Toad Triumphant (29 page)

“But before I depart I think this may be the appropriate moment to read to you the brief note I have had from Madame d’Albert-Chapelle, who has been unfairly vilified in this affair. It is to her credit that once her initial distress at being jilted was over she did what she could to rescind the action for breach of promise. But as I warned, whilst the wheels of Justice are slow to start, they have proved impossible to stop.

“She writes simply
‘Dear Monsieur Badger, I am very sad for my cousin Monsieur Toad, but I have not succeeded to get him liberty a second time. It is the guillotine for him. I shall always be unhappy for this, but remember with affection my stay with you at the River Bank. Commend me most especially to Mr Prendergast for his many kindnesses and give him this little drawing I made of him. With salutations, Madame d’Albert
.”‘

The Badger handed the little sketch to Prendergast, in which she had depicted him in the pose of pouring tea.

“Thank you, sir, I shall treasure it always,” said he, putting it in his pocket. “Now, if I may —”

Only then, for the first time, did Prendergast betray any emotion over his master’s fate, and there was no one there who did not understand why he swiftly hurried away back to the Hall and his own private thoughts, for surely it is much against the Butler’s Code to show one’s tears.

Yet none there could have guessed that that was to be the last they saw of Prendergast, apart, that is, from the Otter who, up early the following morning, saw a very extraordinary sight emerging from the gates of Toad Hall. It was a horse at full gallop, and on its back was Prendergast, booted, behatted and rigged up for a long, hard journey and the direction in which he turned the horse, before the Otter had a chance to hail him, was the Town.

The Otter felt it best to gather the Badger and the Rat, Nephew and Brock together to go to the Hall to investigate. All was in impeccable order, and various notices had been left in Prendergast’s hand giving instructions for the maintenance of the Hall and even suggesting two possible and most worthy successors to himself: namely Mr Edwards of Fulham Palace, or Mr Waller of the Blenheim Estate.

“Ah,” sighed the Rat, “the strain was too much for him after all.”

But when the Otter ventured below-stairs to the butler’s pantry he found the only evidence of the butler’s distress and haste. A half-drunk glass of sherry an ink well with its top unclosed and its pen uncleaned of the ink used in writing his final instruction. The gaslight still burning —”Most unlike Prendergast not to turn it off, he must have been very overwrought,” murmured the Otter.

There seemed only one clear clue to the faithful butler’s purpose and desperate intent. For the Code he followed so carefully was also there upon his writing bureau. Between its pages a piece of paper had been placed which, on examination, proved to be that little sketch which the Madame had sent him via the Badger the day before.

“But what possible effect can that have had upon so worthy a butler to push him into headlong flight?” said the Badger. Then he paused a moment, a look of surprise and dawning wonder upon his wise face, and he murmured, “Unless we do him a grave injustice —”

“Look!” said the Otter in alarm. “See which page this drawing marked.”

They saw that it was at Article Five of the Code. “Read it, Otter,” said the Badger in a voice that suggested he might be beginning to understand now what was afoot.

“If the Master’s life is threatened, it shall be the duty of a professional butler to offer his life first which, if accepted, shall be repaid with an honorarium of one week’s holiday prior to said life’s cessation
—”

The Otter read no more, for the gist was all too plain.

“What does he intend to do?” said the Otter, aghast.

“Let us see what we can find in the rest of the Hall,” said the Badger, calmer and more hopeful for Toad now than he had been for many weeks.

They explored the rooms, and it was Brock who found something else, this time in the conservatory. It was a champagne bucket, devoid of ice or a champagne bottle, but quite clearly ready to receive these special items of cheer and celebration, most carefully arranged upon a table adjacent to Toad’s favourite wicker chaise longue. With it was a box of Havanas, and the means to light them.

Propped up against the champagne bucket was a sealed envelope addressed thus:
For Mr Toad of Toad Hall. To be opened only by himself upon the occasion of his welcome return home.

The hand was indubitably Prendergast’s own, and there was no further clue as to the contents of the envelope, or Prendergast’s intentions. Alone among them the Badger was calm, and by now almost cheerful.

“Badger, will you kindly tell us what you think is going on, for I can see you think something!” said the Rat, speaking for them all.

“I will only say” observed the Badger, after a moment’s reflection, “that I doubt very much, very much indeed, that there is a butler in all the land who combines common sense and resourcefulness with courage and self-sacrifice in so great and bold a way as the inestimable Prendergast. But if I am right about what he proposes to do to save his Master’s life, and thus fulfil the obligation of his Code, the matter is too delicate, too critical, too uncertain in its outcome, for it to be wise that I say more now.”

The day the hour, the last minutes of the execution of Toad’s just and lawful sentence had come, and he sat now no longer in his cell. How homely that seemed compared to the cold clean-painted room they had brought him to now, whose only furniture was a hard wooden stool, on which he found himself sitting manacled and chained.

Through a barred window he could see the gallows, and hanging from it a rope and noose. For company there was a clock upon the wall, whose minute hand stood at three minutes before noon, and his gaoler, who sought even at this late hour to cheer Toad up.

“That’s a new rope they’ve got in for you, sir, which is thoughtful, is it not, for it guards against breakages.”

“I suppose it does,” said Toad, upon whom an astonishing calm had descended. He had stared into the void of matrimony and seen eternal horrors there, and despite all, the gallows seemed to him a swifter and more humane end.

