The Brown Mouse, Page 3

  CHAPTER III

  WHAT IS A BROWN MOUSE

  Immediately upon the accidental election of Jim Irwin to the position ofteacher of the Woodruff school, he developed habits somewhat like aghost's or a bandit's. That is, he walked of nights and on rainy days.

  On fine days, he worked in Colonel Woodruff's fields as of yore. Had hebeen appointed to a position attached to a salary of fifty thousanddollars a year, he might have spent six months on a preliminary vacationin learning something about his new duties. But Jim's salary was to bethree hundred and sixty dollars for nine months' work in the Woodruffschool, and he was to find himself--and his mother. Therefore, he had toindulge in his loose habits of night walking and roaming about after hoursonly, or on holidays and in foul weather.

  The Simms family, being from the mountings of Tennessee, were ratherstartled one night, when Jim Irwin, homely, stooped and errandless,silently appeared in their family circle about the front door. They hadlived where it was the custom to give a whoop from the big road before onepassed through the palin's and up to the house. Otherwise, how was one toknow whether the visitor was friend or foe?

  From force of habit, Old Man Simms started for his gun-rack at Jim'sappearance, but the Lincolnian smile and the low slow speech, so much likehis own in some respects, ended that part of the matter. Besides, Old ManSimms remembered that none of the Hobdays, whose hostilities somewhatstood in the way of the return of the Simmses to their native hills, couldpossibly be expected to appear thus in Iowa.

  "Stranger," said Mr. Simms, after greetings had been exchanged, "you'reright welcome, but in my kentry you'd find it dangersome to walk inthisaway."

  "How so?" queried Jim Irwin.

  "You'd more'n likely git shot up some," replied Mr. Simms, "onless youwhooped from the big road."

  "I didn't know that," replied Jim. "I'm ignorant of the customs of othercountries. Would you rather I'd whoop from the big road--nobody elsewill."

  "I reckon," replied Mr. Simms, "that we-all will have to accommodateourse'ves to the ways hyeh."

  Evidently Jim was the Simms' first caller since they had settled on thelittle brushy tract whose hills and trees reminded them of theirmountains. Low hills, to be sure, with only a footing of rocks where thecreek had cut through, and not many trees, but down in the creek bed, withthe oaks, elms and box-elders arching overhead, the Simmses could imaginethemselves beside some run falling into the French Broad, or the Holston.The creek bed was a withdrawing room in which to retire from the eternalblack soil and level corn-fields of Iowa. What if the soil was so poor, incomparison with those black uplands, that the owner of the old wood-lotcould find no renter? It was better than the soil in the mountains, andsuited the lonesome Simmses much more than a better farm would have done.They were not of the Iowa people anyhow, not understood, not theirequals--they were pore, and expected to stay pore--while the Iowa peopleall seemed to be either well-to-do, or expecting to become so. It was muchmore agreeable to the Simmses to retire to the back wood-lot farm with thecreek bed running through it.

  Jim Irwin asked Old Man Simms about the fishing in the creek, and whetherthere was any duck shooting spring and fall.

  "We git right smart of these little panfish," said Mr. Simms, "an' Calistadone shot two butterball ducks about 'tater-plantin' time."

  Calista blushed--but this stranger, so much like themselves, could not seethe rosy suffusion. The allusion gave him a chance to look about him atthe family. There was a boy of sixteen, a girl--the duck-shootingCalista--younger than Raymond--a girl of eleven, named Virginia, butcalled Jinnie--and a smaller lad who rejoiced in the name of McGeehee, butwas mercifully called Buddy.

  Calista squirmed for something to say. "Raymond runs a line o' traps whenthe fur's prime," she volunteered.

  Then came a long talk on traps and trapping, shooting, hunting and thejoys of the mountings--during which Jim noted the ignorance and poverty ofthe Simmses. The clothing of the girls was not decent according to localstandards; for while Calista wore a skirt hurriedly slipped on, Jim wasquite sure--and not without evidence to support his views--that she hadbeen wearing when he arrived the same regimentals now displayed byJinnie--a pair of ragged blue overalls. Evidently the Simmses were wearingwhat they had and not what they desired. The father was faded, patched,gray and earthy, and the boys looked better than the rest solely becausewe expect boys to be torn and patched. Mrs. Simms was invisible except asa gray blur beyond the rain-barrel, in the midst of which her pipe glowedwith a regular ebb and flow of embers.

