river, so the Badger, taking up his lantern again, led the way along a
damp and airless tunnel that wound and dipped, part vaulted, part hewn
through solid rock, for a weary distance that seemed to be miles. At
last daylight began to show itself confusedly through tangled growth
overhanging the mouth of the passage; and the Badger, bidding them a
hasty good-bye, pushed them hurriedly through the opening, made
everything look as natural as possible again, with creepers,
brushwood, and dead leaves, and retreated.
They found themselves standing on the very edge of the Wild Wood. Rocks
and brambles and tree-roots behind them, confusedly heaped and tangled;
in front, a great space of quiet fields, hemmed by lines of hedges black
on the snow, and, far ahead, a glint of the familiar old river, while
the wintry sun hung red and low on the horizon. The Otter, as knowing
all the paths, took charge of the party, and they trailed out on a
bee-line for a distant stile. Pausing there a moment and looking back,
they saw the whole mass of the Wild Wood, dense, menacing, compact,
grimly set in vast white surroundings; simultaneously they turned and
made swiftly for home, for firelight and the familiar things it played
on, for the voice, sounding cheerily outside their window, of the river
that they knew and trusted in all its moods, that never made them afraid
with any amazement.
As he hurried along, eagerly anticipating the moment when he would be
at home again among the things he knew and liked, the Mole saw clearly
that he was an animal of tilled field and hedgerow, linked to the
ploughed furrow, the frequented pasture, the lane of evening
lingerings, the cultivated garden-plot. For others the asperities, the
stubborn endurance, or the clash of actual conflict, that went with
Nature in the rough; he must be wise, must keep to the pleasant places
in which his lines were laid and which held adventure enough, in their
way, to last for a lifetime.
V
DULCE DOMUM
The sheep ran huddling together against the hurdles, blowing out thin
nostrils and stamping with delicate fore-feet, their heads thrown back
and a light steam rising from the crowded sheep-pen into the frosty
air, as the two animals hastened by in high spirits, with much chatter
and laughter. They were returning across country after a long day's
outing with Otter, hunting and exploring on the wide uplands, where
certain streams tributary to their own River had their first small
beginnings; and the shades of the short winter day were closing in on
them, and they had still some distance to go. Plodding at random
across the plough, they had heard the sheep and had made for them; and
now, leading from the sheep-pen, they found a beaten track that made
walking a lighter business, and responded, moreover, to that small
inquiring something which all animals carry inside them, saying
unmistakably, "Yes, quite right; _this_ leads home!"
"It looks as if we were coming to a village," said the Mole somewhat
dubiously, slackening his pace, as the track, that had in time become
a path and then had developed into a lane, now handed them over to the
charge of a well-metalled road. The animals did not hold with
villages, and their own highways, thickly frequented as they were,
took an independent course, regardless of church, post-office, or
public-house.
"Oh, never mind!" said the Rat. "At this season of the year they're
all safe indoors by this time, sitting round the fire; men, women, and
children, dogs and cats and all. We shall slip through all right,
without any bother or unpleasantness, and we can have a look at them
through their windows if you like, and see what they're doing."
The rapid nightfall of mid-December had quite beset the little village
as they approached it on soft feet over a first thin fall of powdery
snow. Little was visible but squares of a dusky orange-red on either
side of the street, where the firelight or lamplight of each cottage
overflowed through the casements into the dark world without. Most of
the low latticed windows were innocent of blinds, and to the
lookers-in from outside, the inmates, gathered round the tea-table,
absorbed in handiwork, or talking with laughter and gesture, had each
that happy grace which is the last thing the skilled actor shall
capture--the natural grace which goes with perfect unconsciousness of
observation. Moving at will from one theatre to another, the two
spectators, so far from home themselves, had something of wistfulness
in their eyes as they watched a cat being stroked, a sleepy child
picked up and huddled off to bed, or a tired man stretch and knock out
his pipe on the end of a smouldering log.
