The Keeper of the Bees, page 19
Then Jamie went home. He opened the gate and carefully closed it after him. Half the length of the steps he sat down. For the first time he brought the little bunch of flowers he held around to the range of his vision.
“Can you beat it!” said Jamie to himself. “Can you beat it? That close, and I slept I must be more of a log than I am of a man!”
He sat staring at the delicate pinkish purple flowers that, as was their wont in the evening, were opening wide with the heat of his hand and distilling all around him the exquisitely subtle and delicate odors of their particular perfume. Once Jamie looked out toward the sea.
“Then I’m right,” he said. “She does live somewhere near here. At least, she haunts this beach. And she knew me, even with my face covered. For that matter, at a pinch I might know her form better than I do her face! But what’s the object in filling my hand with the most appealing little flowers in all the world if she hasn’t any use for me in any other way?”
Jamie thought that over carefully, and then he told the Pacific Ocean about it.
“Come to think of it,” he said, “I’ve filled my purpose with her. She has the name she asked for. She has the ring and she has the certificate. She hasn’t any further use for me, but this does prove that she has me on her mind, that at least she didn’t use me and forget me.” Then Jamie dropped the Pacific as being rather impersonal and confined himself to the flowers. He held them daintily in his slender fingers and looked at them with absorbed, questioning eyes.
“I wish,” he said, “that you could talk. I wish your little faces could tell me what you saw in her face when she gathered you. I wish that I knew exactly what was in her heart. I wish I knew whether she is very sure that she has finished with me, or whether there’s something more that I could do for her.”
Then Jamie shook himself and sat straight.
“By gracious!” he said, and this time he addressed a particularly tall, particularly straight, unusually handsome yellow hollyhock growing beside the pergola. “By gracious! I’m not so sure that she’d get me any farther if she did want me! It’s one thing to offer a name you haven’t any use for and a body that’s not going to last so very long as a sop to dry a woman’s tears, not of repentance, but of fear, a fear that the world is going to shun the leper of disgrace, fear that the accusing eyes of a child are going to look into her face and find her wanting—it’s one thing to do what you can when your time for doing anything is strictly limited. It’s only a few days now until this month is going to be passed, and if Margaret Cameron looks at my breast and can truthfully say that the fire is dying out of the wound there, if I am not deceiving myself in thinking that I am infinitely more of a man than I was thirty days ago, that’s another proposition. That’s a proposition that I hadn’t figured on when I essayed the bridegroom stunt. And that’s a proposition that’s going to take a lot of thought. It doesn’t behoove any man to assume a ‘I am holier than thou’ attitude, but at the same time, a man certainly has to do considerable thinking before he makes up his mind as to whether he wants to assume the rearing of a child fathered by a man who had the streak of yellow in his make-up that made him neglect to give his child honorable parentage.”
Jamie thought that over. He thought for a long time. He thought deep and hard. He thought from the background of Scottish prejudice. He remembered personal pride. He thought from the background of public opinion. Then he cast them all aside and thought straight from the shoulder. From somewhere a legal phrase crept into his brain. “Mitigating circumstances.” He could not think of the form of the Storm Girl as he had held it tight in his arms, he could not think upon the silkiness of her hair and the perfume of her breath and the wild odors that clung about her, he could not force himself to think that she was anything but fresh and young and healthful both of body and of mind. It was not compatible with ordinary reason that she should have polluted her body and smirched her soul, that she had broken the laws of God and broken the laws of man, and risked, not only for herself, but for the life that was to come, that blinding, blighting thing which has been so comprehensively designated as the finger of scorn.
