The Keeper of the Bees, page 31
“Oh, hello! How’s everything?”
“How’s everything at your end of the line?” parried Jamie.
“Fine!” said the little Scout. “I’m doing all those things that I told you I’d do for our partnership baby. He’s going to be an awful nice baby. Mother’s crazy over him. She cuddles him up and takes care of him exactly like she did Jimmy, but she ain’t much stuck on this bottle business. She says it’s an awful nuisance to fix the bottle, and she says it’s an awful pity that any baby should have to lose its mother because she says that a baby, when it’s a little thing like that, gets more from its mother than just milk. She says it gets a steady stream of love. She says that a baby that lies on its mother’s breast and looks in her eyes and lays one little hand on her neck, gets with its food something that it knows about all its life. She says it tain’t natural and it tain’t right for a baby to be laid all alone on a pillow and any old bottle propped into its mouth. It ain’t propped with Jamie, ’cause I hold it, and it’s a good thing this happened while there’s no school, ’cause I’m tellin’ you that you wouldn’t believe all the things I do when there ain’t anybody looking. I can hold the bottle, and I put my arm around Jamie so’s maybe I can kind of fool him into thinking he’s got the same stream of love along with his milk that our Jimmy got. I tell you, our Jamie is just keen. My goodness! there I’ve gone and used Nannette’s word! That’s the only adjecdve Nannette knows. Her shoes are keen, and her dress is keen, and her hair-cut is keen, and the party is keen, and the picture is keen, and I’ve heard it so much I hope to goodness I ain’t going to go and get keen, too!”
Jamie laughed.
“You don’t have to ‘get keen,’ Mr. Scout Master,” he said. ‘You’ve been perfectly keen ever since you’ve been born!”
The little Scout was evidently pleased. There was a slight increase in height; there was a funny toss of the head.
“Well, who’s going to shake dice with the right kind of a swing, and manage a bunch of Scouts, and do a whole lot of other things that I been up against all my Life, and not be pretty keen? I’m keen on this place, I can tell you that! I’m about dead for it. I was telling Mother this morning that the very minute I get through ‘reading’ and writing’ and ’arithmetic,’ I’m going to come here and get on my job. She says I’m going to college, but there are a whole lot of things about me that she doesn’t know as well as she might, and college is one of them.”
Then the Scout Master amply proved to Jamie the claim that had been made. He felt himself being subjected to a long look. He felt the length of a small figure pressing against him. He felt a hand unusually clean slipping up over his left side. He heard a voice so soft and sweet that it reminded him of a certain telephone voice that he knew.
The voice wailed: “Oh, Jamie! Your side didn’t tear, did it? You ain’t got it all to do over again, have you? “Jamie put his arm around the little Scout.
“Why, no,” he said, “my side’s fine! It’s getting better every day. I have it in the back of my head that in two or three months more I will not even have to wear the lightest kind of a pad or a bandage.”
The Scout Master looked up.
“Then what’s the matter?”
Jamie hesitated.
“Your face looks pasty and your eyes are dead tired. You look all beat out. You look just like I do when the Scouts go to rough-housing and I’ve had to lick the bunch. Sometimes I look at my face when I brush my teeth and I can see just how big my job is. Right around my eyes I can see it. And I can see things around your eyes now.” What’s the matter Jamie thought swiftly. He did not want to tell the little Scout what was the matter, in Mr. Meredith’s absence. He did not want Mrs. Meredith worried with a legal complication when she had undue care of the baby for whose care he had assumed responsibility. He thought fast and hard and let the moment slip.
“You are all right, little Scout,” he said. “You are rather keen. I was worried last night and I didn’t sleep well. I was kind of keeping watch over our place and Margaret’s.”
“Isn’t Margaret back yet? Things look all shut up,” observed the Scout Master.
“I imagine she’s gone into the city to have a vacation visit with the Molly you’re always talking about,” said Jamie. “I’m taking care of things for her while she is gone.”
