Once upon a time there was a little mouse called Squarky-woo, who lived behind the wainscoting in a house in Berkeley Square. His mother, who lived with him, was very old, and very grey, and very wise. He called her Mammy-ana, partly from affection and partly because it was her name. She was a widow, Squarky-woo's father having met with a tabby catastrophe in the kitchen, which had abruptly terminated his stainless career in the very flower of mousehood. It had been a cruel blow to Mammy-ana, who had loved him dearly, and would not have lost him for all the cheese in Cheddar. She had dragged his remains from the dust-heap on to which they had been thrown, and lovingly interred them beneath the dining-room floor, erecting over his grave the simple and touching memorial:
REQUIESCAT
IN
PUSSIE
From that day onward she had lavished the whole affection of her broken heart upon little Squarky-woo. He was indeed a mouse of which any mother might have been proud. His coat was as brown as the Thames water at London Bridge, his eyes were as black as Maria, and his teeth were as sharp as needles and as white as ivory. Deep down in her heart Mammy-ana thought him perfect, but it must not be supposed from this that she in any way neglected her duties as a mother. She insisted on his getting up at twelve o'clock every night, and going into his hole at six o'clock every morning. He was never allowed to play with the other young mice, or to use any vulgar expressions, such as "Go to Felis!" or "You be trapped!" Above all, he was strictly forbidden, on any excuse whatever, to go near the kitchen in which his beloved father had met so dreadful a fate.
With the foolishness of youth, Squarky-woo chafed under this admirable discipline. Not that he ever complained to his mother—oh, dear, no! He loved her too much, and, besides, she would probably have beaten him. Of course, if she had done so, it would only have been for his own good; but Squarky-woo, being modest by nature, felt that he was quite good enough. So he kept his thoughts to himself, and did what he was told, and Mammy-ana frequently informed him that he was the best behaved and the most satisfactory little mouse in the whole of Berkeley Square. "This," she would add, "is rather due to your excellent upbringing than to any innate virtue that you yourself possess." And Squarky-woo, who had quite made up his mind to pay a visit to the kitchen on the first possible occasion, used to bow his head gracefully, as though recognising the truth of her remark, and then wink at himself in the looking-glass under the dining-room sideboard.
Though nothing can excuse such duplicity, especially in early life, Squarky-woo's conduct was not really quite so reprehensible as it appears at first sight. He suffered from temptations of which Mammy-ana was ignorant, for the other young mice had the most offensive habit of jeering at him whenever she was not present. "Yah!" they would cry, "Who's afraid of the cat? Look at little Stay-in-hole!" Then they would tell him wonderful stories about the kitchen, how the floor was strewn with crumbs, and how exciting it was to creep in quietly and pick them up, while the great, ugly brute of a cat nodded away sleepily in front of the fire. And Squarky-woo would grind his teeth with impotent fury, and swear to himself that, come what might, nothing should stop him from sharing in their adventures.
And so, one evening, when Mammy-ana had gone across the square to pay a visit of congratulation (the cat at No. 4 having been rather severely bitten by a stray dog), Squarky-woo seized the opportunity of putting his long-cherished scheme into operation. He waited until twelve o'clock, when all the half-dressed people upstairs seemed to have gone to bed, and then, creeping softly out of his hole, made his way to the head of the kitchen stairs. His heart was beating furiously with excitement, and that strange, delicious ecstasy which, alas! so frequently accompanies a first departure from the paths of right flowed fiercely through his veins. He listened for a moment or two, scarcely daring to breathe, but the quivering of his own tail alone broke the silence.
Very cautiously he crept downstairs, until he reached the basement, where a small, blue jet of gas was flickering feebly in the draught. Squarky-woo knew from this that the servants had all retired into their holes. He paused for a moment outside the pantry door, until he heard the butler growling through his nose, which, according to Mammy-ana, was a sure sign that he had gone to sleep. Then, setting his teeth, he scuttled off down the passage in the direction of the kitchen.
To his intense surprise, the door was partly open; some careless scullery-maid had evidently forgotten her duty. For one instant he hesitated as the memory of his father's fate suddenly rushed into his mind. But the thought of what the other young mice would say swept away all caution, and, trembling with excitement, he crawled forward, and peeped round the corner into the forbidden chamber. In his wildest moments he had never imagined anything so exquisite. His heart almost stopped beating, and, in a hoarse whisper, he ejaculated to himself the single exclamation, "Crumbs!" The floor was literally strewn with them. Bread, toast, flour, bacon, potato—minute portions of all that made life sweet and radiant lay scattered there in boundless plenty. The dying firelight shone upon the silver covers on the walls, and threw a faint, harmonious glow over the entire banquet.
