The Wind in the Willows
pocket should have been. But here the cotton gown, which had nobly
stood by him so far, and which he had basely forgotten, intervened, and
frustrated his efforts. In a sort of nightmare he struggled with the
strange uncanny thing that seemed to hold his hands, turn all muscular
strivings to water, and laugh at him all the time; while other
travellers, forming up in a line behind, waited with impatience, making
suggestions of more or less value and comments of more or less
stringency and point. At last—somehow—he never rightly understood
how—he burst the barriers, attained the goal, arrived at where all
waistcoat pockets are eternally situated, and found—not only no money,
but no pocket to hold it, and no waistcoat to hold the pocket!
To his horror he recollected that he had left both coat and waistcoat
behind him in his cell, and with them his pocket-book, money, keys,
watch, matches, pencil-case—all that makes life worth living, all that
distinguishes the many-pocketed animal, the lord of creation, from the
inferior one-pocketed or no-pocketed productions that hop or trip about
permissively, unequipped for the real contest.
In his misery he made one desperate effort to carry the thing off, and,
with a return to his fine old manner—a blend of the Squire and the
College Don—he said, “Look here! I find I’ve left my purse behind. Just
give me that ticket, will you, and I’ll send the money on to-morrow?
I’m well-known in these parts.”
The clerk stared at him and the rusty black bonnet a moment, and then
laughed. “I should think you were pretty well known in these parts,” he
said, “if you’ve tried this game on often. Here, stand away from the
window, please, madam; you’re obstructing the other passengers!”
An old gentleman who had been prodding him in the back for some moments
here thrust him away, and, what was worse, addressed him as his good
woman, which angered Toad more than anything that had occurred that
evening.
Baffled and full of despair, he wandered blindly down the platform
where the train was standing, and tears trickled down each side of his
nose. It was hard, he thought, to be within sight of safety and almost
of home, and to be baulked by the want of a few wretched shillings and
by the pettifogging mistrustfulness of paid officials. Very soon his
escape would be discovered, the hunt would be up, he would be caught,
reviled, loaded with chains, dragged back again to prison and
bread-and-water and straw; his guards and penalties would be doubled;
and O, what sarcastic remarks the girl would make! What was to be done?
He was not swift of foot; his figure was unfortunately recognisable.
Could he not squeeze under the seat of a carriage? He had seen this
method adopted by schoolboys, when the journey-money provided by
thoughtful parents had been diverted to other and better ends. As he
pondered, he found himself opposite the engine, which was being oiled,
wiped, and generally caressed by its affectionate driver, a burly man
with an oil-can in one hand and a lump of cotton-waste in the other.
“Hullo, mother!” said the engine-driver, “what’s the trouble? You don’t
look particularly cheerful.”
“O, sir!” said Toad, crying afresh, “I am a poor unhappy washerwoman,
and I’ve lost all my money, and can’t pay for a ticket, and I _must_
get home to-night somehow, and whatever I am to do I don’t know. O
dear, O dear!”
“That’s a bad business, indeed,” said the engine-driver reflectively.
“Lost your money—and can’t get home—and got some kids, too, waiting for
you, I dare say?”
“Any amount of ’em,” sobbed Toad. “And they’ll be hungry—and playing
with matches—and upsetting lamps, the little innocents!—and
quarrelling, and going on generally. O dear, O dear!”
“Well, I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” said the good engine-driver.
“You’re a washerwoman to your trade, says you. Very well, that’s that.
And I’m an engine-driver, as you well may see, and there’s no denying
it’s terribly dirty work. Uses up a power of shirts, it does, till my
missus is fair tired of washing of ’em. If you’ll wash a few shirts for
me when you get home, and send ’em along, I’ll give you a ride on my
engine. It’s against the Company’s regulations, but we’re not so very
particular in these out-of-the-way parts.”
The Toad’s misery turned into rapture as he eagerly scrambled up into
the cab of the engine. Of course, he had never washed a shirt in his
life, and couldn’t if he tried and, anyhow, he wasn’t going to begin;
but he thought: “When I get safely home to Toad Hall, and have money
again, and pockets to put it in, I will send the engine-driver enough
to pay for quite a quantity of washing, and that will be the same
thing, or better.”
The guard waved his welcome flag, the engine-driver whistled in
cheerful response, and the train moved out of the station. As the speed
increased, and the Toad could see on either side of him real fields,
and trees, and hedges, and cows, and horses, all flying past him, and
as he thought how every minute was bringing him nearer to Toad Hall,
and sympathetic friends, and money to chink in his pocket, and a soft
bed to sleep in, and good things to eat, and praise and admiration at
the recital of his adventures and his surpassing cleverness, he began
to skip up and down and shout and sing snatches of song, to the great
astonishment of the engine-driver, who had come across washerwomen
before, at long intervals, but never one at all like this.
They had covered many and many a mile, and Toad was already considering
what he would have for supper as soon as he got home, when he noticed
that the engine-driver, with a puzzled expression on his face, was
leaning over the side of the engine and listening hard. Then he saw him
climb on to the coals and gaze out over the top of the train; then he
returned and said to Toad: “It’s very strange; we’re the last train
running in this direction to-night, yet I could be sworn that I heard
another following us!”
