The Keeper of the Bees, page 15
Angel Face sent an arrow over the fence.
Having exhausted his arrows Angel Face disappeared for an instant and returned to the fray beating the bee drum and shouting, “Atta boy! Keep your powder dry!”
Flying down the walk came the Nice Child with a fresh installment of tomatoes.
“First aid to the injured!” yelled the Scout Master.
When the last tomato had disappeared from the girders, the Scouts appeared breathless and panting before the Scout Master, who stood with sword at attention while the Scouts fell in line for orders. “Scouts, our thanks to the noble stranger who has so ably assisted us in vanquishing our ancient enemies.”
Three small boys, embarrassed at the unexpectedness of the situation, faced Jamie. Fat Old Bill hung his head and, with his eyes rolled obliquely, muttered, “Thank you!” The Nice Child looked at him straight and said, “Much oblige!” Angel Face brought his heels together, saluted with dignity, and said, “Deeply obligated, sir!” and the Scout Master swept the sword in a wide circle and repeated the hand on the chest bow, and then straightening, faced Jamie. “I thank you! My Scouts thank you! Your country thanks you! Everybody in this darned neighborhood thanks you! Scout One, get the hose!
Scout Two, bring the broom! Scout Three, turn on the water!”
When the lne was laid, the Scout Master took charge. The water sprayed against the white fence. Fat Old Bill wielded the broom. The Nice Child and Angel Face gathered up the scraps of tomato and carried them back to the garbage can. When they had finished and everything was neat again and the late afternoon sun began with a few last rays to dry and whiten the fence, Jamie noticed in passing close to it that there were dozens of almost invisible red lines all through the white, and he realized that the sham battle was probably a weekly affair in the garden of the Bee Master. So he went back to the bench under the jacqueranda with the feeling that in permitting the encounter he had not exceeded the limit of his privileges. While his back was turned, exactly what happened he was not able to decide. When he turned to take his seat, his gaze encountered a heap of flying legs and arms. Arms and legs everywhere. A big ball of humanity was rolling over the gravel walk, and in it the fat, bare legs of Bill, and the olive-brown legs of the “Nice Child, and the silk-stockinged, kid-shod feet of Angel Face were intermixed. Presently, the Dutch bob of the Scout Master appeared on top and the leader, with deft hands, began separating the mass, disintegrating it, expertly flinging it in different directions.
“Get a pacifier for the babies!” shouted the Scout Master. “Grabbing and fighting over a hose like that! I said, ‘Scout One, put the hose away!’”
Angel Face was sputtering.
“You didn’t said no such thing! You said, ‘Scout; Three,’ and I’m Scout Three, myself! You wouldn’t a-told One to put it away when you’d told One to bring it!”
The Scout Master fell into deep meditation. The sword handle was used to scratch the tumbled head.
“Fellows,” said the Scout Master, dropping into a confidential tone, “I guess Angel Face is right. I guess, by Gum and by Golly! I did tell him to put away the hose, and I guess I told Two to put away the broom, and I guess I didn’t tell One to do anything, which is for the reason Old Bill’s so fat it’s cruelty to animals to make him move anyway!”
The Scout Master sheathed the sword, combed the Dutch hair with soiled fingers, wiped the face on a particularly dirty sleeve, and stuffed in the tail of a shirt very much in evidence.
“Scouts, use your lipsticks and disband for the day!” came the order.
Then the Scout Master walked up in front of Jamie, took a decided stand and looked at him inquiringly, while Bill and the Nice Child and Angel Face ranged themselves near, their eyes highly expectant.
Jamie, sick though he might have been, Scot though he surely was, remembered back dimly to the time when he was a boy and fought imaginary enemies and hunted with wooden guns and flourished wooden swords and made wagons with rocking wheels and carried in his anatomy a
stomach that was for ever empty. The stomach that was for ever empty was the keynote of the present situation he felt sure. Jamie rose up and extended one hand to the Scout Master and the other to Angel Face, who happened to be such a particularly attractive young gentleman that Jamie succumbed to the light of his eyes and the charm of his smile the first instant he had a square look at him.