“I guess I’ll go over and take a look at my property,” said the Scout Master, grinning broadly at Jamie.
“All right,” said Jamie.
Neither of them had noticed that the interloper had passed Margaret Cameron’s while they were watering her garden and had unlocked the front door and entered the house of invitation. The Scout Master flew over the fence, trotted down the gravel walk, waved a salutation to the jacqueranda, and took the curve passing the front of the house for the very natural reason that the one acre which stood on the county records in the name of Jean Meredith lay on the right-hand side of the house as one approached it from the entrance. As the child crossed the walk, there was a noticeable movement in the living room and the whiff of an odor that acted on the little Scout as a stiff breeze of formic acid acts on the wild.
With a large fund of assurance, the Scout Master crossed the porch in a bound, swung open the front door, and faced the open trunk, the dresses draped over the Bee Master’s chair; faced, also, a young woman with an unduly bleached head and over-painted face, a young woman who, to the eyes of the Scout Master, was a fine combination of everything in the world that a nice young woman should not be. The youngster stared in amazement.
“How come?” was the greeting shot at the interloper. The suggestive hands were thrown out, one in the direction of the trunk, one of the chair.
“Hello, Kiddo,” said the young person. “You’re sure my luck! Take this dime and run to the nearest grocery and get me a bottle of milk, and when you bring it back, I’ll give you a nickel for going.”
The Scout Master stood still and looked hard at the young woman, looked long and intently and remembered something and could not tell exactly what.
“You’re not, you’re not Jamie’s mother, are you? But, of course, you couldn’t be Jamie’s mother ’cause Jamie’s coming made her too sick and she had to go across whether she wanted to or not. Who are you, and what arc you doing here?”
“That’s nothing to you,” said the young lady. “Run along and get my milk, and then I’ve got about fifty other errands I want you to do. You can pick up quite a bit of my small change in the next hour or two if you move so that you stir the dust at all.”
The Scout Master stood still. With hard, almost feverish eyes the face of the woman was scanned. The eyes especially were studied deeply. The trunk and the clothing, the abominable odors of cheap soaps and vile perfumes, all registered adversely on the child’s mind. This woman in the house and Jamie at Margaret Cameron’s, and doing nothing about it! That was exactly like Jamie. It had been the private opinion of the little Scout for some time that as a fighter Jamie might hold his own among the Germans, but he did not show much inclination to hold his own when somebody tried to give him a wonderful piece of property. Vaguely the thought that had begun stirring in the back of the Scout Master’s head stirred deeper and cleared up and took form. The small hand was thrust out.
“Give me your dime! Sure I’ll do your errands for you!” said the little Scout.
With the dime tightly gripped in one hand, the Scout Master sailed over the fence and landed almost at the feet of Jamie, and there the child stared at him belligerently.
“Who’s the Jane in the crooked make-up and the dirty skirt?”
The demand was brief and to the point.
“Is there any one in the house?” asked Jamie.
He was so taken aback he reverted to his fathers childhood and said “hoose.”
“I’m telling you there’s someone in the ‘hoose!’” cried the little Scout. “There’s a comedy queen in the ‘hoose’!
A Jane like that draped all over the Bee Master’s chair and her trunk open in the middle of the floor! What did you let her in for?”
“She walked in,” said Jamie.
“And wasn’t you big enough to keep her out?” demanded the little Scout, tilting up a head to look to the full extent of Jamie’s six feet plus.
“Yes, I was,” said Jamie, “if I had used force, but I’m not given to using force on the ladies.”
“So you cleared out and came over here and you turned over our property to that piece of Limburger cheese!” “I’m afraid I did,” said Jamie.
“Well, you put the biggest crimp in my style that anybody ever did,” said the Scout Master. “I bet you just walked out like a milk-fed turkey an’ never put up one war-like gobble!”
“I told her,” said Jamie, “to tell it to the probate judge.”
