The Wind in the Willows

As a cool evening chases away the hot summer heat, Rat returns from a long day with Otter and his family. They’re wonderful hosts, but he can tell they’re hiding their worry over the disappearance of their little son, Portly. Mole remarks that Portly is famous for getting lost and then reappearing. This time, replies Rat, the Otter family has searched everywhere, but no one has seen their child. Portly isn’t yet a good swimmer, which worries Otter. The father keeps watch nightly at the nearby ford, where Portly first took swim lessons, hoping the youngster will return there out of fondness for it.

Rat and Mole decide to search for Portly. They launch Rat’s boat and paddle carefully upstream on the dark waters until the moon rises and brings light to the shorelines. As they continue upriver, they tie up often and walk the banks.

After some hours, the moon sets again. Rat hears the faraway sound of pipes being played. Entranced, he urges Mole toward the music, but Mole can’t hear anything. Further upstream, they turn onto a backwater, and finally Mole hears the sweet sounds. They paddle toward it as dawn lights their way; nearby reeds and flowers appear exceptionally beautiful.

A low dam, water tumbling over it, marks the upper reach of their travel. Before the dam lies a small, lush island that seems to call to them. They tie up their boat and step onto the island. Both feel nearby “some august Presence” (73). They sense they’ve been summoned here.

Before them sits the god Pan, a bearded giant with horns and hooves. He holds pan-pipes; nestled at his feet, fast asleep, is Portly. Rat and Mole bow to him in worship. The sun crests the horizon and dazzles them; when they look again, the deity is gone. For a moment, they feel the terrible loss of that beautiful vision. A light breeze wafts over them, causing them to forget, “Lest the awful remembrance should remain and grow, and overshadow mirth and pleasure” (74).

Rat hurries to Portly. Mole vaguely recalls the vision as if it were a dream lost in waking and then gives up and accepts that something beautiful has faded away. Portly wakes and squeaks happily at his two friends. Then, he looks about for Pan, can’t find him, and bursts into tears. Rat notices hoof prints on the grass and wonders at them.

They place Portly in the boat, which cheers the young otter, who loves boats. They scull back to the main river and continue upstream to where Otter stands vigil, drop off Portly—who scurries to his overjoyed father—and then coast back downstream to Rat’s home.

On the way, Mole and Rat both feel strangely tired, as if they’d been involved with “something very surprising and splendid and beautiful” (76). The wind, playing in the nearby reeds, reminds them of faraway music. Rat hears words, too, that seem to tell of someone who awes them and then makes them forget.

Rat ceases to hear the whispered words. Then, he says he hears them again. Mole asks what they say. Rat doesn’t reply; Mole turns to see that his friend has fallen asleep.

For weeks, Toad languishes sadly in his prison cell. He refuses to eat, so the jailer’s daughter, who loves animals, decides to bring poor Toad back to health. She tempts him with savory food. At first, he refuses it, but its aroma reminds him of his happy life at Toad Hall, and soon he’s munching buttered toast, drinking tea, and describing life back at home with his animal friends. These talks continue for many days. She thinks, but doesn’t say, that Toad would make a wonderful pet. Toad thinks, but doesn’t say, that it’s too bad she’s not in his high social class.

One day, the girl suggests that Toad pay a few pounds to her aunt, the prison washerwoman, for a uniform like hers. When Toad protests that he doesn’t want to be a washerwoman, she explains that he’d use the costume to escape from prison. Toad agrees.

The next night, the aunt appears with Toad’s washing. She pockets the gold coins she finds on Toad’s cell table while her niece fits Toad out in the gown, apron, shawl, and bonnet of a washerwoman. The aunt insists that she be bound and gagged to make Toad’s escape appear forced. Thus disguised, Toad makes his way out of the prison. Some of the staff, thinking he’s a woman, flirt rudely, but Toad manages to keep his temper, and he escapes.

He heads for the nearby train station and tries to buy a ticket but realizes his money is in his street clothes back in the jail cell. He begs a train engineer to help him get home to his poor, hungry children. After Toad promises to get some of the engineer’s washing done, the engineer accepts, and Toad climbs into the cab.

