Toad Triumphant Page 12

  Before long he had worked out how to speed up, accelerating as he approached each new bend in the meandering River and shouting “Wheee!” as he went round it, and “Whooo!” as he drew out of it and took up a straighter course once more.

  This soon bored him and he began to explore the higher speeds of his excellent craft, with utter disregard for frantic wildfowl, and the effect of the wash and the waves upon the banks. But this too became tedious and repetitive and he tried slowing down and then surging suddenly forward in a most wilful way. But even that was not much fun after a while.

  Toad became ever more adventurous as he successively tried steering with one hand and his eyes shut, then standing on one leg and merely caressing the wheel with a finger or two; then, ever more balletic, Toad tried letting go and describing the odd pirouette about the deck before taking up the wheel once more —”Vroom! Vroom!” he cried.

  Then, standing upon the higher deck and hooking one foot upon the wheel, both to steer and hold him in at the same time, the foolish Toad leaned out across the water, which raced past beneath him — “Vroom! Wheee! Whoosh!”

  It would be good and just to be able to report that Toad came a cropper; very satisfactory to report that Toad crashed the offending craft irrecoverably; just and equitable to be able to say that Toad fell in and got very wet and muddy and was forced to limp the long way home, a wiser and more reasonable animal.

  But Fate is fickle and unjust, and sometimes smiles upon those whom ordinary sober, hard-working mortals rightly condemn. Indeed, Fate sometimes goes out of its way to help the Toads of this world and heap upon them the fortune and riches that its favours bring.

  So it was that afternoon with Toad. Whatever he did in that lunatic voyage in pursuit of the Madame, whether it was controlling the boat with only one foot on the wheel, or doing a quick hand-stand or two, or putting the craft into full throttle while he just popped below decks to see what victuals and beverages the excellent Prendergast had laid in store, inflicted no setback at all: the odd bump, the odd brief grounding, but nothing, absolutely nothing, seriously delayed his progress.

  Finally as the afternoon light began to wane, Toad, by now going more slowly and calmly and with a Havana in his left hand and a brimming glass of champagne adjacent to the other, saw ahead of him His Lordship’s House. He did not immediately recognize it since the last time he had come that way was from the air, drifting down in a parachute. But once he drew closer he saw that same hothouse roof with which he had once had an uncomfortable acquaintance.

  “Ha, ha!” said he, chortling to himself, “I have arrived unnoticed and will now proceed with caution. The Madame’s hand will not be won by foolhardy bravado but by a cunning strategy that combines stealth and resolution, with a clear plan and rapid execution. I shall rescue her from the unwelcome attentions of the High Judge, we shall escape in my waiting craft, and then —”

  But Toad, as is the way with lovers, was not much concerned with what happened afterwards. Jealousy was his motivation, re—possession his present goal.

  He perused the chart and saw that the small tributary he had espied just before he reached His Lordship’s estate was clearly marked, with some useful tips for mariners:

  “Dangerous channel; not navigable; underwater obstructions; subject to the laws of statutory trespass and instant trial before the Admiralty Offences Board; therefore River-users strongly advised to avoid.”

  “Ideal,” said Toad, chuckling at his quick-thinking cleverness and bravado, “I shall moor the craft down there, for no one will think to search for it in so inhospitable a place.”

  He turned sharply about, shot back down river, saw that same barbed wire and notice with which the Mole had tangled some days before, and powered his craft straight through the lot of it, coming to rest safely and out of view among the high reeds upon His Lordship’s bank. There he made the boat fast, and climbed out onto dry land once more.

  “My sweet, my dear,” he announced to the nearest tree stump, by way of practice and to work up his passion once again, “I am coming to you now! Can you sense the imminence of my arrival? Do your instincts tell you that your Toad is near? I shall find thee a gift, a bouquet perhaps —”

  But a search amongst the bank-side vegetation yielded nothing more than some of last year’s bulrushes, the poor frail blooms of eglantine, and some yellow flag which cut his hands when he tried to pick it. A rustic lover might have made much even of this limited fare, but one such as Toad, spoilt by a lifetime of self-indulgence, gave up the endeavour on the instant and decided to entrust the finding of a floral gift to Providence, which had served him so well for so long, and might be expected to turn up trumps on his behalf a few times more.

