The River Bank

by Kij Johnson

  The Badger only shook his ponderous head, looking severe. “I have been meeting each train, hoping you would be arriving this way.”

  “Badger, there was no need for that! Or— O Badger, do you mean you’ve heard something?” he asked urgently. “About Toad, I mean?”

  “No, nothing,” said the Badger. “But outdoors and at night is no time for discussions. We’ll go to your house and talk there.”

  The Water Rat peppered the Badger with questions during the walk home. About the Toad, there was nothing to tell: he had not been apprehended, so far as was known. Nor was the Rabbit anywhere to be found. “And after so many days with no news . . .” The Badger trailed off. There was no need to complete the sentence, and in any case, it was not their way to speculate about such things.

  The Water Rat unlocked his front door and let them into his little parlor, which was dark and cold, the wicks on the lanterns burnt down to nothing. “Mole?” called the Rat. “Mole?”

  “Then it is true,” said the Badger heavily.

  The Water Rat lit a candle so that he could see, and pulled down one of the lanterns to trim its wick. “What’s true? Has he gone back to Mole End?”

  The Badger cleared his throat as though preparing to relate dark news: “It’s as I feared. No, Rat: Mole has not returned to Mole End. They have eloped.”

  The Water Rat gaped at him. “Eloped? Who has eloped?”

  “Mole and the young Mole lady. Beryl. I had hoped there was another interpretation of the facts, but there is not. Mole’s absence proves it. They are gone, Beryl and the Mole together.”

  “I simply don’t believe it,” said the Water Rat, finding his voice at last.

  “No? Read this.” The Badger shoved a piece of paper into the Rat’s paw.

  Dear Badger,

  I am writing in great haste to tell you that Beryl and I are off together to St Giles’s (which is the church closest to the Hills), as soon as we can go. Perhaps together we can fix the worst plight ever two animals found themselves in. I’m very sorry, but we’re leaving you to sort out the money as we know nothing of lawyers or bank-managers. I’ve left the original letter at Ratty’s so you can see what has to happen.

  I hope this finds you in good health. I checked on Toad Hall today and all seemed well enough there.

  Yours &c.,

  the Mole

  P.S. Beryl sends her regards.

  The Water Rat flipped the note over, looking for something, anything, upon the back, but it was blank. “That cannot be right! This makes no sense at all. Where’s this letter to me that he writes about?”

  They found the Mole’s letter to the Rat upon the table and read it together. It said essentially the same thing: the Mole and Beryl were fled together to a church in the Hills; they would be back in a few day’s time; someone needed to do something or other about the money. There was no enclosed letter.

  “‘The money’ must be a dowry, I suppose,” said the Badger. He tapped the sheet of paper with one paw. “And this letter the Mole refers to—it must be a note from Beryl to him.”

  “Perhaps she has run into financial difficulties and must marry to repair her fortune?” hazarded the Water Rat.

  “Mole is not rich,” the Badger reminded him.

  “I know, only— Mole . . . in . . . love! I should hardly have thought it. If they have exchanged more than a word or two, I never saw it.”

  “We have all been very busy with this Toad business. Have you been with Mole every moment?”

  “No, of course not! I am not his nursemaid, and he has his own activities, just as we all do.” The Water Rat frowned. “Beryl! Why, he does not even like her!”

  “That is the way these things work,” the Badger said grimly. “Have you never read a serialized story in the newspaper?”

  “No, and I have a hard time believing that you have!” replied the Water Rat in surprise.

  The Badger continued, unheeding. “They are full—full!—of young people who dislike one another upon first meeting, and then through a sequence of misadventures fall in love. These stories invariably”—he repeated it for the full effect—“invariably, end with a wedding.”

  The Water Rat gasped. “A wedding! O Badger, surely it will not come to that! Marriage!”

  “I should have said such doings were not his kind of thing at all, no, “said the Badger grimly. “I mean no offense against Beryl, who is a very pleasant animal—in fact, admirable in many ways—but—you know.”

  The Water Rat did know. “Badger, we cannot allow him to make a mistake like this! Can he not be stopped?”

