“‘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.”
It was Prendergast who brought a measure of order and common sense to the situation. As Toad ceased to struggle and began to stare about rather desperately Prendergast said in a measured way “You called, sir?”
“I called for you, Prendergast, not for these interlopers, these unwelcome intruders, who —”
“Yes, sir?” said Prendergast very calmly and with a reassuring smile, hoping thereby to calm Toad.
“I found my fishing rod in the gun room all right, Prendergast, but I cannot find the box of flies that go with it anywhere, nor even the reel, and —”
“You are going fishing?” asked the Badger suspiciously. “I was hoping to till I was set upon so violently and you took my rod from my hand,” said Toad in a hurt and injured way. “I thought it might help clear my head, don’t you see?”
“Toad, I can’t say that I ever remember you going fishing before,” said the Otter, carrying the interrogation a little further; “why now?”
“I liked fishing when I was young,” said Toad ruefully “and I fancied I might like it again now I have found love. There by the calm flow of the River, to the measured rhythm of the cast, I shall weave a poem about the lady who has left me —”
The animals exchanged serious and meaningful glances but let him continue.
“You see, Badger, she inspires in me moods and memories long forgotten. No doubt you remember these lines of the hapless lover:
Distracted with Care,
For Florentine the Fair;
Since Nothing cou’d move her,
Poor Toady her Lover,
Resolves in Despair
No longer to languish,
Nor bear so much Anguish;
But, mad with his Love,
To—”
Having already substituted Florentine for the original Phyllis, and himself for Damon, it had been Toad’s intention to continue the poem with a few lines about fishing. Unfortunately the Badger was rather losing patience and tried to interrupt him, but Toad, always relishing an audience, and always glad to shock others if he could, made the grave — the very grave — mistake of continuing the poem as originally written:
“But, mad with his Love,
To a Precipice goes!”
Here Toad raised his voice, and rolled his eyes in semblance of a madman before uttering the mordant final lines:
“Where a Leap from above
Wou’d soon finish his Woes!
“Of course,” said Toad immediately “I do not mean —”“No, Nephew, do not release him quite yet,” commanded the Badger very seriously not seeing the joke at all. Though reassured somewhat by Toad’s generally calm tone, he feared it might indicate that he had reached a benign phase of his ailment which might be of only short duration before something more violent took him over once more. A theory surely amply confirmed by the last lines of the ditty Toad had spoken.
“We feel, Toad old chap,” said the Badger, trying to sound at once pleasant but firm, “that for your own good it would be wise if you were confined —”
“For my own good!” cried Toad, enraged. The Badger sighed, for it was plain that the benign phase was indeed to be but short-lived.
“Confined, yes; but you shall be granted all the comforts you need —”
“But I pay for them!” shouted Toad, struggling once more, and beginning to see the dangerous drift of the conversation. “They’re mine!”
“— for so long as it may take for this — this aberration —”
“Of course love’s an aberration, you dunderhead!” yelled Toad, suddenly laughing wildly. “It’s wonderful, it’s confusing, and it makes my head ache. Therefore a quiet spot of fishing and —”
“— this delusive impulse —”
Toad was suddenly still, seeing that struggling did not help and only exhausted him.
“So what shall you do to me?” said he, plaintive now. The Badger saw that the cycle of madness was almost complete and that their charge was declining into depression and gloom once more.
“We shall confine you to your bedroom and fetch a doctor who shall prescribe a sedative till you are fully recovered.”
“Please, Badger,” cried Toad suddenly hurling himself from Nephew’s grasp and falling to his knees, “do not do this to me. I cannot bear incarceration! I cannot stomach having my liberty taken away! Have mercy upon me!”
As he was pleading thus, the Badger came forward to him, much moved by his despair. No animal likes to imprison another, no friend to cramp another’s freedom.
“Alas, Toad,” said the Badger, “we are all friends here and can speak openly. We fear a return in you of that wildness and behaviour that landed you in such trouble and caused you so much misery in the past, and we are pledged to protect you from your own weaknesses. If Mole and Ratty were here they would say the same.”
“O, I see that you are right!” said Toad pathetically. “But woe is me that I seem to have found happiness only to know despair!” He began weeping and sobbing even more than before as his friends sought to comfort him.
In the middle of this, and sobbing still, Toad managed to catch the eye of Prendergast who was standing a little aloof, and somewhat embarrassed; and catching his eye Toad winked, and then winked again.
