University of Virginia Library

3. CHAPTER III.
HUCKLEBURY RUN AND ITS ENTERPRISING PROPRIETOR.

New and important characters wait impatiently for
an introduction to the reader, and why pause to relate
events that occurred as a matter of course, after the
death of little Venus? Why pause to tell of Aunt
Catharine's further exposition of “her mind;” of the
touching funeral of the little girl, attended to her grave
by the entire corps of the “Crampton Light Infantry,”
in procession; of each little member going up and tossing
flowers into her grave; of the prayers and preachings
of the good pastor over the “mysterious providence;”
of the reaction against infant schools among the people
of Crampton; of the disgust of Dr. Gilbert with the ignorance
and superstition of those whom he had striven
to benefit; and of the freedom in which Miss Fanny
Gilbert was left to dream of a career?

A few weeks after the events which have been narrated,
Dr. Gilbert had a long interview with Mrs.
Blague, in her snug back parlor. That little lady, pale
with her recent sickness, and dropping tears freely under

the stress of present gloomy reflections, sat rocking
the cradle of her little boy, and rocking herself at the
same time.

“You must cheer up,” said the doctor, with a voice
so sonorous that it seemed to jar the floor.

“Ah! doctor, you say it very easily; I find it very
hard.”

“Well, you must stir about, you must get out doors
and see people, and—and—get strength. That was always
Mrs. Gilbert's way.”

“Poor Mrs. Gilbert!” responded Mrs. Blague, with
an involuntary sigh. “How much comfort she would
be to me, if she were living!”

Aunt Catharine's recent remarks upon Mrs. Gilbert
had made the doctor sensitive, and he changed the direction
of the conversation.

“Well, to come back to business. We may as well
look all our troubles in the face. I find, on examining
your husband's accounts, that, after paying all the debts,
you will only have this house left. Now the practical
question is, how you are going to live. You are not able
to earn any thing, and you will not be, while this child
is young. You have but one resort, and that is Arthur.
He is eighteen years old—smart and strong—able to
earn his own living and yours too; and if he is a boy
of the spirit I take him to be, he will devote himself to
you gladly.”

“But it will be such a disappointment to him to be
obliged to relinquish study; and I had set my heart on
his going through college. It was the strongest wish of
his father that he should be an educated man, and have

a chance to rise in the world. I would willingly give
up the house—”

“It cannot be done, madam,” said the doctor, interrupting
her. “You've got a house—keep it over
your head. You've got a house—keep it over
your head. You've got a son able to earn money
enough to support you in it. Let him do it. It is as
plainly God's providence for you,” said the doctor,
rising, and walking back and forth across the room, “as
if he had told you so in so many words. Let Arthur
be called, and let us find out what he thinks about
it.”

Arthur is in his chamber writing up accounts; and
while Mrs. Blague goes to call him, let us engage ourselves
with a bit of history which is passing through the
busy mind of Dr. Gilbert. Mr. Blague had been a
humble country tradesman, industrious and frugal, but
not prosperous. He had lived comfortably and reputably,
but he had lived a life of sorrow. His first
child, Arthur, had thriven, but he had had many children,
all of whom he had lost. Some taint of constitution
had attached to all in turn, and just as they were blossoming
into childhood, one after another had sickened and
died. These repeated blows had so stricken the feeble
mother that she had become what strong people call “a
broken-down woman.” For her, there were no bright
skies, no green fields, no pleasant melody of birds, no
beautiful flowers, no life-inspiring breezes; and when
the last blow came, and he who had been her constant
friend, and her one stay and support, was taken from her,
her spirit was crushed into a helpless grief from which
she did not even care to rise. The birth of another boy,
after the death of her husband, was but an added grief,

for she had lost all hope now, that any child of hers
might live.

