The Brown Mouse

  Produced by Roger Frank and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

  THE BROWN MOUSE

  ByHERBERT QUICK

  Author ofAladdin & Company, The Broken LanceOn Board the Good Ship Earth, Etc.

  INDIANAPOLISTHE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANYPUBLISHERS

  Copyright 1915The Bobbs-Merrill Company

  Printed in the United States of America

  PRESS OFBRAUNWORTH & CO.BOOK MANUFACTURERSBROOKLYN, N. Y.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER I A Maiden's "Humph" 1 II Reversed Unanimity 24 III What Is a Brown Mouse 38 IV The First Day of School 48 V The Promotion of Jennie 55 VI Jim Talks the Weather Cold 65 VII The New Wine 75 VIII And the Old Bottles 89 IX Jennie Arranges a Christmas Party 99 X How Jim Was Lined Up 111 XI The Mouse Escapes 122 XII Facing Trial 132 XIII Fame or Notoriety 147 XIV The Colonel Takes the Field 164 XV A Minor Casts Half a Vote 188 XVI The Glorious Fourth 203 XVII A Trouble Shooter 218 XVIII Jim Goes to Ames 235 XIX Jim's World Widens 242 XX Think of It 248 XXI A School District Held Up 258 XXII An Embassy From Dixie 277 XXIII And So They Lived---- 295

  THE BROWN MOUSE

  CHAPTER I

  A MAIDEN'S "HUMPH"

  A Farm-hand nodded in answer to a question asked him by Napoleon on themorning of Waterloo. The nod was false, or the emperor misunderstood--andWaterloo was lost. On the nod of a farm-hand rested the fate of Europe.

  This story may not be so important as the battle of Waterloo--and it maybe. I think that Napoleon was sure to lose to Wellington sooner or later,and therefore the words "fate of Europe" in the last paragraph should beunderstood as modified by "for a while." But this story may change theworld permanently. We will not discuss that, if you please. What I amendeavoring to make plain is that this history would never have beenwritten if a farmer's daughter had not said "Humph!" to her father's hiredman.

  Of course she never said it as it is printed. People never say "Humph!" inthat way. She just closed her lips tight in the manner of people who havea great deal to say and prefer not to say it, and--I dislike to recordthis of a young lady who has been "off to school," but truthfulnesscompels--she grunted through her little nose the ordinary "Humph!" ofconversational commerce, which was accepted at its face value by thefarm-hand as an evidence of displeasure, disapproval, and even ofcontempt. Things then began to happen as they never would have done if themaiden hadn't "Humphed!" and this is a history of those happenings.

  As I have said, it may be more important than Waterloo. _Uncle Tom'sCabin_ was, and I hope--I am just beginning, you know--to make this a muchgreater book than _Uncle Tom's Cabin_. And it all rests on a "Humph!"Holmes says,

  "Soft is the breath of a maiden's 'Yes,' Not the light gossamer stirs with less."

  but what bard shall rightly sing the importance of a maiden's "Humph!"when I shall have finished telling what came of what Jennie Woodruff saidto Jim Irwin, her father's hired man?

  Jim brought from his day's work all the fragrances of next year's meadows.He had been feeding the crops. All things have opposite poles, and thescents of the farm are no exception to the rule. Just now, Jim Irwinpossessed in his clothes and person the olfactory pole opposite to thenew-mown hay, the fragrant butter and the scented breath of the lowingkine--perspiration and top-dressing.

  He was not quite so keenly conscious of this as was Jennie Woodruff. Hadhe been so, the glimmer of her white pique dress on the bench under thebasswood would not have drawn him back from the gate. He had come to thehouse to ask Colonel Woodruff about the farm work, and having receivedinstructions to take a team and join in the road work next day, he hadgone down the walk between the beds of four o'clocks and petunias to thelane. Turning to latch the gate, he saw through the dusk the white dressunder the tree and drawn by the greatest attraction known in nature, hadre-entered the Woodruff grounds and strolled back.

  A brief hello betrayed old acquaintance, and that social equality whichstill persists in theory between the work people on the American farm andthe family of the employer. A desultory murmur of voices ensued. Jim Irwinsat down on the bench--not too close, be it observed, to the piqueskirt.... There came into the voices a note of deeper earnestness,betokening something quite aside from the rippling of the course of truelove running smoothly. In the man's voice was a tone of protest andpleading....

