THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS - I. THE RIVER BANK

I. THE RIVER BANK

The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his
little home. First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and
steps and chairs, with a brush and a pail of whitewash; till he had dust
in his throat and eyes, and splashes of whitewash all over his black
fur, and an aching back and weary arms. Spring was moving in the air
above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark
and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing.
It was small wonder, then, that he suddenly flung down his brush on the
floor, said ‘Bother!’ and ‘O blow!’ and also ‘Hang spring-cleaning!’
and bolted out of the house without even waiting to put on his coat.
Something up above was calling him imperiously, and he made for
the steep little tunnel which answered in his case to the gavelled
carriage-drive owned by animals whose residences are nearer to the sun
and air. So he scraped and scratched and scrabbled and scrooged and
then he scrooged again and scrabbled and scratched and scraped, working
busily with his little paws and muttering to himself, ‘Up we go! Up we
go!’ till at last, pop! his snout came out into the sunlight, and he
found himself rolling in the warm grass of a great meadow.

‘This is fine!’ he said to himself. ‘This is better than whitewashing!’
The sunshine struck hot on his fur, soft breezes caressed his heated
brow, and after the seclusion of the cellarage he had lived in so long
the carol of happy birds fell on his dulled hearing almost like a shout.
Jumping off all his four legs at once, in the joy of living and the
delight of spring without its cleaning, he pursued his way across the
meadow till he reached the hedge on the further side.

‘Hold up!’ said an elderly rabbit at the gap. ‘Sixpence for the
privilege of passing by the private road!’ He was bowled over in an
instant by the impatient and contemptuous Mole, who trotted along the
side of the hedge chaffing the other rabbits as they peeped hurriedly
from their holes to see what the row was about. ‘Onion-sauce!
Onion-sauce!’ he remarked jeeringly, and was gone before they could
think of a thoroughly satisfactory reply. Then they all started
grumbling at each other. ‘How STUPID you are! Why didn’t you tell
him----’ ‘Well, why didn’t YOU say----’ ‘You might have reminded
him----’ and so on, in the usual way; but, of course, it was then much
too late, as is always the case.

It all seemed too good to be true. Hither and thither through the
meadows he rambled busily, along the hedgerows, across the
copses, finding everywhere birds building, flowers budding, leaves
thrusting--everything happy, and progressive, and occupied. And instead
of having an uneasy conscience pricking him and whispering ‘whitewash!’
he somehow could only feel how jolly it was to be the only idle dog
among all these busy citizens. After all, the best part of a holiday
is perhaps not so much to be resting yourself, as to see all the other
fellows busy working.

He thought his happiness was complete when, as he meandered aimlessly
along, suddenly he stood by the edge of a full-fed river. Never in
his life had he seen a river before--this sleek, sinuous, full-bodied
animal, chasing and chuckling, gripping things with a gurgle and
leaving them with a laugh, to fling itself on fresh playmates that shook
themselves free, and were caught and held again. All was a-shake and
a-shiver--glints and gleams and sparkles, rustle and swirl, chatter and
bubble. The Mole was bewitched, entranced, fascinated. By the side of
the river he trotted as one trots, when very small, by the side of a man
who holds one spell-bound by exciting stories; and when tired at
last, he sat on the bank, while the river still chattered on to him,
a babbling procession of the best stories in the world, sent from the
heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea.

As he sat on the grass and looked across the river, a dark hole in the
bank opposite, just above the water’s edge, caught his eye, and dreamily
he fell to considering what a nice snug dwelling-place it would make for
an animal with few wants and fond of a bijou riverside residence, above
flood level and remote from noise and dust. As he gazed, something
bright and small seemed to twinkle down in the heart of it, vanished,
then twinkled once more like a tiny star. But it could hardly be a star
in such an unlikely situation; and it was too glittering and small for a
glow-worm. Then, as he looked, it winked at him, and so declared itself
to be an eye; and a small face began gradually to grow up round it, like
a frame round a picture.

A brown little face, with whiskers.

A grave round face, with the same twinkle in its eye that had first
attracted his notice.

Small neat ears and thick silky hair.

It was the Water Rat!

Then the two animals stood and regarded each other cautiously.

‘Hullo, Mole!’ said the Water Rat.

‘Hullo, Rat!’ said the Mole.

‘Would you like to come over?’ enquired the Rat presently.

