The Willows in Winter (23 page)

“Did you?” said the Badger dubiously.

“I did, but though I hate to say it, such has
your dislike and distrust of Toad been these weeks and days past that first
Otter and then Mole declared, ‘Bother Badger! We can’t rely on him any more!
Let’s be off!”‘

“O!” said
Badger,
considerably deflated.

“But not I, Badger, my friend, not I,” said the
Rat magnanimously. “I said, ‘My instincts tell me he’ll be there in good time
and so I shall retrace my steps and satisfy myself that I am right. I must
confess I was disappointed not to see you here when I got back, so I went
inside Otter’s house to fill my pipe and, coming out, what do I find? My
confidence proved absolutely right. You have come to lead us upon Toad Hall,
Badger, and have thus confirmed my own hopes, and I am sure it will restore the
confidence of Mole and Otter in you too. Also, you have set an example of
probity and tolerance to Mole’s Nephew here, the like of which he is never
likely to forget.”

“I have?” said the Badger slowly, not resisting
when the Rat took his arm and led him onto the path which the Mole and the
Otter had taken.

“But —” said the Badger, the last vestiges of
his resistance melting away before the Rat’s ingenious flattery, “well, I
suppose we
should
try and let bygones be bygones when it comes to it.
Hard though that is in the case of Toad, and in this
particular
case
of Toad.
The truth is, Rat —”

“Yes, Badger?” murmured his doughty companion.
“Well, of course, Toad must be punished, and perhaps he already has been but,
well, I wouldn’t want that punishment to be too extreme, too — final as it
were.”

He spoke very sombrely indeed, and with
furrowed brow cast a grim gaze skywards as if there to see some terrible vision
of Toad’s final struggle at the controls of his flying machine, of his
desperate efforts to get clear of the thing in which his own pride and vanity
had trapped him, of a final realization of his many sins and omissions and his
own moral worthlessness, till, thus spiritually condemned, Toad and his machine
plunged to their inexorable doom on the cold indifferent wintry ground far
far
below.

The Rat and Mole’s Nephew shuddered at the
terrible vision which the Badger’s mute gaze alone had power to put before
them, whilst Badger himself shook his head sadly and slowed his pace till he
had quite stopped.

“No’ he whispered, “even Toad, even he, does
not deserve so grim a fate.”

Thus beset by sober thoughts of their erstwhile
friend, and treading that easy path along the bank which summer and autumn,
spring and now winter, led to his unnecessarily vast and inflated domain, into
any minute corner of which their own abodes could have fitted comfortably ten
times over or more, the Water Rat led Badger on.

Perhaps to brighten things up a little, for the
Rat was not an animal inclined to gloom and despondency, he said, “Don’t worry,
we’ll catch them up soon enough —”And but a short while later they did so,
which was not surprising because the Mole had finally half-guessed the Rat’s
scheme, and had persuaded the Otter to pause and sit upon the bank despite the
cold, and wait.

So it was that Badger found himself, as often
before, at the head of a file of animals heading resolutely for Toad Hall.

“Now, Badger’ said the Water Rat, “tell us as
we go along exactly what you meant a day or two ago by describing Toad Hall as
‘doomed to rack and ruin’.”

“You’ll see soon enough,” said the Badger
shortly, hunching his shoulders purposefully and thrusting his head forward as
if to get there all the sooner and show them exactly what he meant.

“My word!” declared the Water Rat as they paced
about the rooms and corridors of Toad Hall a short while later. “I really had
no idea!”

“Dear me’ added the Mole, eyeing the scene with
something akin to shock, “I never imagined things could have got so bad so
fast!”

“O yes,” said the Badger, “they can and they
have and that’s what comes of spending all your money on splendour and trumpery
and not spending a little more on maintaining it. It happened with Toad’s
father, and now it’s happening with Toad!”

The three animals were alone, for Mole’s Nephew
and the Otter, not enjoying one bit the chilly interior of the Hall, and seeing
the glorious winter sunshine that was shining warmly outside it, had gone to
sit on the steps that led from the ballroom down towards the main lawn.

The scene inside was grim indeed. Whether from
neglect, as the Badger implied, or oversight, or some mischance which might
have happened to any structure as vast as Toad Hall, somewhere in the floors
above the water pipes had frozen in the weeks past, and had burst.

Had such a misfortune been promptly
dealt with the damage might have been kept to a minimum and quickly rectified.
But with most of Toad’s aides and
servants already gone off for the festive break some time before his own less
planned departure, and those that were to have stayed behind having left of
their own accord following the disappearance and seeming demise of Toad
himself, there was nobody about to deal with the burst pipes.

It might well be that some had come back, seen
the extent of the damage, raised their hands in helpless horror and departed
once more. Whatever the truth, the results were all too plain to see: water
damage everywhere. Great stains in the ceilings, the mouldings all ruined, and
wallpaper discoloured and in many places hanging half off.

Carpets were covered in fallen plaster, as were
some of Toad’s most expensive armchairs and sofas, including even the chaise-
longue
in his summer room, upon which, in better days, he
had been wont to hold court to such acquaintances as he could persuade to fawn
and admire him. The Badger, of course, had never accepted invitations to such
occasions, though the Rat and the Mole were both perfectly willing to eat
cucumber sandwiches and drink iced Indian tea with Toad from time to time, and
thoroughly enjoyed doing so.

