Toad Triumphant Read online

The Mole at last found the painter and, leaving off the cashiering of the Rat till later so that he could attend to the immediate crisis, he struggled for some little while to ease the rocking, bucking boats nearer to the wire that he might pass the painter over and around it and secure it fast. He managed the passing over and around, but the securing proved beyond his competence, and the Mole had no choice but to cling on to the rope and sit as low in the bows as he could manage, his back to the clinker boards, and all of him aching and weakening more as the seconds went by.

  “Ratty,” he cried feebly from the nether regions of the boat, whose continued rocking and sideways slipping caused various packages and provisions to fall on top of him, “will you ever come back? I shall find it very hard to forgive you. Ratty!”

  The Mole’s desperation grew as beneath him, butting and scraping their teeth as they mouthed at the underside of the boat, less than an inch from where he lay monsters of the deep began their dread work of sniffing him out, and demolishing the frail craft to get at him.

  “Ratty!” wailed the Mole. “What shall I do?”

  For as the monstrous sounds grew more ominous, and he seemed to hear the watery cracking and splintering of wood, it occurred to the Mole that it might be better if he released the painter and allowed the current to take the boats off down-river, safe from present dangers. On the other hand — and this was the Mole’s dilemma —when the Rat reappeared, if he did (and here the Mole did not permit himself to dwell upon the possibility that the monsters had made a first course of his friend before making him the main meal), the Rat would not be pleased to discover his precious boats wrecked downstream and all their gear lost.

  It was at such moments that the Mole rediscovered that courage and resource for which he was renowned along the River Bank. Quiet and unassuming the Mole might normally be, and very slow to ire, but only let the fates conspire to corner him, or to threaten one of his friends, and the Furies of his soul were unleashed.

  “Ratty my friend, if they have taken you I am too late. But if not there may yet be something I can do!”

  With that the Mole heaved at the painter to pull the boats back up towards the wire and give himself more leg room, grasped the cutlass and stood up, as formidable and as ready for slaughter as any Viking who ever stood upon the prow of his ship as it drove hard onto an alien shore.

  With his left hand gripping the painter and his other hand brandishing the weapon, ready to kill, he gazed into the depths below and saw the stirring, murky monster begin to rise.

  “Avast there and may Thor be with me!” cried he, prior to bringing his sword down into the water below in the manner of a Nordic mariner fighting his final battle.

  “No need to be too rough with it, Mole,” a familiar voice cried out from behind him; “that old tree trunk will soon drift off now that I have freed it.”

  “Ratty,” gasped the Mole, turning about and nearly tumbling in the water as he did so, “you are here, you are alive. Where have you been?”

  Relief mixed with annoyance, embarrassment with fatigue, and the Mole could only collapse back into the bow and listen as the Rat took control of the boats and explained what he had discovered.

  “The bottom of the tributary is as clean as a whistle, which means that the flow is good and there’s better water upstream. I shifted that trunk out of our way and now we can just slide under the wire — how sensible and practical of you to slump down there in the bows, and to have shifted some of our gear and redistributed the boat’s weight to ease my task.”

  “What about that notice?” said the Mole, falling back on the only protest he could make.

  “O, that!” responded the Rat contemptuously. “Pshaw! No landowner has the right to obstruct lawful travellers upon the River, or curtail their freedom of passage. No Court of Law would sustain his case.”

  “Unless he was the presiding Judge,” said the Mole, ever sensible.

  “I would take the matter to the Lords of the Admiralty,” said the Rat grandly.

  “And the ‘Danger’ that was mentioned?” said the Mole, thinking perhaps of those monsters he had imagined were about to get him, and who might be lurking upstream still. The Lathbury Pike, for example.

  “All stuff and nonsense,” said the Rat, “and only intended to keep us from our lawful course, but effective only on the cowardly and feeble-minded, and not the likes of us.”

  “No?” said the Mole feebly and feeling cowardly.

