The Willows in Winter (20 page)

“I really — I don’t think — I mean —” said the
Mole, sniffing and wiping away the untoward tears that began to course down his
cheeks. The Rat saw them, of course, and he heard the Mole’s sniffles, but
chose to say nothing and let things be.

So the two animals sat on either side of the fire,
eating their soup, having second helpings, and cleaning the bowls out with
crusts of buttered bread, neither saying a thing for a very long time. Finally,
when the Mole had taken a little nap and the Rat was already on his second pipe
of the evening, and both their noses were red with the firelight, they talked
at last.

“My dear chap,” said Rat sympathetically, for
Mole still sniffled to himself from time to time, “if you have the inclination,
would you like to tell me what really happened down there in the river?”

“I would,” said the Mole fervently, saying
nothing more.

“I confess,” said the Rat at length, “that I
was gravely worried for you. The
river is a dangerous thing
and few animals, not even
myself, would survive if they fell through the
ice as you did.”

“No,” said the Mole, “I don’t suppose they
would.”

“Yet you did, Mole, and here you are back home
again, and no one more glad, more happy, more
pleased
than myself.”

“Yes,” said the Mole, staring at the fire.

“So —” began the Rat again, puffing at his
pipe. “I don’t know
how
I survived, Ratty, really I don’t. I remember so
little about it, you see, except how my concern to get across to your house got
the better of my prudence, and how I felt foolish to have tried so dangerous a
thing, even as the ice threatened to break. Then it
did
break and I
could do nothing to save myself, nothing at all except grasp a floe and hang
on! Then I felt that —in that dreadful dark icy water — and I couldn’t think or
breathe — I really couldn’t — I mean I knew, I believed, I was sure I was going
—”

Poor Mole was quite overcome by the memory of
those terrible moments, and the Water Rat sensed that the best thing was still
to do no more than make murmured noises of support. Then, when the Mole’s sobs
and tears threatened to quite overwhelm him, the Rat put down his pipe, got up,
and put a comforting arm round his friend’s shaking shoulders, and still said
nothing.

“But — but — but —”

“You take your time, Mole, for there’s plenty
of it now. Don’t try and hurry yourself because I’m not going away till you
send me away.

“No, don’t go!” cried the Mole, who in his
distress did not quite understand, and then: “I’d rather you stayed,
much
rather.”

The Mole was silent a good while longer, but
then seemed a little more settled, and the Rat felt it safe to go back to his
own armchair and take up his pipe.

“When all’s said and done,” said the Mole at
last, “I
don’t
know how I did survive. It’s all rather vague, really,
rather strange.”

“But you remember something, even if it is vague
and strange?” murmured the Rat.

“I remember —”

The Water Rat was surprised to see the Mole
suddenly sit forward in his chair as if he had seen something in the fire,
which perhaps he had, for he stared at the flickering of the flames, and into
the deepest reds and mauves of the embers, his eyes open, his face alert, and
he continued quietly thus: “I remember that I was sinking into a darkness
deeper and darker than any I had ever known or imagined before. More than just
towards the river’s depths, of that I’m sure. It was cold, fearfully cold, and
there was a peace in the oblivion towards which I was going, and an endless
sleep, and I wanted to go there, Ratty, I really did. I felt I could go on no
longer, not fighting the cold and the swirling current and the ice.

“Yes, I remember that. Then — and then —”

Now the Mole leaned forward even more, and the
Rat put down his pipe and leaned forward
himself
to
stare into the fire, as if there, together, they might somehow summon forth
once more the memory that was eluding Mole.

“Ratty’ continued the Mole, casting a glance at
his friend as if to be sure he was still there and attentive, “we have said
from time to time that we know there is
Beyond
, have
we not, but have never been there, and cannot imagine it?”

“Yes,” said the Rat softly, very surprised and
a little awed.

“Well, as I slipped towards what I had thought
was eternal sleep, I had the strangest feeling, almost a vision really, that
there was a
Before
, just as we have said there may be
a Beyond. And no sooner had I remembered some dim memory of
Before
,
and something that had happened, than I felt, or thought I felt, Him there.”

The Rat remained very still and quiet when the
Mole spoke these words, as did the Mole himself, so that the only sound in his
parlour was the soft crackling and shifting of the fire.

“I felt I was taken up in His arms out of the
dark flow of the river, up into the night, and then placed down somewhere warm
and dry where I could go to sleep knowing that when I was ready I would wake
once more in a place where the river meanders up into a blue distance, and
where there are mountains shining with the sun, and —O Ratty, do you
understand?”

The Rat nodded slowly, his eyes never straying
from the fire.

“As I was thinking that, knowing that, I said,
‘Stay with me’ and He said — He said — O, I wish I could be sure of this, or
remember it better, but it flows and ebbs in my mind, it shifts and swirls,
like the dark currents of the river itself, coming from who knows where, and
going to somewhere else. Yet I am sure that He replied, ‘They’re still there,
your friends, and they will be waiting for you, Mole. Your time is not yet, nor
theirs.’“

Mole was quiet again and slowly sat back, tears
on his face.