But now, even that chaise-
longue
,
upholstered as it had been in the finest scarlet silk to set off Toad’s legs to
the best advantage, was ruined by water and the filth it had brought down with
it. In place after place the water had run down the walls, or dripped through
the ceiling roses and thence onto the floor beneath, there to ruin the carpet,
or the polished oak boards.

“O dear!” was all the Mole or any of them could
bring themselves to say when they pushed open the door in the great banqueting
hall. Here the floor had not been carpet or oak boards, but beautifully laid
and much polished parquet flooring which seemed to stretch its shining
reflective way forever till, by great gilded double doors at the far end, which
led on towards the kitchens, it reached its end in a huge moulded skirting board,
with a wainscot above.

But the floor shone no longer! The water had
come down here as well, had flooded the floor, soaked into it, and then on one
of those dark and bitter nights past had frozen once more, and in the ensuing
expansion had lifted the floor all over. It looked now like the ruts and
hollows of a fallow field, ploughed up and left to fend for itself the seasons
through.

As if to heighten this effect, and showing the
great power of something as innocent-seeming as water, chairs and dining tables,
stools and card tables, had been lifted up as well, and were crazily tilted
this way and that.

“To think that we had that great banquet here
to celebrate the re-capture of Toad Hall from the weasels and stoats those
years ago!” said the Mole, while the Badger and the Rat could only sigh and
shake their heads, their gaze shifting from one distressing scene to another.

With foreboding the three animals decided to
embark upon a thorough exploration of the Hall to see if they might find the
source of the trouble, and set in train some temporary repairs. In this, the
Rat was glad to note, the Badger took the lead, though less from a desire to
please Toad (should he ever return) than from a desire for order and propriety,
for it distressed his austere and simple heart to see such ruin and disorder.

Of the journey into the upper floors of the now
deserted Toad Hall none of the three was ever prepared to say much, so
distressing and terrible did they find it. The flood of water seemed to have
come down in two places rather than one, affecting the central part of the
Hall, and its right wing. But many of the bedrooms had fared no better than
the reception rooms below, and one of the finest was in much disarray because
the great velvet curtains had become waterlogged, and dragged down their
fittings and half the ceiling with them.

They finally climbed one of the narrow
staircases that led into the attic rooms in something like despair, their way
lit only by the flickering candle which the Rat, ever the resourceful planner
for such ventures, had thought to provide.

As they reached the last few steps there was a
sudden blast of cold wind from above and the candle went out.

“
Hmmph
!” said the
Rat, pushing on upwards and thrusting open an attic door.

Cold white light flooded down on them, and
wintry draughts, and they immediately saw the reason why: there was a huge hole
in the roof with many tiles missing or fallen on the attic floor, and
everything was open to wind and rain and snow.

The attic room stretched a long way, leading to
others, and that hole in the roof was not the only one, though it was by far
the biggest. Nor was it hard to find the burst pipe, or one of them, for the
more they explored the more frost damage they found. Here and there, where the
water had spread out across the floors and collected in pools, sheets of
slippery ice had formed, and both the Mole and the Rat took tumbles before they
learnt that it was best to grasp the rafters above for support.

“There’s nothing we can do here,” said the
Badger finally, “and precious little we can do in the rooms below.”

“We can cover some of Toad’s valuables, and
some of the furniture against any further damage,” said the Mole thoughtfully.

“Yes, we can, and perhaps put some of the more
valuable things and his papers and suchlike into a room which we’ll lock, to
protect them from thieves,” said the Rat.

It was with heavy hearts that they returned to
the ground floor and got the Otter and Nephew to help them with these tasks —
work which seemed to add up to very little indeed when set against the
extensive damage and ruin they had discovered.

“Toad will be heart-broken,” said the kindly
Mole, who had never for one moment doubted that Toad would return.

“Well, it may seem a hard thing to say’ said
the Badger, “but I fear that wealth and extravagance does bring this kind of
disaster in its wake. What Toad wants with all this space and all these things
I cannot imagine. But I cannot deny that I feel sorry for what we have seen
today. And —”

But he paused and then stopped, unwilling for
the moment to say more.

Their tasks complete, they gathered those few
modest wants they had for their tea party into boxes, feeling, sadly, that
these few objects — a tea service, a hot water urn, some silver — were likely
to be better protected with them than if they left them where they were.

Then, closing the great doors behind them, they
went outside once more, breathing the clean air of winter and taking in the
ordered scene of the river and the trees beyond with considerable relief after
the dank ruin they had left inside.

“What was it you were going to say, Badger, but
which you didn’t quite finish?” asked the Water Rat.

Badger sighed.

“I was going to say, I was going to suggest
rather, that perhaps, after all, it might be kinder upon Mr Toad, for all his
folly and his faults and his selfishness, if he never came back to Toad Hall to
witness what we have seen today. As Mole has rightly said, it would surely
break his heart.”

They all nodded sadly, sharing Badger’s
sentiment, and with heavy hearts and slow steps set off across Toad’s great
lawn with their few burdens, and thence along the bank towards the peace and
harmony, the order and the warmth of their own much humbler homes.