In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim. Frances Hodgson Burnett
kind of thing she wants—pretty and with plenty of frills.”
He seemed to set his heart especially upon this abundance of frills and kept it in view throughout the entire arrangements. Little Mrs. Rutherford was to take charge of the matter, purchasing all necessaries and superintending the work of placing it in competent hands.
“Why,” she said, laughing at him delightedly, “she’ll be the best dressed baby in the county.”
“I’d like her to be among the best,” said Tom, with a grave face, “among the best.”
Whereupon Mrs. Rutherford laughed a little again, and then quite suddenly stopped and regarded him for a moment with some thoughtfulness.
“He has some curious notions about that baby, mother,” she said afterwards. “I can see it in all he says. Everyone mightn’t understand it. I’m not sure I do myself, but he has a big, kind heart, that Tom de Willoughby, a big, kind heart.”
She understood more clearly the workings of the big, kind heart before he left them the next morning.
At night after she had put her child to sleep, she joined him on the front porch, where he sat in the moonlight, and there he spoke more fully to her.
He had seated himself upon the steps of the porch and wore a deeper reflective air, as he played with a spray of honeysuckle he had broken from its vine.
She drew up her rocking-chair and sat down near him.
“I actually believe you are thinking of that baby now,” she said, with a laugh. “You really look as if you were.”
“Well,” he admitted, “the fact is that’s just what I was doing—thinking of her.”
“Well, and what were you thinking?”
“I was thinking—” holding his spray of honeysuckle between his thumb and forefinger and looking at it in an interested way, “I was thinking about what name I should give her.”
“Oh!” she said, “she hasn’t any name?”
“No,” Tom answered, without removing his eyes from his honeysuckle, “she hasn’t any name yet.”
“Well,” she exclaimed, “they were queer people.”
There was a moment’s silence which she spent in looking curiously both at him and his honeysuckle.
“What was her mother’s name?” she asked at last.
“I don’t know.”
Mrs. Rutherford sat up in her chair.
“You don’t know!”
“She was dying when I saw her first, and I never thought of asking.”
“But her father?”
“I didn’t think of asking that either, and nobody knew anything of them. I suppose he was not in the frame of mind to think of such things himself. It was all over and done with so soon. He went away as soon as she was buried.”
Mrs. Rutherford sank back into her chair.
“It’s the strangest story I ever heard of in my life,” she commented, with a sigh of amazement. “The man must have been crazed with grief. I suppose he was very fond of his wife?”
“I suppose so,” said Tom.
There was another pause of a few moments, and from the thoughts with which they occupied it Mrs. Rutherford roused herself with a visible effort.
“Well,” she said, cheerily, “let it be a pretty name.”
“Yes,” answered Tom, “it must be a pretty one.”
He turned the bit of honeysuckle so that the moonlight fell on its faintly tinted flower. It really seemed as if he felt he should get on better for having it to look at and refer to.
“I want it to be a pretty name,” he went on, “and I’ve thought of a good many that sounded well enough, but none of them seemed exactly to hit my fancy in the right way until I thought of one that came into my mind a few moments ago as I sat here. It has a pleasant meaning—I don’t know that there’s anything in that, of course; but I’ve got a sort of whim about it. I suppose it’s a whim. What do you think—” looking very hard at the honeysuckle, “of Felicia?”
“I think,” said his companion, “that it is likely to be the best name you could give her, for if she isn’t a happy creature it won’t be your fault.”
“Well,” said Tom, “I’ve set out to do my best and I’d like to give her a fair start in every way, even in her name, though there mayn’t be anything in it, but I’d like to do it. I suppose it’s time I should be having some object in life. I’ve never had one before, and I’ve been a useless fellow. Well, I’ve got one now by chance, and I’m bound to hold on to it and do what I can. I want her to have what chances I can give her on her side, and it came into my mind that Felicia——”
He stopped to consult the honeysuckle, as it were, and Jenny Rutherford broke in:
“Yes,” she said, “Felicia is the name for her, and it’s a beautiful thought——”
“Oh!” interrupted Tom, bestirring himself uneasily, “it’s a natural thought. She needs all she can get to balance the trouble she began life with. Most other little chaps begin it in a livelier way—in a way that’s more natural, born into a home, and all that. It’s a desolate business that she should have no one but a clumsy fellow like me to pick her up, and that there should be a shadow of—of trouble and pain and death over her from the first. Good Lord!” with a sudden movement of his big arm, “let’s sweep it away if we can.”
The thought so stirred him, that he turned quite around as he sat.
“Look here,” he said, “that’s what I was aiming at when I set my mind on having her things frilled up and ornamented. I want them to be what they might have been if she had been born of a woman who was happy and well cared for and—and loved—as if she had been thought of and looked forward to and provided for in a—in a tender way—as they say young mothers do such things: you know how that is; I don’t, perhaps, I’ve only thought of it sometimes——” his voice suddenly dropping.
But he had thought of it often, in his lonely back room one winter a few years ago, when it had drifted to him that his brother De Courcy was the father of a son.
Mrs. Rutherford leaned forward in her seat, tears rose in her eyes, and she put her hand impulsively on his shoulder.
“Oh!” she cried, “you are a good man. You’re a good man, and if she lives, she will tell you so and love you with all her heart. I will see to the little clothes just as if they were Nellie’s own” (Nellie being the baby, or more properly speaking, the last baby, as there were others in the household). “And if there is anything I can ever do for the little thing, let me do it for her poor young mother’s sake.”
Tom thanked her gratefully.
“I shall be glad to come to you often enough, I reckon,” he said. “I guess she’ll have her little sick spells, as they all do, and it’ll help wonderfully to have someone to call on. There’s her teeth now,” anxiously, “they’ll be coming through in a few months, and then there’ll be the deuce to pay.”
He was so overweighted by this reflection, that he was silent for some minutes afterwards and was only roused by a question requiring a reply.
Later the Judge came in and engaged him in political conversation, all the Judge’s conversation being of a political nature and generally tending to vigorous denunciations of some candidate for election who belonged to the opposite party. In Barnesville political feeling ran high, never running low, even when there was no one to be elected or defeated, which was very seldom the case, for between such elections