So, when Dr. Gilbert told her to “cheer up,” it
only made her the more sensible that she was beyond
the ability of cheerfulness. When he bade her “stir
about,” she comprehended no motive for the effort. She
could cheer no one; she could be cheered by no one.
Vital elasticity there was none within her. Her life
had become a passive, grieving, plaining thing.

There is a sound upon the stairs, and Dr. Gilbert,
growing impatient with a few minutes' delay, looks at
his watch. Arthur Blague opens the door, and respectfully
steps aside for his mother to enter. He is tall
enough and strong enough to lift her in his arms like a
child. His hair is black, his eye is dark—there is something
manly beyond his years in his bearing—yet the
down of manhood hardly darkens his lip. Shaking Dr.
Gilbert's hand, he advances to the cradle, and taking it
up, he removes it to another room. The mother follows
passively, and he shuts the door after her. Dr. Gilbert
clears his throat, and forgets what, in his hasty promptness,
he was going to say. Arthur is not a boy any
longer, and there is something in his presence—felt but
undefinable—that gives Dr. Gilbert the consciousness
that he has will and character to deal with.

Can streams rise higher than their fountains? They
can, and they do. There was more power, more character,
more life, in this boy, than either his father or his
mother possessed—nay, more than both together possessed.
He was of a more generous pattern, physically
and mentally, than either. Where did he come from?
What germ of a feeble life enclosed the germ of this

large life? Philosophy tells of great hereditary qualities
stepping proudly over the heads of many generations,
and entering into life again. Philosophy tells us
that family life is like a garden vine, that repeats the
parent root at long intervals, and pushes on with new
vitality. Philosophy is a cheat. God makes new
Adams every day.

Arthur Blague took a chair in front of Dr Gilbert,
and calmly looked him in the face. The doctor cleared
his throat, and began: “As the administrator of your
father's estate, and as his old friend, I am, of course,
much interested in the future comfort and welfare of
his family.”

Dr. Gilbert paused, uncertain how to proceed, and
drummed upon the arm of his chair with his finger-nails.
Arthur still looked in his face, and simply responded
“Yes, sir.”

“Well,” pursued the doctor, entirely breaking
down on his preamble, “to make a long story short,
we can only save this house from the estate; and some
means are to be devised for supporting your mother,
her little one, and yourself.”

“Yes, sir,” responded Arthur again.

“I am aware,” continued Dr. Gilbert, getting easier,
“that you have entertained high aims in life, and you
know, Arthur, that I sympathize with you in them. It
will be very hard for you to relinquish them, I know;
but you see how it is, and I have no doubt you will be
ready to make the sacrifice.”

“I suppose,” replied Arthur, “that I can change
my plans, without changing my aims.”

Light dawned on the doctor. He would encourage

the boy to entertain a pleasant delusion, though he was
entirely at a loss to imagine how a man could become
eminent without first attaining, in the regular way, what
people are accustomed to call “an education.”

“A very proper distinction,” said the doctor, rubbing
his hands. “Keep your aims and change your
means. Keep your eye on the goal, and, if circumstances
make it necessary to change the path by which
you have chosen to reach it, then adopt a new path. A
good distinction—very good. I'm glad you thought of
it, because it will help you, and make a change in your
plans comparatively easy.”

“Easy!” exclaimed Arthur, a half-contemptuous
twinge in his lip, and added: “I take it that the simple
question with me is, what is right, and what is best.”

“Very well, how do you decide that question?”

“I decided, before my father was laid in the grave,
that it was right and best for me to support my mother
and myself, and that it would be a shame and a curse
to me to relinquish her, or submit myself to the charity
of friends, in order to attain my own selfish ends.”

“A brave decision, Arthur Blague!” exclaimed the
doctor with a hearty smile. “Now what do you propose
to do? Will you teach a school this winter?”

“I think not.”

“Why not?”

“Because I wish to undertake some employment
which I can follow constantly, and which will give me
a regular income throughout the year. It must be near
my home, for my mother cannot be left alone. It must
be an employment of promise, in which I can feel that I

am learning that which will be of more value to me than
my wages.”

