From: Arden Town (1913; Unpublished MS)
Author: Scott Nearing
Published:
“Have you parlor car seats, Fred?” asked Sam Bennett, as the machine picked its way through the street traffic.
“No, there are always seats on this train. It’s a little early in the day for the rush, which usually strikes the five o’clock train.”
“Do you use this train much?’”
“Yes, I quite frequently go down for a week end.” Then by way of elucidation, Fred Allen continued, “You see Miss Treat, the young lady of whom I spoke, has been there all summer, and I have been holding up my place in the line.”
“In order to establish and maintain a fair competitive basis, I suppose,” said Sam mischievously.
“You ought to give the others a chance.”
“Stuff,” replied Fred. “Here we are,” he availed himself of the opportunity to change the conversation, “with ten minutes to spare. I suppose that will be long enough for us to find your cousin. She is doubtless—”
He interrupted himself on discovering that he was alone. Turning, he saw Sam Bennett shaking hands warmly with a prepossessing young woman, every line of whose radiant face revealed her joy at meeting her cousin.
“Sam,” she was saying, “I have been wanting the chance to see you again. How nice for it to come in this delightful way! You, and a stay at the shore all at once—it seems too good to be real.”
Had Fred Allen been a careful observer he would have noted that the youthful curls, though arranged neatly under a becoming hat, still insisted on showing themselves as curls, protruding at all sorts of enchanting places, and framing a face of rare strength. He was not observing, however. He was listening to the low-pitched, vibrant, earnest voice of the girl, and watching intently her mobile face and her fine eyes. The eyes, the voice, the figure all fitted marvelously into one another.
What a picture! he reflected. It is Ruth Wade, sure enough. She is just like her kid picture, only older. Whew, I see Sammy’s end.
By this time Sam had turned and was introducing.
“Ruth, my old college friend, Fred Allen. Miss Wade, Fred. The bright angel of my early childhood, the girl whose brown curls adorned my college boudoir.”
“Has he always been like that, Mr. Allen?” asked Ruth, as she frankly shook bands.
“Always,” said Fred. “He closely resembles Tennyson’s ‘Brook.’”
“Limpid, transparent, pure,” murmured Sam in mock ecstasy. “He describes me to a nicety, Ruth dear. Well, well, talk is agreeable; but the sun is warm and the train waits, so let’s get aboard.”
Sam led the way with a breezy authority which readily secured the three best unsold seats in the car, while Fred, feeling a little uncertain of himself, brought up the rear. Before he fully awoke to the realities of existence he found himself facing Ruth Wade, and talking to her about the weather, the city, politics, his business. Slowly he recovered his moral equilibrium, and attempted to measure his companion. She was an artist. He assured himself that he could have told that if he had met her casually on the street, but the exact characteristics which connoted her artistic nature, he was entirely at a loss to explain. One thing was borne in upon him with irresistible force—he could not escape her. He might disapprove, or expostulate, or worship, but he surely could not ignore. Of medium height, in the flower of her young womanhood, Ruth Wade was a person at whom one would look at least twice. She was tastily dressed in the latest fashion, yet the style was so modified to suit her individuality that it became her as if it had been created for her alone. From under her wavy golden-brown hair, her glance came so brilliant and fearless that he almost feared to meet it. What might this encounter presage?
Fred Allen was accustomed to business and business men. He had faced society and society women. Measured by the world’s standard he was an unquestioned success. Now he faced a novel experience. Never in his life had he been compelled to face a woman like Ruth Wade and take her seriously. He had seen her type on the stage, he told himself, subconsciously, while he met her sallies and answered her questions; but he faced it on a Pullman for the first time.
While he talked to her, answering her as best he could, feeling blindly for phrases, stumbling over words, and striving to express himself satisfactorily, he was conscious that he was on the rack, that those brilliant gray-brown eyes were taking in every detail, and that he was being weighed and measured. Would he be able to stand the test?
In brief, crisp sentences she summarized her views of things and personages. She had traveled, studied, thought, created. She did not say so, but Fred Allen felt it instinctively and wondered. Her eye saw, her intuitive mind grasped, her beautiful voice expressed.
Surely this was no ordinary woman. His society friends called themselves women. They were witty, gay, sometimes bold; but never before had he met a woman with such keen insight, such broad a grasp of situations. He was astonished, confused, appalled, dazzled. She towered high above him. He waited and wondered at her feet. Meanwhile, he must not waste the precious moments. He must measure, weigh, understand, explain. Why did he feel like an ineffectual child? How was it possible for a simply dressed artist from a crank colony to overwhelm him with her splendor? Madly his soul struggled through the semi-darkness.
“Mr. Allen,” Ruth Wade was saying, “you are a business man. Can you not explain to me about this financial crisis through which we have just passed?”
