The Keeper of the Bees, page 39
Far into the night Jamie sat under the jacqueranda, and when at last he began to be tortured by the aching of his bones from the cold, he got up and went into the house. He lighted the fire and sat down before it in a chair opposite the Bee Master’s and stretched his long legs to the comfort of the flames. With his heart in turmoil and his brain whirling so that he could scarcely think consecutively, with all his might he wished for the Bee Master. He wished that Michael Worthington, who for so many years had been the spirit and the life of that small house, could come back to it, that he could sit for an hour in his accustomed chair beside his hearth stone and counsel with him, help him to see the light, tell him what he must do to make his peace with a girl so unspeakably fine that Jamie had no way in which to say what he thought of her.
That day, with brutal force, he had compelled her own hand to write before the astonished eyes of her group of little people one of the hatefullest words that can be found in any language—not only to write it, but to rewrite it and to underscore it. He had struck it home as hard as he knew how to strike, and then he had disappeared and left her to be seared with a brand that probably was as repugnant to her soul as any form of torture that could have been invented for her.
Jamie stared across at the vacant chair questioningly. He found himself praying that the Bee Master would come. But he did not come. The chair stood vacant. It was only in imagination that Jamie could see the white head, the slender face, the big dark eyes, the silken beard, and the slender, probing, delicate hands that accompany sensitive and artistic natures. He did not come. Jamie felt in his heart that he knew why he did not come. The Bee Master would have been so much of a gentleman, he would have been so refined by the crucial fires of his own suffering, he would have been so tender, he never would have hurled that awful word at a woman, he never would have forced her to brand her own heart with it. What the Bee Master would have done would have been to say: “Molly girl, things seem to make it appear that you haven’t told the truth, that you haven’t played the game square; but since I know you as I do, I know’ this cannot be true, so won’t you explain to me how things really were? What truly occurred?”
Now, it was not necessary for Jamie to be told anything. He had learned all there was to know when he looked across the bowed head of Margaret Cameron and the pitiful baubles her hands clutched, to the open marriage certificate lying on the bed before her with his name and that of her only child written upon it.
The gray of morning was beginning to creep in the windows when the Keeper of the Bees threw himself on his bed without undressing and fell into troubled sleep. He did not awaken until he heard Margaret Cameron in the kitchen with his breakfast. Then he arose and went out to her. She took one look at him and then she said: “Jamie, you haven’t been undressed, and I doubt if you’ve been asleep all night!”
Jamie replied: “Neither have you, Margaret, so you haven’t any grounds upon which to base your right to scold me.”
“Yes, I have,” said Margaret. “I’ve almost never been sick a day in my life with real illness. I’ve no scar over my heart that must be nursed with extreme care for months yet. I carry my scars where the world can’t probe into them.”
“Don’t!” cried Jamie. “Don’t be bitter, Margaret. We don’t know why, we never can know why things happen in this world exactly as they do; but this we know: We know that God is in His Heaven, that He is merciful to the extent of ordaining mercy; we know that if we disobey and take our own way and run contrary to His commandments, we are bitterly punished. And it is the most pitiful of laws that no man or woman can take their punishment alone in this world. It is the law that none of us can suffer without making someone else suffer, but in some way it must be that everything works out for the best, even if we can’t possibly see how that could be when things are happening that hurt us so. I thought when I arose and walked out of the hospital that I was embarking on a Great Adventure all of my own. I got a great thrill out of standing on my feet and doing what I pleased for a few days, out of taking my own orders. Before we get through with what has happened to me, it may prove that God told me to get up and walk out and test the mercy of the road in order that I might be truly thankful when shelter came to me; and it may be that He needed me here to offer what comfort I could to a stricken girl heart in the days when things were going so pitifully wrong for her.”
Margaret Cameron was setting the breakfast things on the table and the big tears were running down her cheeks, tears for which Jamie was unspeakably thankful. Reason may be depended upon to keep its balance when God gives the surcease of tears in time of trouble.
“Now,” said Jamie, “I’m going to eat my breakfast and take a bath here at the house. Then I am going to dress myself the best I can and go in search of Molly Cameron. You could do a very great deal to make that search easier for me if you would give me her address, if you would tell me where I might find her.”
“How long is it,” asked Margaret Cameron, “since you have known Molly?”
“Almost ever since I’ve been here,” said Jamie, “only please understand that I didn’t know that she was my next-door neighbor, that she was your niece, until yesterday.”
“There is this I can do,” said Margaret Cameron. “I can call her on the ’phone and ask her if she will be at home to-day and if you may come to see her and at what hour she will see you.”
“Would you be so kind as to do that?” asked Jamie. Margaret sat down until Jamie finished his breakfast. Then he walked over with her to carry back the things, ostensibly to see little Donald, in reality to suggest the telephoning again and to learn what the answer would be. When he did suggest it, Margaret Cameron called two or three times and had no reply. The telephone could be heard ringing distinctly at the other end of the line, so they knew that Molly was not at home. Margaret said there was nothing to do but to wait until she returned.
