In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim. Frances Hodgson Burnett
room, Tom paused at the foot of the bed. All was straight and neat and cold. Among the few articles in the one small trunk, the woman had found a simple white dress and had put it on the dead girl. It was such a garment as almost every girl counts among her possessions. Tom remembered that his sisters had often worn such things.
“She looks very pretty,” he said. “I dare say her mother made it and she wore it at home. O Lord! O Lord!” And with this helpless exclamation, half sigh, half groan, he turned away and walked out of the front door into the open air.
It was early morning by this time, and he passed into the dew and sunlight not knowing where he was going; but once outside, the sight of his horse tethered to a tree at the roadside brought to his mind the necessity of the occasion.
“I’ll ride in and see Steven,” he said. “It’s got to be done, and it’s no work for him!”
When he reached the Cross-roads there were already two or three early arrivals lounging on the store-porch and wondering why the doors were not opened.
The first man who saw him, opened upon him the usual course of elephantine witticisms.
“Look a yere, Tom,” he drawled, “this ain’t a-gwine to do. You a-gittin’ up ’fore daybreak like the rest of us folks and ridin’ off Goddlemighty knows whar. It ain’t a-gwine to do now. Whar air ye from?”
But as he rode up and dismounted at the porch, each saw that something unusual had happened. He tied his horse and came up the steps in silence.
“Boys,” he said, when he stood among them, “I want Steven. I’ve been out to the Hollow, and there’s a job for him there. The—the woman’s dead.”
“Dead!” they echoed, drawing nearer to him in their excitement. “When, Tom?”
“Last night. Mornin’s out there. There’s a child.”
“Thunder ‘n’ molasses!” ejaculated the only family man of the group, reflectively. “Thunder ‘n’ molasses!” And then he began to edge away, still with a reflective air, towards his mule.
“Boys,” he explained, “there’d ought to be some women folks around. I’m gwine for Minty, and she’ll start the rest on ’em. Women folks is what’s needed. They kin kinder organize things whar thar’s trouble.”
“Well,” said Tom, “perhaps you’re right; but don’t send too many of ’em, and let your wife tell ’em to talk as little as possible and leave the man alone. He’s got enough to stand up under.”
Before the day was over there were women enough in the hillside cabin. Half a dozen faded black calico riding-skirts hung over the saddles of half a dozen horses tethered in the wood round the house, while inside half a dozen excellent souls disposed themselves in sympathetic couples about the two rooms.
Three sat in the front room, their sunbonnets drawn well down over their faces in the true mourner’s spirit, one at the head of the bed slowly moving a fan to and fro over the handkerchief-covered face upon the pillow. A dead silence pervaded the place, except when it was broken by occasional brief remarks made in a whisper.
“She was a mighty purty-lookin’ young critter,” they said. “A sight younger-lookin’ than her man.”
“What’s the child?”
“Gal.”
“Gal? That’s a pity. Gals ain’t much chance of bein’ raised right whar they’re left.”
“Hain’t they any folks, neither on ’em?”
“Nobody don’t know. Nobody hain’t heerd nothin’ about ’em. They wus kinder curi’s about keepin’ to themselves.”
“If either on ’em had any folks—even if they wus only sort o’ kin—they might take the chile.”
“Mebbe they will. Seems to reason they must have some kin—even if they ain’t nigh.”
Then the silence reigned again and the woman at the bed’s head gave her undivided attention to the slow, regular motion of her palm-leaf fan.
In the room beyond a small fire burned in spite of the warmth of the day, and divers small tin cups and pipkins simmered before and upon the cinders of it, Aunt Mornin varying her other duties by moving them a shade nearer to the heat or farther from it, and stirring and tasting at intervals.
Upon a low rocking-chair before the hearth sat the wife of the family man before referred to. She was a tall, angular creature, the mother of fifteen, comprising in their number three sets of twins. She held her snuff-stick between her teeth and the child on her lap, with an easy professional air.
“I hain’t never had to raise none o’ mine by hand since Martin Luther,” she remarked. “I’ve been mighty glad on it, for he was a sight o’ trouble. Kinder colicky and weakly. Never done no good till we got him off the bottle. He’d one cow’s milk, too, all the time. I was powerful partickerler ’bout that. I’d never have raised him if I hadn’t bin. ‘N’ to this day Martin Luther hain’t what ’Poleon and Orlando is.”
“Dis yere chile ain’t gwine to be no trouble to nobody,” put in Aunt Mornin. “She’s a powerful good chile to begin with, ‘n’ she’s a chile that’s gwine to thrive. She hain’t done no cryin’ uv no consequence yit, ‘n’ whar a chile starts out dat dar way it speaks well for her. If Mornin had de raisin’ o’ dat chile, dar wouldn’t be no trouble ’t all. Bile der milk well ‘n’ d’lute down right, ‘n’ a chile like dat ain’t gwine to have no colick. My young Mistis Mars D’Willerby bought me from, I’ve raised three o’ hern, an’ I’m used to bilin’ it right and d’lutin’ it down right. Dar’s a heap in de d’lutin’. Dis yere bottle’s ready now, Mis’ Doty, ef ye want it.”
“It’s the very bottle I raised Martin Luther on,” said Mrs. Doty. “It brings back ole times to see it. She takes it purty well, don’t she? Massy sakes! How f’erce she looks for sich a little thing!”
Later in the day there arose the question of how she should be disposed of for the night, and it was in the midst of this discussion that Tom De Willoughby entered.
“Thar ain’t but one room; I s’pose he’ll sleep in that,” said Mrs. Doty, “ ‘n’ the Lord knows he don’t look the kind o’ critter to know what to do with a chile. We hain’t none o’ us seen him since this mornin’. I guess he’s kinder wanderin’ round. Does any of you know whar he is? We might ax what he ’lows to do.”
Tom bent down over the child as it lay in the woman’s lap. No one could see his face.
“I know what he’s going to do,” he said. “He’s going away to-morrow after the funeral.”
“ ‘N’ take the child?” in a chorus.
“No,” said Tom, professing to be deeply interested in the unclosing of the small red fist. “I’m going to take the child.”
There were four sharp exclamations, and for a second or so all four women gazed at him with open mouths. It was Mrs. Doty who first recovered herself sufficiently to speak. She gave him a lively dig with her elbow.
“Now, Tom D’Willerby,” she said, “none of your foolin’. This yere ain’t no time for it.”
“Mars D’Willerby,” said Aunt Mornin, “dis chile’s mother’s a-lyin’ dead in the nex’ room.”
Tom stooped a trifle lower. He put out both his hands and took the baby in them.
“I’m not foolin’,” he said, rather uncertainly. “I’m in earnest, ladies. The mother is dead and the man’s going away. There’s nobody else to claim her, he tells me, and so I’ll claim her. There’s enough of me to take care of her, and I mean to do it.”
It