The River Bank

by Kij Johnson

  The Toad had been thinking all this while. He was a flighty Toad, a frivolous Toad, a Toad abandoned to every sort of vanity and folly, but he was also at heart a decent Toad, and he could not but admit the justice of the Badger’s words. He had been days in the Rabbit’s company without any duenna, any chaperone or maid or female companionship at all. No one would have been happier than he to have been able at this moment to reveal that the Rabbit was his sister; but she was not and he could not. He rose from his seat and, after making sure he would not be placing himself uncomfortably upon a stone or twig, lowered himself to one knee before the Rabbit.

  “Madam,” said the Toad to the Rabbit, “will you do me the honor of accepting my hand in marriage?”

  He thought he got it off rather well, with the perfect note of respectful yet ardent admiration, but the Rabbit, regrettably, only giggled.

  The Toad, disregarding the giggle and rather getting into the spirit of things, added grandiloquently, “I am sure that your family and friends will wish to judge for themselves my ability to sustain a wife in a manner suitable to her class and character. I should be happy to lay out my situation fully for whomever—”

  “She can’t marry Toad!” interrupted the Water Rat, and, into the silence that followed his words, he dropped, “He’s disgraced. He’s still a criminal! At least, until there’s a pardon he can’t be married, not without involving his, ah, bride in his disgrace.” It was a wrench to get the word out, but he succeeded. The Toad visibly brightened.

  “The more reason to clear his name quickly,” said the Badger, who was starting to think rather well of this notion. It was universally known that marriage cooled the blood in the veins, so perhaps it might settle even the mercurial Toad.

  “Disgraced?” said the Rabbit hotly. “You speak as though it were Toad’s fault that things went wrong, and that is nonsense, as anyone with sense can see. And in any case, it was all very exciting. I’m sure any bride of Toad’s would have a delightful time of it.” She smiled fondly down upon the Toad, who had clasped her paw between his own.

  “My dear,” said the Toad with appropriate fervor. The Water Rat looked rather ill.

  “But,” said the Rabbit, “I don’t think so.” And she pulled her paw free.

  “You’re rejecting me?” said the Toad. “Me? Toad? The Toad? Toad of Toad Hall? Myself?”

  “I am,” said the Rabbit cheerfully. “Let me see if I say this correctly: ‘I am deeply sensible of the honor you have shown me, and sorry for any pain my refusal may cause—’ Is that quite right, Beryl?”

  Beryl nodded. “That is precisely as I had Evelina say it in 19 Croquet Lane.”

  They exchanged a smile, then Rabbit turned back to the Toad, and with a tiny curtsey said, “—but I must decline your very kind offer.”

  “But—!” said the Badger, faint but pursuing. “Your good name!”

  The Rabbit gave a little shake. “O, that! No, Toad’s a very good sort, but I have no wish to be trammeled with a husband.”

  “‘Trammeled’? ‘A very good sort’?” Toad said, puffing up. “This is all you feel for me? When I have offered you my hand, Toad Hall, and my heart?”

  The Rabbit shook her head. “It is very good of you, indeed it is! But no. No husbands for me!”

  The rest of the walk home was silent. The Rabbit’s rejection of the Toad’s marriage proposal seemed to have cured his incipient cold, at least, and if he drooped along at the tail of the group, counting syllables on his paws, and muttering to himself, “Love, glove, above; lost, tossed, frost . . .,” it did no harm to anyone else, and did not slow them up in the slightest.

  And so they came again to the River Bank. It was dusk, and the air was filled with the liquid melodies of nightingales and reed warblers, and the stridulence of the frogs and crickets; dusk, when the air thickened and settled as mist on the River; and for the first time there was something else in the air, a snap that was not yet autumn but would be, in a few weeks’ time.

  The Badger went home with the Toad, avowedly to assist should Toad Hall have been overrun by Stoats in their absence (it was not) but in fact to keep a close eye on the Toad until the pardon was final— “Or a foot upon his neck, if that’s what it takes,” muttered the Badger to the Water Rat as they separated.

