The Willows in Winter (3 page)

The Mole was almost deafened by the blast of wind about him in the wood,
and blinded by the stinging snow that drove into his face. To make matters
worse, the snow was getting deeper all the time, so that it was a struggle
getting his galoshes in and out of it, and harder still to make out the path
ahead.

The trees swayed and creaked about him in the
night, and if the wind was not trying to rip his coat off his back, the brambles
and branches
were,
grasping and clutching and scratching him as he
struggled on. And it was dark, dreadfully dark.

His storm lantern was at least some help, for
it cast a useful beam of light ahead, and enabled him to avoid veering too much
off the path.

“I will not give up!” he muttered to himself,
puffing his belt tighter, hunching his head lower, pushing his feet harder, and
gripping the lantern ever more firmly “If it’s not Rat himself who’s in
trouble then it’s Otter. What else could
Portly’s
words have meant? Either way, Rat will need help!”

With bold brave words such as these the Mole
kept
himself
going, grateful for being able to make
out the old oak tree, and the rabbit warren, which he recognized as being on
the way to Rat’s house. He sheltered for a short time near the rabbit warren,
and even shouted down to see if anyone was about — but, of course, rabbits can
never be relied on, especially when they are most needed, and there was no
reply.

Out of the wind, away from the driving snow, he
felt his will to go on weakening rapidly, and if it had been any other animal
than his dear friend Rat who he felt needed him, he might have taken
heed .
of
his Nephew’s advice, and
sheltered till daylight in the hope that the blizzard might abate.

“I must go on and I shall!” he cried out
suddenly, charging out into the blizzard once more, and battling on.

It was only much later, when the dark of night
had grown darker still, and the blizzard even more
bitter
,
that a horrible thought occurred to the Mole, stopping him dead in his tracks.
Or rather, in his disappearing tracks, for peering behind him through the murk
he saw that the snow was now settling so fast that tracks made but moments
before had all but gone.

The horrible thought, which would surely have
been obvious to a practical animal like the Rat, was this:

Rat’s house was on the far side of the river,
so how was he going to get over to it? The bridge was a long way off, and, of
course, Rat’s boat was on the far side of the river too.

The answer was that he had no answer, but
having got so far, he decided to press on all the same, convinced that it was
what Rat himself would have done.

“A solution will come to me!” he told himself.

So it was that, feeling more dead than alive,
and with his face-fur all iced up, and his whiskers clogged with snow, the Mole
arrived at the river bank. He peered out across the river itself, and though he
could not see across to where the Rat lived, in the lurid light of the night he
was astonished to see that the river seemed all frozen over. It was smooth and
white where snow had settled on the ice.

“Perhaps if I call to Rat he might hear,” said
the Mole to
himself
, though without much hope.

“Rat!
Ratty! O Rat, please hear me!” he called out
as loudly as he could, holding up his lantern as he did so, and waving it
about. But the wind rushed and roared around him even more, and snatched his
weak words away the moment they were uttered, and scattered them as wildly and
uselessly as if they were flakes of snow.

Even worse, the light of the lantern began to
gutter, and then, quite suddenly, an extra strong gust of wind blew it out.

“Well then,” said the daunted but resolute
Mole, putting the spent lantern on the ground, “there’s nothing else for it!
Frozen rivers are dangerous things, no doubt, but I must try to cross, despite
the dangers.”

He peered out into the night again, trying to
establish if the river was frozen all the way across.

“I could venture out a
little
way’ he
thought, “and then I could see the dangers ahead better. Yes, that’s what I
shall do!”

But no sooner had he scrambled down the bank —
O!
such
a gentle blissful place in summer, but so
graspy
and
slidy
and difficult
now! —
and
put his front paws on the ice, than another
horrible thought occurred to him. He turned round, clambered back up the bank
to a sheltered spot among the surface roots of one of the willows, and
scratched his head.

“I must be prudent. I must think of others. It
is possible that in trying to cross the river I shall — well, that I shall not
return. I must therefore leave my affairs in order and write a message, so that
those who come after me will know what my intentions were — so that —O dear!
O my!”

The Mole suddenly felt very alone indeed, and
tears came to his eyes and rolled down his face, where they began to freeze in
his already frozen fur.

