University of Virginia Library

8. CHAPTER VIII.
MRS. RUGGLES SPREADS HER MOTHERLY WINGS OVER ARTHUR,
AND IS UNGRATEFULLY REPULSED.

The proprietor would receive no notice from Miss
Hammett, but told her angrily that she could go at
once. She accordingly made no delay in exchanging
her unpleasant quarters at the Run for the comfortable,
quiet, and tidy home of Mrs. Blague. Arthur's mother
received the new-comer very cordially, for Dr. Gilbert
had reassured her. As for Aunt Catharine and Fanny,
they were in a state of great excitement about her.
The doctor had shown more enthusiasm with relation to
Mary Hammett than any woman had excited in him for
years. He could not stop talking about her, and could
not be stopped even by Aunt Catharine's sharp rallying.

The women can safely be left to make each other's
acquaintance, and Miss Hammett to commence her
school, while Arthur's first experiences as a regular
resident of the Run are chronicled.

The life of Mrs. Ruggles and her daughter Leonora
had never been more delightful than during the illness
of the husband and father, and Arthur's detention in the

family. He had introduced a fresh element of life, and
it was in accordance with their desire that old Ruggles
had invited him to board in his family. The charge
would be the same, and the bedding, at least, much
more desirable. Arthur shrank from coming in contact
with the mother and daughter again; but his duties
would be out of the house, and he could shun them
pretty effectually, he thought.

Very little did the young man know of the resources
of his ingenious landlady. Leonora was always wishing
to do a bit of shopping, and Arthur must take her along
when he went to the post-office; or she wanted very
much to attend an evening meeting, and would walk to
Crampton, if Arthur would go for her after factory
hours; or she was out at a neighbor's house, and the
mother, worrying about her, wished that Arthur would
walk over and bring her home. Always, when Arthur
returned, the mother had retired, and there was a nice
fire to be enjoyed by those who might come in out of
the chilly air. Mrs. Ruggles said but little when her
husband was present; but when he happened to be absent
from a meal, the old range of talk was resumed,
and often became almost unendurable.

One afternoon Leonora came home from Crampton,
whither she had been on a three days' visit to a boarding-school
acquaintance, and brought back to her
mother her first knowledge of Arthur's agency in the
removal of Mary Hammett, and the stories to which it
had given rise in the village. The account which she
gave of Miss Hammett's sudden popularity, and the attention
shown to her by everybody, filled the mother
with utter dismay. Something would have to be done,

and done at once; but the matter was delicate, and
must be delicately managed. It was managed very
delicately—in Mrs. Ruggles' opinion.

Mr. Ruggles went to New York—his first visit after
his long confinement—and this was Mrs. Ruggles'
golden opportunity. She did not often visit the mill
now. Time had been when she would go in and weave
all day to help her husband along; but she had gradually
got above this kind of amusement, socially, and
grown too large for it, physically. Occasionally she waddled
into the different rooms, when her husband was away,
and held long conversations with those whom she knew,
and then went away very proudly, her cap-strings, neckerchief
points, and a great deal of wollen yarn, following
her. No sooner was her husband out of sight, and
on his way to market beyond the possibility of turning
back to look after something which he had forgotten,
than the ponderous woman made her appearance before
Arthur Blague, who was endeavoring to regulate matters
in the store, so that codfish might be made to assume
that subordinate position among dry goods which
the nature of the article and good popular usage had
designated as legitimate and desirable.

Mrs. Ruggles was very amiable. “Slicking up, eh,
Arthur?” said she, with her most amiable and patronizing
expression, and looking around upon the shelves
in admiration. “I always tell Leonora that I love to
see a young man that keeps things slick around him;
for, says I to Leonora, a young man that keeps things
slick around him, and does not leave hair in his comb,
but throws it out of the winder, and keeps the dander

all off his coat-collar, and scrapes his feet before he
comes into the house, always makes a good husband.”

“I'm afraid I stand a very poor chance,” said
Arthur.

