The Pond

Mrs. Reed-Warbler shrank back and hardly dared look down.

A little water-spider sat on the leaf of a water-lily and smoothed her fine velvet dress.

"You're looking very hard at me, Mrs. Reed-Warbler, but you won't eat me," she said. "I lie too heavy on the stomach. I am a bit poisonous … just poisonous enough, of course, and no more. Apart from that, I am really the most inoffensive woman in the water."

"And you say that one ought to eat one's parents?" asked Mrs. Reed-Warbler.

"Maybe that was a rather free way of talking to a bird," said the spider. "What suits one doesn't necessarily suit another. I only know that I ate my mother last year and a fine, fat, old lady she was."

"Sing to me, or I'll die!" screamed Mrs. Reed-Warbler.

Her husband sang. And, meanwhile, they looked down at the water-spider.

She plunged head foremost into the water. For a moment, she let her abdomen float on the surface of the pond and distended her spinnerets till they were full of air. Then the creature sank and shone like silver as she glided down to the bottom.

"That's very, very pretty," said the reed-warbler.

"Be quiet," said his wife and stared till she nearly strained her neck.

Deep down in a bush, the spider had spun a bell, which she filled with air. The bell was built of the finest yarn that she was able to supply and fastened on every side with strong, fine threads, so that it could not float away. And round about it was a big web for catching insects… Just now a water-mite was hanging in it and the spider took her into the bell and sucked her out.

"It's really remarkable," said little Mrs. Reed-Warbler. "She has a nest just as we have, hung up between the reeds. For all we know, she may sit on her eggs."

"Ask her," said the reed-warbler.

"I want first to get to the bottom of that story about her mother," said she, sternly.

Soon after, the spider came up again and sat on the leaf of the water-lily and smoothed herself out.

"You were looking down at me, weren't you?" she said. "Yes … I have quite a nice place, haven't I? A regular smart little parlour. You must know I am an animal that loves fresh air, like Mr. Reed-Warbler and yourself. And, as my business happens to lie in the water, it was easiest for me to arrange it this way. It's thoroughly cosy down there, I assure you. And, in the winter, I lock the door and sleep and snore the whole day long."

"Have you any eggs?" asked Mrs. Reed-Warbler.

"Rather!" said the spider. "I have everything that belongs to a well-regulated household. I have any number of eggs. As I lay them, by degrees, I hang them up in bundles from the ceiling of my parlour."

"Don't you hatch them?"

"No, dear lady. My heart is not so warm as that. And it's not necessary either. They come out nicely by themselves."

"Did your husband help you build the parlour?" asked Mrs. Reed-Warbler.

"He had enough to do building for himself, the booby!" she said. "You needn't think I would have him in my parlour, He made himself a little room beside it; and then there was the tunnel between us and that was really more than enough."

"Was?" asked Mrs. Reed-Warbler. "Is he no longer with you, then?.. Oh, you mustn't take my question amiss, if it pains you. I find it so difficult to understand the domestic conditions of the lower classes… Perhaps you don't even know where he is?"

"Why, I should just think I did know!" replied the spider. "More or less. For I ate him last Wednesday."

"Goodness gracious me!" said Mrs. Reed-Warbler.

"He was in my way," said the spider. "I tumbled over him wherever I went. And what was I to do with him? So I ate him up; and a tough little brute he was!"

"She ate her husband on Wednesday and she ate her mother last year," said Mrs. Reed-Warbler. "Sing to me, or that terrible woman will be the death of me!"

But the reed-warbler himself was so frightened that he could not get out a note. And the spider did not care in the least.

"Yes … mother," she said. "That was only out of hunger. I didn't eat her alone, either. My brothers and sisters shared in the feast. We were famishing and there was nothing else to eat, for it was well in the autumn. Then mother came along, just in the nick of time, and so we ate her."

She jumped into the water again.

But Mrs. Reed-Warbler did not sleep a wink that night. She kept on whispering to herself:

"She ate her mother … she ate her husband on Wednesday…"

"Come, don't think about it," said the reed-warbler. "Why, your own mother was eaten by the hawk; and, if you eat me, it will be for love!"

"You ought to be ashamed to jest in such times as these," said she.

"I think all times are alike," he said. "Those we live in always seem the worst."