“Come on, fellows,” he said, casually. “Let’s go down to the corner stand and clean out the hot dogs and strawberry pop!”
The shrill cheering that greeted Jamie’s ears was perfect compensation for the amount of the hole that the treat would make in the very meager bunch of loose change that he carried in his breeches pocket.
Lined before the stand, while their diverse orders were being attended to, the visiting Scouts looked Jamie over critically. They liked the twinkle in his eyes. They liked the lean smile that crept over his white face. They liked the accuracy with which he had whizzed the pebbles and the dexterity with which he had gathered more when his supply ran short. Above everything else, they liked the fact that he had worked from behind a tree. If he had stood in the open and picked up stones and thrown them, it would not have meant much to the Scout Master and that particular band of Scouts; but the fellow that played the game hard, that played it according to the rules, that made it not a game but a reality by playing it as they played it, was nothing short of a real fellow and the youngsters crowded close and began to ask questions.
Jamie sat down in the shade of a live oak and put one arm around the Scout Master and the other around Angel Face, and saw to it that there was room for Old Bill and the Nice Child; and while the buns were being toasted and the onions fried, and the wieners split and browned and the mustard beaten smooth and the dill pickles sliced, and the pop brought from the ice, he told the boys something about what scouting meant when a man started on a night as black as a hat, on his stomach, crawling over shell holes big as a house, through broken rock and the debris of a sodden battlefield with a rain of shells and shrapnel bursting over him, trying to get close enough to steal a secret from the enemy, searching for the odor that attached to a beloved Buddy, hunting for the body of an officer.
The Nice Child and Old Bill came and pressed close to Jamie’s knees. The Scout Master leaned the Dutch head against the wound on his breast and trained unblinking eyes on him and Angel Face laid violent hands on his arm and paid not the slightest attention when the stand man said: “Your hot dogs are ready!” and the popping of corks began.
“Tell us some more!” they shouted in unison. “Tell us some more!” And Fat Old Bill kicked the olive shin of the Nice Child and said: “Gee! we never got a chance like this before, did we? He’s been where the ground’s all soggy with real blood and swords and things cuttin’ into him, and shooting going on above him! Gee! ain’t he wonderful?”
It was Jamie himself who wrecked the party with his sensitive nostrils. He had talked about vitamins and calories. He had agreed with Margaret Cameron that they would start a regime that he would follow religiously, but since the regime had not started as yet, and since it seemed to him that he never in all his life had smelled anything quite so alluring as the odor of the hot dogs, he reached a long arm over the heads of the youngsters and with one hand gathered up the plumpest hot dog he could see and with the other a particularly pink bottle of pop. What he said was: “Fall to chow! Help yourselves, Buddies!”
Half an hour later he came up the grassy sidewalk past Margaret Cameron’s door and grinned at her. His white face was flushed peculiarly and Margaret Cameron peered at him over the load of clippings she was carrying and then stared reprovingly. “I’ll wager two bits you went down to the corner stand and ate hot dogs with those youngsters,” she accused.
Jamie smiled at her joyously.
“You win!” he said, enthusiastically. “Holy smoke! but they were delicious!”
10. Because of God
The next time Jamie answered the telephone he got his call to the hospital. At two o’clock the following day he again boarded the trolley for the city and with no difficulty whatever made his way to one of its largest hospitals. Almost immediately he was shown to the room of the Bee Master, a big room where the sun shone in and the wind played through and the air was tinged with the perfume from a bowl of yellow roses. The instant Jamie saw those roses he realized that if they were not from the bush that grew beside Margaret Cameron’s door, they were from some other bush that belonged to the identical family and species. The yellow of the roses, the faint sweetness of their perfume, was in his nostrils as he rounded the screen by the bedside and stood facing the Bee Master.
