could easily answer that question, for with her first kind word all the ill feeling I had ever cherished against her was swept away, and, putting my face to hers, I kissed her more than once, in token of peace between us.

That afternoon Aleck started North with his family tree and my family record, and, beginning at the date of my mother’s marriage, worked backward until the branch which had been broken with the Gales in New York was united with the Wilsons of New Haven, “making a beautiful whole,” as he wrote in a letter to Thea, who was to me like a dear sister, and who, with her perfect tact, treated Grant as if they had never been more to each other than friends. Those were very happy days which followed, and now, instead of being the least, I think I am the most considered of all in the household, and in her grave way Aunt Kizzy pets me more than any one else, except, of course, Grant, whose love grows stronger every day, until I sometimes tremble with fear lest my happiness may not last. We are to be married at Christmas time, and are going abroad, and whether I shall ever write again in this journal I cannot tell. Years hence I may perhaps look at it and think how foolish I was ever to have kept it at all. There is Grant calling me to try a new wheel he has bought for me, and I must go. I can ride a wheel now, or do anything I like, and Aunt Kizzy does not object. But I don’t think I care to do many things, and, except to please Grant, I do not care much for a wheel, being still, as Thea says, something of a softie.

I am too old now to commence a diary; but the house is so lonely with only Keziah and myself in it that I must do something, and so I will record briefly the events of the last few weeks, or rather months, since the astounding disclosure that Doris and not Thea was the direct heir in the Hepburn line. Nothing ever broke Keziah up like that, transforming her whole nature and making her quite like other people and so fond of Doris that she could scarcely bear to have her out of sight a moment, and when Grant and Doris were married and gone she cried like a baby, although some of her tears, let us hope, were for Beriah, who will not come back to live with us again, while Doris will.

And right here let me speak of Beriah’s little romance, which has ended so happily. Years ago she loved Tom Atkins, but Kizzy separated them, in the hope that Brier would marry John Haynes, of the Hepburn line, as possibly she might have done, for she was mortally afraid of Kizzy. But John had the good taste to die, and Brier remained in single blessedness until she was past forty, when Tom, who she supposed was dead, turned up unexpectedly in Cairo. Grant, who was there at the time, made his acquaintance and brought a message from him to Brier, who, after receiving it, never seemed herself, but sat for hours with her hands folded and a look on her face as if listening or waiting for some one, who came at last.

It was in November, and the maple-leaves were drifting down in great piles of scarlet in the park, and in the woods there was the sound of dropping nuts, and on the hills a smoky light, telling of “the melancholy days, the saddest of the year.” But with us there was anything but sadness, for two brides-elect were in the house, Doris and Thea, who were to be married at Christmas, and whose trousseaus were making in Frankfort and Versailles. Thea had expressed a wish to be married at Morton Park on the same day with Doris, and, as her guardian did not object, she was staying with us altogether, while Aleck came every day. So we had a good deal of love-making, and the doors which used to be shut promptly at half-past nine were left open for the young people, who, in different parts of the grounds, or piazza, told over and over again the old story which, no matter how many times it is told, is ever new to her who hears and him who tells it.

One morning when Aleck came as usual, he said to Grant, “By the way, do you remember that chap, half Arab and half American, whom we met in Cairo? Atkins was the name. Well, he arrived at the hotel last night, with that wild-eyed little girl and two Arabian servants, one for him, one for the child. He used to know some of your people, and is coming this morning to call, with his little girl, who is not bad-looking in her English dress.”

We had just come from breakfast, and were sitting on the piazza, Grant with Doris, and Brier with that preoccupied look on her face which it had worn so long. But her expression changed suddenly as Aleck talked, and it seemed to me I could see the years roll off from her, leaving her young again; and she was certainly very pretty when two hours later, in her gray serge gown with its trimmings of navy blue, and her brown hair, just tinged with white, waving softly around her forehead, she went down to meet Tom Atkins, from whom she parted more than twenty years ago. We had him to lunch and we had him to dinner, and we had him finally almost as much as we did Aleck, and I could scarcely walk in any direction that I did not see a pair of lovers, half hidden by shrub or tree.

“‘Pears like dey’s a love-makin’ from mornin’ till night, an’ de ole ones is wuss dan de young,” I heard Adam say to Vine, and I fully concurred with him, for, as if he would make up for lost time, Tom could not go near Brier without taking her hand or putting his arm around her.

Just what he said to her of the past I know not, except that he told her of dreary wanderings in foreign lands, of utter indifference as to whether he lived or died, until in Athens he met a pretty Greek, whom, under a sudden impulse, he made his wife, and who died when their little Zaidee was born, twelve years ago. After that he spent most of his time in Egypt, where he has a palatial home near Alexandria, with at least a dozen servants. Last winter he chanced to meet Grant at Shepheard’s Hotel in Cairo, and, learning from him that Beriah was still unmarried, he decided to come home, and, if he found her as unchanged in her feelings as he was, he would ask her a second time to be his wife. So he came, and the vows of old were renewed, and little Zaidee stayed with us altogether, so as to get acquainted with her new mamma that was to be. She is a shy, timid child, who has been thrown mostly with Arabs and Egyptians, but she is very affectionate, and her love for Beriah was touching in its intensity.