“You musn't be so modest,” continued Mrs. Ruggles,
looking Arthur in the face very encouragingly, and
endeavoring to convey a great deal of meaning in her
look. “`Now,' says Leonora to me, when I had got
through, says she, `I know who you mean;' says she,
`you are thinking about Arthur Blague.' Dear me,
how hot it is in here!” Then Mrs. Ruggles helped
herself to a palm-leaf fan, and sat down upon a tea-chest,
that creaked as if it were going straight through
the world to the place where it came from.

Arthur had no reply to this talk, and was about to
leave her on some plea of necessity, when she said, “I
come down to the mill a purpose to ask you to come
to supper early to-night, for we are going to have something
real good. I want,” continued Mrs. Ruggles,
“that you should feel yourself to home to our house, because
you have always had a mother to look after you,
and to pervide for you, and, as I tell Leonora, it is my
duty to be a mother to you, and to make you feel to
home.” Mrs. Ruggles looked in Arthur's face with a
beaming maternal tenderness that must have won Arthur's
heart, if he had trusted himself to look at her.

“Do you love rye flapjacks, Arthur?” inquired
the maternal Ruggles, “rye flapjacks, baked in a pile,
with the butter and sugar all on?”

Arthur thought he did.

“How much that is like Leonora,” resumed the
voluble woman. “Says Leonora, says she to me, `I

don't believe but what Arthur Blague loves rye flapjacks,
and you shall have some for supper to-night,' says
she. `Arthur shall set to the head of the table, but
you shall cut them up,' says she to me, `for when you
cut them up, your hand is so fat, and the cakes is so fat,
that when your knife comes down through, and hits the
plate, it sounds good and hearty, like the cluck of a
hen.' Says I to Leonora, `It isn't because my hand is
fleshy; it's the eggs; the cluck is in the eggs, my dear.'
Oh! you ought to have heard Leonora laugh when I said
that. Says Leonora, says she to me, `Mother, I believe
you'll kill me.' How hot you do keep it here!” exclaimed
Mrs. Ruggles, wiping her face, “I'm getting
real sweaty.” Then she rose from the tea-chest, which
sprang back with a creak of relief, and giving Arthur a
parting injunction to “be to supper in season,” she
sailed out of his presence and out of the mill with a
grandeur equal to her gravity.

Arthur did not know what shape the torment of the
evening would assume, but he knew very well what its
character would be; and when the supper hour arrived,
he started off to meet the maternal yearnings of Mrs.
Ruggles in any thing but an amiable frame of mind.
On entering the half-kitchen, half-parlor, that served as
the Ruggles dining-room, he found Leonora dressed
more elaborately than usual, and wearing upon her
tame and tiresome features a sad and injured look, that
was intended to be very touching.

“You must take your old place to the head of the
table, Arthur, and perside,” said the hearty hostess,
overflowing with good-nature and hospitality. She had
been pent up within herself so long by the presence of

“father,” between whom and herself there was no more
communion than between the north and south poles, that
it was a great treat to be free. Arthur took his seat, and
Leonora sat down at his right, but did not bestow upon
him a smile—not even a look of gentle patronage.

“Leonora, dear, what makes you so kind of down
in the mouth?” inquired the affectionate mother.

“Nothing,” replied the young woman, her face inflexibly
doleful.

“What ails you, dear? Don't you feel well?”

“Feel well enough.”

“Well, well, dear, you must chirk up, or you won't
enjoy your flapjacks.”

“Flapjacks!” exclaimed Leonora contemptuously, a
gust of annoyance escaping from her nostrils, which
were always open for the delivery of her miserable
emotions.

“I know,” said Leonora's mother, sympathetically,
“that flapjacks doesn't cure every thing.”

Arthur could not help smiling at the fancy which
sprang in his mind of a very hot flapjack tied over Mrs.
Ruggles' mouth, and another bound upon Miss Ruggles'
heart. Miss Ruggles lifted her languid eyes in time to
see the smile, and sighed.