Then morning came and the sun shone and he sang to his little brown wife until she recovered her spirits.

CHAPTER V

The Bladder-Wort

Little Mrs. Reed-Warbler's babies were now expected any day.

There was no end to her nervousness and unreasonableness. Her husband simply could not satisfy her. If he brought her a fly, she shook her head and asked how could he think her capable of eating immediately before the most important event in her life. If he brought her none, she said it was evidently his intention to starve her. If he sang, it was unbearable to listen to him. If he was silent, she could plainly see that he no longer cared for her.

"You don't appreciate me as I deserve," he said. "You ought to be married to the eel for a bit, or to the cray-fish's husband; then you would know what's what."

"And you ought to have taken the spider," said she. "Then you would have been eaten."

"Dear lady! Dear lady!" cried the cray-fish from down in the mud.

"Well?" said the reed-warbler.

"I can't stand this!" said Mrs. Reed-Warbler.

"I only wanted to ask you, dear lady, not to forget me and those shells," said the cray-fish.

"I won't have anything to do with an odious woman like you, who eats her own children," replied Mrs. Reed-Warbler.

"Oh, dear!.. Surely, ma'am, you don't believe that mean carp who was here the other day? A horrid, malicious fellow like that! He doesn't even belong to the pond, you know. He's a regular man's fish. They only put him here to fatten him up and eat him afterwards … I saw it myself last year; he was a mere spawn then; now he has grown big and stout on men's food; and he has plenty of time, too, since he doesn't have to work like another; and so he runs round and slanders poor people and robs them of the sympathy of kind ladies like yourself."

"Stop your chattering, Goody Cray-Fish," said the reed-warbler. "You'll drive my wife quite silly with your silly talk."

"Oh, dear!.. Well, I beg a thousand pardons," said the cray-fish. "I only want to remind the lady about the egg-shells."

Then she went backwards into her hole.

"Why will you think so much about all that rabble?" said the reed-warbler to his wife. "There are other things in the world besides cray-fish and eels and spiders. Find something pretty to look at. That would do you good just now."

"Show me something," she said, languidly.

"Look at the beautiful white flower down below there," said he. "See how charmingly he rises above the water. He surely can be neither a robber nor a cut-throat."

It was really a beautiful white flower that grew up from the bottom of the pond on a long, thin stalk and looked exceedingly sweet and innocent. Mrs. Reed-Warbler glanced at him kindly:

"What's your name, you pretty flower?" she asked. "May I look at you a little?"

"Look as much as you please," replied the flower. "My name's Bladder-Wort, and I have no time to waste in talking to you. I have things to attend to and must hurry."

Mrs. Reed-Warbler stretched her neck and peeped down into the water.

"That horrid spider has her nest between his leaves," she said.

"Well, the bladder-wort can't help that," replied her husband. "It's a flower's fate to stand where he stands and take things as they come. He sucks his food calmly out of the ground, has no stains on his flowers, and no blood on his leaves. That's what makes him so poetic and so refined."

"Hush!" she said. "They are talking together."

And talk together they did, with a vengeance.

"Have you caught anything?" asked the bladder-wort.

"Indeed I have," replied the water-spider. "I don't go to bed fasting. This is a good time of year for water-mites, and so I don't complain. And how have you done?"

"Nicely, thank you," said the bladder-wort. "I have caught a hundred and fifty midge-grubs and forty carp-spawn this afternoon. But I'm not satisfied. I don't believe I could ever be satisfied."

"What's that he's saying!" whispered little Mrs. Reed-Warbler, and looked at her husband in dismay.

"Be quiet," he said. "Let us hear more."

The spider went into her parlour, hung seven eggs from the ceiling, swallowed a mouthful of air and came out again.

"You're really a terrible robber," she said. "If it wasn't that I had come to lodge with you, I should be furious with you. Why, you take the bread out of my mouth!"

"Nonsense!" said the bladder-wort. "Surely there's plenty for the two of us! I am quite pleased to have a lodger who drives the same trade as myself. It gives one something to talk about."

"It's really odd that a flower like yourself should have turned robber," said the spider. "It's not in your nature, generally speaking."

"What am I to say?" replied the flower. "These are hard times. There are a great many of us, and the earth is quite exhausted. So I hit upon this and it goes swimmingly. But then I have got my apparatus just right. Would you like to see it?"

