The Keeper of the Bees, page 35
In an effort to spare Margaret Cameron he stretched his arms for the baby, but Mrs. Meredith was a genial person. She had to deliver the baby herself. She had to spread out his wardrobe and explain how she had used things. She was dubious as to whether Margaret Cameron, who had not had a baby in more than twenty years, was going to know enough to oil a baby and put the right kind of clothing on it and handle it properly in the present year of our Lord. Twenty years is a long stretch, and science figures out numerous things in that length of time. She was so full of good nature, so full of high spirits, so pleased with herself for having taken care of the baby until Margaret Cameron came, that she did not notice the white, drawn face of the woman, a woman whom she scarcely knew to begin with. She shocked Margaret’s old-fashioned soul by putting into her arms a baby that was wearing no flannel, whose feet were bare and kicking, whose dress was no longer than the feet. It seemed to Margaret Cameron the only thing Mrs. Meredith did that had been done to old-fashioned babies was to watch that the little eyes were screened, that strong lights did not penetrate.
Margaret lifted her voice in protest.
“Where are his flannels?” she said, and Mrs. Meredith spread a pair of expressive hands in a gesture that both Margaret and Jamie recognized immediately.
“There ain’t going to be no flannels!” she laughingly quoted. “California babies have graduated from flannel. It’s too hot for them and chafes their delicate skins and makes them fret and cry.”
Then she sat down on the davenport and opened up the baby basket she had brought and displayed the implements she used in the morning toilet of James Lewis MacFarlane, Junior.
Margaret sat and stared. She listened to what was said. She watched what was done. She looked the baby over and then slowly shook her head.
“Jamie,” she said, “if I take this child and try to take care of him in this way and he dies, are you going to hold it against me?”
Jamie and Mrs. Meredith laughed unrestrainedly. “No,” promised Jamie, “I won’t lay it up against you, and since Mrs. Meredith seems to have had fine success with a baby of her own that isn’t so many months older than our Jamie, let’s try what she says. The things she has here are the things the baby’s mother made for him. You see they are short. She intended to use the little dresses and clothing she had made.
“Why, yes,” said Mrs. Meredith, “all these things are what Mr. MacFarlane brought from the hospital.” She turned to him. “Are there any more?”
“Yes,” said Jamie, “there were. But the nurse said the small package was personal belongings of the baby’s mother. It is in the middle drawer of my highboy, Margaret. Any time you need anything you haven’t got, maybe it’s there. I haven’t reached the point of trying to go through it myself, but I don’t mind your looking enough to see if there are any other things that the baby might need.”
“Well,” said Margaret, “I must say frankly that this beats me! I’m sure he’ll be killed. I’m sure he’ll take cold and die of the croup. I thought babies and flannel were inseparable.”
“Just cut off the ‘in,’” laughed Mrs. Meredith. “Cut off the ‘in’ and make it ‘separable’! My baby is the best baby you ever saw. He isn’t roaring with the colic and keeping us awake at night. He is getting so fat his face is round like a full moon. We never know he’s in the house unless he is hungry or needs attention, and he is the kind of a little gentleman that lets me know instantly when he does need attention. Aside from that, I haven’t got a baby for all I know. You try the new way on this other little Jamie; try it on him, and if he isn’t a better baby and an easier baby to take care of, less trouble in every way, and happier, why, then you can call in a doctor and figure out what you think would serve better.”
She turned to Jamie.
“You must fix up some kind of a bed for him. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to get a clothes basket. Put a couple of pillows in it and fold something over for a padding. Our little Scout will bring you out a real softy pillow for his head. Our Jimmy has two or three. He can always divide with another baby, and I think he has enough little covers that we can spare a couple, and there is a world of clothes in that suitcase. He won’t be needing anything for months, unless he grows so fast that he walks out of them.”
She arose and went to the telephone, picked up a pencil attached to a string, and on the margin of a list hanging there wrote a number.
“That’s my number, and a ring will find me at eight o’clock in the morning, or twelve at noon, or six in the evening. If anything goes wrong, call me and I’ll come right out and see what I can do to help you.”
Then she picked up the baby and held it tight to her and kissed its little face and its hands and finished with its feet and handed it to Margaret Cameron. Jamie escorted Mrs. Meredith and the little Scout back to the car. As he closed the door, the Scout Master leaned forward and laid a hand on Jamie’s and lifted a pair of lips that had something to say. Jamie brought his ear in range.
“May I tell Mother about that girl off the Santa Fe butting in on our garden?” came the whisper.
Jamie drew back and looked at the small person in surprise.
“Haven’t you told her?” he inquired.
The little Scout shook a vigorous head.
“No. You said it might worry her, not to tell until Dad came, but he’s coming to-night.”
“Since it’s all over,” said Jamie, “there’s nothing to worry about. You didn’t leave the lady a leg to stand on. You got her confession before three good witnesses, and it just happened that there were two more in the background that you did not know about. We have the papers in our possession, and that reminds me that, while the lock of the chest is broken, I’d better go over that stuff and select what really is important and put it in a safe somewhere. I think likely I’d better turn it over to Mr. Meredith.”
