The Brown Mouse

“A woman has an advantage of a man in such a contest,” said Jim; “she can work just as hard as he can, and at the same time profit by the fact that it’s supposed she can’t.”

“I need all the advantage I possess,” said Jennie, “and all the votes. Say a word for me when on your pastoral rounds.”

“All right,” said Jim, “what shall I say you’ll do for the schools?”

“Why,” said Jennie, rather perplexed, “I’ll be fair in my examinations of teachers, try to keep the unfit teachers out of the schools, visit schools as often as I can, and – why, what does any good superintendent do?”

“I never heard of a good county superintendent,” said Jim.

“Never heard of one – why, Jim Irwin!”

“I don’t believe there is any such thing,” persisted Jim, “and if you do no more than you say, you’ll be off the same piece as the rest. Your system won’t give us any better schools than we have – of the old sort – and we need a new kind.”

“Oh, Jim, Jim! Dreaming as of yore! Why can’t you be practical! What do you mean by a new kind of rural school?”

“A truly-rural rural school,” said Jim.

“I can’t pronounce it,” smiled Jennie, “to say nothing of understanding it. What would your tralalooral rural school do?”

“It would be correlated with rural life,” said Jim.

“How?”

“It would get education out of the things the farmers and farmers’ wives are interested in as a part of their lives.”

“What, for instance?”

“Dairying, for instance, in this district; and soil management; and corn-growing; and farm manual training for boys; and sewing, cooking and housekeeping for the girls – and caring for babies!”

Jennie looked serious, after smothering a laugh.

“Jim,” said she, “you’re going to have a hard enough time to succeed in the Woodruff school, if you confine yourself to methods that have been tested, and found good.”

“But the old methods,” urged Jim, “have been tested and found bad. Shall I keep to them?”

“They have made the American people what they are,” said Jennie. “Don’t be unpatriotic, Jim.”

“They have educated our farm children for the cities,” said Jim. “This county is losing population – and it’s the best county in the world.”

“Pessimism never wins,” said Jennie.

“Neither does blindness,” answered Jim. “It is losing the farms their dwellers, and swelling the cities with a proletariat.”

For some time, now, Jim had ceased to hold Jennie’s hand; and their sweetheart days had never seemed farther away.

“Jim,” said Jennie, “I may be elected to a position in which I shall be obliged to pass on your acts as teacher – in an official way, I mean. I hope they will be justifiable.”

Jim smiled his slowest and saddest smile.

“If they’re not, I’ll not ask you to condone them,” said he. “But first, they must be justifiable to me, Jennie.”

“Good night,” said Jennie curtly, and left him.

Jennie, I am obliged to admit, gave scant attention to the new career upon which her old sweetheart seemed to be entering. She was in politics, and was playing the game as became the daughter of a local politician. The reader must not by this term get the impression that Colonel Woodruff was a man of the grafting tricky sort of which we are prone to think when the term is used. The West has been ruled by just such men as he, and the West has done rather well, all things considered. Colonel Albert Woodruff went south with the army as a corporal in 1861, and came back a lieutenant. His title of colonel was conferred by appointment as a member of the staff of the governor, long years ago, when he was county auditor. He was not a rich man, as I may have suggested, but a well-to-do farmer, whose wife did her own work much of the time, not because the colonel could not afford to hire “help,” but for the reason that “hired girls” were hard to get.

The colonel, having seen the glory of the coming of the Lord in the triumph of his side in the great war, was inclined to think that all reform had ceased, and was a political stand-patter – a very honest and sincere one. Moreover, he was influential enough so that when Mr. Cummins or Mr. Dolliver came into the county on political errands, Colonel Woodruff had always been called into conference. He was of the old New England type, believed very much in heredity, very much in the theory that whatever is is right, in so far as it has secured money or power.

He had hated General Weaver and his forces; and had sometimes wondered how a man of Horace Boies’ opinions had succeeded in being so good a governor. He broke with Governor Larrabee when that excellent man had turned against the great men who had developed Iowa by building the railroads. He was always in the county convention, and preferred to serve on the committee on credentials, and leave to others the more showy work of membership in the committee on resolutions. He believed in education, provided it did not unsettle things. He had a good deal of Latin and some Greek, and lived on a farm rather than in a fine house in the county seat because of his lack of financial ability. As a matter of fact, he had been too strictly scrupulous to do the things – such as dealing in lands belonging to eastern speculators who were not advised as to their values, speculating in county warrants, buying up tax titles with county money, and the like – by which his fellow-politicians who held office in the early years of the county had founded their fortunes. A very respectable, honest, American tory was the colonel, fond of his political sway, and rather soured by the fact that it was passing from him. He had now broken with Cummins and Dolliver as he had done years ago with Weaver and later with Larrabee – and this breach was very important to him, whether they were greatly concerned about it or not.

