The Willows in Winter (15 page)

Then the Badger advanced upon the Mole, utterly
unafraid, astonishing in his courage, and as the others watched in awe from
where they half hid themselves, the ghost began to retreat back down the bank
up which it had come, protesting as it went.

“Yes, Spirit,” cried Badger, undaunted by its
plaints, “leave us in peace to mourn the loss of Mole.”

“I
am
Mole!” said the Thing very
irritably indeed, finally standing its ground. “And I am cold and hungry, and I
—”

“O lost creature, do not —”

While the others shivered and stared in alarm,
dawning recognition came at last to the
Rat,
and hope
as well. He climbed over the roots and came to the Badger’s side.

“Why, I think it
may
be Mole,” he said,
peering through the gloom.

“Of course I’m Mole; who else would I be?” said
Mole.

“But you’re pale and white —”

“O yes, that!” said the Mole.
“Snow and ice upon my coat, and in my eyes as well.”

“But, Mole, how did you —”By boat,” said the
Mole shortly; “how else would I come upstream from the island — swim? Really,
you are all being very exasperating. What are you doing here anyway?”

“By boat —” whispered the Rat, beginning to
make sense of things, “and from the island. You were there all this time, and
my boat —”

“Yes, yes, Ratty, but must we talk about it
here? You are all, if I may say so, behaving most strangely”

“You
are
Mole!” cried the Water Rat with
sudden Conviction, pushing past the bemused Badger and grasping his friend in a
warm and delighted embrace. Then all the others came forward to peer at the
Thing that was Mole, and helped him scrape the snow and ice from his fur before
they led him away from the river and towards his own home, to warmth, and rest,
and food.

While behind them, muttering as darkly as ever,
came
the Badger.

“Toad,” he was saying, “that Toad. He’s mixed
up with this in some way, bound to be.
Certain to be.”

Then the Badger stopped and cried up towards
the snowy night sky so loudly that the others turned and stared. “If you’re up
there, you reprehensible and dreadful Toad, you had better never come down, for
I, Badger, have a great deal to say to you!”

“Badger doesn’t seem quite himself,” said Mole
quietly.

“He isn’t,” said the Water Rat matter-of-factly
“Hasn’t been for days. And nor will Toad be, if he ever dares return.”

VII

How the Mighty Fall

It is a sad reflection upon Toad’s moral character that no sooner had
the Water Rat fallen from the flying machine and his parachute opened than he
said to himself, “That’s all right then!
Rat’ll
be
all right, for the parachute will save him, so now I can enjoy myself.”

But the truth was that Toad had behaved even
more infamously than the Rat would have given him credit for. The machine had
not stopped of its own accord at all. Toad had turned the engine off himself,
hoping thereby to get the Rat to bail out first on the false promise that he,
Toad, would follow, which he had no intention of doing at all. Voluntary
parachuting was not Toad’s style.

But it had not quite worked out that way — when
the engine was turned off the flying machine had turned over and the Rat had
fallen out, while Toad had managed to cling on for dear life till the machine
righted itself. With trembling hands, Toad had managed to re-start the engine.
Only then, when he was safe and sound once more and flying merrily about, did
the cowardly Toad think of his erstwhile friend again, who for all he knew had
already crashed onto the ground far below No doubt it was with a sigh of relief
that he saw the Rat floating downwards in relative safety, though the sigh
would have been less at seeing the Rat safe, than at knowing that others might
not have reason to blame him for the Rat’s demise.

All this took but seconds, after which, with
the engine roaring before him in a fruity and agreeable manner, and the
spoilsport Rat out of the way, Toad could get down to what really mattered —
his own enjoyment.

“Aha!” he cried, grasping the joystick with a “
Wheeee
!” and a “Whoops!
”,
as the
cold air drove excitingly into his face and he began to experiment with flight.
Up he went, and down, down so that his stomach felt as if it was falling
through the seat; then up once more, towards the clouds above and right into
them!

“O yes!” he cried, for there was a brightness
above, “O my goodness me, we are heading for somewhere wonderful now!”

Then on up through the clouds he went, and out
into bright sunshine, to a prospect so vast, so awe-inspiring that even Toad,
who liked things to excess, was forced to mutter, “Well! Did you ever see such
a thing as —as —” and he delighted in banking the machine to examine and
explore the great and glorious domain which suddenly he had taken for his own.

How long Toad gloried in this wonderful world
of bright light and endless space none could say, least of all himself He was
absorbed by the views, and the freedom, and to one who had been chained and
fettered by the likes of Badger for so very long (as it seemed to him) time was
of no account before such limitless wonders.

“I am” he began to say to himself as he banked
one way and then another and hummed to himself at the same time, “I am a Toad
extraordinaire, a magnificent Toad! None is my equal. What Toad, what creature,
has ever showed such capacity, such expertise,
such
brilliance with so powerful a machine as I have today?

