From: Arden Town (1913; Unpublished MS)
Author: Scott Nearing
Published:
“What do Ardenites do on Sunday?” asked Fred Allen at breakfast the next morning.
“They don’t,” grinned Tim from a neighboring table. As Tim played left field and was one of the best batters on the team, he felt himself justified in taking liberties.
“What that piece of young impertinence means,” said Will Evans, with a frown of mock severity, “is that we do as we please. I please to go over to the Club House and hear some music. If you will come along I shall be charmed. What say you?”
“Agreed,” Fred Allen answered readily enough, “if you’ll tell me what kind of music.”
“Anything you like.”
“I like everything musical.” There was a time, not so far distant, in Fred Allen’s life when such a statement would have been very far from true. That time had passed, he confidently believed, forever. All music was beautiful now, and many things which he might at one time have looked upon as discordant were now vibrating in an atmosphere of exquisite harmony. He knew that he should enjoy music or anything else that chimed with the outpourings of his buoyant soul.
Will Evans was ready with a reply. “Since you like everything, we will do our best to give you just that,” he said.
As they walked toward the Club House, Will Evans explained. “There are a number of people here who can sing—two or three who have fine voices. The man who played the piano last night, for example, is an excellent tenor.”
“What a crowd you are,” exclaimed Fred Allen enthusiastically, “each one does something.”
“Of course. In that respect, as in others, we are just like people, except that each of us tries to do something that will sound or look well to the rest. In short, we try our best to be social.”
“Hello, Mitter Allen,” interrupted Elizabeth, trotting up from behind, and slipping her hand confidentially into his.
“Well, Elizabeth!” cried Will Evans, turning and patting her shoulder, “bless your sweet face. How are you this sunshiny morning?”
“Pretty well, fank you,” answered Elizabeth, with a smile of cordial greeting.
“Want to ride on my shoulder?” suggested Fred Allen.
Elizabeth nodded.
“Up you go then,” and the child, seated on his shoulder, cried out gleefully,—
“Oh, Dracie, look here!” Whereupon Gracie and two companions appeared from somewhere behind the hedge, and ran whooping gleefully around Elizabeth and her new mount.
It was a merry crowd that reached the Club House five minutes later. Fred Allen wiped his face and looked around, making the best possible use of a situation which possessed several manifest disadvantages. The decorations of the previous evening had not been changed; but in the bright light of morning, the interior of the hall looked less spacious than it had in the semi-darkness. Thirty or forty people were sitting on the benches and chairs scattered around the room, while a small group surrounded the piano. A number of those present were children.
Elizabeth, from her perch of vantage, hailed the others in no uncertain terms.
“Come and see my man,” she cried. “He’s a dandy.”
Whereupon the other children gathered speedily, swarming over Fred Allen and Will Evans like the white ants of Africa. Both men laughed good-humoredly.
“Now, now,” said Will Evans at last, “they are going to begin.”
The room quieted down, and the piano player of the night before sang in a rich tenor voice a little song about a rose and a garden. The song, which had no great intrinsic merit, was beautifully rendered.
“That is as pretty a piece of music as I have ever heard sung,” Fred Allen found himself saying to Will Evans.
“Oh, that is only a starter—wait!”
A woman of perhaps thirty, with whom Fred Allen remembered to have danced on the previous evening, next sang a pretty, light French song, in a full, well-trained soprano voice.
“Aren’t those youngsters too heavy for you?” demanded Will Evans, pointing to the child on either knee.
“No, indeed, they are just where I want them,” replied Fred Allen.
“In fact,” he added thoughtfully, “I have an idea that perhaps my shoulders and knees were made for just such purposes.”
Then came the more serious work. The tenor sang “Rigoletto” and “I’ Pagliacci,” the soprano sang “Faust” and “Carmen.” Together, they sang the “Il Miserere” from “Il Trovatore,” and the tenor-soprano duets from “Aida.” Following this, there were two duets from “Madame Butterfly.” Then the performers left the piano.
“Oh,” cried Elizabeth, clapping her hands joyously, “pleath don’t sthop! Pleath!”
“I’m sorry, Elizabeth,” said the soprano, laughing, “but it’s dinner time.”
“Dinner time!” exclaimed several voices.
Will Evans held out his watch.
“We have been here almost three hours,” he answered, “and the hour hand is moving very rapidly away from twelve.”
The crowd walked out in groups of two and three, chatting. Will Evans slipped off to talk to some one, leaving Fred Allen with the children, of whom eight had now gathered around.
“Do you like music, Elizabeth?” Fred Allen asked.
“Yeth, and I like your shoulder too,” answered Elizabeth demurely.
