steadying himself on the coal, could command a view of the line behind
them for a long distance.
Presently he called out, "I can see it clearly now! It is an engine,
on our rails, coming along at a great pace! It looks as if we were
being pursued!"
The miserable Toad, crouching in the coal-dust, tried hard to think of
something to do, with dismal want of success.
"They are gaining on us fast!" cried the engine-driver. "And the
engine is crowded with the queerest lot of people! Men like ancient
warders, waving halberds; policemen in their helmets, waving
truncheons; and shabbily dressed men in pot-hats, obvious and
unmistakable plain-clothes detectives even at this distance, waving
revolvers and walking-sticks; all waving, and all shouting the same
thing--'Stop, stop, stop!'"
Then Toad fell on his knees among the coals, and, raising his clasped
paws in supplication, cried, "Save me, only save me, dear kind Mr.
Engine-driver, and I will confess everything! I am not the simple
washerwoman I seem to be! I have no children waiting for me, innocent
or otherwise! I am a toad--the well-known and popular Mr. Toad, a
landed proprietor; I have just escaped, by my great daring and
cleverness, from a loathsome dungeon into which my enemies had flung
me; and if those fellows on that engine recapture me, it will be
chains and bread-and-water and straw and misery once more for poor,
unhappy, innocent Toad!"
The engine-driver looked down upon him very sternly, and said, "Now
tell the truth; what were you put in prison for?"
"It was nothing very much," said poor Toad, colouring deeply. "I only
borrowed a motor-car while the owners were at lunch; they had no need of
it at the time. I didn't mean to steal it, really; but people--especially
magistrates--take such harsh views of thoughtless and high-spirited
actions."
The engine-driver looked very grave and said, "I fear that you have
been indeed a wicked toad, and by rights I ought to give you up to
offended justice. But you are evidently in sore trouble and distress,
so I will not desert you. I don't hold with motor-cars, for one thing;
and I don't hold with being ordered about by policemen when I'm on my
own engine, for another. And the sight of an animal in tears always
makes me feel queer and soft-hearted. So cheer up, Toad! I'll do my
best, and we may beat them yet!"
They piled on more coals, shovelling furiously; the furnace roared,
the sparks flew, the engine leapt and swung, but still their pursuers
slowly gained. The engine-driver, with a sigh, wiped his brow with a
handful of cotton-waste, and said, "I'm afraid it's no good, Toad. You
see, they are running light, and they have the better engine. There's
just one thing left for us to do, and it's your only chance, so attend
very carefully to what I tell you. A short way ahead of us is a long
tunnel, and on the other side of that the line passes through a thick
wood. Now, I will put on all the speed I can while we are running
through the tunnel, but the other fellows will slow down a bit,
naturally, for fear of an accident. When we are through, I will shut
off steam and put on brakes as hard as I can, and the moment it's safe
to do so you must jump and hide in the wood, before they get through
the tunnel and see you. Then I will go full speed ahead again, and
they can chase me if they like, for as long as they like, and as far
as they like. Now mind and be ready to jump when I tell you!"
They piled on more coals, and the train shot into the tunnel, and the
engine rushed and roared and rattled, till at last they shot out at
the other end into fresh air and the peaceful moonlight, and saw the
wood lying dark and helpful upon either side of the line. The driver
shut off steam and put on brakes, the Toad got down on the step, and
as the train slowed down to almost a walking pace he heard the driver
call out, "Now, jump!"
Toad jumped, rolled down a short embankment, picked himself up unhurt,
scrambled into the wood and hid.
Peeping out, he saw his train get up speed again and disappear at a
great pace. Then out of the tunnel burst the pursuing engine, roaring
and whistling, her motley crew waving their various weapons and
shouting, "Stop! stop! stop!" When they were past, the Toad had a
hearty laugh--for the first time since he was thrown into prison.
But he soon stopped laughing when he came to consider that it was now
very late and dark and cold, and he was in an unknown wood, with no
money and no chance of supper, and still far from friends and home;
and the dead silence of everything, after the roar and rattle of the
train, was something of a shock. He dared not leave the shelter of the
trees, so he struck into the wood, with the idea of leaving the
railway as far as possible behind him.
