THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS - IX. WAYFARERS ALL

THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS

By Kenneth Grahame

Author Of “The Golden Age,” “Dream Days,” Etc.

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. Today, however, though they were civil enough, the field-mice
and harvest-mice seemed preoccupied. 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 odor? 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 southward, 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 land-locked 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 shellfish? 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.

‘Southwards we sailed again at last,’ continued the Sea Rat, ‘coasting
down the Italian shore, till finally we made Palermo, and there I
quitted for a long, happy spell on shore. I never stick too long to one
ship; one gets narrow-minded and prejudiced. Besides, Sicily is one of
my happy hunting-grounds. I know everybody there, and their ways just
suit me. I spent many jolly weeks in the island, staying with friends up
country. When I grew restless again I took advantage of a ship that was
trading to Sardinia and Corsica; and very glad I was to feel the fresh
breeze and the sea-spray in my face once more.’

‘But isn’t it very hot and stuffy, down in the--hold, I think you call
it?’ asked the Water Rat.

The seafarer looked at him with the suspicion of a wink. ‘I’m an old
hand,’ he remarked with much simplicity. ‘The captain’s cabin’s good
enough for me.’

‘It’s a hard life, by all accounts,’ murmured the Rat, sunk in deep
thought.

‘For the crew it is,’ replied the seafarer gravely, again with the ghost
of a wink.

‘From Corsica,’ he went on, ‘I made use of a ship that was taking wine
to the mainland. We made Alassio in the evening, lay to, hauled up our
wine-casks, and hove them overboard, tied one to the other by a long
line. Then the crew took to the boats and rowed shorewards, singing as
they went, and drawing after them the long bobbing procession of casks,
like a mile of porpoises. On the sands they had horses waiting, which
dragged the casks up the steep street of the little town with a fine
rush and clatter and scramble. When the last cask was in, we went and
refreshed and rested, and sat late into the night, drinking with our
friends, and next morning I took to the great olive-woods for a spell
and a rest. For now I had done with islands for the time, and ports and
shipping were plentiful; so I led a lazy life among the peasants, lying
and watching them work, or stretched high on the hillside with the blue
Mediterranean far below me. And so at length, by easy stages, and partly
on foot, partly by sea, to Marseilles, and the meeting of old shipmates,
and the visiting of great ocean-bound vessels, and feasting once
more. Talk of shell-fish! Why, sometimes I dream of the shell-fish of
Marseilles, and wake up crying!’

‘That reminds me,’ said the polite Water Rat; ‘you happened to mention
that you were hungry, and I ought to have spoken earlier. Of course, you
will stop and take your midday meal with me? My hole is close by; it is
some time past noon, and you are very welcome to whatever there is.’

‘Now I call that kind and brotherly of you,’ said the Sea Rat. ‘I was
indeed hungry when I sat down, and ever since I inadvertently happened
to mention shell-fish, my pangs have been extreme. But couldn’t you
fetch it along out here? I am none too fond of going under hatches,
unless I’m obliged to; and then, while we eat, I could tell you more
concerning my voyages and the pleasant life I lead--at least, it is very
pleasant to me, and by your attention I judge it commends itself to you;
whereas if we go indoors it is a hundred to one that I shall presently
fall asleep.’

‘That is indeed an excellent suggestion,’ said the Water Rat, and
hurried off home. There he got out the luncheon-basket and packed
a simple meal, in which, remembering the stranger’s origin and
preferences, he took care to include a yard of long French bread, a
sausage out of which the garlic sang, some cheese which lay down
and cried, and a long-necked straw-covered flask wherein lay bottled
sunshine shed and garnered on far Southern slopes. Thus laden, he
returned with all speed, and blushed for pleasure at the old seaman’s
commendations of his taste and judgment, as together they unpacked the
basket and laid out the contents on the grass by the roadside.

The Sea Rat, as soon as his hunger was somewhat assuaged, continued the
history of his latest voyage, conducting his simple hearer from port to
port of Spain, landing him at Lisbon, Oporto, and Bordeaux, introducing
him to the pleasant harbours of Cornwall and Devon, and so up the
Channel to that final quayside, where, landing after winds long
contrary, storm-driven and weather-beaten, he had caught the first
magical hints and heraldings of another Spring, and, fired by these, had
sped on a long tramp inland, hungry for the experiment of life on some
quiet farmstead, very far from the weary beating of any sea.