  “How?” mourned the Badger. “It is most inconsiderate of them to leave without warning like this, just now, when things are in such disorder on the River Bank. We cannot afford to leave, yet we shall have to follow them and try to talk sense into them.”

  The Water Rat said in a bleak tone, “I suppose we must. I say, Badger, what about Toad? He is still out there somewhere, or might be, anyway.”

  “Bother Toad!” said the Badger savagely. “I wash my hands of him. How many times have we warned him his foolish misdeeds would disgrace him utterly (if not worse); and this time, to cap it off, he has sucked Another—an innocent!—into his orbit.” He looked up with dawning horror. “I say. They must be married, as well!”

  The Water Rat gaped back. “Toad? And the Rabbit?”

  The Badger groaned. “It hardly bears thinking of, but they have been days and days together.”

  “If they return to the River Bank, he must of course marry her,” said the Rat. “But it might steady him, you know.”

  But the Badger shook his head and said only, in a low voice, “Toad, wed. It almost makes one hope he doesn’t return.”

  Chapter Ten

  “Cribbed, Cabined, and Confined”

  The Toad was useless. All the valiant courage to which he rather liked to lay claim had evaporated, and through that first long night, as the gang of outlaws made their plans and the Fox wrote his letters, the Toad could only huddle against a wall in the old barn’s tack room, fat tears rolling down his face and moaning “Doomed! Doomed!” at regular intervals, like a fog-horn. After a few vain attempts to soothe him, the Rabbit settled down to listening for whatever she might hear through the cracked and slatted walls, though it was little enough: low talk and rude laughter.

  The pale light before dawn was beginning to ease in through the cracks in the walls when the Fox at last said, more loudly, “So that’s the plan, boys. Everyone clear?” There were sounds of assent. “You will take the letters to the post. You and you will stand guard, and we’ll gather again tomorrow night. We can’t hear anything for a day or two, so for now, it’s just—keep them safe and secure, right, boys?”

  “Right, guv’nor, right,” said several voices. After a general shuffling and “See you later, chaps”-ing, the barn door opened and closed, and then the Rabbit heard the door to their prison unlocked.

  It was the Fox. “Nice and comfy?” he said in his smooth voice.

  Surprisingly, it was the Toad who responded. He looked a wretched thing, tear-stained and filthy, his natty Town-going clothes torn and disreputable and scattered with straw from the barn floor; but he had managed to stand up, and, leaning heavily upon a stool, he said in a thin voice, “Do you mean to starve us? Villain, do your worst!”

  The Fox shook his head. “Starve—? O no—where are my manners?” He gestured and the assigned guards stepped forward—the Rabbit was relieved to note that one was the amiable Head Weasel who had winked at her, but the other was one of the larger Stoats, who had been rude earlier. “Boys, we don’t want our guests to starve, do we?”

  The Stoat laughed, not at all nicely.

  The Fox continued, “Find some water and food for them, and then keep them locked up tight until we return. I should be very sorry if anything, anything at all ”—and here he glared at the Stoat, who looked surly and kicked his paw at the ground—“were to happen to them before I returne
d. Don’t get stupid, and if we do this right we’ll be rich—rich and pardoned!” And with a sweeping (but not, the Rabbit thought, very sincere) bow, he melted into the cool shadows of approaching dawn, and the door was swung shut on them. A few minutes later the Weasel brought them some coarse brown bread and a bit of butter, and a pail of water that was not very clean, with bits of straw floating on the surface. “Sorry it’s not what you’re used to, lass,” he said apologetically to the Rabbit, “but tonight I’ll run over to the tuck-shop in the village and bring you back sponge cakes and jelly, and won’t that be a treat?” Then the door was locked, and they were left alone again.

  “Well, that’s that, then,” said the Rabbit practically, and turned to the Toad. “We must escape, that’s all, and then we shall go to the Hills.”

  But the Toad was turning over the coarse bread as though hoping to find a slice of roast beef hiding beneath it. He looked up and said mournfully, “They do mean to starve us to death, after all. But what can we do?”