After so many weeks within walls, he found the wood strange and
unfriendly and inclined, he thought, to make fun of him. Night-jars,
sounding their mechanical rattle, made him think that the wood was
full of searching warders, closing in on him. An owl, swooping
noiselessly towards him, brushed his shoulder with its wing, making
him jump with the horrid certainty that it was a hand; then flitted
off, moth-like, laughing its low ho! ho! ho! which Toad thought in
very poor taste. Once he met a fox, who stopped, looked him up and
down in a sarcastic sort of way, and said, "Hullo, washerwoman! Half a
pair of socks and a pillow-case short this week! Mind it doesn't occur
again!" and swaggered off, sniggering. Toad looked about for a stone
to throw at him, but could not succeed in finding one, which vexed him
more than anything. At last, cold, hungry, and tired out, he sought
the shelter of a hollow tree, where with branches and dead leaves he
made himself as comfortable a bed as he could, and slept soundly till
the morning.
IX
WAYFARERS ALL
The Water Rat was restless, and he did not exactly know why. To all
appearance the summer's pomp was still at fullest height, and although
in the tilled acres green had given way to gold, though rowans were
reddening, and the woods were dashed here and there with a tawny
fierceness, yet light and warmth and colour were still present in
undiminished measure, clean of any chilly premonitions of the passing
year. But the constant chorus of the orchards and hedges had shrunk to
a casual evensong from a few yet unwearied performers; the robin was
beginning to assert himself once more; and there was a feeling in the
air of change and departure. The cuckoo, of course, had long been
silent; but many another feathered friend, for months a part of the
familiar landscape and its small society, was missing too, and it
seemed that the ranks thinned steadily day by day. Rat, ever observant
of all winged movement, saw that it was taking daily a southing
tendency; and even as he lay in bed at night he thought he could make
out, passing in the darkness overhead, the beat and quiver of
impatient pinions, obedient to the peremptory call.
Nature's Grand Hotel has its Season, like the others. As the guests one
by one pack, pay, and depart, and the seats at the _table-d'hote_ shrink
pitifully at each succeeding meal; as suites of rooms are closed, carpets
taken up, and waiters sent away; those boarders who are staying on, _en
pension_, until the next year's full re-opening, cannot help being
somewhat affected by all these flittings and farewells, this eager
discussion of plans, routes, and fresh quarters, this daily shrinkage in
the stream of comradeship. One gets unsettled, depressed, and inclined to
be querulous. Why this craving for change? Why not stay on quietly here,
like us, and be jolly? You don't know this hotel out of the season, and
what fun we have among ourselves, we fellows who remain and see the whole
interesting year out. All very true, no doubt, the others always reply;
we quite envy you--and some other year perhaps--but just now we have
engagements--and there's the bus at the door--our time is up! So they
depart, with a smile and a nod, and we miss them, and feel resentful. The
Rat was a self-sufficing sort of animal, rooted to the land, and, whoever
went, he stayed; still, he could not help noticing what was in the air,
and feeling some of its influence in his bones.
It was difficult to settle down to anything seriously, with all this
flitting going on. Leaving the water-side, where rushes stood thick
and tall in a stream that was becoming sluggish and low, he wandered
country-wards, crossed a field or two of pasturage already looking
dusty and parched, and thrust into the great sea of wheat, yellow,
wavy, and murmurous, full of quiet motion and small whisperings. Here
he often loved to wander, through the forest of stiff strong stalks
that carried their own golden sky away over his head--a sky that was
always dancing, shimmering, softly talking; or swaying strongly to
the passing wind and recovering itself with a toss and a merry laugh.
Here, too, he had many small friends, a society complete in itself,
leading full and busy lives, but always with a spare moment to gossip,
and exchange news with a visitor. To-day, however, though they were
civil enough, the field-mice and harvest mice seemed pre-occupied.
Many were digging and tunnelling busily; others, gathered together in
small groups, examined plans and drawings of small flats, stated to be
desirable and compact, and situated conveniently near the Stores. Some
were hauling out dusty trunks and dress-baskets, others were already
elbow-deep packing their belongings; while everywhere piles and
bundles of wheat, oats, barley, beech-mast and nuts, lay about ready
for transport.
