Toad Triumphant

by William Horwood

  “But, Ratty, you’re all —”

  The Rat’s face was a good deal thinner than it had been when the Mole last saw him, and it was cut and torn with scratches and bruises, and his left hand was bound in a bandage that would have been a good deal neater and more orderly if the Mole himself had applied it.

  “What happened to you, Ratty? How did —?”

  Behind the Rat a great shadow loomed, and the Mole saw clearly for the first time the elder of the two badgers who had been looking after him. Then, at the end of the bed the younger, slighter one of the two.

  “Mr Brock here says I must not talk to you for too long, Mole, for you have been very ill these weeks past —”

  “Weeks!” exclaimed the Mole, making a vain attempt to rise from his bed as if to do so might help recover lost time. He collapsed back onto the pillows exhausted.

  “Yes, weeks, Mole. You have been seriously ill from the wounds and broken arm and leg you sustained in fighting off that terrible beast from its attack upon me, while I — I —”

  Only now did the Mole see how tired the Rat was, and begin to guess how the River must have swept him downstream till exhausted and half-dead he had clambered ashore, lucky to have survived.

  “I have been lost in wild woods below this place all this time, too weak even to answer the calls of Mr Brock here, who finally found me only yesterday never having given up hope I might be alive. But he was only able to bring me back to his home here today. I wanted to see you at once, Mole, I wanted to know —”

  It was the Mole’s turn now to comfort his friend, and to hold his hand.

  “Dear Ratty,” said he, “we have both come through our ordeal and will get better — but I’m sure that these good gentlemen will be happier if you go and rest now yourself. We shall talk later.”

  Brock nodded his head approvingly at this, and the younger badger, whom the Mole took to be his son, helped the Rat away.

  For a long time then Brock stared down at the Mole without saying anything, and in his younger days the Mole might have been very afraid of his fierce look, of that deep voice, and of his silence. But no more. Rather the contrary indeed, for he rather fancied he knew who the older badger was, and that one important purpose of his journey had in a most unexpected way been fulfilled.

  “Your friend,” said Brock, “has told me little of who you are, of why you are here, and it may be better for all concerned if you do not speak of it more. You are naturally welcome to stay till you are fully recovered but —well, we do not see many strangers in these parts and prefer it that way. We keep ourselves to ourselves and —”

  “Mr Brock,” interrupted the Mole, “I believe you may have guessed where we have come from. I believe —”

  “And what if I have?” said Brock angrily pacing about the room as if he were not in the presence of an invalid but an inquisitor, which in a sense he was.

  “My name is Mole,” he said very simply “and I live at Mole End along the River Bank.”

  “Humph!” said Brock.

  “And my friend Ratty lives there too —”

  “I am not interested in the past or future life of you or your friend,” said the badger brusquely “and I will have discharged my responsibility when I see you both back to health and off on your journey away from here. You should not have come here in the first place. Now, if you have any sense you will go straight back to wherever it is you say you’ve come from, and you’ll avoid using the River till you’re a good deal lower down the valley for the Pike roams all along its length up here.”

  “And my responsibility as leader of this expedition,” said the Mole, boldly interrupting again and feeling his spirits rise by the moment, even though tiredness was returning, “is to say what I feel I must to those I feel should hear it. Nobody should be afraid of a few words now and then!”

  “Humph!” said Brock once more, glowering furiously and reaching for the door handle.

  “Others encouraged us to make this journey among them Mr Toad of Toad Hall — I believe you may have heard of Toad Hall?”

  “And what if I have, eh, what then?”

  “And also Mr Badger of the Wild Wood — he was very insistent that we embark upon our venture.”

  If the Mole had any doubts before about the identity of Mr Brock, they were now dispelled, for that large and angry animal stilled at once at the mention of Badger and the Wild Wood, and his hand fell away from the door handle.

  “He is still alive?” growled Badger’s son.

  “He is very much alive,” said the Mole, before adding more gently “and I am permitted to say that he — that he —”

  There was much that the Mole might then have said, but the great animal who stood before him seemed half broken by his words, and by what he might reveal, and he sensed that he must go gently. In any case the Mole felt tiredness sweeping over him and he knew he could not stay awake much longer, or talk very sensibly.

  “I want to say only this,” he continued. “Earlier this year Mr Badger had reason to look after me in his home much as you have done these weeks past —”

  “It has not been your year for good health, Mr Mole,” said Brock with the first glimmerings of a gruff and rueful good humour that reminded the Mole of the Badger himself.

  “No, it has not,” said the Mole. “Badger was kind enough to take care of me, and in the spare room in which he put me he kept certain mementoes of his past — items that I think suggest that but few days can go by when he does not think of the past with some regret, and wish he might redress whatever mistakes he may have made.”

  “What items?”

  “A blue-black overcoat, for example, that might have fitted one not much younger than the badger who has helped me regain my health these weeks past, whom I take to be your son, and therefore Mr Badger’s grandson.”

  “Aah —” sighed Brock, sitting down at last.