  On the next rainy day Jim called again and secured the services of Raymondto help him select seed corn. He was going to teach the school nextwinter, and he wanted to have a seed-corn frolic the first day, instead ofwaiting until the last--and you had to get seed corn while it was on thestalk, if you got the best. No Simms could refuse a favor to the fellowwho was so much like themselves, and who was so greatly interested intrapping, hunting and the Tennessee mountains--so Raymond went with Jim,and with Newt Bronson and five more they selected Colonel Woodruff's seedcorn for the next year, under the colonel's personal superintendence.

  In the evening they looked the grain over on the Woodruff lawn, and thecolonel talked about corn and corn selection. They had supper at half pastsix, and Jennie waited on them--having assisted her mother in the cooking.It was quite a festival. Jim Irwin was the least conspicuous person in thegathering, but the colonel, who was a seasoned politician, observed thatthe farm-hand had become a fisher of men, and was angling for the souls ofthese boys, and their interest in the school. Jim was careful not to flushthe covey, but every boy received from the next winter's teacher someconfidential hint as to plans, and some suggestion that Jim was relying onthe aid and comfort of that particular boy. Newt Bronson, especially, wasleaned on as a strong staff and a very present help in time of trouble. Asfor Raymond Simms, it was clearly best to leave him alone. All this talkof corn selection and related things was new to him, and he drank it inthirstily. He had an inestimable advantage over Newt in that he wasstarved, while Newt was surfeited with "advantages" for which he had nouse.

  "Jennie," said Colonel Woodruff, after the party had broken up, "I'mlosing the best hand I ever had, and I've been sorry."

  "I'm glad he's leaving you," said Jennie. "He ought to do something exceptwork in the field for wages."

  "I've had no idea he could make good as a teacher--and what is there in itif he does?"

  "What has he lost if he doesn't?" rejoined Jennie. "And why can't he makegood?"

  "The school board's against him, for one thing," replied the colonel."They'll fire him if they get a chance. They're the laughing-stock of thecountry for hiring him by mistake, and they're irritated. But after seeinghim perform to-night, I wonder if he can't make good."

  "If he could _feel_ like anything but an underling he'd succeed," saidJennie.

  "That's his heredity," stated the colonel, whose live-stock operationswere based on heredity. "Jim's a scrub, I suppose; but he acts as if hemight turn out to be a Brown Mouse."

  "What do you mean, pa," scoffed Jennie--"a Brown Mouse!"

  "A fellow in Edinburgh," said the colonel, "crossed the Japanese waltzingmouse with the common white mouse. Jim's pedling father was a waltzingmouse, no good except to jump from one spot to another for no good reason.Jim's mother is an albino of a woman, with all the color washed out in oneway or another. Jim ought to be a mongrel, and I've always considered himone. But the Edinburgh fellow every once in a while got out of hisvariously-colored, waltzing and albino hybrids, a brown mouse. It wasn't acommon house mouse, either, but a wild mouse unlike any he had ever seen.It ran away, and bit and gnawed, and raised hob. It was what we breederscall a Mendelian segregation of genetic factors that had been in thewaltzers and albinos all the time--their original wild ancestor of thewoods and fields. If Jim turns out to be a Brown Mouse, he may be a biggerman than any of us. Anyhow, I'm for him."

  "He'll have to be a big man to make anything out of the job of a
countryschool-teacher," said Jennie.

  "Any job's as big as the man who holds it down," said her father.

  Next day, Jim received a letter from Jennie.

  * * * * *

  "Dear Jim," it ran. "Father says you are sure to have a hard time--theschool board's against you, and all that. But he added, 'I'm for Jim,anyhow!' I thought you'd like to know this. Also he said, 'Any job's asbig as the man who holds it down,' And I believe this also, _and I'm foryou, too!_ You are doing wonders even before the school starts in gettingthe pupils interested in a lot of things, which, while they don't belongto school work, will make them friends of yours. I don't see how this willhelp you much, but it's a fine thing, and shows your interest in them.Don't be too original. The wheel runs easiest in the beaten track. Yours.Jennie."

  Jennie's caution made no impression on Jim--but he put the letter away,and every evening took it out and read the italicized words, _"I'm foryou, too!"_ The colonel's dictum, "Any job's as big as the man who holdsit down," was an Emersonian truism to Jim. It reduced all jobs to anequality, and it meant equality in intellectual and spiritual development.It didn't mean, for instance, that any job was as good as another inmaking it possible for a man to marry--and Jennie Woodruff's "Humph!"returned to kill and drag off her "I'm for you, too!"