  That was the question. The next two days were dreary beyond the pen’s ability to tell—not with enthusiasm, at any rate. With the Toad’s listless aid, the Rabbit went over their cell inch by inch. The tack room’s walls were of sturdy oak, over a century old, their wood aged into rock-like solidity; and, while there were gaps, they were none of them narrow enough for a Rabbit in walking-dress, let alone a stoutish Toad reluctant to lose his buttons. The floor was crowded with saddle racks, tack trunks, wooden stools (one with a broken leg), and pails. Against one side wall was a large wooden box lined with tin (“A coffin,” moaned the Toad) that was used to store sacks of oats for mash. There was a stack of horse blankets in another corner (“What a lucky chance!” said the Rabbit; “Shrouds,” groaned the Toad: “dusty shrouds!”). Just out of reach, there was a cluttered single shelf, and beyond that, the tack room stretched far, far up to a slatted ceiling that was the floor of the haymow. The walls were hung with saddles, riding whips (“Implements of torture,” wept the Toad), bridles, cinches, straps of leather, spare steel bits, and soft hempen halters; but everything was quite out of their grasp, even were they to jump. In any case neither was of the athletic, vigorous build that makes nothing of leaping gorges or scaling sheer rock faces.

  “Doomed,” said the Toad sadly, and threw himself to the ground weeping. “Doomed!”

  “Nonsense!” said the Rabbit stoutly. “Why should we be doomed? The worst thing that may happen is that they will receive their ransom and free us; and that will be that.”

  But the Toad could only roll about and say, “It’s not fair; it’s not fair!”

  The Rabbit knelt beside him. “What’s not fair? Being kidnapped? I am sure you are right, but here we are and we must make the best of it.”

  But just at that moment it was not the kidnapping that so inflamed his sensibilities. It was the ransom. “Did you hear them?” sobbed the Toad. “Fifty—thousand—pounds! I shall be bankrupt!” (This was not at all true.) “I shall be begging in the street—eating shoe leather—sleeping in parks in all weather—” (This was even less true.) “It can’t be done, Rabbit, that’s all.”

  But the Rabbit said reasonably, “Well, it is your own money; what better use for it than to ransom yourself?”

  “It’s the principle,” wept the Toad. “They should have asked someone else for the money! My admiring friends! These brigands could have insisted a collection be taken up. I am sure everyone would have helped out a bit. Instead, they want my last groat!” He threw out a grand gesture. “Perhaps they want the teeth from my head?”

  “Keep it down in there,” one of the guards called through the door in a warning tone. “We can’t ’ear ourselves count our points, we can’t”—for they were playing cribbage on an overturned pail to while away what looked to be a long, weary day.

  “Toad—Toad!” said the Rabbit, sounding a little strained: even she had her limits. “Toad, you can’t expect your friends to pay for your ransom when you have so much money! It’s—it’s absurd.”

  The Toad was still sniffling. “I should have thought they would be happy to help in every little way—selling a field or two—cashing in their Funds—borrowing from lenders in out-of-the-way little offices in Town—but—” He stopped suddenly, an arrested expression on his face. “No. In fact, I am come by my just desserts. Badger told me he would wash his hands of me—Ratty, too! Even Moley looked disapproving, the last time I got in trouble, and said—he said—” The Toad choked. “He said they couldn’t keep bailing me out of my troubles. The best of friends—the truest chaps a fellow ever knew! I have worn out their affection, that’s all!”

  “Toad,” the Rabbit said with a sigh, her paws pressed against her closed eyes, for she seemed to be developing a headache. “Your friends shall get the ransom note, and they shall speak with your banker, who shall collect the funds and pay the ransom, and You. Shall. Be. Freed.”

  “Unless they get the ransom note, and decide not to,” said the Toad in a dejected tone, determined to be wretched. “They may be grateful to have me gone. Life will be simpler on the River Bank without me. It’s just what I deserve.”

  “If that happens—which it will not—we’ll just have to escape,” said the Rabbit practically.

  “Impossible,” sobbed the Toad. “Detained—penned—caged, like a wild beast! Doomed! No way out—no hope—no—”

  “What?” said the Rabbit. “You’re Toad! What prison has ever held you?”