"Here's old Ratty!" they cried as soon as they saw him. "Come and bear
a hand, Rat, and don't stand about idle!"
"What sort of games are you up to?" said the Water Rat severely. "You
know it isn't time to be thinking of winter quarters yet, by a long
way!"
"O yes, we know that," explained a field-mouse rather shamefacedly;
"but it's always as well to be in good time, isn't it? We really
_must_ get all the furniture and baggage and stores moved out of this
before those horrid machines begin clicking round the fields; and
then, you know, the best flats get picked up so quickly nowadays, and
if you're late you have to put up with _anything_; and they want such
a lot of doing up, too, before they're fit to move into. Of course,
we're early, we know that; but we're only just making a start."
"O, bother _starts_," said the Rat. "It's a splendid day. Come for a
row, or a stroll along the hedges, or a picnic in the woods, or
something."
"Well, I _think_ not _to-day_, thank you," replied the field-mouse
hurriedly. "Perhaps some _other_ day--when we've more _time_--"
The Rat, with a snort of contempt, swung round to go, tripped over a
hat-box, and fell, with undignified remarks.
"If people would be more careful," said a field-mouse rather stiffly,
"and look where they're going, people wouldn't hurt themselves--and
forget themselves. Mind that hold-all, Rat! You'd better sit down
somewhere. In an hour or two we may be more free to attend to you."
"You won't be 'free' as you call it, much this side of Christmas, I
can see that," retorted the Rat grumpily, as he picked his way out of
the field.
He returned somewhat despondently to his river again--his faithful,
steady-going old river, which never packed up, flitted, or went into
winter quarters.
In the osiers which fringed the bank he spied a swallow sitting.
Presently it was joined by another, and then by a third; and the
birds, fidgeting restlessly on their bough, talked together earnestly
and low.
"What, _already_," said the Rat, strolling up to them. "What's the
hurry? I call it simply ridiculous."
"O, we're not off yet, if that's what you mean," replied the first
swallow. "We're only making plans and arranging things. Talking it
over, you know--what route we're taking this year, and where we'll
stop, and so on. That's half the fun!"
"Fun?" said the Rat; "now that's just what I don't understand. If
you've _got_ to leave this pleasant place, and your friends who will
miss you, and your snug homes that you've just settled into, why, when
the hour strikes I've no doubt you'll go bravely, and face all the
trouble and discomfort and change and newness, and make believe that
you're not very unhappy. But to want to talk about it, or even think
about it, till you really need--"
"No, you don't understand, naturally," said the second swallow.
"First, we feel it stirring within us, a sweet unrest; then back come
the recollections one by one, like homing pigeons. They flutter
through our dreams at night, they fly with us in our wheelings and
circlings by day. We hunger to inquire of each other, to compare notes
and assure ourselves that it was all really true, as one by one the
scents and sounds and names of long-forgotten places come gradually
back and beckon to us."
"Couldn't you stop on for just this year?" suggested the Water Rat,
wistfully. "We'll all do our best to make you feel at home. You've no
idea what good times we have here, while you are far away."
"I tried 'stopping on' one year," said the third swallow. "I had grown
so fond of the place that when the time came I hung back and let the
others go on without me. For a few weeks it was all well enough, but
afterwards, O the weary length of the nights! The shivering, sunless
days! The air so clammy and chill, and not an insect in an acre of it!
No, it was no good; my courage broke down, and one cold, stormy night
I took wing, flying well inland on account of the strong easterly
gales. It was snowing hard as I beat through the passes of the great
mountains, and I had a stiff fight to win through; but never shall I
forget the blissful feeling of the hot sun again on my back as I sped
down to the lakes that lay so blue and placid below me, and the taste
of my first fat insect! The past was like a bad dream; the future was
all happy holiday as I moved southwards week by week, easily, lazily,
lingering as long as I dared, but always heeding the call! No, I had
had my warning; never again did I think of disobedience."
