The Willows in Winter (26 page)

But even as Toad vainly sought to back away
(the crowd now being too thick behind him) the footmen emerged, and with them
the ghastly sight of that same butler whom Toad had so successfully bamboozled
into serving him sweetmeats and nectars in bed: Prendergast.

“Him!” gasped Toad, suddenly realising that the
wedding he was witness to involved, on the groom’s side, the son and heir of
the House where he, Toad, had been for three days a cuckoo in the nest.

He struggled to back off once more, but it was
no use, for the crowd grew thicker still behind him. Then, before Toad’s shocked
eyes, there issued forth from the church porch more police than he had ever set
eyes upon even in his nightmares. Perhaps by now his mind was fevered and he
saw more than were really there. But out they came, like bees from a hive, and
at their head —the bride’s godfather, it would seem — was the Police
Commissioner himself.

Was the groom’s father, then, His Lordship?

“He is,” groaned Toad as he too emerged,
striving to sink towards the ground, but quite unable to since he was supported
by the crowd behind and the church gate in front.

Toad’s nightmare now gathered about him apace,
and began to overtake him.

A photographer appeared with an apprentice
carrying his paraphernalia, which was set up in front of the church for
portraits to be taken. The flashes of the lights were like warning beacons
across the heavy seas in which Toad now found
himself
struggling. Yet still he might escape, he thought, simply by staying still and
unnoticed in the great thronging crowd.

“Who would bother with a simple Toad?” thought
Toad hopefully, forgetting in whose garb he was disguised.

“The sweep!
Bring him out here for luck!
The chimney sweep!”

Toad had been espied by the photographer’s
eager and sharp-eyed assistant. A chimney sweep always brought good luck to a
wedding
scene,
and an extra guinea for the
photographer who thought of providing one.

Willing hands reached out to the reluctant and
desperately self-effacing Toad.

“No, no!” he cried.

But it was no use, and even as he was hauled
out before them all, and placed between the bride and groom — even as that
happened, the police and footmen formed a guard of honour, to frame and
complete the picture of which (to the shared delight of both the wedding party
and the crowd) the chimney sweep, alias Toad, was now the very centre.

Flash!
and
Flash!
again
.

“And just one more!” cried the photographer.
“Try to smile this time, chimney sweep — you look quite sick!”

O, the merriment! O, the laughter! And O, what
a haze of ecstasy Toad was suddenly in. He smiled, he laughed,
he guffawed —
for he
was
triumphant after all.

He had no need to be afraid. His disguise was
perfect and he remained utterly undetected.

“Another!” cried out Toad, exulting in his
position, and causing even more merriment.

“My right profile is by far the best!”

O folly! O vanity! O pride! How great and swift
its downfall can be.

There was a commotion in the crowd, an
accusatory cry, and then a shrieking female voice, all too familiar to Toad,
which said, “That’s no chimney sweep, that’s a toad! It’s
the
Toad! The
impostor who tried to steal my heart! The —
And
there
she stood at the church gate, even more massive in her anger and outrage than
she had been in her domestic welcome: the chimney sweep’s wife!

“He done away with my old man to take ‘is
place!” she screeched. “‘E’s a murderer, I tell
yer
!”

No charge could ever have been more clearly or
more baldly stated, or express so well in its simplicity the heinous crime, the
motive, and the victim’s suffering as that: “
He done
away with my old man to take ‘is place.”

Perhaps Toad spoke, but more than likely he did
not. He remembered a final flash of light — no doubt the photographer’s last
photograph; he remembered better still eight flashes of blue, and four of
black, and two of accusatory purple. Then all was lost forever as Toad was
arrested, handcuffed, put into leg irons, manhandled into a shiny windowless
automobile and off on his bumpy way towards a dungeon deep within a castle
great and grim.

Down long steep stone steps he was escorted,
along rough-hewn corridors and passageways, past bars and impregnable
nail-studded doors, till he was held fast and deep and close-confined where
hope was gone forever, and bleak despair could surely be his only friend.

Toad was at liberty no more.

XI

Habeas Corpus

The national sensation caused by Toad’s arrest — or more accurately his
re-capture after his gaol-break some years before —
may
well be imagined. It is all too rare that so unscrupulous and habitual a
confidence trickster and common criminal is arrested in the midst of the
Society Wedding of the Year.