  The Toad shook his head violently and shrieked, “Doomed!”

  Rabbit knelt beside him. “Dear Toad, they write you up in newspapers! Bold Toad, adventuresome Toad! Acts of Parliament are written because of you! There have been widespread prison reforms because of you!”

  The Toad raised his head and said, still a little reluctant to relinquish his misery, “I suppose you are right.”

  “Why, you are practically a legend!” said the Rabbit. “Of course there shall be a way for us to escape.”

  “How did you escape last time?” asked the Rabbit. It was the next day. By degrees, the Rabbit had restored the Toad’s amour propre, but (as was usually the case with the Toad) he did not long remain there, instead sliding immediately past equipoise and into the divine egoism one most commonly associated with him.

  The Toad said complacently, “The prison warden’s daughter admired me rather—my person or my character or my courage, I can’t say—a pretty young thing—smitten, quite smitten—but the difference between our stations was too great; in any case, I could not reciprocate her understandable feelings. . . .” He trailed off with a self-satisfied smile that was not at all attractive. “Where was I?”

  “The warden’s daughter,” prompted the Rabbit.

  “Yes, yes,” said the Toad, with a little bow, as though he were speaking to a political assembly. “To be brief, then. It was for love, though I blush to say it—” (he did no such thing) “—that this warden’s daughter coaxed an agèd washerwoman to give me her clothes. I disguised myself—walked down corridors lined with guards—through gates overseen by cruel turnkeys—chaffed policemen to their faces—mocked the warden directly—no one guessed a thing! He, he! I walked right through the front gates, bold as brass and free as a bird!”

  He meant to go on a bit more, but the Rabbit was not attending. She said, “I don’t think the Weasel or the Stoat have any daughters that might fall in love with you, and I doubt there are any washerwomen at all associated with this barn.” She looked disapprovingly at the filthy horse blankets.

  “I suppose you’re right,” said the Toad, a little quenched. “But, wait— Rabbit, has not the Weasel been making up to you?”

  “Me? Surely not!” exclaimed the Rabbit. “He’s quite old! I mean, he has been quite kind, true, but I am sure that’s all he means by it! And if it is true”—and she did have the grace to blush—“it does seem hard to take advantage of his sentiments like this, as it would leave him in the most terrible trouble with the Fox and his fellows. S
till, I suppose we must make the attempt, mustn’t we?”

  Now that it was broad daylight, it was possible to see a little of the barn’s main floor through a chink in the wall, though it was nearly the dullest sight imaginable. For a long while, the Weasel and the Stoat played cards, until the Weasel won (“And that is good,” said the Rabbit, “for it shall make his mood better.”); and then the Weasel went out to stretch his legs and have a smoke while the Stoat remained, tossing his knife point-first into the floor; and then they sat together for a time saying not much; but finally the Stoat said, “Well, I’ll go out for a bit of a walk. Don’t you fall asleep while I’m gone, ’ear? I don’t want to come back and find these desprit crim’nals ’ave ’it you on the ’ead and run off,” and he laughed and left.

  “Now!” hissed the Toad.

  “I know,” responded the Rabbit in a whisper. “It’s just— O, all right, if I must.” As the Toad laid himself on a pallet of horse blankets and began to snore discreetly, she tapped softly on the tack-room door.

  “Hello?” she said.

  She heard the Weasel approach. He said through the door, “Why, lass! Awake? Y’oughter be curled up after your long night, a-sleeping the day away, a-dreaming of pretty ’ats and cakes, an’ nice things like that.”

  “Cake,” moaned the Toad behind her. But very softly.

  The Rabbit said, “O, I would, but— I am so very afraid! What will happen to us when this is done? I know the Fox says we shall be freed, but how can we trust that? I am sure something quite terrible will happen!”

  “Nothing’ll ’appen to you!” the Weasel said in a comforting tone. “This ’ere Toad’s friends’ll show up with the money, and that’ll be that—you’ll be free!”

  The Rabbit gave a little sob. It did not sound at all convincing to her, but the Weasel said miserably, “O, lassie! No, you’ll be safe, I swear it to you!”