“Certainly, Miss Wade, the situation is—a—just like this.” He paused to collect enough ideas to make a respectable sentence. “We all manufacture on orders. Each month our salesmen go out to our customers and say,—‘How many shoes, or hats, or gas fixtures do you want?’ ‘This month,’ replies the customer, ‘I want fifty.’ The salesman promptly writes back, ordering fifty, and the factory proceeds at once to make them up. In a panic orders stop coming.”
“Yes, I know that, but why do they stop coming?”
“Well—well—they stop coming because people stop buying.”
“Why do people stop buying?”
“Well, I suppose it is because they don’t want anything more.”
Ruth Wade smiled incredulously.
“Do you mean to tell me, Mr. Allen,” she protested, “that as an intelligent business man you believe the average member of the community to be satisfied with the things he has?”
“Perhaps not—yes, I daresay you’re right. Most people want more than they have.”
“Well, then, isn’t it perfectly apparent that the customer stops buying because he has nothing to buy with?”
“Why, yes, I suppose that’s so, but—“
“Then it’s lack of income that makes a lack of orders.”
“I guess you’re right, but look here,—” Fred Allen saw the abyss yawning, but it was already too late.
“Do you know what that lack or income means?” Ruth Wade continued resistlessly. “It means that a few rich men take such a big share of the wealth produced that the remainder of the population haven’t enough to satisfy their wants. If you paid the average man double the wage, he would spend most of it, making twice the demand for goods, or, as you say, twice the orders.”
Sam Bennett lowered the paper behind which he had been listening, and leaned across the aisle.
“Fred, old man,” he said sympathetically, “better ask the porter to change your seat. The heat is terrific here, am there isn’t likely to be a let up. The volcano will belch forth suffrage next. It always acted just that way, but since it has been abroad, its letters have been loaded with suffrage to the crater.”
All three laughed. Sam Bennett retired once more behind his paper; Fred Allen looked fixedly at Ruth Ware’s splendid, shining dark eyes; and she, in her turn, colored deeply as she apologized.
“I am sorry that I insisted on talking shop to you,” she insisted, “but whenever I meet a business man, I like to find out whether he knows the theory of his business, or whether, like the peanut vender, he believes that ‘peanuts is peanuts’ and makes no more inquiries.”
“I should be very glad to talk to you about the depression, Miss Wade, if I knew anything about it. But, as you doubtless gathered from my scattering remarks, I am extremely ignorant on too subject. Most business men are.”
Ruth Wade looked serious.
“Mr. Allen, if I had a business, I would either find out its effect on the human beings who worked for me and who bought ray products, or—or I should quit.”
“Bravo, little cousin,” said Sam, emerging again, “gouge him hard. He is a crusty old moss-back. Wake him up and put Mill’s ‘Principles’ back into his hands. He needs political economy. If he is as ignorant of the significance of the relation of business to human needs as I am of the relation of law to social justice, he ought to be set in the pillory and whipped.”
“Sam, you break up the party,” protested Fred. “I was just about to ask Miss Wade if she were a suffragist or a suffragette.”
“Oh, I beg your pardon,” Sam returned. “l thought that I was officiating at a funeral, but since you can still look upon its pleasant side, proceed, by all means.”
“Do you really want me to answer your question seriously?” Ruth Wade inquired, a little at a loss, under the cross fire.
“Of course,” Fred Allen replied, enjoying an apparent advantage. “Of course I do, my whole future depends upon your answer.”
“In that case I must say that your future is on the narrowest kind of narrow footing. Aren’t you afraid it will topple?”
“Not if it goes in the right direction,” Fred Allen replied promptly.
“Come then, let’s see. Are you a manufacturer or a manufacturer?”
“Plead not guilty, Freddy, old boy—hurry up!” interrupted Sam Bennett.
“Miss Wade, I am a man who makes and sells goods. Yet that hardly answers your question.”
“Indeed it does, for I, sir, am a woman who believes in establishing and exercising her rights.”
“But you surely do not want to mix up with a lot of roughs at the polls!”
“Certainly I do not. Certainly I should not, because if I were at the polls they would not be rough. Suppose you were an election judge and I came in, you would take off your hat and stop smoking, I am sure.”
“Guilty,” pleaded Fred submissively.
“Well, there you are. We women wouldn’t revolutionize politics, but we would clean up politics from the cigar ashes in the polling places to contract jobbing in the City Hall.”
“Miss Wade,” Fred Allen admitted in a complete collapse of the defence,”I honestly believe that you would make a better voter than I do. I haven’t been at the polls for three years.”
“Oh, you men?” she smiled. “I have a very good friend up in town who is an ardent suffragist, in the last election she told her two boys that they must vote. ‘Oh, Mother!’ they grumbled, you never forget it, do you; well, whom shall we vote for?’ She wrote out the names of the reform candidates on a slip of paper and gave it to them. That night when they came home she asked them if they had voted. ‘Yes indeed,’ they said. ‘Well, for whom did you vote?’ she asked. ‘Oh, I don’t remember,’ said the older, ‘I voted for the names you put on the paper.’ Now do you wonder that politics are nasty and corrupt?”