  “Absolutely not,” said the Rat. “Now keep your head down, for I’m going to punt us through with this oar.”

  The Mole saw the wire and its notice slide past above his head; he heard and felt the rasp of the dead stems of rushes across his shoulders, and he watched as the Rat nimbly negotiated these obstacles whilst still keeping both boats under control and guiding them forward.

  “There,” the Rat cried after a very few moments more of this, “you can sit up again now, Mole.”

  The Mole did so, and felt a surge of excitement. As the Rat punted on, the wire and its attendant obstructions soon receded behind them and were gone, and with them the River — the only waterway the Mole had ever known.

  Now, ahead of them, hedged in on either side by impenetrable thickets and trees, was a different River, a deeper, faster-flowing one, whose ways ahead wound and twisted out of sight, and whose scents and colours were dark and more ancient than any he had ever known.

  “O Ratty!” said the Mole with awe in his voice.

  “Aye,” said the Rat with new purpose, “now we must use all our skills and endeavours to survive, for this is new uncharted territory. Here we must be on our guard, and be ready for every eventuality.”

  “Hurrah!” cried the Mole, grasping the handle of his cutlass yet tighter and raising it in the air from sheer exuberance, for he felt now that the most exciting part of their expedition had begun.

  · VI ·

  Cupid’s Arrow

  If Toad’s sudden swoon into the arms of his friends was unexpected, it was no more so than the change that had overtaken him in those memorable moments when he had met his cousin, and she had met him.

  Had his friends themselves been experienced in matters of romantic love and the speed, arbitrariness, and frequent unreasonableness of the attachments it creates they might have recognized the symptoms even as Toad cried out his cousin’s name. For people not afflicted with the contagion of love do not cry out “Florentine!” with quite the passion, and the wild purpose Toad attached to it. Nor do they arise from their swoon, clutching their breast, and cry out, “Where is she? Carry me to her this instant for I am yet too weak to walk. Only the sight of her will restore my failing heart, and the strength to my legs.”

  And finally for good measure, when his friends were beginning to suspect the worst but had not yet gathered their wits together to take decisive action, “Let me be; I shall seek her myself Unhand me, you villains, that I may protect her from thee!”

  Such, or something like it, were among the cries and pleas, the imprecations and threats, that the love—struck Toad uttered as he recovered from his swoon.

  That he could not find Madame d’Albert was no great surprise, given his wild impatient state. She had felt that discretion and propriety indicated that his friends should tend to him rather than herself. She had no inkling then of what ailed him, and if she had done she would certainly have left Toad Hall and the River Bank, there and then.

  Meanwhile, being the enthusiastic artist that she was, she took the opportunity of the extra time offered by his collapse to engage in a different project. She requested Prendergast to assume the posture of one pouring a cup of tea that she might sketch him and positioned him at the far end of the conservatory where the light was better. But since that area was particularly thick with potted plants, it took the recovered Toad a good deal of hopping and skipping about, uttering his cries of love and hope, before he found the object of his desire.

  She spoke first.

  “So English,
so typique, so ‘ow you say absolute in ‘is formality! I like your butler very much!”

  Toad eyed his man suspiciously and said, “Prendergast, have you a satisfactory explanation for watering the palms with tea?”

  “Sir, I —”

  “Then remove yourself,” said Toad impatiently “that I may talk to the Madame.”

  It was at this moment that the Badger caught up with Toad. That nightmare vision he had had when the Mole had first confessed the grave mistake he had made the day before had here and now, before his eyes, like a tropical storm coming from off the sea to devastate a peaceful land, become reality.

  “Toad,” growled the Badger in Toad’s ear, “you are in danger of making a fool of yourself”

  “Love,” cried Toad blissfully turning from the Madame to his friend, yet still reaching a hand towards the one upon whom he had set his heart, “is a fool, a happy fool, and I —”

  The Mole caught up with them and saw that the Badger was not quite handling Toad aright, and thought that he might try a different approach.

