Run To Seed

"Run To Seed", by Thomas
Nelson Page

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Title: "Run To Seed" 1891
Author: Thomas Nelson Page
Release Date: October 12, 2007 [EBook #23015]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK "RUN TO
SEED" ***

Produced by David Widger

"RUN TO SEED."
By Thomas Nelson Page
1891

I.
Jim's father died at Gettysburg; up against the Stone Fence; went to
heaven in a chariot of fire on that fateful day when the issue between
the two parts of the country was decided: when the slaughter on the
Confe'd-erate side was such that after the battle a lieutenant was in
charge of a regiment, and a major commanded a brigade.
This fact was much to Jim, though no one knew it: it tempered his mind:
ruled his life. He never remembered the time when he did not know the
story his mother, in her worn black dress and with her pale face, used to
tell him of the bullet-dented sword and faded red sash which hung on
the chamber wall.
They were the poorest people in the neighborhood. Everybody was
poor; for the county lay in the track of the armies, and the war had
swept the country as clean as a floor. But the Uptons were the poorest
even in that community. Others recuperated, pulled themselves together,
and began after a time to get up. The Uptons got flatter than they were
before. The fences (the few that were left) rotted; the fields grew up in
sassafras and pines; the barns blew down; the houses decayed; the
ditches filled; the chills came.
"They're the shiftlesses' people in the worl'," said Mrs. Wagoner with a
shade of asperity in her voice (or was it satisfaction?). Mrs. Wagoner's
husband had been in a bombproof during the war, when Jim Upton
(Jim's father) was with his company. He had managed to keep his
teams from the quartermasters, and had turned up after the war the
richest man in the neighborhood. He lived on old Colonel Duval's place,
which he had bought for Confederate money.
"They're the shiftlesses' people in the worl'," said Mrs. Wagoner. "Mrs.
Upton ain't got any spirit: she jus' sets still and cries her eyes out."
This was true, every word of it. And so was something else that Mrs.
Wagoner said in a tone of reprobation, about "people who made their

beds having to lay on them"; this process of incubation being too well
known to require further discussion.
But what could Mrs. Upton do? She could not change the course of
Destiny. One--especially if she is a widow with bad eyes, and in feeble
health, living on the poorest place in the State--cannot stop the stars in
their courses. She could not blot out the past, nor undo what she had
done. She would not if she could. She could not undo what she had
done when she ran away with Jim and married him. She would not if
she could. At least, the memory of those three years was hers, and
nothing could take it from her--not debts, nor courts, nor anything. She
knew he was wild when she married him. Certainly Mrs. Wagoner had
been careful enough to tell her so, and to tell every one else so too. She
would never forget the things she had said. Mrs. Wagoner never forgot
the things the young girl said either--though it was more the way she
had looked than what she had said. And when Mrs. Wagoner descanted
on the poverty of the Uptons she used to end with the declaration:
"Well, it ain't any fault of mine: she can't blame me, for Heaven knows
I warned her: I did my duty!" Which was true. Warning others was a
duty Mrs. Wagoner seldom omitted. Mrs. Upton never thought of
blaming her, or any one else. Not all her poverty ever drew one
complaint from her sad lips. She simply sat down under it, that was all.
She did not expect anything else. She had given her Jim to the South as
gladly as any woman ever gave her heart to her love. She would not
undo it if she could--not even to have him back, and God knew how
much she wanted him. Was not his death glorious--his name a heritage
for his son? She could not undo the debts which encumbered the land;
nor the interest which swallowed it up; nor the suit which