“I don't know where you'll find it,” said the doctor,
shaking his head dubiously. “There isn't much going
on in Crampton. Wagon-making is down. I had to
take one for a debt last week, and sacrifice on it.
Brooms are very uncertain. Brush is high now, and
nobody makes any thing. Ketchum & Fleesum are
doing a good deal with palm-leaf hats, I suppose. They
make considerable noise about it, at least. What do
you say to going into their store?”

“I've had enough of stores,” replied Arthur decidedly.

“Well, there's old Ruggles, down at Hucklebury
Run. He is about the only man in Crampton who is making
any thing. Cotton and sugar are high now, and the
market for linsey-woolsey was never better at the South.
He employs a great many hands, and pays good wages.”

Arthur cast his eyes, which he had held steadily on
the doctor's face till this moment, upon the floor. His
face grew red, and a mingled expression of pain and disgust
passed over it.

The doctor noticed the change, and added: “I know
that they tell hard stories about matters down at the
Run. Old Ruggles, as we call him, isn't exactly a popular
man. I suppose he does the best he can for himself,
like the rest of us, but he's a driving fellow, and brings a
great deal of money into the place. He's a member of
our parish, you know, and pays something for the support
of the Gospel.”

“And starves what he pays out of his operatives,
unless they lie,” replied Arthur.

“Well, well, we can't always tell about these
things. Men who have so many people to manage have
a great many trials we know nothing about. I'm inclined
to think he is a little hard, but he will do as he
agrees to do; and the question which you have to settle
is, whether you can earn enough in his employ to
support the family, and still be learning something that
will enable you to get up in life.”

“Dr. Gilbert,” said Arthur warmly, “you know that
old Ruggles did my father more injury than any other
man he ever dealt with. He always over-reached him,
and always abused his confidence. I have quarrelled
with him myself, and he hates me. I have no respect
for him, and can have none.”

“Very well, if you can do better, I have nothing to
say; but you see how it is. I confess that I see nothing
for you to do, unless you can find it in his establishment.”

Arthur rose, and walked the room in undisguised
distress. It was torture to think of being under the
control of one whom he knew to be mean-spirited and
tyrannical. Then the humiliation of coming upon a
level with those who had been the slaves of their employer
for years, and who, for bread, had forfeited their
manhood in a craven sycophancy, chafed his pride almost
beyond endurance. The loss of caste with his associates
in the village—young men with whom he had
hoped to dispute the honors of a higher grade of life—
he could bear better than this, but it helped to make
his cup more bitter.

“You see,” suggested the doctor, watching him
closely, “that you will not be obliged to stay at the

Run at night. You can breakfast here, take your
dinner along with you, and come home to sup and
sleep.”

Arthur did not need the suggestion. He had struggled
with himself, and he had conquered. Brushing
tears from his eyes that the conflict had cost him, he
calmly seated himself again, and said: “The matter is
settled. I shall go to the Run, if I can get employment
there.”

He had hardly finished his sentence when the doctor
rose from his seat, hurried to the window, raised it,
and shouted to a man passing along the street in a
wagon, behind a half-fed horse. Having just then received
a swinging cut with the whip, the animal was
not readily checked. So the driver gave him another
cut to make him stop, and as the horse did not understand
that way of doing business, he gave him another
cut to make him understand it, shouting “Whoa then!”
so savagely that he could be heard from one end of
Crampton common to the other.

The doctor beckoned him to return. Arthur trembled
from head to foot, not with apprehension but
with indignation. It was old Ruggles himself, on his
regular morning visit to the post-office. As he came
back to the window, his horse, half-crazed with pain and
fear, was not readily pulled up, and he was whipped
again, and then he was driven round and round a circle
in front of the house, and whipped all the way. At
length the poor brute stood still.

