The Keeper of the Bees, page 20
“The days are fairly long for you, aren’t they?” asked Jamie.
“Oh, I reckon the days are all right,” answered the little Scout. “They’re the same days other kids have, and a lot of ’em get fat on ’em. Cast your optics on Fat Old Bill, if you don’t believe it. It’s just that there’s times when I pretty near know that my job’s about all I can handle.”
“What’s the trouble?” asked Jamie.
“Well, I reckon you know how you get to be a Scout Master, don’t you?”
Because he wanted information, Jamie said he was not sure.
The little Scout shrugged exasperated shoulders.
“Well, I’m sure! I’m darned sure! You get to be a Scout Master by mastering the Scouts, that’s how! If they are jumping, you jump the farthest. If they are swinging, you swing the highest. If they are running, you spread your white wings and beat ’em to it. If it’s bicycles, you just lie down over the handle bars and paw the air for dear life and let the rest eat your dust. If it’s canoeing, your canoe makes the waves the rest of them upset in. If it comes to a slugging match, you got to have your jujitsu so thoroughly in practice that you can sling any of the bunch in any direction you want ’em to circulate. Being a Scout Master means mastering the bunch; and Fat Old Bill is getting to the place where I’m going some if I handle him! The Nice Child is easier, but let me tell you, Angel Face is putting on muscle these days! He didn’t used to be so well. He was fussing around with appendicitis. Anywhere in the region of his right side even a little crack would knock him out and make him sweat blood. But now he’s kicking out of it in fine shape. He’s going to make a great big, strong man. In just about a year more he’s going to find out what I know already, that if he knew as much as I do, he’d know it’s only luck if I handle him now. And whenever they find that out they’s mutiny, and the fellow that can handle the bunch is due to usurp the throne. I got that out of a history book, and it’s good stuff. It sounds unpleasant, but it’s a plain statement of facts. Scout Master and The Limit is the same thing.”
“In other words, you are working too hard,” said Jamie. “You are trained down so fine that you are on the edge, and while the rest of them are gaining, you are losing. Is that the point?”
The Scout Master meditated.
“I guess the real needle-fine point of it is that there’s one of me and there’s three of them, and sometimes they beg so hard that we let in two or three more that I can’t eat ’em raw; I got to roast ’em or quit. And on those days I finish up just about out of ammunition. Nannette says that I keep on fighting and rolling and kicking until I horn in on her territory sometimes, but she ain’t got any. thing coming on me. I never had the hysterics and bellowed out in the night until I waked the family just ’cause the turtles didn’t eat all of anything!”
Jamie tightened his arm around the Scout Master and slumped his body into an inviting curve, and in three minutes he held against him a youngster tired to exhaustion at the middle of the day and fast asleep.
When they reached the hospital, Jamie gently shook the Scout Master, and instantly the youngster was up with blinking eyes and an ingratiating smile, ready to prove that unconsciousness of what was going on was for someone else; that particular fellow always was and always had been wide awake. The instant they were inside the hospital, the Scout Master reached for Jamie’s hand, crowded up beside him, and walked to the elevator and down the long halls cat stepping.
Evidently they were expected. The Bee Master’s door was open; a screen shielded the bed from the view of the passersby. The Scout Master sent one look across the room and to the open window and nudged Jamie with a sharp elbow.
“Have you noticed how Margaret Cameron’s roses have fallen off in blooming lately?”
The whisper was sibilant; but Jamie caught it and smiled as he noted the flowers, and then he heard a further whisper.
“She’s always cottoning up to him. She’s got the idea that he’s her personal property. There’s been more than one day when she’d about given her eyes If I’d ’a’ gone home, but as long as the Bee Master says, ‘Stay,’ I’m staying!”