Toad ceased his frivolous antics at once. He became grave and
depressed, and a dull pain in the lower part of his spine,
communicating itself to his legs, made him want to sit down and try
desperately not to think of all the possibilities.
By this time the moon was shining brightly, and the engine-driver,
steadying himself on the coal, could command a view of the line behind
them for a long distance.
Presently he called out, “I can see it clearly now! It is an engine, on
our rails, coming along at a great pace! It looks as if we were being
pursued!”
The miserable Toad, crouching in the coal-dust, tried hard to think of
something to do, with dismal want of success.
“They are gaining on us fast!” cried the engine-driver. And the engine
is crowded with the queerest lot of people! Men like ancient warders,
waving halberds; policemen in their helmets, waving truncheons; and
shabbily dressed men in pot-hats, obvious and unmistakable
plain-clothes detectives even at this distance, waving revolvers and
walking-sticks; all waving, and all shouting the same thing—‘Stop,
stop, stop!’”
Then Toad fell on his knees among the coals and, raising his clasped
paws in supplication, cried, “Save me, only save me, dear kind Mr.
Engine-driver, and I will confess everything! I am not the simple
washerwoman I seem to be! I have no children waiting for me, innocent
or otherwise! I am a toad—the well-known and popular Mr. Toad, a landed
proprietor; I have just escaped, by my great daring and cleverness,
from a loathsome dungeon into which my enemies had flung me; and if
those fellows on that engine recapture me, it will be chains and
bread-and-water and straw and misery once more for poor, unhappy,
innocent Toad!”
The engine-driver looked down upon him very sternly, and said, “Now
tell the truth; what were you put in prison for?”
“It was nothing very much,” said poor Toad, colouring deeply. “I only
borrowed a motorcar while the owners were at lunch; they had no need of
it at the time. I didn’t mean to steal it, really; but
people—especially magistrates—take such harsh views of thoughtless and
high-spirited actions.”
The engine-driver looked very grave and said, “I fear that you have
been indeed a wicked toad, and by rights I ought to give you up to
offended justice. But you are evidently in sore trouble and distress,
so I will not desert you. I don’t hold with motor-cars, for one thing;
and I don’t hold with being ordered about by policemen when I’m on my
own engine, for another. And the sight of an animal in tears always
makes me feel queer and softhearted. So cheer up, Toad! I’ll do my
best, and we may beat them yet!”
They piled on more coals, shovelling furiously; the furnace roared, the
sparks flew, the engine leapt and swung but still their pursuers slowly
gained. The engine-driver, with a sigh, wiped his brow with a handful
of cotton-waste, and said, “I’m afraid it’s no good, Toad. You see,
they are running light, and they have the better engine. There’s just
one thing left for us to do, and it’s your only chance, so attend very
carefully to what I tell you. A short way ahead of us is a long tunnel,
and on the other side of that the line passes through a thick wood.
Now, I will put on all the speed I can while we are running through the
tunnel, but the other fellows will slow down a bit, naturally, for fear
of an accident. When we are through, I will shut off steam and put on
brakes as hard as I can, and the moment it’s safe to do so you must
jump and hide in the wood, before they get through the tunnel and see
you. Then I will go full speed ahead again, and they can chase me if
they like, for as long as they like, and as far as they like. Now mind
and be ready to jump when I tell you!”
They piled on more coals, and the train shot into the tunnel, and the
engine rushed and roared and rattled, till at last they shot out at the
other end into fresh air and the peaceful moonlight, and saw the wood
lying dark and helpful upon either side of the line. The driver shut
off steam and put on brakes, the Toad got down on the step, and as the
train slowed down to almost a walking pace he heard the driver call
out, “Now, jump!”
Toad jumped, rolled down a short embankment, picked himself up unhurt,
scrambled into the wood and hid.
Peeping out, he saw his train get up speed again and disappear at a
great pace. Then out of the tunnel burst the pursuing engine, roaring
and whistling, her motley crew waving their various weapons and
shouting, “Stop! stop! stop!” When they were past, the Toad had a
hearty laugh—for the first time since he was thrown into prison.
But he soon stopped laughing when he came to consider that it was now
very late and dark and cold, and he was in an unknown wood, with no
money and no chance of supper, and still far from friends and home; and
the dead silence of everything, after the roar and rattle of the train,
was something of a shock. He dared not leave the shelter of the trees,
so he struck into the wood, with the idea of leaving the railway as far
as possible behind him.
After so many weeks within walls, he found the wood strange and
unfriendly and inclined, he thought, to make fun of him. Night-jars,
sounding their mechanical rattle, made him think that the wood was full
of searching warders, closing in on him. An owl, swooping noiselessly
towards him, brushed his shoulder with its wing, making him jump with
the horrid certainty that it was a hand; then flitted off, moth-like,
laughing its low ho! ho! ho; which Toad thought in very poor taste.
Once he met a fox, who stopped, looked him up and down in a sarcastic
sort of way, and said, “Hullo, washerwoman! Half a pair of socks and a
pillow-case short this week! Mind it doesn’t occur again!” and
swaggered off, sniggering. Toad looked about for a stone to throw at