“What are you two talking about?” inquired Mrs. Meredith.
“Since I wasn’t in on the whole performance,” said Jamie, “the little Scout had better tell you from start to finish exactly how things were, and then, if there are any details I can add as to what I saw and heard personally, I’ll be glad to furnish all the corroborative evidence that I can.”
As the car started Jamie heard the voice of the little Scout saying: “A long time ago, one day when he was blue, the Bee Master told me—” and that was all he heard of the story. What he had seen of it was sufficient for him. He went back to the house laughing and without realizing that Margaret Cameron would expect him to be in mourning. He saw the surprise in her eyes and straightened his face immediately. His Scotch honesty instantly asserted itself.
“Margaret,” he said, “I am not sailing under any false colors with you. There are some things that I don’t want to talk about, because I don’t understand them well enough to make them plain to anybody else. But there is this I am going to tell you. I saw the girl I married only once and very little of her before we were married, and I did not see her afterward until she was at the point of making her crossing. This baby bears my name and has been left to me, and I am going to do the best job I can in rearing him properly, but I am not in mourning for his mother, and you needn’t expect me to exhibit any deep symptoms of grief, because I can’t when I don’t feel them.”
Margaret Cameron stood still, looking at the baby.
“That kind of a tale doesn’t sound like you, Jamie,” she said, “but if I understand the province of a friend at all it consists largely in keeping one’s mouth shut and doing the things that will be of most benefit. Naturally, I would like to know what this baby’s mother looked like and what kind of a girl she was, but I suppose, after all, she looked like the baby since a boy generally resembles his mother, and I can’t tell what any baby three or four days old looks like. if she were to be judged by this suitcase of baby clothing, she was pretty fine. These are dainty little things, carefully and exquisitely made. That tells a big story about any mother.”
As the days went by, it seemed to Jamie that there never had been a greater blessing afforded a woman than the Storm Baby was to Margaret Cameron. He had the feeling very largely that that tiny bit of humanity had the same pull for Margaret Cameron that it had for Mrs. Meredith and the little Scout. Its appeal to him was strong. Half-a-dozen times a day he made some excuse to slip into the living room and look in the basket in which tiny Jamie lay. If the little fellow were sleeping, he covered him up and went quietly away. If he were awake, he leaned over and talked to him and examined his hands and his feet. They were hands that had been fashioned to play music, to paint pictures, to hold rare books, possibly to write them.
Sometimes when he went he found Margaret Cameron busy bathing the small person, or dressing him, or washing little garments, or carefully ironing them. One day he realized suddenly that exactly the thing that Margaret had asked for had been given to her. Something alive, something that she could work for, something different, something that would appreciate what she did. So he ceased to feel guilty over the physical strength he was asking her to spend on the tiny baby and felt instead that the child might be the greatest boon that could come into her life. He had a difficult time the day he tried to talk finances with Margaret concerning the baby. After a few words she flatly refused to listen to him.
At last she said to him: “Jamie, this baby’s been such a blessing to me, loving him and caring for him has so eased the tension in my brain, that I have no way in which to tell you what he has done for me. I could not take money for him. Really I couldn’t! As time goes by, when he needs more clothing or things come up, like a little bathtub shaped right for a baby, things that he has to have, I’ll tell you, and it’s your right and your privilege to get them, but as for taking money for what I am doing for him, I can’t do it. We won’t talk about it again.”
“All right,” said Jamie, and he walked out of the house and began the process of going over Margaret’s grounds minutely to discover what there was that he could do in the garden she was neglecting, among flowers she was hurriedly watering, that he thought would be equivalent to the care of the baby.
Presently Margaret realized that this was what was happening, and the arrangement suited her admirably. For a few days she had not cared whether her flowers lived or died. She had not cared whether her house were neat and orderly, or the food in place for the mocking birds and rosy finches. To-day she cared immeasurably about all these things because very soon little Jamie would be big enough to notice a pretty flower, to throw crumbs to a bird, and always his health must be safeguarded by perfect cleanliness and sanitary conditions around him.
So Margaret Cameron became more of a housekeeper and less of an outdoors person, and Jamie found on arising every morning that he had gained enough more strength to add to the labors of his day what was necessary to be done at the house across the white fence.
Religiously he stuck to the tomato juice in the morning, the orange juice in the afternoon, milk as a beverage at meal time, the diet that Margaret Cameron always insisted she had worlds of time to prepare for him. He was beginning to feel so much of a man, so secure in his strength, so proud of the skin coating that was deepening in color, deepening in thickness, stretching securely across his left side, so proud of the free, pure blood coursing his veins, so thankful to God for release, for his chance, he found his lips puckering in a little whistled rendition of every tune he knew as he went about his work. Some of them were army songs, things that the boys had sung in camps, but most of them were songs that he had sung in Sabbath School or things that he had heard his mother sing when he was a child. Sometimes he picked up airs that he heard on the streets or as he lay sunning on the beach. Jamie’s repertoire ran all the way from “Jesus, Gentle Savior, Hear Me!” to “It Ain’t Gonna Rain No More,” and as he used the hose to help produce the most prolific growth of fruit and flowers that he had ever known, as he thought of his healing side and the rare miracle that had been wrought in his cure, it seemed to him that it did not make much difference whether it rained or not. California seemed to be getting along without rain.