But it was from one little window, with its blind drawn down, a mere
blank transparency on the night, that the sense of home and the little
curtained world within walls--the larger stressful world of outside
Nature shut out and forgotten--most pulsated. Close against the white
blind hung a bird-cage, clearly silhouetted, every wire, perch, and
appurtenance distinct and recognisable, even to yesterday's dull-edged
lump of sugar. On the middle perch the fluffy occupant, head tucked
well into feathers, seemed so near to them as to be easily stroked,
had they tried; even the delicate tips of his plumped-out plumage
pencilled plainly on the illuminated screen. As they looked, the
sleepy little fellow stirred uneasily, woke, shook himself, and raised
his head. They could see the gape of his tiny beak as he yawned in a
bored sort of way, looked round, and then settled his head into his
back again, while the ruffled feathers gradually subsided into perfect
stillness. Then a gust of bitter wind took them in the back of the
neck, a small sting of frozen sleet on the skin woke them as from a
dream, and they knew their toes to be cold and their legs tired, and
their own home distant a weary way.
Once beyond the village, where the cottages ceased abruptly, on either
side of the road they could smell through the darkness the friendly
fields again; and they braced themselves for the last long stretch,
the home stretch, the stretch that we know is bound to end, some time,
in the rattle of the door-latch, the sudden firelight, and the sight
of familiar things greeting us as long-absent travellers from far
over-sea. They plodded along steadily and silently, each of them
thinking his own thoughts. The Mole's ran a good deal on supper, as it
was pitch-dark, and it was all a strange country for him as far as he
knew, and he was following obediently in the wake of the Rat, leaving
the guidance entirely to him. As for the Rat, he was walking a little
way ahead, as his habit was, his shoulders humped, his eyes fixed on
the straight grey road in front of him; so he did not notice poor Mole
when suddenly the summons reached him, and took him like an electric
shock.
We others, who have long lost the more subtle of the physical senses,
have not even proper terms to express an animal's inter-communications
with his surroundings, living or otherwise, and have only the word
"smell," for instance, to include the whole range of delicate thrills
which murmur in the nose of the animal night and day, summoning,
warning, inciting, repelling. It was one of these mysterious fairy
calls from out the void that suddenly reached Mole in the darkness,
making him tingle through and through with its very familiar appeal,
even while yet he could not clearly remember what it was. He stopped
dead in his tracks, his nose searching hither and thither in its
efforts to recapture the fine filament, the telegraphic current, that
had so strongly moved him. A moment, and he had caught it again; and
with it this time came recollection in fullest flood.
Home! That was what they meant, those caressing appeals, those soft
touches wafted through the air, those invisible little hands pulling
and tugging, all one way! Why, it must be quite close by him at that
moment, his old home that he had hurriedly forsaken and never sought
again, that day when he first found the River! And now it was sending
out its scouts and its messengers to capture him and bring him in.
Since his escape on that bright morning he had hardly given it a
thought, so absorbed had he been in his new life, in all its
pleasures, its surprises, its fresh and captivating experiences. Now,
with a rush of old memories, how clearly it stood up before him, in
the darkness! Shabby indeed, and small and poorly furnished, and yet
his, the home he had made for himself, the home he had been so happy
to get back to after his day's work. And the home had been happy with
him, too, evidently, and was missing him, and wanted him back, and was
telling him so, through his nose, sorrowfully, reproachfully, but with
no bitterness or anger; only with plaintive reminder that it was
there, and wanted him.
The call was clear, the summons was plain. He must obey it instantly,
and go. "Ratty!" he called, full of joyful excitement, "hold on! Come
back! I want you, quick!"
"Oh, _come_ along, Mole, do!" replied the Rat cheerfully, still
plodding along.
"_Please_ stop, Ratty!" pleaded the poor Mole, in anguish of heart.
"You don't understand! It's my home, my old home! I've just come
across the smell of it, and it's close by here, really quite close.
And I _must_ go to it, I must, I must! Oh, come back, Ratty! Please,
please come back!"
The Rat was by this time very far ahead, too far to hear clearly what
the Mole was calling, too far to catch the sharp note of painful
appeal in his voice. And he was much taken up with the weather, for he
too, could smell something--something suspiciously like approaching
snow.
"Mole, we mustn't stop now, really!" he called back. "We'll come for
it to-morrow, whatever it is you've found. But I daren't stop
now--it's late, and the snow's coming on again, and I'm not sure of
the way! And I want your nose, Mole, so come on quick, there's a good
fellow!" And the Rat pressed forward on his way without waiting for an
answer.