“Whoever,” said Jamie to a particularly intelligent mocking bird that happened at that minute to be perched on a brace of the pergola near him, “whoever invented that little phrase about the ‘finger of scorn’ didn’t make it half strong enough. What they should have called it was the red-hot poker of scorn, the iron that can be thrust against the breast of a woman and that all her days can sear her soul and be set scorching anew at any unforeseen moment, and all because for a minute she probably loved a man so infinitely better than she loved herself that she risked her soul and lost it, so far as the world is concerned. It is a blessed thing that she did not lose it with God, for there was the Magdalene whom He forgave, and the. Magdalene was an old-timer who perhaps deserved what the mob gave her. But after all, God did forgive her, and it wouldn’t do to allow God to be kinder to a woman than a Scotsman would be.”
The mocking bird flirted his tail and cocked his eye and said, quoting an oriole on a plum tree in the garden, “Once more now! Once more now!”
Jamie grinned.
“Have I got to do better than that.?” he said. “Well, how would it do if I said that I’d break my word not to try to find the Storm Girl, and start out with the deliberate intention of finding her? And how would it do if I said that I honestly and truly felt the ‘mitigating circumstances’ to be mitigating, and if I really turned out, say in about a year from now, to be a sound man, maybe she could overlook my scars and maybe she could explain, and maybe we could find something really beautiful in life together?”
Then the mocking bird remembered a particularly brilliant performance he had heard on a date palm down in Mexico from a bloody red bird and threw a repetition straight at Jamie’s head, “Good’ cheer! Good cheer! Good cheer!”
So Jamie looked at his flowers again and saw that they were beginning to droop their lovely heads. He got up and hurried to find the little copper bowl in order to put them in water. When he had very carefully arranged them in the bowl, he carried it to the bedroom and set it on the stand beside the bed that could be drawn close to his pillow.
All the rest of that day, Jamie stumbled as he walked, not because of weakness, but because he was dreaming a peculiarly absorbing dream.
12. Seeing Through Veiled Places
The remainder of that week, outside of the time consumed in carrying out the regime Jamie had laid down for himself, he spent in the garden and with the books. With the trees and flowers he had a sure hand. He had learned how to make flowers thrifty and healthful in the meager climate of New England. With water to lavish, with almost uninterrupted sunshine, with warm days and cool nights very frequently foggy, Jamie found himself facing a reversion of all he knew about gardening. He very speedily learned that in a land so lavish with sunshine and water, his task was going to be, not to stimulate flowers to growth, but to cut back the growth in order to draw the strength of the plant more directly toward the production of flowers. Much garden lore he accumulated from Margaret Cameron—practical things that she had learned through experience: how to loosen soil; how to fertilize; how to water discreetly and to the purpose. Jamie already knew how to cut back effectively. What to do to secure flowers instead of leaves he soon learned.
All that week he was looking forward to Saturday, planning for the day on which he and the little Scout should go to visit the Bee Master. He had set the hour for their starting at two o’clock. It was fifteen minutes past two when the little fellow swung over the high board fence and came racing down the walk. Jamie was rather surprised. He had expected, from the casual and businesslike manner with which the little Scout had conducted the fight with the Indians, that equal promptness and executive ability would be displayed in keeping a date.
He was waiting on the bench under the jacqueranda when the small figure sailed over the fence. Scanning the little Scout closely, Jamie thought he detected traces of recent tears. The eyes were suspiciously red of rim; the cheeks smeared with the indisputable evidence of childish grief. Instantly Jamie’s heart went out in protest. Who had any business to hurt the little Scout? What was it, beside the sting of a bee, that could bring tears to so valiant a small soul? Without taking time for thought, Jamie stretched out both hands. Without an instant’s hesitation, the little Scout walked straight into his arms and laid a confiding head on his breast, and Jamie’s arms closed up tight.
“You didn’t have a fall and hurt yourself, did you?” Jamie could feel the shake of negation on his shoulder and the gulp in the throat.
“I’m sorry,” said Jamie, “but if we’re not to keep the Bee Master waiting, we must clean up your face and be on our way.”
The little Scout instantly stood erect.
“Clean up! Clean up! Can’t you tell by one look at me that I’ve been parboiled and scoured and curry combed?”