“I'll teach you,” said old Ruggles, spitefully, and
then seeing for the first time who had called him, whined
out by way of apology, “The fact is, doctor, the women

drive this horse so much that he isn't good for any
thing. I hate to whip a horse.”

“I never whip a horse,” said the doctor.

“Well, you can't always get along without it.
Horses are like folks. You have to straighten them
out once in a while. He! he! he!” and the proprietor
of Hucklebury Run tried to smile amiably.

“Have you a few minutes to spare now?” inquired
Dr. Gilbert.

“Well! yes—always enough to do, you know. We
are working folks down to the Run. Can't stop long.
What is't?”

“A little matter of business. Suppose you tie your
horse, and come in.”

Old Ruggles looked down upon his rusty satinet
suit, perfectly conscious that he was out of place in a decent
house and good company.

“I ain't fixed up any, you see,” said he, “but handsome
is that handsome does, as they say. He! he!
he!” and he tried to smile again. Arthur was burning
with disgust. His sensitive nature revolted from contact
with the man, but he stepped to the door and admitted
him. He took Arthur's unresisting hand, and
remembering that he was in a house which death had
recently visited, he drew on a very long and a very
sympathetic face, and told Arthur he was glad to see
him looking well, and inquired how his mother “stood
up under it.” Then he blew his nose, a tough organ,
accustomed by long usage to that process, and on the
present occasion blown as an expression of sympathy
for the bereaved family, and as a signal for the commencement
of business.

“We were talking of you the moment you drove
past the window,” said the doctor preliminarily.

“Saying nothing bad, I hope,” replied Ruggles, looking
from the doctor to Arthur, and from Arthur to the
doctor again, with his small, shrewd, gray eyes.

Arthur blushed, but the doctor, intent on business,
paid no attention to the remark, and proceeded.

“Perhaps you know, Mr. Ruggles, that Mr. Blague's
affairs do not turn out so well as we had hoped, for the
sake of his family, they might.”

Ruggles nodded his head, and said that he had heard
something to that effect.

“Which,” continued the doctor, “will make it
necessary for our young friend Arthur to relinquish
some of his plans, and to devote himself to obtaining a
support for himself and the family.”

Ruggles nodded his head again, evidently puzzled to
know why all this should be said to him.

Dr. Gilbert proceeded: “Arthur and I have been
considering the matter, and have come to the conclusion
that a situation in your establishment would perhaps
give him the best opportunity he could have for earning
reasonable wages, and, at the same time, of acquiring
knowledge of a business that would enable him at some
future day to realize a competence.”

Arthur's eyes were riveted upon the face of his
future employer. The gray eyes twinkled with a new
light, the thin, long lips twitched with unwonted excitement,
and the hard, wrinkled cheeks, black as ink
with a three-days beard, seemed to hug more tightly
the bones beneath them. The thought that the son of
the old tradesman—that Arthur Blague, who had defied

him, and who had proudly expressed his contempt of
him to his face, should become his dependent, was one
which gratified every thing that was malignant in his
nature. Arthur, with his keen instincts, read the hard
face as if it were the page of an open book.

Old Ruggles looked about the room, wrinkled his
forehead as if in a brown study, and whistled to himself.
He was at home now. He forgot his rusty suit
of satinet. He forgot the dissonance of his breeding
with that of the quiet house in which he sat. He was
the lord of a favor and a destiny, and, as a fitting expression
of his new dignity, he put his dusty feet in a
chair, and whistled again.

“Well, I don't know hardly what to say about it.
I've got all the help I care about, and I'm afraid that
Arthur ain't quite used enough to work to be contented
with us. We are working folks down to the Run, you
know;” having said which, old Ruggles subsided into
another whistle.

“I'm not afraid of work, sir,” said Arthur.

“Well, I'm glad to hear you say it. Pluck is every
thing, but I—I—don't exactly like to have you do it.
It's a kind of—sort of—coming down, ain't it?” The
proprietor of Hucklebury Run grinned maliciously, and
thought he was looking amiable and sympathetic.

