Toad Triumphant

by William Horwood

  “Not me,” said Toad triumphantly “at least, not the mortal me. Mortals are mere flesh and bone and when we die we are gone.”

  Light was beginning to dawn in the Mole’s mind, and with it came a sense of release. If this was to be the nature of Toad’s immortality then the River Bank was safe enough.

  “You mean — ?” began the Mole, beginning to describe with his hands a general form and shape that he imagined might resemble Toad himself.

  “Yes, Mole, I do!” mistaking the Mole’s dawning comprehension for a shared excitement for his scheme. “I mean to erect here the sculpted form of myself, which shall be cast in bronze and will last for many hundreds of years. That same statue, historic and memorable, whose tide shall be Mr Toad of Toad Hall, shall be replicated throughout the world in miniature copies that others, unable to see the real thing, may have their spirits uplifted and their hearts warmed. Like —”

  “Like busts of Beethoven, perhaps, which some keep upon their pianoforte?” offered the Mole.

  “I shall be very like Beethoven, yes,” agreed Toad.

  “Or like those of Garibaldi,” the Mole added with some fervour, for he himself had such a bust and it certainly uplifted his spirits to look at it. The Italian revolutionary had been the Mole’s hero in his youth.

  “Him, too, if you must,” conceded Toad, who knew nothing of Garibaldi.

  He pointed to the surviving pedestal upon the terrace of an old statue long since relegated to the scrap heap.

  “Used to be four of ‘em,” said Toad indifferently “but they fell into disrepair and that solitary pedestal is all that remains. They represented the four Virtues.”

  “I thought there were three Virtues,” said the Mole, “Faith, Hope and Charity.”

  “My father created a fourth for my benefit,” said Toad in a bored voice, “when I was born.”

  The Mole noticed upon the pedestal an inscription in Latin which read, “HUMILITAS SUPER OMNIA”.

  “What does it mean?” he asked.

  “Nothing very much, I shouldn’t wonder,” said Toad. “I was never much of a scholar.”

  “You say that this work commences tomorrow afternoon?” said the Mole, returning to the plans for the garden, now very much easier in his mind than he had been before. If there were nothing more to Toad’s scheme concerning immortality than spending some of his money in a vain and conceited effort to create a bust of himself, then he could see no great danger in it. Even Toad could not make such a harmless venture go awry though he himself could not share Toad’s belief that there would be a general demand for replicas of the original.

  “This evening a continental artist of renown has agreed to come up to Toad Hall from the Town, and tomorrow that artist will conduct a preliminary sitting,” announced Toad, pausing in such a way that the Mole knew he was expected to ask a further question.

  Since he saw no danger for the River Bank in this new venture, wastrel and foolish though it undoubtedly was, the Mole was only too happy to oblige his friend.

  “You suggested earlier that we — that is Badger, Rat and myself— might help in some way? That we might be a part of this — ah — immortality.”

  “You might, so you might,” said Toad grandly as if about to distribute largesse to workers on his estate. “I think it will be a good idea, and a gesture on my part in acknowledgement of acts of friendship in the past, if you and the others were to appear in some way in this work of art that I have commissioned.”

  “Appear?” wondered the Mole.

  “In a supportive way” said Toad hastily “Like those actors in a classic drama who come on and speak a word or two, or perhaps no words at all, but by their very presence help add to the audience’s esteem of he who plays the hero’s part.”

  “I am sure we would find no objection to that,” said the kindly Mole, who saw right through Toad’s pomposity (though the Rat would certainly grumble a little about it) but felt certain that the others would be willing to play their part in the harmless charade.

  “It is agreed then,” said Toad promptly “Report for duty tomorrow afternoon.”

  “But Toad —” said the Mole, realizing too late his folly in agreeing to something that would interfere with the start of their expedition.

  “You cannot, you must not let me down!” cried Toad immediately.

  “Will it take long?”

