The Wind in the Willows
to the paddock and set them to capture the old grey horse, who, without
having been consulted, and to his own extreme annoyance, had been told
off by Toad for the dustiest job in this dusty expedition. He frankly
preferred the paddock, and took a deal of catching. Meantime Toad
packed the lockers still tighter with necessaries, and hung nosebags,
nets of onions, bundles of hay, and baskets from the bottom of the
cart. At last the horse was caught and harnessed, and they set off, all
talking at once, each animal either trudging by the side of the cart or
sitting on the shaft, as the humour took him. It was a golden
afternoon. The smell of the dust they kicked up was rich and
satisfying; out of thick orchards on either side the road, birds called
and whistled to them cheerily; good-natured wayfarers, passing them,
gave them “Good-day,” or stopped to say nice things about their
beautiful cart; and rabbits, sitting at their front doors in the
hedgerows, held up their fore-paws, and said, “O my! O my! O my!”
Late in the evening, tired and happy and miles from home, they drew up
on a remote common far from habitations, turned the horse loose to
graze, and ate their simple supper sitting on the grass by the side of
the cart. Toad talked big about all he was going to do in the days to
come, while stars grew fuller and larger all around them, and a yellow
moon, appearing suddenly and silently from nowhere in particular, came
to keep them company and listen to their talk. At last they turned in
to their little bunks in the cart; and Toad, kicking out his legs,
sleepily said, “Well, good night, you fellows! This is the real life
for a gentleman! Talk about your old river!”
“I _don’t_ talk about my river,” replied the patient Rat. “You _know_ I
don’t, Toad. But I _think_ about it,” he added pathetically, in a lower
tone: “I think about it—all the time!”
The Mole reached out from under his blanket, felt for the Rat’s paw in
the darkness, and gave it a squeeze. “I’ll do whatever you like,
Ratty,” he whispered. “Shall we run away to-morrow morning, quite
early—_very_ early—and go back to our dear old hole on the river?”
“No, no, we’ll see it out,” whispered back the Rat. “Thanks awfully,
but I ought to stick by Toad till this trip is ended. It wouldn’t be
safe for him to be left to himself. It won’t take very long. His fads
never do. Good night!”
The end was indeed nearer than even the Rat suspected.
After so much open air and excitement the Toad slept very soundly, and
no amount of shaking could rouse him out of bed next morning. So the
Mole and Rat turned to, quietly and manfully, and while the Rat saw to
the horse, and lit a fire, and cleaned last night’s cups and platters,
and got things ready for breakfast, the Mole trudged off to the nearest
village, a long way off, for milk and eggs and various necessaries the
Toad had, of course, forgotten to provide. The hard work had all been
done, and the two animals were resting, thoroughly exhausted, by the
time Toad appeared on the scene, fresh and gay, remarking what a
pleasant easy life it was they were all leading now, after the cares
and worries and fatigues of housekeeping at home.
They had a pleasant ramble that day over grassy downs and along narrow
by-lanes, and camped as before, on a common, only this time the two
guests took care that Toad should do his fair share of work. In
consequence, when the time came for starting next morning, Toad was by
no means so rapturous about the simplicity of the primitive life, and
indeed attempted to resume his place in his bunk, whence he was hauled
by force. Their way lay, as before, across country by narrow lanes, and
it was not till the afternoon that they came out on the high-road,
their first high-road; and there disaster, fleet and unforeseen, sprang
out on them—disaster momentous indeed to their expedition, but simply
overwhelming in its effect on the after-career of Toad.
They were strolling along the high-road easily, the Mole by the horse’s
head, talking to him, since the horse had complained that he was being
frightfully left out of it, and nobody considered him in the least; the
Toad and the Water Rat walking behind the cart talking together—at
least Toad was talking, and Rat was saying at intervals, “Yes,
precisely; and what did _you_ say to _him?_”—and thinking all the time
of something very different, when far behind them they heard a faint
warning hum; like the drone of a distant bee. Glancing back, they saw a
small cloud of dust, with a dark centre of energy, advancing on them at
incredible speed, while from out the dust a faint “Poop-poop!” wailed
like an uneasy animal in pain. Hardly regarding it, they turned to
resume their conversation, when in an instant (as it seemed) the
peaceful scene was changed, and with a blast of wind and a whirl of
sound that made them jump for the nearest ditch, It was on them! The
“Poop-poop” rang with a brazen shout in their ears, they had a moment’s
glimpse of an interior of glittering plate-glass and rich morocco, and
the magnificent motor-car, immense, breath-snatching, passionate, with
its pilot tense and hugging his wheel, possessed all earth and air for
the fraction of a second, flung an enveloping cloud of dust that
blinded and enwrapped them utterly, and then dwindled to a speck in the
far distance, changed back into a droning bee once more.
The old grey horse, dreaming, as he plodded along, of his quiet
paddock, in a new raw situation such as this simply abandoned himself
to his natural emotions. Rearing, plunging, backing steadily, in spite
of all the Mole’s efforts at his head, and all the Mole’s lively
language directed at his better feelings, he drove the cart backwards
towards the deep ditch at the side of the road. It wavered an
instant—then there was a heartrending crash—and the canary-coloured
cart, their pride and their joy, lay on its side in the ditch, an
irredeemable wreck.