Poor Mole stood alone in the road, his heart torn asunder, and a big
sob gathering, gathering, somewhere low down inside him, to leap up to
the surface presently, he knew, in passionate escape. But even under
such a test as this his loyalty to his friend stood firm. Never for a
moment did he dream of abandoning him. Meanwhile, the wafts from his
old home pleaded, whispered, conjured, and finally claimed him
imperiously. He dared not tarry longer within their magic circle. With
a wrench that tore his very heart-strings he set his face down the
road and followed submissively in the track of the Rat, while faint,
thin little smells, still dogging his retreating nose, reproached him
for his new friendship and his callous forgetfulness.
With an effort he caught up to the unsuspecting Rat, who began
chattering cheerfully about what they would do when they got back, and
how jolly a fire of logs in the parlour would be, and what a supper he
meant to eat; never noticing his companion's silence and distressful
state of mind. At last, however, when they had gone some considerable
way further, and were passing some tree stumps at the edge of a copse
that bordered the road, he stopped and said kindly, "Look here, Mole,
old chap, you seem dead tired. No talk left in you, and your feet
dragging like lead. We'll sit down here for a minute and rest. The
snow has held off so far, and the best part of our journey is over."
The Mole subsided forlornly on a tree stump and tried to control
himself, for he felt it surely coming. The sob he had fought with so
long refused to be beaten. Up and up, it forced its way to the air,
and then another, and another, and others thick and fast; till poor
Mole at last gave up the struggle, and cried freely and helplessly and
openly, now that he knew it was all over and he had lost what he could
hardly be said to have found.
The Rat, astonished and dismayed at the violence of Mole's paroxysm of
grief, did not dare to speak for a while. At last he said, very
quietly and sympathetically, "What is it, old fellow? Whatever can be
the matter? Tell us your trouble, and let me see what I can do."
Poor Mole found it difficult to get any words out between the
upheavals of his chest that followed one upon another so quickly and
held back speech and choked it as it came. "I know it's a--shabby,
dingy little place," he sobbed forth at last brokenly: "not like--your
cosy quarters--or Toad's beautiful hall--or Badger's great house--but
it was my own little home--and I was fond of it--and I went away and
forgot all about it--and then I smelt it suddenly--on the road, when I
called and you wouldn't listen, Rat--and everything came back to me
with a rush--and I _wanted_ it!--O dear, O dear!--and when you
_wouldn't_ turn back, Ratty--and I had to leave it, though I was
smelling it all the time--I thought my heart would break.--We might
have just gone and had one look at it, Ratty--only one look--it was
close by--but you wouldn't turn back, Ratty, you wouldn't turn back! O
dear, O dear!"
Recollection brought fresh waves of sorrow, and sobs again took full
charge of him, preventing further speech.
The Rat stared straight in front of him, saying nothing, only patting
Mole gently on the shoulder. After a time he muttered gloomily, "I see
it all now! What a _pig_ I have been! A pig--that's me! Just a pig--a
plain pig!"
He waited till Mole's sobs became gradually less stormy and more
rhythmical; he waited till at last sniffs were frequent and sobs only
intermittent. Then he rose from his seat, and, remarking carelessly,
"Well, now we'd really better be getting on, old chap!" set off up the
road again over the toilsome way they had come.
"Wherever are you (hic) going to (hic), Ratty?" cried the tearful
Mole, looking up in alarm.
"We're going to find that home of yours, old fellow," replied the Rat
pleasantly; "so you had better come along, for it will take some
finding, and we shall want your nose."
"Oh, come back, Ratty, do!" cried the Mole, getting up and hurrying
after him. "It's no good, I tell you! It's too late, and too dark, and
the place is too far off, and the snow's coming! And--and I never
meant to let you know I was feeling that way about it--it was all an
accident and a mistake! And think of River Bank, and your supper!"
"Hang River Bank, and supper, too!" said the Rat heartily. "I tell
you, I'm going to find this place now, if I stay out all night. So
cheer up, old chap, and take my arm, and we'll very soon be back there
again."
Still snuffling, pleading, and reluctant, Mole suffered himself to be
dragged back along the road by his imperious companion, who by a flow
of cheerful talk and anecdote endeavoured to beguile his spirits back
and make the weary way seem shorter. When at last it seemed to the Rat
that they must be nearing that part of the road where the Mole had
been "held up," he said, "Now, no more talking. Business! Use your
nose, and give your mind to it."
They moved on in silence for some little way, when suddenly the Rat
was conscious, through his arm that was linked in Mole's, of a faint
sort of electric thrill that was passing down that animal's body.
