I Know a Secret/Chapter 14

by Christopher Darlington Morley

Gissing Pond

SOME of the best evenings the Grape Arbor ever had were when the Gissing Pond Quartette came up to sing. The frogs of Gissing Pond are famous singers: every year for I don't know how long they have won the championship—not only over the frogs from the other ponds in the Roslyn Estates, but in the big competition between the Village and the Heights. You know what rivalry there is between our two fire departments, the one in Roslyn and the one in the Heights, to see which can get to the fire sooner; and between our two post offices, to see which can sell more stamps. Well, it is just like that among the frogs. Every spring is the big Choir Festival. From every pool in all our woodlands, from the smallest green swamp in the Estates as proudly as from the famous Mill Pond, frogs come hopping down to Cedarmere, the beautiful old place by the water where William Cullen Bryant lived. There, by kind permission of Mr. Godwin, they sit on the stone bridge across that picturesque lake and sing their competitions. Big snapping turtles crawl up on the bank to listen, herons and muskrats and wild ducks applaud from the reedy shore of the harbour.

The Gissing Pond Quartette always wins. (Mr. Godwin's white ducks are the judges.) When the Quartette whistles a light airy wheedling tune like Over the Hills and Far Away it is enchanting. When they troll the old Scotch ditty Roslyn Castle (from which Roslyn takes its name) the echoes repeat it all down the harbour as far as Bar Beach. Then they pitch their voices very low and sweet and break into Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes. Basso, the big bullfrog who sings the bottom notes, has a thrilling throaty rumble. To hear his deep bass sliding under the others, supporting and completing the harmony, brings tears to your eyes. When they finish that song there is the finest applause of all—perfect silence. The Gissing Pond Quartette will always win as long as they have Basso. He might have beena very famous singer, for he was often urged to go into Grand Opera; but he preferred the quiet life of the Roslyn Estates. He is a plumber by trade, very clever at mending drains and fixing leaks or anything wet. He sings only to give his neighbours pleasure.

One evening when all the animals and children were in the arbor, and the Quartette had sung for them, Escargot asked Basso very politely if he wouldn't give them a few reminiscences. Basso is an old-timer, very large and stout. He is always pleased to be asked about Roslyn history.

"I don't suppose any of you," he said, "not even Bonny June who is the dean of the children in our neck of the woods, really remember Gissing Pond as it used to be in the old days. It didn't even have a name then, it was just a pond in the wilderness. Concealed in the hollow below the old ruin, behind big trees and the tangle of blackberry briars, few people knew it was there. I remember Mr. Mistletoe's excitement when he first discovered it. He had been brought up to believe that children should always have a tadpole pond handy: what luck to find one almost at your front door! He used to come and sit on an old stump and smoke his pipe and wish the children would hurry up and grow big enough to hunt tadpoles. I was a tadpole myself at that time, and it rather worried me.

"When I consider that my family have lived here for so many generations—even before the Union Mortgage Company—it amuses me to think of Mr. Mistletoe feeling so proprietory about our pond. He always had a comic belief that he was a pioneer in these parts. He used to say, 1620 the Pilgrims settled in New England, 1920 the Mistletoes settled in the Roslyn Estates. But I have a kindly feeling toward him, because, though it is not generally known, I actually lived in his house for a while. He couldn't wait for the children to grow up to the age of tadpole-hunting so he went in wading and caught some himself. I was one of them. He put us in a milk bottle and took us home with him. He said it made him feel young again to have tadpoles in the dining room. I was afraid he meant he was going to eat us. But apparently he regarded us merely as a decoration: we were kept in a bowl in the dining-room window for some time. Then, when our legs began to grow, he took us back to the pond. That was kind of him, and I have always been grateful. Therefore I am pleased to come up here with my friends and sing for you."

Basso cleared his throat and sat thinking in silent dignity. He is rather a pompous old fellow, and they have all learned that he likes to be treated with deference. They sat waiting respectfully for him to proceed.

"Yes," he continued, "you are all too young to remember those days properly. But it is a very good thing for children to have some one place rooted in their early memory: a place they know by heart and whose traditions will always be dear to them. Even for kittens it is a good thing to be respectful to their elders," he added sternly, noticing that Hops and Malta were a bit frolicsome.

Fourchette cuffed the kittens into order, and Basso went on.

"I recall my father telling me about the first night the Mistletoes ever spent in this house. One of the vans bringing the furniture broke down on the way, and the family had no beds to sleep on. Louise, who was only seventeen months old, slept in her baby carriage in the room which is now Mr. Mistletoe's den. Louise was a very wriggly infant, and she had to be strapped in."

All the animals looked at Louise when her name was mentioned. Pleased and yet embarrassed to be singled out in this way she squirmed violently and looked wildly at the sky in a sudden fit of bashfulness.

"Where did I sleep?" cried both Helen and Blythe.

"You? Why neither of you were born or thought of," said Basso severely. "Helen might have been thought of, but certainly she hadn't been born."

"How about me?" asked Donny, who is now the senior dog of the Roslyn Estates and thinks himself rather important.

"You didn't exist either," said Basso. "Why even Gissing, the dog our pond was named for, wasn't born till that autumn."

"I don't believe the old frog was born himself," Donny grumbled irritably to Fritz in a hoarse whisper. "He's an old windbag."