But all this was superficial; all these were things that were going on as a result of the exigencies of life. The deep thought, the thing at the bottom of Jamie’s heart, the thing that had sent him reeling on his feet and had made him reel mentally ever since, the thing he did not understand and that he could not excuse was the thing that he had been led into by the Storm Girl.
He had thought from what she had said that she needed his help for herself, and he had given it immediately, freely. But he did not like being lied to. He did not like being deceived. He had married one girl; he had been invited to assume the responsibility of bringing up a child that belonged to an entirely different girl. It was not fair. It was not honest. If his ring and if the certificate of marriage that had been issued to him for the Storm Girl had been turned over to another girl in distress that she might have them to make her peace with doctors and nurses, he could see how they could have been so used. But if the name under which the marriage had been performed were not the true name of the girl he had married, then the marriage was not legal, and investigation would leave the tiny baby to be a shame baby after all. The thing had been clumsily done. In the condition in which he had been at the time, feeling as he had felt, Jamie would have given his name to any woman anywhere who needed it. He had taken the letter that he had treasured from his pocket and laid it away. It was no longer a personal possession. The whole thing had not been fair.
Then, when his indignation waxed hottest, when anger surged up the strongest, in his heart came a great, throbbing, gushing, overwhelming sense of relief. However she had lied, with whatever motive she had deceived him, one big fact remained on Jamie’s horizon. The Storm Girl had fulfilled his thought of her. He had not felt that a woman with sage in her hair and sand verbena and primroses rising like an incense around her knees, her midnight garments trailing in them, he had not thought that the hair of silk binding across his face, that the physical strength, the quick assurance of speech, he had not thought that these things possibly could be coupled with a shame woman. He had been ready to accept any excuse, to believe anything. Now there was nothing to believe except that there had been a lie—but, after all, there had been lies in the world that were rather magnificent. There was just a bare possibility that this lie, that this thing that had been done, had a reason backing it that he might be willing to countenance. So Jamie spent largely of his days and somewhat of his nights torn by conflicting emotions.
20. The Scout Mutiny
It was midsummer in the garden; long, golden vacation days. The bees were happy. Innumerable swarms had stretched the rows of hives not only down the sides of the garden, but well across the foot, and Jamie was beginning to feel that by the coming season some of them must be disposed of or he would have more than he could manage. The flowers were blooming in a mad riot of color. The trees were laden with fruit. He was so nearly a well man that he was beginning to use his left arm almost without realizing that he was using it. Carefully he was oiling the soft skin. It was still protected with a light pad. The bandages were so nearly negligible he did not even notice them or the soft strap across his shoulders that held them in place. Every day was a day of work that he loved in a location that he loved. Every evening he found refuge in the books that taught him the things that he needed to know to master his new profession, and now he was beginning to branch out to those other books, the emanations of the brightest minds of ages reaching back to the earliest collected beginnings of literature.
With the advent of an income, with the assurance that he would not be again at the mercy of the Government or the public, Jamie had ventured to subscribe to half a dozen of the leading magazines in which he was most interested, and they carried to him wonderful tales of a world with which he had lost touch for a long period. Some of the things he learned from them were interesting, highly educative, and some of them were alarming, and he was set to wondering where our country was heading, exactly what was to be expected as an ending for peculiar beginnings that were being made. Some of the things that he found, which seemed to be casually accepted and written of and to be bandied about in the world in print and conversation, set his cheeks flaming and the reserves of his Scot soul felt outraged.
There began to be born in his breast the feeling that it was time for him to go out in the world, to break his bands of security and of peace in the garden, and hunt up the men who were forming the Legion to which he should belong. He began to listen, on slow, sleepy Sabbath mornings, for the tolling of the church bells, and to wonder if there might be such a thing anywhere within a reasonable distance as a Presbyterian church with a minister just near enough to Scotland to have a little bit of a loved burr in his voice. He began to feel that the time was coming very shortly when he was going to fare forth in search of these things.
He was thinking of it very strongly one morning when the hose he was handling had brought him to a petunia bed just across from the jacqueranda tree and he stooped to flood the roots of the brilliant flowers. His scouting ears caught a rush of feet, a slam of the gate, and there flashed into view the little Scout forging toward him with both arms extended, a distorted face, and clothing fairly torn to ribbons. Jamie dropped the hose and whirled with arms outstretched. He caught on his breast the little quivering figure and eased himself down to the seat under the jacqueranda and held the child tight—a twisting, shaking figure, physically nauseated, tears so big that they gushed and rolled in a torrent. All he could do was to gather up the little bundle and hold it together and wait. He began rubbing his cheeks over the small head, whispering, as best he could, words of consolation.
“Little Scout, dear little Scout,” he panted, “tell Jamie what has hurt you so? Oh, what has hurt you so? Little Scout, little partner!”
