Toad Triumphant (28 page)

This solitary saviour was Madame’s son, the Count. Callow and young, foolish but brave, he saw Toad’s plight and did what he felt he must do. Wresting a crook from the nearest bishop, he leapt in front of Toad and uttered the cry that Toad had made on his behalf in
his
moment of doubt and weakness:
“Liberté, monsieur! Fraternité et Liberte’!
Flee, Monsieur Toad, while I fight these cruel men off! Run while you can!”

Toad heard this valiant call to action, and he saw the brave youth who uttered it; and he needed no second thought, nor further encouragement As his fiancée came out onto the terrace, when all attention was upon her and the High Judge, Toad turned and fled as fast as his short legs would carry him.

As he went he hurled off anything that might be an encumbrance to flight: the carnation in his lapel, his morning coat, then his top hat, and finally his cravat, that he might puff and pant more freely as he fled.

Round the side of the Hall he went, past the vast assemblage of motor-cars and broughams gathered there, and straight out of his own front gates, which he reached just as the first hue and cry was heard.

Above him he saw the notice that the Badger had caused to be set up, and knew beyond doubt the truth of what it said, and that his liberty could not last long.

“THERE WILL BE NO SECOND CHANCE!”

Nor could there be, he knew that now, but while he had life he might have hope, and while he felt hope he could strive to recapture liberty!

Thus Toad fled his own wedding, and left the Madame standing, if not at the altar then upon the terrace, which is the next worst thing; and if any there had ever doubted the truth of the expression “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” they needed only to look upon the jilted Madame’s face.

“Monsieur?” she wondered. “Monsieur?!” she wept.

“Monsieur!”
she bellowed, giving chase at once.

Over the Iron Bridge Toad fled and thence into the Wild Wood. No plan had he, no clever means of escape, just the overwhelming desire to escape the eternal bond that marriage to the Madame, worthy though she was, seemed to be.

While behind him, gathering momentum under the Madame’s lead, Toad Hall was in uproar, with constables who had been ushers taking up their batons again. Those among them trained in the handling of hounds and bulldogs, using Toad’s cravat for scent, set off in pursuit of him who in breaching that most holy of promises to a lady had become a fugitive, and a criminal once more.

Hobbling along behind them all, shaking his fist and with his eyes flashing with just anger, was the High Judge, who cried,
“There will be no second chance!”

All night long Toad cowered and shivered in the Wild Wood as the manhunt gradually closed in on him. What fearsome noises he heard in that dark dank place, what horrible eyes and faces within the roots of trees and what reaching crooked arms and claws within their ancient branches!

“O despair, I am done for now!” wept Toad.

Yet when the sun began to rise, Toad arose as well, and the dark fearsome shadows and noises of that place put fear in him no more. What he had seen of matrimony appeared to him to be more fearsome by far than incarceration in the Town Gaol, a trial, and a final and irrevocable sentence. In that was the greater liberty. He turned and made his way back to the Badger’s house and there, with his friends watching sadly he gave himself into the arms of the Law.

To only one present had he any word to say and that was his young friend the Count.

“As these honest men are my witness,” said Toad, pointing to the Senior Bishop, the Commissioner of Police and the High Judge, “I commend you to take a better road than I did. Be good, be kind to others, and think of yourself last of all!”

Then, these worthy sentiments well spoken, Toad was taken into custody placed into a dark and shiny motorcar upon whose doors were painted the words “Town Constabulary”. Then he was taken back to a place he had hoped never to see more — the remotest, most inhospitable dungeon in the Town Castle.

· XII ·

Toad Triumphant

Toad’s return to custody in the Town Castle was not much cheered by the familiar and doleful sight of the gaoler who had been in charge of him two years before.

“Welcome back, sir, I hope you have had a good holiday outside,” he said.

“You go up those stairs,” said one of the gaoler’s young colleagues, feeling that the dazed and miserable Toad might need direction to Reception, where he must have his head shaved and don prison garb.

“It’s all right,” said Toad’s friendly gaoler; “this one’s a regular and knows the way.”

“Will it go so hard with me?” asked Toad later, ensconced in his damp cell, with only a small, high barred window for light, and a few planks of wood for a bed.

“O, they’ll hang you this time, sir, for certain, but in your case, since you’re a gentleman, I’m sure they’ll try to make a good swift job of it.”

Toad wept.

“There, there, sir, don’t be too unhappy. You’ve come in on a Sunday so there’s two slices of bread and dripping for tea instead of just the one.”

“When will my trial come up?”

“Tomorrow morning, first thing, Mr Toad. Yours is a special, I’m told, and they want to get it over and done with.”

“Does it matter what I plead?”

“Not from where you sit, no sir, but it’ll go hard with you if you plead guilty —”

“But I
am
guilty.”

“Well, so you may be; most of us are. But the lawyers like to have something to argue about so they can earn their fees by proving what they already know You’d be best to say —”

“I am guilty,” said Toad obstinately “and that’s what I shall plead.”

Toad’s trial proved to be complex and involved, since the crimes included insult and injury, in person and in mind, to representatives of Justice, Law and the Established Church.