Tears of happiness gathered in Squarky-woo's eyes, and rolled gently down his nose. No wonder his father had risked everything in such a cause. Instead of a rash, indefinite shadow, Squarky-woo suddenly saw him in the guise of an heroic martyr, and a great thrill of family pride shot through his fluttering heart. He raised his head, and glanced savagely round the kitchen. Where was that infernal cat? She should pay bitterly for her deed of blood.
Fortunately, however, for Squarky-woo, the cat was otherwise engaged, and with the exception of a few black beetles, who eyed him with apathetic interest, he was in sole possession of the kitchen. Well! vengeance would keep, and the crumbs would not. There they lay in all their toothsome beauty. He crushed back his more noble sentiments, and flung himself upon the feast.
It was one of those rare occasions when the realization of a long-cherished scheme is even more enjoyable than imagination has already painted it, and so eagerly did Squarky-woo enter upon his task that for some moments he was totally oblivious of all other considerations. At length, however, when the first glow of gratified appetite was gradually cooling down, he began to realise that the whole apartment was permeated by a delicate perfume for which none of the fragments on the floor were directly responsible. He stopped eating and began to sniff the air with the rich satisfaction of a true connoisseur. "If that isn't Cheddar cheese," he murmured to himself, "I'm a Dutch-mouse!"
As far as he could judge, the source of this delicious odour lay somewhere in the direction of the fireplace. In eager expectancy he darted across the floor; and there, just in front of the grate lay the most perfect slice of Cheddar cheese, surrounded by a curious arrangement of wire and wood.
Now Squarky-woo had been brought up by Mammy-ana on an excellent principle, carefully copied from the manner in which she had observed human beings educated their children. That such things as traps and cats existed it was, of course, impossible to deny, but what they were like in appearance, and where they were likely to be found, were things that no decent-minded young mouse had any right to know. The great object of education was to launch one's children upon the world in absolute ignorance of the darker side of life.
"My own little Squarky-woo," she would say to other approving mothers, "is just as pure-minded as the day that he was born."
This being so, Squarky-woo had naturally no idea that the curious thing in front of him was a trap. He had often heard other young mice speak of such things with bated breath, but had never dared to ask what they were actually like, for fear that he should be laughed at for not knowing. So he walked round it, and sniffed at it, and puzzled his head trying to make out what it was. It could scarcely be intended to keep the cheese clean; it was obviously not intended to prevent anybody stealing it. Well, it was no good trying to account for human idiocy. People who kept cats for pleasure were obviously a little wanting in ordinary intelligence. If they chose to put their cheese into a sort of birdcage and leave it on the kitchen floor, that was their own look-out. He knew what to do with it if they hadn't.
Hesitating no longer, he ran into the trap, and, catching hold of the corner of the cheese with his sharp little teeth, gave it a quick jerk in order to detach it from the hook. Snap! He leaped round like a flash, but it was too late—the door of the trap had closed behind him. For an instant he scarcely realised what had happened; and then the hideous truth suddenly broke upon him in all its terrible reality. He hurled himself recklessly against the wires, but the cunning artificers of Birmingham had wrought them of the stoutest copper, and he only bruised his tender little body, and made no impression upon his prison. In pitiful distress he turned round and round, seeking in vain for some outlet. There was none; and Squarky-woo realized that nothing was now left to him except to face a cruel and painful death without disgracing his lineage.
Meanwhile Mammy-ana had returned from her visit in excellent spirits, the cat at No. 4 having been even more badly bitten than rumour had related. So it had been in a very genial frame of mind she had run upstairs, laughing gaily to herself as she pictured the amusing incident. Her only regret was that she had not been present to listen to the cat's squeak. That would have been music indeed.
Before going out, she had told Squarky-woo that he had better not leave the hole until her return, so she was very surprised, and not a little annoyed, to find that he had disobeyed her. "However," she thought, "he is probably only in the dining-room or the drawing-room, and I can't really be angry on such an auspicious occasion."
She trotted off to look for him, still chuckling to herself, and no suspicion of the terrible truth entered into her mind. Indeed, it was not until she had thoroughly searched both apartments that she began to get a little uneasy. "Surely Squarky-woo could not have been so madly disobedient as to go down into the kitchen!" She inquired of one or two mice she happened to meet, but none of them had seen anything of her son; and one of them went so far as to remark that he thought she always carried him in her pocket. But Mammy-ana was in no mood for joking. A horrible fear was slowly tightening round her heart. She darted away to the head of the kitchen stairs, and peering down into the dimly-lit passage, called out nervously:
"Squarky-woo! are you there?"
A faint answering squeak echoed up the stairs.
"Come up at once," she cried.
There was a long pause, and then a feeble broken little sob: "Caught in a trap."
The world seemed suddenly to reel round before Mammy-ana's eyes, and it was only with a super-verminous effort that she stopped herself from fainting. Sick with dread, she hurried downstairs, and, guided by the sound of Squarky-woo's voice, made her way straight to the kitchen. At the sight of her darling caught fast in the hideous engine of destruction, the last remnant of hope fled despairingly from her heart.