Such being her family history, Jennie was something of a politician herself. She was in no way surprised when approached by party managers on the subject of accepting the nomination for county superintendent of schools. Colonel Woodruff could deliver some delegates to his daughter, though he rather shied at the proposal at first, but on thinking it over, warmed somewhat to the notion of having a Woodruff on the county pay-roll once more.

CHAPTER VI

JIM TALKS THE WEATHER COLD

“Going to the rally, James?”

Jim had finished his supper, and yearned for a long evening in his attic den with his cheap literature. But as the district schoolmaster he was to some extent responsible for the protection of the school property, and felt some sense of duty as to exhibiting an interest in public affairs.

“I guess I’ll have to go, mother,” he replied regretfully. “I want to see Mr. Woodruff about borrowing his Babcock milk tester, and I’ll go that way. I guess I’ll go on to the meeting.”

He kissed his mother when he went – a habit from which he never deviated, and another of those personal peculiarities which had marked him as different from the other boys of the neighborhood. His mother urged his overcoat upon him in vain – for Jim’s overcoat was distinctly a bad one, while his best suit, now worn every day as a concession to his scholastic position, still looked passably well after several weeks of schoolroom duty. She pressed him to wear a muffler about his neck, but he declined that also. He didn’t need it, he said; but he was thinking of the incongruity of a muffler with no overcoat. It seemed more logical to assume that the weather was milder than it really was, on that sharp October evening, and appear at his best, albeit rather aware of the cold. Jennie was at home, and he was likely to see and be seen of her.

“You can borrow that tester,” said the colonel, “and the cows that go with it, if you can use ’em. They ain’t earning their keep here. But how does the milk tester fit into the curriculum of the school? A decoration?”

“We want to make a few tests of the cows in the neighborhood,” answered Jim. “Just another of my fool notions.”

“All right,” said the colonel. “Take it along. Going to the speakin’?”

“Certainly, he’s going,” said Jennie, entering. “This is my meeting, Jim.”

“Surely, I’m going,” assented Jim. “And I think I’ll run along.”

“I wish we had room for you in the car,” said the colonel. “But I’m going around by Bronson’s to pick up the speaker, and I’ll have a chuck-up load.”

“Not so much of a load as you think,” said Jennie. “I’m going with Jim. The walk will do me good.”

Any candidate warms to her voting population just before election; but Jennie had a special kindness for Jim. He was no longer a farm-hand. The fact that he was coming to be a center of disturbance in the district, and that she quite failed to understand how his eccentric behavior could be harmonized with those principles of teaching which she had imbibed at the state normal school in itself lifted him nearer to equality with her. A public nuisance is really more respectable than a nonentity.

She gave Jim a thrill as she passed through the gate that he opened for her. White moonlight on her white furs suggested purity, exaltation, the essence of womanhood – things far finer in the woman of twenty-seven than the glamour thrown over him by the schoolgirl of sixteen.

Jim gave her no thrill; for he looked gaunt and angular in his skimpy, ready-made suit, too short in legs and sleeves, and too thin for the season. Yet, as they walked along, Jim grew upon her. He strode on with immense strides, made slow to accommodate her shorter steps, and embarrassing her by his entire absence of effort to keep step. For all that, he lifted his face to the stars, and he kept silence, save for certain fragments of his thoughts, in dropping which he assumed that she, like himself, was filled with the grandeur of the sparkling sky, its vast moon, plowing like an astronomical liner through the cloudlets of a wool-pack. He pointed out the great open spaces in the Milky Way, wondering at their emptiness, and at the fact that no telescope can find stars in them.

They stopped and looked. Jim laid his hard hands on the shoulders of her white fur collarette.

“What’s the use of political meetings,” said Jim, “when you and I can stand here and think our way out, even beyond the limits of our Universe?”

“A wonderful journey,” said she, not quite understanding his mood, but very respectful to it.