  "I know you are," said she; "but after all these years don't you think youshould be at least preparing to be something more than that?"

  "What can I do?" he pleaded. "I'm tied hand and foot.... I might have..."

  "You might have," said she, "but, Jim, you haven't ... and I don't see anyprospects...." "I have been writing for the farm papers," said Jim; "but..."

  "But that doesn't get you anywhere, you know.... You're a great deal moreable and intelligent than Ed ---- and see what a fine position he has inChicago...."

  "There's mother, you know," said Jim gently.

  "You can't do anything here," said Jennie. "You've been a farm-hand forfifteen years ... and you always will be unless you pull yourself loose.Even a girl can make a place for herself if she doesn't marry and leavesthe farm. You're twenty-eight years old."

  "It's all wrong!" said Jim gently. "The farm ought to be the place for thebest sort of career--I love the soil!"

  "I've been teaching for only two years, and they say I'll be nominated forcounty superintendent if I'll take it. Of course I won't--it seemssilly--but if it were you, now, it would be a first step to a life thatleads to something."

  "Mother and I can live on my wages--and the garden and chickens and thecow," said Jim. "After I received my teacher's certificate, I tried towork out some way of doing the same thing on a country teacher's wages. Icouldn't. It doesn't seem right."

  Jim rose and after pacing back and forth sat down again, a little closerto Jennie. Jennie moved away to the extreme end of the bench, and theshrinking away of Jim as if he had been repelled by some sort of negativemagnetism showed either sensitiveness or temper.

  "It seems as if it ought to be possible," said Jim, "for a man to do workon the farm, or in the rural schools, that would make him a livelihood. Ifhe is only a field-hand, it ought to be possible for him to save money andbuy a farm."

  "Pa's land is worth two hundred dollars an acre," said Jennie. "Six monthsof your wages for an acre--even if you lived on nothing."

  "No," he assented, "it can't be done. And the other thing can't, either.There ought to be such conditions that a teacher could make a living."

  "They do," said Jennie, "if they can live at home during vacations. _I_do."

  "But a man teaching in the country ought to be able to marry."

  "Marry!" said Jennie, rather unfeelingly, I think. "_You_ marry!" Thenafter remaining silent for nearly a minute, she uttered thesyllable--without the utterance of which this narrative would not havebeen written. "_You_ marry! Humph!"

  Jim Irwin rose from the bench tingling with the insult he found in hertone. They had been boy-and-girl sweethearts in the old days at theWoodruff schoolhouse down the road, and before the fateful time whenJennie went "off to school" and Jim began to support his mother. They hadeven kissed--and on Jim's side, lonely as was his life, cut off as itnecessarily was from all companionship save that of his tiny home and hisfellow-workers of the field, the tender little love-story was the soleromance of his life. Jennie's "Humph!"
retired this romance fromcirculation, he felt. It showed contempt for the idea of his marrying. Itrelegated him to a sexless category with other defectives, and badged himwith the celibacy of a sort of twentieth-century monk, without the honorof the priestly vocation. From another girl it would have been bad enough,but from Jennie Woodruff--and especially on that quiet summer night underthe linden--it was insupportable.

  "Good night," said Jim--simply because he could not trust himself to saymore.

  "Good night," replied Jennie, and sat for a long time wondering just howdeeply she had unintentionally wounded the feelings of her father'sfield-hand; deciding that if he was driven from her forever, it wouldsolve the problem of terminating that old childish love affair which stillpersisted in occupying a suite of rooms all of its own in her memory; andfinally repenting of the unpremeditated thrust which might easily havehurt too deeply so sensitive a man as Jim Irwin. But girls are not usuallyso made as to feel any very bitter remorse for their male victims, and soJennie slept very well that night.