“You should remember, dear,” suggested the mother,
“that you have gentleman's company to-night, and that
whatever sufferings you have, you should cover up, so's
to make it pleasant. We're making company of Arthur
to-night, you know, and you musn't look on him as a
boarder. I've been thinking all the afternoon, how
pleasant it would be to see you and Arthur eating flapjacks
together.”

“A good deal Arthur cares for us, I guess,” said
Miss Ruggles, taking in a large mouthful of the unctuous
staple upon her plate.

“Now, my dear, you shall not talk so,” declared the
mother very emphatically; “it's just like a young girl
like you to believe all the stories that's told you. You
shan't go down to Crampton again, and get your head
full of things to distress you. You see,” Mrs. Ruggles
explained to Arthur, “Leonora has been down to
Crampton village, and she heard all about that Hammett
girl's being to your mother's, and she heard it was
you who got her away from father's mill, and what else
she heard, I don't know; but she thinks now that you
don't think so much of your old friends as you used to.
`Nonsense!' says I to Leonora. `Do you suppose that
Arthur Blague would take up with a poor creature that
he don't know nothing about, and that there don't anybody
know nothing about? Nonsense,' says I.”

“It's very romantic, mother,” said Miss Ruggles,
whose spirits were improving. “She might be a
princess in disguise, you know.”

Arthur's “flapjacks” stuck in his throat, and he felt
conscious of growing angry. He would not trust himself
to speak.

“Leonora,” said Mrs. Ruggles, in a tone of reprimand,
“you are letting your feelings run away with you.
Arthur Blague is a sensible young man, and he has feelings;
and because he thinks he's called upon to help a
poor outeast girl, that hasn't any friends, and is a suspicious
character, and wants to take her away from
temptations, and give her a chance to get along in the

world, it isn't for us who's more favored, to pick flaws
with him, or to say, Why do ye do so?”

Human nature, as it existed in Arthur Blague, could
stand no more. “Who says that Mary Hammett is a
suspicious character?” said he, his eyes burning with
anger. “Who dares to breathe a word against her?”

Mrs. Ruggles giggled. “Now you look handsome,”
said she. “Look at him, Leonora. I never see you
when you was mad before. I said to Leonora once,
says I, `Arthur Blague has got it in him, you may depend.
Them eyes of his wasn't given to him for nothing,'
says I. Have some more flapjacks, won't you?
Your cup is out, I declare. Why didn't you pass it?
Leonora, you should have seen that Arthur's cup is out,
you know my eyes is feeble.”

Arthur looked her steadily in the face till she had
finished, and then said: “Mrs. Ruggles, the woman of
whom you have been speaking is not without friends,
and will not want a friend while I live; and I will not
sit anywhere quietly and hear her spoken against. A
woman's good name is not a thing to be trifled with,
especially by a woman; and if you have any thing to
say against her, I will leave your table.”

The maternal brain was puzzled, but the maternal
ingenuity was not conquered. “It's a very kind thing
in you, Arthur, to take up for those that ain't in persition
to take up for themselves. If there's one thing that
I've always stood up for, it's my own seck. I ought to
know,” continued Mrs. Ruggles, “how easy it is to say
things, and how hard it is to prove it; but don't you
think that this Hammett girl is—well, I don't mean but
what it's all right, you know—but don't you think she

is kind of artful? They say Dr. Gilbert is quite took
up with her, and that folks think she wouldn't have any
objections to being his second wife.”

“I say I will not hear Miss Hammett abused,” said
Arthur, rising from the table in uncontrollable excitement.
“She is a noble woman, and no decent man,
young or old, can help admiring and respecting her.
There is not a woman in Hucklebury Run, or in all
Crampton, who is her equal, and if you have any thing
more to say against her, I will leave the room.”

Leonora heard the young man's declaration, and,
rising from the table, bounced out of the room. The
maternal Ruggles watched her as she retired, with fond
and painful solicitude. Then spreading her handkerchief
over her fat palm, she put it to her eyes, and exclaimed:
“You have broke her heart; Arthur, you've
broke her heart.”