“Dear Badger, and you, thoughtful Otter, O, and you too, Nephew, I am sorry I have caused you grief and misery. I have been mad with love and grief, it is true. No doubt I am my own worst enemy and ought to be confined as you suggest. I will willingly do as you say but may I ask one small favour?”
With Toad so plainly contrite and more at peace with himself, and accepting the necessity of the course of action they suggested, they had released their hold of him a little. Sufficiently so for him to rise in their midst as he talked — though holding his head low and with his shoulders bowed — while he kept a quizzical eye upon Prendergast.
“Of course, old friend,” said the Badger, “if there is a favour we can grant —”
“Prendergast, that item we put in storage when you first arrived?”
“Yes sir,” said Prendergast coolly understanding at once the nature of his master’s request. O, how his spirit soared at all these goings-on! How much more exciting this was than His Lordship’s House. True, down there in his parlour he had weakened for a time, and seemed to favour the enemies of his master. But now, seeing the glorious Mr Toad’s courageous attempts to fend off his foes and enemies and make good his escape, how could he not aid and abet him?
“Is it ready for its first outing?” Toad asked.
Mr Toad was, of course, speaking of the powerful motor-launch that had been secreted in the boat-house.
“Quite ready sir.”
“Is this something I can fetch for you, Toad?” asked the Otter all unsuspectingly.
“Dear fellow,” said Toad faintly “that will not be necessary. Prendergast here has reassured me on a small domestic matter and now I am ready —”
He righted himself at last, he looked them bravely in the eye, and suddenly he was no abject and sorry Toad, but a Toad Imperial, a Toad Immortal.
“Why Toad, you look a good deal better now you have accepted the wisdom of our advice,” said the Badger with satisfaction. “Now come along —”
“I’ve never been better!” cried Toad, pushing the Otter suddenly back a step or two and the Badger sideways before, stooping low to grab the fishing rod, he leapt towards the open window.
“Toad, you deceitful creature!”
“Ha!” cried Toad, warding them off with the rod. “Confine me again, would you? Imprison me? For my own good, eh? Prendergast, I order you to lock that door upon these villains while I —”
With a nimble leap Toad was up and out of the window and had slammed it shut and thrust a nearby rake against the window jamb to make it impossible to open from inside.
Then, as they shouted out their warnings and their rage, and sought in vain to open the window and the door that Prendergast had quickly locked, Toad scampered across the terrace and made towards the boathouse.
But not in so much haste or panic that he did not find time to pause at that spot where she he loved had elevated him to the status of Imperial Caesar, and there raise himself up in that imperious pose once more, while casting a backward glance of considerable satisfaction at the faces of his confined, imprisoned and incarcerated do-gooding friends .
“I am imperial indeed!”
“Sir!” called Prendergast from the terrace, where he had hurried to help his master. “I fear it will not be long before they make good their escape. You will find the rest of the fishing tackle you were seeking in the boat, along with a rod which I judged better for boat fishing.”
“But aren’t you coming with me, Prendergast? That’s your job, isn’t it? I order you to, now!”
“Ah, sir, would that I could, but it is against my professional code, I fear. Butlers may under the second part of the fourth Schedule of the Servants Act of 1899 aid their masters, but they may not abet. I have done the first, sir, to the best of my ability, but the second is beyond my conscience. I shall keep the house in good order against the day when you return home!
“I shall also prepare everything for that Grand Opening which I believe it is your intention to hold in early autumn.”
“But, Prendergast — I do not know how to drive the boat!”
“It is a modern craft, sir. Simply crank the engine with the implement all ready by the wheel, make sure you cast off the ropes, and turn sharp right, very sharp right, as you exit the boat-house. It is as easy if I may make the analogy, as driving a motor-car or piloting a flying machine, at which I believe you have considerable experience. Now, sir, it sounds as if your guests have escaped —”
With these words of advice and farewell, Prendergast sent Toad on his way and watched with considerable pleasure as his master reached the boat-house. And even more pleasure when a short time later, with his pursuers already crossing the lawn and about to reach him, there was the roar of an engine, and his master’s new launch shot out of the boat-house. It headed erratically towards the far bank of the River, before turning sharply right, then it was gone in a welter of smoke and spray upstream towards His Lordship’s House in pursuit of Madame d’Albert.
Toad Triumphant Page 9