“Aw!” said the Scout Master in the hoarsest, roughest tone Jamie ever had heard issue from the small throat. “Aw, what’s the use of the probate judge? You knew the Bee Master, and you know he wouldn’t do anything that wasn’t fair and right. If you want to lop over like a California Christmas candle, you can just do it! You can give her your share if you want to, but believe you me,” the hands were in action, “believe you me, Mr. James Lewis MacFarlane, you will not give away my half of that bee garden, ’cause that was the only chance I’ve ever stood of getting a horse. The reason I didn’t get a horse wasn’t ’cause there wasn’t enough money in the family to buy a horse; it was ’cause I couldn’t keep a horse in a city. Out here I don’t see why I couldn’t. There’s no neighbors on my side to object. I’ll see that flax-wig in there doing me out of my horse!”
The little Scout thrust forth a hand and disclosed a dime.
“I’m going to the grocery to get milk for her, and then there’s ‘fifty other errands,’” suddenly the little Scout changed to the woman in the house and in an exact imitation of the tone and manner that Jamie recognized he heard, ‘Kiddo, there’s about fifty other errands you can do for me.’” There was another change. “You can stake your roll ‘Kiddo’ is going to stay right here on the job! ‘Kiddo’ is going to do the errands. ‘Kiddo’ is going to find out some way to get that Jane out of there and get her out pretty quick. ‘Kiddo’ happens to know a whole lot of things that you don’t, and ‘Kiddo’ is just beginning to get wise to who that party is!”
Both hands flew out, one of them widespread, the other gripping the dime. “Let me tell you, ‘Kiddo’ is saving a last arrow for that party right in there! ‘Kiddo’ owes it to the Bee Master to puncture her until you can see daylight clear through her! Maybe you think I ain’t got her number now. Maybe you think I don’t know who pushed little Mary and broke her spine and made her die! You watch me! If you ain’t going to fight, I am. How did you get in this house?”
“Walked in,” said Jamie.
“All right,” said the little Scout, “I’m going to telephone Mother and I’m going’ to get my Scouts on the job, and you put your ear to the ground and listen for a rumble. ‘Kiddo’ is letting loose the dogs of war, believe you me!”
The Scout Master brought both feet down with an emphatic slap and presently Jamie heard the ringing of the telephone and he heard, too, the voice of the little Scout.
“Say, Mom! Margaret Cameron’s away and my partner out here needs me. I’ll probably have to cook his dinner for him. I may not get in till late. If it’s too late, he’ll bring me. Don’t worry about me. I’m all right, but this big baby out here needs taking care of worse than baby Jamie. I’ll tell that to the assembled multitude!”
The receiver hit the hook hard enough to break both and the Scout Master went through the front door and started on a skimming run in the direction of the corner grocery below. Jamie sat down and began to think. Then he went to the telephone and called John Carey. He asked if in the event any of the bees threatened to swarm the next day, he could depend on him for help. The reply was that he could. Carey would come over in the morning and they would look the hives over and get some fresh ones ready for swarms to occupy.
Presently Jamie saw the Scout Master enter their front gate and go up the walk with the bottle of milk. After that he saw a bunch of papers and odds and ends carried to the incinerator. Then he watched the gathering of tomatoes and vegetables, the picking of fruit that was carried to the kitchen, and when he went over to get a better idea of what was going on, he saw in passing a window that the Scout Master was standing in the middle of the living room fitting dresses over the Bee Master’s coat hangers and hanging them up in his closet. Presently the little Scout came out to him.
Jamie was surprised at the expression on the small face. It had become absolutely inscrutable. It did not remind Jamie of anything he ever had seen. It was a trifle white, a trifle set, immobile to the last degree. It was only by looking closely that Jamie saw that the entire figure was tuned up like a fiddle string, stretched and taut and ready to respond to the note it would be called on to deliver. Suddenly, in Jamie’s heart there leapt up a feeling of confidence. The Bee Master had said that the little Scout knew. Thereupon it appealed to Jamie that it would be a wise thing on his part to stand guard while the little Scout went into action on the basis of whatever knowledge would furnish the grounds for action.
