in the main street amongst tall establishments of mart and worship was a high narrow house pressed between a coffee factory and a bootmaker’s. it had four flights of long dim echoing stairs, and at the top, in a room that was full of the smell of dried apples and mice, a man in the middle age of life had sat reading russian novels until he thought he was mad. late was the hour, the night outside black and freezing, the pavements below empty and undistinguishable when he closed his book and sat motionless in front of the glowing but flameless fire. he felt he was very tired yet he could not rest. he stared at a picture on the wall until he wanted to cry; it was a colour print by utamaro of a suckling child caressing its mother’s breasts as she sits in front of a blackbound mirror. very chaste and decorative it was, in spite of its curious anatomy. the man gazed, empty of sight though not of mind, until the sighing of the gas jet maddened him. he got up, put out the light, and sat down again in the darkness trying to compose his mind before the comfort of the fire. and he was just about to begin a conversation with himself when a mouse crept from a hole in the skirting near the fireplace[164] and scurried into the fender. the man had the crude dislike for such sly nocturnal things, but this mouse was so small and bright, its antics so pretty, that he drew his feet carefully from the fender and sat watching it almost with amusement. the mouse moved along the shadows of the fender, out upon the hearth, and sat before the glow, rubbing its head, ears, and tiny belly with its paws as if it were bathing itself with the warmth, until, sharp and sudden, the fire sank, an ember fell, and the mouse flashed into its hole.
the man reached forward to the mantelpiece and put his hand upon a pocket lamp. turning on the beam, he opened the door of a cupboard beside the fireplace. upon one of the shelves there was a small trap baited with cheese, a trap made with a wire spring, one of those that smashed down to break the back of ingenuous and unwary mice.
“mean—so mean,” he mused, “to appeal to the hunger of any living thing just in order to destroy it.”
he picked up the empty trap as if to throw it in the fire.
“i suppose i had better leave it though—the place swarms with them.” he still hesitated. “i hope that little beastie won’t go and do anything foolish.” he put the trap back quite carefully, closed the door of the cupboard, sat down again and extinguished the lamp.
was there any one else in the world so squeamish and foolish about such things! even his mother, mother so bright and beautiful, even she had laughed at his childish horrors. he recalled how once in his childhood, not long after his sister yosine was born, a[165] friendly neighbour had sent him home with a bundle of dead larks tied by the feet “for supper.” the pitiful inanimity of the birds had brought a gush of tears; he had run weeping home and into the kitchen, and there he had found the strange thing doing. it was dusk; mother was kneeling before the fire. he dropped the larks.
“mother!” he exclaimed softly. she looked at his tearful face.
“what’s the matter, filip?” she asked, smiling too at his astonishment.
“mother! what you doing?”
her bodice was open and she was squeezing her breasts; long thin streams of milk spurted into the fire with a plunging noise.
“weaning your little sister,” laughed mother. she took his inquisitive face and pressed it against the delicate warmth of her bosom, and he forgot the dead birds behind him.
“let me do it, mother,” he cried, and doing so he discovered the throb of the heart in his mother’s breast. wonderful it was for him to experience it, although she could not explain it to him.
“why does it do that?”
“if it did not beat, little son, i should die and the holy father would take me from you.”
“god?”
she nodded. he put his hand upon his own breast. “oh feel it, mother!” he cried. mother unbuttoned his little coat and felt the gentle tick tick with her warm palm.
[166]
“beautiful!” she said.
“is it a good one?”
she kissed his upsmiling lips. “it is good if it beats truly. let it always beat truly, filip, let it always beat truly.”
there was the echo of a sigh in her voice, and he had divined some grief, for he was very wise. he kissed her bosom in his tiny ecstasy and whispered soothingly: “little mother! little mother!” in such joys he forgot his horror of the dead larks; indeed he helped mother to pluck them and spit them for supper.
it was a black day that succeeded, and full of tragedy for the child. a great bay horse with a tawny mane had knocked down his mother in the lane, and a heavy cart had passed over her, crushing both her hands. she was borne away moaning with anguish to the surgeon who cut off the two hands. she died in the night. for years the child’s dreams were filled with the horror of the stumps of arms, bleeding unendingly. yet he had never seen them, for he was sleeping when she died.
