The Brown Mouse Part 10

"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't it?"

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

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

"That's the best answer I've had on that point, Pete," he said, after the disturbance had subsided. "But if the James boys and the Youngers had had the sort of culture I'm for, they would have been successful stock men and farmers, instead of train-robbers. Take Raymond Simms, for instance. He had all the qualifications of a member of the James gang when he came here. All he needed was a few exasperated a.s.sociates of his own sort, and a convenient railway with undefended trains running over it. But after a few weeks of real 'culture' under a mighty poor teacher, he's developing into 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 think you'll find the cattle ready to come in out of the storm when you get good and through."

"I think I'll let 'em in now," said Pete, by way of excusing himself. "I expect 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.

CHAPTER XI

THE MOUSE ESCAPES

Jennie played the piano and sang. They all joined in some simple Christmas songs. Mrs. Woodruff and Jim's mother went into other parts of the house on research work connected with their converse on domestic economy. The colonel withdrew for an inspection of the live stock on the eve of the threatened blizzard. And Jim was left alone with Jennie in the front parlor. After the buzz of conversation, they seemed to have nothing to say. Jennie played softly, and looked at nothing, but scrutinized Jim by means of the eyes which women have concealed in their back hair. There was something new in the man--she sensed that. He was more confident, more persuasive, more dynamic. She was used to him only as a static force.

And Jim felt something new, too. He had felt it growing in him ever since he began his school work, and knew not the cause of it. The cause, however, would not have been a mystery to a wise old yogi who might discover the same sort of change in one of his young novices. Jim Irwin had been a sort of ascetic since his boyhood. He had mortified the flesh by hard labor in the fields, and by flagellations of the brain to drive off sleep while he pored over his books in the attic--which was often so hot after a day of summer's sun on its low thin roof, that he was forced to do his reading in the midmost night. He had looked long on such women as Helen of Troy, Cleopatra, Isabel, Cressida, Volumnia, Virginia, Evangeline, Agnes Wickfleld and Fair Rosamond; but on women in the flesh he had gazed as upon trees walking. The aforesaid spiritual director, had this young ascetic been under one, would have foreseen the effects on the psychology of a stout fellow of twenty-eight of freedom from the toil of the fields, and a.s.sociation with a group of young human beings of both s.e.xes. To the novice struggling for emanc.i.p.ation from earthly thoughts, he would have recommended fasting and prayer, and perhaps, a hair shirt. Just what his prescription would have been for a man in Jim's position is, of course, a question. He would, no doubt, have considered carefully his patient's symptoms. These were very largely the mental experiences which most boys pa.s.s through in their early twenties, save, perhaps that, as in a belated season, the transition from winter to spring was more sudden, and the contrast more violent. Jim was now thrown every day into contact with his fellows. He was no longer a lay monk, but an active member of a very human group. He was becoming more of a boy, with the boys, and still more was he developing into a man with the women. The budding womanhood of Calista Simms and the other girls of his school thrilled him as Helen of Troy or Juliet had never done. This will not seem very strange to the experienced reader, but it astonished the unsophisticated young schoolmaster. The floating hair, the heaving bosom, the rosebud mouth, the starry eye, the fragrant breath, the magnetic hand--all these disturbed the hitherto sedate mind, and filled the brief hours he was accustomed to spend in sleep with strange dreams. And now, as he gazed at Jennie, he was suddenly aware of the fact that, after all, whenever these thoughts and dreams took on individuality, they were only persistent and intensified continuations of his old dreams of her. They had always been dormant in him, since the days they both studied from the same book. He was quite sure, now, that he had never forgotten for a moment, that Jennie was the only girl in the world for him. And possibly he was right about this. It is perfectly certain, however, that for years he had not consciously been in love with her.

Now, however, he arose as from some inner compulsion, and went to her side. He wished that he knew enough of music to turn her sheets for her, but, alas! the notes were meaningless to him. Still scanning him by means of her back hair, Jennie knew that in another moment Jim would lay his hand on her shoulder, or otherwise advance to personal nearness, as he had done the night of his ill-starred speech at the schoolhouse--and she rose in self-defense. Self-defense, however, did not seem to require that he be kept at too great a distance; so she maneuvered him to the sofa, and seated him beside her. Now was the time to line him up.

"It seems good to have you with us to-day," said she. "We're such old, old friends."

"Yes," repeated Jim, "old friends .... We are, aren't we, Jennie?"

"And I feel sure," Jennie went on, "that this marks a new era in our friendship."

"Why?" asked Jim, after considering the matter.

"Oh! everything is different, now--and getting more different all the time. My new work, and your new work, you know."

"I should like to think," said Jim, "that we are beginning over again."

"Oh, we are, we are, indeed! I am quite sure of it."

"And yet," said Jim, "there is no such thing as a new beginning.

Everything joins itself to something which went before. There isn't any seam."

"No?" said Jennie interrogatively.

"Our regard for each other," Jennie noted most pointedly his word "regard"--"must be the continuation of the old regard."

"I hardly know what you mean," said Jennie.

Jim reached over and possessed himself of her hand. She pulled it from him gently, but he paid no attention to the little muscular protest, and examined the hand critically. On the back of the middle finger he pointed out a scar--a very tiny scar.

"Do you remember how you got that?" he asked.

Because Jim clung to the hand, their heads were very close together as she joined in the examination.

"Why, I don't believe I do," said she.

"I do," he replied. "We--you and I and Mary Forsythe were playing mumble-peg, and you put your hand on the gra.s.s just as I threw the knife--it cut you, and left that scar."

"I remember, now!" said she. "How such things come back over the memory.

And did it leave a scar when I pushed you toward the red-hot stove in the schoolhouse one blizzardy day, like this, and you peeled the skin off your wrist where it struck the stove?"

"Look at it," said he, baring his long and bony wrist. "Right there!"

And they were off on the trail that leads back to childhood. They had talked long, and intimately, when the shadows of the early evening crept into the corners of the room. He had carried her across the flooded slew again after the big rain. They had relived a dozen moving incidents by flood and field. Jennie recalled the time when the tornado narrowly missed the schoolhouse, and frightened everybody in school nearly to death.

"Everybody but you, Jim," Jennie remembered. "You looked out of the window and told the teacher that the twister was going north of us, and would kill somebody else."

"Did I?" asked Jim.

"Yes," said Jennie, "and when the teacher asked us to kneel and thank G.o.d, you said, 'Why should we thank G.o.d that somebody else is blowed away?' She was greatly shocked."

"I don't see to this day," Jim a.s.serted, "what answer there was to my question."

In the gathering darkness Jim again took Jennie's hand, but this time she deprived him of it.

He was trembling like a leaf. Let it be remembered in his favor that this was the only girl's hand he had ever held.

"You can't find any more scars on it," she said soberly.

"Let me see how much it has changed since I stuck the knife in it," begged Jim.

Jennie held it up for inspection.

"It's longer, and slenderer, and whiter, and even more beautiful," said he, "than the little hand I cut; but it was then the most beautiful hand in the world to me--and still is."

"I must light the lamps," said the county superintendent-elect, rather fl.u.s.tered, it must be confessed. "Mama! Where are all the matches?"

Mrs. Woodruff and Mrs. Irwin came in, and the lamplight reminded Jim's mother that the cow was still to milk, and that the chickens might need attention. The Woodruff sleigh came to the door to carry them home; but Jim desired to breast the storm. He felt that he needed the conflict. Mrs.

Irwin scolded him for his foolishness, but he strode off into the whirling drift, throwing back a good-by for general consumption, and a pathetic smile to Jennie.