The Keeper of the Bees, page 23
Jamie arose. He offered his hand to Doctor Grayson, “I am going out in the air where I can walk and think,” he said. “But I’ll tell you right now, there’s no use to probate that document. It was made by a sick man—”
“It was made by a man fighting for life after an operadon,” said the Doctor. “His mentality was as clear as yours or mine when I said good-night to him at ten o’clock last night. There isn’t a court in the land that can touch that will.”
“It’s simply impossible,” said Jamie. “I will not even consider it.”
“Oh, yes, you will,” said Doctor Grayson, “because If you don’t probate that will, I’ll do it for you and you can rest very largely assured that Mr. Meredith will see that his child’s interests in it are taken care of. You will take it whether you want it or not. if you don’t want to keep it, once it comes to your hands, if you’d rather see someone the Bee Master would have hated go into the little house and commercialize the garden, that’s up to you, so far as your half of it is concerned. You can make up your mind when the time comes. Since you are so in doubt about it, I think I had better turn the document over to Mr. Meredith, but the chances are he will want you to cooperate with him.”
“Well, I will not!” said Jamie, stubbornly. “I will not accept a thing I haven’t earned!”
“Oh, damn the Scots!” said Doctor Grayson, impatiently. “I’m glad I’m English and willing to take all I can get, and you’re the first Scotsman I ever saw who wasn’t willing to take all he could get, no matter if it did come as a gift. And as for not taking things you haven’t earned, you’d better stop breathing, you’d better stop soaking in sunshine, you’d better stop eating the fruits of the earth. They are all gifts that you have accepted, and were mighty glad to accept!”
“A gift from God is one thing,” said Jamie. “A gift from a man I have known such a short time is something different.”
“There is no difference in the gifts,” said the Doctor. “They are both gifts, and I reiterate, you are a fool If you don’t accept them with a thankful heart!”
Jamie shook his head and, turning from the office, went down to the street and then back to the house and to the blue garden that the love of flowers and the love of beauty in the heart of a sentimentalist had built around a home. He stepped softly as he entered the door. He carried his hat in his hand and looked around for some place not too intimately connected with the Bee Master where he might lay it.
What was it that amazing document had said? One acre of valuable soil crowded to the limit with wonderful planting, a row of white hives running the length of it, something in the bank, plenty of comfortable clothing that fitted him, a bed whereon to sleep, and they were his if he cared to stretch forth his hand and take them? Jamie suddenly discovered that he was not so strong as he had thought he was because he was shaking until his teeth chattered and the tears were rolling down his cheeks until he was exhausted. So he got up and went down the back walk the extreme length of it, and opened the gate and stepped into the footpath that led down to the white sands of the sea. There before him his eyes encountered an amazing sight.
Backed against a rock, making feeble efforts at self-defense, were a couple of children, and before them there was a small figure working a sand shovel with the precision of a rotary plough and the velocity of a whirlwind. The victims against the rock were clawing their eyes and gasping for breath and making an ineffectual effort to return the compliment. To Jamie it was evident that the flying sand was very nearly smothering both of them. A few long strides brought him to the rescue. He grabbed the little Scout by the belt and pulled hard.
“Gently, partner! Go gently!” he said. “You’re smothering those children!”
The little Scout lifted the shovel and raised a face of outrage with the offered explanation: “They began it! They picked on me! I wasn’t doing a thing until they threw sand on me half-a-dozen times!”
“No doubt,” said Jamie. “No doubt, but that is not any sufficient reason as to why you should smother them. You’re going at them like a whirlwind!”
The little Scout drew to full height. A deep breath filled a heaving chest. There was no disputing the argument offered: “Again I threw as much on each one of them as both of them could throw on me, I had to be going some!”
Jamie took that in slowly.
“Perhaps you did,” he said. “Is that shovel yours or theirs?”
“It’s theirs,” answered the little Scout. “I took it from the biggest one, and you will notice he is taller and huskier than I am. So that’s that.”
