Chapter the Eighth. In which Bilbo has an Inkling of Days to Come
As Bilbo and his helper drove along, chatting merrily, with the Sun now behind them, Bilbo watched the shadows growing and thought the temperature might just be dropping. To be honest, he scarcely noticed the cold, warmed as he was by little Nell’s company. Everything was new and fresh in her eyes; she often interrupted Bilbo – or herself – to point and exclaim, and her enthusiasm was catching. At the moment, she was in raptures at spying the red breast of a robin hopping about under some bushes, pointing an eager finger and bouncing on her seat. Bilbo found an answering grin lighting his face, and he set aside the story he was telling long enough to teach her how to imitate the robin’s winter song. She proved an apt pupil.
Preparing to resume the current story, he settled his muffler a bit more snugly around his neck and looked down at his small but faithful companion. ‘Are you warm enough, my dear?’
‘It’s not cold!’ Nell answered, followed by, ‘Look! I’m smoking a pipe!’ She blew out a large breath and laughed at the resulting “smoke” that floated away on the frigid air.
‘Still,’ Bilbo said, shifting the reins to one hand and using the other to tuck the lass’s blankets more tightly around her, ‘we wouldn’t want you to catch your death.’
Pimpernel laughed up at him. ‘How comical!’ she said. ‘Why should anyone want to go running after Death... much less catch him?’
Bilbo chuckled. The lass was absolutely delightful, from her unusually extensive vocabulary (explained by the fact that her parents were readers of the old tales, he thought) to her sense of whimsy, as yet untarnished by surrounding adults’ quashing of childish enthusiasm. (All too often, Bilbo had overheard from one adult or another, None of your nonsense, now, in groups of mixed ages, but it had never quite sat right with him, not in all his eight and ninety years.) ‘Why indeed!’ he answered, and the lass gave him an approving nod.
And all along the way, the old hobbit was thinking... coming to the realisation of the loneliness his life had become without his even noticing. Though he felt (and looked) hardly a few months older than the day he’d run out his door to follow a wizard and thirteen dwarves on their way, the cousins his age and other contemporaries had not enjoyed the same prolonged vigour with the passing of the years. As was the way of the world, they had aged; and ageing, they had gradually turned to other interests and pursuits suited to their increasing maturity and responsibilities. Bilbo, who’d embraced the timeworn saying You’re only as old as you feel, had been unable to empower his cousins to hold back the clock. As time passed, they had less and less in common, and Bilbo became ever more isolated and, truth be told, eccentric by Shire standards.
Driving along with young Nell, taking turns telling stories, sharing jokes, pointing out interesting sights... stirred a longing deep within the old hobbit that he hadn’t missed, up until the Tooks showed up at his door and rubbed his face in his isolation. Even in the midst of smiling and laughing and singing, his mind was working at the problem. He’d no desire to marry – all the lasses who’d interested him before his journey to the Lonely Mountain had married and grown old, in any event. Thus, there seemed little chance he might fill Bag End with song and laughter and children of his own. Yet, for the first time, he could see himself as a selfish beast, knocking about an echoingly empty Bag End, when he had plentiful resources to bring some good to others. In taking on an orphan, such as Drogo’s son, it seemed he might do himself a great deal of good along with the benefit he could offer young Frodo.
The early winter darkness was falling when they came to Frogmorton, roughly halfway between Hobbiton and the Brandywine Bridge. After stopping at the inn there to water the ponies and warm themselves by the fireside with mugs of hot cider, Paladin himself joined Bilbo on the waggon seat, brushing off any expressions of concern, though he acceded to Eglantine’s request that he bundle himself in blankets along with his heavy coat and woollen cloak and hood. ‘All the lasses are secure inside your marvellous “pavilion”... but are you not tired of the driving yet?’
‘Why, we’ve just got started!’ Bilbo returned heartily. He shook the reins, and the ponies took the hint and leaned into their collars, then took off at a walk. Soon they’d left the well-swept yard and were on the road again, now lit by the lanterns hanging on the sides of the waggon. The journey would be slower through the dark hours, for the limitations of the lantern-light meant it would be safer to keep to a walk rather than trotting part of the time.
‘We’re halfway, you mean,’ the farmer said quizzically, and then his face cleared and he laughed. ‘Ah, you mean we’ve just started from Frogmorton! O’ course!’
Laughing together seemed a good omen for the dark journey ahead of them. It seemed Eglantine was also reassured at the sound, for they soon heard her voice, somewhat muffled under the coverings, raised in song. For several miles, the hobbits on the waggon seat sat without speaking, charmed by the sound of mother and little ones singing, Pearlie making a pleasing harmony, Nell sometimes following her mother and other times echoing her older sister, and little Vinca adding her chirps and squeaks and wandering in her own sweet way between the notes.
As they progressed, the children’s voices fell away, one by one, first tiny Pervinca and then Nell as sleep stole over them, almost without their noticing, it seemed. Pearl and Eglantine sang on for a mile or two more, until finally the mother sang alone, a Tookish lullaby that Bilbo remembered his own mother singing to him. At last the song ended, and Bilbo surmised that Eglantine slept as well.
The farmer and the wanderer drove along the darkened road in comfortable, companionable silence. Bilbo noticed, by the light of the lanterns, when Paladin’s chin drooped and then rested on his chest, and he nodded in satisfaction. ‘Don’t you worry about me falling asleep whilst driving,’ he murmured. ‘I’m not the one who just recently got over a fever!’
When Paladin at last awakened after a long and blessed sleep, the sky was beginning to lighten in front of them though the stars still shone brightly above their heads. ‘What, the dawning already?’