"Very much," said the spider. "But you won't hurt me, will you?"

"Be easy," said the bladder-wort, with a laugh. "You're too big for me. Run along one of my stalks and I'll explain the whole thing to you."

The spider crept cautiously for some way down the branch and then stopped and looked at a little bladder there.

"That's tight," said the bladder-wort. "That is one of my traps. I catch my prey in them. I have a couple of hundred of them."

"So you can eat two hundred water-mites at a time?" said the spider, enviously.

"I can. If they come. But I'm never so jolly lucky as all that. Now just look: beside the bladder you will see a little flap, which is quite loose. When some fool or other knocks up against it, it goes in and – slap, dash! – the fool tumbles into the bladder. He can't get out; and then I eat him at my leisure."

"Do you hear?" whispered Mrs. Reed-Warbler.

"Yes," said the reed-warbler, with a very serious face.

The spider could not resist fumbling at the flap with one of her legs:

"Ow!" she yelled suddenly.

She darted back with a jerk and the leg remained caught in the bladder. It was drawn inside in a twinkling and the flap closed and the leg was gone.

"Give me back my leg, please," said the spider, angrily.

"Have I your leg?" asked the bladder-wort. "Well then, you must have touched the flap. What did you do that for, dear friend? I made a point of warning you!"

"You said I was too big."

"So you are, worse luck! But, of course, I can easily eat you in bits, like this."

"It's not nice of you, seeing that you're my landlord," said the spider. "But as I have seven legs left, I suppose I must forgive you."

"Do, dear friend," said the bladder-wort. "I must tell you, I am not really master of myself when those flaps are meddled with. Then I have to eat what is inside of them. So be careful next time!"

"You may be sure of that," said the spider. "One has to be cautious with a fellow like you. Would you think it indiscreet if I asked you what my leg tastes like?"

"Oh, well," said the bladder-wort, "there wasn't much on it. For that matter, I've finished, in case you care to see what's left of it."

Just then the flap was opened, and a tiny little hard stump was flung out into the water.

"Is that my leg?" asked the spider.

"Don't you recognise it?"

The bladder-wort laughed contentedly. The spider stood and looked at the stump for a little while. Then she said good-night and limped sadly into her parlour.

"Good-night," said the bladder-wort, pleasantly. "And good luck to your hunting in the morning."

"I shall never survive this," said little Mrs. Reed-Warbler.

But, at that moment, she felt something alive under her:

"The children!" she screamed.

She was up on the edge of the nest in a second. On the opposite side sat her husband, watching just as eagerly as she.

One egg was quite in two and one of the others was burst. A wee, blind, naked youngster lay in the nest; and from the other egg protruded the dearest little leg of a chick.

"Did you ever see anything like it?" cried she. "Isn't it charming?"

"Delightful!" said he.

Then they began carefully to peck at the other eggs. And, inside, the young chicks pecked with their little beaks and five minutes later, they were all five out.

"Help me to clear up," she said.

Out flew the shells, on every side, down into the water.

"God bless you, kind lady!" cried Goody Cray-Fish from down below.

She was out for an evening stroll. But no one heard her. The reed-warblers were mad with delight over their children and had no thought for anything else in the world.

"What are you thinking of?" said the husband. "They'll perish with cold. Sit on them at once!"

And she sat on them and covered them up and peeped at them every moment.

But he stayed up half the night, singing, on the top of the reed.

CHAPTER VI

Summer

The whole pond was alive.

There were not only great, horrid pikes and great mannerly carp and roach and perch and sticklebacks and eels. There were cray-fish and frogs and newts, pond-snails and fresh-water mussels, water-beetles and daddy-long-legs, whirligigs and ever so many others.

There was the duck, who quacked at her ducklings, and the swan, who glided over the water with bent neck and rustling wings, stately and elegant. There was the dragon-fly, who buzzed through the air, and there were the dragon-fly's young, who crawled upon the water-plants and ate till they burst. But that did not matter; they just had to burst, if they were to come to anything.

There was the bladder-wort, who had his innocent white flowers above the water and his death-traps down at the bottom; the spider, who was still his lodger and now had the whole ceiling full of eggs, and hundreds of thousands of midge-grubs, who lay on the surface of the water and stuck up their air-vessels and hurried down to the bottom the moment a shadow fell over the pond. There were hundreds of thousands of midges, who danced in the air, and there was the water-lily, who knew how beautiful she was, and who was unapproachable for self-conceit.