  Great events, I find myself repeating, sometimes hinge on trivial things.Considered deeply, all those matters which we are wont to call greatevents are only the outward and visible results of occurrences in theminds and souls of people. Sir Walter Raleigh thought of laying his cloakunder the feet of Queen Elizabeth as she passed over a mud-puddle, and allthe rest of his career followed, as the effect of Sir Walter's mentalattitude. Elias Howe thought of a machine for sewing, Eli Whitney of amachine for ginning cotton, George Stephenson of a tubular boiler for hislocomotive engine, and Cyrus McCormick of a sickle-bar, and the world waschanged by those thoughts, rather than by the machines themselves. John D.Rockefeller thought strongly that he would be rich, and this thought, andnot the Standard Oil Company, changed the commerce and finance of theworld. As a man thinketh so is he; and as men think so is the world. JimIrwin went home thinking of the "Humph!" of Jennie Woodruff--thinking withhot waves and cold waves running over his body, and swellings in histhroat. Such thoughts centered upon his club foot made Lord Byron a greatsardonic poet. That club foot set him apart from the world of boys andtortured him into a fury which lasted until he had lashed society with thewhips of his scorn.

  Jim Irwin was not club-footed; far from it. He was bony and rugged andhomely, with a big mouth, and wide ears, and a form stooped with labor. Hehad fine, lambent, gentle eyes which lighted up his face when he smiled,as Lincoln's illuminated his. He was not ugly. In fact, if that qualitywhich fair ladies--if they are wise--prize far more than physical beauty,the quality called charm, can with propriety be ascribed to a field-handwho has just finished a day of the rather unfragrant labor to which I havereferred, Jim Irwin possessed charm. That is why little Jennie Woodruffhad asked him to help with her lessons, rather oftener than was necessary,in those old days in the Woodruff schoolhouse when Jennie wore her hairdown her back.

  But in spite of this homely charm of personality, Jim Irwin was set offfrom his fellows of the Woodruff neighborhood in a manner quite assegregative as was Byron by his deformity. He was different. In localparlance, he was an off ox. He was as odd as Dick's hatband. He ran in agang by himself, like Deacon Avery's celebrated bull. He failed tomatriculate in the boy banditti which played cards in the haymows on rainydays, told stereotyped stories that smelled to heaven, raided melonpatches and orchards, swore horribly like Sir Toby Belch, and played poolin the village saloon. He had always liked to read, and had piles ofliterature in his attic room which was good, because it was cheap. Veryfew people know that cheap literature is very likely to be good, becauseit is old and unprotected by copyright. He had Emerson, Thoreau, a John B.Alden edition of Chambers' _Encyclopedia of English Literature_, someFranklin Square editions of standard poets in paper covers, and a fewRuskins and Carlyles--all read to rags. He talked the book English ofthese authors, mispronouncing many of the hard words, because he had neverheard them pronounced by any one except himself, and had no standards ofcomparison. You find this sort of thing in the utterances of self-educatedrecluses. And he had piles of reports of the secretary of agriculture,college bulletins from Ames, and publications of the various bureaus ofthe Department of Agriculture at Washington. In fact, he had a goodlibrary of publications which can be obtained gratis, or very cheaply--andhe knew their contents. He had a personal philosophy, which while it hadcost him the world in which his fellows lived, had given him one of hisown, in which he moved as lonely as a cloud, and as untouched of the lifeabout him.

  He seemed superior to the neighbor boys, and felt so; but this feeling wascuriously mingled with a sense of degradation. By every test of commonlife, he was a failure. His family history was a badge of failure. Peopledespised a man who was so incontestably smarter than they, and yet coulddo no better with himself than to work in the fields alongside the trampsand transients and hoboes who drifted back and forth as the casual marketfor labor and the lure of the cities swept them. Save for his mother andtheir cow and garden and flock of fowls and their wretched little rentedhouse, he was a tramp himself.

  His father had been no better. He had come into the neighborhood fromnobody knows where, selling fruit trees, with a wife and baby in his oldbuggy--and had died suddenly, leaving the baby and widow, and nothing elsesave the horse and buggy. That horse and buggy were still on the Irwinbooks represented by Spot the cow--so persistent are the assets ofcautious poverty. Mrs. Irwin had labored in kitchen and sewing room untilJim had been able to assume the breadwinner's burden--which he did aboutthe time he finished the curriculum of the Woodruff District school. Hewas an off ox and odd as Dick's hatband, largely because his duties to hismother and his love of reading kept him from joining the gangs whereof Ihave spoken. His duties, his mother, and his father's status as an outcastwere to him the equivalent of the Byronic club foot, because they tookaway his citizenship in Boyville, and drove him in upon himself, and, atfirst, upon his school books which he mastered so easily and quickly as tobecome the star pupil of the Woodruff District school, and later uponEmerson, Thoreau, Ruskin and the poets, and the agricultural reports andbulletins.

