The Keeper of the Bees, page 11
And then, quite before Jamie knew at all what was happening to him or what was going to happen, he felt another shift of position of the woman in his arms, and for the next second he was in her arms. Hands had found the sides of his head and his face was turned up and a wet, cold salty face was laid against his, cold lips were touching his cheeks and a breathless voice was saying: “Oh! you’re good! You’re good! I didn’t know there was a man like you in the whole world! Will you meet me tomorrow at three o’clock at the Marriage Bureau in Los Angeles? Will you truly have a marriage license made out? Will you stand beside me through a ceremony that will mean life and the lifting of a black burden?”
“I will!” said Jamie. “Don’t give yourself another minute’s worry. Dry your eyes and cheer up! I’ll be right there as sure as God is in His Heaven and there’s any justice for women in all this world. And if I am not there, you can know that the red tiger has eaten through to my vitals until I cannot get there—but you needn’t worry, because I shall be there. God wouldn’t give me this shining chance and then snatch it away from me.”
“Will you sit here, right in this spot, for a few minutes more?” asked the girl.
“I’ll sit here all night if you tell me to,” said Jamie, calmly, and it was not so calmly either because his heart was tearing until he was afraid it would fall out of the opening above it, and his blood was racing as blood had never raced in his veins. The girl in his arms might be cold and clammy and salt pasted, but he was neither cold nor clammy. He got one more tight hug and one more kiss—which happened to land squarely on the tip of his nose—not the location in which he wanted it in the least—and then she was gone and he heard swift feet going down the back of the rock and his trained ears could hear the first few footfalls across the dark beach.
He sat there and waited and looked down into the boiling surf and out over the battling sea, and by and by, he calmed himself so that he could think straightly and evenly, and then he said: “Such quick action as this seems to indicate that my time is short, and if there is a big thing that I have a chance of doing in this world, I’ve got to do it and do it quickly. So to-morrow afternoon at three o’clock, I’ll start on what appeals to me as the shining part of my Great Adventure.”
8. A New Kind of Wedding
When the faintest sound of a footfall had died away, Jamie settled back in his niche in the rock, drew his wrappings around him, and turned his face in the direction of the sea, the face that had been held between a pair of strong, impetuous woman’s hands, the face that had been showered with wholly impersonal caresses merely as an expression of release from a thralldom of shame. He had been paid in the coin of the realm of womanhood most desired by men, therefore most frequently offered by women in extremity.
Jamie sought among his clothing and found a handkerchief. He pulled it out and carefully wiped his face. There was nothing about the clammy, salty kisses he had received that he wished to perpetuate, not even the memory of them, because the girl who gave them had not meant them for him personally. She had bestowed real kisses elsewhere. These were the first available expression of thankfulness for freedom, freedom to lift up her head, freedom to face the world, freedom to go on with her life in such a manner that the ever-ready “finger of scorn” need not be pointed at her.
Jamie grinned dourly as he scoured his face.
“I hope she doesn’t think,” he said to the boiling surf below, “that she fooled me any with those kisses. It’s all right. She’s welcome to my name. She’s welcome to her ring—If she buys it herself—and her certificate. I didn’t see her very well, but what I did see didn’t look like a fast woman.
“I’ll say that for her. And she didn’t act as if she were used to calling on other people to shoulder many of her burdens. God knows she wasn’t afraid for her body, or she wouldn’t have been on this rock close to midnight in this storm; not afraid with physical fear; but I suppose it’s the mental strain that gets people the worst. I suppose it’s mental fear or nerve strain, or whatever you might call it, that’s been eating me for the past two years. It’s not that I’m afraid of death physically. God knows I’ve seen enough of it so that I can take my medicine as I saw thousands of boys take theirs! It’s just that since I am alive, since I am breathing, since there is the ghost of a possibility that I might have a slim fighting chance, I hate standing still and watching myself going out by the inch. And the reason I hate the going is because I’ve never lived; I’ve never had the things that, to a man, constitute real life, and I want a taste of life! I know just enough about the sky and the sea and the earth to want to get on the tree job and run it down as I’ve always intended.”
Then, for a time, long past the stipulated time, Jamie sat and watched the gradual clearing of the sky, the calming of the sea. It was not long before he could see the stars again, and some way a star always was connected in Jamie’s mind with a suggestion of hope. Ever since he had read an oration by the greatest agnostic of his day in which he had said at the grave of a beloved brother, when put to the ultimate test himself: “I n the night time of despair, hope sees a star and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing,” Jamie had thought that perhaps the lips of man never had uttered more beautiful words. This night had been a “night time of despair” for a young thing that he had held in his arms for a few brief minutes. Every night for a long time had been a night of despair for him. He was sorry, sorry to the depths of his heart for the grief that wracked and tore and drove frantic such a fine, strong young thing, with an odor of the woods, with the sage of the mountains and the lavender and gold flowers of the beach distilling like incense around her.