  “And some worsted trousers, worn once by the same small person, and a hand-knitted red woollen scarf—”

  “He still has my red scarf—”

  “And a great deal more,” said the determined Mole. “For example, he has kept most carefully those books that young person once owned, and which that same person most wilfully scored and crayoned, as young people will —”

  “Why” exclaimed Brock, his anger and irritation nearly all gone and the warmth of childhood memory softening his care-worn eyes, “I would very much like to see those books again!”

  “And also,” continued the Mole, resolutely putting off his tiredness that he might not miss this opportunity of plain talking, but pausing briefly when he saw that the bedroom door had opened a little and Brock’s son was outside and no doubt hearing every word, which seemed a very good thing indeed, “— also, Mr Badger has kept upon the wall of that bedroom a calendar which he should long since have removed, whose year I think you might very well recall.”

  “Of course I do remember the year,” said Brock quietly, “and the date, too, for it was a Monday and the last day of September —”

  The Mole nodded, remembering how the Badger had written the words “The Final Date” upon the calendar against that very day. He was glad to see that when Brock’s son found courage to creep into the room, and sit upon the bed in wary expectation that his father would ask him to leave, nothing was said, and he was allowed to stay.

  “How I wished that he had come with me,” said Brock.

  “He followed you some way up-river as far as the Tavern at Lathbury,” said the Mole, “but there he learnt of what he presumed must be your death at the jaws of the Pike and —”

  Brock nodded wearily and said, “I had an encounter much as you did, and like you was lucky enough to escape with my life. I have stayed up here ever since, with my privacy preserved by the Pike itself. For many years I lived alone till this young — my son’s mother graced me with her presence and companionship for a number of years till she — well, of her passing I shall say nothing now.”

  “No
r have you ever said anything of your other past, father,” said the younger badger, “except those tales you told me when I was very young of a place, a beautiful place, called the River Bank, and another nearby dark and fearsome, to which you gave the name Wild Wood.”

  “Did I?” said Brock, affecting not to remember.

  “He certainly did,” said his son, turning to the Mole, “but never more than that, and never once since I grew older and began asking questions.”

  “Did he not tell you of Badger, a wise animal who lived in the Wild Wood?” said the Mole, sleepy now, and wishing so much that Brock would take up the tale he should have told his son long, long ago.

  “Badger? Well, I think perhaps there was such a one in the tales he told —”

  “And did he not tell you who Badger was, and is still?” whispered the Mole, looking to Brock with appeal in his eyes, for it was not a story he should tell.

  “Who is Badger then?” said Badger’s grandson.

  How long and deep the silence then as the Mole slipped back towards sleep, but not so long that he did not hear, or fancy he heard, a voice very like the Badger’s own, a little gruff and rough around the edges, but warm at its centre, beginning thus: “It was a long, long time ago when I was very young, and your grandmother was still alive —”

  And as the Mole’s eyes closed, and he slipped into oblivion for a time, one badger spoke as a younger one listened, and told a tale too long untold, too long suppressed, of the Wild Wood and the River Bank.

  Six days later the Rat was very fully recovered, and raring to be up and at it, while the Mole, with some assistance, was able to sit outside Brock’s house in the woods near Pike Lake, and stare contentedly at a distant prospect, hazy blue, of mountains and waterfalls none had ever been to, nor would be likely to.

  “Aye, Beyond’s somewhere up there, all right,” Brock told them, “but I’ve done enough journeying away from things in my lifetime, and I’ll leave its exploration for others.”

  How much they had talked, and how much they had listened, and how much, finally they had agreed, and resolved.

  For it was clear that the Mole would need a month or two yet before his broken bones and wounds recovered sufficiently for him to risk the journey home.

  “You can’t leave it much beyond autumn,” said Brock, “for the winters are wild and rough up here and will do your health no good at all. But you should be well enough to leave by then.”

  Meanwhile, the Rat was much exercised by the fact that they had been away from the River Bank for a good deal longer than intended, and that by now the Otter and the Badger would be very worried indeed, and quite likely to mount an expedition to rescue them. The more so, because a day or two after he had escaped from the Pike and crawled shivering to some dark hole along the steep-sided River he had thrown some broken beech branches into the water, in the hope that the Otter might eventually see them, and realize that a serious accident had befallen them.

  “I had no idea if you were alive or not, Mole, and I felt it the best thing I could do. Well, if Otter sees them he’s sure to come upstream, endangering himself and any that come with him. Therefore I must journey back to head him off, and reassure our friends that though an invalid still, you are recovering.”

  But the Mole would not hear of the Rat setting off alone and the two friends argued the point most fiercely for a time. It was only the wise intercession of Brock himself that produced a compromise — not one that was entirely satisfactory or free of risk, but quite the best that any of them could think of.

  “Of course,” said Brock, “I have no particular wish to go back to the River Bank, for those days are over for me. But now I cannot, and will not, deny my son knowledge of his past, and I feel it only right that he should visit the River Bank for a time and meet his grandfather, of whom you have spoken so highly.

  “Perhaps in that way old wounds can best be healed. Therefore, I propose the following: I shall accompany Ratty back home now, and see that he arrives safely without further encounters with pikes or any other beasts. There I shall make my peace with my father. My son here, who is well fitted to look after you, Mole, shall stay here and keep you company.