Jamie rounded the screen and the Scout Master followed and stood back until Jamie shook hands with the Bee Master and stepped aside. Then the small Scout walked up before the Master’s bed, wide-eyed, and took one good look and changed color, changed slowly from red lips and tinted cheeks to a spreading white. But the heels came together with a click. The figure stood very straight. The salute was according to rule and snappy to the superlative degree. The grin that overspread the small features was ingratiating. The Bee Master held out shaking hands and suddenly—Jamie thought he never had seen a movement quite so sudden; he wasn’t sure how the intervening space was cleared—the little figure simply arose in a leap and dived into the bed. The Bee Master made a good catch, although he caught his breath at the same time, because he was shaken by the suddenness of the plunge. But he had the little Scout tight in his arms, and the child was thoroughly draped over the chest of the Bee Master. A small hand was gripping the old white head on either side, and from forehead to chin a shower of short hot kisses was raining over the Bee Master’s face. The little Scout sat straight up on the bed and suddenly big tears shot one after another across the childish face and a little sharp wail that cut deeper than a knife piped out, “Oh, God! I wish you didn’t have to suffer so!”
The Bee Master’s chin pointed toward the ceiling. He lifted his right hand and gathered his lower lip into folds and gave it outside pressure to reinforce it.
“Yes, Buddy, I’ve thought about that myself,” he said, “and I’ve sort of wished it, but it seems to be in the divine plan, or through some negligence of mine in taking proper care of the machinery as I’ve come along, and so I have to take the consequences. But don’t you mind.”
“Well, I do mind!” said the little Scout. A hand was jerked backward in the direction of Jamie. “He’s all right. He’s a good scout. He had sense enough to get behind the tree and use what he could find when the Redskins attacked us. He’s good stuff, a sure fire thing, but he don’t think himself, that he’s you.”
The Bee Master glanced at Jamie and their eyes met and held.
“Take a chair,” he said to Jamie. “Draw up close here. I want to tell you something, but first I want to ask you something.” He looked straight at the Scout Master. “You’re fairly sure,” he said, “that the man I left to keep the bees is the right kind of a man?”
“Yes, I’m sure,” said the Scout Master, promptly. “You couldn’t get him to do a low-down, mean trick to save you!”
“That’s all right then,” said the Bee Master. Then he turned to Jamie. “And you,” he said, “have you become rather well acquainted with my little partner here?”
“Oh, we’ve made a start,” said Jamie. “We haven’t had so much of a chance. The little Scout is in school, you know.”
“Well, what I’m interested in knowing,” said the Bee Master, “is whether you’ve got a feeling that my little partner plays the game square, doesn’t do any mean tricks, is willing to help the other follow, knows how to salute and to revere the flag of our country, and has a proper reverence for the Great Giver of all good and perfect gifts.”
Jamie thought an instant and then he nodded assent. “Yes,” he said, “yes, I think we’ve come pretty close to at least touching on all that ground. I think If you had searched the whole world over, you couldn’t have found a more genuine little human being to make your partner in the keeping of the bees.”
“All right, then,” said the Bee Master, “that’s all I wanted to know. Merely if you liked each other. If you are getting along well together. In case I should have to stay here for quite a time, or in case I should get better and have to make quite a long journey, I just wanted to know if you would keep the garden growing and keep the bees happy. You know it’s something of a trick, If you have been studying the books carefully; you know it isn’t a thing that every one can do, just keeping two acres of bees happy, two acres of life thriving.”
Then he addressed Jamie directly.
“There will be times when you must have help,” he said. “I told you about the right man the last time you were here. If you will call Mr. Carey and tell him the circumstances when you find in your examination that the last cell of any hive has been filled, and the bees are growing restless, he will come and help you harvest the honey. He will show you how. Then you can render him the same service and that way you will neither one be put to the expense of hiring a party who may not be compatible to the bees. He will teach you what the first signs of foul brood are and how to go to work on it, and as far as the rest is concerned, my little side partner here can tell you anything you need to know in taking care of the bees. Can’t you, Buddy?” asked the Bee Master, tightening his arm.
“I sure can!” answered the youngster. “I have put him wise to every single thing you ever told me about a bee. I haven’t forgot the first word of anything you told me and I can pretty near hit the bull’s-eye on anything you ever read me from a book. I might not have just all of the big, high sounding words, but I passed on the proper meaning.”