The fact that he did not deny his guilt regarding the main charge of breach of promise, despite a good deal of pressure from his lawyer to counter with all kinds of nonsense involving alibis, false identity, unbalanced minds and extenuating circumstances, did not seem to change the course of the trial very much.

He sat once more in that uncomfortable chair wherein he had been tried on one hundred and sixteen charges two years previously in the same court room, and before the same judges, the High Judge himself once more presiding.

Their wigs, their long faces, their convoluted language were bad enough, but the presence of the Commissioner of Police, representing the nation’s constables, and the Senior Bishop, in his role as Prelate in Judgment of the Ecclesiastical Court-in-Sitting, could not but impress on all those present, the accused in particular, that this was a Final Court from which the harshest Findings and the most brutal Punishments would (quite properly) be due.

As generally expected, Toad was found guilty on each and every count, with sentencing to follow the next morning. It was early that morning, while he was waiting to be summoned for his final appearance in court, that he asked his gaoler for pen and paper, that he might write a letter.

He sat and thought a good deal before he wrote down what he wanted, tears coursing down his face and making a mess of the ink. But he finished it at last and summoned his gaoler again.

“Pray can you do me a small service? Please see that this missive is sent to my friend Mr Badger of the Wild Wood.”

“It’ll have to be read by the Governor and censored as necessary” said the gaoler, “and the High Judge will have to read it too.”

“I think there is nothing in it to which objection can be found,” said Toad. “Now please take it to them right away for I shall be called into court in less than an hour.”

How right he was, for an hour later Toad was back in his cell, a condemned criminal. How long and full his life had been, yet how swiftly the High Judge had donned the black cap and pronounced sentence of death by hanging!

“Life’s certainly upsetting, sir,” observed his morose gaoler, “and does take sudden turns. Here today and gone tomorrow, eh, Mr Toad?”

The gaoler’s laugh was like the tolling of a bell at evensong.

“Not tomorrow,” said Toad; “the day after that. Did you send that letter?”

“Yes, Mr Toad, don’t you worry about that.”

The letter arrived at the Badger’s house at the same time as news that a guilty verdict had been passed, and sentence of death by hanging pronounced upon the hapless Toad. For a time the letter was ignored, for though the sentence had been expected it was a shock when it was finally heard.

“I am sad that my return to the River Bank has been accompanied by such grievous goings-on,” said Mr Brock, “and that my son’s first experience of the River Bank finds us all in mourning. If there is any comfort to be had at all in this, it is that my father can at least look forward to good years ahead with Ratty and Mole safe and well, for that might have been a different story, might it not?”

They took a little comfort from this, but dead did the September sun seem, and muted the colours of autumn. Nor, when they read it, did Toad’s letter offer them much cheer.

My dear friends,

It has all gone against me and I shall not survive the week. I await final sentence this morning but none doubts the outcome. Therefore, lest I am in no state to write later, I do so now with two final requests.

First, watch out for the Madame’s son, for he is good at heart, and always did well by me. He will have need of friends such as yourselves if he is to avoid that road I have taken.

Secondly and even though you will call it empty vanity and false conceit, please me by inaugurating the statue of Roman triumph that the Madame completed in my image before my return, which was intended as a wedding gift. I prefer to be remembered so than as one tried by Society condemned to execution, and swung from the gallows.

Alas, they have denied me my last wish here, and all I am allowed for a cigar is a clay pipe of shag, and for champagne a pint of Policeman’s Punch. In vain have I protested that shag and ale are not suited to Toad’s style or taste. Therefore, when my statue is finally revealed, toast my health in my best champagne and smoke a Havana each in my memory I shall be very much obliged.

Farewell from your old friend,

Toad of Toad Hall

“We must do Toad’s bidding,” said the Badger sombrely “and honour and remember his good spirit and intentions for others as readily as we shall seek to forget his ignominious end.”

“But is there nothing we can do for him, nothing at all?” said the Rat, who now regretted most bitterly his resolve in making Toad return to Toad Hall, despite the protestations of all his friends that in the end Toad’s undoing was his own fault.

“We could not protect our old friend from himself forever,” the Badger had said, “and I’m sure that Mole would say just the same. I have racked my brains for a way out but can find none. So too has Prendergast.”

They turned to Toad’s trusty and able servant and saw his sadness.

“I feel I have let my master down, gentlemen. And yet I take comfort in the discipline of my profession. You see, the Final Article of the Professional Butler’s Code, which as you know I had a hand in wording, suggests that when a master is in
mortal
difficulty the well-trained butler, may I say the
professional
butler, will always be able to find a solution to his woes. Such a butler must strive for perfection in the art and science of his craft, and never give up.

“Therefore, gentlemen, sad though I am, I shall not give up till that moment when I hear, and on the best authority, of my master’s demise. Till then, as the Senior Bishop is inclined to say of matters in general, and spiritual despair in particular, there is always hope and I shall continue to seek a solution.”

“Well then,” said the Badger, concluding this mournful discussion, “we shall cause Toad’s statue to be erected on the morning, and at the hour, of his demise, which is to say in two days’ time at midday. Till then do as Prendergast suggests, do not give up hope that a solution may be found.