The Wind in the Willows
“If I thought that, Ratty,” murmured Toad, more feebly than ever, “then
I would beg you—for the last time, probably—to step round to the
village as quickly as possible—even now it may be too late—and fetch
the doctor. But don’t you bother. It’s only a trouble, and perhaps we
may as well let things take their course.”
“Why, what do you want a doctor for?” inquired the Rat, coming closer
and examining him. He certainly lay very still and flat, and his voice
was weaker and his manner much changed.
“Surely you have noticed of late——” murmured Toad. “But, no—why should
you? Noticing things is only a trouble. To-morrow, indeed, you may be
saying to yourself, ‘O, if only I had noticed sooner! If only I had
done something!’ But no; it’s a trouble. Never mind—forget that I
asked.”
“Look here, old man,” said the Rat, beginning to get rather alarmed,
“of course I’ll fetch a doctor to you, if you really think you want
him. But you can hardly be bad enough for that yet. Let’s talk about
something else.”
“I fear, dear friend,” said Toad, with a sad smile, “that ‘talk’ can do
little in a case like this—or doctors either, for that matter; still,
one must grasp at the slightest straw. And, by the way—while you are
about it—I _hate_ to give you additional trouble, but I happen to
remember that you will pass the door—would you mind at the same time
asking the lawyer to step up? It would be a convenience to me, and
there are moments—perhaps I should say there is _a_ moment—when one
must face disagreeable tasks, at whatever cost to exhausted nature!”
“A lawyer! O, he must be really bad!” the affrighted Rat said to
himself, as he hurried from the room, not forgetting, however, to lock
the door carefully behind him.
Outside, he stopped to consider. The other two were far away, and he
had no one to consult.
“It’s best to be on the safe side,” he said, on reflection. “I’ve known
Toad fancy himself frightfully bad before, without the slightest
reason; but I’ve never heard him ask for a lawyer! If there’s nothing
really the matter, the doctor will tell him he’s an old ass, and cheer
him up; and that will be something gained. I’d better humour him and
go; it won’t take very long.” So he ran off to the village on his
errand of mercy.
The Toad, who had hopped lightly out of bed as soon as he heard the key
turned in the lock, watched him eagerly from the window till he
disappeared down the carriage-drive. Then, laughing heartily, he
dressed as quickly as possible in the smartest suit he could lay hands
on at the moment, filled his pockets with cash which he took from a
small drawer in the dressing-table, and next, knotting the sheets from
his bed together and tying one end of the improvised rope round the
central mullion of the handsome Tudor window which formed such a
feature of his bedroom, he scrambled out, slid lightly to the ground,
and, taking the opposite direction to the Rat, marched off
lightheartedly, whistling a merry tune.
It was a gloomy luncheon for Rat when the Badger and the Mole at length
returned, and he had to face them at table with his pitiful and
unconvincing story. The Badger’s caustic, not to say brutal, remarks
may be imagined, and therefore passed over; but it was painful to the
Rat that even the Mole, though he took his friend’s side as far as
possible, could not help saying, “You’ve been a bit of a duffer this
time, Ratty! Toad, too, of all animals!”
“He did it awfully well,” said the crestfallen Rat.
“He did _you_ awfully well!” rejoined the Badger hotly. “However,
talking won’t mend matters. He’s got clear away for the time, that’s
certain; and the worst of it is, he’ll be so conceited with what he’ll
think is his cleverness that he may commit any folly. One comfort is,
we’re free now, and needn’t waste any more of our precious time doing
sentry-go. But we’d better continue to sleep at Toad Hall for a while
longer. Toad may be brought back at any moment—on a stretcher, or
between two policemen.”
So spoke the Badger, not knowing what the future held in store, or how
much water, and of how turbid a character, was to run under bridges
before Toad should sit at ease again in his ancestral Hall.
Meanwhile, Toad, gay and irresponsible, was walking briskly along the
high road, some miles from home. At first he had taken by-paths, and
crossed many fields, and changed his course several times, in case of
pursuit; but now, feeling by this time safe from recapture, and the sun
smiling brightly on him, and all Nature joining in a chorus of approval
to the song of self-praise that his own heart was singing to him, he
almost danced along the road in his satisfaction and conceit.
“Smart piece of work that!” he remarked to himself chuckling. “Brain
against brute force—and brain came out on the top—as it’s bound to do.
Poor old Ratty! My! won’t he catch it when the Badger gets back! A
worthy fellow, Ratty, with many good qualities, but very little
intelligence and absolutely no education. I must take him in hand some
day, and see if I can make something of him.”
Filled full of conceited thoughts such as these he strode along, his
head in the air, till he reached a little town, where the sign of “The
Red Lion,” swinging across the road halfway down the main street,
reminded him that he had not breakfasted that day, and that he was
exceedingly hungry after his long walk. He marched into the Inn,
ordered the best luncheon that could be provided at so short a notice,
and sat down to eat it in the coffee-room.