while this old woe was come vividly before him he again became aware of the mouse. his nerves stretched upon him in repulsion, but he soon relaxed to a tolerant interest, for it was really a most engaging little mouse. it moved with curious staccato scurries, stopping to rub its head or flicker with its ears; they seemed almost transparent ears. it spied a red cinder and skipped innocently up to it ... sniffing ... sniffing ... until it jumped back scorched. it would crouch as a cat does, blinking in the warmth, or scamper[167] madly as if dancing, and then roll upon its side rubbing its head with those pliant paws. the melancholy man watched it until it came at last to rest and squatted meditatively upon its haunches, hunched up, looking curiously wise, a pennyworth of philosophy; then once more the coals sank with a rattle and again the mouse was gone.
the man sat on before the fire and his mind filled again with unaccountable sadness. he had grown into manhood with a burning generosity of spirit and rifts of rebellion in him that proved too exacting for his fellows and seemed mere wantonness to men of casual rectitudes. “justice and sin,” he would cry, “property and virtue—incompatibilities! there can be no sin in a world of justice, no property in a world of virtue!” with an engaging extravagance and a certain clear-eyed honesty of mind he had put his two and two together and seemed then to rejoice, as in some topsy-turvy dream, in having rendered unto c?sar, as you might say, the things that were due to napoleon! but this kind of thing could not pass unexpiated in a world of men having an infinite regard for property and a pride in their traditions of virtue and justice. they could indeed forgive him his sins but they could not forgive him his compassions. so he had to go seek for more melodious-minded men and fair unambiguous women. but rebuffs can deal more deadly blows than daggers; he became timid—a timidity not of fear but of pride—and grew with the years into misanthropy, susceptible to trivial griefs and despairs, a vessel of emotion that emptied as easily as it filled, until he came[168] at last to know that his griefs were half deliberate, his despairs half unreal, and to live but for beauty—which is tranquillity—to put her wooing hand upon him.
now, while the mouse hunts in the cupboard, one fair recollection stirs in the man’s mind—of cassia and the harmony of their only meeting, cassia who had such rich red hair, and eyes, yes, her eyes were full of starry enquiry like the eyes of mice. it was so long ago that he had forgotten how he came to be in it, that unaccustomed orbit of vain vivid things—a village festival, all oranges and houp-là. he could not remember how he came to be there, but at night, in the court hall, he had danced with cassia—fair and unambiguous indeed!—who had come like the wind from among the roses and swept into his heart.
“it is easy to guess,” he had said to her, “what you like most in the world.”
she laughed; “to dance? yes, and you...?”
“to find a friend.”
“i know, i know,” she cried, caressing him with recognitions. “ah, at times i quite love my friends—until i begin to wonder how much they hate me!”
he had loved at once that cool pale face, the abundance of her strange hair as light as the autumn’s clustered bronze, her lilac dress and all the sweetness about her like a bush of lilies. how they had laughed at the two old peasants whom they had overheard gabbling of trifles like sickness and appetite!
“there’s a lot of nature in a parsnip,” said one, a fat person of the kind that swells grossly when stung by[169] a bee, “a lot of nature when it’s young, but when it’s old it’s like everything else.”
“true it is.”
“and i’m very fond of vegetables, yes, and i’m very fond of bread.”
“come out with me,” whispered cassia to filip, and they walked out in the blackness of midnight into what must have been a garden.
“cool it is here,” she said, “and quiet, but too dark even to see your face—can you see mine?”
“the moon will not rise until after dawn,” said he, “it will be white in the sky when the starlings whistle in your chimney.”
they walked silently and warily about until they felt the chill of the air. a dull echo of the music came to them through the walls, then stopped, and they heard the bark of a fox away in the woods.
“you are cold,” he whispered, touching her bare neck with timid fingers. “quite, quite cold,” drawing his hand tenderly over the curves of her chin and face. “let us go in,” he said, moving with discretion from the rapture he desired. “we will come out again,” said cassia.
but within the room the ball was just at an end, the musicians were packing up their instruments and the dancers were flocking out and homewards, or to the buffet which was on a platform at one end of the room. the two old peasants were there, munching hugely.
