“Heard what?” asked Toad, turning over to face him. “Go on, dearest! Quick, don’t spare me—what haven’t I heard?”
Just then there came a knock at the door, and Mole jumped up to answer it. “Hello, Rat,” he said (for it was Rat at the door). “Have you come here to tell Toad the bad news?”
“Hello, Mole,” said Rat, very politely. “I thought you were out.”
“Hello, Rat,” Mole said again. “I don’t believe that I am. I thought it was you who was out.”
“As you like it, I’m sure,” Rat said. “Won’t you invite me in?”
“As you like it, I’m sure,” Mole said, and stepped aside to make room for Rat, who immediately went into the kitchen and began boiling the water for tea.
“Rat,” Mole said after a moment. “I have absolutely terrible news for Toad.”
“Terrible news?”
“Just terrible news.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that.”
“I thought you’d be sorry to hear that, Rat,” Mole said. “You’re always very sympathetic.”
“Is it the terrible news about his home?” Rat asked. “The terrible news about Toad Hall?”
“The very same terrible news,” Mole said. “The very exact same terrible news about his home, Toad Hall.”
“Oh, dear,” Rat said, pouring two cups of tea, one for Mole and one for himself.
“Oh, dear,” Mole said. “No sugar in mine, thanks.”
Toad lifted himself up so he could see what was going on in the kitchen. “What has happened to Toad Hall?”
“I think it’s very sad, what happened to Toad Hall,” Mole said to Rat. “Won’t you come and sit by the fire while we have our tea?”
“Thank you,” Rat said, and the two of them took their tea back into the parlor where Toad was half twisted up from his pallet on the floor.
“I think it’s very sad that our friend Toad doesn’t have a house,” Rat said. “I have a house, and you have a house, and Badger has a little house, too. Even Otter has a house of sorts. I think it is very sad that Toad is the only one who hasn’t even the least little bit of a house.”
“He used to have a house,” Mole said. “A very fine one too, was Toad Hall.”
“Will someone please tell me what has happened to Toad Hall,” Toad said desperately.
“Oh,” said Mole, “you haven’t heard what’s happened to Toad Hall? Well, it was a good deal talked about down here, naturally—not only along the riverbanks, but even in the Wild Woods.”
“Very strange, your not hearing of it,” Rat said, “how They went and took Toad Hall, while you’ve been so sick lately.”
“They made arrangements, while you were ill,” Mole said. “They said anyone as sick in the head as you have been was not likely to return home anytime soon—and you must admit They had a point, for you have been distressing us all terribly with your behavior lately—and They decided They had better move Their things into Toad Hall, and sleep there, and make sure everything was ready for you when you turned up, if you ever turned up.”
Toad only nodded.
“If you ever turn up,” Rat said, “I expect They will still be there waiting for you. Some of Them came in through the carriage drive, and some of Them came in through the kitchens and the gardens, and some of Them came in through the French windows that open onto the lawn, and I expect all of Them are still there waiting for you.”
“People took sides about it,” Mole said, “naturally. I think it was a terrible shame, no matter what people say about you, no matter how often folks said you were never coming back.”
“Never, never, never coming back,” Rat agreed. “This is excellent tea, Mole.”
“Thank yourself,” Mole said. “You made it.”
“So I did,” Rat said, taking another sip.
“But we knew you would be back to your old self in no time,” Mole said to Toad after a few minutes’ silence, “and that you would be eager to go back to Toad Hall and clear Them out, even if no one else went with you, and you had to creep back all by yourself in the darkness to whatever met you behind your own front doors.”
“We knew,” Rat agreed. “We knew you’d as good as promised to go back and clear Them out.”
“But he hasn’t gone back and cleared Them out, has he, Rat?” Mole asked.
“No, Mole,” Rat said slowly, “come to think of it, he hasn’t. Toad hasn’t kept his promise at all. Why do you suppose that is?” And he turned to ask him, but Toad was nowhere to be seen. “Toad,” Rat said. “Where have you got to, and why haven’t you kept your promise?”