He was about half-way through his meal when an only too familiar sound,
approaching down the street, made him start and fall a-trembling all
over. The poop-poop! drew nearer and nearer, the car could be heard to
turn into the inn-yard and come to a stop, and Toad had to hold on to
the leg of the table to conceal his over-mastering emotion. Presently
the party entered the coffee-room, hungry, talkative, and gay, voluble
on their experiences of the morning and the merits of the chariot that
had brought them along so well. Toad listened eagerly, all ears, for a
time; at last he could stand it no longer. He slipped out of the room
quietly, paid his bill at the bar, and as soon as he got outside
sauntered round quietly to the inn-yard. “There cannot be any harm,” he
said to himself, “in my only just _looking_ at it!”
The car stood in the middle of the yard, quite unattended, the
stable-helps and other hangers-on being all at their dinner. Toad
walked slowly round it, inspecting, criticising, musing deeply.
“I wonder,” he said to himself presently, “I wonder if this sort of car
_starts_ easily?”
Next moment, hardly knowing how it came about, he found he had hold of
the handle and was turning it. As the familiar sound broke forth, the
old passion seized on Toad and completely mastered him, body and soul.
As if in a dream he found himself, somehow, seated in the driver’s
seat; as if in a dream, he pulled the lever and swung the car round the
yard and out through the archway; and, as if in a dream, all sense of
right and wrong, all fear of obvious consequences, seemed temporarily
suspended. He increased his pace, and as the car devoured the street
and leapt forth on the high road through the open country, he was only
conscious that he was Toad once more, Toad at his best and highest,
Toad the terror, the traffic-queller, the Lord of the lone trail,
before whom all must give way or be smitten into nothingness and
everlasting night. He chanted as he flew, and the car responded with
sonorous drone; the miles were eaten up under him as he sped he knew
not whither, fulfilling his instincts, living his hour, reckless of
what might come to him.
“To my mind,” observed the Chairman of the Bench of Magistrates
cheerfully, “the _only_ difficulty that presents itself in this
otherwise very clear case is, how we can possibly make it sufficiently
hot for the incorrigible rogue and hardened ruffian whom we see
cowering in the dock before us. Let me see: he has been found guilty,
on the clearest evidence, first, of stealing a valuable motor-car;
secondly, of driving to the public danger; and, thirdly, of gross
impertinence to the rural police. Mr. Clerk, will you tell us, please,
what is the very stiffest penalty we can impose for each of these
offences? Without, of course, giving the prisoner the benefit of any
doubt, because there isn’t any.”
The Clerk scratched his nose with his pen. “Some people would
consider,” he observed, “that stealing the motor-car was the worst
offence; and so it is. But cheeking the police undoubtedly carries the
severest penalty; and so it ought. Supposing you were to say twelve
months for the theft, which is mild; and three years for the furious
driving, which is lenient; and fifteen years for the cheek, which was
pretty bad sort of cheek, judging by what we’ve heard from the
witness-box, even if you only believe one-tenth part of what you heard,
and I never believe more myself—those figures, if added together
correctly, tot up to nineteen years——”
“First-rate!” said the Chairman.
“—So you had better make it a round twenty years and be on the safe
side,” concluded the Clerk.
“An excellent suggestion!” said the Chairman approvingly. “Prisoner!
Pull yourself together and try and stand up straight. It’s going to be
twenty years for you this time. And mind, if you appear before us
again, upon any charge whatever, we shall have to deal with you very
seriously!”
Then the brutal minions of the law fell upon the hapless Toad; loaded
him with chains, and dragged him from the Court House, shrieking,
praying, protesting; across the marketplace, where the playful
populace, always as severe upon detected crime as they are sympathetic
and helpful when one is merely “wanted,” assailed him with jeers,
carrots, and popular catch-words; past hooting school children, their
innocent faces lit up with the pleasure they ever derive from the sight
of a gentleman in difficulties; across the hollow-sounding drawbridge,
below the spiky portcullis, under the frowning archway of the grim old
castle, whose ancient towers soared high overhead; past guardrooms full
of grinning soldiery off duty, past sentries who coughed in a horrid,
sarcastic way, because that is as much as a sentry on his post dare do
to show his contempt and abhorrence of crime; up time-worn winding
stairs, past men-at-arms in casquet and corselet of steel, darting
threatening looks through their vizards; across courtyards, where
mastiffs strained at their leash and pawed the air to get at him; past
ancient warders, their halberds leant against the wall, dozing over a
pasty and a flagon of brown ale; on and on, past the rack-chamber and
the thumbscrew-room, past the turning that led to the private scaffold,
till they reached the door of the grimmest dungeon that lay in the
heart of the innermost keep. There at last they paused, where an
ancient gaoler sat fingering a bunch of mighty keys.
“Oddsbodikins!” said the sergeant of police, taking off his helmet and
wiping his forehead. “Rouse thee, old loon, and take over from us this
vile Toad, a criminal of deepest guilt and matchless artfulness and
resource. Watch and ward him with all thy skill; and mark thee well,
greybeard, should aught untoward befall, thy old head shall answer for
his—and a murrain on both of them!”
The gaoler nodded grimly, laying his withered hand on the shoulder of
the miserable Toad. The rusty key creaked in the lock, the great door
clanged behind them; and Toad was a helpless prisoner in the remotest
dungeon of the best-guarded keep of the stoutest castle in all the
length and breadth of Merry England.
VII.
THE PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN
The Willow-Wren was twittering his thin little song, hidden himself in