“You do give evidence of having had a bath,” said Jamie. “It’s only the region of your eyes that needs slight attention.”
“Oh, well, then,” said the little Scout, “if you say I need it, I reckon I do. I had so everlastingly much trouble with Mother and the Princess that I thought I never should get started. Women make me dead tired!”
“What’s the matter with the ladies?” inquired Jamie as he led the way to the bathroom, moistened a wash cloth and began operations in order to make sure that they were properly conducted. To his surprise, the youngster stood still and lifted a submissive face, and as Jamie operated, the child continued.
“Oh, Mother is always nagging about cleaning your nails and spooning out your ears and wild hairs in your eyelashes and ingrowing toenails! You’d get to be a burden to yourself if you’d try to pay any attention to all the things that woman wants done. When it comes to the Princess, I’d give my best jack-knife If Dad would fire her.”
“Fire a princess?” said Jamie. “You’re suggesting an unseemly proceeding. A princess is supposed to be treated with a very high degree of consideration.”
The youngster shrugged lean shoulders and sniffed. “Well, this princess we’ve got in our kitchen hails from some little crossroad in Europe, and she’s used to being waited on herself, and so she knows too darned well how to wait on other people. All of us got to go through too much pollyfoxing. It’s too familiar to call us by our first names and say anything in plain English. You’ve got to beat around the bush like a scoutin’ native to put it across that you’d like a little more butter on your toast, or the strawberry jam just ain’t. What’s the use of all the fuss? When it comes to clothes, both all two of ’em make me sick! That’s what this row was about. I wanted to wear my clothes, so when I got back I could meet the fellows and go down on the beach for a sham battle. Mother would have it that I couldn’t go with you and I couldn’t go to the hospital without being all rigged up until I looked like—” the little Scout stopped and dug an enraged toe in the rug before the wash bowl and then concluded—“until I looked like such a sissy that the Bee Master wouldn’t ’a’ owned me! And to tell it like a want ad, I was just forced to dress the way they wanted me to and at the same time I had to steal out the things I meant to wear and hide ’em in a hedge down the street a house or two, and then I had to duck the hedge and get the bundle and find a place where I could change, and I’m none too sure my things will be where I left ’em when I go back. Always making a lot of time killing and a lot of worry!”
“I see,” said Jamie, slowly, “but didn’t you want to be dressed in the best you had when you went to visit a very fine gentleman, whom you love as you told me you love the Bee Master?”
The little Scout drew up and heaved a deep breath.
Into play came the gesture that had now come to be inseparable from the Scout Master’s personality.
“About loving the Bee Master—that’s a thing that it ain’t very good to talk about. That gets down among your feelings where you want ’em covered up, where things ain’t much of anybodies business. if it was anything that would do the Bee Master any good, I’d stand fire and water to do it; but when it’s just nonsense, what’s the use? The Bee Master likes me or he wouldn’t have sent for me, and he never in his life saw me as dolled up as I am right now!”
The Scout Master squirmed, thrust forth a stocking clad leg and a patent leather shoe.
“Look at that now! Wouldn’t it make you sick? What’s legs for if you can’t use just leg? Who invented stockings anyway? Scratchy, itchy things and in a country where you don’t need ’em! I’ll tell the world, I’d ’a’ shed the socks, too, but I knew I was late. Come on, let’s go!”
Jamie hung up the wash cloth, used the towel, and started to apply the comb. The Scout Master backed away with out-thrown hands.
“No, you don’t!” cried the little Scout. “I’m not allowed to use other people’s combs. They might have tarantulas or Gila monsters or octopuses on ’em!”
Jamie laid back the comb and reached his hand. The Scout Master laid a hard, scarred, wiry hand in his and walked sedately beside him until they passed through the front gate.
Then the child looked up and remarked: “Now I guess we better release the clutch. If any of the fellows would see us, there’s just a possibility that I’d get toppled off my throne. My Scouts are about all I can handle some of these days, anyway.”
