Chapter XXVII.

From: Arden Town (1913; Unpublished MS)
Author: Scott Nearing
Published:

  Sunday did not dawn. Instead, it filtered, bit by bit, through a driving rain. The storm must have begun after midnight, but it had made up for late coming by a generous bounty in the much-needed rain.

  Fred Allen rose betimes, decking himself out again in a soft silk shirt and flannels, and made his way across the green to the Inn. The grass was drenched. The trees, heavy with moisture, hung down their smaller branches despondently, pouring to the ground a load that they could no longer carry. Except for the patter of rain-drops, the morning was peaceful. Nature drank in the longed-for moisture with silent gratitude.

  As they finished breakfast, Will Evans said to Fred Allen,—

  “You and I are to take dinner with Ruth to-day. She says that we must wash the dishes; but the compensation which she offers in the form of bright smiles, sweet tones, and well-cooked food, more than makes up the difference.”

  “I am still thinking of last night,” mused Fred Allen. “How unique it all seemed – we might have been in fairyland! As for Titania,” he added, half to himself, “she was a dream, spiritualized, resplendent. Never did I think——”

  He paused, confusedly, for a moment; and then noting the sympathy in the glance which Will Evans gave him, he added simply, “I think she is the most wonderful woman I have ever seen.”

  They walked out together across the green, Will Evans to do some odd jobs, and Fred Allen to accept in person the dinner invitation. Several others, protected by rubber coats from the worst inclemencies of the weather, greeted him joyously, glorying in the enriching wetness of the day and the sweet, damp, invigorating air.

  Without knowing exactly how he got there, Fred Allen found himself lifting the latch of Ruth Wade’s cottage, and then chatting, singing, and laughing with a gay group that had gathered. Before he had thought of the clock, Ruth was preparing the table, and Will Evans had come in to dinner.

  The meal, like all of those which Fred Allen had eaten there, was well prepared, and served with that dainty taste known among women of domestic inclination to be largely a matter of inherited, rather than of acquired, ability. Instinctively she was artistic. Fred Allen looked on and marveled.

  There were six at dinner, counting Ruth herself. When the whipped cream had been brought in and the dessert set on the table, the talk turned from the new houses that were under way, the latest work of the futurists in art and such topics, to Sunday and the Sunday spirit.

  “It’s inconsistent to the last degree,” Will Evans laughed, “but these teetotaler days put spirits into everything. There’s the spirit of ‘76; the spirit of art, poetry, and music; the spirit of the West: the spirit of the twentieth century; the spirit of the age; the spirit of the times; the Arden spirit, and the spirit of the Sabbath. All of which means, I take it,” he went on with a thoughtful air, “that men are trying to read into their lives something more than gross, material facts of everyday. There is the spirit in things material which the primitive religions recognized by peopling groves, streams, mountains, springs and deserts, which is taking possession of us. We do the same wholly inspiring things in a much more impersonal way. Thereby we avoid idolatry, while we relight the torch of our faith.”

  “You surely don’t see the torch of any faith being relighted at the shrine of our beastly Sunday spirit, Uncle Will,” Ruth protested.

  “No,” he admitted, “you are right. I do not see it, but I should like mightily to do so. Then there must be a change in the origin of Sunday observance,” Will Evans argued. “Puritanical Sundays come direct from Puritanical forefathers, who were unmindful of women and women’s welfare, and so solicitous about their own that they put a ban on all joy and happiness, and on all male labor. Female labor they allowed to go on—domestic labor, I mean.”

  “But, surely,” Fred Allen broke in, “surely you believe in Sabbath observance.”

  “Do you?” Will Evans queried.

  “Of course.”

  “And do you observe it?”

  “Yes—at least I suppose I do.”

  “Did you observe it when you were in Paris and Vienna?”

  “Not in our American way, of course, but—”

  “Ah,” Will Evans sighed, “the old story. When you are in Rome or Brussels, it makes so much difference! The American people have never had the spirit of Sabbath observance. They have had its letter, sure enough; but after all, it is only the fear of hell fire that keeps them from wandering from the straight and narrow cinder path to pick berries or throw a green apple at a peacefully grazing cow.”

  “Then you believe in a wide-open home on Sunday?” some one asked.

  “All the week—seven days of it—I believe in man,” Will Evans said. “Bob Ingersoll said that when we were ready to write a creed, it should contain but one word—‘Liberty.’ I have a wider creed than that, and I have written it long ago. It also contains one word—‘Man.’ I believe in man,” he continued, “in his possibilities, hopes, fears, admirations, sorrows, pleasures, ambitions, and efforts. I wish him to be big—bigger than any men that I know. Big souls in big bodies; beautiful minds in beautiful heads; strong, earnest hearts in strong, well-knit frames. Every side of man, every angle, every need must be recognized. The Sabbath is a part of the arrangement for doing that.”