“Then again,” said his affable warder, “they’ve got in the Senior Bishop to say last prayers and rites, the Commissioner of Police, just to make sure you don’t escape, and the High Judge himself, to see his sentence is properly executed, if you’ll pardon the expression. It’s a high honour to have all three watching over you to the last, Mr Toad.”

“I’m glad of it,” said Toad.

The clock clicked a minute more, which made one minute less and two to go. At which signal the three important personages the gaoler had mentioned appeared upon the gallows’ stand in the courtyard outside, and the warder took Toad’s arm.

“I think it’s time for a breath of fresh air, Mr Toad, if you follow my meaning. I hope you have found that I have been able to keep you cheerful to the last. You’ll find that Albert the Executioner goes about his business in a very affable kind of way. He’s more friendly than the last one they had, and very inclined to invite you round to meet the wife.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” said Toad.

Toad was led out into the open air and sunshine, up a few steps towards a large gentleman, a good deal larger than anybody else, who was wearing a black hood. The executioner approached Toad and placed the noose about his neck.

“Didn’t know this was one of yours, Frederick,” said he to the gaoler, for they were old friends and had done this kind of work together more than once.

Then, turning to Toad, he said, “That’s right, sir, stand just there, if you will, and I would be obliged if you did not move your feet. How’s the wife, Frederick?”

“Keeping well, thank you, Albert.”

With Toad well placed and nicely noosed the Senior Bishop said, “Mr Toad of Toad Hall, have you any final words?”

“Not on my own behalf, no, for I am glad to be finding a final liberty,” said Toad, a craven coward no more, it seemed. “But I beg you, and you in particular, Your High Lordship, to take care of the Madame’s son, for he means no harm and needs a little guidance now and then. I am past redemption, but he —”

Toad’s last speech was interrupted by a rattling of the courtyard door, and a messenger came running.

“Message for His Lordship, if you please.”

A note was handed to the High Judge who quickly read it, and then took the Commissioner of Police aside. Whatever he told him, it made that gentleman look very furious, and he blew a whistle and spoke to several constables, who went off about an urgent task. Then the High Judge spoke to the Senior Bishop, who went quite white and looked most horrified before falling upon his knees and offering up a silent prayer. Then he gathered up his purple skirts, called for his Chaplain and dashed off on urgent business.

The High Judge said, “Take the prisoner to his cell. Execution of sentence is postponed for twenty-four hours.”

With that he too was gone.

“I really think,” said Toad, considerably irritated, “that those gentlemen might have listened to my speech right to the end.”

“Never mind,” said his gaoler, leading him away; “you’ll have a chance to finish it tomorrow”

But within twenty-four hours Toad was at liberty once more, and on his way home, astonished, bemused, and for once not singing his own praises but those of another.

When the High Judge had first read that missive that reached him a few moments before the execution of the sentence upon Mr Toad he was very much astonished, yet not entirely unhappy to have an excuse to postpone matters for a day or two.

It was true that he was known as a hanging judge, but it was also true that he was one of those who did not rest easy unless he felt he was satisfied that the punishment he decreed truly fitted the crime. To his mind, hanging often did, and so he had little compunction sending those who came before him into that final cul de sac.

Once in a while, however, there came before him one in whom he saw the possibilities of redemption, and for whom, reprehensible though their crimes were — and Mr Toad’s were singularly bad, particularly his offences in the field of botany — he felt a less conventional punishment might be suitable. But though he had racked his brains he could not seem to find anything better than hanging for Mr Toad, and had therefore donned the black cap and passed that ultimate sentence.

Then came the letter, and suddenly all seemed changed. Mr Toad’s crimes — and the punishment thereof — were cast in a very different complexion indeed.

Indeed, so surprised was the High Judge by what the missive contained that he read it several times, as well as the clipping from the Town’s evening newspaper that was attached to it.

“
Your comments would be welcome,”
the editor of that organ wrote briefly to him. The clipping was headlined with words that said it all: “HIGH JUDGE’S FORMER BUTLER ELOPES WITH JILTED FRENCH BRIDE.”

Then, in type less bold,
“Love-nest found in Harwich. They take the packet to Australia tomorrow.”

Them in type even less bold,
“Mystery of why lady’s ‘best man’, the ‘Hang-‘em-High
‘
High Judge, was allowed to pass judgment on her former fiancé.”

Then, in ordinary—sized type, the sorry tale itself, which told of how the butler Prendergast, a Lothario of the worst kind it seemed, had plotted with Madame d’Albert-Chapelle, infamous jilted bride in the case of Mr Toad, to elope on the very morning of his execution.

“Even as that generous and courageous sporting gentleman puts his neck in the hangman’s noose, the Cunning Countess and the Brutal Butler will be heartlessly watching the coast of our once-just land recede as their boat sets sail for pastures new Rarely in our legal history
—” and so the story continued, lurid detail after lurid detail.

The High Judge was very well used to the rantings of the popular press, but he was shaken to the core by these events, if they were true.

The Madame marrying a
butler,
that was the gist of it, the beginning and the end of it. He saw it now almost too late, as once before he had been slow to see the nobility and courage that Mr Toad hid under his unprepossessing and criminal-seeming exterior.