“You come with me,” said Jamie. “Let’s go up here to the rock and sit down and look out on the ocean. When were you home last? “
“Left right after breakfast,” said the little Scout. “It’s Saturday, you know. I was coming to help you with the bees this morning, but you wasn’t there, and so I came on down to the sand and thought I’d look around and see If I could start anything, and right away those kids began picking on me, so I thought I’d better show ’em a few.” Jamie headed toward the throne and the little Scout scuffled along beside him.
“If you’ve not been home since breakfast,” said Jamie, when they were finally seated facing the ocean, “If you haven’t been home since breakfast, Jean-”
“Who told you my name was Jean?” cut in the little Scout.
“Doctor Grayson,” said Jamie. “He told me at the hospital this morning that your name was Jean Meredith.” “What else did he blab about me?” inquired the little Scout. It was evident to Jamie that the whole of the small figure beside him was suddenly imbued with defiance, drawn up for battle.
“He didn’t say anything,” said Jamie, “except that you would have the sense to accept a very wonderful gift that’s going to be offered to you.”
“Is it a horse?” asked the little Scout instantly, the defiance beginning to fade.
“No,” said Jamie, “It’s something worth more than a great many horses. Never mind that right now. There is something else I want to tell you. I just came from the hospital.”
Slowly the little person drew away from Jamie. Slowly the gray eyes widened. Slowly the hands clenched. Slowly the narrow chest heaved up and sank back again.
“Aw!” said the youngster, harshly, “aw! he ain’t gone and slept the beautiful sleep, has he?”
Jamie sat still and looked out across the ocean. It was a blow he found himself powerless to deliver. Slowly his eyes turned to the horrified face of the child beside him, and suddenly the little Scout launched a quivering figure into his arms and buried a twisted face on his breast and for a short time Jamie had difficulty in holding the writhing body in his arms together. A curious thought struck him. That rock that he had called the throne was not very well named. It seemed to be a place where people brought their troubles. In an earlier experience with it he had held the body of a woman tortured to the extreme limit of endurance. Now he was holding the body of a child so lean and slight that he could scarcely manage his long arms to give the support that was needed. “Don’t!” begged Jamie. “Don’t take it like that!
Let me tell you. It was like your Aunt Beth. It was in the night without even awakening the Bee Master, hands were folded on his breast, too. There was a wonderful smile on his face, exactly the smile that you described, the smile that seemed as If there were a great secret that those closed lips could tell If they could open,”
Jamie fumbled for his handkerchief and turned the little Scout’s head and wiped the streaming eyes and cupped a big hand under the quivering cheeks and held on dght.
“Don’t cry like that,” he begged. “You are tearing yourself to pieces! The Master wouldn’t like it. Don’t you know that you said all the angels would be glad when they saw your Aunt Beth coming marching, straight and tall, with a sure step, down the flower ways of Heaven? It’s going to be like that with the Bee Master. You are selfish when you cry like that. You are not thinking about him; about his going home to Mary and his wee girl; you are thinking about yourself.”
Instantly the little figure straightened.
“Sure, I’m thinking about myself. Why shouldn’t I think about myself? I got mvself to live with, haven’t I? Who’s going to be hurt when I’ve got a pain or ain’t strong enough to handle Old Fat Bill, or when I can’t make anybody understand any of the things that he always did understand? He ain’t the only one that spilt the beans. When he told me all there was to tell about things that went wrong with him and the people who ruined him, he didn’t do all the talking. He knew just as much about me as I did about him, and now I ain’t got a living soul to go to that will understand! What am I going to do? Just answer me that! What am I going to do!”
Suddenly Jamie found himself taking the woebegone face before him between his hands; he found himself laying it against his face, first on one side and then on the other; he found himself hugging the frail body until he knew he was almost cracking the bones in it, and deep and husky he heard his own voice saying: “You come straight to me! When you’ve got a secret you want kept, when any one doesn’t seem to understand and some of the bunch will not play fair and things go wrong, you come to me!”