  All this degraded--or exalted--him to the position of an intellectualfarm-hand, with a sense of superiority and a feeling of degradation. Itmade Jennie Woodruff's "Humph!" potent to keep him awake that night, andsend him to the road work with Colonel Woodruff's team next morning withhot eyes and a hotter heart.

  What was he anyhow? And what could he ever be? What was the use of hisstudies in farming practise, if he was always to be an underling whosesole duty was to carry out the crude ideas of his employers? And whatchance was there for a farm-hand to become a farm owner, or even a farmrenter, especially if he had a mother to support out of the twenty-five orthirty dollars of his monthly wages? None.

  A man might rise in the spirit, but how about rising in the world?

  Colonel Woodruff's gray percherons seemed to feel the unrest of theirdriver, for they fretted and actually executed a clumsy prance as JimIrwin pulled them up at the end of the turnpike across Bronson's Slew--thesaid slew being a peat-marsh which annually offered the men of theWoodruff District the opportunity to hold the male equivalent of a sewingcircle while working out their road taxes, with much conversational gain,and no great damage to the road.

  In fact, Columbus Brown, the pathmaster, prided himself on the BronsonSlew Turnpike as his greatest triumph in road engineering. The workconsisted in hauling, dragging and carrying gravel out on the low fillwhich carried the road across the marsh, and then watching it slowlysettle until the next summer.

  "Haul gravel from the east gravel bed, Jim," called Columbus Brown fromthe lowest spot in the middle of the turnpike. "Take Newt here to helpload."

  Jim smiled his habitual slow, gentle smile at Newton Bronson, his helper.Newton was seventeen, undersized, tobacco-stained, profane and proud ofthe fact that he had once beaten his way from Des Moines to Faribault onfreight trains. A source of anxiety to his father, and the subject of manypredictions that he would come to no good end, Newton was
out on the roadwork because he was likely to be of little use on the farm. Clearly,Newton was on the downward road in a double sense--and yet, Jim Irwinrather liked him.

  "The fellers have put up a job on you, Jim," volunteered Newton, as theybegan filling the wagon with gravel.

  "What sort of job?" asked Jim.

  "They're nominating you for teacher," replied Newton.

  "Since when has the position of teacher been an elective office?" askedJim.

  "Sure, it ain't elective," answered Newton. "But they say that with asmany brains as you've got sloshing around loose in the neighborhood,you're a candidate that can break the deadlock in the school board."

  Jim shoveled on silently for a while, and by example urged Newton to earnthe money credited to his father's assessment for the day's work.

  "Aw, what's the use of diggin' into it like this?" protested Newton, whowas developing an unwonted perspiration. "None of the others are heatin'themselves up."

  "Don't you get any fun out of doing a good day's work?" asked Jim.

  "Fun!" exclaimed Newton. "You're crazy!"

  A slide of earth from the top of the pit threatened to bury Newton ingravel, sand and good top soil. A sweet-clover plant growing rankly besidethe pit, and thinking itself perfectly safe, came down with it, its darkgreen foliage anchored by the long roots which penetrated to a depth belowthe gravel pit's bottom. Jim Irwin pulled it loose from its anchorage, andafter looking attentively at the roots, laid the whole plant on the bankfor safety.

  "What do you want of that weed?" asked Newton.

  Jim picked it up and showed him the nodules on its roots--little whiteknobs, smaller than pinheads.

  "Know what they are, Newt?"

  "Just white specks on the roots," replied Newton.

  "The most wonderful specks in the world," said Jim. "Ever hear of the useof nitrates to enrich the soil?"

  "Ain't that the stuff the old man used on the lawn last spring?"

  "Yes," said Jim, "your father used some on his lawn. We don't put it onour fields in Iowa--not yet; but if it weren't for those white specks onthe clover-roots, we should be obliged to do so--as they do back east."

  "How do them white specks keep us from needin' nitrates?"