  Meanwhile he swiftly penned a proposal of marriage to his beloved on a page torn from his craft’s log, in case there were too little time for words, in which he promised her his eternal fidelity and love, and all his worldly goods. Then he set off to find her, with Providence firmly on his side.

  For one thing, His Lordship’s hounds had been locked up early in their kennels for the day from where they were able only to bay and bark harmlessly at his furtive presence as he advanced through shrubberies and vegetable gardens and then across the lawns.

  Then Providence smiled yet more sweetly upon Toad, for it guided him towards the house by way of a large yew hedge and then along a brick path which passed one end of that hothouse whose roof, and prickly plants, he remembered so well.

  It was a warm evening and the air was heavy with the musky scents of the blooms within, a few of which he could vaguely make out through moist and misted glass. Even though the light was beginning to fail, the brilliant reds and yellows of their petals, the voluptuous purples and sensuous apricots of their stamens and pistils all revealed themselves when he peered in.

  Once this floral extravaganza had been seen and scented by Toad, he could not resist the temptation offered him to create a bouquet of bouquets, and one that would surely win the heart of the Madame. How could a lady however hard—hearted she seemed, resist a billet doux of the kind he had so passionately penned when accompanied by a bouquet of blooms so exotic and expressive?

  He tried a door, it opened, and in he hurried to help himself, as thoughtlessly as he had always helped himself to the good things of life — and not bothering to read the notices there prominently displayed over every door and bay: SEVERE AND EXTREME PENALTY FOR TOUCHING, HARMING OR PICKING ANY OF THE COLLECTION’S FLORA by Order of the High Judge.

  It must not be thought that Toad did not appreciate the blooms he had discovered, for he did. He sniffed at them heartily as he might at a joint of well-cooked beef, he exclaimed his pleasure cheerfully and he declared rather too loudly “Flowers fit for a queen!”

  Toad then danced about, helping himself with that same gay and self-satisfied abandon with which he had earlier that day guided his launch upstream. With a quick pick here and a hard pull there he set to work gathering the brightest, largest and most scented blooms in an impulsive and carefree manner that led him up and down the aisles of His Lordship’s hothouse, and left behind him a trail of floral ruin and arboreal destruction.

  Thus satisfied, and now humming happily to himself as swains will who have at last found a satisfactory gift for their beloved, Toad sought to retrace his steps to the door by which he had entered, but he could not immediately find it. In so large and grand a hothouse one aisle is much like another, one row of plants no different from the next, especially when many of their best blooms have been removed and they have been reduced to bare and boring foliage, and so Toad began to wander about seeking an exit.

  It was as he was thus employed that he turned a corner and found himself approaching a pair of French doors through whose glass he could see a well-lit morning room of some kind, all gilt and mirrors and marble statues, but with little furniture.

  In the middle of this room Toad saw a grouping of three gentlemen, all past their best years, arranged upon a dais
in poses rather less ebullient than that triumphal one Toad himself had essayed some weeks before.

  One, whose face Toad knew to be that of the High Judge himself, sat in a simple oak chair and had about him the look of Justice.

  The second gentleman, whom Toad was uncomfortably aware of having seen before, though not wearing the linen sheet which was now draped about his puny torso, represented Law.

  “O dear!” muttered Toad unhappily to himself, clutching his stolen bouquet all the tighter. “Here is not just the High Judge, but the Commissioner of Police as well!”

  Then, moving rapidly on to the third figure he asked himself, “Could this be —?”

  He looked, and knew immediately that it was just as he feared: he was fast approaching the three people he least wished to meet in the whole world, especially in combination. For the last gentleman stood behind the other two, holding a crook in his hand — the very representation of the Established Church.