Mole jerked his head toward the kitchen. “Toad is hiding among the pots and pans,” he said. “I expect he is hiding because he is so ashamed of being a coward.”
“Toad,” Rat called, “are you hiding among the pots and pans?”
“Toad,” Mole said, “why would you rather be with the pots and pans than with your friends? Come out and have a visit with us.”
After a moment, the cupboard door opened, and Toad crept out. He crawled along the floor until he was back at Mole’s feet.
“Toad,” Mole said sternly, “you promised to go back and clear Toad Hall of all your enemies who are living there, sleeping in your beds and drinking your tea. Why haven’t you done it?”
“Toad,” Rat said, “did you mean it when you promised you would go back and clear out Toad Hall, or were you telling a lie?”
“I didn’t,” Toad said. “Or, I mean, I didn’t tell a lie or make a promise either. I didn’t even know there was anybody else in my house until you told me, just now.”
“At the very least,” Mole said in an injured tone, “I would think you would want to go back to Toad Hall so you could invite Rat and myself over for tea, after all the hospitality I’ve shown you since you’ve been so ill.”
“I would so like to have tea,” Rat said, setting down his cup. “I haven’t had any tea in the longest time, and Mole hasn’t either—he’s been too busy worrying himself over you.”
“Toad,” Mole said, “you are a very good friend, only I wish you would tell the truth, because you always feel so sick when you tell lies. You did promise you would sweep Toad Hall clear of all your enemies, and I think it’s high time you got up off my parlor floor and went home to find out what was living there.”
“I know I didn’t,” Toad said. “I know I didn’t.”
“Then why do you feel so sick right now?” Mole asked.
“I don’t,” Toad said. “I don’t feel sick, I don’t, I don’t.”
“Then why can’t you stand back up?” Mole said. “And why does your head feel so funny?”
“I don’t know,” Toad said. “Maybe—”
“I think you are telling lies again. I think you would feel better if you told us the truth. Would you like to feel better?”
“Yes,” Toad said in a small misery voice.
“Would you like to be able to get up again?” Mole asked.
“Yes,” Toad said.
“I can’t hear you when you mumble, Toad,” Mole said. “Did you say yes?”
“Yes,” said Toad, turning his head.
“I would like it if you felt better and could get up again,” Mole said. “Wouldn’t you, Rat? Wouldn’t we all like it if Toad would tell us the truth and feel better?”
“I would,” Rat said.
“We both want you to feel better,” Mole said. “It makes us sick too when you tell lies.”
“I feel terribly sick,” Rat said, pouring himself another cup. “Every time Toad tells a lie, I feel sick.”
“I’m sorry I told you a lie, Rat,” Toad said.
“Do you forgive him, Rat?” Mole said.
“I forgive him,” Rat said. “I forgive you, Toad.”
“Are you going to go to Toad Hall, and see all of Them who have been living there and saying such hateful things about you, and about all the things they would like to do to you if they got their hands on you, and keep
your promise, Toad?” Mole asked. “You don’t have to say yes again if it hurts to talk. You can just nod.”
Toad nodded.
“Are you going to start now?” Mole asked.
Toad nodded.
“Do you need help getting up, so you can start keeping your promise?” Mole asked.
Toad nodded, and his friends helped him get up. He only wobbled a little as he went out the front door.
NINE
Cast Your Bread Upon the Waters
Aquinas says passion deserves neither praise nor blame, and I have no quarrel with that. If acedia, that noonday demon, is a kind of passion—a species of sadness, as the Damascene says—then it is no sin in itself. Yet surely passions can be blameworthy when attached to unworthy objects. Surely the immoderation of such spiritual torpor, if left unchecked, is, if not yet full sin in bloom, at least the error that may in time lead to sin. For our story, it all led to sin in the end, and it all began with the listlessness and self-forgetting that comes not from God.
* * *
The woman, in this instance, was wicked, and the man was stupid. That is not always the case between women and men, but that is how it ever was with the two of them. There came a great wickedness out of a small fault; I saw it with my own eyes. Together they committed a wickedness that has left me with six children to bring up in my old age, when I should be preparing myself for a crown and glory. Had I known what would come of it, I would have smothered Johnnie Croy in his crib before he ever grew into a man. But I never had the right to kill him until he sinned a great sin, of course.
