The Wind in the Willows
fern came creeping in to help. Leaf-mould rose and obliterated, streams
in their winter freshets brought sand and soil to clog and to cover,
and in course of time our home was ready for us again, and we moved in.
Up above us, on the surface, the same thing happened. Animals arrived,
liked the look of the place, took up their quarters, settled down,
spread, and flourished. They didn’t bother themselves about the
past—they never do; they’re too busy. The place was a bit humpy and
hillocky, naturally, and full of holes; but that was rather an
advantage. And they don’t bother about the future, either—the future
when perhaps the people will move in again—for a time—as may very well
be. The Wild Wood is pretty well populated by now; with all the usual
lot, good, bad, and indifferent—I name no names. It takes all sorts to
make a world. But I fancy you know something about them yourself by
this time.”
“I do indeed,” said the Mole, with a slight shiver.
“Well, well,” said the Badger, patting him on the shoulder, “it was
your first experience of them, you see. They’re not so bad really; and
we must all live and let live. But I’ll pass the word around to-morrow,
and I think you’ll have no further trouble. Any friend of _mine_ walks
where he likes in this country, or I’ll know the reason why!”
When they got back to the kitchen again, they found the Rat walking up
and down, very restless. The underground atmosphere was oppressing him
and getting on his nerves, and he seemed really to be afraid that the
river would run away if he wasn’t there to look after it. So he had his
overcoat on, and his pistols thrust into his belt again. “Come along,
Mole,” he said anxiously, as soon as he caught sight of them. “We must
get off while it’s daylight. Don’t want to spend another night in the
Wild Wood again.”
“It’ll be all right, my fine fellow,” said the Otter. “I’m coming along
with you, and I know every path blindfold; and if there’s a head that
needs to be punched, you can confidently rely upon me to punch it.”
“You really needn’t fret, Ratty,” added the Badger placidly. “My
passages run further than you think, and I’ve bolt-holes to the edge of
the wood in several directions, though I don’t care for everybody to
know about them. When you really have to go, you shall leave by one of
my short cuts. Meantime, make yourself easy, and sit down again.”
The Rat was nevertheless still anxious to be off and attend to his
river, so the Badger, taking up his lantern again, led the way along a
damp and airless tunnel that wound and dipped, part vaulted, part hewn
through solid rock, for a weary distance that seemed to be miles. At
last daylight began to show itself confusedly through tangled growth
overhanging the mouth of the passage; and the Badger, bidding them a
hasty good-bye, pushed them hurriedly through the opening, made
everything look as natural as possible again, with creepers, brushwood,
and dead leaves, and retreated.
They found themselves standing on the very edge of the Wild Wood. Rocks
and brambles and tree-roots behind them, confusedly heaped and tangled;
in front, a great space of quiet fields, hemmed by lines of hedges
black on the snow, and, far ahead, a glint of the familiar old river,
while the wintry sun hung red and low on the horizon. The Otter, as
knowing all the paths, took charge of the party, and they trailed out
on a bee-line for a distant stile. Pausing there a moment and looking
back, they saw the whole mass of the Wild Wood, dense, menacing,
compact, grimly set in vast white surroundings; simultaneously they
turned and made swiftly for home, for firelight and the familiar things
it played on, for the voice, sounding cheerily outside their window, of
the river that they knew and trusted in all its moods, that never made
them afraid with any amazement.
As he hurried along, eagerly anticipating the moment when he would be
at home again among the things he knew and liked, the Mole saw clearly
that he was an animal of tilled field and hedge-row, linked to the
ploughed furrow, the frequented pasture, the lane of evening
lingerings, the cultivated garden-plot. For others the asperities, the
stubborn endurance, or the clash of actual conflict, that went with
Nature in the rough; he must be wise, must keep to the pleasant places
in which his lines were laid and which held adventure enough, in their
way, to last for a lifetime.
V.
DULCE DOMUM
The sheep ran huddling together against the hurdles, blowing out thin
nostrils and stamping with delicate fore-feet, their heads thrown back
and a light steam rising from the crowded sheep-pen into the frosty
air, as the two animals hastened by in high spirits, with much chatter
and laughter. They were returning across country after a long day’s
outing with Otter, hunting and exploring on the wide uplands where
certain streams tributary to their own River had their first small
beginnings; and the shades of the short winter day were closing in on
them, and they had still some distance to go. Plodding at random across
the plough, they had heard the sheep and had made for them; and now,
leading from the sheep-pen, they found a beaten track that made walking
a lighter business, and responded, moreover, to that small inquiring
something which all animals carry inside them, saying unmistakably,
“Yes, quite right; _this_ leads home!”
“It looks as if we were coming to a village,” said the Mole somewhat
dubiously, slackening his pace, as the track, that had in time become a
path and then had developed into a lane, now handed them over to the
charge of a well-metalled road. The animals did not hold with villages,
and their own highways, thickly frequented as they were, took an
independent course, regardless of church, post office, or public-house.