“i tell you,” said one of them, “there’s nothing in the world for it but the grease of an owl’s liver. that’s[170] it, that’s it! take something on your stomach now, just to offset the chill of the dawn!”
filip and cassia were beside them, but there were so many people crowding the platform that filip had to jump down. he stood then looking up adoringly at cassia, who had pulled a purple cloak around her.
“for filip, filip, filip,” she said, pushing the last bite of her sandwich into his mouth, and pressing upon him her glass of loupiac. quickly he drank it with a great gesture, and, flinging the glass to the wall, took cassia into his arms, shouting: “i’ll carry you home, the whole way home, yes, i’ll carry you!”
“put me down!” she cried, beating his head and pulling his ears, as they passed among the departing dancers. “put me down, you wild thing!”
dark, dark was the lane outside, and the night an obsidian net, into which he walked carrying the girl. but her arms were looped around him, she discovered paths for him, clinging more tightly as he staggered against a wall, stumbled upon a gulley, or when her sweet hair was caught in the boughs of a little lime tree.
“do not loose me, filip, will you, do not loose me,” cassia said, putting her lips against his temple.
his brain seemed bursting, his heart rocked within him, but he adored the rich grace of her limbs against his breast. “here it is,” she murmured, and he carried her into a path that led to her home in a little lawned garden where the smell of ripe apples upon the branches and the heavy lustre of roses stole upon the air. roses and apples! roses and apples! he carried her right[171] into the porch before she slid down and stood close to him with her hands still upon his shoulders. he could breathe happily at the release, standing silent and looking round at the sky sprayed with wondrous stars but without a moon.
“you are stronger than i thought you, stronger than you look, you are really very strong,” she whispered, nodding her head to him. opening the buttons of his coat she put her palm against his breast.
“oh how your heart does beat: does it beat truly—and for whom?”
he had seized her wrists in a little fury of love, crying: “little mother, little mother!”
“what are you saying?” asked the girl, but before he could continue there came a footstep sounding behind the door, and the clack of a bolt....
what was that? was that really a bolt or was it ... was it ... the snap of the trap? the man sat up in his room intently listening, with nerves quivering again, waiting for the trap to kill the little philosopher. when he felt it was all over he reached guardedly in the darkness for the lantern, turned on the beam, and opened the door of the cupboard. focussing the light upon the trap he was amazed to see the mouse sitting on its haunches before it, uncaught. its head was bowed, but its bead-like eyes were full of brightness, and it sat blinking, it did not flee.
“shoosh!” said the man, but the mouse did not move. “why doesn’t it go? shoosh!” he said again, and suddenly the reason of the mouse’s strange behaviour was made clear. the trap had not caught it completely,[172] but it had broken off both its forefeet, and the thing crouched there holding out its two bleeding stumps humanly, too stricken to stir.
horror flooded the man, and conquering his repugnance he plucked the mouse up quickly by the neck. immediately the little thing fastened its teeth in his finger; the touch was no more than the slight prick of a pin. the man’s impulse then exhausted itself. what should he do with it? he put his hand behind him, he dared not look, but there was nothing to be done except kill it at once, quickly, quickly. oh, how should he do it? he bent towards the fire as if to drop the mouse into its quenching glow; but he paused and shuddered, he would hear its cries, he would have to listen. should he crush it with finger and thumb? a glance towards the window decided him. he opened the sash with one hand and flung the wounded mouse far into the dark street. closing the window with a crash he sank into a chair, limp with pity too deep for tears.
so he sat for two minutes, five minutes, ten minutes. anxiety and shame filled him with heat. he opened the window again, and the freezing air poured in and cooled him. seizing his lantern he ran down the echoing stairs, into the dark empty street, searching long and vainly for the little philosopher until he had to desist and return to his room, shivering, frozen to his very bones.
when he had recovered some warmth he took the trap from its shelf. the two feet dropped into his hand; he cast them into the fire. then he once more set the trap and put it back carefully into the cupboard.