“Whose heart?” inquired Arthur.

“Oh! no matter now,” sobbed Mrs. Ruggles. “This
is the thanks we get for helping poor folks, and making
much of them that can't appreciate what's done for
them. But the world is full of disappointments. Little
did I think, when I took you in, that I was ruining the
peace of my own heart's blood.”

“What do you mean? What under heaven are
you talking about?” said Arthur excitedly.

“Oh! no matter now! It's too late,” continued Mrs.
Ruggles, holding her handkerchief over her eyes with
one hand, and attending to her nose with the other.
“Go on, ruining hopes, and—and—scattering firebrands.
It's woman's lot, but I did hope that my own flesh and
blood would be spared.”

“If you mean to say or intimate,” said Arthur,
“that I have ever, by thought, word, or deed, intended
to make your daughter believe that I love her, or wish
to marry her, or that she has any legitimate expectation
that I shall marry her, you are very much mistaken;
for I do not love her, never did love her, and I never
will love her.”

“Oh! that's always the way, when peace is gone and
the heart is broke!” sobbed Mrs. Ruggles.

“Mrs. Ruggles,” said Arthur, losing all patience, “I
wish you to understand that I consider you and your
daughter a pair of fools, and that I always considered
you so.”

On the announcement of this very decided and very
uncomplimentary opinion, the young woman whose
heart was broken and whose peace was ruined reappeared,
having previously so far compromised her determination
to retire to her room as to stop upon the
opposite side of the dining-room door, and listen at the
keyhole.

“Pretty talk before ladies, Mr. Arthur Blague, I
should think,” said Miss Ruggles, resuming her seat at
the table.

“These is Crampton manners, I expect, dear,” said
Mrs. Ruggles sarcastically, forgetting about her eyes,
and dropping her handkerchief in her lap. “O my
dear! we've had such an escape—such an escape!”

“I'm sure I wish Miss Hammett much joy,” said
Miss Ruggles tartly.

“Help yourself to more flapjacks, dear,” urged the
mother, “and finish out your supper. We s'posed we
had a gentleman to the table, didn't we, dear? But

we s'posed wrong, for once. Some folks is brung up
perlite, and some isn't, and them that isn't we must
make allowances for.”

Then Leonora giggled, and the mother giggled, and
grew amazingly—almost alarmingly—merry. Arthur
looked at them in quiet contempt, and rapidly determined
upon the course it was best for him to pursue.
He knew that he had been hasty, but he could not bring
himself to believe that he should not repeat the same
indiscretion under the same circumstances.

“I bid you good night,” said Arthur, when the
laughter of the mother and daughter had subsided sufficiently
to allow him to be heard. “I presume it
will not be your wish that I remain longer in your
house, and I will look out for other lodgings to-night.”

“Suit yourself, and you'll suit me,” responded the
old woman. “The quicker you and your duds are out
of this house, the better I shall feel. Young men that
takes factory girls out of the mill, and keeps them to
his home, don't make this house any safer when the
head of the family is gone abroad.”

The idea of being dangerous society for Mrs. Ruggles
and her daughter was so ludicrous to Arthur, that
he could not help smiling, and turning on his heel, he
took his hat, and without more words went to the mill.
His first business was to find Cheek, and to reveal to
him the necessities of his condition. Cheek scratched
his head with great perplexity. “We can feed any
quantity of people at the boarding-house, but we can't
sleep 'em,” said Cheek. “I sleep,” continued he, “with
Bob Mullaly, the Irishman, and if I can only get him to

take to his old hammock under the roof again, you can
sleep with me.”