“I can’t say that I do,” Fred Allen admitted.
“We women would improve politics if we had a vote, don’t you think so?”
“I know one woman who would try.”
“No compliments. Please tell me the truth, always.”
“That’s true.”
“Do you really believe it?”
“Indeed I do.”
“Then you would have no objection to that one woman voting?”
“None in the world.”
“Hurrah” cired Ruth. “Cheers! Another convert! You shall speak for us next month at the open air demonstration in the park.”
“Really, Miss Wade,” began Fred Allen in sudden alarm, I—”
“Really, Mr. Allen, you needn’t say a word. You will be so enthusiastic by that time that you will be fairly longing to speak.”
“Ruth,” said Sam solemnly, looking up across his glasses, why don’t you have a little pity? You have the field. If you told us to stand out in the street and hold up street lamps, we shouldn’t refuse you. You know that. Be merciful—bid me tear the bond. Don’t make the poor fellow perform in public.”
Ruth Wade’s smile showed a line of perfect teeth. Her face had lighted up as she talked, her eye had kindled, and now a triumphant expression radiated from her whole being.
“I will let you off,” said she, “if you will promise to vote for suffrage at your first opportunity.”
“It’s a go,” said Sam, settling back in his chair. Then, as Fred Allen hesitated,—“Hurry up, man, she’ll ask you for a ten thousand contribution if you don’t come across in a hurry.”
“I am all submission,” exclaimed Fred Allen, “I yield one.”
“Then let’s change the subject.”
“With all my heart, Miss Wade. I can hardly complain of this one, though, because I started you off on it myself.”
“Guilty again, sir. By way of punishment, suppose you introduce a more fitting topic.”
“Well, tell me, are you an artist?”
“Do I look it?” Ruth Wade retorted.
“Yes, you do,” answered Fred Allen with a glance of frank admiration full into her splendid eyes.
“That is a real compliment,” said Ruth Wade, turning her eyes away for a moment. “Thank you. I don’t know whether or not I am a real artist, but I do try to paint.”
“How long were you in Paris?”
“Only two years. You see I didn’t get really started at my art until I was an old woman. I have worked quite faithfully at it since, but I have a long road in front of me. Do you enjoy art, Mr. Allen?”
“Yes, indeed. I think that I never enjoyed anything quite so much as my first journey through the Louvre.”
“It is wonderful.”
Then she turned quickly toward him.
“If you enjoy art so much you must surely apply it in your business.”
“We ought to, I know; but competition is keen, and we must keep the plant going. After all, Miss Wade, you can’t be too particular if you are engaged in business. You take what comes and are thankful it is no worse. We make ornamental brass and iron work for the trade. Styles may, or may not, be artistic. We must follow the styles or go into some other business.”
“Oh, Mr. Allen, doesn’t it hurt you to make things just because they are stylish?”
She could not have pleaded more earnestly for the life of a friend.
“I’m afraid it doesn’t hurt me nearly as much to be inartistic as to be a failure in business,” Fred Allen admitted. “You take it quite seriously, though, don’t you?”
“Yes indeed I do. Why shouldn’t I? Did you never feel that there might be something—may I say it?—higher than business? You would not steal, would you?”
“No, I suppose not. But that is wrong, you know.”
“Yes, I know. It is written in the Ten Commandments, ‘Thou shalt not steal.’ That is a negative command, though. There is a positive one just as important—‘Be beautiful and express beauty.’ How can you consistently believe in art unless you apply it to your business in the same way that you apply honesty to your business?”
“We don’t all employ honesty, you know, even in business,” he parried.
“Oh, I know that,” she exclaimed. “I know that, and it is such a shame—such a shame, Mr. Allen. Dishonest and ugly! What more hideous charge could be brought against a business than that?”
Then she looked genially at his sober face; her whole figure relaxed, and she laughed gayly.
“You must think me an awful bore to talk political economy and art, but you see I live with a group of people who are interested in just those things, and when I get started on them it is hard to stop.”
“You live in Arden” asked Fred Allen.
“Yes. Indeed.”
“And are all of the people like you?”
“Just like me.” she smiled.
“I think I should like to go to Arden. Will you tell me about it some day?”
“Gladly,” and she turned to speak to her cousin.
Fred Allen drew a long breath, passed his hand mechanically over his necktie and leaned forward to glance out of the window. To his amazement he found that they were already crossing the salt marshes. The wind blew in fresh through the screen, laden with the pungent sea smell. Fred Allen leaned back in his chair and gazed out over the desolation. Compared with that young lady, my friends are about as flat as the marshes, he thought. His social life had been spent with fashionable women. He was accustomed to them and their ways; but this kind of woman, with her aggressive mind and broad grasp of ideas, was new to him. Each time that he had ventured out into the shallows of polite convention, she had dazzled him, and for every serious subject they had touched, she had a question too deep for his answer. She has turned me inside out, he reflected, but I am not at all sorry.
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