Exactly what he had expected to see, he did not know. What he did see almost broke his heart. The man whom he had supported to the davenport, whom he had helped to the ambulance, had been ill; he had been in a sweat of agony; but he had been a man alive, with a chance for life manifest by the strength of his frame, the firmness of his muscles, the light in his eyes. It seemed to Jamie that the frame stretched on the bed before him was not tenanted by life, but by a spirit, a spirit that might flicker out and make its passing at any minute. There was not much strength left in the white hand that reached out to him. The voice that greeted him was scarcely above a whisper. The eyes that searched his face and rested on him were tired almost beyond endurance.
To cover his shock, his sense of pity, Jamie drew up a chair and began to talk about the thing he knew would be of most concern to the Bee Master.
“First of all,” he said, “I must tell you that I believe I’m bee immune. I’ve worn your coat and used the mint and the cinnamon pinks and the Madonna lilies prescribed by your partner, and they have been effective even above the dressings I’m carrying on my side. I can fill the water pans and gauge the right amount of salt and go past any of the hives with safety. I haven’t had much length of time to study, but in so far as I know, your bees are flourishing. Your partner sends you word that they are all right, and the youngster really seems to know.”
“Certainly,” said the Bee Master, “my partner does know. My partner knows bees rarely and finely well, even to performing the delicate operation of clipping the wings of a Queen.”
“All right, then,” said Jamie, “you can take it that the bees are fine. Margaret Cameron sends her love and her assurance that your flowers are flourishing, and I can tell you that your house is being cared for lovingly. I lock it carefully if I leave it, and I live in it sympathetically as behooves a man when he treads on antique rugs and touches antique furniture. You will find everything exactly as you left it when you come home again.”
The Bee Master smiled. “I divined that would be the case when I hailed you from the road,” he said. “You appealed to me, even in that hour of agony, as a man of fine perceptions and right instincts. I knew that I would be safe in leaving even my most cherished possessions with you. I had not any sense that you were a stranger. You seemed to me rather an instrument that had been sent to serve my dire necessity. And the little Scout? My little partner?”
“Your little partner comes to the garden, but I doubt if the garden is much of a garden without you. There are two things that I have to tell you.”
Jamie dipped in his pocket and produced the price of the hot dog and the strawberry pop and laid the coins in the outstretched hands of the Bee Master.
“My instructions,” he said, “were to have the bun fried, the hot dogs split and cooked crisp. The onions were to be browned. The exact amount of mustard was specified. I was to superintend the construction of that hot dog personally and with care. I’ll go now and see that it is made according to specifications, if you think Doctor Grayson would not cane me.”
The Bee Master smiled. He closed his fingers over the money, the identical pieces that his little partner had counted out for him.
“That money was carefully selected,” said Jamie, “from a collection of buttons and buckles and dice and moonstones, and it happened to just about clean out the treasury. There wasn’t much left. But your partner won a bet that was going to bring in two bits, so bankruptcy is not looming. I happened to be a witness to the winning of the bet. An accurately directed stream of saliva hit a bumblebee at about ten paces and knocked it off a red creeper.”
A dry chuckle shook the frame of the Bee Master. “Good work!” he said, heartily. “My partner can be depended upon to hit ‘most anything that happens to be the mark that’s aimed at.”
“And your partner,” said Jamie, “has got a heart that’s filled with love for you, love so deep and of such a nature that I truly believe that the offer to give a right hand that would be needed in riding a horse, in paddling a boat, in managing the Scouts, nevertheless, the offer freely and honestly made, of that same right hand in your behalf if it would ease the pain and bring you home safe and well.” The Bee Master shut his eyes tight and lay there fingering the dime and the two nickels. By and by he smiled stiffly at Jamie.