  For several weeks, the Toad went nowhere and did nothing. The Badger had explained the importance of behaving well; the Toad had agreed fervently and shed not a few tears at the past follies that had so stained his name and character that the Badger (rightly) felt he could not return to his own home in the Wild Wood but must watch the Toad carefully. The Badger knew better than to take this remorse as writ on anything but sand, and so he stuck like glue to the Toad, an omnipresent rain cloud casting gloom over all his waking hours, until the Badger in desperation proposed the Toad take up a quiet hobby, such as collecting Coins of the Ancient World. To the astonishment of all, the Toad did precisely that, and for some time after, Toad Hall was a flurry of special couriers whirling in from Town, bringing numismatic catalogues and worn, ragged little fragments of silver or gold wrapped in cotton wool. “Toad taken advantage of?” said the Badger to the Mole one day, when they were all gathered for luncheon at Toad Hall. “Of course he’s being taken advantage of! But at least it’s not motor-cycles.”

  As for his passion for the Rabbit, so momentarily felt and so sincerely expressed, it did not last the composition of even a full quatrain, let alone an entire sonnet. The Rabbit, instead, remained with her dear friend.

  Beryl returned to her cottage and wrote her books. Philotera’s Horror was followed by The Dark Overture, and after that she began a long and ambitious four-book series which she and her publisher hoped would bring the latter days of the Roman Empire to startling life, and which might break her into the American Market, so fiercely coveted by all English authors. She spent her afternoons on the River, or visiting the many friends she had made: the Mouse-wives and Hedgehog misses, and even some of the younger Weasels of both sexes, who found her novels very dashing (to put it mildly), and eyed her with mingled awe and wariness.

  She and the Badger became good friends, and even in the winter, when most social life on the River Bank slowed to a crawl, one or the other would occasionally rouse sufficiently to pay a call upon the other.

  The Water Rat remained a little suspicious of her, still worried that she might in some fashion disrupt the friendships of the River Bank, but as time passed and he saw that she did nothing of the sort, and indeed had no wish to do so, he warmed to her company and even went so far as to solicit her company on summer afternoons. She was quiet and did not talk too much (unlike, say, the Toad), she made excellent lemonade, and she was well content to let the Water Rat do the rowing. By midwinter, it became an understood thing that on certain sunny days he would walk across to Sunflower Cottage, for she loaned her books freely without asking for a speedy return and could be coaxed into talking about writing, a thing the Water Rat at least never tired of.

  Beryl and the Mole settled into a new relationship, as well: grown up but with all the history of shared childhood. They did not often visit one another’s homes, but would go on long rambles together, even as far as the Hills to visit their siblings, and such was their harmony that one might spend a day in their company and see no more than a few instances of eye-rolling, or hear more than a barest minimum of heavy sighs.

  Author’s Note

  In 1908, Methuen Books published a novel that became one of the classics of children’s literature, The Wind in the Willows. Its author, Kenneth Grahame, was a writer of sentimental memoirs and novels in what were turning out to be the dying days of the British Empire.

  As a child, I adored this book, and the animals that peopled the River Bank—staunch Mole, the sociable Water Rat, the severe Badger, and the ebullient, ever troublesome Toad. I didn’t notice the entrenched assumptions about privilege, class, and gender. Later, as an adult, these things bothered me; this book is an imperfect attempt to o
pen up the world of the River Bank a little.

  I wish to acknowledge Diane Purkiss and G. S. Dastur, who offered many, many suggestions that contributed to the book’s tone and details. Thank you also to readers Will Badger, Wilton Barnhardt, Leigh Dragoon, and Lane Robins, but a special thank-you to Elizabeth Bourne and Barbara Webb. Much love.

  About the Author

  & Illustrator

  Kij Johnson has won the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Sturgeon Awards for her short fiction. She is also the author of four novels, a print novella, and a collection, At the Mouth of the River of Bees: Stories. She teaches writing at the University of Kansas, where she is associate director for the Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction. She splits her time between Kansas and Washington.

  Kathleen Jennings was raised on fairytales in western Queensland. She trained as a lawyer and filled the margins of her notes with pen and ink illustrations. She has been nominated for the World Fantasy award and has received several Ditmar Awards. She lives in Brisbane, Australia.