The Water-Spider
[Illustration]
Little Mrs. Reed-Warbler was not feeling very well.
She was nervous and tired from sitting on the eggs and she had just a
touch of fever. She could not sleep at night, or else she dreamt of the
cray-fish and the carp and the eel and screamed so loud that her husband
nearly fell into the pond with fright.
"I wish we had gone somewhere else," she said. "Obviously, there's none
but common people in this pond. Just think how upset I was about Goody
Cray-Fish. Do you really believe she eats her children?"
Before he could reply, the eel stuck his head out of the mud and made
his bow:
"Absolutely, madam," he said, "ab-so-lutely. That is to say, if she can
get hold of them. They decamp as soon as they can, for they have an
inkling, you know, of what's awaiting them. Children are cleverer than
people think."
"But that's terrible," said Mrs. Reed-Warbler.
"Oh, well," said the eel, "one eats so many things from year's end to
year's end! I don't condemn her for that. But, I admit, it doesn't look
well amid all that show of affection.... Hullo, there's the pike!...
Forgive me for retiring in the middle of this interesting conversation."
He was off.
And the pike appeared among the reeds with wide-open mouth and rows of
sharp teeth and angry eyes.
"Oof!" said Mrs. Reed-Warbler.
"Come down here and I'll eat you," said the pike, grinning with all his
teeth.
"Please keep to your own element," said Mrs. Reed-Warbler, indignantly.
"I eat everything," said the pike, "ev-e-ry-thing. I smell eel, I smell
cray-fish, I smell carp. Where are they? Tell me at once, or I'll break
your reed with one blow of my tail!"
[Illustration: THE PIKE APPEARED AMONG THE REEDS [p. 38 ]
The reed-warblers were silent for sheer terror. And the pike struck out
with his tail and swam away. The blow was so powerful that the reeds
sighed and swayed and the birds flew up with startled screams. But the
reeds held and the nest remained where it was. Mrs. Reed-Warbler settled
down again and her husband began to sing, so that no one should see how
frightened he had been. Then she said:
"A nice place this!"
[Illustration]
"You take things too much to heart," said he. "Life is the same
everywhere; and we must be satisfied as long as we can get on well
together. I am very much afraid that all this excitement will hurt the
children's voices and then they will disgrace us at the autumn concert.
Pull yourself together and control yourself!"
"It's easy for you to talk," she said. "And I know well enough what life
is worth. My innocent little sister was eaten by an adder and my mother
was caught by a hawk, just after she had taught us to fly. I myself had
to travel in hot haste to Italy, last autumn, if I didn't want to die of
hunger. Then you came; and I have already learnt that marriage is not an
unmixed blessing. After all, one would be glad of peace just after the
children are born. And then, of course, I think of what the children
will grow up like in this murderers' den. Children take after others.
And such examples as they see before them here! Really, it might end in
their eating their parents!"
"Yes, why not, if they taste good?" asked a ladylike voice on the
surface of the water.
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."
[Illustration]
"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!"
[Illustration: 'HE WAS IN MY WAY,' SAID THE SPIDER]
"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.