"Ah, yes, the call of the South, of the South!" twittered the other
two dreamily. "Its songs, its hues, its radiant air! O, do you
remember--" and, forgetting the Rat, they slid into passionate
reminiscence, while he listened fascinated, and his heart burned
within him. In himself, too, he knew that it was vibrating at last,
that chord hitherto dormant and unsuspected. The mere chatter of these
southern-bound birds, their pale and second-hand reports, had yet
power to awaken this wild new sensation and thrill him through and
through with it; what would one moment of the real thing work in
him--one passionate touch of the real southern sun, one waft of the
authentic odour? With closed eyes he dared to dream a moment in full
abandonment, and when he looked again the river seemed steely and
chill, the green fields grey and lightless. Then his loyal heart
seemed to cry out on his weaker self for its treachery.
"Why do you ever come back, then, at all?" he demanded of the swallows
jealously. "What do you find to attract you in this poor drab little
country?"
"And do you think," said the first swallow, "that the other call is
not for us too, in its due season? The call of lush meadow-grass, wet
orchards, warm, insect-haunted ponds, of browsing cattle, of
haymaking, and all the farm-buildings clustering round the House of
the perfect Eaves?"
"Do you suppose," asked the second one, "that you are the only living
thing that craves with a hungry longing to hear the cuckoo's note
again?"
"In due time," said the third, "we shall be home-sick once more for
quiet water-lilies swaying on the surface of an English stream. But
to-day all that seems pale and thin and very far away. Just now our
blood dances to other music."
They fell a-twittering among themselves once more, and this time
their intoxicating babble was of violet seas, tawny sands, and
lizard-haunted walls.
Restlessly the Rat wandered off once more, climbed the slope that rose
gently from the north bank of the river, and lay looking out towards
the great ring of Downs that barred his vision further southwards--his
simple horizon hitherto, his Mountains of the Moon, his limit behind
which lay nothing he had cared to see or to know. To-day, to him
gazing South with a new-born need stirring in his heart, the clear sky
over their long low outline seemed to pulsate with promise; to-day,
the unseen was everything, the unknown the only real fact of life. On
this side of the hills was now the real blank, on the other lay the
crowded and coloured panorama that his inner eye was seeing so
clearly. What seas lay beyond, green, leaping, and crested! What
sun-bathed coasts, along which the white villas glittered against the
olive woods! What quiet harbours, thronged with gallant shipping bound
for purple islands of wine and spice, islands set low in languorous
waters!
He rose and descended river-wards once more; then changed his mind and
sought the side of the dusty lane. There, lying half-buried in the
thick, cool under-hedge tangle that bordered it, he could muse on the
metalled road and all the wondrous world that it led to; on all the
wayfarers, too, that might have trodden it, and the fortunes and
adventures they had gone to seek or found unseeking--out there,
beyond--beyond!
Footsteps fell on his ear, and the figure of one that walked somewhat
wearily came into view; and he saw that it was a Rat, and a very dusty
one. The wayfarer, as he reached him, saluted with a gesture of
courtesy that had something foreign about it--hesitated a moment--then
with a pleasant smile turned from the track and sat down by his side
in the cool herbage. He seemed tired, and the Rat let him rest
unquestioned, understanding something of what was in his thoughts;
knowing, too, the value all animals attach at times to mere silent
companionship, when the weary muscles slacken and the mind marks time.
The wayfarer was lean and keen-featured, and somewhat bowed at the
shoulders; his paws were thin and long, his eyes much wrinkled at the
corners, and he wore small gold ear rings in his neatly-set well-shaped
ears. His knitted jersey was of a faded blue, his breeches, patched and
stained, were based on a blue foundation, and his small belongings that
he carried were tied up in a blue cotton handkerchief.
When he had rested awhile the stranger sighed, snuffed the air, and
looked about him.
"That was clover, that warm whiff on the breeze," he remarked; "and
those are cows we hear cropping the grass behind us and blowing softly
between mouthfuls. There is a sound of distant reapers, and yonder
rises a blue line of cottage smoke against the woodland. The river
runs somewhere close by, for I hear the call of a moorhen, and I see
by your build that you're a freshwater mariner. Everything seems
asleep, and yet going on all the time. It is a goodly life that you
lead, friend; no doubt the best in the world, if only you are strong
enough to lead it!"
"Yes, it's _the_ life, the only life, to live," responded the Water
Rat dreamily, and without his usual whole-hearted conviction.