When they reached the street car and took their places, Jamie looked down at the figure beside him and decided that it was too lean, that the physical condition was not what it should be.
“Do you mind,” he asked, “telling me how old you are?” “No,” said the Scout Master, “I don’t. I’m ten years old, and lemme tell you, I’ve lived ’em! I’ve lived ’em all the way from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, and I’ve lived in cities where you had to be for ever dodging the police, and the bandits, and the kidnappers, in Mother’s imagination. You couldn’t get a kidnapper to touch me with a lightning rod. They’d take me for a regular roughneck!”
Jamie decided that the best way to get information was to keep quiet, so he said nothing.
“I’ve ridden on ships and boats and launches and paddled canoes and traveled on trains from the New York Limited to the Missionary, and believe me, I’ve had my eyes open and my ears open all the way! Last time we came out we missed the Limited we had reservations on and we had to take the Missionary or stay five days in Chicago and none of us could stick that, so we took the Missionary. The rest of ’em like to died, but I had heaps of fun, and lemme tell you, I swelled my roll something pretty. I’d just go through the cars and nice and polite I’d say to the hot, dirty folks, ‘For five cents I’ll get you a nice, cool drink of water.’ If they looked like a Rolls-Rich, I’d make it ten, ’cause more of ’em got caught than us. You ought to ’a’ seen ’em fall for it! I got so much I had to bank in my suitcase in our drawing room, and Nannette saw me and baa-hed like a sheep, and I thought ‘all was lost’—”
“Well, was it?” inquired Jamie.
“Not total. You see, Dad and Mother wasn’t in that load. First our Personal Conductor looked a mixture, but finally she got to laughing ’cause I told her the funds was the result of the idle rich grinding the masses, and she’s a dead sport. She said if I’d go fifty-fifty with the Orthopedic Home, I could keep it. I was lief as not on that.” The little Scout paused. “Ever thank God for good legs?”
Jamie said, “I have!” fervently and the little Scout grinned and continued, “I’ve gone a good deal scouting round with the Scouts, and, of course, some of it at school would stick to me by accident. My mother’s not so slow, and let me tell you there’s things you can learn from my dad! Maybe you think he hasn’t been a giddy ranger! Boy! He’s been city editor of a big newspaper, and he’s been two years in a scouting plane over Germany, and he knows about making pictures. My dad’s a regular leaping tuna!”
“I am going to meet him some of these days,” said Jamie.
The little Scout looked up quickly.
“Where?”
The inquiry was terse and forceful.
“When I called your telephone number to tell you about today, your mother invited me to dinner.”
The little Scout’s face fell.
“Aw!” The ejaculation was too laden with disapproval to escape notice.
“Of course, if you don’t want me to come-”
“Now, that’s another one of them unpleasant issues,” said the small person.
“Sure I want you to have grub! You can live on casabas and lobster and home brew for all of me. But what’s the use of dragging Mother and Dad and Nannette and Jimmy and the Royal family of Denmark into our affairs? Why ain’t it good enough for us to go on being friends just the way we are?”
“All right,” said Jamie. “I wouldn’t think of coming if you don’t want me.”
“There you go again!” said the small person. “Did I ever say I didn’t want you? Did I ever say I didn’t fall for you hard? Did I ever say I wasn’t hitting on six cylinders every time I see you? No, I never did! But just because I say there’s places I want to see you and places I don’t, you go and make it look like I didn’t want you any old time and any old place! I thought from your mug you’d be a guy that’d play the game square!”
“Well, I try to play the game square,” said Jamie. “Well, you’re out of luck, you’re all wet!” said the small person, “If you think you’re playing the game square when you tell me I don’t want you just because there’s certain places I don’t want you! Couldn’t a fellow have reasons? Couldn’t there be some things a body wouldn’t want to bleat all over the pasture?”
Jamie reached down and put his arm around the small person and drew the little figure up against him and found that the frame he was holding was quivering from head to foot.