Spell-bound and quivering with excitement, the Water Rat followed
the Adventurer league by league, over stormy bays, through crowded
roadsteads, across harbour bars on a racing tide, up winding rivers that
hid their busy little towns round a sudden turn; and left him with a
regretful sigh planted at his dull inland farm, about which he desired
to hear nothing.

By this time their meal was over, and the Seafarer, refreshed and
strengthened, his voice more vibrant, his eye lit with a brightness that
seemed caught from some far-away sea-beacon, filled his glass with the
red and glowing vintage of the South, and, leaning towards the Water
Rat, compelled his gaze and held him, body and soul, while he talked.
Those eyes were of the changing foam-streaked grey-green of leaping
Northern seas; in the glass shone a hot ruby that seemed the very
heart of the South, beating for him who had courage to respond to its
pulsation. The twin lights, the shifting grey and the steadfast red,
mastered the Water Rat and held him bound, fascinated, powerless. The
quiet world outside their rays receded far away and ceased to be. And
the talk, the wonderful talk flowed on--or was it speech entirely,
or did it pass at times into song--chanty of the sailors weighing the
dripping anchor, sonorous hum of the shrouds in a tearing North-Easter,
ballad of the fisherman hauling his nets at sundown against an apricot
sky, chords of guitar and mandoline from gondola or caique? Did it
change into the cry of the wind, plaintive at first, angrily shrill as
it freshened, rising to a tearing whistle, sinking to a musical trickle
of air from the leech of the bellying sail? All these sounds the
spell-bound listener seemed to hear, and with them the hungry complaint
of the gulls and the sea-mews, the soft thunder of the breaking wave,
the cry of the protesting shingle. Back into speech again it passed, and
with beating heart he was following the adventures of a dozen seaports,
the fights, the escapes, the rallies, the comradeships, the gallant
undertakings; or he searched islands for treasure, fished in still
lagoons and dozed day-long on warm white sand. Of deep-sea fishings he
heard tell, and mighty silver gatherings of the mile-long net; of sudden
perils, noise of breakers on a moonless night, or the tall bows of
the great liner taking shape overhead through the fog; of the merry
home-coming, the headland rounded, the harbour lights opened out;
the groups seen dimly on the quay, the cheery hail, the splash of the
hawser; the trudge up the steep little street towards the comforting
glow of red-curtained windows.

Lastly, in his waking dream it seemed to him that the Adventurer had
risen to his feet, but was still speaking, still holding him fast with
his sea-grey eyes.

‘And now,’ he was softly saying, ‘I take to the road again, holding on
southwestwards for many a long and dusty day; till at last I reach the
little grey sea town I know so well, that clings along one steep side of
the harbour. There through dark doorways you look down flights of stone
steps, overhung by great pink tufts of valerian and ending in a patch
of sparkling blue water. The little boats that lie tethered to the
rings and stanchions of the old sea-wall are gaily painted as those
I clambered in and out of in my own childhood; the salmon leap on the
flood tide, schools of mackerel flash and play past quay-sides and
foreshores, and by the windows the great vessels glide, night and day,
up to their moorings or forth to the open sea. There, sooner or later,
the ships of all seafaring nations arrive; and there, at its destined
hour, the ship of my choice will let go its anchor. I shall take my
time, I shall tarry and bide, till at last the right one lies waiting
for me, warped out into midstream, loaded low, her bowsprit pointing
down harbour. I shall slip on board, by boat or along hawser; and then
one morning I shall wake to the song and tramp of the sailors, the clink
of the capstan, and the rattle of the anchor-chain coming merrily in.
We shall break out the jib and the foresail, the white houses on the
harbour side will glide slowly past us as she gathers steering-way, and
the voyage will have begun! As she forges towards the headland she will
clothe herself with canvas; and then, once outside, the sounding slap of
great green seas as she heels to the wind, pointing South!

‘And you, you will come too, young brother; for the days pass, and never
return, and the South still waits for you. Take the Adventure, heed the
call, now ere the irrevocable moment passes!’ ‘Tis but a banging of the
door behind you, a blithesome step forward, and you are out of the old
life and into the new! Then some day, some day long hence, jog home here
if you will, when the cup has been drained and the play has been played,
and sit down by your quiet river with a store of goodly memories for
company. You can easily overtake me on the road, for you are young, and
I am ageing and go softly. I will linger, and look back; and at last I
will surely see you coming, eager and light-hearted, with all the South
in your face!’