So, in disappointment, Jamie went home. Instead of bathing in the tub as he had intended, he went down to the sea, and in its cold, saline waters he drew some of the soreness and the tiredness from his body. Then he lay on the hot sands and almost instantly fell asleep.
He slept until nearly noon. Then he went back by way of Margaret Cameron’s, and this time he copied the telephone number and carried it with him. He meant to keep the wires busy until he had a response. After his first failure, he laid out the most attractive clothing he could find among his own things and those he had been given by the Bee Master. With more care than he ever before had used, he selected the finest silk shirt of a delicate lavender with a deeper-colored tie to match. He put on the gray trousers and black shoes and laid out the black coat. He had the feeling that he wished to appear at his level best. There was enough on the record against him that it behooved him to enhance his personal appearance to the extent of his ability. He was standing in his shirt sleeves before the highboy, carefully laboring with the tie he meant to wear, when he heard the screen of the front door open and close and then a clear voice, faintly burred with accents that he loved, call “Keeper of the Bees, are you here?”
Jamie stepped to the bedroom door and across the living room faced Molly Cameron. He was so taken aback he could not even say, “Oh!” to indicate that he was surprised. He felt that he was crazy for thinking that he detected a twinkle in the gray-brown eyes, half a laugh twisting the red lips of the wide mouth. Molly Cameron, in boots and breeches as she went afield, the bobbed hair tumbling in the wind, her cheeks flushed with exercise, or was it anger? stood before him.
But it could not have been anger, because so surely as he had ever seen anything, Jamie MacFarlane saw laughter on Molly’s face, as she demanded: “Jamie MacFarlane, are you still firm in the conviction that I’m a liar?”
Jamie reached out a pair of supplicating arms.
“Storm Girl,” he said, “I am firm in the conviction that you’re most adorable. I have thought so all the time. I haven’t been able to believe, ever, not for a minute, that you could possibly have needed me for yourself, and now that I know you didn’t, now that I know your courage and your bravery, I haven’t words for the cowardly thing I did yesterday. Can you ever forgive me? Molly Girl, can you ever forgive me?”
It did not seem quite possible that Molly Cameron was standing in the doorway looking at him with an amused face, almost laughing.
“In consideration of what has happened,” she said, “in consideration of how I used you to serve my own purposes—and I will have to admit that I intended to deceive you; I meant you to believe that I wanted help for myself when, all the time, I wanted it for Lolly, and I wanted it so desperately, because of the debt Don and I owed her mother—”
She stopped abruptly, and the laughter had vanished. “I’ve been over talking to Aunt Margaret,” she continued, “and I know now that you know all there is to be told about the situation save one thing. There is one other thing that you must know. Through some loss or delay in the mail, more than a month after Don lost his life, I had a letter from him that was the only comfort Lolly and I had during the bitter days when I had her hidden in my rooms in the city and was managing letters for her to her mother, supposed to be written in Sacramento. Of course, you will guess that I made the arrangements at the hospital, and with our combined earnings we paid the bills. I never thought that she could not endure giving birth to her baby. I did not dream that she would have to go, but I think she did because she insisted on having arrangements made that provided for that contingency. We shaped her letters so that Aunt Margaret would not be too much surprised, and I thought we had everything fixed. And then Lolly would take that certificate to the hospital with her. She was so eaten up with shame, she just would have that where the doctors and the nurses could see it. She was forced to offer proof because her self-respect had been so endangered; she was so bitterly hurt; and that’s how it came that Aunt Margaret found it yesterday when she went to look over your things to see what needed mending.”
“You will believe,” said Jamie, “that I had not opened that packet. I did not know to whom you had turned over the certificate and the ring. I did not know in whose name you had taken out the license. I only knew when I reached the hospital that if I opened my mouth to say that I never had seen the girl they led me to, I might put her openly to the shame she had lost her life in enduring alone, so I kept still even when the doctor rated me scorchingly”
Molly Cameron extended her hands and advanced to the middle of the room.
“Oh!” she cried. “Oh! that’s a shame! But Lolly told her nurse—I heard her tell her—that you were wonderful, that you had been fine, that no other man would have done one thing so fine as you did! I heard that!” “The nurse stood up for me,” said Jamie. “She told the doctor things that made him apologize. Never mind that! It hasn’t anything to do, or rather, it has everything to do, with what I did yesterday.”
Then Jamie advanced and opened his arms.
“Is there any hope at all, Storm Girl? Is there any hope at all, Molly Cameron, that you can forgive me? And will you believe that the wound that I carried that night on the rock, the wound that I thought as surely as I think that God lives, would end me in a few months at the extreme limit, will you believe that we have healed it, your Aunt Margaret and I, with salt water and sunshine and a careful diet? Will you believe that I am a whole man again, even if my body is scarred? Will you?” “Oh, Jamie!” said Molly, “I never knew any Scotsman that could talk so much! America has done something awful to you! You aren’t a real Scotsman at all! A real Scotsman would close up the few steps between us and ask, ‘Will ye? ‘and then take it for granted that I would and get down to business!”