“Yes, I think you could,” said the Bee Master. “I will bear you out in that. I never read anything to you that you failed in getting the proper meaning.”
“And, too, you know,” said the little Scout, “that you read something wonderful! You go very slow, and you pronounce your words so that almost anything you read is like poetry, and you put in little explanations where the language gets extensive. Most anybody could understand what you read.”
Then with a sudden rush the Scout slid from the bed and, turning around, smoothed the coverlet and dipped deep in a trouser pocket and brought forth a grimy, round-cornered pair of dice. With a flourish of triumph these were laid before the Bee Master.
“I won’t get you all het up throwing against you today,” said the Scout Master. “This is the luckiest set I got. I’m going to leave ’em with you so as If times come when you can have a pillow propped up, you’ll have ’em to play with. Would a nurse be too pudding-headed to throw with you? Could you teach her just how to roll the bones right? Could you teach her?” The Scout Master stopped suddenly. “If a woman’s got sense enough to take care of sick people and give ’em their medicine right and bathe ’em and rub ’em and take away the pain, I reckon she can throw dice. So, of course, you’ll have somebody to play with you. I just kind of got the feeling that there can’t anybody do anything just exactly the way we do it.”
The Scout Master looked at the Bee Master and the Bee Master looked at the Scout Master and each smiled a smile so rarely beautiful that his whole face was transfigured.
“Well, as a secret, between us, and not letting that tall, lean Scotsman there hear what we are saying, of course, such old friends as we are, people that have been so many years with each other, we do have ways that nobody else can quite understand. We do satisfy each other a little bit better than any one else could. I have a very nice nurse. She will play with me, and I can’t tell you how fine I think it is of you to leave your best set with me. I’ll take great care of them, and If it just happens that the nurse is so puddingheaded that she can’t roll the bones right, I’ll ask Jamie to bring them back to you some of these days.”
The Scout Master nodded. Then from a hip pocket was brought out a small roll done in tissue paper. This was spread on the bed and opened up, and before the amazed eyes of Jamie and the Bee Master there billowed over the bed yards and yards of gaudy silk and satin flowered, plaided, and striped ribbons. The Scout Master ran appreciative fingers through the gaudy mass and shook it out.
“You wouldn’t guess in a frog’s croak how I got these. A few years ago, before all the girls took to painting their mouths and their faces like the Indians, and all of them got the shingles, they was addicted to ribbons. Ribbons just raged. You couldn’t get ’em bright enough and you couldn’t get ’em broad enough, and you couldn’t get ’em stiff enough. Nannette used to look like the ribbon counter at Wanamaker’s or Marshall Field’s or Robinson’s when she’d come down to breakfast. And then, just like that,” the Scout Master snapped a thumb and second finger with a spang to show how instantaneous ‘that’ was, “just like that, ribbons were out, and Nannette had spent all her pin money on ribbons until she had a lean and hungry look every time she passed a hot-dog stand or an Eskimo-pie wagon. Ain’t they the prettlest things! I liked to see Nannette wear ’em. She couldn’t get ’em too bright to suit me, nor too broad, nor too flowery. She had a whole drawer full of ’em. But when she shingled, I asked her if I could have ’em. She’s got a business head on her all right! She soaked me two bits, but I paid it because I knew what they were worth. Then I took ’em down to the Princess in the kitchen and I told her she could have two that she liked the best to make her cases for her embroidery silks if she’d wash the rest of ’em and iron out the creases and make ’em pretty for me. I wasn’t too lazy to do it myself, but I wasn’t right sure how much soap to put on ’em, or what kind, and swinging an electric iron is a profession you got to learn. You can’t flip the dust off your shoulder into anybodies eye unless you’ve had a good deal of dust there to flip, and that’s the way it is with swinging an electric iron. You’ve got to know how to do it before you get results.”
The Scout Master shook out the ribbons.
“Now, one thing you can do is to take ’em one at a time and just slip ’em through your fingers and look how silky they are and how lovely the flowers are and what beautiful colors there are in the stripes and how they run into each other.”