  “It’s that same Lord Bishop I met in the hothouse last time I dropped in,” said Toad, trying to put as positive a complexion on that doleful incident as he could.

  There were two more figures in the room, though for the moment he had eyes only for one of them. For there, her words muted by the glass of the French doors, but her gestures and stance as loud and raucous as ever, was his cousin Madame d’Albert, caught in the very act of pushing, prodding and persuading her subjects into a pose which she intended to sketch and afterwards re-form into a sculptural group.

  The other person in the room —But before Toad could take in what he saw, he was accosted by an infirm gentleman holding a rake.

  This was the Head Gardener (retired) who, up till that moment, had given over sixty years of unimpeachable service to His Lordship, his Lordship’s father, and his father before that, having started in the vegetable garden at the age of twelve.

  O fickle Fate, that smiles so illiberally upon a villain such as Toad, yet turns her back upon a deserving old gentleman now nearly infirm, and (as it happened) but two days from final and complete retirement. Forty-eight hours more, and that good, kind gentleman might have lived his remaining years in bliss, and his twelve children and thirty-six grandchildren with their family reputation pure as unsullied snow.

  But it was not to be.

  “My man,” said Toad loftily “give me that rake at once and get out of my way for I have work to do!”

  Work!

  Had not the speechless gardener worked? Had he not tended the Orchis celebrata whose solitary bloom, nine years in the growing, Toad now so rudely held?

  Work!? Had he not nurtured that Acer himalaya that his High Lordship himself had collected on his Nepalese journey in ‘89, and which had finally succeeded in seeding only a week before?

  Work?!!!?

  Had not his gnarled and arthritic hands —

  The old Head Gardener was able to say nothing as these thoughts raged through his dumb-founded brain, so shocked and appalled was he, and he allowed Toad to take the rake from his shaking hands without resistance of any kind; but he did not get out of the way quite swiftly enough.

  True love certainly does not run smooth, especially for those who get in its way.

  “Stop dawdling, and pot a few more plants if you have nothing better to do!” cried the heartless Toad, pushing the old man into the nearest flower bed and advancing past him with a look of determination on his face.

  Certainly Toad had something more important than a doddery gardener upon his mind, and it concerned that last person he had espied in the morning room, and at whom he now stared unseen, a look of fury, rage and jealousy suffusing his face. For there, quite open and brazen, was the person the Madame had referred to before she had fled Toad Hall, the person who stood between Toad and his beloved.

  Toad had been quite prepared to fight for her hand against judges, policemen and bishops, all together if need be, but he had not expected his rival to be younger than he, and a toad as well! He had certainly not expected him to be attired in the silks, ruffles and feathers of a louche fop, and to have about his waist a jewelled belt from which hung a scabbard in which seemed to be a real sword; and on his head a huge felt hat of the type that Gallic musketeers, and Romeos, are inclined to wear when they go about their professional business.

  In normal times Toad might have decided that in all the circumstances, with the forces of Law, Order and the Church arrayed against him, and a rival who seemed his match as well, it might have been best to let discretion be the better part of valour, and beat a hasty retreat before he was seen. But jealousy is indiscreet, love unmanageable, and Toad’s blood was up.

  He eyed the bejewelled sword once more, saw the slim and elegant toad who wore it bow low before the Madame and kiss her hand — a kiss Toad would have been happier to see her reject with a disgusted look upon her face — and Toad followed the jealous longings and inclinations of his heart.

  Pushing the French doors open and stepping inside, he paused long enough for all parties therein to see him, before brandishing the rake above his head and declaiming in a loud voice, “This is my trusty sword and with it I shall cut down and destroy my enemies and all those who insult the one I love!”

