The Brown Mouse Page 10

  CHAPTER X

  HOW JIM WAS LINED UP

  There is no doubt that Jennie Woodruff was justified in thinking that theywere a queer couple. They weren't like the Woodruffs, at all. They were ofa different pattern. To be sure, Jim's clothes were not especiallynoteworthy, being just shiny, and frayed at cuff and instep, and short ofsleeve and leg, and ill-fitting and cheap. They betrayed poverty, and theinability of a New York sweatshop to anticipate the prodigality of Naturein the matter of length of leg and arm, and wealth of bones and jointswhich she had lavished upon Jim Irwin. But the Woodruff table had oftenenjoyed Jim's presence, and the standards prevailing there as to clotheswere only those of plain people who eat with their hired men, buy theirclothes at a county seat town, and live simply and sensibly on the fat ofthe land. Jim's queerness lay not so much in his clothes as in hispersonality.

  On the other hand, Jennie could not help thinking that Mrs. Irwin'squeerness was to be found almost solely in her clothes. The black alpacalooked undeniably respectable, especially when it was helped out by acurious old brooch of goldstone, bordered with flowers in blue and whiteand red and green--tiny blossoms of little stones which looked like theflowers which grow at the snow line on Pike's Peak. Jennie felt that itmust be a cheap affair, but it was decorative, and she wondered where Mrs.Irwin got it. She guessed it must have a story--a story in which thestooped, rusty, somber old lady looked like a character drawn to harmonizewith the period just after the war. For the black alpaca dress looked morelike a costume for a masquerade than a present-day garment, and Mrs. Irwinwas so oppressed with doubt as to whether she was presentable, withknowledge that her dress didn't fit, and with the difficulty of behavingnaturally--like a convict just discharged from prison after a ten years'term--that she took on a stiffness of deportment quite in keeping with theidea that she was a female Rip Van Winkle not yet quite awake. But Jenniehad the keenness to see that if Mrs. Irwin could have had an up-to-datecostume she would have become a rather ordinary and not bad-looking oldlady. What Jennie failed to divine was that if Jim could have invested ahundred dollars in the services of tailors, haberdashers, barbers andother specialists in personal appearance, and could for this hour or sohave blotted out his record as her father's field-hand, he would haveseemed to her a distinguished-looking young man. Not handsome, of course,but the sort people look after--and follow.

  "Come to dinner," said Mrs. Woodruff, who at this juncture had a hiredgirl, but was yoked to the oar nevertheless when it came to turkey and theother fixings of a Christmas dinner. "It's good enough, what there is ofit, and there's enough of it such as it is--but the dressing in the turkeywould be better for a little more sage!"

  The bountiful meal piled mountain high for guest and hired help and familymelted away in a manner to delight the hearts of Mrs. Woodruff and Jennie.The colonel, in stiff starched shirt, black tie and frock coat, carvedwith much empressement, and Jim felt almost for the first time a sense ofthe value of manner.

  "I had bigger turkeys," said Mrs. Woodruff to Mrs. Irwin, "but I thoughtit would be better to cook two turkey-hens instead of one great biggobbler with meat as tough as tripe and stuffed full of fat."

  "One of the hens would 'a' been plenty," replied Mrs. Irwin. "How much didthey weigh?"

  "About fifteen pounds apiece," was the answer. "The gobbler would 'a'weighed thirty, I guess. He's pure Mammoth Bronze."

  "I wish," said Jim, "that we could get a few breeding birds of the wildbronze turkeys from Mexico."

  "Why?" asked the colonel.

  "They're the original blood of the domestic bronze turkeys," said Jim,"and they're bigger and handsomer than the pure-bred bronzes, even.They're a better stock than the northern wild turkeys from which ourcommon birds originated."

  "Where do you learn all these things, Jim?" asked Mrs. Woodruff. "Ideclare, I often tell Woodruff that it's as good as a lecture to have JimIrwin at table. My intelligence has fallen since you quit working here,Jim."

  There came into Jim's eyes the gleam of the man devoted to a Cause--andthe dinner tended to develop into a lecture. Jennie saw a little moreplainly wherein his queerness lay.

  "There's an education in any meal, if we would just use the things on thetable as materials for study, and follow their trails back to theirstarting-points. This turkey takes us back to the chaparral ofMexico----"

  "What's chaparral?" asked Jennie, as a diversion. "It's one of the words Ihave seen so often and know perfectly to speak it and read it--but afterall it's just a word, and nothing more."

  "Ain't that the trouble with our education, Jim?" queried the colonel,cleverly steering Jim back into the track of his discourse.

  "They are not even living words," answered Jim, "unless we have clothedthem in flesh and blood through some sort of concrete notion. 'Chaparral'to Jennie is just the ghost of a word. Our civilization is full ofinefficiency because we are satisfied to give our children these ghostsand shucks and husks of words, instead of the things themselves, that canbe seen and hefted and handled and tested and heard."