“You need not doubt the loyalty or the sincerity of that offer,” he said. “And you need not doubt that it would have been heroically fulfilled had necessity arisen. And you need not doubt, on my part, that in all the world there is no one left half so dear to me as the little fellow. One of the reasons I’d like to live is that I might go on further in what I am trying to teach that particular youngster about the keeping of bees and, incidentally, about the keeping of a soul that I happen to believe is immortal. Anything my partner has gotten from me will do no damage. In fact, I have a feeling that the damaging things of this world are going to go past a mind that is fully occupied with something legitimate and constructive. Don’t tell my partner that I dare not have the hot dog or the strawberry pop. Say that I am mighty thankful to be remembered. Give my love, and if you feel that I would not be too much of a shock, next time bring the little fellow along.”
“I’d be only too glad,” said Jamie. “And now, can you give me any instructions before I go? Doctor Grayson specified that I must stay only a few minutes.”
“I think there is nothing but to go on as you are. I’d be glad if you would put in your spare time among the bee books. It would help you with your job. It might interest you to an extent that would carry you on during the time of my weakness, provided your own strength is sufficient. Grayson wants to see you in his office here in the hospital before you go, and if you will pull out that drawer there on the left and put the envelope in it in your pocket, that will afford you at least some compensation for what you have done for me in easing my mind about my home and my belongings and my business. Tell Margaret that they will not allow me to write, but that I love the roses she sends and her notes are much company to me. Tell her I hope she will continue to indulge an old man until, let’s say until I reach home again, since I possibly have some chance. I will say good-bye now. I want you to know that I am thinking about you almost constantly in my waking hours. Be sure to see Grayson. He is mighty fine. He might be able to suggest something that would make you less white and help you to gather strength. Now it’s good-bye.”
“Good-bye,” said Jamie, “and rest easy. Among us, Margaret Cameron, the little Scout, and myself, we can manage the bees. There is no difficulty whatever about the flowers and the trees. I’ve already got that routine.” Then Jamie went down and found the office of Doctor Grayson, and half an hour later he went home with a big bundle of antiseptic dressings and without a drop of medicine. He had been advised to follow his impulses. If his body cried out for cold salt water, to indulge it. If the demand was to lie in the sand in the sun, to go ahead.
“Since a year of the best care they could give you at one of our finest government hospitals didn’t budge your trouble, try doing exactly what Nature tells you she wants you to do,” said the doctor, “and see what result you get from that. I am not sure but salt water and sunshine and clean air are not the best doctors in all the world, anyway.”
In the office Jamie sat on a bench to rest a few minutes and decide what he would do next. He was thankful for the dressings because he had not known exactly what would be the best thing to use. The doctors and nurses had done what they pleased to him, but he had not known very much about what they were doing. Now he would have the assurance that what he was using could at least do no damage.
Me thought about some necessaries he wanted and he wondered If the envelope contained enough to replace the sum he had borrowed for a ring and the marriage license, and so he opened it. Then he sat in dumbfounded amazement. It would not be a wise thing to go back and enter protest in the room of the sick man. He counted up the days that he had been on the job in the garden. He figured that he had had his room and his board and the use of the clothing he required, but it was not right and it was not reasonable that he should be paid any such sum as that envelope contained for what he had done. He sat there wondering if men all over the country for common day labor were being paid any such sum as that. He felt the money between his fingers. He spread it out before his eyes. He studied it searchingly. He could replace what he had borrowed and he could spend the same sum two or three times over, for only a few days of the protection of his presence about the bee garden.
That was practically what his services had amounted to. He had kept the house open. He had given it the effect of someone on the job. He put the money in his pocket—in a pocket where he could slip his hand to it and feel it. He left the hospital and went on the street, and still he kept fingering that money. If a sick man could earn that much merely by “sticking around,” as the little Scout had expressed it, what could he not do if he were well? Doctor Grayson had said that salt water and sunshine and clean air might possibly be the best doctors. Very well, then, he had the Pacific Ocean full of salt water. He had the whole sky full of sunshine. He had air absolutely dustless and clean wafting softly from the ocean every hour of every day, coming all the way from China. If there were dust in the air he breathed, Jamie reflected that it would have to be star dust.
