The Keeper of the Bees, page 18
Now, these were subjects upon which Jamie MacFarlane could speak eloquently on slight provocation, because he had loved his father and mother with good reason. They had been full Scot stern, but they had also been over-flowingly Scot gentle and loving and tender, and his memories of his home and his childhood were something beautiful. Jamie, seated beside the bed with the light from the window falling on his face, spoke slowly with the deliberation that searches for the salient points, with the loving impulse that puts in the small details that round out the full picture. When he had finished with the final description of how he was brought home from the war to the shock of the knowledge that both of them were gone, and there was nothing whatever, he sat very still, looking through the window, and it was the voice of the Bee Master that called him back.
“And from there on?” he suggested.
So Jamie began again and finished the story. He told it truthfully, with no deviation whatever except that he omitted the night of the storm and its subsequent results.
When he had finished, the Bee Master smiled at him, and then he said: “And what about the bees and the weeks that you have been among them in the blue garden?” Jamie answered: “As far as my mind is concerned, the time I have spent in your home trying to take care of your bees and your flowers and your trees has been the most beautiful time of my whole life. I began with a gnawing fire in my breast and a bitter blackness in my heart and brain; but some way, owing to some things the little Scout said to me and the clean air and the crisp sunshine and the beauty all around me, there is a sort of corresponding beauty that’s crept into my heart and my brain, and I think it’s smothered a large part of the bitterness. I was so desperately tired when I staggered across the road to you to try to help you reach the hospital that I am in no position to say what my physical or mental condition was when I came. But I know that to-day I have done about twice the work in the garden that I could manage the first day I really tried to look after your interests.”
The Bee Master moved his lean hands over the coverlet. A rare smile illumined his face.
“That’s fine!” he said. “Fine! And would you feel, then, that If they carry me out of here some of these days and bring me home, a wreck of a man unable to stand on my feet and carry on my work, would you feel that you would care to remain with me, that you would try learning bees from the egg onward?”
“I’d love it,” said Jamie. “I’d love to wait on you and help you back to health over the same path that I’ve laid out for myself.”
Then he explained to the Master what path he had laid out for himself, and again the gentle old voice cried: “Fine! Couldn’t be better, and what’s more, I can see that you are making it. Each trip you make to cheer the old man up a little, I can see that your skin is taking on a healthier hue, that the blue lights of pain and discouragement are fading out of your eyes. You even speak with a stronger voice, with the assurance of a man who is captaining his own soul. I am staking my money that you’re going to win through to health and happiness in the garden that has come the nearest to bringing me consolation of anything I ever have tried.”
The Bee Master lay still and waited a long time. Then he said to Jamie: “It may seem to you that such confidence as I asked from you should be met with equal confidence, but I find that my weakness has made a coward of me. Some day, if you ever want to know what there is to know concerning me, ask my little side partner. There was an hour of exceeding blackness in which the little Scout Master swung over my side fence and walked into my heart and into my life so securely that when this bitter hour came, almost before I knew what I had done, I had laid the whole of my burden on the shoulders of a child, only to learn that however keenly a child may think, however deeply a child may feel, there does not seem to be a large capacity for shouldering burdens. Children are so occupied with growing, with amusing themselves, with exploring the wonderful world around them, with following their impulses to explore and to fight, that there isn’t much possibility of weighting their young shoulders with responsibility for any one else unless, by chance, you take them from their companions, from their play, and load them with sickening burdens of heavy responsibilities that are unnatural and that often breed rebellion in their young hearts.
The little Scout knows why I left my home and a goodly circle of friends and came out here alone, and from two acres of rocky land and a few hives developed two acres of beauty and made homes for millions of little denizens that swarm in the garden. The little Scout knows my troubles, but, God knows, I don’t believe I am equal to telling that story again! If the day ever comes when you feel that you need to know, tell the little Scout that I said you were to be told and you will get an accurate account of what brought me here, of the bitter pain I have endured, and of the surcease I have found in the glory of the sunshine and the song of the sea, in the healing of the lilies and the consolation of the roses, in absorbing work with as interesting a branch of the evolution of life as the whole world affords. I have investigated rather deeply. I will guarantee you that in the evolution of any living species, in the whole world, there can be found no life processes more complicated, more absorbingly interesting, more nearly human than in just the development of bees. I hope that you are making good use of the bee books.”
“Yes,” said Jamie, “to the exclusion of everything else. The little Scout started me on the books that, to quote literally, contained the ‘jokes about the bees.’ The jokes were so absorbingly interesting that they held me. But If I would render honest service for the wage I accepted, I realized that I must work intelligently. So I soon dropped the jokes and went on to the reality. I have advanced to the place where I can recognize a queen, and I know an Italian queen from a German queen. I am also able to distinguish a nurse from a drone and a drone from a worker. Through long hours of studying the observation hive, I’ve pretty thoroughly familiarized myself with what must be going on inside of each of the hives in those other long rows. As I told you, I had intended to study tree surgery, but I figure that if there is such a possibility as that I may become a well man, and since I have no ties, I had better remain in the same kind of air and sunshine that seems to be working the miracle that I need to make a whole man of me.”