She was instantly seated above the rest, who crowded along, impeding progress, and running in imminent danger of having their toes crushed. Al Wilson and several of the boys came up behind, laughing.
“We’ll help you out, Boss,” he announced; and suiting the action to the word, he seized the nearest child and planted him on his shoulder. The other boys followed suit, and in a twinkling, the rabble was disposed of.
“You’d make a good pied piper,” announced one of the boys to Fred Allen. “I guess these youngsters would follow you right into the mountain.”
Al Wilson changed the subject.
“Can you handle an ax?” he demanded.
“I used to,” he replied. “You will have to wait a few minutes, however, until I clear the decks for action.”
“Oh, there’s lots of time, – Any time between now and five P.M. will answer. It looks, though, as if you were divinely appointed among the hewers of wood and drawers of water. We begin on the wood.”
“Really,” Fred Allen protested, “I don’t follow you.”
“Well,” grinned Al Wilson, “try it a little more. There are some twenty-eight or twenty-nine minutes between this and dinner time. I expect to use the interval in collecting wood for the camp fire. If you a.re inclined to play pied piper a little longer, the mob will assist in the work.”
Al Wilson led the way to a glade in -the woods. On one side a sloping bank had been terraced into seats. Directly in front of this circular terrace was a pile of ashes.
“I suppose this is the place where they have those wonderful camp fires I have heard so much about,” suggested Fred Allen.
“Right you are,” replied Al Wilson. “Here,” he added, reaching behind a log, “is a little modus operandi.” As he said this, he drew from behind the log and handed Fred Allen a decrepit looking ax “You can start on that dead chestnut.”
The chestnut, a sapling four or five inches through, was soon felled, cut into lengths, and added to the pile of small twigs and branches which the children had collected. Small limbs were broken, large limbs were chopped, and before the allotted twenty- nine minutes had passed, a very respectable heap of wood had been erected on the campfire site.
“Goody—good,” commented Al Wilson. “Any blisters?”
Fred Allen showed two small ones.
“Oh, you’ll get used to that. Besides, you’ll enjoy the show a lot more to-night. The fellows who build the fire always do. It’s their fire, and if it is a success, as our fires always are”- he stressed the “our” enormously—“We have a very good feeling inside.
An hour later Fred Allen rose from the dinner table, well content with the world and with himself. He felt that it was very beautiful and peaceful. Then, too, he remembered that Ruth Wade would be back at six that evening—a delightful climax to a delightful day, he told himself.
“How about a walk,” demanded Will Evans, as the crowd sauntered away from the dining-room. “What do you say, Al?”
“Capital, Boss,” rejoined Al Wilson heartily.
“How about you, Fred Allen?”
“Freddie is on the job,” answered that individual with a cordial good will.
The recruiting proceeded until a dozen of the younger men and women had been collected.
“It’s down to the river—no?” demanded Al Wilson.
Eventually it was agreed, and away went the crowd, chatting, laughing, gay in the scorching July sunshine. Soon they had crossed the common, plunged into the woods, and were following the stream—some snapping branches and rustling leaves along the bank, others leaping from stone to stone, along the middle of the channel. The day was hot, however, and by the time the river was reached, all were glad to drop on the shady bank and watch the launches and sail-boats glide past.
Then they formed a ring, and some played Peg with jack-knives, while others sang songs and told stories. It was a glorious quiet Sunday afternoon, with enough fun thrown in to keep the crowd alive.
Fred Allen won at Peg. He had been skilled at it at once. He joined gayly in the choruses, and laughed hugely at the jokes.
Will Evans’s turn came.
“Arthur said it was eighty-six this afternoon,” said he to one of the girls.
“Arthur who?” she answered innocently.
“Our thermometer,” retorted Will Evans dryly, and the whole crowd roared.
“Chilluns,” exclaimed Will Evans, looking at his watch, “it’s several minutes of five, If we all expect to meet that six o’clock with dear little Ruth safe inside of it, we must bid a short farewell to the river and hurry.”
Accordingly, they hurried, taking the road this time, and walking along two by two on the shady side of the way. Though they hurried, the train was already at the station when they arrived, and Ruth Wade stood on the platform waiting. At a glance she took in the situation – the return from a river walk – streaming hair, happy faces, and dusty shoes.
She listened to the greetings of the others, and then, turning to Fred Allen, she said earnestly,—
“I’m so glad! You belong, don’t you?”
Fred Allen looked ruefully at his travel-stained clothes. Then he smiled happily.
“Yes, Miss Wade, I do belong,” he answered, “thanks to you.”
A moment later they were walking up the road together, bound for Arden Town.
All Sub-Works of Arden Town (1913; Unpublished MS):
PDF Sub-Works open in a new tab. Close the tab when done viewing to return here.
