II
THE MOUSE-TRAP, HENRIETTA STREET
In Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, there is a mouse-trap, a cunningly devised contrivance in which many a timid little mouse is caught. You will find them in other streets than this. They are set in exactly the same way, the same alluring bait, the same doors that open with so generous an admission of innocence, the same doors that close with so final and irrevocable a snap.
I have never watched the other ones at work. But I have seen four mice caught at different times in Henrietta Street. Therefore, it is about the mouse-trap in Henrietta Street that I feel qualified to speak.
One of these little mice I knew well. I knew her by name, where she lived—the little hole in this great labyrinth of London down which she vanished when the day’s work was done, or when any one frightened her little wits and made her scamper home for safety. She even came once and sat in my room, just on the edge of an armchair, taking tea and cake in that frightened way, eyes ever peering, head ever on the alert, as mice will eat their food.
So you will see I knew a good deal about her. It was through no accident of chance that I saw her walk into the trap. I had heard that such an event was likely. I was on the lookout for it.
During the day-time, she waited at the tables in an A.B.C. shop. Don’t ask me what they paid her for it. I marvel at the wage for manual labour when sometimes I am compelled to do a little job for myself. I wonder why on earth the woman comes to tidy my rooms for ten shillings a week. But she does. What is more, I find myself on the very point of abusing her when she breaks a piece of my Lowestoft china, coming with tears in her eyes to tell me of it.
Whatever it was they paid this little mouse of a child, she found it a sufficient inducement to come there day after day, week after week, with just that one short, marvellous evening in the six days and the whole of the glorious seventh in which to do what she liked.
I suppose it would have gone on like that for ever. She would have continued creeping in and out amongst the tables, her body on tip-toe, her voice on tip-toe, the whole personality of her almost overbalancing itself as it worked out its justification on the very tip of its toes.
She would have continued waiting on her customers, writing her little checks in a wholly illegible handwriting, which only the girl at the desk could read. She would have continued supplying me with the three-pennyworth of cold cod steak for my kitten until I should have been ordering five cold cod steaks for the entire family that was bound to come. All these things would have gone on just the same, had not the tempter come to lure her into the mouse-trap in Henrietta Street, Covent Garden.
I saw him one morning, a dandy-looking youth from one of the hosier’s shops in the Strand near by. He was having lunch—a cup of coffee and some stewed figs and cream. Taste is a funny thing. And she was serving him. She had served him. He was already hustling the food into his mouth as he talked to her. But it was more than talking. He was saying things with a pair of large calf eyes and she was laughing as she listened.