The Wind in the Willows
him, but could not succeed in finding one, which vexed him more than
anything. At last, cold, hungry, and tired out, he sought the shelter
of a hollow tree, where with branches and dead leaves he made himself
as comfortable a bed as he could, and slept soundly till the morning.
IX.
WAYFARERS ALL
The Water Rat was restless, and he did not exactly know why. To all
appearance the summer’s pomp was still at fullest height, and although
in the tilled acres green had given way to gold, though rowans were
reddening, and the woods were dashed here and there with a tawny
fierceness, yet light and warmth and colour were still present in
undiminished measure, clean of any chilly premonitions of the passing
year. But the constant chorus of the orchards and hedges had shrunk to
a casual evensong from a few yet unwearied performers; the robin was
beginning to assert himself once more; and there was a feeling in the
air of change and departure. The cuckoo, of course, had long been
silent; but many another feathered friend, for months a part of the
familiar landscape and its small society, was missing too and it seemed
that the ranks thinned steadily day by day. Rat, ever observant of all
winged movement, saw that it was taking daily a southing tendency; and
even as he lay in bed at night he thought he could make out, passing in
the darkness overhead, the beat and quiver of impatient pinions,
obedient to the peremptory call.
Nature’s Grand Hotel has its Season, like the others. As the guests one
by one pack, pay, and depart, and the seats at the _table-d’hôte_
shrink pitifully at each succeeding meal; as suites of rooms are
closed, carpets taken up, and waiters sent away; those boarders who are
staying on, _en pension_, until the next year’s full re-opening, cannot
help being somewhat affected by all these flittings and farewells, this
eager discussion of plans, routes, and fresh quarters, this daily
shrinkage in the stream of comradeship. One gets unsettled, depressed,
and inclined to be querulous. Why this craving for change? Why not stay
on quietly here, like us, and be jolly? You don’t know this hotel out
of the season, and what fun we have among ourselves, we fellows who
remain and see the whole interesting year out. All very true, no doubt
the others always reply; we quite envy you—and some other year
perhaps—but just now we have engagements—and there’s the bus at the
door—our time is up! So they depart, with a smile and a nod, and we
miss them, and feel resentful. The Rat was a self-sufficing sort of
animal, rooted to the land, and, whoever went, he stayed; still, he
could not help noticing what was in the air, and feeling some of its
influence in his bones.
It was difficult to settle down to anything seriously, with all this
flitting going on. Leaving the water-side, where rushes stood thick and
tall in a stream that was becoming sluggish and low, he wandered
country-wards, crossed a field or two of pasturage already looking
dusty and parched, and thrust into the great sea of wheat, yellow,
wavy, and murmurous, full of quiet motion and small whisperings. Here
he often loved to wander, through the forest of stiff strong stalks
that carried their own golden sky away over his head—a sky that was
always dancing, shimmering, softly talking; or swaying strongly to the
passing wind and recovering itself with a toss and a merry laugh. Here,
too, he had many small friends, a society complete in itself, leading
full and busy lives, but always with a spare moment to gossip, and
exchange news with a visitor. Today, however, though they were civil
enough, the field-mice and harvest-mice seemed preoccupied. Many were
digging and tunnelling busily; others, gathered together in small
groups, examined plans and drawings of small flats, stated to be
desirable and compact, and situated conveniently near the Stores. Some
were hauling out dusty trunks and dress-baskets, others were already
elbow-deep packing their belongings; while everywhere piles and bundles
of wheat, oats, barley, beech-mast and nuts, lay about ready for
transport.
“Here’s old Ratty!” they cried as soon as they saw him. “Come and bear
a hand, Rat, and don’t stand about idle!”
“What sort of games are you up to?” said the Water Rat severely. “You
know it isn’t time to be thinking of winter quarters yet, by a long
way!”
“O yes, we know that,” explained a field-mouse rather shamefacedly;
“but it’s always as well to be in good time, isn’t it? We really _must_
get all the furniture and baggage and stores moved out of this before
those horrid machines begin clicking round the fields; and then, you
know, the best flats get picked up so quickly nowadays, and if you’re
late you have to put up with _anything_; and they want such a lot of
doing up, too, before they’re fit to move into. Of course, we’re early,
we know that; but we’re only just making a start.”
“O, bother _starts_,” said the Rat. “It’s a splendid day. Come for a
row, or a stroll along the hedges, or a picnic in the woods, or
something.”
“Well, I _think_ not _to-day_, thank you,” replied the field-mouse
hurriedly. “Perhaps some _other_ day—when we’ve more _time_——”
The Rat, with a snort of contempt, swung round to go, tripped over a
hat-box, and fell, with undignified remarks.
“If people would be more careful,” said a field-mouse rather stiffly,
“and look where they’re going, people wouldn’t hurt themselves—and
forget themselves. Mind that hold-all, Rat! You’d better sit down
somewhere. In an hour or two we may be more free to attend to you.”
“You won’t be ‘free’ as you call it much this side of Christmas, I can
see that,” retorted the Rat grumpily, as he picked his way out of the
field.
He returned somewhat despondently to his river again—his faithful,
steady-going old river, which never packed up, flitted, or went into
winter quarters.