Jamie drew up his shoulders. He took one breath that went to the depth of his lungs and acted accordingly By and by, when she could find breath for anything, Molly Cameron twisted her head free and turned her face to the ceiling and said: “I weel. Whenever ye want me, I weel!”
And Jamie said: “I want you right now, to-day if you say so, the very first minute we can get to the License Bureau and get the legal documents. I’m tired of adventuring. I want to settle down and spend the rest of my life loving you and keeping bees.”
“What’s that License Bureau going to think,” inquired Molly Cameron, “if the same girl goes to it for another license under another name in such a short time?”
With his arms tight around her, Jamie laughed down into her eyes. “You leave that Bureau to me! It’s got to be in charge of someone that’s human. I’ll go and interview them, and I’ll guarantee that there won’t anything unpleasant occur when you arrive. There have been times in my life when I have been able to do quite a canny job of persuading people.”
“Yes,” admitted Molly Cameron, “I’ll have to vouch for that statement! I’ll back you up as the greatest persuader I’ve ever known! If you hadn’t been such a persuader it never would have occurred to me to let you in for all the annoyance that you have suffered at my hands ever since the great storm.”
“Don’t you mind about annoyance or about my suffering at your hands,” said Jamie. “There’s only one thing I want to know. Do you understand right down in the depths of your heart that I never could believe that you wanted that certificate and that ring and my name for yourself?”
Molly Cameron looked him straight in the eye.
“Sure you couldn’t!” she said. “Of course you couldn’t! You’re enough of an outdoor man yourself to know the outdoor kind of a girl when you meet her. Sure you wouldn’t think a thing like that about me!”
Then she put both arms around Jamie’s neck and she had only a short distance to draw his head before it was level with hers.
“What I think about you, Jamie MacFarlane,” she said, “couldn’t be written in many books, but there is this I want to know before you see that License Bureau. Are you going to let me go on, two or three days a week, teaching Americanism? I’m just crazy about my work! I think it’s one of the most interesting jobs that any woman in this country has today!”
“Of course,” said Jamie; “of course I’m going to let you. I’m going to let you do exactly what you please and I am going to go with you and see how much assistance I can give in teaching Americanism. I’ve had some fairly stiff training to fit me to teach Americanism. There are a few things I know about the war end of the game about as well as any man could know them. And there is one question I want to ask you before we go to the
License Bureau. I want to know if we may have a Scotch Presbyterian minister to marry us right here in this house that belongs to us? I want to know if afterward you will go to church and to Sabbath School with me? I want to know if we may have God and the atmosphere of religion in our home? I want to know if our children may be born to an inheritance that is like that bequeathed to me and, no doubt, to you, by our own parents?”
“Of course,” said Molly Cameron. “Of course. I wouldn’t want things any other way, and I would dearly love to be married here in the little house that is a shining monument to a man who was a friend to both of us. I knew and loved the Bee Master, too. I have read almost every book in his library. I’ve dusted his pictures and his precious furniture. If he hadn’t been stricken, you would have met me here long ago.”
“It strikes me,” said Jamie, “that there are times when you have been here anyway.”
“Very few,” said Molly. “I just couldn’t keep away all the time, Jamie lad. Ever since that night on the rock I’ve been unable to make my heart behave at all whenever I thought of you. To tell the plain truth, I love you! I love you, Jamie MacFarlane! I loved you in the storm, and I love you here in the garden, and I even loved you down on the beach yesterday when you had the nerve to let me know what you really thought of me. I was pretty mad when I ran after you, but just the same, when I got through speaking my piece, if I had found you, I probably would have told you that I loved you, dear Keeper of the Bees.”
“Well, how come?” said a voice behind them, and Jamie and Molly turned to see the little Scout standing in the doorway with wide eyes.
“Hello, Jean Meredith,” said Jamie, suavely. “Come and see what’s happened in this family next!”
Jean Meredith walked in and set her hands at her waistline, and with elbows akimbo and her head on one side, peered up at the pair.
“Well, If anybody asked me,” she said, “I’d say you are a fast worker! I don’t think it’s a week yet since your wife died and here you got Molly all cottoning up to you, just like Dad and Mother! Can you beat it!”
“Not very well,” said Jamie. “You will have to take it for granted that there are some things in the world that such little people as you don’t understand.”
“Well, don’t take too much for granted,” said Jean. “Maybe I understand more than you think I do. Anyway, you needn’t think I ever thought that little Jamie had a mother and she died and you took him and walked away and left her. That ain’t the way men act when their wives die. That made a good story, but you can tell it to the world. I ain’t a-going to! It’s a good deal more sensible that you got Molly in your arms. I’ll believe that all right! If I was you, that’s what I’d do. Say, is this stack of lumber out here for Chiefs stable?”
