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_.