“I don’t have much to leave behind’ he said,
“but what I have I like, and I would take comfort as I — as I —
slip away,”
(he
could not bring himself to use a more precise expression) “to know that my
worldly goods and possessions are not only in good hands, but in the
right
hands.”

He had no paper in his pockets, except for the
grease-proof paper around the pudding, and that was no good. So, finding a
suitably large surface root of a willow tree, he did his best in the darkness
to scratch a last message for his friends.

It took him some time, but when he had at last
finished he felt much better, and stepped back into the storm to admire his
handiwork, whispering the words he had written aloud, nodding his head, and
feeling that he was now ready to — to slip away, if that’s how it must be.

Finally he placed the spent lantern prominently
on the path, its handle tilted towards the tree where his message was written,
in the hope that whoever found it would look in the right direction, and turned
back down the bank once more.

This time he hardly noticed the steep descent,
so determined was he to get the difficult crossing over with. Out onto the
snowy ice he went, his paws slipping and sliding under him as the wind, clear
of the trees and bushes of the bank, came at him in an unimpeded rush. His
snout ached with cold, his eyes ran, his flanks shivered, but on he went!

He peered ahead at each step, testing the ice
carefully before putting his full weight on it, always checking back to see
where he was and that, if need be, he could scramble back to safety. But it
was
hard to see, what with the swirling, driving snow, and the cold —and he
would
feel better if he could only catch a glimpse of the bank on the other side.
Even better, if he could see the welcome sight of the Rat himself standing
there, waving to him.

As if in answer to his wish, the wind dropped
and for a moment he could see the way clear ahead, right across to the other
side. Why it seemed hardly any distance at all! He could almost reach out and
touch it … and then, for the first time, the Mole forgot to look carefully at
the way ahead.

The first warning he had that something was
wrong was that the ice, so solid till then, trembled and shifted, so that the
world about him wobbled. The next was that he heard a new sound, the dull,
relentless roar of water, just in front. The last and final warning, and by
then it was far too late, was a loud
crack!
somewhere
just behind him.

Desperately he tried to turn back the way he
had come, his back paws sliding away from him as he did so. As he fell on his
face he reached out for something solid and saw to his horror that where there
had once been ice there was now a black chasm, and that the ice he was on was
moving and wobbling more and more. As it tilted beneath him he felt himself sliding
towards the water. He tried to clamber up the ice and right it, but as he did
so it suddenly tilted the other way and he found himself slipping unstoppably
towards the implacable black race of the water itself.

“Help!” cried the terrified Mole.
“O my!
O my!
Help!”

But this final cry was all in vain. It seemed
the night turned blacker still, and then deathly silent, the wind gone, the
snow no more, as the cold confusion of icy water was suddenly all about him:
below, to right, to left, and he was swept off downstream into the night,
clutching at a floe of ice.

Where the Mole had been, nothing was left but
the night, the blizzard wind, the river flowing past broken ice; and the first
bleak gleams of a winter dawn, shining on a little painted notice on the side
of the bank which the Mole had so bravely been trying to reach.

“Rat’s House’ it said.

But no light was there; no Rat; no welcome at
all.
Only the rattle and rasp of old brambles against each
other, and the triumphant howl of the wind.

II

Mole’s Last Will
and

Testament

It was not till the dawn of the third day that the blizzard began to
die, and that same,
midday
that it finally stopped. One moment the sky
was grey and the trees all bent against the wind, and the next the sky was
blue, the sun shone, and all was bright and shining across the meadows, the
river, and the Wild Wood, at whose edge the Otter lived.

“Rat!
Time to rouse yourself! Time to get up!” cried
the Otter, scenting at the lovely winter’s day, and feeling in need of fresh
air and a jaunt.

“Not in this wind! Not in this driving snow!”
answered the Rat drowsily from beneath the quilt which the Otter had
thoughtfully laid on the sofa to make up a bed for his unexpected visitor.

“My dear fellow!” called out the Otter, “that’s
all blown over. The sun is shining fit to bust and it’s time we got up and
about once more. It’s as crisp a winter’s day outside as you could wish!”

The Rat sat up, rubbing his eyes and eyeing
without much pleasure the untidy pile of plates and bottles — all there was
left to show for the three days of his enforced rest with Otter.