Instantly he disengaged himself, fell back a pace, and waited, all
attention.
The signals were coming through!
Mole stood a moment rigid, while his uplifted nose, quivering
slightly, felt the air.
Then a short, quick run forward--a fault--a check--a try back; and
then a slow, steady, confident advance.
The Rat, much excited, kept close to his heels as the Mole, with
something of the air of a sleep-walker, crossed a dry ditch, scrambled
through a hedge, and nosed his way over a field open and trackless and
bare in the faint starlight.
Suddenly, without giving warning, he dived; but the Rat was on the
alert, and promptly followed him down the tunnel to which his unerring
nose had faithfully led him.
It was close and airless, and the earthy smell was strong, and it
seemed a long time to Rat ere the passage ended and he could stand
erect and stretch and shake himself. The Mole struck a match, and by
its light the Rat saw that they were standing in an open space, neatly
swept and sanded underfoot, and directly facing them was Mole's little
front door, with "Mole End" painted, in Gothic lettering, over the
bell-pull at the side.
Mole reached down a lantern from a nail on the wall and lit it, and the
Rat, looking round him, saw that they were in a sort of fore-court. A
garden-seat stood on one side of the door, and on the other a roller;
for the Mole, who was a tidy animal when at home, could not stand having
his ground kicked up by other animals into little runs that ended in
earth-heaps. On the walls hung wire baskets with ferns in them,
alternating with brackets carrying plaster statuary--Garibaldi, and the
infant Samuel, and Queen Victoria, and other heroes of modern Italy.
Down on one side of the fore-court ran a skittle-alley, with benches
along it and little wooden tables marked with rings that hinted at
beer-mugs. In the middle was a small round pond containing gold-fish and
surrounded by a cockle-shell border. Out of the centre of the pond rose
a fanciful erection clothed in more cockle-shells and topped by a large
silvered glass ball that reflected everything all wrong and had a very
pleasing effect.
Mole's face beamed at the sight of all these objects so dear to him,
and he hurried Rat through the door, lit a lamp in the hall, and took
one glance round his old home. He saw the dust lying thick on
everything, saw the cheerless, deserted look of the long-neglected
house, and its narrow, meagre dimensions, its worn and shabby
contents--and collapsed again on a hall-chair, his nose to his paws.
"O Ratty!" he cried dismally, "why ever did I do it? Why did I bring
you to this poor, cold little place, on a night like this, when you
might have been at River Bank by this time, toasting your toes before
a blazing fire, with all your own nice things about you!"
The Rat paid no heed to his doleful self-reproaches. He was running
here and there, opening doors, inspecting rooms and cupboards, and
lighting lamps and candles and sticking them up everywhere. "What a
capital little house this is!" he called out cheerily. "So compact! So
well planned! Everything here and everything in its place! We'll make
a jolly night of it. The first thing we want is a good fire; I'll see
to that--I always know where to find things. So this is the parlour?
Splendid! Your own idea, those little sleeping-bunks in the wall?
Capital! Now, I'll fetch the wood and the coals, and you get a duster,
Mole--you'll find one in the drawer of the kitchen table--and try and
smarten things up a bit. Bustle about, old chap!"
Encouraged by his inspiriting companion, the Mole roused himself and
dusted and polished with energy and heartiness, while the Rat, running
to and fro with armfuls of fuel, soon had a cheerful blaze roaring up
the chimney. He hailed the Mole to come and warm himself; but Mole
promptly had another fit of the blues, dropping down on a couch in
dark despair and burying his face in his duster. "Rat," he moaned,
"how about your supper, you poor, cold, hungry, weary animal? I've
nothing to give you--nothing--not a crumb!"
"What a fellow you are for giving in!" said the Rat reproachfully.
"Why, only just now I saw a sardine-opener on the kitchen dresser,
quite distinctly; and everybody knows that means there are sardines
about somewhere in the neighbourhood. Rouse yourself! pull yourself
together, and come with me and forage."
They went and foraged accordingly, hunting through every cupboard and
turning out every drawer. The result was not so very depressing after
all, though of course it might have been better; a tin of sardines--a
box of captain's biscuits, nearly full--and a German sausage encased
in silver paper.
"There's a banquet for you!" observed the Rat, as he arranged the
table. "I know some animals who would give their ears to be sitting
down to supper with us to-night!"