The Rat danced up and down in the road, simply transported with
passion. “You villains!” he shouted, shaking both fists, “You
scoundrels, you highwaymen, you—you—roadhogs!—I’ll have the law of you!
I’ll report you! I’ll take you through all the Courts!” His
home-sickness had quite slipped away from him, and for the moment he
was the skipper of the canary-coloured vessel driven on a shoal by the
reckless jockeying of rival mariners, and he was trying to recollect
all the fine and biting things he used to say to masters of
steam-launches when their wash, as they drove too near the bank, used
to flood his parlour-carpet at home.
Toad sat straight down in the middle of the dusty road, his legs
stretched out before him, and stared fixedly in the direction of the
disappearing motor-car. He breathed short, his face wore a placid
satisfied expression, and at intervals he faintly murmured “Poop-poop!”
The Mole was busy trying to quiet the horse, which he succeeded in
doing after a time. Then he went to look at the cart, on its side in
the ditch. It was indeed a sorry sight. Panels and windows smashed,
axles hopelessly bent, one wheel off, sardine-tins scattered over the
wide world, and the bird in the bird-cage sobbing pitifully and calling
to be let out.
The Rat came to help him, but their united efforts were not sufficient
to right the cart. “Hi! Toad!” they cried. “Come and bear a hand, can’t
you!”
The Toad never answered a word, or budged from his seat in the road; so
they went to see what was the matter with him. They found him in a sort
of a trance, a happy smile on his face, his eyes still fixed on the
dusty wake of their destroyer. At intervals he was still heard to
murmur “Poop-poop!”
The Rat shook him by the shoulder. “Are you coming to help us, Toad?”
he demanded sternly.
“Glorious, stirring sight!” murmured Toad, never offering to move. “The
poetry of motion! The _real_ way to travel! The _only_ way to travel!
Here to-day—in next week to-morrow! Villages skipped, towns and cities
jumped—always somebody else’s horizon! O bliss! O poop-poop! O my! O
my!”
“O _stop_ being an ass, Toad!” cried the Mole despairingly.
“And to think I never _knew!_” went on the Toad in a dreamy monotone.
“All those wasted years that lie behind me, I never knew, never even
_dreamt!_ But _now_—but now that I know, now that I fully realise! O
what a flowery track lies spread before me, henceforth! What
dust-clouds shall spring up behind me as I speed on my reckless way!
What carts I shall fling carelessly into the ditch in the wake of my
magnificent onset! Horrid little carts—common carts—canary-coloured
carts!”
“What are we to do with him?” asked the Mole of the Water Rat.
“Nothing at all,” replied the Rat firmly. “Because there is really
nothing to be done. You see, I know him from of old. He is now
possessed. He has got a new craze, and it always takes him that way, in
its first stage. He’ll continue like that for days now, like an animal
walking in a happy dream, quite useless for all practical purposes.
Never mind him. Let’s go and see what there is to be done about the
cart.”
A careful inspection showed them that, even if they succeeded in
righting it by themselves, the cart would travel no longer. The axles
were in a hopeless state, and the missing wheel was shattered into
pieces.
The Rat knotted the horse’s reins over his back and took him by the
head, carrying the bird cage and its hysterical occupant in the other
hand. “Come on!” he said grimly to the Mole. “It’s five or six miles to
the nearest town, and we shall just have to walk it. The sooner we make
a start the better.”
“But what about Toad?” asked the Mole anxiously, as they set off
together. “We can’t leave him here, sitting in the middle of the road
by himself, in the distracted state he’s in! It’s not safe. Supposing
another Thing were to come along?”
“O, _bother_ Toad,” said the Rat savagely; “I’ve done with him!”
They had not proceeded very far on their way, however, when there was a
pattering of feet behind them, and Toad caught them up and thrust a paw
inside the elbow of each of them; still breathing short and staring
into vacancy.
“Now, look here, Toad!” said the Rat sharply: “as soon as we get to the
town, you’ll have to go straight to the police-station, and see if they
know anything about that motor-car and who it belongs to, and lodge a
complaint against it. And then you’ll have to go to a blacksmith’s or a
wheelwright’s and arrange for the cart to be fetched and mended and put
to rights. It’ll take time, but it’s not quite a hopeless smash.
Meanwhile, the Mole and I will go to an inn and find comfortable rooms
where we can stay till the cart’s ready, and till your nerves have
recovered their shock.”
“Police-station! Complaint!” murmured Toad dreamily. “Me _complain_ of
that beautiful, that heavenly vision that has been vouchsafed me!
_Mend_ the _cart!_ I’ve done with carts for ever. I never want to see
the cart, or to hear of it, again. O, Ratty! You can’t think how
obliged I am to you for consenting to come on this trip! I wouldn’t
have gone without you, and then I might never have seen that—that swan,
that sunbeam, that thunderbolt! I might never have heard that
entrancing sound, or smelt that bewitching smell! I owe it all to you,
my best of friends!”
The Rat turned from him in despair. “You see what it is?” he said to
the Mole, addressing him across Toad’s head: “He’s quite hopeless. I
give it up—when we get to the town we’ll go to the railway station, and
with luck we may pick up a train there that’ll get us back to riverbank
to-night. And if ever you catch me going a-pleasuring with this
provoking animal again!”—He snorted, and during the rest of that weary
trudge addressed his remarks exclusively to Mole.