  Then, advancing upon the villain who fondled the Madame’s hand, he said, “Unhand her, villain, and defend yourself”

  His cry, his wild and dangerous gestures, and this final challenge appeared so to surprise and unnerve those upon whom he advanced that for a moment or two they stood stock still, as in some medieval tableau, caught forever in an act that future generations might find very mysterious indeed.

  But Toad was not so stilled, and his mind felt as sharp as if it had recently been honed upon a barber’s strop. Seeing his moment of advantage, he advanced a few paces, pushed aside his rival, went down upon one knee and, presenting his bouquet and accompanying letter to the Madame, made this pretty speech: “Madame, accept this missive as my proposal of marriage, and these paltry blooms as an emblem of my sentiments. Pray choose one that I may carry it upon my person as your favour in that battle in which I must now engage as your knight to protect the honour I have here seen stained and spoiled by this rogue!”

  Closer examination of the rogue showed him to be even younger in years than Toad had at first thought him. Indeed he was barely out of childhood, and someone with more experience of youthful play would have realized at once that the youth was in some form of fancy dress and certainly not the brazen cad Toad had thought him to be. Indeed, putting two and two together, almost anyone other than Toad would have deduced that the “villain” he now proposed to assassinate was the Madame’s young son, he to whom, as she had told Toad before, her whole life was dedicated.

  But Toad was not now to be stopped, and had already raised his rake in what he imagined to be the correct position for one embarking upon a fencing duel with a rival. A proceeding that might not have mattered too much had not the youth — who, even more than Toad, had the air of one used to having his own way spoilt and indulged from the first moments of his birth — had not this youth, thinking Toad to be some hireling actor or tomfool brought in for the occasion for his personal entertainment, decided that it would be amusing to take the challenge seriously.

  “En garde!” said he, drawing his sword and taking up a position opposite Toad.

  The sight of the sword sharp and glittering before his nose and the fierce determination of the unpleasant youth rather surprised Toad, who so far as he had thought about the business at all, had assumed that any rival he might have would instantly flee before his challenge.

  Quite plainly this was not to be, just as it was plain that Toad had challenged a mere whippersnapper who might have been better dealt with by being led out of the room by the scruff of the collar.

  “En garde!” the youth cried again. “You insult Maman with your attention not-wanted, and for that I will kill you!”

  Toad decided that the best approach was to bluff it out and, still feeling that etiquette dem
anded that he attempt to wield his rake like a duelling sword, he made a few passes in the air, cut a few bold swathes and advanced upon the boy crying, “Yield now and your honour will be saved!”

  The three elderly eminences seemed as struck dumb by Toad’s antics as the Head Gardener had been, but the Madame very quickly recovered her composure.

  “Monsieur Toad!” she cried, seeking to intervene in a duel which, knowing the participants as she did, she guessed would come to no good. “I am pleased to introduce you to my son the Count d’Albert-Chapelle.”

  “Ha!” cried the youth, ignoring his mother completely (as he had done since a babe) and counter-attacking Toad with such speed, grace and ruthlessness that it was painfully clear which of the two contestants had had lessons in swordcraft in a Parisian gymnasium, and which had not.

  “And my dear son, mon petit chou,” continued the Madame, “I am so very glad that you now ‘ave the opportunity to play with your English uncle. But now this silly game must STOP!”

  “Bah!” grunted Toad, irritated at being forced into retreat and feeling it would do his cause no good to suffer defeat at the hands of a mere youth. With an astonishing speed for one so rotund, and with an impressive sweep and cut of the rake he attempted to finish off the youth with one mighty blow, hoping to sort out the matter with his mother afterwards.

  The boy leapt back with agility, deflected Toad’s new attack, and caused the rake to descend upon the feet, and more particularly the toes, of the High Judge, the Commissioner of Police and the Bishop all at once. This woke them from the slumber of surprise and shock into which they seemed to have fallen and with one voice they began shouting accusations and threats, while at the same time summoning the various servants, police constables, chaplains, clerks of the court and all the other hangers-on which great and important men have nearby wherever they go, awaiting their beck and call.