Slowly the Bee Master assented.
“Yes,” he said, “I think you’re right. I think you’re right. I think you can find even a greater amount of interest in the intricate and delicate life processes of a bee than in work with the insensate trees that grow because they must, for however interesting they may be, and however beautiful they may be, the fact remains that they are not carrying out life processes that border so nearly on thinking and on reasoning as do the bees.”
“I have quite decided,” said Jamie, “that I am going to study hard. I am going on carefully and if you give me the opportunity, I will make my work among the bees.” “About the location, now,” said the Bee Master. “How do you feel about my location?”
Jamie smiled.
“I know the Atlantic seaboard and quite a bit abroad. I’ve seen the coasts of England and France, and I’ve gone all the way across this continent. The bay below your place constitutes my whole experience with the Pacific, but I am fairly sure that in all this world there is nothing to be found much lovelier than your garden of perfect blue. You remember that the ancient Chinese called blue the perfect color’?”
The Bee Master nodded corroboratively.
“There have been days in that azure garden, laddie,” he said, “when God has really given me surcease, when for a minute a gold-haired vision of childhood has dropped from my mind, when for a minute the pain of the sin? committed against the woman I loved has been obliterated. If it can do that for a man carrying the burden that has been my portion, there is a prospect that a young man with health in his body and a heart without secrets might find the same great blessing in daily beneficence.”
Jamie looked at the Bee Master and winced. For one second he sat with his lips open and his tongue ready to fashion words, and then he reflected that he had no right to tell a secret unless it were his secret alone. He had no right to describe the Storm Woman. He had no right to tell any man of the shame baby he had covered with his name. If there had been anything magnanimous in his deed, it would lose the fine flavor, the beauty that such a deed might have, if he talked about it. If he lived, there might possibly be something more to that phase of his adventure. If he died, he would face his Maker more of a man if he kept his mouth shut concerning a subject that drove so noble a specimen of womanhood as the woman he had married to the course she had taken.
“The next time you come,” said the Bee Master, “make it on Saturday and bring the Scout Master with you. That little Scout gets under my cuticle so deeply that I am hungry for the odor of horse and the tang of dog, and all the outdoors that carries wherever the Scout Master goes.”
Jamie leaned forward with a broad grin on his face.
“Just between us,” he said, “could you give me any accurate information as to the sex of the Scout Master? “
The Bee Master leaned back.
“I could go no farther than my own conclusions,” he said. “And it wouldn’t be fair to the Scout Master to deal in surmises. Did you ever have any conversation on the subject?”
“I asked point blank,” said Jamie.
“And what were you told?” inquired the Bee Master. “That if I could not tell, it didn’t make any difference.” The Bee Master’s head rolled back on the pillows. He laughed until a nurse came racing. As he wiped his eyes with the handkerchief she gave him, he said: “Well, really now, isn’t that about the truth? Does it make a particle of difference?”
“I don’t know that it does,” said Jamie. “I’m sure it doesn’t seem to have made any with you. I see no reason why it should with me.”
He rose to go.
“We’ll make it Saturday,” he said, “and I think you’ll be asked if I got your hot dog right.”
The Bee Master reached under the pillow and pulled out a small envelope, a tiny prescription envelope.
“In case I am,” he said, “the one thing I’ve never done is to lie to my little partner. I’ll tell the truth. I’ll show the money waiting under the pillow until the doctor says I may have the treat.”
“I see,” said Jamie, “and I think you’re right. I don’t believe we get very far with the lies we tell children.”
“We get nowhere,” said the Bee Master, sternly. “We get nowhere. They see through us or discover our deception later every dme.”
Jamie arose and went over to the side of the bed and took the Bee Master’s hand, and suddenly he bent down and laid his lips on his forehead and before he realized what he was doing, he found that he was on his knees beside the bed. He heard his voice saying: “When I was a youngster, my father and mother taught me to pray. In the intervening years I got so sure of my own sufficiency and efficiency that I grabbed the bait and ran, but lately, when I got to the place where I could truthfully say, in the language of the old hymn, Other refuge have I none,’ I’ve been on my knees creeping back toward the foot of the throne. I am asking, if it’s consistent with the divine plan, that I may be given back my strength and my youth, that I may be of some help in making my country a good place wherein to live, to work, and to love. I am going home, and I am going to kneel beside your bed, and I am going to ask God, if it is the best thing for you, to let you come home, to let you have more of life, more time to enjoy the beauty that you have created; and if that is not His plan, then I am going to ask Him to give you the surcease that the little Scout Master says was vouchsafed to little old Aunt Beth.”
The Bee Master smiled.
“I heard that story,” he said. “I was told about it when it happened. It was a very wonderful thing that those two children could have gotten such a lovely conception of journey to the Far Country, and I am very sure it is the right conception.”
Jamie kissed the Bee Master on the forehead, and then he lifted to his lips the slender hands of the sick man and, turning, went quietly from the room. As he went, he passed a beautiful blue bowl filled to overflowing with more of the yellow roses that he had seen growing only in the garden of Margaret Cameron.
