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

by Mary Jane Holmes

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.”