This Bob Mullaly was an old sailor, and by no
means an unpopular item of the population of Hucklebury
Run. He told yarns to the boys, every one of
which they believed, and was always trying to deceive
himself with the idea that he was on board ship. His
brief mornings he spent in splicing ropes. Sundays he
devoted to weaving hammocks, whenever he could provide
himself with the necessary twine. Occasionally, a
window of the mill directly over the pond would be
raised, and out would fly a bucket at a rope's end,
which would very certainly go straight into the water,
and dip itself full, and then Bob Mullaly would haul it
in as if he were leaning over a ship's side, and were
dipping from the sea. He sang sea-songs in the minor
key, and with a very husky voice, all day, while at his
work.

“We've been trying to get rid of the old cock this
ever so long,” said Cheek, “and this is a first-rate
chance, because he likes you, and will be glad to do you
a good turn.”

“Oh! I won't deprive Bob of his bed,” said Arthur.

“He might just as well sleep in a hammock,” said
Cheek, “such sleeping as he does, as not. He's always
agrunting, and agroaning, and chawing, and spitting,
and gritting his teeth, and snoring. Lord! you'd
think he was fighting, and dying, and eating his dinner
all at once. I'd jest as soon sleep with a highpoppytaymus.
You don't know any thing about it,” continued
Cheek. “You wouldn't sleep any for three
nights if he was within ten feet of you. Oh! I tell

you, he has the nightmare, and the nighthorse, and half
a dozen colts, and a yellow dog sometimes.”

Under this representation of Bob Mullaly's terrific
nocturnal habits, Arthur consented that Cheek should
apply to the old salt for the desired favor. Accordingly,
that young man sought him out in his room, and
succeeded very speedily in his object. Arthur then returned
to the Ruggles mansion, entered the door, and
was surprised to find awaiting him in the passage, his
valise, packed and locked, and ready for transportation.
Leonora was not visible, but Mrs. Ruggles met him,
candle in hand, and told him she “wasn't going to have
him running all over her house.” “Your things is all
in the portmanter, there,” said the old woman, “and
all I've got to say is, good riddance to bad rubbidge!”

Having finished her happily limited speech, and Arthur
having taken the valise in his hand, she turned, and
left him to find his way out in the dark and alone. As
the young man left the house, he heard mother and
daughter laughing loudly, and thought that, for women
whose hearts had been so terribly dealt with, they were
very merry indeed.

Leaving his valise in the mill until the close of the
labors of the evening, Arthur resumed his duties, which
he continued long after the bell had dismissed the operatives.
Cheek came, and sat quietly down near his
desk to wait for him, and introduce him to the lodging-rooms
of the mill. As Arthur closed the ledger, and
wiped his pen, Cheek said: “Blague, you musn't expect
any thing very grand now. I stand it well enough, because
I'm used to it; but you have been in another line,
you know. You haven't slept in an ash-hole to keep

away from old Bob Lampson, and been tucked in with
a pair of tongs, as I have.”

Arthur said that he thought he could live as other
people did, if he should try; and taking down his hat,
and taking up his valise, he announced himself ready for
bed. They went out of the mill, leaving the watchman
making his ceaseless round of the rooms, and crossed a
spongy patch of garden to reach the lodging-room.
The building which contained this room was constructed
originally for a wood-shed. It was narrow in proportion
to its length, and all the lower portion was open to
wind and weather. The necessities of the boarding-house
had induced the proprietor to construct and finish
off, in a rough way, a hall running the entire length of
the shed, with a room at one end as a general depository
of trunks and clothing. Into this hall as many beds
were crowded as it could contain, and at the same time
allow the lodgers sufficient room to dress in. In the
winter, the carpetless floor gave free passage upward to
the wind that swept through the open wood-shed beneath;
and in the summer, the hot roof imparted to the
atmosphere a stifling power, that rendered sleep well
nigh impossible, while the idea of ventilation was lost
sight of entirely.