"Oh, Squarky-woo," she cried, "oh, you little fool!" and great tears of misery almost blinded her.
Squarky-woo crushed back his sobs when he saw his mother weeping.
"Don't cry, Mammy-ana," he said, "I am not worth it. I am only a wicked, ungrateful little beast, and I don't mind dying."
Then Mammy-ana broke down helplessly and sobbed out that he was all she had in the world, and that it was all her own fault for not having told him what a trap was like, and that Heaven knew she had done it all for the best. A sad, twisted little smile flickered across Squarky-woo's face, but he only shook his head and repeated bravely:
"No, mother, it was all my fault."
"Oh," she cried, "I might have known what would happen. Your father's blood was bound to come out."
Squarky-woo's eyes lit up with a great pride. "Yes," he said, "it has taught me how to make a fool of myself, but it will also teach me how to die."
"Listen," cried Mammy-ana suddenly. "There is one faint chance. If the cat is not present when you are discovered, they will try to drown you. Just as they are going to open the trap I will attract their attention, and if by any chance they open it a second too soon—jump, darling, jump, for your life and mine."
A glimmer of hope stole into Squarky-woo's eyes, and he set his little teeth with a grim determination that was good to witness. Mammy-ana wiped away her tears, and kissed him through the wires. And when the cold, grey light of morning crept through the chinks in the shuttered windows, she was still beside him, softly encouraging him with words of hope, and firmly resolved that if she failed to save him it should be at the price of her own existence.
At last a heavy step outside warned them of approaching danger, and Mammy-ana scuttled away and took up her position under the dresser. The terrible and immediate necessity for caution kept her cool and alert, though every nerve was tingling with savage determination. Then the door opened, and a great, sleepy scullery-maid blundered into the room. Directly she saw Squarky-woo in the trap she gave a scream of terror, and darted to the door.
"Cook, cook," she called. "Come 'ere."
Mammy-ana heard the door of the cook's room open, and the angry answer that came across the passage:
"Well, what are yer screechin' about, silly?"
"There's a mouse in the trap."
"Well, it won't eat yer."
There was a sound of flopping footsteps, and the cook waddled in, looking anything but pleasant.
"Never 'eard such a noise," she remarked angrily. "Ain't yer ever seen a mouse before, fat'ead?"
She advanced towards the fireplace, and glanced down at Squarky-woo. "Where's that blessed cat?" she inquired.
"Dunno," said the scullery-maid.
"What's the good of you?" demanded the cook scornfully.
Being apparently unable to find any satisfactory solution to this problem, the scullery-maid only glanced nervously at Squarky-woo and murmured, "Pore little thing."
"Pore little thing!" shouted the cook indignantly; "p'r'aps ye'd like to make a pet of it. 'Ere, there's Jaimes. Jaimes! Jaimes!"
The footman—a tall, pale-faced young man—sauntered in in a state of some incompleteness with regard to costume.
"What are you 'ollerin' about?" he inquired.
"You might tike and drown this 'ere mouse like a good feller," said the cook.
"Mouse," he echoed sarcastically. "Lor' bless us! it might 'a bin a tiger from the row you was makin'."
He picked up the trap with a brutal indifference and strolled towards the door. Trembling with excitement, Mammy-ana slipped along the wall after him. He strode down the passage whistling to himself, and, turning the corner, came to a standstill just alongside of a large tin bucket full of water. "Let's see yer swim," he remarked to Squarky-woo, and, lifting the trap, placed his thumb upon the spring. With a prayer in her heart, Mammy-ana leapt forward and struck in with her sharp little teeth upon the calf of his leg, which was only protected by a thin white stocking. With an exclamation of pain he started back, and unconsciously pressed the spring. Up went the flap, and out went Squarky-woo, just missing the bucket by the eighth of an inch. He came down with a terrible bang upon the stone floor, but was up again in an instant, and, before the astonished footman had recovered his composure, both he and Mammy-ana had disappeared down a neighbouring hole.
"'Ave you drowned it?" called out the cook.
And James, who knew women, pulled himself together and said, "Yes."
Upstairs, in Mammy-ana's quiet little retreat, the final and distressing dénouement took place. Squarky-woo crouched in a corner awaiting his destiny. For some time Mammy-ana eyed him in stern silence. Then she flicked her tail and Squarky-woo shivered.
"Come here," she said.
He made no motion.
"Come here," she squeaked, "you—you—wee, slickit, cowering, timorous beastie!"
Horrified at her language, Squarky-woo turned to escape, but it was too late. With one bound Mammy-ana was upon him, and catching hold of his ear with her teeth, she lifted up his tail, and beat him with her own.