‘Oh, its all very well to TALK,’ said the Mole, rather pettishly, he
being new to a river and riverside life and its ways.

The Rat said nothing, but stooped and unfastened a rope and hauled
on it; then lightly stepped into a little boat which the Mole had not
observed. It was painted blue outside and white within, and was just the
size for two animals; and the Mole’s whole heart went out to it at once,
even though he did not yet fully understand its uses.

The Rat sculled smartly across and made fast. Then he held up his
forepaw as the Mole stepped gingerly down. ‘Lean on that!’ he said.
‘Now then, step lively!’ and the Mole to his surprise and rapture found
himself actually seated in the stern of a real boat.

‘This has been a wonderful day!’ said he, as the Rat shoved off and took
to the sculls again. ‘Do you know, I’ve never been in a boat before in
all my life.’

‘What?’ cried the Rat, open-mouthed: ‘Never been in a--you never--well
I--what have you been doing, then?’

‘Is it so nice as all that?’ asked the Mole shyly, though he was quite
prepared to believe it as he leant back in his seat and surveyed the
cushions, the oars, the rowlocks, and all the fascinating fittings, and
felt the boat sway lightly under him.

‘Nice? It’s the ONLY thing,’ said the Water Rat solemnly, as he
leant forward for his stroke. ‘Believe me, my young friend, there is
NOTHING--absolute nothing--half so much worth doing as simply
messing about in boats. Simply messing,’ he went on dreamily:
‘messing--about--in--boats; messing----’

‘Look ahead, Rat!’ cried the Mole suddenly.

It was too late. The boat struck the bank full tilt. The dreamer, the
joyous oarsman, lay on his back at the bottom of the boat, his heels in
the air.

‘--about in boats--or WITH boats,’ the Rat went on composedly, picking
himself up with a pleasant laugh. ‘In or out of ‘em, it doesn’t matter.
Nothing seems really to matter, that’s the charm of it. Whether you get
away, or whether you don’t; whether you arrive at your destination or
whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at
all, you’re always busy, and you never do anything in particular; and
when you’ve done it there’s always something else to do, and you can do
it if you like, but you’d much better not. Look here! If you’ve really
nothing else on hand this morning, supposing we drop down the river
together, and have a long day of it?’

The Mole waggled his toes from sheer happiness, spread his chest with
a sigh of full contentment, and leaned back blissfully into the soft
cushions. ‘WHAT a day I’m having!’ he said. ‘Let us start at once!’

‘Hold hard a minute, then!’ said the Rat. He looped the painter through
a ring in his landing-stage, climbed up into his hole above, and after
a short interval reappeared staggering under a fat, wicker
luncheon-basket.

‘Shove that under your feet,’ he observed to the Mole, as he passed
it down into the boat. Then he untied the painter and took the sculls
again.

‘What’s inside it?’ asked the Mole, wriggling with curiosity.

‘There’s cold chicken inside it,’ replied the Rat briefly;
‘coldtonguecoldhamcoldbeefpickledgherkinssaladfrenchrollscresssan-
dwichespottedmeatgingerbeerlemonadesodawater----’

‘O stop, stop,’ cried the Mole in ecstacies: ‘This is too much!’

‘Do you really think so?’ enquired the Rat seriously. ‘It’s only what I
always take on these little excursions; and the other animals are always
telling me that I’m a mean beast and cut it VERY fine!’

The Mole never heard a word he was saying. Absorbed in the new life he
was entering upon, intoxicated with the sparkle, the ripple, the scents
and the sounds and the sunlight, he trailed a paw in the water and
dreamed long waking dreams. The Water Rat, like the good little fellow
he was, sculled steadily on and forebore to disturb him.

‘I like your clothes awfully, old chap,’ he remarked after some half
an hour or so had passed. ‘I’m going to get a black velvet smoking-suit
myself some day, as soon as I can afford it.’

‘I beg your pardon,’ said the Mole, pulling himself together with an
effort. ‘You must think me very rude; but all this is so new to me.
So--this--is--a--River!’

‘THE River,’ corrected the Rat.

‘And you really live by the river? What a jolly life!’