In the osiers which fringed the bank he spied a swallow sitting.
Presently it was joined by another, and then by a third; and the birds,
fidgeting restlessly on their bough, talked together earnestly and low.
“What, _already_,” said the Rat, strolling up to them. “What’s the
hurry? I call it simply ridiculous.”
“O, we’re not off yet, if that’s what you mean,” replied the first
swallow. “We’re only making plans and arranging things. Talking it
over, you know—what route we’re taking this year, and where we’ll stop,
and so on. That’s half the fun!”
“Fun?” said the Rat; “now that’s just what I don’t understand. If
you’ve _got_ to leave this pleasant place, and your friends who will
miss you, and your snug homes that you’ve just settled into, why, when
the hour strikes I’ve no doubt you’ll go bravely, and face all the
trouble and discomfort and change and newness, and make believe that
you’re not very unhappy. But to want to talk about it, or even think
about it, till you really need——”
“No, you don’t understand, naturally,” said the second swallow. “First,
we feel it stirring within us, a sweet unrest; then back come the
recollections one by one, like homing pigeons. They flutter through our
dreams at night, they fly with us in our wheelings and circlings by
day. We hunger to inquire of each other, to compare notes and assure
ourselves that it was all really true, as one by one the scents and
sounds and names of long-forgotten places come gradually back and
beckon to us.”
“Couldn’t you stop on for just this year?” suggested the Water Rat,
wistfully. “We’ll all do our best to make you feel at home. You’ve no
idea what good times we have here, while you are far away.”
“I tried ‘stopping on’ one year,” said the third swallow. “I had grown
so fond of the place that when the time came I hung back and let the
others go on without me. For a few weeks it was all well enough, but
afterwards, O the weary length of the nights! The shivering, sunless
days! The air so clammy and chill, and not an insect in an acre of it!
No, it was no good; my courage broke down, and one cold, stormy night I
took wing, flying well inland on account of the strong easterly gales.
It was snowing hard as I beat through the passes of the great
mountains, and I had a stiff fight to win through; but never shall I
forget the blissful feeling of the hot sun again on my back as I sped
down to the lakes that lay so blue and placid below me, and the taste
of my first fat insect! The past was like a bad dream; the future was
all happy holiday as I moved southwards week by week, easily, lazily,
lingering as long as I dared, but always heeding the call! No, I had
had my warning; never again did I think of disobedience.”
“Ah, yes, the call of the South, of the South!” twittered the other two
dreamily. “Its songs its hues, its radiant air! O, do you remember——”
and, forgetting the Rat, they slid into passionate reminiscence, while
he listened fascinated, and his heart burned within him. In himself,
too, he knew that it was vibrating at last, that chord hitherto dormant
and unsuspected. The mere chatter of these southern-bound birds, their
pale and second-hand reports, had yet power to awaken this wild new
sensation and thrill him through and through with it; what would one
moment of the real thing work in him—one passionate touch of the real
southern sun, one waft of the authentic odor? With closed eyes he dared
to dream a moment in full abandonment, and when he looked again the
river seemed steely and chill, the green fields grey and lightless.
Then his loyal heart seemed to cry out on his weaker self for its
treachery.
“Why do you ever come back, then, at all?” he demanded of the swallows
jealously. “What do you find to attract you in this poor drab little
country?”
“And do you think,” said the first swallow, “that the other call is not
for us too, in its due season? The call of lush meadow-grass, wet
orchards, warm, insect-haunted ponds, of browsing cattle, of haymaking,
and all the farm-buildings clustering round the House of the perfect
Eaves?”
“Do you suppose,” asked the second one, that you are the only living
thing that craves with a hungry longing to hear the cuckoo’s note
again?”
“In due time,” said the third, “we shall be home-sick once more for
quiet water-lilies swaying on the surface of an English stream. But
to-day all that seems pale and thin and very far away. Just now our
blood dances to other music.”
They fell a-twittering among themselves once more, and this time their
intoxicating babble was of violet seas, tawny sands, and lizard-haunted
walls.
Restlessly the Rat wandered off once more, climbed the slope that rose
gently from the north bank of the river, and lay looking out towards
the great ring of Downs that barred his vision further southwards—his
simple horizon hitherto, his Mountains of the Moon, his limit behind
which lay nothing he had cared to see or to know. To-day, to him gazing
South with a new-born need stirring in his heart, the clear sky over
their long low outline seemed to pulsate with promise; to-day, the
unseen was everything, the unknown the only real fact of life. On this
side of the hills was now the real blank, on the other lay the crowded
and coloured panorama that his inner eye was seeing so clearly. What
seas lay beyond, green, leaping, and crested! What sun-bathed coasts,
along which the white villas glittered against the olive woods! What
quiet harbours, thronged with gallant shipping bound for purple islands
of wine and spice, islands set low in languorous waters!
He rose and descended river-wards once more; then changed his mind and
sought the side of the dusty lane. There, lying half-buried in the
thick, cool under-hedge tangle that bordered it, he could muse on the
metalled road and all the wondrous world that it led to; on all the
wayfarers, too, that might have trodden it, and the fortunes and