Toad Triumphant (13 page)

Then Toad, exhausted, came to a heaving, puffing stop before the Madame, who had done likewise.

“Am I?” said Toad with hopeful obedience. “Am I like a bird?”

“A bold bird,” said she, unknowingly feeding his vanity and love, even as he began to swell his chest and preen and parade before her like a peacock, “and a noble bird!”

“I
am!”
concurred Toad with sudden conviction.

“Is ‘e not?” she cried, appealing to the Badger for confirmation.

“He can be,” averred the Badger reluctantly eyeing the strutting Toad with distaste, “I suppose.”

He hoped that Toad might heed the warning note in his voice and calm down once more. He knew what little encouragement it needed for Toad to swell his chest, and how little more for him to strut about seeking to look as important as he felt. With the Madame encouraging him to think of himself as a bold bird, even a noble one, he had flown in a matter of moments from disappointment that his earlier declarations seemed to have gone unnoticed by her, to flights of fancy that gyred ever higher on the winds of her admiration.

“Where is my art to be erected?” she asked again.

 “My sculpture? Me?”

“Yes,” she breathed. “Show me, Cousin; show me
now!”
With an extraordinary movement of arms and hands, much like a provincial actor making his first entrance on the stage in a part far beyond his range, experience and abilities, and driven by an impulse to wish to impress his audience, Toad strode across to the plinth upon which he so looked forward to seeing a sculpture of himself erected, double size.

“I shall be here eternally!” said he.

“O, Monsieur Toad, strike a pose!” she cried after him. “Be noble, be most bold! Inspire my Art with the immortality of your Spirit!”

Toad tried his best to do so, and after some experimentation — for despite considerable secret practice in previous days, he had not found it easy to strike a dramatic pose that did not very soon lead to fatigue and a loss of balance and dignity — he stood with his arms, hands and finally his fingers extended as nobly and as boldly as he could.

The Madame regarded him gravely for quite some time, and then came to a sudden and most startling conclusion.

“‘E must be, ‘e
is,
an Emperor,” said Madame d’Albert with sudden decision. “That is what ‘e conveys to me: nothing less than an Emperor.”

“An Emperor,” gasped Toad, feeling suddenly weak and faint, for it was physically taxing to be so bold and so noble of body for so long.

“And yet —” said Madame in a quiet and timorous way as if some thought almost too awesome to contemplate had suddenly occurred to her, though the Badger suspected she had it all along, “— yet I wonder — Monsieur Badger,” she said, grasping his arm and drawing him into the circle of decision, “‘ave you never looked at your friend Monsieur Toad and seen ‘im as ‘e might truly be?”

“As he
is,
yes,” said the Badger, finding that the resistance he was able offer through his greater height was less than the force she was able to apply as a result of her greater weight, so that he was drawn forward towards Toad and forced to look up at him, “as he
might be,
rarely.”

“Then look now,” she said with a grand gesture towards the perspiring Toad, who was now in desperate straits as he tried to retain his extraordinary pose and his dignity; “look, and what do you see?”

“I see —” The Badger was reluctant to continue, for he knew too well what he saw He saw struggling pomp and blind vanity; he saw over-weening pride and — and a Toad afflicted by passions he could not control.

“‘E shall be
Imperial!”
cried the Madame ecstatically plucking some laurel and handing it to Toad that he might hold it to his head like a wreath of victory.

“Imperial?” queried the Badger, peering up at Toad even as the sole leg that supported him gave up the unequal struggle and he began to collapse.

“Imperial Caesar, that is what Monsieur Toad shall be. And you, Badger, Rat and Mole, and Otter as well, you shall be legates, smaller than the Emperor, delivering scrolls announcing his victories! That is my conception. The sitting is over! Hail Imperial Caesar!”

This was clearly the conclusion of Madame’s afternoon’s work and it certainly satisfied Toad. He wobbled one last time and with a thump hit the ground, grasping her hand as he did so.

“Cousin,” he cried, holding on tight and fatally deciding that her effusions were no more nor less than a declaration of love, “will you take the hand of Imperial Caesar in holy matrimony?”

The Badger stared in utter horror, but he need not have felt concern.

The Madame had had many proposals before this one, and though she had been slow to read the signals, now the truth of her client’s desires was out in the open she knew exactly what to say and do.

“Cousin,” said she calmly
“marriage
is not possible for I love another.”

“O misery!” said Toad.

“To ‘im I am committed all my life.”

“O despair!” wailed Toad.

“Also I ‘ave other clients I must see
immédiatement.”

“Which clients?” said Toad, still lying on the ground. He saw no good reason to get up.

The Madame pulled from her voluminous folds a list, and as she read it out the Badger could not but marvel at her skills and talents in the matter of love, and the subduing of a swain.