All the way home Jamie rode in deep thought. Would the Bee Master ever be able to come back to the house with the gracious face turned to the roadway, with the luring garden looking to the sea? Would he ever again sit in his great chair by his fireside and read from his loved books? Jamie realized that he was not waiting to reach home and the side of the Bee Master’s bed to offer up his petition. He was asking God as he rode through the turmoil of the streets of the city, crowded on either hand by people absorbed in the affairs of life, to grant even a short respite to the man he was rapidly learning to idolize.
When he left the car, he walked slowly up the roadway to the house of the Bee Master. He entered it and stood irresolute for a minute and then he walked to the telephone and from a list he had made, selected the number that the little Scout had given him. When he called it, the rich, sweet voice of a woman answered.
Then said Jamie, “This is James MacFarlane of the Sierra Madre Apiany. Is the Scout Master at home?” “Not at this minute,” came the reply.
“Would you contract,” asked Jamie, “to deliver this message? I’ve been to the hospital for a visit with the Bee Master. He is homesick to see his little partner. He has asked particularly for a visit the coming Saturday. I thought I had better tell you about it before arrangements were made with the boys for a scouting party or some kind of a hike.”
“Yes, that’s a good idea,” said the voice at the other end of the line. “I’ll make a note of the message and I’ll see that it is delivered. I should be interested in knowing how you found the Bee Master.”
“It is difficult to say,” said Jamie. “He seems so frail that a strong draft of air coming in the window beside him might carry his breath away.”
“Too bad,” said the gentle voice. “That is too bad. The children dearly love him. Any one can see that he is a noble specimen of manhood.”
“Yes, I think that, too,” said Jamie. “His home here, his library, his room, the pictures on his walls, the furniture he uses, everything seems to indicate that he could not be finer.”
“I’ve heard about you,” said the voice over the wire. “If you’re fine enough to appreciate the Bee Master to the fullest extent, it means that you are pretty fine yourself. We’d be glad to have you come in with our little person some day and take dinner with us.”
“Why, thank you,” said Jamie. “That’s awfully kind, I’ve been pretty seedy and I’ve been shunning people for quite some time, but I think, if there’s an evening when you would not be having guests, I’d enjoy coming with the Scout Master and sharing your fireside for an hour.”
“All right, then. Come any time you choose,” said the voice whose every cadence Jamie liked. “There never was a time when there wasn’t enough food on our table for one more and room to squeeze in one more chair. Come right along any time you’d like!”
Jamie hung up the telephone and looked around him. He was not in the mood for reading. He stepped into the kitchen and drank his daily quota of orange juice and when he reached the back door there was a call in the air, a call that he answered with his blood. He went down the back walk and out of the gate and to his particular mound of beach primroses. He stretched himself on the sand, pulled his hat over his eyes to shade them from the sun, fitted his figure into the curves of the mound, and presently he was unconscious in the unconsciousness of deep, sound, refreshing sleep.
By and by he awoke, and even before he was fully conscious, sniffed the air with questing nostrils. “That’s strange!” said Jamie to himself. “I chose this mound for its particularly inviting curve, but I didn’t see any sand verbena on it.”
Jamie drew a deep breath to be sure that he had not been mistaken as to the odor that was mingling with the primroses around him. He realized that so near to evening the verbenas would be opening to distill their sweetest fragrance. Then he opened his eyes and straightened up to look around him, and he discovered that his right hand was full of verbena blooms. He stared down at it; then he whirled to his knees and took a long survey up the beach and down the beach, and then he shifted over and scanned the sand with eager eyes.
There it was. The footprint of a woman—not the peaked toed, pointed heel that he sometimes saw tilting over the sand. The imprint of a foot intended for business, shod in a shoe reasonable in width, unusual in length, with decidedly a common-sense heel. Jamie sprang up, and clasping his flowers followed that row of footprints straight down the beach to the throne. With wildly beating heart and head awhirl, he climbed the throne and peered over and he found that he was sickeningly disappointed that it was vacant. He took his own seat to the far south to think. He remained there, carefully sniffing the rock beside him. The tang of sage, the odor of verbena, a whiff of primrose, were distinctly discernible. Not to lose time, he made his way down the rock. But the track that led to it did not lead from it. Gravel and fine stone and rock over which footsteps could not be distinguished formed the way from the throne to the roadway above. She must have gone that way. So Jamie followed. But when he reached the road he could not see a trace of any one that looked in the very least like the figure of the girl whom he was seeking. He went back to the throne and over the path he had come, and at the primrose mount he took up the trail and followed it south along the beach until he lost it among the entangling primroses and verbena, among the sea figs. Just at the point where he lost it, Jamie discovered the reason why he had lost it. It had become obliterated by the tramping of dozens of little feet, funny little tracks, all of them the footprints of children. Blindly Jamie followed down the beach, and once he found a spot where the footprint he was searching for stood plain in the sand beside a spot where the sand verbena grew, and all around it there came again the obliterating fleet of childish footprints.