‘How quickly passes the time,’ Bilbo said lightly, though deep within himself he was remembering Paladin as a small lad with his sisters and parents in the midst of the commotion caused by the auctioning off of “the effects of the late Bilbo Baggins Esquire, of Bag-End, Underhill, Hobbiton”. When Bilbo had returned from his journeying, Paladin had been about the same age as young Samwise Gamgee was now. How quickly the years had passed, indeed. And a warning chimed deep within, that he should not let the grass grow under his feet now but go boldly forward with the plan he was formulating.
They stopped and breakfasted at the Stonebows Inn at the Bridgefields end of the ancient stone bridge spanning the Brandywine. Bilbo allowed Paladin to pay for the meal, though after they walked out to the waggon, as they were depositing the children under cover, he told Paladin and a blushing Eglantine that, while he felt more-than-adequately rewarded for hosting the Tooks and driving them to Buckland, the meal “didn’t hold a candle” to Eglantine’s “breakfast fit for the haying”.
‘In fact,’ he added, ‘I am most probably in your debt, since without your kind agreement to allow me to travel with you, I’d’ve had to walk through snow up to my knees whether attending Yuletide in Tuckborough or Bucklebury! You’ve probably saved me from a nasty bout with the Old Gaffer’s Friend, at the least!’
Though young Pimpernel begged again to ride on the waggon seat, and Pearl clamoured for a turn, their mother could not be persuaded, for a gentle snowfall had begun to sift down from the sky as they left the inn to claim ponies and waggon once more. Bilbo was equally firm with Paladin, insisting that he ride in the covered waggon bed, with its warming lanterns.
Thus it was that he alone sat on the waggon seat, guiding the ponies along the snowy road from the Gate to the Hall. They made good time, for under the light of the Sun, smiling through the clouds, the ponies could now alternate trotting with walking. In truth, he was glad for the time to himself, the better to think his own thoughts and to formulate his plan, for deciding to take on an orphan was one thing. Gaining the agreement of those who were currently responsible for said orphan’s well-being would be quite another.
Bilbo quite enjoyed the drive. His passengers were quiet – sleeping, he thought, even hoped for Paladin’s sake. The road was well-kept, making for a smooth, gently rocking ride and no jolting from a wheel dropping into a hole. Though the snow had gradually grown shallower, the closer to the River they’d travelled, there was still plenty enough to cover the ground, perhaps ankle-deep in Buckland, or so Bilbo estimated. The snow blanketing the smials, outbuildings, fences, bushes and trees, along with the large, lacy flakes falling from the sky, made for a peaceful landscape, lulling Bilbo to a restful state though he stubbornly maintained some wakefulness since he was driving a waggon laden with hobbits, including small children.
Just outside Bucklebury, he was startled into full wakefulness by shouts and movement to both sides of the lane. The ponies, equally startled, threw up their heads, breaking from their steady trot into an uneven gait that reflected their unease. Bilbo shook himself and quickly sat up straight on the seat while taking a firmer grip on the reins.
‘Hoi there!’ he called. ‘What do you think you’re about?’ Though surprised, he was not angry but merely concerned lest the ponies be frightened into bolting. He might be a competent driver under normal circumstances, but he wasn’t so confident of his ability to deal with a runaway...
He’d nearly driven into a large group of teens and tweens – two groups, rather, separated by the road and engaged in a glorious battle featuring snowballs. Snow was not just falling from the sky but was flying in every direction, and Bilbo was driving through the middle of it all!
‘Welcome to Buckland!’ shouted a tween, taller and fairer than the rest and flashing a cheeky grin. With almost elf-like grace that reminded Bilbo hauntingly of a young Primula Brandybuck, the tween scooped up another double-handful of snow, moulded it quickly into a missile, cocked back his arm and threw, aiming at someone on the opposite side of the road. Had his aim been true, the snowball would have flown over the ponies’ backs and into the opposing force.
Unfortunately, just as he released his shot, another tween jostled against him, spoiling his aim.
Thwack!
Bilbo spluttered as the large snowball impacted his face, filling his mouth and blinding him momentarily, but he maintained enough presence of mind to keep a firm grip on the reins and pull back. He spat out snow, clearing his mouth, and shouted, ‘Whoa! Whoa there, my pretties! Steady now!’
He shook his head, trying to regain his vision, but it wasn’t until he felt Paladin’s ponies begin to steady, by way of the easing of the ponies’ pull on the reins, that he felt confident enough to shift the reins into one hand so that he could wipe away the snow from his eyes with the other.
Taking up the reins in both hands again, he pulled-and-released, pulled-and-released, all the while crooning, ‘Whoa now, whoa,’ until the waggon slowed to a stop, whereupon he sat, trembling slightly at how close disaster might have come to them, had the ponies spooked and bolted whilst he was blinded.
When he regained his presence of mind, two things impressed themselves upon his senses. For one, the snow to either side of the road, though covered in footprints, was empty, the combatants having obviously scattered and fled.
For another, Paladin was calling from the waggon bed. ‘What is it? What’s happening?’
Bilbo drew a deep sigh, took a careful look at the ponies to ensure they were continuing to settle down and weren’t about to take fright again, and then turned in his seat to answer.
‘We’ve arrived at last! Welcome to Buckland!’
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Author’s notes: Some text may have been drawn from or inspired by “A Long-Expected Party” in The Fellowship of the Ring and “The Last Stage” in The Hobbit, both by J.R.R. Tolkien. The “Old Gaffer’s Friend” is a Shire term for pneumonia.
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Author's note: The story continues in Clearing the Heir, Part 3.
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