  “Minutes I should say” said Toad, who knew nothing of art and its making. “I have mentioned my idea to the personage who is coming and I have been told that in expert hands such a matter requires merely a few sketches. I, naturally will be needed for rather longer but with you and the others it is merely a matter of seeing you and — and so forth.”

  “Well —” said the Mole feebly now seeing no way out of the dilemma his own weakness and good nature had led him into, but feeling sure he could find some way of persuading the others to humour Toad, “if it will only take a short while —”

  There were a number of other questions the Mole felt he ought to ask, such as who this “personage” was, at the mention of whom Toad’s voice took on a strange tone of mischievous excitement which did not augur well. But the Mole desisted from further questions since Toad would take so long answering them that he would never get away —”

  “That’s all, is it?” said the Rat irritably now that the Mole’s tale seemed to be finished. “We’re to be delayed to satisfy this latest whim of Toad’s?” He rose up and began to stow away the last few items for the expedition in the boats.

  “I really do not think it too serious a matter,” said the Badger diplomatically “and as Mole has said, matters could have been much worse —”

  “But that’s just it,” interrupted the Mole, “they might very well be worse! You see —”

  “There’s more?” said the Rat very seriously turning from his task. “You have not told us all?”

  “Well,” said the Mole very quietly lowering his gaze, “there is something else. You see I felt so relieved that matters had turned out as they had, so pleased, that I made a most foolish remark. A remark that suggested something to Toad that he had not thought of before.”

  “You mean,” said the Badger, putting down his pipe and rising up with a look upon his face quite as serious as that already on the Rat’s, “you put a new idea in Toad’s silly head?”

  “Yes,” said the Mole, very quietly indeed.

  “What idea?” said the Rat with terrible calm.

  “I do not know what came over me, but he pressed a glass or two upon me, as is his custom, and it must have gone to my head and before I left I found myself daring to suggest that — that —”

  The Mole looked despairingly at the River and seemed to see in its great and sonorous flow not only the glorious eternities of life, but some of its unpleasantness and difficulty as well.

  The others waited in terrible silence for him to finish. ,, — that there are other, better, kinds of immortality than mere busts of bronze.”

  “Very unwise,” said the Rat.

  “What kinds of immortality?” asked the Badger in a very serious way.

  The Mole hesitated.

  “Well?” said the Rat accusingly.

  “You must try to understand, I meant it for the best —on that previous occasion in his garden some weeks ago I had felt quite moved and wistful at the thought that future generations might see his new garden full grown. I felt it a pity that we along the River Bank, with the exception of Otter, have no direct kith and kin. I suggested — and, O dear, it was foolish of me, I knew it the moment I said it — I said that perhaps true immortality can only reside in the offspring we have, and therefore perhaps — O dear, I meant no harm —”

  “Goodness me, Mole,” said the normally cheerful Otter, voicing the worst fear that had arisen in the breast of each of them, “you were not so foolish, so idiotic, as to suggest to Toad that he should consider matrimony?”

  There! The dread word was out and it rose and swelled and loo
med above them like the darkest of storm clouds; and from the Mole’s guilty suggestion it was plain that that was exactly the idea he had sown.

  “I was speaking hypothetically” said the Mole defensively.

  “But he took it literally?” said the Badger.

  “He did,” confessed the Mole finally. “He did, he did! O my!”

  They stood in grim and gloomy silence before the Badger finally spoke:

  “We must attend this artist’s visit, and conspire to puff up as much as we can Toad’s vanity and conceit in this sculptural enterprise. Perhaps the excitement of it all will distract Toad’s mind sufficiently for this malignant seed Mole has most unfortunately sown in the over-fertile soil of Toad’s mind to wither and die.

  “But I think we may take some comfort from the fact that so far as I know there are no obvious suitors of Toad’s hand in marriage hereabouts, and even if there were they would surely have the sense to refuse one of such profligate, self—centred, and unreliable character as he.”