  “Toad,” he said, pleasantly but quite firmly “I do not know what has come over you but you are in danger of compromising yourself —”

  “I do not know, sweet Cousin,” cried Toad, leaping up in the air and describing a brief pirouette with an energy that was gathering momentum by the second, “what has come over me, but I am in danger —”

  The Water Rat now joined the mêlée and sought a better way of dealing with the bedazzled and besotted swain within their midst.

  “Toad,” he hissed, pulling him to one side, “if you don’t come to your senses at once then we shall have to forcibly remove you to a place of safe-keeping till you have calmed down, and you will look very foolish in the eyes of your cousin. She will lose all respect for you and I dare say will cease the sitting forthwith, and her visit here, and what is more —”

  “Ratty, old fellow, please don’t grip my arm so tight, it hurts.”

  “— we will summon the police!”

  “Not them!” cried Toad.

  “And the Stipendiary Judge,” added the Badger.

  “No, not him!” whined Toad.

  “And I should imagine that a bishop or two will be needed,” added the Mole, following the Water Rat’s approach.

  “Please, not a member of the clergy,” said Toad, now chastened, “for they talk so much and make my head feel tired.”

  It seemed that the resourceful Rat had indeed found a way to calm Toad. The combination of a great many more warning words like these, spoken in fierce sotto voce, and the continuance of that ruthless grip upon Toad’s arm served to dampen Toad’s ardour and finally to silence him.

  It was in vain that the Mole and the Badger (while the Rat still held Toad to one side, and Prendergast was sent to fetch him a calming tisane) tried to explain to Madame d’Albert the nature of her cousin’s ailment; nor did their brief description of his chequered history, and his marked tendency to criminal behaviour, seem to make any impact on her.

  “‘E is magnifique, ‘e is formidable, ‘e is a toad sauvage,” she exclaimed. “And now we must resume our sitting.”

  At least the interval of restraint seemed to have sobered Toad from the inebriating effects of that heady beverage of infatuation from which he seemed to have drunk so suddenly and so deep.

  They thought it safe to allow him to speak again.

  “Cousin,” said he, “sweet —”

  “Toad!” growled the Badger, seeing the danger signs once more.

  “Cousin — madame,” essayed Toad again, “I am better now I am in l—”

  “Be careful, old fellow,” said the Mole in a calming way fearing that another declaration of love was imminent. “When you speak to her, try to imagine she is a potted plant — that might help.”

  Toad stared at the Mole in astonishment, thinking that his words rather confirmed what he already thought: that the heat of the day and the airlessness of the conservatory was going to everybody’s head. How else could one explain the fact that a sane fellow like the Mole could expect him to think of Florentine as a potted plant? What else but temporary madness could account for his butler affecting to water palms with tea that had long since dried up?

  “I think, Cousin, that I am tired and need a moment’s rest. Then, my dear —”

  The Badger needed only to cast him a glance now to bring him back on course.

  “— my dear Cousin, I trust you will discuss with me the pose you recommend for the statue you have agreed to make.”

  This was sanity returned, so much so that Toad drank the special tea that Prendergast brought, and out of courtesy had a peck of tapioca pudding. Finally he went out onto the terrace for the next part of the sitting.

  The Rat and the Mole quietly took the opportunity to take leave of their host and return to their boats, with the Otter to help them on their way.

  “Good luck, you fellows,” said the Badger, lingering with the others for a moment; “I would come down to see you off, but one of us had better keep an eye on Toad.”

  On the terrace, Madame d’Albert was now able to turn her full attention on Toad. “Let me regard you, mon cher. Let me see you as you truly are.”

  Toad stood where he was, staring at her in some alarm.

  “I do not quite know what you mean,” he said.

  “‘E is so modest, monsieur, so like a bird that longs to fly but feels constrained from doing so,” said she over her shoulder to the Badger, who by now had taken upon himself the role of chaperone and was rather wishing that the sculptress would be a little less flamboyant in her use of language, for it only encouraged Toad.