The train heads out toward the countryside. Thinking how wonderful it’ll be to return home again, Toad begins to dance, which startles the engineer. In addition, he’s troubled to find that they’re being followed by another train. It’s crowded with police and prison warders waving weapons and shouting, “Stop, stop, stop!” (86).

Toad drops to his knees and begs for mercy. He explains the car theft and the endless misery he faced in prison. The engineer’s heart softens at the sight of Toad’s tears. He confesses that he likes neither cars nor police ordering him about on his own train. He adds coal to the furnace, and the train picks up speed, but the pursuing vehicle keeps gaining on them.

The engineer devises a plan: He’ll speed up in a tunnel and then stop at the woods beyond, where Toad will jump off and escape. The plan works, and Toad watches both trains roar into the distance. He laughs for the first time in weeks.

The woods feel unfriendly. An owl, taunting him, flaps past, brushing Toad with a wing. A fox makes a sarcastic comment about a washerwoman. Hungry, chilled, and tired, Toad finds a hollowed-out tree, crawls inside, and sleeps.

As summer edges toward fall and the leaves begin to turn, Rat watches the birds leaving and the meadow mice packing to move before the “horrid machines” return to clip the fields. The birds talk of “the call of the South, of the South!” (92) that whispers in their hearts. He tries to talk them all into staying, but the migrating animals insist on going, like a hotel’s summer guests who finally check out and leave the winter pensioners behind.

Rat wonders what the warm southern sun would feel like. Feeling jealous, he asks the birds why they bother to return north each year. One replies that Rat’s world too beckons to them in its own time: “The call of lush meadow-grass, wet orchards, warm, insect-haunted ponds, of browsing cattle, of haymaking” (92). Now, though, the South sings its song, and they must answer.

Troubled by his sudden ache to see faraway lands, Rat goes for a walk. He sits under a bush, and a traveling rat wanders up and joins him. The visitor says he has all he wants at a farm up north, and the area where Rat lives is the best he’s seen, but he’s a “seafaring rat” and simply must travel. He’s from Constantinople; his ancestors came from Norway when its king, Sigurd, visited there. Every great port city, though, feels like home to the rat; it’s not the sea but coastal life that appeals to him.

Troubles at home forced him to take to the sea. He traveled to the Grecian Isles, the Levant, and up the Adriatic coast to Venice, where at night he sang with friends and feasted on shellfish while gondola boats swayed on the canals. Next was the island of Sicily, then Sardinia, Corsica, and back to northern Italy, then off to Marseilles. Rat asks if shipboard life is tough; the visitor says he knows how to live in the captain’s cabin.

Rat interrupts the travelogue, hurries home, packs a picnic basket, and returns with it. They dine hungrily. The seafarer continues his tale, describing his journey to Spain and then up to England and the beautiful inland farm.

Rat is mesmerized by the seafarer’s words. The visitor leans in, his grey eyes blazing, and urges Rat to take to the sea. The visitor walks off. Calmly, hypnotically, Rat gathers up the picnic things, takes them home, loads a traveling satchel, and is walking out the door when Mole arrives and asks what Rat’s doing. Rat says he’s “[g]oing South, with the rest of them” (99), and then out to sea.

Mole sees someone else in Rat’s eyes, which have turned from brown to grey. He grabs his friend, throws him to the ground, and holds him there until Rat’s eyes unglaze. Mole helps him to a chair, where he shivers violently and begins to sob. Mole locks up Rat’s satchel and watches until Rat falls asleep. When Rat awakes, he’s calm, his eyes again brown, but he has trouble explaining to Mole what happened—how a seafaring rat’s enchanting tales had so enraptured him.

Mole, in turn, talks about the coming harvest, “the towering wagons and their straining teams, the growing ricks, and the large moon rising over bare acres dotted with sheaves” (100), and of the apples and preserves and cordials of fall and winter. Rat perks up at these words. Mole brings him pencil and paper and suggests he work on some of his poetry. Rat pushes the paper away, but later Mole finds him scribbling: “[I]t was joy to the Mole to know that the cure had at least begun” (101).