XL

THE DARK came early that night, and with it the wild, torrential rain of a “line storm” which had been moving up the coast. Lamplit and cheerful from within, the kitchen window panes looked out into a pitch blackness of wind and storm, and standing a moment by the open door, I could hear the unquiet stir of the nearer trees, and the great sound of rain falling everywhere in the immense and lonely dark.

Not a very good night for a church supper, yet not a night to keep the adventurous at home. Elizabeth brought in our old hats and oilskins. I lit the lantern we leave burning in the kitchen when we go forth of nights, and the rooms being one by one darkened, we climbed into the car and drove off in the rain. Streaming torrents lashed against the windshield and the clicking, energetically busy wipers, and at a turn of the road a surge of the gale drove through the windshield beam and the slanting, silvery rain a great, drenched gust of golden leaves.

“I wonder if many will come?” said Elizabeth from beside me in the darkness of the car. “They’ll come,” I answered, “but you’ll find them arriving a bit late. Well, here we are.”

We had ourselves come a little early, and there were but three or four cars standing outside the church when we drove up to the curb. On the street level, the old brick edifice was as dark as a tomb though one light shone very brightly over the entrance door; it was the church basement whose windows glowed with preparations and a sense of welcoming. Entering by a side door, we found ourselves in the big coat-room of the Sunday School, and reassured by a very genial, all pervading smell of a meat dinner.

*   *   *

A friendly hand in the kitchen waved to us a first welcome; it was Mrs. Tom Sherman working briskly with the other ladies of the congregation getting dinner ready. One could see the steam of potatoes, and a long table of plates, each garnished with a pale wedge of pie. Seated together on a Sunday School bench standing against a wall, Elizabeth and I watched the outside door open and swing back and the guests assemble, both of us looking for neighbors and friends amid the arriving crowd closing umbrellas and pulling off raincoats and rubbers. It was largely a grown-up gathering except for the pretty schoolgirls who acted as waitresses and the usual cornerful of boys with hair slicked back for the occasion above their fresh, out-of-door faces. The room which only a quarter of an hour before had been so empty was filling with a stir of people, and growing vocal with a cheerful, social noise of welcomes, greetings, and pleasant small-talk.

No one that I could see gave any signal, but presently we all stood up and began to move rather solemnly into the dining room. It was the Sunday School basement, and there was a raised platform at one end enthroning a very solemn ecclesiastical chair of American Gothic in some dark wood. When we had taken our places at long tables, the minister, our friend Rev. Cecil Witham asked a blessing I thought full of dignity, the stir in the kitchen quieting a moment as he spoke. Then in came the first plates, and with the first plates a new mood. Deft hands and a girl with a pretty smile suddenly appeared beside us, and placed steaming plates before us both. On each were hamburg cakes well done, plus a dishing of hamburg gravy, a mound of mashed potato, and a mound of mashed and buttered turnip. There was bread already on the table and extra butter. Again rather solemnly but very contentedly we all fell to.

More hands appeared from behind, hands holding huge white-enamel pitchers. “Will you have coffee?” “There’s lots more hamburg; take all you want.” “More gravy?” “Like some more turnip?” “Apple or mince?” “Anybody want seconds on pie?”

A good, substantial supper, we agreed, as we drove back to the farm. It was still pouring, the silver rods of driving rain slanting past the street lights on their poles above the road.

FARM DIARY

The last porcupine who came to eat the old “high top” apples made such a racket at midnight that the noise woke me out of a sound sleep. The creature squealed like a small, angry pig who had been refused permission to go to the party. / The hunting season begins, and in the profound, golden peace of the windless morning I hear a faraway hound give tongue and the occasional pop! of a gun from the deep woods. / A scurry in the wall, a gnawed apple on the kitchen floor, and my own hunting season opens. The restless, adventuring rat is in search of winter quarters, and we had our first invaders. Score: five in three nights and we are sure to have others. / Elizabeth buys the farm another hand woven blanket with a pattern of cheerful rainbow stripes from end to end. “Not one of my regular blankets,” explains the genial weaver. “I made it up just to show what colors I could furnish, but you can have it now that the season is over.” / The leaves fall, the wind blows, and the farm country slowly changes from its summer cottons into its winter wools.

*   *   *

I have lately been working with machines, and I venture to set down here something of my growing quarrel with one aspect of modern machinery. Again and again as I study these contrivances, I am struck by their increasingly dehumanized and even anti-human perversity of design. That a machine is both a machine and something meant to be used by a human being is apparently the last thing to be considered in the blueprints. Not only is one now confronted with some absurdity of design which makes repairs difficult, but also with absurdities of structure which make difficult and even dangerous the care of the machine necessary to its daily use. Among such deviltries—and they are numberless—are parts so placed that only a contortionist could reach them, spaces through which the hand must pass which are too small and cramped for the hand, and oil drains which require a gutter if the oil is not to mess up everything.

The country tradition of the handicrafts would be ashamed of any such neglect and scorn of our humanity. I am sure, moreover, that this same scorn and perversity has a role in the making of our fatigues and discontents. It may be a mere detail, but it’s not a small one when you are tying yourself in exasperated knots with a greasy monkey wrench.