  The Mole stared now at the Badger and then rose up to his full height and looked each of his friends boldly and courageously in the eye, like one who wishes to make a final confession before going to the gallows.

  “There is still more?” said the Rat in a low and terrible voice.

  “There is,” said the Mole. “It is the nature of the artist whom Toad has commissioned to create the bust.”

  “Is he disreputable? Is he a marriage broker? That would certainly be bad,” said the Badger.

  “I understand not,” said the Mole. “I understand the artist is of the female persuasion.”

  “Female!” said the Rat, aghast.

  “And a female who has claimed some distant connection with Toad himself,” said the Mole, making a clean breast of it, “if only at some very considerable remove.

  “You mean this female artist is a distant cousin of Toad’s, and herself a toad?” said the Badger gravely. “And it is upon the eve of the coming of this — this Toadess that you, Mole, of whom we might have expected something better, have put the idea of matrimony into Toad’s head?”

  The matter could not have been put more bluntly than that, nor the crisis more plainly stated.

  The Mole bowed his head in shame. He had brought a grave crisis to the River Bank, albeit unwittingly and the very expedition of which he had been so proud, so flattered, to have been leader, must now be threatened with postponement or even cancellation.

  “May I ask,” said the Badger in a voice made more dreadful by its measured calm, “what Toad’s response was to this notion of yours?”

  How slowly the River flowed by them then, how deep and dangerous its depths, how inevitable its coming, and its going.

  “He thought,” confessed the Mole finally “that it was a very good idea indeed. In fact he —”

  “Say no more, Mole,” said the Badger, putting out his pipe at once, “for it seems you have already said too much. We must go to Toad Hall immediately.”

  “I shall go by boat, Badger, for to leave them here unattended with all our gear and provisions would be an open invitation to the weasels and stoats,” said the Rat with a fierce glance at the Mole.

  “I did not mean — I mean to say — I am sure that —”spluttered the downcast Mole helplessly.

  “Enough of words,” said the Badger, “reconnaissance of the situation and determined action to avert a disaster whose implications are quite unmentionable is what is needed, and needed immediately Otter, you come with me.”

  With that, and without any further discourse, lest further delay bring the impending disaster all the nearer and more likely the Badger and the Otter set off on foot, and the Rat got into his boat, leaving the disgraced Mole all alone and feeling as unhappy and as wretched as he had ever been.

  “Shall I come with you, Ratty?” he said in a most pathetic voice.

  “Humph!” said the Rat, grudgingly making room for him.

  “O dear!” said the poor Mole to himself as he cast off the painter and the Rat began to row upstream on what the Mole still hoped might be the first leg of the expedition. It seemed a poor way to begin so noble an enterprise.

  “Ratty — ?” he essayed a short while later.

  “Better not say a word, old chap,” said the Rat. “Best to stay silent for a while, for it distresses me to think of matrimony and Toad. Why even the River seems nervous and fretful at the prospect. Best to stay silent till we see what damage has been done.”

  “Yes, Ratty,” said the Mole in a very quiet voice, wishing they were already far, far away from the trouble and unpleasantness that he seemed to have created.

  · IV ·

  The Madame

  The exertion of sculling upstream, and the calming flow of the River all about them, soon put the Water Rat into better humour.

  “We shall not let this matter delay our trip, Mole, old fellow, so please don’t look so miserable, for it upsets me,” said he, before adding a trifle grudgingly as he guided the boat to the landing-stage by Toad’s boat-house, “I suppose any one of us might have made the same mistake.”

  The Mole accepted this olive branch gratefully and without further comment.

  “I am not quite sure I understand why Badger is so upset,” the Mole dared venture after due thought. “I mean to say is matrimony really so terrible a thing? Might not Toad benefit from having to think of another, once in a while?”