There are six eternal sins that defy the Holy Ghost and merit Hell: Despair, or believing that one’s own sin is more powerful than divine grace; Presumption, seeking pardon without repentance or glory without worthiness; Resistance, to truth; Envy of the spiritual glory of a brother or resenting the increase of grace in the world; Impenitence, or not repenting of a sin already committed; Obstinacy, willfully intending to grow further in sin.
Johnnie was tall and well formed, and people liked to look at him and to listen to him talk. He had a fine voice, warm and rumbling, and it made you smile to hear it. I liked him fine myself, but I did not mistake any of his talents for virtue. The Lord sees not as man sees, but looks on the heart.
He claimed to have first seen the woman when he was out collecting driftwood, which certainly may have been true. He had heard her singing before he saw her, and of course her voice was so piercing and sweet and otherworldly that he had to abandon his labor and listen to her. Well, I call that sloth, however pretty the music. She was sitting on a rock way out past the tide line and combing her long hair—because her people neither work nor pray and have endless time for vanities.
You will think me grim, and an enemy of joy, to begrudge my son a snatch of music or my son’s love of her pretty hair. Well, I saw what came of it. I like music and pretty things as much as anyone, within reason, but I also need driftwood more than I need stories of invisible concerts. We sell abstract driftwood sculptures to mainlanders, who love buying sticks of wood shaped to look vaguely like horses’ heads, and chairs no one can sit in, and great big knobby burls to put on their coffee tables. They especially like buying them from flinty old islanders and their good-looking sons, and since fishing doesn’t bring in what it used to, we end up needing a lot of driftwood.
So instead of collecting driftwood or fishing or looking to his chores, my good-looking son spent the afternoon watching a damp woman groom herself on a rock. Like jet her hair was, which grew all the way down to the back of her knees, and her eyes were fine, and my good-looking son, who had already committed the sin of sloth, grew obstinate, and fully intended to sin again. A woman is not a sin, mind, but this woman was, so of course my son came home and told me he could not love anyone else but her. “You don’t have to love anyone else if you haven’t a mind to,” I said, “but I’d be much obliged if you could love her and bring home driftwood at the same time.”
“How can you talk of driftwood when my heart lies somewhere in the sea?” he said. “Don’t speak to me of driftwood; I care nothing for it.”
“Well, if it comes to that,” I said mildly, “I don’t much like it myself, but I do enjoy being able to pay for things like tea and whisky and tobacco when I go to the grocer’s; call it an old islander’s habit and indulge me.”
“I kissed her,” he said. “I went out past the tide line, and I waited until she put down her comb, and I put my arms around her and I kissed her.”
“Did you?” I said.
“She hit me for it,” he said, trying to sound sheepish. “Right in the jaw.” Which isn’t a very smart place to hit a man—hurts like hitting another fist.
“What did you do then?” I asked.
“I apologized,” he said. “Then I stole her comb.” So I added theft to his list of offenses.
“You’ll keep the priest busy, at least, if not yourself,” I said.
He went on to say that she had begged for the return of the comb, which he showed me; its teeth were an evil gray-green color and I misliked it. She had jumped into the water and raged at him, and told him that to lose her comb was a great shame, and that she could not return to her accursed people who lived underneath the waves without it. Johnnie’s answer to that was that she should not return to them, but come home and live with him (that it was not his home to offer but mine had presumably not troubled him). “For,” said he, “there is no point in ever trying to love someone else now.”
“No point at all,” I agreed.
But she would not come home with him, which showed she had some sense, and said she could not abide our black rain or smoky huts, the snow in winter, and the hot sun in summer, and told him to come with her instead.
“Which you did not do,” I said.
“Which I did not do,” he said. “I told her my home was not a hut, but had several rooms in it, and land and sheep besides, and that I had also a boat, a hand-mirror, a big bed, and some cash in the mattress, and that I would give her anything else she wanted. But she would not come with me.”