“Ratty, I don’t know quite what He meant by
that, but when those words were spoken I thought of Badger, and of Toad, and of
my Nephew, and of
you,
Ratty, of you — and all the animals of the River
Bank, and the Wild Wood. I thought of all the places, and the things, and the
people that I know and love — and I let myself slip into a different kind of
sleep then, for I knew they would be there, waiting for me, when I came back.
Just as I knew that the place I thought I saw —“

“Beyond,” murmured the Rat.

“Yes,
Beyond
— just as
I knew then as I know now that it will be there for us, waiting for when we’re
finally ready to go to it —”

The Mole said little more, for it seemed he was
exhausted by striving to regain these memories. He slept awhile, and the Water
Rat watched over him, building up the fire when it began to die, and placing a
warm plaid about his friend, for the wind was getting up
outside,
and there was a draught from beneath the door.

The Mole had not wanted him to leave, nor would
he, for he knew he was needed for a time and might yet be needed more, for his
friend’s sleep was restless and sometimes he muttered to himself, and seemed to
push out his arms and legs as if to ward off the waters of the river, and to
struggle away once more from that endless darkness that had so nearly taken
him.

“No!” he cried out more than once, and “I
cannot —and then finally, before he slipped into a more peaceful sleep, saying,
“Yes —” and “O yes —”

All of which made the Rat feel surprised, even
disturbed, when rather later it was
he
who found himself coming out of
sleep, and the Mole who was tending to
him
in a most concerned way.

“Are you all right, Ratty? You were quite
distressed and your cries woke me up!”

“My cries?
I — I must have dozed,” said the
Rat a little grumpily.

“A long enough doze to call it a sleep!” said
the Mole, who sounded very much more like his normal self. “Look, I have made
some peppermint tea and toasted a little of the bread that was left.”

The two animals tucked in and when they had
done so to their satisfaction, the Mole said, “We’ve talked quite enough of
what happened to me and now it’s your turn. What’s been happening since I had
my mishap? Nothing unusual, I hope?”

“Ah!” said the Rat cautiously “Not unusual if
you have been expecting, as I have for a very long time, that Toad would show
some of his old form again.

“Toad!” exclaimed the ever tolerant and
trusting Mole, “but is he not altered and reformed? He has been for so long
that I would be very surprised if he had slipped back.”

“Then be surprised, Mole; allow surprise to
overtake you: Toad has done something even more dreadful than anything he has
done before. Something I hardly dare to mention on so happy an occasion as your
safe return.”

“But what?” cried the
Mole.
“Surely, whatever it is it cannot be so bad that it cannot soon be forgiven and
forgotten!”

“Forgiveness!
Forgetting! You would be wise not
to mention such things to Badger when next you see him. No, Toad has gone far
beyond the limits of our endurance, so far indeed that I think I may safely say
that we shall never see Toad in these parts again. If he is still alive, which
I very much doubt, we may hazard that he is lost to the River forever!”

These were final words indeed, and despite the
Rat’s reluctance to say anything at that moment the Mole would not let the
matter rest till he heard it all, and more. For despite everything, Toad was
surely as much a part of river-bank life as they themselves were. “Anyway,”
added the Mole finally, “he may be exasperating, and the things he does
vexatious, but he is, in the end, always fun!”

“Fun?” repeated the Water Rat with some heat.
“Fun!
Do you call being dragged up into the air fun? Do you
call being hurled across the skies
fun?
Do you dare suggest that being
thrown at an ever increasing velocity back towards the ground
is fun?”

The Rat glared at the surprised Mole and
clenched his pipe between his teeth so hard that it cracked.

“Fun!” he exclaimed finally, falling into a
brooding silence.

“I think, perhaps, you had better begin at the
beginning,” said the Mole in a quiet and conciliatory way, so as not to provoke
the Rat into another outburst.

The Rat duly began his tale with the discovery
that Mole was missing, continuing with the first searches for him, and thence
to the monstrous appearance of the airborne Toad, and all that it was to lead
to.

“And all for me!” exclaimed the Mole more than
once during this recital.
“All for me!”

Of Toad’s trickery regarding the Badger and the
pilot-mechanic, and the Rat’s subsequent abduction, the truth had to be told,
and the Rat did not stint in telling it.

But the more dramatic his account became, the
more terrifying his developing ordeal, the more difficult it was for the
impressionable Mole not to feel a little of the excitement and adventure that
his friend Toad must have experienced.

“I trust, Mole, you are not enjoying this at my
expense,” growled the Rat, interrupting himself.

“No, no, of course not!” declared the Mole,
though without much conviction. “What you say Toad did was wrong, I’m sure,
quite wrong, but —”

“But?
But
what?”
said the Rat
warningly.

“Well …” faltered the Mole, “I mean that —
you see —I have never
seen
a flying machine and though I imagine they
are quite dangerous things, nevertheless they do seem quite exciting and it’s
no good me pretending otherwise.”

“
Hmmph
!” said the
Rat, frowning. “Be that as it may, having stolen the flying machine, for we may
be sure he had not paid for it despite his claims, Toad then abducted me and up
into the air we went. Needless to say he forgot all about looking for
you,
so
excited and absorbed did he become in flying the thing.”

“So he didn’t actually crash it, then?” said
the Mole. “I mean he did succeed in flying it?”