‘By it and with it and on it and in it,’ said the Rat. ‘It’s brother
and sister to me, and aunts, and company, and food and drink, and
(naturally) washing. It’s my world, and I don’t want any other. What it
hasn’t got is not worth having, and what it doesn’t know is not worth
knowing. Lord! the times we’ve had together! Whether in winter or
summer, spring or autumn, it’s always got its fun and its excitements.
When the floods are on in February, and my cellars and basement are
brimming with drink that’s no good to me, and the brown water runs by my
best bedroom window; or again when it all drops away and, shows patches
of mud that smells like plum-cake, and the rushes and weed clog the
channels, and I can potter about dry shod over most of the bed of it and
find fresh food to eat, and things careless people have dropped out of
boats!’

‘But isn’t it a bit dull at times?’ the Mole ventured to ask. ‘Just you
and the river, and no one else to pass a word with?’

‘No one else to--well, I mustn’t be hard on you,’ said the Rat with
forbearance. ‘You’re new to it, and of course you don’t know. The bank
is so crowded nowadays that many people are moving away altogether: O
no, it isn’t what it used to be, at all. Otters, kingfishers, dabchicks,
moorhens, all of them about all day long and always wanting you to DO
something--as if a fellow had no business of his own to attend to!’

‘What lies over THERE’ asked the Mole, waving a paw towards a background
of woodland that darkly framed the water-meadows on one side of the
river.

‘That? O, that’s just the Wild Wood,’ said the Rat shortly. ‘We don’t go
there very much, we river-bankers.’

‘Aren’t they--aren’t they very NICE people in there?’ said the Mole, a
trifle nervously.

‘W-e-ll,’ replied the Rat, ‘let me see. The squirrels are all right. AND
the rabbits--some of ‘em, but rabbits are a mixed lot. And then there’s
Badger, of course. He lives right in the heart of it; wouldn’t live
anywhere else, either, if you paid him to do it. Dear old Badger! Nobody
interferes with HIM. They’d better not,’ he added significantly.

‘Why, who SHOULD interfere with him?’ asked the Mole.

‘Well, of course--there--are others,’ explained the Rat in a hesitating
sort of way.

‘Weasels--and stoats--and foxes--and so on. They’re all right in a
way--I’m very good friends with them--pass the time of day when we meet,
and all that--but they break out sometimes, there’s no denying it, and
then--well, you can’t really trust them, and that’s the fact.’

The Mole knew well that it is quite against animal-etiquette to dwell
on possible trouble ahead, or even to allude to it; so he dropped the
subject.

‘And beyond the Wild Wood again?’ he asked: ‘Where it’s all blue
and dim, and one sees what may be hills or perhaps they mayn’t, and
something like the smoke of towns, or is it only cloud-drift?’

‘Beyond the Wild Wood comes the Wide World,’ said the Rat. ‘And that’s
something that doesn’t matter, either to you or me. I’ve never been
there, and I’m never going, nor you either, if you’ve got any sense
at all. Don’t ever refer to it again, please. Now then! Here’s our
backwater at last, where we’re going to lunch.’

Leaving the main stream, they now passed into what seemed at first sight
like a little land-locked lake. Green turf sloped down to either edge,
brown snaky tree-roots gleamed below the surface of the quiet water,
while ahead of them the silvery shoulder and foamy tumble of a weir,
arm-in-arm with a restless dripping mill-wheel, that held up in its
turn a grey-gabled mill-house, filled the air with a soothing murmur
of sound, dull and smothery, yet with little clear voices speaking up
cheerfully out of it at intervals. It was so very beautiful that the
Mole could only hold up both forepaws and gasp, ‘O my! O my! O my!’

The Rat brought the boat alongside the bank, made her fast, helped the
still awkward Mole safely ashore, and swung out the luncheon-basket. The
Mole begged as a favour to be allowed to unpack it all by himself; and
the Rat was very pleased to indulge him, and to sprawl at full length on
the grass and rest, while his excited friend shook out the table-cloth
and spread it, took out all the mysterious packets one by one and
arranged their contents in due order, still gasping, ‘O my! O my!’ at
each fresh revelation. When all was ready, the Rat said, ‘Now, pitch
in, old fellow!’ and the Mole was indeed very glad to obey, for he had
started his spring-cleaning at a very early hour that morning, as people
WILL do, and had not paused for bite or sup; and he had been through a
very great deal since that distant time which now seemed so many days
ago.

‘What are you looking at?’ said the Rat presently, when the edge of
their hunger was somewhat dulled, and the Mole’s eyes were able to
wander off the table-cloth a little.

‘I am looking,’ said the Mole, ‘at a streak of bubbles that I see
travelling along the surface of the water. That is a thing that strikes
me as funny.’