Before the eyes of the Bee Master there was held up one ribbon of delicate hues.
“You know,” said the small person, “the man who invented that—if it wasn’t a woman—whoever did it—had rainbows on the brain. See the violet and the orange and the purple? See how the colors mix and blend? That’s about as good a rainbow as God ever set in the sky to make a sign to His people that He would keep His covenants with man. S. S. That means Sunday School.” With fingers busy with the ribbons, the Scout Master glanced over toward Jamie.
“Do you know the Bible pretty good?”
“My father was a minister,” said Jamie. “I know the Bible from cover to cover.”
“Then you know that about rainbows?” asked the Scout Master.
“Yes,” said Jamie. “I know.”
“Do you know anything prettier?” asked the Scout Master.
“No,” said Jamie. “In any literature of any language I ever learned to read, I know nothing more beautiful than the promise that is symbolized by the rainbow.”
The Scout Master stood still. Lean brown hands dropped among the ribbons. A pair of deep, expressive, tender eyes lifted to the eyes of the Bee Master.
“Do you reckon,” said the Scout Master, “that that covenant between God and man is a little like our covenant about the bees and about our secrets?”
The fine old eyes of the Bee Master were tender and solemn and his voice was loving as he said to the little person: “Well, you know a covenant is an understanding; it’s an agreement, usually only between two people, an agreement about something important and something worth while.”
“Well, then,” said the little Scout, “that’s what ours was, and I’m keeping it, and I am going to go on keeping it. And this one, now this one is a regular flower bed with the bouquets all made up, and this one is Roman stripes like Ben Hur had for his sash when he drove Atair and Aldebaran and Antares and Riegel. Oh, joy! Oh, boy! Wouldn’t it be great stuff if we really had an honest and true amphitheater and horses like that and races like that now? These dinky little races around here where the riders come and sell out the race before they run it, and they draw cuts in the morning to decide who gets to win that day, oh, bah! don’t it make you sick? The world’s getting so rotten they don’t even run the ponies fair any more!”
“I am sorry to say,” said the Bee Master, “that you are about right in your statements. If we don’t call a stern halt, If we don’t make a right about, if we don’t come to our senses pretty soon, we won’t have very much of the ancient honor that obtained among men left anywhere in this world concerning sport or business, either one.”
Then noticing the arresting hand and the grave face of the little Scout, he added: “Are you holding the Scouts level these days?”
There was an instant of hesitation on the part of the Scout Master.
“The Nice Child is all right, but Fat Old Bill and Angel Face are eating too much raw meat. If they mutiny one at a time, I can handle ’em. If the day comes very often when two or three of them go bad in a heap—” the Scout Master straightened up and lifted a face contorted by a wry grimace—“woe is me!”
Jamie and the Bee Master could not keep from laughing, much as they respected the mentality of their small partner.
“Now, as I was telling you,” continued the little person, “you can look how-beautiful they are and, too, you can braid ’em. Just by getting a nurse to give you a pin and starting with two and then working’ up and down and across like this, you can make a coverlet big enough for your shoulders to keep the cold air out, and you can make them run in waves, an you can make ’em go in loops. I don’t know anything you can play at easier or get more combinations out of when you are sick and have to lie in bed than just a bunch of beautiful ribbons. It keeps your mind on what you are doing, but it isn’t like solitaire or some of the things you can play alone that still make you think hard enough to send you to the mat if you wasn’t already there. Now, I guess we’d better go. The Bee Master, will be tired. Mother said I wasn’t to stay long enough to make a sick man tired, and I wasn’t to talk enough to make him worse, and what else did she say? Oh, I know. I wasn’t to look like I wanted anything to eat, ’cause there wasn’t anything to eat at a hospital.”
The Scout Master, with a lingering stroke, pushed back the gaudy ribbons, eyed them an instant covetously, and then bent above the Bee Master and dropped a feathery kiss on his forehead, ran a hand over his hair, and said: “You be a good boy and take your medicine and sleep when you’re told and come home quick, just as quick as you possibly can!”