The photographer was able to retire immediately
upon the proceeds earned from the photographs he had taken of Toad the
Terrible, cavorting between the innocent bride and groom, and showing off his
right profile. The photographer’s assistant needed to be assistant no more, for
his career as Photographer to Nobility was established at a stroke.

The arresting officers were immediately
commended for their courage and bravery in confronting so desperate a
criminal, and promoted Deputy Commissioners to a man. The footmen all found
employment as butlers in establishments as widely spread as
China
,
Italy
and the
United States of America
.

The Bishops could not be promoted much higher
than they were — though one discovered his ambitions for a different see as a
result of the events of that day —but if there were spare cathedrals going they
were theirs, and all sorts of ecclesiastical commissions and sinecures came
their way.

While the chimney sweep’s wife, whose righteous
indignation was spread across the front pages of newspapers throughout the
land, and in twenty-eight foreign lands and all the colonies as well, received
more than fifty offers of marriage by the following weekend.

It was as well she accepted none of them, for
bigamy is a serious offence, yet who could have blamed her if she had? For
while it was true that her chimney sweep husband was missing presumed dead, the
harsh fact was that having so unexpectedly discovered the pleasures of being
the heroic aviator who risked his life to save the Town by steering his flying
machine so bravely beyond it (all thanks to Toad) he was in no hurry to revert
to his humdrum and sooty life — and wife.

But of
all this
poor
Toad knew nothing. Re-captured and confined as he now was, he had no access to
news, or friends, or help. Villains such as he, whose heart seemed stained more
than that of any criminal in living memory — must be put away, and utterly
forgotten.

“But —” he faltered some weeks later to the
only one he might call friend, his gaoler, a talkative but pessimistic man,
“won’t they at least try me? Won’t they give me a chance? I can explain
everything.”

“They would try you if they could but they
can’t, for they say there aren’t any
laws
big enough,
and wide enough, and terrible enough to try you by,” said his cheerful friend.
“It’s a poor lookout for you, Mr Toad!”

“Is there no hope at all?” whispered Toad.

“None,” said the gaoler, “or none that I can
see. You’re in here for life plus twenty-five years I reckon.”

“O dear!” said Toad, slumping.

“But look on the bright side,” said the gaoler,
who liked to try to cheer his charges up, for he had a kindly heart, “you’re
getting on a bit so you’re not likely to survive more than twenty years or so.
It’ll go by in a flash!”

But twenty years of prison life did not pass
through Toad’s imagination in a flash at all, but rather dragged by, long
second by second, tick—
tock
—tick—
tock
,
or as slow as the drips of water from the roof of his dank cell, and as aimless
as the cockroaches which trod their heavy way across the granite flags beneath
his iron bed.

“What’s the charge?” asked Toad, some time
later. “Charges plural, you mean. Charges manifold. They do say they are too
many and too great to name.

“Is there no hope?”

“None.”

“No news?”

“None.”

“No — sign of anything at all?”

“Hardly any.

“Hardly
any?” repeated the desperate Toad, sensing if
not quite a glimmer of hope, then at least a distant chink of light.

“Shouldn’t say this, Mr Toad, but they’re
thinking of having an identity parade.”

“For
who
?” whispered
Toad with widening eyes, for far from finding hope in this he saw only further
trouble.

“Can’t say more, Mr Toad, as I’ve
said quite enough.
Now eat your bread and dripping like a good fellow and would you like a second
mug of cold water, seeing as
it’s
Sunday?”

Toad shook his head and sighed.

“I’m not very hungry or thirsty’ he said in a
very small voice.

“Well, I’ll leave it there all the same,” said
the gaoler, and went on his way.

An identity parade! Could there be doubt about
who he was? Of course not! He was Toad, the reprehensible escapee Toad, they
knew that. No, the only possibility was very grim indeed, it meant that Toad
had been accused of some additional crime, and his accuser was to come and pick
him out, just to be certain.

Toad bowed his head, and sighed again.

“I am lost and forgotten forever,” he told
himself. “I have no friends to care for me, and if I had what could they do for
me now?
Nothing.
Yes, Toad is
forgot
.”
Great tears came to Toad’s eyes and rolled down his cheeks and fell with
audible plops upon the
ungiving
stone floor.