The last Sunday of the gazette’s summer came in thin and early. By the second honk of the morning the light had gone paler than it had been even a fortnight back, and the older drakes, in such talk as carried from their western station, seemed to have caught it too. I had come down before there was much to come down for, on the bet that the morning would hold next to nothing. The bet paid. Next to nothing held, and held all morning.
The heron stood at the west pier where it has stood, bar the small interruptions readers of recent editions will recall, from the twentieth of May onward, and it had not moved. The family of dabchicks of the west pier had drawn up toward the seaward end, in what is now plainly their formation. The eldest of the dabchicks kept her settled station and gave no sign, this morning, that the household wished to be drawn into talk. No fish showed at all.
The coot of the Channel Sprint was at his customary station on the eastern bank, the pebble at his left. It came back to his keeping at the finish line of the eighth-of-July rematch and has been in his keeping ever since, moved to that spot lately and by habit. Drake Halford of the east shore passed the older drakes’ station a little after the third honk, bound for the far reaches of the east shore, and was, by what the distance let me see, carrying nothing at all.
The long-resident frog of the southern waters held the customary place he keeps under the second willow. The frog presently resident in the southern waters, whom the long-resident frog has gone on declining to fix with any word this paper has been free to set down, kept a station a short way off. Neither frog spoke, the while I watched, and neither gave any visible sign of meaning to. The pondweed at the willow’s edge was thicker than it had been even the previous Sunday at the same hour. The older drakes hold the thickening a settled matter, and on the older drakes’ authority I hold it so as well.
The Deputy of the Warden of the Sluice was, I am given to understand, down at the lower sluice gate, where most evenings of these last weeks have found her at her work. The Warden of the Sluice I will put as I have settled on putting it: he was not observed, and there was no sure way to observe him. The office’s own correspondence had, by the Clerk’s word, been arriving at the gate, and being taken in there, and being settled in the customary way.
In the same hour a leaf came loose from the Old Willow and went, the way small leaves go, off toward the southern waters. A single ripple of no clear origin spread from the middle of the pond and was, by the time I thought to look for it again, gone. The light moved across the water the way light moves when nobody is watching it for any particular reason.
Of the matters that have held this paper across the season now closing. The heron remains. The fish are gone. The dabchicks are arranged. The pebble is with the coot. Drake Halford’s census remains, as it has since the sixteenth of April, under review. The Deputy is at the sluice; the Warden is not. The Cultural Subcommittee will be back in October. The Subcommittee’s tally of deferrals, by the Clerk’s count, sits comfortably within range. The frog is at his station. The frog presently resident in the southern waters is at his.
The lights at the upper bend have, by the word of parties placed to know, come on again each of the last three nights, in the arrangement the Resident of the Upper Bend has lately set right for us. On none of the three nights could any party settle on an explanation. On none of the three could any party settle on ruling one out.
The matter remains open. Most matters do.
As ever, the pond remains.