He was on his way homeward early the next morning, and by noon his horse
had climbed the rising ground from which he could look down on the
Cross-roads and the post-office baking itself brown in the sun. Catching
sight of the latter edifice, he smiled a little and shook the bridle
against his steed's warm neck.
"Get along, Jake," he said. "I'm in a little more of a hurry to get home
than usual--seems that way anyhow."
The eagerness he felt was a new experience with him and stirred his sense
of humour even while it warmed his always easily moved heart. It had been
his wont during the last eight years to return from any absence readily
but never eagerly or with any touch of excited pleasure. Even at their
brightest aspect, with the added glow of fire and warmth and good cheer,
and contrast to winter's cold and appetite sharpened by it, the back
rooms had always suffered from the disadvantage of offering no prospect
of companionship or human interest to him. After the supper had been
disposed of and the newspapers read and the pipe smoked, there had only
been the fire to watch, and it was quite natural to brood as its blaze
died down and its logs changed to a bed of glowing cinders. Under such
circumstances it was easy to fall into a habit of brooding too much and
thinking of things which had better been forgotten. When there was no
fire, it had been lonelier still, and he had found the time hang heavily,
on his hands.
"But now," he said, shaking his bridle again, "there she is, and it's
quite queer, by thunder, how much she seems to give a man to think of and
what will it be when she begins to talk." And his smile ended in a jovial
laugh which rather startled Jake, who was not expecting it, and caused
him to shy promptly.
She was not asleep when he entered her presence, which was so unusual a
state of affairs that he found it a little alarming.
"Hello!" he exclaimed, "there's nothing wrong, I hope."
"Wid dat chile?" chuckled Mornin, delightedly. "I sh'd think not, Mars'
D'Willerby! Dat ar chile's a-thrivin' an' a-comin' 'long jes' like she'd
orter. Dar ain't a-gwine to be nothin' wrong wid dat chile."
"That's a good thing," said Tom.
He sat down by the cradle's side and regarded its occupant with an
interest as fresh as if she had just appeared for the first time upon his
horizon. She had been imbibing a large quantity of milk, and the effect
of this nourishment had been to at once compose her spirits and slightly
enliven them. So she employed the passing moments by looking at Tom with
steadfast and solemn eyes--not, perhaps, very intelligently, but still
with a vacant air of interest in him in his character of an object.
"Why," he said, "she's grown; she's grown in thirty-six hours, and she's
improved too. Oh, yes! she's coming along nicely."
He touched her very carefully with his large forefinger, a liberty which
she did not resent or even notice, unless the fact that she winked both
eyes might be regarded as a token of recognition.
"We'll have a box full of things here for her in a couple of weeks," he
said. "And then she can start out in life--start out in life."
The last four words seemed to please him; as he repeated them he touched
her cheek again, carefully as before.
"And start out fair, too!" he added. "Fair and square--as fair and square
as any of them."
He remained a little longer in his seat by the cradle, talking to Mornin,
asking her questions and delivering messages laden with advice from
little Mrs. Rutherford, which instructions Aunt Mornin plainly regarded
as superfluous.
"Now, Mars' D'Willerby," she giggled in amiable scorn, "didn't I raise
fo' o' my young Mistes's? Mornin ain't no spring chicken. Dar ain't
nuffin 'bout chillun Mornin h'aint heerd. Leeve dis yere chile to
Mornin."
"She ain't going to be left to anyone," said Tom, cheerfully, "not to the
best woman in Hamlin County. We've got to make up to her for two or three
things, and we're going to do it."
Having relieved himself of which sentiment, he went to his place at the
table and ate a mighty dinner, during his enjoyment of which meal he did
not lose interest in his small silent partner at all, but cast proud
glances and jocular sallies at her every few mouthfuls, partaking of her,
as it were, with his mountain trout, and finding her add flavour and zest
to his hot corn-bread and fried ham.
When he had ended his repast with an astonishing draught of buttermilk,
and was ready to go into the store, she had dozed off cosily again and
was making the best of her opportunities, so he only paused for a moment
to give her a farewell glance.
"Yes," he said, "Felicia--that'll do. When you come to the meaning of it,
I don't know of anything else that'd seem to start her out as
fair--Felicia!"
And though he said the word in a whisper it seemed to reach her ear in
some mysterious way, for she stirred slightly, though not as through any
sense of disturbance, opened her eyes upon his big figure and, closing
them the next instant, sank into soft sleep again with the faintest dawn
or ghost of a baby smile upon her face.
So, nestling under the patchwork quilt and sleeping the hours away in the
small ark stranded in the chimney corner, she began life.
* * * * *
Felicia was received by Talbot's Cross-roads with some difference of
opinion.