Instantly the little Scout struggled away from him. Jamie met a level gaze of such depth and appeal as he never before had encountered in human eyes.
“Honest to God?” said the little Scout. “Tear out your heart, cut it in pieces, and cast it to the four winds of the heavens?”
“Whose lodge ritual have you been reading?” asked Jamie.
“Dad’s,” said the little Scout, calmly, “only we made ours as much worse as we could.” Then his fingers tightened again.
“Honest? On the level, do you really mean it?”
“Honest. On the level. Swear over my heart,” said Jamie. “Hold up my right hand and take the oath before the Almighty! I’ll always be your friend. I’ll keep any secret you tell me. I’ll do anything in all the world that I can at any time, at any place, to help you.”
A steady hand was thrust at him.
“Shake!” said the little Scout. “All that goes for me All what you said about me, I’ll say about you. I’ll come to you like I been going to the Bee Master. We’ll be partners like him and me was. I’ll help you all I can But, say, what’s going to become of the bees? What’s going to become of the garden? What’s going to become of that nice house?”
Jamie hesitated. Someone had to tell the child. They were there. It was his opportunity. He wanted a childish viewpoint. Why not?
So he said quietly: “Would you believe there was any one in all this world that the Bee Master loved any better than he did you?”
“I don’t have to waste any breath on explaining beliefs on that point,” said the little Scout. “I got actual information, and I got it from the Great Mogul; I got it from the Man Higher Up; I got it right up against the Bee Master’s heart; I got it with a tight kiss and it’s a secret I ain’t tellin’ anybody except the man that takes his place. Remember you’re under oath and this is the first one I’m going to tell you because it was our secret between us. There might have been folks that wouldn’t have liked it If they’d known it. There was folks that wouldn’t have liked it. Margaret Cameron wouldn’t have liked it, for one, ’cause I’ve got my doubts if she cared any more about Lolly than she did about the Bee Master. What I know about her, the way she cleaned after him and waited on him! I guess I seen Mother cottoning up to
Dad. I guess I know a little about married folks, and what I know about her is that she’d have been tickled to pieces if the Bee Master had said to her, ‘Wilt thou?’ You just bet she’d have ‘wilted’! She’d have ‘wilted’ all over him! But he didn’t ever ask her, and he didn’t ever intend to ask her. He never loved any woman in all the world but Highland Mary, and he let one other woman make a fool of him when he was so lonesome after she was gone, like a chicken trying to peruse around with its head cut off.—Say! That’s a secret, too! I seem to be spilling all I know on you all at once. You might get ’em in line better and hold on to ’em tighter if I told ’em one at a time, and it’d be more sense if I’d tell my own, anyway. He might not like it if I told his. I didn’t mean to, either. Just saying that about Margaret Cameron made me think how I could have told her any time she was whirling like a button on a barn door that there wasn’t nothing to it except that he thought she was clean, and he thought she was fine, and he’d rather play cribbage or checkers with her than to sit and think about the awful thing that happened to the woman he liked best and to his little Mary. No, she needn’t ever thought it was her he liked best, ’cause it wasn’t. It was just ‘as is’ little old me! And why I know it is like I told you before.’ Cause he said so! And he wouldn’t have to say so If he didn’t want to. Nobody asked him. Nobody pushed him off the springboard. He took the high dive all by himself.”
“Well, then,” said Jamie, “if he loved you like that, and you know he loved you like that, and if he was going on his long journey and had something very dear to him to leave, who do you think would be the person to whom he would leave it?”
