What do you think Mr. Bass is thinking and feeling after hearing Gustus’s reasons for making the trip to the banana tree?

He feels that his father doesn't love him. He feels that his father doesn't understand his needs. He feels that his father protects him from the world too much

Explanation:

I think that the wedding gift referred in the title is not the child itself the former lover gives him but the fact that his wife accepts to raise it as her own.  

The main idea of the story is the sense of duty. He might no longer love the woman that dies, but this doesn’t mean he is going to leave the child to its own means. He knows he is doing the right thing by bringing the kid to his life and taking responsibility for its up bring, that’s why he isn’t scared of telling his newly wife the truth, that he had a kid with another woman.

On the other hand, Berthe, the wife, doesn’t hesitate a moment in accepting the little one when she learned the mother has died. It shows and incredible sense of duty, raise somebody else’s child, and to me it shows not only sense of duty and commitment to her husband but to the mother, in an incredible act of sorority. She is confident in the love she and her husband share and that the other woman never represented a threat, and she knows that the mother did not mean to leave her child alone, so she takes up her responsibility.