“If you are particular about knowing my opinion on
that point,” replied Arthur sharply, “I think it is.”

“Now that's jest the trouble I expected. You see
we are all alike down to the Run. I work jest as hard
as any of my hands, and we can't have anybody round
that feels above his business. You can't learn my business,
and learn it so that it will be of any use to you,

unless you begin at the foot of the ladder, and work up.
I began at the foot of the ladder, and I make 'em all
begin at the foot of the ladder. Hucklebury Run is the
last place to have high notions in.”

“I suppose a man may have such notions as he
chooses, provided he does his work well,” said Arthur,
and added, “but if you don't want me, there is an end
of it. I shall try somewhere else.”

“I s'pose I can make a place for you, but I couldn't
give you much the first year.”

“How much?”

“Let's see!” and the manufacturer ciphered it out
with his eyes on the ceiling. “Ten times twelve is a
hundred and twente-e-e—ten times twelve is a hundred
and twente-e-e—fifty-two dollars—fifty-two quarters—
fifty-two quarters—sixty-five—wages and board. Well,
a hunderd and eighty-five dollars for the first year.
That's—ah—ten dollars a month for twelve months, and
a dollar and a quarter a week for board.”

“Is that all you can give?” inquired Dr. Gilbert,
very much disappointed.

“It's all that it's safe to offer, I assure you, doctor.
The fact is, he may not like, and I may not like. If he
should earn more, why, of course, I would increase his
wages.”

“But the board,” replied the doctor, “is very low.
A young man of Arthur's age cannot live on it.”

“A dollar and a quarter a week is all I ever pay at
the boarding-house, and my hands live just as well as I
do. We are all alike down to the Run. We work
hard, and live economically.”

Old Ruggles comprehended his advantage perfectly.

He knew there was no other steady employment in
Crampton procurable, that would pay Arthur as good
wages as he had offered him. So he blew his nasal
horn, as a hint that he was in a hurry.

“We will let you know,” said the doctor, “and will
not detain you longer this morning.”

The manufacturer rose to his feet, so intent on new
and pleasant thoughts that he forgot to bid his friends
good-morning. His horse shrank from him as he approached,
and was sharply jerked in the mouth as a
punishment for his apprehensions. As the jerk brought
the raw-mouthed creature back almost upon his haunches,
he kicked him in his side to bring him up again.

“I'll teach you,” spitefully exclaimed the lord of
Hucklebury Run again, as if he were addressing an
equal, or one of his operatives. Then he added, as a
piece of information that it would be well for the horse
to know, that he “hadn't got a woman hold of him
now.” The animal understood the information, and
went off down the street at a rattling pace.

Arthur said not a word, but stood exploring vacancy
through one of the parlor windows. Dr. Gilbert said not
a word, and drummed with his fingers upon the other.

“Well, Arthur, what do you say?” inquired the
doctor, breaking the silence at last.

“I shall go, I suppose,” he replied with a sigh that
was almost a groan.

“I think I would try it.”

“If I try it, I shall go through it,” said Arthur. “I
know what I shall have to encounter. I know the man;
I know his men, and I know his place. I am to be insulted,
humiliated, and overworked.”

“Oh! you exaggerate. You must not be too sensitive.
The world is all rougher than you have supposed
it to be, Arthur; and Mr. Ruggles is not so much
worse than everybody else as you imagine. Do your
work well, be quiet, learn all you can, improve all your
spare time, and keep up your high aims, and all will
come out right in the end.”

Having said this, in his most encouraging tone, Dr.
Gilbert looked at his watch, and said he must go. The
moment he crossed the threshold, and closed the garden
gate behind him, the subject was dismissed from his
mind for the time, and he plunged into the business of
the day as if a young and unperverted nature, struggling
with destiny, were a matter of the smallest consequence.
Arthur's life was only one of the things that
engaged his attention, and as soon as it was disposed of,
other things came in turn. Mrs. Blague's house was to
be saved, and the family was to be supported, more or
less ably and respectably, by Arthur. On the establishment
of his plans with relation to these affairs, he
left Arthur to himself.