“Alone I did it and alone I do it. I, Toad,
care not for your Honours and your Sirs and your Lords, for I am sovereign of
all I survey!”

With wild words and ever more outrageous ideas
such as these — and more, and worse — not to mention various songs of triumph
and conquest which he made up by the moment and sang into the sun-filled air
that streamed by, while the real world remained cut off by the bright clouds
below him and his infernal machine, Toad lost himself utterly in his own
selfish pleasures.

“Toad is up, high
in the sky,

Toad is up and
away.

Toad is the monarch
of all he surveys,

Toad is not stuck
down below!

There goes Toad

And Toad goes
there,

And they’re all
down below!

Toad is great

It was not long before Toad, having grown tired
of singing his own praises, imagined that others must be singing them as well.
It was but a short step — and a short flight — to modify his self-centred song
in a way that others might sing it if, as he would have wished, they could see
him flying his machine so brilliantly.

“Look at Toad! He’s
high in the sky;

Look, he’s up and
away!

He really is
monarch of all he surveys,

While we are all
stuck down below!

He’s a wonder is
Toad,

A wonder to see,

But
us?
We’re
stuck down below!

“Yes you are!” cried Toad over the edge of his
craft to his imaginary admirers. “But I’m not! Nor ever will be again,
tra
la
la
—”

Toad is up, high in
the sky,

Toad is up and away

Toad is…

—
and
he was off again into his song, chortling,
laughing, almost weeping with the pleasure of it all.

That all could change and be lost in a moment
did not occur to him — not even when the machine’s engine spluttered and
stopped briefly for a moment or two, before starting up once more.

“Ha!” cried Toad. “Nothing can defeat me,
nothing!” Not even when the machine seemed to slow a little, and not pull out
of his latest loop the loop as fast as it had before, so that it skimmed
briefly through the clouds below and plunged him into misty gloom before
heaving and shuddering its way at his heavy touch up into light once more.

“Not me, not us!” he cried, as if the machine
was now alive and had become his friend.

No, not even when, as the machine spluttered
some more, the sky ahead darkened quite suddenly, the sun was gone and the
prospect before him was no longer glorious nor fine, but heavy with the swirl
of cloud-laden winds.

“We’ll turn from all that — that
nuisance’
said
Toad, pointing a mocking figure at what even he could tell were stormy winds,
“and return once more to that —that —”

He was going to say, “That light and wondrous
place where I was but moments ago and which is surely still there somewhere
behind me”, and he was going to bank the obedient machine again to go back
where he had been and so forget about the “nuisance” into which he was flying.

But bank and turn he could not, nor could he
speak. The engine’s spluttering grew worse, and the darkness of the skies
seemed to surround him and take him and his machine upwards with a power far
greater and more dreadful than any he might have imagined for himself. Then, as
suddenly as he had been taken up, he was plunged unerringly down, down, down
into darkness, far faster than he had gone down before. As this nastiness
began something else happened, and right in front of his very eyes: the
propeller stuttered, stopped briefly, started for a few laboured revolutions
and then stopped utterly, as finally and inevitably the fuel ran out.

No amount of frantic pushing and puffing at the
controls, or twisting of the joystick, or looking about for something else,
anything
else, to make the propeller start again, had any effect at all. And still
the machine plunged down. The terrified Toad, realising that his game was up,
or rather on the way down, could see little, for his goggles were covered by
what seemed mist, then black stinging rain, and the exposed part of his face
was assaulted by a wind no longer bright and clear, but one dark, and cold, and
savage.

“Help!” bleated Toad, turning back to see if by
some miracle the Rat, having fallen out of the machine earlier when he no
longer needed him, might perhaps have fallen back in again when he did. But no
Rat was there to rescue him now.

A little later Toad re-opened his eyes — for he
had closed them some time before — saw that the clouds were shooting vertically
upwards and he and the machine therefore shooting downwards, and he huddled
down into his seat and covered his head with his hands in the hope that his
problem might go away.

He dared open his eyes again only when the
world about him lightened, and he found he was through the clouds and hurtling
towards the ground, though not quite as vertically as he had thought. The
propeller was just as motionless as before.

Then the machine jolted, banked, shuddered and,
slowly and inexorably, turned over and went along upside down, rocking from
side to side in a very confusing way.

Toad gulped, for somewhere above him — or was
it to his side? —
he
could see what looked suspiciously
like ground, very solid ground, with trees, and rivers and fields, and not far
off, houses.

“The Town,” he said aghast, “we’re going
towards the Town.”

Now while this was generally true, the route
became a somewhat errant and chaotic one, for Toad and his machine were caught
up in the very centre of a storm of wind and rain and cloud. This caused him to
loop the loop in ways unimaginably horrible, and to fly upside down at speeds
quite intolerable, and to shoot off at angles quite incalculable before,
unerringly, the storm winds brought him back to the one place he had no wish to
go, or to be seen near, which was, as he had rightly told himself, the Town.