‘Bubbles? Oho!’ said the Rat, and chirruped cheerily in an inviting sort
of way.

A broad glistening muzzle showed itself above the edge of the bank, and
the Otter hauled himself out and shook the water from his coat.

‘Greedy beggars!’ he observed, making for the provender. ‘Why didn’t you
invite me, Ratty?’

‘This was an impromptu affair,’ explained the Rat. ‘By the way--my
friend Mr. Mole.’

‘Proud, I’m sure,’ said the Otter, and the two animals were friends
forthwith.

‘Such a rumpus everywhere!’ continued the Otter. ‘All the world seems
out on the river to-day. I came up this backwater to try and get a
moment’s peace, and then stumble upon you fellows!--At least--I beg
pardon--I don’t exactly mean that, you know.’

There was a rustle behind them, proceeding from a hedge wherein last
year’s leaves still clung thick, and a stripy head, with high shoulders
behind it, peered forth on them.

‘Come on, old Badger!’ shouted the Rat.

The Badger trotted forward a pace or two; then grunted, ‘H’m! Company,’
and turned his back and disappeared from view.

‘That’s JUST the sort of fellow he is!’ observed the disappointed Rat.
‘Simply hates Society! Now we shan’t see any more of him to-day. Well,
tell us, WHO’S out on the river?’

‘Toad’s out, for one,’ replied the Otter. ‘In his brand-new wager-boat;
new togs, new everything!’

The two animals looked at each other and laughed.

‘Once, it was nothing but sailing,’ said the Rat, ‘Then he tired of that
and took to punting. Nothing would please him but to punt all day
and every day, and a nice mess he made of it. Last year it was
house-boating, and we all had to go and stay with him in his house-boat,
and pretend we liked it. He was going to spend the rest of his life in
a house-boat. It’s all the same, whatever he takes up; he gets tired of
it, and starts on something fresh.’

‘Such a good fellow, too,’ remarked the Otter reflectively: ‘But no
stability--especially in a boat!’

From where they sat they could get a glimpse of the main stream across
the island that separated them; and just then a wager-boat flashed into
view, the rower--a short, stout figure--splashing badly and rolling a
good deal, but working his hardest. The Rat stood up and hailed him, but
Toad--for it was he--shook his head and settled sternly to his work.

‘He’ll be out of the boat in a minute if he rolls like that,’ said the
Rat, sitting down again.

‘Of course he will,’ chuckled the Otter. ‘Did I ever tell you that good
story about Toad and the lock-keeper? It happened this way. Toad....’

An errant May-fly swerved unsteadily athwart the current in the
intoxicated fashion affected by young bloods of May-flies seeing life. A
swirl of water and a ‘cloop!’ and the May-fly was visible no more.

Neither was the Otter.

The Mole looked down. The voice was still in his ears, but the turf
whereon he had sprawled was clearly vacant. Not an Otter to be seen, as
far as the distant horizon.

But again there was a streak of bubbles on the surface of the river.

The Rat hummed a tune, and the Mole recollected that animal-etiquette
forbade any sort of comment on the sudden disappearance of one’s friends
at any moment, for any reason or no reason whatever.

‘Well, well,’ said the Rat, ‘I suppose we ought to be moving. I wonder
which of us had better pack the luncheon-basket?’ He did not speak as if
he was frightfully eager for the treat.

‘O, please let me,’ said the Mole. So, of course, the Rat let him.

Packing the basket was not quite such pleasant work as unpacking’ the
basket. It never is. But the Mole was bent on enjoying everything, and
although just when he had got the basket packed and strapped up tightly
he saw a plate staring up at him from the grass, and when the job had
been done again the Rat pointed out a fork which anybody ought to
have seen, and last of all, behold! the mustard pot, which he had been
sitting on without knowing it--still, somehow, the thing got finished at
last, without much loss of temper.

The afternoon sun was getting low as the Rat sculled gently homewards in
a dreamy mood, murmuring poetry-things over to himself, and not paying
much attention to Mole. But the Mole was very full of lunch, and
self-satisfaction, and pride, and already quite at home in a boat (so he
thought) and was getting a bit restless besides: and presently he said,
‘Ratty! Please, _I_ want to row, now!’

The Rat shook his head with a smile. ‘Not yet, my young friend,’ he
said--‘wait till you’ve had a few lessons. It’s not so easy as it
looks.’