  "It's a long story," said Jim. "You see, before there were any plants bigenough to be visible--if there had been any one to see them--the world wasfull of little plants so small that there may be billions of them in oneof these little white specks. They knew how to take the nitrates from theair----"

  "Air!" ejaculated Newton. "Nitrates in the air! You're crazy!"

  "No," said Jim. "There are tons of nitrogen in the air that press down onyour head--but the big plants can't get it through their leaves, ortheir roots. They never had to learn, because when the littleplants--bacteria--found that the big plants had roots with sap in them,they located on those roots and tapped them for the sap they needed.They began to get their board and lodgings off the big plants. And inpayment for their hotel bills, the little plants took nitrogen out ofthe air for both themselves and their hosts."

  "What d'ye mean by 'hosts'?"

  "Their hotel-keepers--the big plants. And now the plants that have thehotel roots for the bacteria furnish nitrogen not only for themselves butfor the crops that follow. Corn can't get nitrogen out of the air; butclover can--and that's why we ought to plow down clover before a crop ofcorn."

  "Gee!" said Newt. "If you could get to teach our school, I'd go again."

  "It would interfere with your pool playing."

  "What business is that o' yours?" interrogated Newt defiantly.

  "Well, get busy with that shovel," suggested Jim, who had been workingsteadily, driving out upon the fill occasionally to unload. On his returnfrom dumping the next load, Newton seemed, in a superior way, quiteamiably disposed toward his workfellow--rather the habitual thing in theneighborhood.

  "I'll work my old man to vote for you for the job," said he.

  "What job?" asked Jim.

  "Teacher for our school," answered Newt.

  "Those school directors," replied Jim, "have become so bullheaded thatthey'll never vote for any one except the applicants they've been votingfor."

  "The old man says he will have Prue Foster again, or he'll give the schoola darned long vacation, unless Peterson and Bonner join on some one else.That would beat Prue, of course."

  "And Con Bonner won't vote for any one but Maggie Gilmartin," added Jim.

  "And," supplied Newton, "Haakon Peterson says he'll stick to HermanPaulson until the Hot Springs freeze over."

  "And there you are," said Jim. "You tell your father for me that I thinkhe's a mere mule--and that the whole district thinks the same."

  "All right," said Newt. "I'll tell him that while I'm working him to votefor you."

  Jim smiled grimly. Such a position might have been his years ago, if hecould have left his mother or earned enough in it to keep both alive. Hehad remained a peasant because the American rural teacher is placedeconomically lower than the peasant. He gave Newton's chatter noconsideration. But when, in the afternoon, he hitched his team with othersto the big road grader, and the gang became concentrated within talkingdistance, he found that the project of heckling and chaffing him about hiseminent fitness for a scholastic position was to be the real entertainmentof the occasion.

  "Jim's the candidate to bust the deadlock," said Columbus Brown, with awink. "Just like Garfield in that Republican convention he was nominatedin--eh, Con?"

  "Con" was Cornelius Bonner, an Irishman, one of the deadlocked schoolboard, and the captain of the road grader. He winked back at thepathmaster.

  "Jim's the gray-eyed man o' destiny," he replied, "if he can get two votesin that board."

  "You'd vote for me, wouldn't you, Con?" asked Jim.

  "I'll try annything wance," replied Bonner.

  "Try voting with Ezra Bronson once, for Prue Foster," suggested Jim."She's done good work here."

  "Opinions differ," said Bonner, "an' when you try annything just forwance, it shouldn't be an irrevocable shtip, me bye."

  "You're a reasonable board of public servants," said Jim ironically. "I'dlike to tell the whole board what I think of them."

  "Come down to-night," said Bonner jeeringly. "We're going to have a boardmeeting at the schoolhouse and ballot a few more times. Come down, and bethe Garfield of the convintion. We've lacked brains on the board, that'sclear. They ain't a man on the board that iver studied algebra, 'r thatknows more about farmin' than their impl'yers. Come down to theschoolhouse, and we'll have a field-hand addriss the school board--andbegosh, I'll move yer illiction mesilf! Come, now, Jimmy, me bye, be game.It'll vary the program, anny-how."

  The entire gang grinned. Jim flushed, and then reconquered his calmness ofspirit.

  "All right, Con," said he. "I'll come and tell you a few things--and youcan do as you like about making the motion."