  Jennie looked Jim over carefully. His queerness was taking on a newphase--and she felt a sense of surprise such as one experiences when theconjurer causes a rose to grow into a tree before your very eyes. Jim'sdevelopment was not so rapid, but Jennie's perception of it was. She beganto feel proud of the fact that a man who could make his impracticalnotions seem so plausible--and who was clearly fired with some sort ofevangelistic fervor--had kissed her, once or twice, on bringing her homefrom the spelling school.

  "I think we lose so much time in school," Jim went on, "while the childrenare eating their dinners."

  "Well, Jim," said Mrs. Woodruff, "every one but you is down on the humanlevel. The poor kids have to eat!"

  "But think how much good education there is wrapped up in the schooldinner--if we could only get it out."

  Jennie grew grave. Here was this Brown Mouse actually introducing thesubject of the school--and he ought to suspect that she was planning toline him up on this very thing--if he wasn't a perfect donkey as well as adreamer. And he was calmly wading into the subject as if she were theex-farm-hand country teacher, and he was the county superintendent-elect!

  "Eating a dinner like this, mother," said the colonel gallantly, "is aneducation in itself--and eating some others requires one; but just how'larnin' is wrapped up in the school lunch is a new one on me, Jim."

  "Well," said Jim, "in the first place the children ought to cook theirmeals as a part of the school work. Prior to that they ought to buy thematerials. And prior to that they ought to keep the accounts of the schoolkitchen. They'd like to do these things, and it would help prepare themfor life on an intelligent plane, while they prepared the meals."

  "Isn't that looking rather far ahead?" asked the countysuperintendent-elect.

  "It's like a lot of other things we think far ahead," urged Jim. "The onlyreason why they're far off is because we think them so. It's athought--and a thought is as near the moment we think it as it will everbe."

  "I guess that's so--to a wild-eyed reformer," said the colonel. "But goon. Develop your thought a little. Have some more dressing."

  "Thanks, I believe I will," said Jim. "And a little more of the cranberrysauce. No more turkey, please."

  "I'd like to see the school class that could prepare this dinner," saidMrs. Woodruff.

  "Why," said Jim, "you'd be there showing them how! They'd get credits intheir domestic-economy course for getting the school dinner--and they'dbring their mothers into it to help them stand at the head of theirclasses. And one detail of girls would cook one week, and another serve.The setting of the table would come in as a study--flowers, linen and allthat. And when we get a civilized teacher, table manners!"

  "I'd take on that class," said the hired man, winking at Selma Carlson,the maid, from somewhere below the salt. "The way I make my knife feed myface would be a great help to the children."

  "And when the food came on the table," Jim went on, with a smile at hisformer fe
llow-laborer, who had heard most of this before as a part of thefield conversation, "just think of the things we could study while eatingit. The literary term for eating a meal is discussing it--well, thediscussion of a meal under proper guidance is much more educative than alecture. This breast-bone, now," said he, referring to the remains on hisplate. "That's physiology. The cranberry-sauce--that's botany, andcommerce, and soil management--do you know, Colonel, that the cranberrymust have an acid soil--which would kill alfalfa or clover?"

  "Read something of it," said the colonel, "but it didn't interest memuch."

  "And the difference between the types of fowl on the table--that'sbreeding. And the nutmeg, pepper and cocoanut--that's geography. Andeverything on the table runs back to geography, and comes to us linked toour lives by dollars and cents--and they're mathematics."

  "We must have something more than dollars and cents in life," said Jennie."We must have culture."

  "Culture," cried Jim, "is the ability to think in terms of life--isn'tit?"

  "Like Jesse James," suggested the hired man, who was a careful student ofthe life of that eminent bandit.

  There was a storm of laughter at this sally amidst which Jennie wished shehad thought of something like that. Jim joined in the laughter at his ownexpense, but was clearly suffering from argumentative shock.

  "That's the best answer I've had on that point, Pete," he said, after thedisturbance had subsided. "But if the James boys and the Youngers had hadthe sort of culture I'm for, they would have been successful stock men andfarmers, instead of train-robbers. Take Raymond Simms, for instance. Hehad all the qualifications of a member of the James gang when he camehere. All he needed was a few exasperated associates of his own sort, anda convenient railway with undefended trains running over it. But after afew weeks of real 'culture' under a mighty poor teacher, he's developinginto the most enthusiastic farmer I know. That's real culture."

  "It's snowing like everything," said Jennie, who faced the window.

  "Don't cut your dinner short," said the colonel to Pete, "but I thinkyou'll find the cattle ready to come in out of the storm when you get goodand through."

  "I think I'll let 'em in now," said Pete, by way of excusing himself. "Iexpect to put in most of the day from now on getting ready to quit eating.Save some of everything for me, Selma,--I'll be right back!"

  "All right, Pete," said Selma.