“My list ‘as three names,” she said, “but I shall sculpt them as one: the ‘igh Judge, the Commissioner of Police, and the Senior Bishop.”

“O horror!” cried Toad, miserably and in some trepidation, for he knew these gentlemen, and they were no friends of his.

“On my way back to Town I ‘ave to visit the ‘igh Judge at his big ‘ouse and meet them all!” she continued ruthlessly. “Now I go,” she declared, as sudden and wilful in her departure as she had been in her arrival.

“It is for the best, monsieur,” she told the Badger just before a motor-car swept her away from Toad Hall’s front door, “for I fear Mr Toad loves me a little, which is not good. So I do not stay.”

The Badger felt a good deal warmer towards her than he could have imagined earlier that day.

As the Badger feared, however, Madame Florentine’s sudden departure from Toad Hall caused her would-be lover a great deal of anguish and despair in the days and weeks ahead. Indeed, so copious were Toad’s tears and lamentations, so loud his plaints concerning Fate, so dark and brooding his frequent silences, that the Badger felt it necessary to convene a meeting of those who had Toad’s interests at heart, to discuss what they might do.

This committee meeting, which in the absence of the Rat and the Mole consisted of the Otter, Nephew and Prendergast, was held in the latter’s downstairs parlour, for his master’s demands were ever more frequent as his decline advanced, and he had to be ready to answer them. Prendergast himself was not quite as keen on this proceeding as the Badger would have wished, saying that his professional code demanded that he work only in his master’s best interests.

“But you will help us help him?” suggested the Otter.

“I will certainly help my master, yes,” said Prendergast with admirable ambiguity.

“Let us sum up the situation then,” declared the Badger. “It is obvious that Toad’s situation is parlous, and he is likely to become a danger to himself and others before long, if he is not already. I have little doubt that before very long, and despite the Madame’s express wishes, plus the warnings we have frequently given, he will seek to escape the confines of his home to prostrate himself before his unwilling cousin.

“Failing which, I have the gravest fears that he is likely to be so overwrought, and his emotions so out of control, that he might well exercise that ultimate sanction upon himself from which there is no return.

“Or, else, and assuming that his natural cowardice and incompetence in such matters get the better of him, I hazard that once at liberty and continuing to be unrequited it is only a matter of time before he commits a serious offence, and is charged, tried and imprisoned for it —”

“Or worse,” said the Otter, “since we all know that all those other crimes of which he has already been found guilty will be resurrected by the Court.”

“Therefore,” continued the Badger, “I propose that —”The Badger’s proposal was interrupted by the loud ringing of one of the servants’ bells. When they looked up at the indicator board on the wall above Prendergast’s head they saw a flag showing Toad’s desire to see his butler in the conservatory.

Prendergast set off at once, but had not been long gone when the other three heard further ringings, and saw other flags dropping down upon the indicator board, suggesting that Toad had set off about the Hall in a strange progress that revealed his wild and maddened state. He went successively from the conservatory into the drawing room (one ring) to the study (three rings) and thence into the hall (one ring either end) and then, most ominously into the gun room (a small, feeble ring suggestive of final desperation) .

“It is a cry for help!” cried the Badger. “But it is one Prendergast will be too late to see. We must go and save him from himself at once!”

Even as they set off there were more ringings.

“Wait,” said the Otter; “he is on the move again!”

Then, most horribly brought before their very eyes with the chilling remote swiftness of modern science, bell by bell, flagged room by room, they witnessed Toad’s downhill slide towards madness and self-destruction.

“He’s heading for the upper floors and thence no doubt out through the attics and onto the roof,” said Nephew, and off they raced.

But in their absence, the bells continued their ringing and revealed a different plot and twist from the penny-dreadful ending that his friends had foolishly imagined. For Toad turned back from the attics, descended via the back stairs, and, reaching the dining room, finally stopped and rang one final time.

It was there they found him, some coming from one direction, some from another, and the Otter climbing in through the half-open window (for he had thought that Toad might escape the house and make a dash for the River and there hurl himself in) .

The master of the house was seated at the table, so far gone with despair and mental decline, it appeared, that he was unable to take off the covering from what seemed to them in their panic to be the gun with which he intended to end it all.

“Ah! Prendergast! At last!” he cried (madness in his eyes). “And Badger — (surprise) and you’ Nephew (puzzlement) and Otter, why you’re climbing in through the window (mounting caution) in your eagerness to help me with —”

“Take it off him!” cried the Badger as he seized Toad’s arms.

“But whatever —” spluttered the surprised Toad.

“I’ve got it!” shouted the Otter, hurling the dread object of destruction to the far side of the room.

“Really I mean to say old fellow,” said Toad, attempting to rise.

“I’ll hold him down,” called out Nephew, setting to with a will.

“If this is a prank,” cried Toad, struggling in vain against their collective might, “it has gone too far.”