Dr. Gilbert had not been aware, during his interview
with Arthur, of the struggle for self-control that
the young man had been carrying on all the time. The
moment Arthur was left alone, the reaction came. He
thought of the sneers of his old companions, the mean
satisfaction of those whose position had made them
jealous of him, the society into which he should be cast
at the Run, the humiliations which his employer
would be sure to visit upon him, and then he gave himself
up to a nervous frenzy. He walked the room, he
swung his arms with uncontrollable excitement, and exclaimed

in a hoarse whisper which he meant should
escape the ear of his mother, “Oh! I cannot do it! I
cannot do it! I cannot do it!”

Then there arose a little wail in the next room, and
the clenched hands, wildly swinging, fell at his side;
the rapid feet, pacing up and down the parlor, were
stayed, and a gush of tears came to the relief of the excited
brain. He heard the appeal of a little helpless
life, placed by Providence in his hands. Should he,
could he, be faithless to the trust? As he stood listening
to the feeble cry of the infant, his mother's voice
broke into a plaintive lullaby, to which the cradle kept
time—a sweet, dreamy melody, not of joy, but of ministry—which
recalled to him sweet faces of little brothers
and sisters long since turned to dust. Still the little
voice wailed on, still the mother sang her plaintive lullaby,
still the gently-rocking cradle kept time, and still
Arthur stood where the baby's voice arrested him.
Under the influence of the two voices, he learned in a
few minutes to front calmly the life before him. Into
his hands God had given a helpless woman—that
woman his mother—a helpless child—that child his
brother. God had honored him by a great confidence,
and he felt his heart springing up into heroic resolution.
He would devote himself to them, trusting God to take
care of and prosper him. He would outlive humiliation,
contumely, and hardship. Outside of the realm
of love and of duty, he would know no life.

Strong, and at peace with himself once more, he lifted
the latch of the door that divided him from his mother,
and approached her with a smile. The cradle was
empty, and the baby was sleeping on her bosom. She

lifted her desponding eyes to Arthur, and heaving a
sigh, asked him what had been decided upon.

“I am going to work for wages, mother, and shall
board at home with you,” replied the young man.

“Who has been in the room with you? I heard a
strange voice.”

“That was Mr. Ruggles, of Hucklebury Run.”

“What could he want here?”

“We called him in. I am going to work for him.”

“In the factory?”

“In the factory.”

“O Arthur!” and the poor woman hid her face
in her handkerchief, and sobbed as if her heart would
break.

“What is there to cry about, mother?”

“To think that you should be called to suffer so for
me,” and his mother renewed her sobbing.

Gently the tall boy dropped upon his knees, gently
he took his mother's hand, gently he bent over and
kissed the soft cheek of the sleeping baby, and then he
said, “I want to tell you, mother, all about what I am
going to do, and what I wish you to do. I am going to
work for Mr. Ruggles. I do not like him, and I expect
a great many hardships, but I am young and strong. I
can get along with my work, and with him, if I can have
you happy at home. Now you must not worry about
me, nor ask me questions. I shall go in the morning
and come at night, and I shall do this until I find some
better way to do. You must be as cheerful as you can,
and if you feel badly about me, don't tell me of it. It
will fret me, and do more to make me wretched than
all that old Ruggles can do. One of these years it will

all be right, and I shall have a business, and we can live
together, and be happy. It will be lonely here, but the
neighbors will be kind, and you can visit here and there,
and little Jamie will grow and be company for you,
and—and—you will be cheerful, will you not, mother?”
and he kissed his mother's forehead.

She could not take her handkerchief from her eyes;
she could not speak. She only pressed his hand.