Arthur and Cheek entered the wood-shed, and
climbed the dark stairway. On entering the hall, they
found a few dim lamps burning, and the atmosphere
pervaded by the stench of unclean breath and unclean
clothing. Sitting on his trunk, surrounded by half a
dozen boys, one foul-mouthed fellow was singing an obscene
song. Another was on the floor, near the stove,
greasing his boots. Others, still, were already in bed,

cursing those who would not permit them to sleep.
Old men of sixty, and boys of almost tender years,
were crowded into this dirty hole, where there was no
such thing as privacy, or personal decency, possible.
All heard the same foul songs, all listened to the same
obscene stories, all alike were deprived of the privilege
of reading and meditation; nay, of prayer itself, had
such a privilege been desired. It was a place where
health of body and of mind was impossible, and where
morals would inevitably rot. Arthur thought again, as
he had many times before, of old Ruggles' boast—“We
are all alike down to the Run;” and he comprehended,
as he had never done before, how the levelling process
had been accomplished.

As Arthur spoke to one and another in a cordial
and respectful way, the confusion subsided by degrees,
and a new sense of decency and dignity seemed to find
its way into the hearts of all. Perceiving that he
wished to retire, all suddenly concluded that it was
time to go to bed; and in a few minutes the motley
crowd were stretched upon their hard and dirty lodgings.
Arthur noticed that, as Cheek lay down, he took
a position directly upon the outer rail of the bedstead,
leaving to his new bedfellow nearly the entire bed.
Arthur expostulated, but Cheek declared that he always
slept so, and could never close his eyes in the world if
he were obliged to do it in the middle of a bed. If
Arthur liked the middle of a bed, he had better take it.
If he could have his way, he would never have a bed
more than nine inches wide, and he would be willing to
bet any reasonable amount of money that he could
sleep on the ridge-pole of the building without rolling

off. Arthur read the good fellow's motives, and was,
on the whole, too weary to refuse to indulge him in
self-sacrifice.

There were too many weary bodies and restless
dreams in the hall that night to allow an unaccustomed
lodger more than a few disturbed and unrefreshing
snatches of sleep. Bob Mullaly, swung up in his hammock
between the wall of the room and the eaves of
the building, had a great sea-fight that night, in which
not only immense navies were engaged, but, judging
from the sounds which found their way through the
wall, a large number of sea-monsters took part.

The night was a long one to Arthur; but, before
a particle of daylight made its appearance, the first
morning bell was rung by the watchman. Everybody
seemed to awake angry; they cursed the bell, and cursed
the watchman who rang it; but still it rang, persistently,
tormentingly, outrageously, until it became impossible
to sleep another moment. One after another
tumbled out of bed. Little boys that slept like logs
were shaken violently by the men, or pulled bodily out
upon the floor and set upon their feet. Arthur lay and
watched them for a time, by the dim light of the lamps.
Half a dozen boys near him dressed themselves without
opening their eyes, and went stumbling, dirty, and unrefreshed,
out of the room to their places in the mill.

“Sich is life!” exclaimed Cheek with a comical
sigh, as he turned and shook Arthur's shoulder.

“God pity those who cannot take it easily, like you,
Cheek,” said Arthur.

Cheek's toilet was very quickly made; and, as the
second bell was ringing, he left Arthur to dress at his

leisure. The young man was at last alone, and full of
the thoughts which such a night's experience was calculated
to excite in such a nature as his. Here was a
little world of misery, set off from the consciousness of
the great world around it, without a redeeming or purifying
element in it. There was no hope—no expectation
of any thing better. It only sought for the lowest
grade of enjoyments; it had no emulations; it pursued
no object higher than the attainment of food to eat, and
clothes to wear; it was ruled by an exacting will, and
kept in essential slavery by the fear of the loss of a
livelihood. Then he thought of his own misfortunes and
hardships, and thanked God for showing him how
greatly above the lot of multitudes of men he had been
blest. He thanked Him also for enlarging the field of
his sympathies, and for giving him an intimation,
through the pity inspired by his contemplations, of that
divinely tender consideration which the Good Father
bestows upon the outcast and the oppressed, the ignorant
and the degraded, wherever human souls look out
from human eyes.

Arthur Blague was getting his education, and we
will leave him for a while.