"Mr. Mistletoe slept on the dining-room floor that night," Basso told them. "He left the light burning all night so that if the van arrived in the dark it could find the house. The frogs could see the light through the trees, and sang extra well, that warm spring evening, to make a good impression on the newcomers. Mr. Mistletoe was astounded at the beauty of their voices. That's how he first knew there must be a pond near by. As soon as they got the furniture into the house, next day, he went out to explore. He discovered the pond, and what times they had. The first violets always grew there, and Christopher had to teach Louise to pick them with their stalks, not just to pull off their heads. There were picnics in the long grass, and turtles in the mud, and a huge old fallen willow tree where you could play house. I'll admit that for a while we didn't care much about this new invasion. My father put up a sign No Trespassing, but that family never paid any attention to Private Property signs.

"It was a few months later that the dog Gissing appeared. The furnace man brought him up from the village in his pocket when he was just a tiny puppy. I never had any use for that dog myself. He was terribly excitable, and he was mad about the pond. Every day, on the slightest possible excuse, he was down by the water barking, snouting and snuffling about in the mud and bushes, plunging in to chase sticks that were thrown, churning to and fro in the water and making a hideous clamour. Some of our oldest frog families couldn't stand it at all. There began to be nervous breakdowns among the tadpoles, and they moved away to new homes. I never approved of the pond being named for Gissing. He was a wild noisy fellow, and I can't understand how he became so famous. We were well rid of him."

"What became of him?" asked one of the younger animals.

"He snapped at some of the neighbours' children and he was taken to Bide-a-Wee," said Basso, and there was a thoughtful silence.

"It may not have been altogether his fault," the old frog added. "Mr. Mistletoe put him into a book, and it went to his head."

"Don't let's any of us get put into a book unless we write it ourselves," said Donny anxiously. "Then we can really tell the truth about things."

 

"Well, Gissing Pond went on in its quiet way," said Basso. "In winter they used it for skating, it was as good as having a private rink. There were snow-shovelling parties, and bonfires on the shore of the pond, and little star-patterns on the clear ice where the children had sat down hard. Mr. Mistletoe used to bring an axe and chop up limbs of dead trees to take home for his fireplace. Dame Quickly, the old Dodge car, often drove right down to the edge of the pond so that he could load her with firewood. New houses were built not far away, but all the frogs got together and made such queer noises at night that people were afraid to come and live in them. We sang the Mortgage Song, which always alarms people when they hear it sung at midnight in a minor key. The magic of the place was strong, and it kept its perfect loneliness. But then one day an amazing thing happened. Perhaps we had sung the Mortgage Song too loud, and aroused some realtor's resentment. The pond disappeared."

"Disappeared?" exclaimed some of the animals, greatly shocked, while others, who knew about it, nodded their heads.

"Absolutely disappeared," repeated Basso solemnly. "We haven't quite got over the shock of it yet. Some workmen came one day, and dug a trench, and in a few hours the water all ran out. It drained down into that other pond, across the Mineola Road, and left only a big mudhole. When Mr. Mistletoe came down he was dreadfully upset, he walked about like a man in a daze. He thought the pond was gone for good, and I saw him pick up a pebble from the mud to keep as a souvenir. He told me he was going to keep it with the pebble Captain Bone gave him that came from the middle of the Atlantic. He thinks there's something amusing in having those two pebbles side by side: one from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean and one from the bottom of Gissing Pond.

"The frogs were badly startled too, I can tell you. Some hopped over to other ponds, but the rest of us stayed around to see what would happen. And I want to pay my respects to Bonny June and Buzzy, who came to the rescue in that distressing time."

Now it was Bonny June and Buzzy's turn to look embarrassed, and they did.

"Bonny June and Buzzy, like all the other children, had heard the sad news and went down to see. In the very middle of the mudhole they found a little puddle of water left, and in that puddle was a fish. All the other fish had escaped down the trench when the water drained off, but this one, a small perch I believe, had got caught. There he was, very puzzled and frightened, going miserably round his small tepid puddle. Bonny June left Buzzy to speak kindly to the perch while she ran home and got a bucket. They filled it with clean water and put the perch in it and carried him carefully over to the Allens' pond. That was well done, and the Gissing Pond Alumni Association honoured them with a vote of thanks.

"But as you know, things weren't as bad as we feared. It seems that they were only draining the pond in order to clean it, and the real estate men hoped to get rid of that Mortgage Song that was alarming people. A lot of trees were cut down and the shores of the pond were trimmed, and a little grassy walk was planted all around it. I'm afraid they're going to make it civilized, very different from the old romantic spot. But anyhow the water all came back, and we hope for the best. And by the way, one of Mr. Hopkins's pigeons brought me a letter from the perch in Allen's pond. He says he is very homesick, and if Bonny June and Buzzy will come with the bucket he'd be glad to be taken back to his old home. He says he'll wait right by the stone steps at the edge of Allen's pond so they'll have no difficulty in finding him."

It was getting dark in the back lot, time for children to be in bed and frogs in pond. Basso and the other members of the Quartette went hopping down the drive past the traffic lights of the fireflies. When they had crossed the meadow and got into the moist ground near home they paused for a final serenade. Their voices, Basso's deep boom strongest of all, were joined in close harmony. "Good Night, Ladies," they sang in rich tones, with all sorts of humorous trills and variations. The words, in a throaty frog accent, came floating up through the sparkling summer dusk. "We're going to leave you now. . . ." Then, if you had been listening very carefully, you could have heard four cool splashes as the singers dived gaily into the water of Gissing Pond.