The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame (black male authors txt) 📕

seemed hours before he crossed the last courtyard, rejected the pressing invitations from the last guardroom, and dodged the outspread arms of the last warder, pleading with simulated passion for just one farewell embrace. But at last he heard the wicket-gate in the great outer door click behind him, felt the fresh air of the outer world upon his anxious brow, and knew that he was free!

Dizzy with the easy success of his daring exploit, he walked quickly towards the lights of the town, not knowing in the least what he should do next, only quite certain of one thing, that he must remove himself as quickly as possible from the neighbourhood where the lady he was forced to represent was so well-known and so popular a character.

As he walked along, considering, his attention was caught by some red and green lights a little way off, to one side of the town, and the sound of the puffing and snorting of engines and the banging of shunted trucks fell on his ear. “Aha!” he thought, “this is a piece of luck! A railway station is the thing I want most in the whole world at this moment; and what’s more, I needn’t go through the town to get it, and shan’t have to support this humiliating character by repartees which, though thoroughly effective, do not assist one’s sense of self-respect.”

He made his way to the station accordingly, consulted a timetable, and found that a train, bound more or less in the direction of his home, was due to start in half-an-hour. “More luck!” said Toad, his spirits rising rapidly, and went off to the booking-office to buy his ticket.

He gave the name of the station that he knew to be nearest to the village of which Toad Hall was the principal feature, and mechanically put his fingers, in search of the necessary money, where his waistcoat pocket should have been. But here the cotton gown, which had nobly stood by him so far, and which he had basely forgotten, intervened, and frustrated his efforts. In a sort of nightmare he struggled with the strange uncanny thing that seemed to hold his hands, turn all muscular strivings to water, and laugh at him all the time; while other travellers, forming up in a line behind, waited with impatience, making suggestions of more or less value and comments of more or less stringency and point. At last⁠—somehow⁠—he never rightly understood how⁠—he burst the barriers, attained the goal, arrived at where all waistcoat pockets are eternally situated, and found⁠—not only no money, but no pocket to hold it, and no waistcoat to hold the pocket!

To his horror he recollected that he had left both coat and waistcoat behind him in his cell, and with them his pocketbook, money, keys, watch, matches, pencil-case⁠—all that makes life worth living, all that distinguishes the many-pocketed animal, the lord of creation, from the inferior one-pocketed or no-pocketed productions that hop or trip about permissively, unequipped for the real contest.

In his misery he made one desperate effort to carry the thing off, and, with a return to his fine old manner⁠—a blend of the Squire and the College Don⁠—he said, “Look here! I find I’ve left my purse behind. Just give me that ticket, will you, and I’ll send the money on tomorrow? I’m well-known in these parts.”

The clerk stared at him and the rusty black bonnet a moment, and then laughed. “I should think you were pretty well known in these parts,” he said, “if you’ve tried this game on often. Here, stand away from the window, please, madam; you’re obstructing the other passengers!”

An old gentleman who had been prodding him in the back for some moments here thrust him away, and, what was worse, addressed him as his good woman, which angered Toad more than anything that had occurred that evening.

Baffled and full of despair, he wandered blindly down the platform where the train was standing, and tears trickled down each side of his nose. It was hard, he thought, to be within sight of safety and almost of home, and to be baulked by the want of a few wretched shillings and by the pettifogging mistrustfulness of paid officials. Very soon his escape would be discovered, the hunt would be up, he would be caught, reviled, loaded with chains, dragged back again to prison and bread-and-water and straw; his guards and penalties would be doubled; and O, what sarcastic remarks the girl would make! What was to be done? He was not swift of foot; his figure was unfortunately recognisable. Could he not squeeze under the seat of a carriage? He had seen this method adopted by schoolboys, when the journey-money provided by thoughtful parents had been diverted to other and better ends. As he pondered, he found himself opposite the engine, which was being oiled, wiped, and generally caressed by its affectionate driver, a burly man with an oilcan in one hand and a lump of cotton-waste in the other.

“Hullo, mother!” said the engine-driver, “what’s the trouble? You don’t look particularly cheerful.”

“O, sir!” said Toad, crying afresh, “I am a poor unhappy washerwoman, and I’ve lost all my money, and can’t pay for a ticket, and I must get home tonight somehow, and whatever I am to do I don’t know. O dear, O dear!”

“That’s a bad business, indeed,” said the engine-driver reflectively. “Lost your money⁠—and can’t get home⁠—and got some kids, too, waiting for you, I dare say?”

“Any amount of ’em,” sobbed Toad. “And they’ll be hungry⁠—and playing with matches⁠—and upsetting lamps, the little innocents!⁠—and quarrelling, and going on generally. O dear, O dear!”

“Well, I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” said the good engine-driver. “You’re a washerwoman to your trade, says you. Very well, that’s that. And I’m an engine-driver, as you well may see, and there’s no denying it’s terribly dirty work. Uses up a power of shirts, it does, till my missus is fair tired of washing of ’em. If you’ll