“Oh, never mind!” said the Rat. “At this season of the year they’re all
safe indoors by this time, sitting round the fire; men, women, and
children, dogs and cats and all. We shall slip through all right,
without any bother or unpleasantness, and we can have a look at them
through their windows if you like, and see what they’re doing.”
The rapid nightfall of mid-December had quite beset the little village
as they approached it on soft feet over a first thin fall of powdery
snow. Little was visible but squares of a dusky orange-red on either
side of the street, where the firelight or lamplight of each cottage
overflowed through the casements into the dark world without. Most of
the low latticed windows were innocent of blinds, and to the lookers-in
from outside, the inmates, gathered round the tea-table, absorbed in
handiwork, or talking with laughter and gesture, had each that happy
grace which is the last thing the skilled actor shall capture—the
natural grace which goes with perfect unconsciousness of observation.
Moving at will from one theatre to another, the two spectators, so far
from home themselves, had something of wistfulness in their eyes as
they watched a cat being stroked, a sleepy child picked up and huddled
off to bed, or a tired man stretch and knock out his pipe on the end of
a smouldering log.
But it was from one little window, with its blind drawn down, a mere
blank transparency on the night, that the sense of home and the little
curtained world within walls—the larger stressful world of outside
Nature shut out and forgotten—most pulsated. Close against the white
blind hung a bird-cage, clearly silhouetted, every wire, perch, and
appurtenance distinct and recognisable, even to yesterday’s dull-edged
lump of sugar. On the middle perch the fluffy occupant, head tucked
well into feathers, seemed so near to them as to be easily stroked, had
they tried; even the delicate tips of his plumped-out plumage pencilled
plainly on the illuminated screen. As they looked, the sleepy little
fellow stirred uneasily, woke, shook himself, and raised his head. They
could see the gape of his tiny beak as he yawned in a bored sort of
way, looked round, and then settled his head into his back again, while
the ruffled feathers gradually subsided into perfect stillness. Then a
gust of bitter wind took them in the back of the neck, a small sting of
frozen sleet on the skin woke them as from a dream, and they knew their
toes to be cold and their legs tired, and their own home distant a
weary way.
Once beyond the village, where the cottages ceased abruptly, on either
side of the road they could smell through the darkness the friendly
fields again; and they braced themselves for the last long stretch, the
home stretch, the stretch that we know is bound to end, some time, in
the rattle of the door-latch, the sudden firelight, and the sight of
familiar things greeting us as long-absent travellers from far
over-sea. They plodded along steadily and silently, each of them
thinking his own thoughts. The Mole’s ran a good deal on supper, as it
was pitch-dark, and it was all a strange country for him as far as he
knew, and he was following obediently in the wake of the Rat, leaving
the guidance entirely to him. As for the Rat, he was walking a little
way ahead, as his habit was, his shoulders humped, his eyes fixed on
the straight grey road in front of him; so he did not notice poor Mole
when suddenly the summons reached him, and took him like an electric
shock.
We others, who have long lost the more subtle of the physical senses,
have not even proper terms to express an animal’s inter-communications
with his surroundings, living or otherwise, and have only the word
“smell,” for instance, to include the whole range of delicate thrills
which murmur in the nose of the animal night and day, summoning,
warning, inciting, repelling. It was one of these mysterious fairy
calls from out the void that suddenly reached Mole in the darkness,
making him tingle through and through with its very familiar appeal,
even while yet he could not clearly remember what it was. He stopped
dead in his tracks, his nose searching hither and thither in its
efforts to recapture the fine filament, the telegraphic current, that
had so strongly moved him. A moment, and he had caught it again; and
with it this time came recollection in fullest flood.
Home! That was what they meant, those caressing appeals, those soft
touches wafted through the air, those invisible little hands pulling
and tugging, all one way! Why, it must be quite close by him at that
moment, his old home that he had hurriedly forsaken and never sought
again, that day when he first found the river! And now it was sending
out its scouts and its messengers to capture him and bring him in.
Since his escape on that bright morning he had hardly given it a
thought, so absorbed had he been in his new life, in all its pleasures,
its surprises, its fresh and captivating experiences. Now, with a rush
of old memories, how clearly it stood up before him, in the darkness!
Shabby indeed, and small and poorly furnished, and yet his, the home he
had made for himself, the home he had been so happy to get back to
after his day’s work. And the home had been happy with him, too,
evidently, and was missing him, and wanted him back, and was telling
him so, through his nose, sorrowfully, reproachfully, but with no
bitterness or anger; only with plaintive reminder that it was there,
and wanted him.
The call was clear, the summons was plain. He must obey it instantly,
and go. “Ratty!” he called, full of joyful excitement, “hold on! Come
back! I want you, quick!”
“Oh, _come_ along, Mole, do!” replied the Rat cheerfully, still
plodding along.
“_Please_ stop, Ratty!” pleaded the poor Mole, in anguish of heart.
“You don’t understand! It’s my home, my old home! I’ve just come across
the smell of it, and it’s close by here, really quite close. And I