The Mole was quiet for a minute or two. But he began to feel more and
more jealous of Rat, sculling so strongly and so easily along, and his
pride began to whisper that he could do it every bit as well. He jumped
up and seized the sculls, so suddenly, that the Rat, who was gazing out
over the water and saying more poetry-things to himself, was taken by
surprise and fell backwards off his seat with his legs in the air for
the second time, while the triumphant Mole took his place and grabbed
the sculls with entire confidence.

‘Stop it, you SILLY ass!’ cried the Rat, from the bottom of the boat.
‘You can’t do it! You’ll have us over!’

The Mole flung his sculls back with a flourish, and made a great dig at
the water. He missed the surface altogether, his legs flew up above
his head, and he found himself lying on the top of the prostrate Rat.
Greatly alarmed, he made a grab at the side of the boat, and the next
moment--Sploosh!

Over went the boat, and he found himself struggling in the river.

O my, how cold the water was, and O, how VERY wet it felt. How it sang
in his ears as he went down, down, down! How bright and welcome the sun
looked as he rose to the surface coughing and spluttering! How black was
his despair when he felt himself sinking again! Then a firm paw gripped
him by the back of his neck. It was the Rat, and he was evidently
laughing--the Mole could FEEL him laughing, right down his arm and
through his paw, and so into his--the Mole’s--neck.

The Rat got hold of a scull and shoved it under the Mole’s arm; then he
did the same by the other side of him and, swimming behind, propelled
the helpless animal to shore, hauled him out, and set him down on the
bank, a squashy, pulpy lump of misery.

When the Rat had rubbed him down a bit, and wrung some of the wet out of
him, he said, ‘Now, then, old fellow! Trot up and down the towing-path
as hard as you can, till you’re warm and dry again, while I dive for the
luncheon-basket.’

So the dismal Mole, wet without and ashamed within, trotted about till
he was fairly dry, while the Rat plunged into the water again, recovered
the boat, righted her and made her fast, fetched his floating
property to shore by degrees, and finally dived successfully for the
luncheon-basket and struggled to land with it.

When all was ready for a start once more, the Mole, limp and dejected,
took his seat in the stern of the boat; and as they set off, he said in
a low voice, broken with emotion, ‘Ratty, my generous friend! I am very
sorry indeed for my foolish and ungrateful conduct. My heart quite fails
me when I think how I might have lost that beautiful luncheon-basket.
Indeed, I have been a complete ass, and I know it. Will you overlook it
this once and forgive me, and let things go on as before?’

‘That’s all right, bless you!’ responded the Rat cheerily. ‘What’s a
little wet to a Water Rat? I’m more in the water than out of it most
days. Don’t you think any more about it; and, look here! I really think
you had better come and stop with me for a little time. It’s very plain
and rough, you know--not like Toad’s house at all--but you haven’t seen
that yet; still, I can make you comfortable. And I’ll teach you to row,
and to swim, and you’ll soon be as handy on the water as any of us.’

The Mole was so touched by his kind manner of speaking that he could
find no voice to answer him; and he had to brush away a tear or two with
the back of his paw. But the Rat kindly looked in another direction, and
presently the Mole’s spirits revived again, and he was even able to give
some straight back-talk to a couple of moorhens who were sniggering to
each other about his bedraggled appearance.

When they got home, the Rat made a bright fire in the parlour, and
planted the Mole in an arm-chair in front of it, having fetched down
a dressing-gown and slippers for him, and told him river stories till
supper-time. Very thrilling stories they were, too, to an earth-dwelling
animal like Mole. Stories about weirs, and sudden floods, and leaping
pike, and steamers that flung hard bottles--at least bottles were
certainly flung, and FROM steamers, so presumably BY them; and about
herons, and how particular they were whom they spoke to; and about
adventures down drains, and night-fishings with Otter, or excursions far
a-field with Badger. Supper was a most cheerful meal; but very shortly
afterwards a terribly sleepy Mole had to be escorted upstairs by his
considerate host, to the best bedroom, where he soon laid his head on
his pillow in great peace and contentment, knowing that his new-found
friend the River was lapping the sill of his window.

This day was only the first of many similar ones for the emancipated
Mole, each of them longer and full of interest as the ripening summer
moved onward. He learnt to swim and to row, and entered into the joy
of running water; and with his ear to the reed-stems he caught, at
intervals, something of what the wind went whispering so constantly
among them.

Posted in: ***English Literature***