"I'd rather had Mirandy or Lucretia," said Mrs. Doty. "Flishyer ain't
nigh as showy as a heap o' other names, 'n' like as not, folks'll be
callin' her F'lish. Now thar's Vangerline 'n' Clementine 'n' Everlyne
that'd ha' bin showier then Flishyer."
"Tom," put in Mr. Doty, with his usual enjoyment of his friend's weakness
and strength, "Tom he'd a notion 'bout it. He said it meant som'n 'bout
her a'bein' happy, 'n' he 'lowed it'd kinder give her a start in the
right direction. It's jes' like Tom. He's full o' notions when he gits
started. I'll back him agin any man in Hamlin fur notions when he gits
started. Lord! it's jes' Tom all over!"
Through a disposition to take even names easily and avoid in all cases
any unnecessary exertion, Mrs. Doty's pronunciation was adopted at once,
which was perhaps the principal reason for a fanciful change being made
not long afterwards.
Against "F'lishyer" Tom rebelled loudly and without ceasing, but without
effect.
The fanciful change came about and was adopted in this wise. In the
course of a couple of weeks the box of little garments arrived from
Barnesville, accompanied by a warm-hearted note from Jenny Rutherford.
The unpacking of the box--which was not a large one, though it seemed to
contain an astonishing number of things, most of them of great length and
elaborateness--was to Tom a singularly exciting event, so exciting that
he found himself wondering and not at all sure that he understood it.
When he opened the box--Mornin standing at his side, her charge in her
arms--he did it with tremulous fingers, and when, having laid one article
after another in a snowy drift upon the bed, he drew back to look at
them, he found it necessary after a few moments' inspection to turn about
and pace the floor, not uneasily, but to work off steam as it were, while
Mornin uttered her ejaculations of rapture.
"I never seen nuthin' like 'em afore, Mars' D'Willerby," she said with
many excitable giggles. "Dis yer chile's a-gwine to take the flo' shore
as yo' bawn! Sich a settin' out as dat is! She'll git ter puttin' on airs
afore she's a year ole. We'll hev ter give her a settin' down wunce 'n a
while to keep her straight. Mis' Rutherford, she wus boun' to do it up in
style, she wus!"
Tom took one hand out of his pocket and ruffled his hair with it, and
then put it back again.
"Your young mistresses now," he suggested, "I suppose they are about such
things as their mothers made for them."
"Lordy, dey's a heap finer, Mars' D'Willerby--a heap finer! Dey wus rich
folks' chillun, but dey never hed sich a settin' out as dis yere--not one
on 'em."
"They didn't?" said Tom, with secretly repressed exultation. "Well, if
they didn't, I guess she'll do. They are rather nice, I reckon--and I
meant they should be. Say, Mornin, suppose you dress her up and let me
show her to the boys."
He himself picked out the sumptuous long-skirted garments she was to wear
and watched with the deepest interest the rather slow process of her
attiring. He was particularly pleased with a wonderfully embroidered
white cloak and lace cap, which latter article he abstractedly tied on
his great fist and found much too small for it. His triumph, when she was
given to his arms, he did not attempt to conceal, but carried her into
the store with the manner of a large victor bearing his spoils.
"Now look here, boys," he announced, being greeted with the usual
laughter and jocular remarks. "This ain't the style of thing we want.
Hand a man a chair."
His customary support being produced, he seated himself in it, keeping
his charge balanced with a dexterity and ease quite wonderful to behold.
"What we want," he proceeded, "is a more respectful tone. Something in
the elaborate chivalric style, and we're going to have it. What we want
is to come into this establishment feeling that there's no risk of our
being scared or upset by any durned fool startling us and setting our
delicate machinery wrong. We've come here to stay, and we expect to be
more familiar with things as we grow older, and the thing for us is to
start out right without any disagreeable impressions. We don't want to
say when we're brought in here--'Why, here's the place where that fool
gave me such a start last week. I wonder if he's here again?' What we
want is to feel that here's a place that's home, and a place that a
person's likely to look forward to coming to with the view to ah--I
should say to a high old time of an agreeable description."
"She's a-goin' to be a doggoned purty critter," said a lounger who sat on
a barrel near by.
"She ain't nuthin' like her mother," said another; "though she wus a
purty critter when I seed her."
He had only seen her in her coffin.
"She ain't like her father," put in another.
Tom moved in his chair uneasily.
"She won't be like either of them," he said. "Let that go."
There was a tone in his voice which more than one among them had now and
again noticed with some slow bewilderment during the last few weeks--a
tone new to them, but which in time they grew used to, though they never
understood its meaning.