There were many more, whom you could not count without getting dizzy. And then there were the tadpoles, who were ever so many and ever so merry. And you only had to take a drop of water and examine it through a magnifying-glass to see how it swarmed with tiny little animals, who all danced about and ate one another without the least compunction.

But just under the reed-warblers' nest there was a little May-fly grub, who was in a terrible state of fright.

She had entered into conversation with little Mrs. Reed-Warbler one day, when the latter had gone all the way down the reed to find food for her five youngsters, who were simply insatiable and kept on crying for more. Just at that moment, the May-fly grub had come up to the surface; and now the bird's beak was exactly over her.

"Let me live," said she.

"That's what they all say," said Mrs. Reed-Warbler. "My children have to live, too!"

So saying she tried to snatch her. But the grub wriggled so and looked so queer that she could not.

"Listen to me for a moment," said the grub; "then I'm sure that you won't hurt me. I am so small and so thin and fill so little space in a stomach."

"Well, what is it?" asked Mrs. Reed-Warbler.

"I have lived here a long time," said the grub. "I have heard you talk to your husband and to the cray-fish and the eel and the spider. It was all so beautiful, what you said. I am certain that you have a good heart."

"I don't know about my heart," said Mrs. Reed-Warbler. "But I know I have five hungry children."

"I am a child myself," said the grub. "And I should so awfully like to live till I grow up."

"Do you think that life is so pleasant?"

"I don't know. I am only a child, you see. I crawl about down here and wait. When I am grown up, I shall have wings and be able to fly like you."

"You don't surely imagine that you're a bird?" asked Mrs. Reed-Warbler.

"Oh, no! I certainly don't aim so high as that. I shall just become a May-fly."

"I know them," said Mrs. Reed-Warbler. "I have eaten lots of them. They taste very good."

"Oh, well, in that case, do wait for me to grow up, before you eat me. I shall only live for a few hours, you know, when I get my wings. I shall just have time to fly once round the pond and lay my eggs in the water. Then I must die. And then you may eat me and welcome. But let me go now. And tell your husband also. He has been after me twice."

"Very well," said Mrs. Reed-Warbler, "though it's foolish of me. You'll probably cheat me and let someone else eat you first."

"I shall do my best to escape," said the grub. "And, now, thank you ever so much."

Before the grub had done speaking, little Mrs. Reed-Warbler was up in the nest again, with six midge-grubs, which she had caught in one bite. Her husband was there too with a dragon-fly, which the children tore to pieces and ate up amid cries of delight.

"There's nothing the matter with their appetites or with their voices either," he said. "If only they could shift for themselves! I am as lean as a skeleton."

"And what about me?" said she. "But the children are thriving and that is the great thing."

He sighed and flew away and came home and flew away again; and so it went on till evening. Then they both sat wearily on the edge of the nest and looked out across the smooth pond:

"It is curious how the life exhausts one," she said. "Sometimes, when I feel thoroughly tired, I can almost understand those animals who let their children look after themselves. Did you notice the eel the other day? How fat and gay he is."

"Are you talking of me, madam?" asked the eel, sticking his head out of the mud.

"Oh, you're always there!" said Mrs. Reed-Warbler.

"More or less. One has to wriggle and twist."

"Have you any news of your children?"

"No, thank goodness!"

"Oh, really?" said the perch. "I have an idea that I ate a couple of them at breakfast… Excuse me for being so frank!"

"Not at all, not at all!" said the eel. "The family is large enough even so."

"How on earth did they come up here from the sea?" asked the roach.

"Just as I did, I imagine," said the eel. "They've got scent of something to be made here; and two or three miles are nothing to them."

"Heigho!" said Mrs. Reed-Warbler.

"Are you sighing because of all this fuss with the children? Well, madam, what did I tell you?"

"Not at all," replied Mrs. Reed-Warbler. "I could never behave like you."

"One has one's duties," said the reed-warbler. "And the loftier one's station in life, the heavier the duties."

"Thank goodness, then, that I am of lowly station," said the eel. "I have a capital time in the mud."