  Ruth asked, “Is, or should be?”

  “Should be,” smiled Will Evans, almost sadly, “should be, I guess. The fight has been such a long one! It’s nearly two thousand years since a great man said that the Sabbath was made for man, yet we continue to force man to serve the Sabbath.”

  “Would you advocate Sunday base ball?” asked Fred Allen.

  “Yes,” answered Will Evans, “I think I should.”

  “Oh, Uncle,” cried Ruth Wade, “you know you hate it.”

  “Yes, I do not like it; and yet, for those who cannot see or play base ball during the week, I believe there should be Sunday base ball, if they want it. If they came asking my advice,” he said gravely, “I should advise strongly against it, because I believe that every once in a while men should pause to reflect, ponder, measure the proportion of things, and edit their sailing directions. ‘Take stock, young man, take stock,’ is excellent advice, which I have always tried hard to follow, making Sunday my stock-taking day. A little rest, a little reflection, a little meditation on the events of the week or the month, or even the year, makes even the most careless take thought for the morrow.”

  The captain was hugely tickled.

  “Say, Pop,” he questioned, “what kind of a figure do you suppose I’d cut on the common if I were to take stock?”

  “A figure eight,” replied Will Evans promptly, “closed at both ends.”

  “Even at that,” the captain ventured, “you wouldn’t expect me to take stock, would you? The misdids and undids of any one day of my life would require at least six days to review and classify.”

  “That’s the way it looks to me,” Ruth interposed. “One man’s meat is another man’s poison. All my thinking life I have been wondering why it was that the good Puritan Fathers, who cut each man’s coat to fit his back, cut his back to fit their religion. Individual coats and shoes, and a standard soul! Sunday should be a different day, a day that makes men and women stronger and nobler and keener for the better things of life. It’s the nobility and strength we want, though; whatever gives them to us is the right kind of a Sunday.”

  “You were twitting me about Paris and Vienna,” Fred Allen said, “but I heard something the other day that interested me greatly. A friend of mine who has a textile factory in Berlin and one in New York, told me only recently that his German workmen were much more efficient than his Americans. The difference he charged up to the way they spend Sunday. The Americans, he explained, get little recreation, because on Sunday everything is closed tight. The Germans, on the other hand, take their families on Sunday to a beer garden, drink a glass of beer themselves, order milk for their children, and spend the day jovially and healthfully. On Monday they are ready for the day’s work. I wondered about it at the time—whether the American ‘tight shut’ plan was best, and I am inclined to think that, after all, there must be something on his side.”

  Will Evans shook his head.

  “I can’t go as far as the beer gardens,” he said. “Flower gardens, or even vegetable gardens, would be tolerable, but not beer gardens! Still,” he said, “I suppose that is the nearest to a flower garden that the city dweller in Berlin can come. When we get our church -”

  “Are you going to have a church?” Fred Allen interrupted.

  “Indeed, and the foundations are laid already,” Will Evans answered brightly. “The plans are drawn, and everything is on hand except the money—a mere bagatelle!”

  They all laughed.

  “Are you to have a minister?” Fred Allen queried.

  “No, neither minister nor creed. There will be beautiful windows, beautiful music, and beautiful pictures. It will be quiet and restful—a place where men and women may go to meditate—alone.”

  “How peaceful that sounds,” said Fred Allen.

  “And peaceful it will be.”

  There was a pause.

  “Will, dear,” said Ruth, “if you will lend your gentle voice and sing us a song, the rest of us, including myself as acting superintendent, will clear the table.”

  “If you will say ‘active superintendent,’ I will do as I am told,” Will Evans replied.

  Sitting down to the piano, he played and sang in a sweet low voice, two or three hymns, then a ballad, and then he turned to the old familiar romantic songs, singing the verse and playing while the chorus rose noisily from the kitchen, where all were busily washing and drying.

  The sun was shining brightly now. The air had cleared. A strong wind sweeping out of the west, drove the clouds scurrying into nothingness, and the gay company, cheered by its choruses and its satisfying dinner, prepared to enjoy the glories of a clear summer afternoon, following in the wake of an abundant rain.

  “Aha! Aha! And we shall have a camp fire,” sang Will Evans.

So he improvised, marking the time with simple chords.

  The afternoon slipped by while they all drank in the freshness that succeeded the rain. A long walk on the damp country road, a cup of tea in the twilight, the sound of a bugle, and the walk across the glade, took their party, increased by a score of gayly chatting friends, to the spot where the camp fire was already crackling. “My Bonnie” sounded beautiful in the moist air of the drying woods, and the notes of “Sweet and Low” held a shade of meaning that Fred Allen had never known in them before. Then two “Br’er Rabbit” stories amused children and grown-ups. Last of all, Will Evans read the familiar lines:—

The poem ended, the Arden song was sung. Then the Arden folk took their several paths homeward, talking and laughing together joyously.

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