"I did not say exactly that," replied the stranger cautiously; "but no
doubt it's the best. I've tried it, and I know. And because I've just
tried it--six months of it--and know it's the best, here am I,
footsore and hungry, tramping away from it, tramping southwards,
following the old call, back to the old life, _the_ life which is mine
and which will not let me go."
"Is this, then, yet another of them?" mused the Rat. "And where have
you just come from?" he asked. He hardly dared to ask where he was
bound for; he seemed to know the answer only too well.
"Nice little farm," replied the wayfarer, briefly. "Upalong in that
direction--" he nodded northwards. "Never mind about it. I had
everything I could want--everything I had any right to expect of life,
and more; and here I am! Glad to be here all the same, though, glad
to be here! So many miles further on the road, so many hours nearer to
my heart's desire!"
His shining eyes held fast to the horizon, and he seemed to be
listening for some sound that was wanting from that inland acreage,
vocal as it was with the cheerful music of pasturage and farmyard.
"You are not one of _us_," said the Water Rat, "nor yet a farmer; nor
even, I should judge, of this country."
"Right," replied the stranger. "I'm a seafaring rat, I am, and the
port I originally hail from is Constantinople, though I'm a sort of a
foreigner there too, in a manner of speaking. You will have heard of
Constantinople, friend? A fair city and an ancient and glorious one.
And you may have heard too, of Sigurd, King of Norway, and how he
sailed thither with sixty ships, and how he and his men rode up
through streets all canopied in their honour with purple and gold; and
how the Emperor and Empress came down and banqueted with him on
board his ship. When Sigurd returned home, many of his Northmen
remained behind and entered the Emperor's body-guard, and my ancestor,
a Norwegian born, stayed behind too, with the ships that Sigurd gave
the Emperor. Seafarers we have ever been, and no wonder; as for me,
the city of my birth is no more my home than any pleasant port between
there and the London River. I know them all, and they know me. Set me
down on any of their quays or foreshores, and I am home again."
"I suppose you go great voyages," said the Water Rat with growing
interest. "Months and months out of sight of land, and provisions
running short, and allowanced as to water, and your mind communing
with the mighty ocean, and all that sort of thing?"
"By no means," said the Sea Rat frankly. "Such a life as you describe
would not suit me at all. I'm in the coasting trade, and rarely out of
sight of land. It's the jolly times on shore that appeal to me, as
much as any seafaring. O, those southern seaports! The smell of them,
the riding-lights at night, the glamour!"
"Well, perhaps you have chosen the better way," said the Water Rat,
but rather doubtfully. "Tell me something of your coasting, then, if
you have a mind to, and what sort of harvest an animal of spirit might
hope to bring home from it to warm his latter days with gallant
memories by the fireside; for my life, I confess to you, feels to me
to-day somewhat narrow and circumscribed."
"My last voyage," began the Sea Rat, "that landed me eventually in
this country, bound with high hopes for my inland farm, will serve as
a good example of any of them, and, indeed, as an epitome of my
highly-coloured life. Family troubles, as usual, began it. The
domestic storm-cone was hoisted, and I shipped myself on board a small
trading vessel bound from Constantinople, by classic seas whose every
wave throbs with a deathless memory, to the Grecian Islands and the
Levant. Those were golden days and balmy nights! In and out of harbour
all the time--old friends everywhere--sleeping in some cool temple or
ruined cistern during the heat of the day--feasting and song after
sundown, under great stars set in a velvet sky! Thence we turned and
coasted up the Adriatic, its shores swimming in an atmosphere of
amber, rose, and aquamarine; we lay in wide landlocked harbours, we
roamed through ancient and noble cities, until at last one morning, as
the sun rose royally behind us, we rode into Venice down a path of
gold. O, Venice is a fine city, wherein a rat can wander at his ease
and take his pleasure! Or, when weary of wandering, can sit at the
edge of the Grand Canal at night, feasting with his friends, when the
air is full of music and the sky full of stars, and the lights flash
and shimmer on the polished steel prows of the swaying gondolas,
packed so that you could walk across the canal on them from side to
side! And then the food--do you like shell-fish? Well, well, we won't
linger over that now."
He was silent for a time; and the Water Rat, silent too and enthralled,
floated on dream-canals and heard a phantom song pealing high between
vaporous grey wave-lapped walls.