She called herself Gem-de-Lovely, which was the stupidest name I had ever yet heard, and she countered his offer with the promise of a white palace built under the caves in the sea, and freedom from both sunshine and wind, and all sorts of creatures he had never seen but might have dominion over—if he would come with her and let her drown him and be her man. She would have had the right to drown him, either for the unlawful taking of her comb, or for the unlawful taking of a kiss. My son was not quite so stupid as to agree to that, but he was stupid enough to sit on that rock for another hour and stare at her, and let her stare at him, and they both loved each other all the more for the looking. He was a very good-looking man.
Eventually, I suppose she did tire of just looking at him, even as handsome as he was, and she swam farther out, crying, “Alas, alas, my lovely comb. Alas, alas, my lovely man,” and then she was gone.
“So now I want you to help me catch her,” he said.
“It would be a wicked catching,” I said to him, “and the keeping of her more wicked still.” But he did not mind. “If you take an unbaptized wife, I cannot help you, whatever comes after.” But he did not mind that either.
* * *
He kept the comb in his room, and went about his work in a daze, and he would not speak to any of the local girls who used to keep him from his labors. The next week he came into my study as I was going over the accounts and began to speak without leave.
“I saw her again last night,” he said. “Gem-de-Lovely. She was sitting at the foot of my bed.”
“I congratulate you,” I said. “She has caught herself for you, and you have no need of my help.”
“She was a vision,” he said, as if I had not spoken at all. “The most beautiful creature anyone has ever seen—you will agree on this, if nothing else, when you see her—and she loves me. She was so beautiful I thought she might be an angel.”
�
�Did you pray, when you thought you had seen one?”
“I tried to,” he said. “I tried to offer up a prayer of thanks, but I found that I could not. I had forgotten every prayer I had ever learned.”
As the one who had taught him every prayer he ever knew, I did not especially like that. “Can you remember one now?”
“I will,” he said. “I will pray every morning and evening, once I have her.”
“One prayer now would be better than a hundred tomorrow,” I said.
“You are likely right,” he said, “but you are also interrupting my story. She came back to ask me to return her comb, which I had under my pillow, and which I could not give her. For if she does not marry me, I will die, and I wish to be buried with it. Then she asked, if I would not return the comb, if I would not change my mind and live with her under the sea, and I told her I could not, but begged her to visit my grave when I perished from the wanting of her.”
“You two are never at a loss for conversation, at least,” I said.
“Then,” he continued, “she made me a new offer.”
I put down my pen. “Did she,” I said.
“She did,” he said. “A fair one, too. She said she loved me, and that she would be my wife and live here with me for seven years, if I would swear to come to her palace under the sea with all that was mine at the end of them.”
“Naturally, you agreed.”
Johnnie smiled. He was terribly beautiful when he smiled, and I loved to see him do it. “I threw myself down on my knees, and I promised all that and more.”
* * *
So that was settled, then. That same week they were married. She let the priest do it, which surprised me. I would not have thought she would be able to stand in the church and hear a bible spoken over her. But she was made of strong stuff, and smiled at everyone, and only shivered a little when the priest made the sign of the cross over her. The two of them together were as lovely as the sun over the sea. Pearls as big as fists studded her hair.
And so for seven years she lived with my Johnnie as his wife—lived with us as Johnnie’s wife. I said nothing, as it was a lawful marriage, but cataloged their sins and watched my son’s beautiful face for signs of repentance, and watched his wife’s beautiful face for signs of pity. And things went well, as long as she was with us. The fish ran as they hadn’t in years, the sheep got fat, a man from the government came out and installed a wind turbine at the end of the grazing field, the grocer got her checks on time. Gem-de-Lovely did not work, and neither did Johnnie, and so the additional labor fell on me. I found their chores came as easily to me as my own; I have never minded work. Some in the neighborhood might fault me for the sin of omission—might say I had the opportunity to tear up wickedness by the root and did not act—but I say I gave them both seven years’ opportunity to choose grace. That they did not seek it was a great grief to me.
The Merry Spinster Page 12