"Kinder," they used to say, "as ef he wus mad or--ruffed up, though it
warn't that exactly, either."
"Black eyes, h'ain't she?" inquired the man on the barrel.
"Yes."
"An har. That's my kind er women, black eyes an' har, and kinder spirity.
They've more devil to 'em 'n' is better able to take care of 'emselves."
"She's got some one to take care of her," answered Tom. "That's my
business."
"You've got her mightily fixed up, Tom," remarked Mr. Doty, who had just
entered. "You'll hev all the women in the country flocking up. She sorter
makes me think o' the Queen o' Sheby. Sheby, she wus great on fixin'."
Every man who entered, seeing her as she lay in state in Tom's lap, was
drawn towards her to stand and wonder at her vaguely. There developed a
tendency to form small and rather silent groups about her. Infancy was no
novelty in this region of numerous progenies, but the fine softness of
raiment and delicate sumptuousness of infancy were. More than one man,
having looked at her and wandered away, was unable to resist the
temptation to wander back again and finally to settle in some seat or box
upon a barrel, that he might the better indulge his curiosity and
interest.
"Ye must hev spent a heap on her, Tom," was said respectfully again and
again.
The fact that "a heap had been spent on her" inspired the audience with a
sense of her importance, which amounted to reverence. That she
represented an apparently unaccountable expenditure, was considered to
reflect credit upon her, however vaguely, and to give her a value not to
be lightly regarded. To Mr. Doty the idea of the "Queen of Sheby"
appeared to recur persistently, all his imaginings of the poetic, the
dramatic, and luxurious being drawn from Scriptural sources.
"I can't think o' nuthin' else but Sheby when I look at her," he remarked
several times. "She 'minds me more o' Sheby then anything else 'n
Scripter. Minty'll jest hev to come ter see her."
This boldness of imagery struck a chord in the breast of his hearers
which responded at once. It was discovered that more than one of them had
been reminded in some indefinite manner of the same distinguished
personage.
"When she was consider'ble younger then in Solomon's time," said one
gentleman with much solemnity.
Tom himself was caught by the fancy and when his charge was referred to
occasionally in a most friendly spirit as "Sheby thar," he made no
protest against it.
"It's a thunderation sight better than 'Flishyer,'" he said, "and if it
comes easier to you fellows, I've no objection. Sheba ain't bad. There's
a kind of swing to it, and you can't get it very far wrong. The other's a
good name spoiled, and it's a name I've a fancy for saving for her. I
gave it to her--I'll save it for her, and it shall be a thing between us
two. Call her Sheba if you like."
So it fell out that Mr. Doty's Oriental imaginings sealed her fate and
gradually, by a natural process, Felicia was abandoned for Sheba, even
Tom using it upon all ordinary occasions.
Having in this manner begun life, a day rarely passed in which she did
not spend an hour or so in the post-office. Each afternoon during the
first few months of her existence Tom brought her forth attired in all
her broidery, and it was not long before the day came when he began to
cherish the fancy that she knew when the time for her visit was near, and
enjoyed it when it came.
"She looks as if she did," he said to Mornin. "She wouldn't go to sleep
yesterday after I came into the room, and I'll swear I saw her eyes
following me as I walked about; and when I carried her in after she was
dressed, she turned her head over her shoulder to look round her and
smiled when she had done it and found nothing was missing. Oh! she knows
well enough when she gets in there."
The fancy was a wonderfully pleasant one to him, and when, as time went
on, she developed a bright baby habit of noticing all about her, and
expressing her pleasure in divers soft little sounds, he was a happier
man than he had ever thought to be. His greatest pleasure was the certain
knowledge that she had first noticed himself--that her first greeting had
been given to him, that her first conscious caress had been his. She was
a loving little creature, showing her affection earlier than most
children do. Before she could sit upright, she recognised his in-comings
and out-goings, and when he took her in his arms to walk to and fro with
her, as was his habit at night, she dropped her tiny head upon his
shoulders with a soft yielding to his tenderness which never failed to
quicken the beatings of his heart.
"There's something in her face," he used to say to himself, "something
that's not in every child's face. It's a look about her eyes and mouth
that seems to tell a man that she understands him--whether his spirits
are up or down."
But his spirits were not often down in those days. The rooms at the back
no longer wore an air of loneliness, and the evenings never hung heavily
on his hands. In the course of a few months he sent to Brownsboro for a
high chair and tried the experiment of propping his small companion up in
it at his side when he ate his supper. It was an experiment which
succeeded very well and filled him with triumph. From her place in the
kitchen Mornin could hear during every meal the sound of conversation of
the most animated description. Tom's big, kind voice rambling cheerily
and replied to by the soft and unformed murmuring of the child. He was
never tired of her, never willing to give her up.