So long as he lives Jamie will remember the reaction of the little Scout to that question. The flat shoulders squared. The head lifted to an extreme height. The chin drew in. The eyes batted. A hand was laid on the chest at the base of the throat; the mouth opened and the eves closed, and the little Scout went through the pantomime of swallowing the biggest morsel that could, by any possibility·’, be forced down a small esophagus. Then it came straight from the shoulder, as Jamie was beginning to learn that everything came with the little Scout. “Why, he’d just naturally leave it to met”
Calmly, casually, convincingly, the words came from lips of assurance. “He’d leave it to me, and maybe he’d leave some to you, because you stuck on the job when you! wasn’t hardly able, and you faced down the bees like a real man would, and you been square about taking care of things. You can write down my answer to that question. He’d leave some to me, and if he played the game square, like he always did, he’d leave some to you!”
“Well,” said Jamie, “you’re a good guesser, Jean! That’s exaedy what the Bee Master has; done. He’s left a writing that Doctor Grayson thinks: will hold in the courts, and this writing says that the west acre of the garden of wonder up there, and the hives; that are on it, are yours; and the east acre and the hives that are on it, are mine. For yourself, you are free to do whatever you and your parents think best. For me, it seems to be a gift that I cannot accept.”
“How come?”
The little Scout shot the phrase at Jamie forcefully. “Why, I haven’t done anything to earn it,” said Jamie. “All I’ve done here is not a drop in the bucket compared with the value of an acre of land down that slope, planted as it is, peopled with the bees. It’s simply stepping into a home and a comfortable living and a profession that I feel sure I have brains enough to master with a few years of loving and painstaking work, and there are all the books I need and all the material I need, and the name of a man who will help me. It’s too easy! It’s a fairy tale! It’s a dream! Things don’t happen that way in real life.” The little person thought that over.
“Look here,” said a confident voice, and a small hand was laid on Jamie’s cheek and his face was turned straightly to meet the gaze of the speaker. “Look here! Maybe you think the bandages you’re wearing don’t show through the shirt on your back; but when you stoop over, they do. You’re pretty game about it and you don’t belly ache, but, of course, you wouldn’t be all harnessed up like that if you didn’t have to be. And that means that wrong things and things that hurt you and hit you awful hard came your way, and it was for all of us, for ‘Our country ’tis of thee.’ But you bucked up and you stood your hurts, and you didn’t complain, and you pulled through ’em; And you just know, all by yourself, that ugly things, and mean things, and maybe things you didn’t deserve at all happened to you. Now, why ain’t that just the same as if something that was wonderful and lovely happened to you? Why couldn’t a beautiful thing happen to you just as well as a bad thing? Why couldn’t getting an acre of land with beehives and flowers, happen to you just as well as getting a rip-snorter that nearly tore your heart out? Laugh that off, will you?”
“Well,” said Jamie, “come to think of it, I have heard of the law of compensation. The law of compensation means that when things have gone about as far as they can go in one direction, sometimes they turn around and go equally far in the other direction.”
“Sure!” said the small person. “That’s the dope! That’s the way to look at it! Don’t sit there and talk about not understanding things and not being worth things. Course you’re worth ’em, or you wouldn’t have got ’em! All your life there’s been something in you, and I expect it was born in you just like it was born in our baby. Ever since they brought him home from the hospital you can see there’s things about him that’s like Dad, and you can see things about him that’s like Mother, and I hope to goodness there will be one thing about him that will be like me! When I went on a boat past the cave in the rock where, if you look through, you can see the light, Molly said, when I saw the light, if I’d wish for the thing I wanted most in the world, it would come true. So I made a wish and Molly wanted to know what· I wished, and I wasn’t going to tell her. I like Molly, but everything ain’t all of her business. I like her, but she ain’t the keeper of my secrets like the Bee Master was and like you’re going to be now in his place. So I’ll tell you what I wished for my little brother when I saw the light that makes wishing come true. I thought of it just the minute I saw the light, ’cause even worse than I want a horse, I want the thing I wished for my little brother. So just as quick and just as hard as ever I could say it, right in my heart and looking straight at the light, I said: ‘I wish that our Jimmy will not ever grow up to be a cad!