That was the pity of it. How had shame happened to a woods girl? Jamie knew that while he lived there would remain in his nostrils the scent that had first assailed them, carried by the winds of the storm, and as if it had not been removed he could feel the clinging of the silky strands of hair. She must have a perfect mane. Then he wondered how it came to be unbound. Then he remembered something else—the one revealing flash that had shown him the girl most clearly. He had not thought of it at the time, but he remembered it now. That flash had disclosed bare feet and a streak of white above them.
“By Jove!” said Jamie, softly, to the Spirit of the Sea that was drawing up very close to him in that hour. “By Jove! She wore a night dress and one of those eiderdown kimonos over it! I remember by the feel of her and by her bare feet. She asked a few minutes’ grace before I should start. That means that she had gone to bed and was so driven she had decided that she’d bed in the sea, and she’d put on the kimono and come as she was to this point she knew how to find. She couldn’t have come up these rocks as still as thought, and she couldn’t have gone down them with the swiftness and case she used if she had not known them perfectly, and a few minutes wouldn’t carry her far across the sands of this soaked beach. That means that she came from somewhere very near here.”
And then, as an outsider might speak to him, Jamie added: “And if you will recall what you said to her, old man, you gave her your word of honor that you wouldn’t try to find her.”
Then Jamie answered back and said: “But how am I going to keep that promise? How am I going to marry a girl with such a noble face, with hair of silk, and hands of such assurance; how am I going to stand up and swear that I’ll love her and take care of her so long as we both shall live, and then not work for her, not wonder where she is, and what is happening to her, and whether I could not do more for her than to give her my name at a pinch?” Then Jamie, for the second time that night, thought of his Great Adventure, and he said to the sea and to the nearby personality who had commenced the conversation with him: “I’m not so sure that what I called a Great Adventure in jesting merely to hearten myself may not possibly prove to be more of an adventure than I’ve reckoned on.”
Then the outside voice talked back to Jamie again, and it was a jeering voice that laughed at him and sneered at him. It said: “Well, Mr. Married Man, you’d better be getting home and fortify yourself with rest and sleep. You’d better press your trousers and see if the Master has got a decent scarf you can borrow. If you’re going to be a bridegroom, you’d better think about starting your preparations.”
Jamie, detecting the sneer in the voice, defended himself. He said: “Well what would you have done? If you hadn’t a relative on earth, if you knew you wouldn’t live to see the consequences, if a woman creature, young and attractive, was ready to throw herself into the sea before you, wouldn’t you save her by any means you could? Wouldn’t you give her a name that couldn’t hurt her and that might possibly help her all the rest of her life?”
He did not hear any answer to that, and so he turned his attention to the sea again. “I’d like to know,” he said, dourly, “what a lot of the mothers in this world mean. If they’ve known enough about the awful power of sex attraction themselves to marry a man and bear a child, why, in God’s world, don’t they know what they are letting the young folks up against when they turn them loose in utter and untrammeled freedom on the mountains and through the canyons and on the beaches and in the parks and the dance halls and the streets? Can’t they see that however times and customs change, the desires of the heart and the urge of the body do not change? They only grow stronger with the freedom and license and physical contact allowed in these astounding days.”
Then Jamie arose unsteadily and drew on the raincoat, and shuffling his feet before him, made his way down the steep pathway with which he had become sufficiently familiar during the few times he had climbed it to negotiate it safely. He followed his way down the beach by gyrating between the slopping of the waves and the entangling primroses. When he found he was among mats of primrose that threatened to trip him, he veered toward the water. When he splashed in the water, he veered toward the primroses, and by so going he came at last to where the lights of the Bee Master’s home threw a welcoming beam down the mountain-side. Then he felt along the back fence until he found the gate, and after that it was easy to reach the back door, and he was entirely ready for the back door by the time he opened it. He dropped on the first chair he encountered to rest awhile.
“I’m none too sure,” said Jamie, “that my contract for to-morrow, or is it to-day?”—he glanced up at the clock and saw to his surprise that it was today—“won’t be about all I can accomplish in one day.” But that one word that had been jeeringly thrust at him out there on the rock, “bridegroom,” persisted in his ears. It meant something to a man to be a bridegroom under any circumstances. It should mean the most wonderful thing in all the world. There should not be anything, unless it might be the love of God, that would be bigger and higher and holier in the heart of a man than to be the groom of his chosen bride, in ordinary circumstances. But there was nothing ordinary about the circumstances under which he had contracted to be a bridegroom. No, there was not. The storm of the elements, the storm in his own heart, the storm in the heart of the girl—
“Holy Moses!” said Jamie. “What a storm! Regular typhoon! Anyway for the clearing up to-morrow I’ll go to bed and I’ll see whether I can sleep or not. And if I can, then I wonder how much time I am going to need, and how I am going to find the place where I’ve promised to be?”
Then he thought of Margaret Cameron. She could tell him what car lines he must take, and once he reached the heart of the city it would not be difficult to find the proper office where the business of the county was transacted.