  “Now, Mole, be careful what you say” rejoined the Rat. “These are deep and difficult matters, about which neither of us knows nearly enough. You lightly mention, for example, ‘having to think of another once in a while’. From the grim warnings I myself have received in the past I can assure you that matrimony involves thinking of another a good deal more than that, and the effort would certainly cause Toad trouble and stress and lead him to do something silly We all know how much he dislikes gaol, do we not?”

  “Yes, but surely —”

  “Well, my dear chap, many have said that marriage is much like gaol, only worse, especially where a female is involved.”

  “I should think a female is generally involved if a fellow is to get married,” said the Mole sensibly.

  “Exactly my point,” said the Rat as if to clinch the argument.

  The boats rocked gently and for a time neither ventured to get out, for the matter they were pondering troubled them and needed much thought.

  “What we can safely say” said the Rat eventually “is that the arrival of a female personage at Toad Hall brings matrimony nearer than if that person had stayed away. We can also be sure that Toad, who is weak and vain and capable of anything if he sees some advantage to himself is likely to be vulnerable to the snares that someone of the female gender might set him.”

  “Are females very dangerous then?” the Mole asked nervously The Rat climbed out onto the landing-stage and pondered the Mole’s question as he tied up the boats.

  “They are not dangerous in themselves,” he said finally “but I have heard it said that they have a capacity for causing trouble and dissension. I mean no disrespect to them in any way of course.”

  “Of course not,” said the Mole, adding ingenuously “why your own mother was a female, was she not?”

  “I believe she was,” conceded the Rat, a shade irritated to be reminded of the fact.

  “Mine as well,” said the Mole confidentially glad to have discovered some non-contentious ground in territory that seemed so riddled with danger and difficulty.

  “Perhaps it is enough to say that we along the River Bank have no need of females and have lived happily without them for a large number of years,” said the Rat judiciously as he finally led the way into Toad’s garden. “They are perfectly all right in their own place but perhaps they would feel uncomfortable here.”

  “I see,” said the Mole, doing his very best to sound as if he did. For the Mole had fond memories of the female members of his family and often, in his quiet and gentle way regretted their passing. L
ife had brought him many blessings and many pleasures, but it was no good pretending that occasionally he did not remember his mother’s touch with fondness, or that he did not feel wistful when he remembered the sound of his sisters’ laughter in childhood days. Naturally from the confidential conversation he had when he had been recuperating at the Badger’s house, he had not forgotten that the Badger was not without a soft spot for a particular female he had known many years before and had never quite forgotten. So the Rat’s seeming dismissal of all female virtues did not entirely convince him.

  But perhaps the Rat recognized the fact and felt that some final statement was necessary to keep the Mole upon the narrow path, for as they approached the terrace steps up to the Hall, and heard the sound of their friends’ voices, he stopped and put a hand upon the Mole’s shoulder.

  “Mole, old friend, you would be well advised to put out of your mind such dangerous thoughts as these, and desist from mentioning matrimony to those of your present friendship and acquaintance.”

  “Even my Nephew?” persisted the Mole.

  He had some hope that one day Nephew would settle down and raise a family and that he, Mole, might have some little use and value still to a new generation. Not that he had ever said so bold a thing to anyone, least of all his Nephew, but it was no good pretending he did not have such simple, harmless dreams.

  “Especially your Nephew, if you want him to remain happy and content,” said the Rat firmly. “You must warn him against such impulses, Mole, should they ever present themselves. Keep him busy and occupied with things that matter, that’s the best approach. Now, let us see how badly Toad is infected with this new idea.”

  The Mole judged it was best not to pursue his enquiries further, and they made their way up the steps, across the terrace, to join the others in Toad’s conservatory.

  From the warning glance that the Badger immediately gave them, and the air of weary good humour that came from the Otter, it seemed that they had arrived not a moment too soon. It was all too plain that Toad was in an advanced state of excited exhaustion and might not get through the hours ahead without yielding to a crisis of some kind.