When Thea heard of the engagement she begged for a triple wedding, and carried her point, as she usually does. “A blow-out, too,” she said she wanted, as she should never marry but once, and a blow-out we had, with four hundred invitations, and people from Cincinnati, Lexington, Louisville, Frankfort, and Versailles. There were lanterns on all the trees in the park, and fireworks on the lawn, and two bands in different parts of the grounds, and the place looked the next morning as if a cyclone or the battle of Gettysburg had swept over it. The brides were lovely, although Doris, of course, bore off the palm for beauty, but Thea was exceedingly pretty, while Beriah reminded me of a Madonna, she looked so sweet and saintly, as she stood by Tom, who, the moment the ceremony was over, just took her in his arms and hugged her before us all. Zaidee was her bridesmaid, while Kizzy was Doris’s and I was Thea’s, and in my cream-colored silk looked, they said, nearly as young as the girls.

The next morning the newly married people left en route for Europe, and the last we heard from them they were at Brindisi, waiting for the Hydaspes, which was to take them to Alexandria. Doris will come back to live with us again in the autumn, but Brier never, and when I think of that, and remember all she was to me, and her patience and gentleness and unselfishness, there is a bitter pain in my heart, and my tears fall so fast that I have blurred this sheet so that no one but myself can read it. I am glad she has Tom at last, although her going from us makes me so lonely and sad and brings back the dreary past and all I lost when Henry died. But some time, and that not very far in the future, I shall meet my love, dead now so many years that, counting by them I am old, but, reckoned by my feelings, I am still young as he was when he died, and as he will be when he welcomes me inside the gate of the celestial city, and says to me in the voice I remember so well, “I am waiting for you, darling, and now come rest awhile before I show you some of the glories of the heavenly world, and the people who are here, Douglas, and Maria, and Gerold, and all the rest who loved you on earth, and who love you still with a more perfect love, because born of the Master whose name is love eternal.”

CHAPTER XIV.—Doris’s Story.
TWO YEARS LATER.

It is just two years since that triple wedding, when six people were made as happy as it is possible to be in this world, Aunt Brier and Mr. Atkins, Aleck and Thea, and Grant and myself, on whom no shadow has fallen since I became Grant’s wife and basked in the fullness of his love, which grows stronger and more tender as the days go on. He is now studying hard in a law office in town, determined to fit himself for something useful, and if possible atone for the selfish, useless life he led before we were married. We spent a year abroad, going everywhere with Aleck and Thea, and staying a few weeks in Mr. Atkins’s elegant villa near Alexandria, where everything is done in the most luxurious and Oriental manner, and Aunt Brier was a very queen among her subjects. When the year of travel was ended we came back to Morton Park, where a royal welcome awaited us, and where Aunt Kizzy took me in her arms and cried over me a little and then led me to my room, or rather rooms, one of which was the Glory Hole, which had been fitted up as a boudoir, or dressing-room, while the large, airy chamber adjacent, where Thea used to sleep, had also been thoroughly repaired and refurnished, and was given to us in place of Grant’s old room.

And here this Christmas morning I am finishing my journal, in which I have recorded so much of my life,—more, in fact, than I care to read. I wish I had left out a good deal about Aunt Kizzy. She is greatly changed from the grim woman who held me at arm’s length when I first came from school, and of whom I stood in fear. We have talked that all over, and made it up, and every day she gives me some new proof of her affection. But the greatest transformation in her came some weeks ago, with the advent of a little boy, who is sleeping in his crib, with a yellow-turbaned negress keeping watch over him. Aunt Kizzy calls herself his grandmother, and tends him more, if possible, than the nurse. Grant laments that it is not a girl, so as to bear some one or two of the queer names of its ancestors. But I am glad it is a boy, and next Sunday it will be christened Gerold Douglas, for my father and grandfather, and Aleck and Thea will stand for it. They have bought a beautiful place a little out of town and have settled down into a regular Darby and Joan, wholly satisfied with each Other and lacking nothing to make them perfectly happy. Aunt Brier and Mr. Atkins are also here, staying in the house until spring, when they will build on a part of the Morton estate which Mr. Atkins has bought of Grant. Oriental life did not suit Aunt Brier, and, as her slightest wish is sacred to her husband, he has brought her to her old home, where, when Aleck and Thea are with us, we make a very merry party, talking of all we have seen in Europe, and sometimes of the Hepburn line, which Aleck says I straightened,—always insisting, however, that it did not need straightening, and that the obnoxious clause in the lease would never have stood the test of the law. Whether it would or not, I do not know, as we have never inquired.