  “I am certain that he will learn much from one as wise and brave as I know you to be, Mole. When you both judge that the time is ripe — but before Autumn I hope —he will act as your guide and guardian, and help you home. It will do him good to have such an adventure, and there comes a time, as I see now nearly too late, that a parent should let his offspring go free.”

  How gratifying it was to hear Brock talk in this way Mole told himself, and to see the excitement in his son’s eyes at being given a real responsibility.

  “But,” began the Mole, now sufficiently recovered to allow himself to think beyond the present, and to see certain shadows there, “what of the Lathbury Pike? I mean to say won’t we have to cross the Lake again to get back to the River?”

  Brock laughed cheerfully.

  “Ratty and I will hike down through the forest and rocks to where you moored your other boat. We will Continue from there.”

  “And what about us?” said the Mole. “I may not be able to hike very far at all.”

  Grandson laughed.

  “Father learnt how to deal with the Pike’s teeth many years ago. He built a punt and lined its bottom with copper and hoops of iron.”

  “The punt we saw by the waterfall,” explained the Rat. “That craft will get us safely downstream when you are well enough to travel,” concluded Grandson.

  A day or two later the Rat and Brock set off on their long journey and, having said their farewells, Mole and Grandson waved and waved till the travellers could be seen no more.

  “Is it a very long way?” said Grandson when they had finally gone.

  “It is only as far as you wish to make it seem,” said the Mole. “Now let us sit in the sun for a while —”

  “And you can tell me a tale of the River Bank.” The Mole laughed and said, “You must have heard them all by now, if not from me then from Ratty, for you have done nothing but make us tell you of our home, so really I —”

  “Just one more then?”

  The Mole looked at the shadows in the trees, and the distant mountains, and heard the far—off roar of water, and fancied he heard in it a familiar laugh, a loud and braying laugh, a smug self-centred laugh.

  “I have told you about Mr Toad, have I not?”

  “A few things,” said Grandson.

  “Did I ever tell you about the time he stole a motorcar and was sent to gaol?”

  “No!” exclaimed Grandson with delight. “Mr Toad is surely very clever and cunning, is he not?”

  “No, he is not,” said the Mole severely; “he is very foolish, very vain, very conceited and very mischievous indeed.”

  “But for all that you like him, Mole, don’t you?” said Grandson impulsively.

  “For all that,” said the Mole, “I do like him, and so I will tell you how the infamous business with the motorcar began, and led to Toad’s first acquaintance with the Town’s gaol.”

  · X ·

  In Loco Parentis

  Barely had Toad begun his dash for freedom from His Lordship’s House, the Madame’s son in tow, than he discovered that some unkind person had unleashed His Lordship’s hounds after them. He had had dealings with those particular hounds before, and knew them to be slavering and relentless. On the last occasion, since he was not a fox, they had not torn him apart. But this time, as he led the young Count across the lawn, he could not rely on such good fortune.

  He had been heading for the creek where he had hidden his launch, but when he heard that baleful baying and barking he rapidly changed tack and made straight for the River. There, he hoped, the hounds might lose their scent as he and his young friend took to the water and liberty.

  It was a close-run thing, and Toad and his ward were but inches from being brought down by the first of the hounds when they reached the River and ju
mped inelegantly in. The current swept them off downstream and out of harm’s way as the confused hounds ran back and forth, wondering what to do.

  “Ha, ha!” cried Toad as he floated along. “Have I not fooled them all again? Young sir, you may relax, for you shall be safe with me!”

  The Count might very well have wondered about that, seeing as he was now mid-river, cold, and could not swim nearly so well as he could fence but — well — he had to admit that so far it was all much more fun than the chilling formality of the High Judge’s House.

  “Where are we ‘going, monsieur?” he asked.

  “To my motor-launch,” gulped Toad happily; “so keep to the right-hand side of the River.”

  Of their watery arrival at the creek, of their entanglement with what was left of the barbed wire the High Judge had sought to seal its entrance with, and of their eventual clambering aboard the hidden vessel, little need be said. It took longer than Toad expected, and was a good deal colder too, and night had fallen by the time they were dry and safe.

  All around them they could hear shouting and see searchlights shining about, and later in the night the ominous sight of a boatload of constables rowing up and down the River beyond the creek’s mouth looking for them, and perhaps even dragging the river bottom for their corpses.

  “It’s a rum go this one,” they heard a constable say “but with a high-class criminal like Mr Toad you can never tell. One thing’s sure, it might be better for ‘im if ‘e is drownded now, for if ‘e’s not and ‘e’s caught, ‘e’ll only be ‘anged later.”

  “Aye, along with that rascal of a French accomplice.”

  “What are they saying?” whispered the Count whose grasp of constable talk was limited. He was now cold and shivering and not sure any more that this enterprise was quite sensible.

  “They are saying,” said Toad, who was fortifying himself with a brandy “that I am a very well-known gentleman and you are a little-known Count.”

  “What shall we do now, monsieur?”

  Thus far Toad’s good fortune had not failed him, and for once, perhaps inspired by love for the Count’s mother, he showed very considerable resource and common sense.