The voice died away and ceased as an insect’s tiny trumpet dwindles
swiftly into silence; and the Water Rat, paralysed and staring, saw at
last but a distant speck on the white surface of the road.

Mechanically he rose and proceeded to repack the luncheon-basket,
carefully and without haste. Mechanically he returned home, gathered
together a few small necessaries and special treasures he was fond of,
and put them in a satchel; acting with slow deliberation, moving about
the room like a sleep-walker; listening ever with parted lips. He swung
the satchel over his shoulder, carefully selected a stout stick for his
wayfaring, and with no haste, but with no hesitation at all, he stepped
across the threshold just as the Mole appeared at the door.

‘Why, where are you off to, Ratty?’ asked the Mole in great surprise,
grasping him by the arm.

‘Going South, with the rest of them,’ murmured the Rat in a dreamy
monotone, never looking at him. ‘Seawards first and then on shipboard,
and so to the shores that are calling me!’

He pressed resolutely forward, still without haste, but with dogged
fixity of purpose; but the Mole, now thoroughly alarmed, placed himself
in front of him, and looking into his eyes saw that they were glazed and
set and turned a streaked and shifting grey--not his friend’s eyes, but
the eyes of some other animal! Grappling with him strongly he dragged
him inside, threw him down, and held him.

The Rat struggled desperately for a few moments, and then his strength
seemed suddenly to leave him, and he lay still and exhausted, with
closed eyes, trembling. Presently the Mole assisted him to rise and
placed him in a chair, where he sat collapsed and shrunken into
himself, his body shaken by a violent shivering, passing in time into
an hysterical fit of dry sobbing. Mole made the door fast, threw the
satchel into a drawer and locked it, and sat down quietly on the table
by his friend, waiting for the strange seizure to pass. Gradually the
Rat sank into a troubled doze, broken by starts and confused murmurings
of things strange and wild and foreign to the unenlightened Mole; and
from that he passed into a deep slumber.

Very anxious in mind, the Mole left him for a time and busied himself
with household matters; and it was getting dark when he returned to the
parlour and found the Rat where he had left him, wide awake indeed, but
listless, silent, and dejected. He took one hasty glance at his eyes;
found them, to his great gratification, clear and dark and brown again
as before; and then sat down and tried to cheer him up and help him to
relate what had happened to him.

Poor Ratty did his best, by degrees, to explain things; but how could
he put into cold words what had mostly been suggestion? How recall, for
another’s benefit, the haunting sea voices that had sung to him,
how reproduce at second-hand the magic of the Seafarer’s hundred
reminiscences? Even to himself, now the spell was broken and the glamour
gone, he found it difficult to account for what had seemed, some hours
ago, the inevitable and only thing. It is not surprising, then, that he
failed to convey to the Mole any clear idea of what he had been through
that day.

To the Mole this much was plain: the fit, or attack, had passed
away, and had left him sane again, though shaken and cast down by the
reaction. But he seemed to have lost all interest for the time in the
things that went to make up his daily life, as well as in all pleasant
forecastings of the altered days and doings that the changing season was
surely bringing.

Casually, then, and with seeming indifference, the Mole turned his talk
to the harvest that was being gathered in, the towering wagons and their
straining teams, the growing ricks, and the large moon rising over bare
acres dotted with sheaves. He talked of the reddening apples around, of
the browning nuts, of jams and preserves and the distilling of cordials;
till by easy stages such as these he reached midwinter, its hearty joys
and its snug home life, and then he became simply lyrical.

By degrees the Rat began to sit up and to join in. His dull eye
brightened, and he lost some of his listening air.

Presently the tactful Mole slipped away and returned with a pencil and
a few half-sheets of paper, which he placed on the table at his friend’s
elbow.

‘It’s quite a long time since you did any poetry,’ he remarked. ‘You
might have a try at it this evening, instead of--well, brooding over
things so much. I’ve an idea that you’ll feel a lot better when you’ve
got something jotted down--if it’s only just the rhymes.’

The Rat pushed the paper away from him wearily, but the discreet Mole
took occasion to leave the room, and when he peeped in again some
time later, the Rat was absorbed and deaf to the world; alternately
scribbling and sucking the top of his pencil. It is true that he sucked
a good deal more than he scribbled; but it was joy to the Mole to know
that the cure had at least begun.

Posted in: ***English Literature***