"Then, again, one is interested in preserving a certain amount of poetry in the world. There is plenty of rabble, plenty of ugliness, I admit. All the more reason why we higher animals should do something to promote the ideal. And I can't imagine anything more ideal than a father's labours on behalf of his family, even though they do become rather fatiguing at times."

"You're tremendously up in the clouds to-day, Mr. Reed-Warbler," said the eel. "Every one to his taste. But, as for poetry, I must confess that I have not seen much of it in my life. And yet I have wriggled and twisted about the world a good deal. The great question, everywhere, is eating and eating and eating. And those who have children to care for are the worst robbers of the lot. Good-bye."

"That's a disgusting fellow," said Mrs. Reed-Warbler. "It was very nice of you to give him a piece of your mind. I quite agree with you. Besides, I myself performed a really fine action to-day."

She ran to the reed and looked into the water:

"Are you there, my little grub?" she asked.

"Yes, thank you," said the May-fly grub.

"And how are you?"

"Fairly. The eel almost caught sight of me; and I was nearly getting into the bladder-wort's prison; and the water-spider was after me before that. Otherwise, I'm all right."

"What's this now?" asked the reed-warbler.

"Oh," answered his wife, "it's a protegée of mine! A little May-fly grub. I promised that I wouldn't eat her. She is so happy at the thought of being grown-up … and that only for a couple of hours, poor little thing!"

She said nothing about her intention of eating the grub when she was grown up; and the reed-warbler was seriously angry.

"What sentimental gammon!" he said. "It's unseemly for a woman with five children to commit such follies."

"I thought it so poetic to give her leave to live," said she.

"Fiddlesticks!" said her husband. "Poetry doesn't apply to one's food. If it did, we should all die of hunger. Besides you can't take a creature like that into consideration."

Thereupon he ran down the reed and hunted eagerly for the grub, to eat her.

But she heard what he said and had gone down to the bottom with terror in her little heart.

CHAPTER VII

The Carp

The summer wore on and things grew worse and worse.

No end of young had come out of the eggs and they filled the whole pond. Out in the middle it was quite green with millions of little water-weeds, which died and rotted and reeked till seven big perch died of it and floated on their backs.

"The pond's blossoming!" sneered the rushes.

"There's a horrid smell here," said Mrs. Reed-Warbler.

"I think, considering all things, that it's delightful here," said the carp.

The carp swam a little way in among the reeds. He had made a friend there, in the shape of the fresh-water mussel, who waded ever so slowly through the mud, or else settled on the bottom and yawned.

They suited each other, these two, for they were quiet and sedate people, who led the same sort of life.

"I don't care to go hunting wildly for food," said the carp. "I open my mouth where the water is moderately thick and let whatever there is run in. Something always sticks. Then one needn't kill people and one doesn't see all that misery."

"It's just so with us," said the fresh-water mussel. "I employ exactly the same methods. It's more gentlemanly and I have grown stout on it."

Then the two sat and talked and yawned all the time and amused themselves capitally notwithstanding.

"Mind you don't go too near them," said Mrs. Reed-Warbler to the May-fly grub.

"Yes, I will; thanks very much," said the grub.

"The carp and the mussel are nicer than the others, I think," said Mrs. Reed-Warbler to her husband.

"Really? And why, pray, madam?" asked the eel, who was always where he was least expected. "Surely they do just the same as all of us … only the animals which they eat are smaller."

"There is a difference, my good fellow," said the reed-warbler. "It's only your lack of refinement that prevents your seeing it."

"Yes, wriggle and twist!" said the eel.

The reed-warbler did not condescend to answer him, but turned to the carp and the mussel, struck up a little trill and said politely:

"My wife and I have the honour to bid you good-morning, gentlemen. We are delighted to observe that you lead your lives in a more mannerly way than most of the other inhabitants of the pond. We have suffered greatly at the sight of the extraordinary cruelty …" he paused, caught a blue-bottle, and tossed it to his children in the nest … "of the extraordinary cruelty that prevails in society here. It cannot but be extremely unpleasant for well-bred people to witness the cynical and unveiled brutality with which every one satisfies his app – …" Here he seized a caddis-fly, ate it, wiped his mouth, and continued, "satisfies his appetite. You, gentlemen, are different. If you had wings, I should be inclined to believe that originally you did not belong to this company at all."