So Jamie lay down and shut his eyes; the velvet blackness of the night closed round him and the steady sweep of the sea breaking on the shore so very near came with rhythmic cadence. There was enough wind to sing a little. He was very tired but he had made good his boast so far. He had told the girl that if she would tell her trouble, he could help her, without a notion in his head as to how he was going to help her. By the depth of her grief he could measure the depth of her relief, relief that set her lips on his face, her hands frantically clutching him. He had saved her position before the world probably. He had offered what was of not much use to him, in the stead of the man who had been too much of a hound to make good his obligations. After all, he would have something beautiful to think about when the last hour came. Maybe the little Scout had been right about the different kinds of death. Maybe when Jamie’s time came he could think of the passion of relief, of deliverance, of utter panicky joy, that had obliterated the passion of fear and humiliation in the girl he was going to try to help. Maybe he could fold his hands and go softly in his sleep, and maybe at least his face could carry the smiling secret that the little Scout had talked about, if he got a chance to enter the gates and face his mother.
The next thing Jamie knew, the clock that he had set for seven was burring and he awoke from deep sleep and went to his breakfast and the watering. He merely told Margaret Cameron that he had some business in town. No, he was not going to the hospital, because he saw the desire to go with him in her eyes. He was not going to the hospital until Doctor Grayson sent for him. He would be back in the evening in time for dinner, maybe sooner. She need not mind about his lunch.
Jamie did the most important of the things he had been doing daily outdoors, postponing as many of them as he possibly could to the coming day. Then he went in and rested awhile. Later he brushed his clothing and searched through the drawers and the closets—the Bee Master had told him to help himself to his clothing if he needed changes, in view of the manifest fact that he had taken him from the road with only the clothing on his back.
Jamie thought it over and then he selected an extremely good-looking gray silk shirt and a dull-blue tie. He looked at his own trousers critically. He had slept in them and given them rough usage, and he had worked in them some. They were not suitable trousers for a bridegroom. He was so near the Bee Master’s height and build that a pair of gray ones he found stretched in the long drawer of a highboy were exactly right. He went on searching, and by and by he had the bed almost covered with clothing that appealed to Jamie as eminently suitable for an honest-to-goodness bridegroom.
Then he went to his bath, and when he managed the fresh dressings on his left breast, he hesitated over the antiseptic—and omitted them. He would not go to his bride even with a taint of medicinal odor about him. Since she smelled of flowers herself, he would emulate the example of the greatest beau the world has ever known by having the odor that emanated from him merely that of fresh linen, of utter cleanliness.
At heart Jamie was a gentleman. When he locked the front door and started down the walk for the short trip to the trolley line which ended a few rods away, he was as white of face and hands as his condition warranted. Otherwise, he was an attractive gentleman. He carried his head at a high angle. He squared his shoulders, as much military training had required. He stepped out in the Master’s best shoes and gray trousers and black coat, in his gray silken shirt and his dull-blue tie and a soft broad-brimmed Mack hat; he stepped out habited as it was proper that any gentleman might habit himself when he was going to be a bridegroom. He stepped very carefully that he might not accumulate dust on his shoes before he reached the trolley, and in taking this care it occurred to him to wonder where the girl he was going to marry was at that minute and what she was doing; whether she really would be at the appointed place to meet him and what she would look like, and what she would say to him, and with what words she would leave him when she had secured from him the things that she had admitted she needed so badly—a name, a wedding certificate, and a ring.
When he reached the ring in thought, a dull red flamed up in Jamie’s cheek. He was not sure that he had not gone too far. Before the Bee Master had been carried from his home he had pointed to a little drawer in his secretary in which Jamie would find money for an emergency, for milk, or ice, or whatever he needed until the Master’s return. From that drawer, as a fortification for his self-respect that morning, Jamie had taken ten dollars. He was not sure that ten dollars would pay for a marriage license. A marriage license was a commodity he had not previously considered. He had no idea what the article cost, but he felt certain it would not be more than ten dollars. Small change for car fare and for a sandwich for his lunch and the money for the license. Perhaps the girl would expect to pay for it, but Jamie could not quite endure the thought of a woman paying for his marriage license. After all, if he stood up and married the girl, it was his wedding, the only wedding he would ever have probably, and he meant to have it in appropriate and decent clothing, even if he borrowed the clothing, and he meant to pay for his wedding even if he borrowed the money. If he had not stayed there and taken care of the bees, someone would have been asked to do it who would have been paid, and when his first earnings were handed to him he could return the ten dollars. He had borrowed that amount.
But about a little thin engraved circlet of gold that looked as if it might fit a woman’s finger, about that little ring that he had run across among the Bee Master’s collar buttons and small belongings—He had it. He had it in his vest pocket. It might be a souvenir; it might be something precious; it might be that there was nothing among the effects of the Bee Master more dear to him. He had not at all made up his mind as to whether he might use it or not, but, at any rate, he had it in his pocket. He was fortified with the clothing and the price and the ring, If he should bring himself to use it.
Then a thought appealed to him. There was a bare possibility that he could materialize his thought, and so he consulted the motorman, and after making several changes, landed before the old Court House with some minutes to spare. Hurriedly he made his way to the Marriage License Bureau on the main floor. He told the Clerk he was expecting to be there shortly with a young lady to secure a marriage license and he asked about the expense, and found to his relief that he had more than enough money. Then with all the haste compatible with the state of his knees, he left the Court House and regained the street. He looked around him, up and down and across, and in that survey he located a jewelry store.