  “Madame,” hissed the Badger, “try to speak more simply for Mr Toad does not quite understand your meaning. Regard him as being a little ill.”

  Then he sighed, for he saw that his intervention had done no good: the Madame had begun to flap her arms vigorously whilst running about the terrace, crying, “Un oiseau! A bird, a flying bird!”

  How willingly and happily Toad followed suit. “A bird! That’s what I am! That’s what she means, Badger old chap! Isn’t she delightful?”

  The Badger frowned at this and let it pass. He was concerned by the reference to birds and flight, for he knew how Toad longed to do many things, flying among them, and how necessary it was for his own safety, and that of all along the River Bank, to restrain him. The constant constraints of his friends rather than self-restraint were what kept Toad from disaster — that the Badger knew.

  Then Toad, exhausted, came to a heaving, puffing stop before the Madame, who had done likewise.

  “Am I?” said Toad with hopeful obedience. “Am I like a bird?”

  “A bold bird,” said she, unknowingly feeding his vanity and love, even as he began to swell his chest and preen and parade before her like a peacock, “and a noble bird!”

  “I am!” concurred Toad with sudden conviction.

  “Is ‘e not?” she cried, appealing to the Badger for confirmation.

  “He can be,” averred the Badger reluctantly eyeing the strutting Toad with distaste, “I suppose.”

  He hoped that Toad might heed the warning note in his voice and calm down once more. He knew what little encouragement it needed for Toad to swell his chest, and how little more for him to strut about seeking to look as important as he felt. With the Madame encouraging him to think of himself as a bold bird, even a noble one, he had flown in a matter of moments from disappointment that his earlier declarations seemed to have gone unnoticed by her, to flights of fancy that gyred ever higher on the winds of her admiration.

  “Where is my art to be erected?” she asked again.

  “My sculpture? Me?”

  “Yes,” she breathed. “Show me, Cousin; show me now!” With an extraordinary movement of arms and hands, much like a provincial actor making his first entrance on the stage in a part far beyond his range, experience and abilities, and driven by an impulse to wish to impress his audience, Toad strod
e across to the plinth upon which he so looked forward to seeing a sculpture of himself erected, double size.

  “I shall be here eternally!” said he.

  “O, Monsieur Toad, strike a pose!” she cried after him. “Be noble, be most bold! Inspire my Art with the immortality of your Spirit!”

  Toad tried his best to do so, and after some experimentation — for despite considerable secret practice in previous days, he had not found it easy to strike a dramatic pose that did not very soon lead to fatigue and a loss of balance and dignity — he stood with his arms, hands and finally his fingers extended as nobly and as boldly as he could.

  The Madame regarded him gravely for quite some time, and then came to a sudden and most startling conclusion.

  “‘E must be, ‘e is, an Emperor,” said Madame d’Albert with sudden decision. “That is what ‘e conveys to me: nothing less than an Emperor.”

  “An Emperor,” gasped Toad, feeling suddenly weak and faint, for it was physically taxing to be so bold and so noble of body for so long.

  “And yet —” said Madame in a quiet and timorous way as if some thought almost too awesome to contemplate had suddenly occurred to her, though the Badger suspected she had it all along, “— yet I wonder — Monsieur Badger,” she said, grasping his arm and drawing him into the circle of decision, “‘ave you never looked at your friend Monsieur Toad and seen ‘im as ‘e might truly be?”

  “As he is, yes,” said the Badger, finding that the resistance he was able offer through his greater height was less than the force she was able to apply as a result of her greater weight, so that he was drawn forward towards Toad and forced to look up at him, “as he might be, rarely.”

  “Then look now,” she said with a grand gesture towards the perspiring Toad, who was now in desperate straits as he tried to retain his extraordinary pose and his dignity; “look, and what do you see?”

  “I see —” The Badger was reluctant to continue, for he knew too well what he saw He saw struggling pomp and blind vanity; he saw over-weening pride and — and a Toad afflicted by passions he could not control.