"No bread!" groaned the Mole dolorously; "no butter, no--"
"No _pate de foie gras_, no champagne!" continued the Rat, grinning.
"And that reminds me--what's that little door at the end of the
passage? Your cellar, of course! Every luxury in this house! Just you
wait a minute."
He made for the cellar-door, and presently reappeared, somewhat dusty,
with a bottle of beer in each paw and another under each arm,
"Self-indulgent beggar you seem to be, Mole," he observed. "Deny
yourself nothing. This is really the jolliest little place I ever was
in. Now, wherever did you pick up those prints? Make the place look so
home-like, they do. No wonder you're so fond of it, Mole. Tell us all
about it, and how you came to make it what it is."
Then, while the Rat busied himself fetching plates, and knives and
forks, and mustard which he mixed in an egg-cup, the Mole, his bosom
still heaving with the stress of his recent emotion, related--somewhat
shyly at first, but with more freedom as he warmed to his subject--how
this was planned, and how that was thought out, and how this was got
through a windfall from an aunt, and that was a wonderful find and a
bargain, and this other thing was bought out of laborious savings and
a certain amount of "going without." His spirits finally quite
restored, he must needs go and caress his possessions, and take a lamp
and show off their points to his visitor and expatiate on them, quite
forgetful of the supper they both so much needed; Rat, who was
desperately hungry but strove to conceal it, nodding seriously,
examining with a puckered brow, and saying, "wonderful," and "most
remarkable," at intervals, when the chance for an observation was
given him.
At last the Rat succeeded in decoying him to the table, and had just
got seriously to work with the sardine-opener when sounds were heard
from the fore-court without--sounds like the scuffling of small feet
in the gravel and a confused murmur of tiny voices, while broken
sentences reached them--"Now, all in a line--hold the lantern up a
bit, Tommy--clear your throats first--no coughing after I say one,
two, three.--Where's young Bill?--Here, come on, do, we're all
a-waiting--"
"What's up?" inquired the Rat, pausing in his labours.
"I think it must be the field-mice," replied the Mole, with a touch of
pride in his manner. "They go round carol-singing regularly at this
time of the year. They're quite an institution in these parts. And
they never pass me over--they come to Mole End last of all; and I used
to give them hot drinks, and supper too sometimes, when I could afford
it. It will be like old times to hear them again."
"Let's have a look at them!" cried the Rat, jumping up and running to
the door.
It was a pretty sight, and a seasonable one, that met their eyes when
they flung the door open. In the fore-court, lit by the dim rays of a
horn lantern, some eight or ten little field-mice stood in a
semicircle, red worsted comforters round their throats, their
fore-paws thrust deep into their pockets, their feet jigging for
warmth. With bright beady eyes they glanced shyly at each other,
sniggering a little, sniffing and applying coat-sleeves a good deal.
As the door opened, one of the elder ones that carried the lantern was
just saying, "Now then, one, two, three!" and forthwith their shrill
little voices uprose on the air, singing one of the old-time carols
that their forefathers composed in fields that were fallow and held by
frost, or when snow-bound in chimney corners, and handed down to be
sung in the miry street to lamp-lit windows at Yule-time.
_CAROL_
_Villagers all, this frosty tide,
Let your doors swing open wide,
Though wind may follow, and snow beside,
Yet draw us in by your fire to bide;
Joy shall be yours in the morning!_
_Here we stand in the cold and the sleet,
Blowing fingers and stamping feet,
Come from far away you to greet--
You by the fire and we in the street--
Bidding you joy in the morning!_
_For ere one half of the night was gone,
Sudden a star has led us on,
Raining bliss and benison--
Bliss to-morrow and more anon,
Joy for every morning!_
_Goodman Joseph toiled through the snow--
Saw the star o'er a stable low;
Mary she might not further go--
Welcome thatch, and litter below!
Joy was hers in the morning!_
_And then they heard the angels tell
"Who were the first to cry _Nowell_?
Animals all, as it befell,
In the stable where they did dwell!
Joy shall be theirs in the morning!"_
The voices ceased, the singers, bashful but smiling, exchanged
sidelong glances, and silence succeeded--but for a moment only. Then,
from up above and far away, down the tunnel they had so lately
travelled was borne to their ears in a faint musical hum the sound of
distant bells ringing a joyful and clangorous peal.