Said the Scout Master, “She is trying every key in the house on my chest and pretty soon she will find one that fits, and that chest is just wadded full of things that ain’t any of her business. That’s got Highland Maty’s things in it and little Maty’s things. It’s got marriage certificates and deeds. It’s got business papers. It’s got the signed up settlement that settles that little flapper in there for life. I know who she is. I know what she thinks she will do. And believe you me, she can do it if she gets that chest open, and that chest belongs to me. What are you going to do about it?”
“Where is the key?” asked Jamie.
“My dad’s got it,” said the little Scout. “It’s among the things the Bee Master had at the hospital with him and the day things were settled the probate judge gave ’em to Dad to keep till I’m of age. It’s in his desk at home. I could get it by making a run in, but I ain’t going to do it. That reminds me that she ain’t going to unlock that chest with any key she’ll find around the house, nor any key she will get made, ’cause that chest’s got a private kind of a lock on it and there’s a leaf in the carving where you’ve got to press a spring before the lock will work. Days when I had done everything else and I was getting ready to go home and the Bee Master was so lonesome for something alive and something to talk to him he would let me work that combination and show me the things and let me look at the pictures and let me see the things that were in there that belonged to big Mary and little Maty. And that’s what’s been working in my head. There’s a picture in that chest of that Jane when she was little, and she looked just about as measly as she does now. It’s got a name and a date on it, too, that will kind of fix her If she don’t look out what she tells the probate judge. She can’t get in that chest unless she splits it with an ax, and If she ever does that zowie!”
The face lifted to Jamie was the face of a small pagan dealing justice. There was not a hint of mercy; there was not a hint of tolerance. It was as inexorable, as immobile as the face of the figure of Justice holding the scales above the judge’s chair in the office of the Probate Court. A cold shiver crept down Jamie’s back. For the first time he addressed his small partner by name.
“Jean,” he said, “Jean, be mighty careful what you do. I am not claiming that I haven’t got an awful wrench in the prospect of being driven from the garden, of giving up what the Bee Master meant me to have, but however much your share of it means to you it cannot mean what it would If you did some terrible thing and got yourself put in prison or blackened your whole life. There is only one way to manage these things, and that is to let justice take its course.”
“Exactly what I think!” agreed the little Scout. “I’m not believing that there isn’t justice in this village, and I’m not believing it ain’t going to take its course If I spring from ambush like Chief Running Horse at the right time. I told you before, I tell you now, you keep out of this and you watch my dust!”
The Little Scout wheeled and went back to the house. Facing the interloper, in tones of suave politeness, this message was delivered: “Mistaw MacFarlane says to tell you that the keys of Mistaw Worthington’s chest are in the care of Mistaw Meredith and that Mistaw Meredith will be out of town for several days and they can’t be delivered until his return.”
“Well, I have no time to wait,” said Miss Worthington. “I’ve got to go through the papers that belong in that chest. I’ve got to open it if I smash it.”
The little Scout smiled.
“Mr. Worthington said that chest came from across the ocean with his grandfather’s housekeeping things and it was hand carved and it once belonged to a Queen. If you tried to break it open and damaged it, and if what you found didn’t satisfy the probate judge as to who you are and what you are doing here, you’d get yourself into pretty serious trouble, ’cause here in California we begin to train the babies along with their bottles—which are against Nature and I don’t recommend ’em, but I thought they’d sound more polite than mentioning the other way—anyhow, we begin to train ’em that early to pull off their hoods and wave ’em when anybody says ‘Antique.’ We swat ’em on the dome impressive if they don’t. We adore antique chests and tables and chairs and rugs and things, and you better look sharp, ’cause California wouldn’t like it if you abuse anything antique.”
“Say, look here!” said Miss Worthington. “Who are you?”