"What I might have given to others if they'd cared for it," was his
thought, "I give to her and she knows it."
It seemed too that she did know it, that from her first gleaming of
consciousness she had turned to him as her friend, her protector, and her
best beloved. When she heard his footsteps, she turned in Mornin's arms,
or in her cradle, to look for him, and when she saw his face her whole
little body yearned towards him.
One afternoon when she was about eight months old, he left her at the
usual time. Mornin, who was working, had spread a big red shawl upon the
floor and seated her upon it, and when Tom went out of the room, she sat
still playing in the quiet way peculiar to her, with the gay fringe. She
gave him a long earnest look as he crossed the threshold, a look which he
remembered afterwards as having been more thoughtful than usual and which
must have represented a large amount of serious speculation mingled with
desire.
Tom went into the store, and proceeded to the performance of his usual
duty of entertaining his customers. He was in a jovial mood, and, having
a larger number of visitors than ordinarily, was kept actively employed
in settling the political problems of the day and disposing of all public
difficulties.
"What's most wanted at the head of things," he proclaimed, "is a man
that's capable of exerting himself (Mis' Doty, if you choose that calico,
Job can cut it off for you!) a man who ain't afraid of work. (Help
yourself, Jim!) Lord! where'd this post-office be if some men had to
engineer it--a man who would stand at things and loaf instead of taking
right hold. (For Heaven's sake, Bill, don't hurry! Jake'll give you the
tea as soon as he's cut off his wife's dress!) That's the kind of men we
want in office now--in every kind of office--in every kind of office. If
there's one thing I've no use for on God's green earth, it's a man with
no energy. (Nicholson, just kick that box over here so I can get my feet
on it!)"
He was sitting near the door which connected the back part of the
establishment with the front, and it was just at this juncture that there
fell upon his ear a familiar sound as of something being dragged over the
floor. The next moment he felt his foot touched and then pressed upon by
some soft unsteady weight.
He looked down with a start and saw first a small round face upturned,
its dark eyes tired but rejoicing and faithful, and then a short white
dress much soiled and dusted by being dragged over the bare boards of the
two storerooms.
His heart gave a leap and all the laughter died out of his face.
"My God, boys!" he said, as he bent down, "she's followed me! She's
followed me!"
It was quite true. She had never crawled far beyond the limits of the
shawl before, but this morning her longing had given her courage and
strength, and she had set out upon her journey in search of him.
Those about him burst into loud, admiring laughter, but Tom did not laugh
at all. He lifted the child to his knee and held her encircled by one
arm. She was weary with her exertion and settled at once into an easy
sitting posture, her head resting against him while she gazed quietly
from under her upcurled lashes at the faces grouped about her. Their
laughter did not disturb her now that she had reached her haven of
safety.
"To think of her a-followin' him!" said Mis' Doty, "'n' her never sot off
nowhars afore. The purty little critter! Lord! Tom, she's a-gwine ter be
a sight when she's grown--with them eyes and har! An' ter think of her
a-slippin' off from Mornin an' makin' up her little mind to follow ye.
I've never had a young 'un to try it that early in all I've raised."
"Lordy!" said Mr. Doty, "she's as sot on Tom 's he's on her, 'n' ef ever
a man wus a doggoned fool about a young 'un, he is about that'n; 'n' fur
bein' a doggoned fool"--triumphantly--"when he sets out ter be, I'll back
Tom agin any man in Hamlin."
Tom said but little. He made no more jokes. He kept the child with him
through the rest of the day, holding her upon his knee or carrying her
out upon the porch.
When at supper-time he carried her back to the room, she was asleep and
he laid her in her cradle himself. He moved about very quietly afterwards
and ate his supper alone with frequent glances at the sleeper.
"Don't take her away," he said to Mornin when she came in; "leave her
here."
"'N' hev her a-wakin' 'n' disturbin' uv ye, Mars' Tom!" she responded.
"Leave her here," he said, laying his hand on the head of the cradle.
"She'll not disturb me. We shall get along finely together."
She was left, Mornin taking her departure with manifest disbelief in the
practicability of the plan. And then, having drawn the cradle to his
bedside, Tom put out the light and retired himself.
But he did not sleep for some time; having flung his mighty body upon the
couch, he lay with his arms thrown above his head gazing at the darkness
and listening to the soft breathing at his side. He was thinking over the
one event of the day.
What might have seemed a slight thing to many men had struck deep into
his great heart.
"My God!" he said, a touch of reverential tone in his whisper, "to think
of her following me!"
And he stretched out his hand in the darkness and laid it upon the side
of the cradle lightly, and afterwards fell asleep.