Actions and Reactions

“Hi-yi-yi-yi!” sang Vixen as we shot round the curves; “Toot-toot-toot!” went the driver’s bugle at the dangerous places, and “yow! yow!” bayed Garm. Kadir Buksh sat on the front seat and smiled. Even he was glad to get away from the heat of the Plains that stewed in the haze behind us. Now and then we would meet a man we knew going down to his work again, and he would say: “What’s it like below?” and I would shout: “Hotter than cinders. What’s it like up above?” and he would shout back: “Just perfect!” and away we would go.

Suddenly Kadir Buksh said, over his shoulder: “Here is Solon”; and Garm snored where he lay with his head on my knee. Solon is an unpleasant little cantonment, but it has the advantage of being cool and healthy. It is all bare and windy, and one generally stops at a rest-house nearby for something to eat. I got out and took both dogs with me, while Kadir Buksh made tea. A soldier told, us we should find Stanley “out there,” nodding his head towards a bare, bleak hill.

When we climbed to the top we spied that very Stanley, who had given me all this trouble, sitting on a rock with his face in his hands, and his overcoat hanging loose about him. I never saw anything so lonely and dejected in my life as this one little man, crumpled up and thinking, on the great gray hillside.

He departed without a word, and, so far as I could see, without moving his legs. He flew through the air bodily, and I heard the whack of him as he flung himself at Stanley, knocking the little man clean over. They rolled on the ground together, shouting, and yelping, and hugging. I could not see which was dog and which was man, till Stanley got up and whimpered.

He told me that he had been suffering from fever at intervals, and was very weak. He looked all he said, but even while I watched, both man and dog plumped out to their natural sizes, precisely as dried apples swell in water. Garin was on his shoulder, and his breast and feet all at the same time, so that Stanley spoke all through a cloud of Garin – gulping, sobbing, slavering Garm. He did not say anything that I could understand, except that he had fancied he was going to die, but that now he was quite well, and that he was not going to give up Garin any more to anybody under the rank of Beelzebub.

Then he said he felt hungry, and thirsty, and happy.

We went down to tea at the rest-house, where Stanley stuffed himself with sardines and raspberry jam, and beer, and cold mutton and pickles, when Garm wasn’t climbing over him; and then Vixen and I went on.

Garm saw how it was at once. He said good-bye to me three times, giving me both paws one after another, and leaping on to my shoulder. He further escorted us, singing Hosannas at the top of his voice, a mile down the road. Then he raced back to his own master.

Vixen never opened her mouth, but when the cold twilight came, and we could see the lights of Simla across the hills, she snuffled with her nose at the breast of my ulster. I unbuttoned it, and tucked her inside. Then she gave a contented little sniff, and fell fast asleep, her head on my breast, till we bundled out at Simla, two of the four happiest people in all the world that night.

THE POWER OF THE DOG

There is sorrow enough in the natural wayFrom men and women to fill our day;But when we are certain of sorrow in store,Why do we always arrange for more?Brothers and sisters, I bid you bewareOf giving your heart to a dog to tear.Buy a pup and your money will buyLove unflinching that cannot lie —Perfect passion and worship fedBy a kick in the ribs or a pat on the head.Nevertheless it is hardly fairTo risk your heart for a dog to tear.When the fourteen years which Nature permitsAre closing in asthma, or tumour, or fits,And the vet’s unspoken prescription runsTo lethal chambers or loaded guns,Then you will find – it’s your own affairBut… you’ve given your heart to a dog to tear.When the body that lived at your single willWhen the whimper of welcome is stilled (how still!)When the spirit that answered your every moodIs gone wherever it goes – for good,You will discover how much you care,And will give your heart to a dog to tear!We’ve sorrow enough in the natural way,When it comes to burying Christian clay.Our loves are not given, but only lent,At compound interest of cent per cent.Though it is not always the case, I believe,That the longer we’ve kept ‘em, the more do we grieve:For, when debts are payable, right or wrong,A short-time loan is as bad as a longSo why in Heaven (before we are there!)Should we give our hearts to a dog to tear?

THE MOTHER HIVE

If the stock had not been old and overcrowded, the Wax-moth would never have entered; but where bees are too thick on the comb there must be sickness or parasites. The heat of the hive had risen with the June honey-flow, and though the farmers worked, until their wings ached, to keep people cool, everybody suffered.

A young bee crawled up the greasy trampled alighting-board. “Excuse me,” she began, “but it’s my first honey-flight. Could you kindly tell me if this is my – ”

“ – own hive?” the Guard snapped. “Yes! Buzz in, and be foul-brooded to you! Next!”

“Shame!” cried half a dozen old workers with worn wings and nerves, and there was a scuffle and a hum.

The little grey Wax-moth, pressed close in a crack in the alighting-board, had waited this chance all day. She scuttled in like a ghost, and, knowing the senior bees would turn her out at once, dodged into a brood-frame, where youngsters who had not yet seen the winds blow or the flowers nod discussed life. Here she was safe, for young bees will tolerate any sort of stranger. Behind her came the bee who had been slanged by the Guard.

“What is the world like, Melissa?” said a companion. “Cruel! I brought in a full load of first-class stuff, and the Guard told me to go and be foul-brooded!” She sat down in the cool draught across the combs.

“If you’d only heard,” said the Wax-moth silkily, “the insolence of the Guard’s tone when she cursed our sister. It aroused the Entire Community.” She laid an egg. She had stolen in for that purpose.

“There was a bit of a fuss on the Gate,” Melissa chuckled. “You were there, Miss?” She did not know how to address the slim stranger.

“Don’t call me ‘Miss.’ I’m a sister to all in affliction – just a working-sister. My heart bled for you beneath your burden.” The Wax-moth caressed Melissa with her soft feelers and laid another egg.

“You mustn’t lay here,” cried Melissa. “You aren’t a Queen.”

“My dear child, I give you my most solemn word of honour those aren’t eggs. Those are my principles, and I am ready to die for them.” She raised her voice a little above the rustle and tramp round her. “If you’d like to kill me, pray do.”

“Don’t be unkind, Melissa,” said a young bee, impressed by the chaste folds of the Wax-moth’s wing, which hid her ceaseless egg-dropping.

“I haven’t done anything,” Melissa answered. “She’s doing it all.”

“Ah, don’t let your conscience reproach you later, but when you’ve killed me, write me, at least, as one that loved her fellow-worker.”

Laying at every sob, the Wax-moth backed into a crowd of young bees, and left Melissa bewildered and annoyed. So she lifted up her little voice in the darkness and cried, “Stores!” till a gang of cell-fillers hailed her, and she left her load with them.

“I’m afraid I foul-brooded you just now,” said a voice over her shoulder. “I’d been on the Gate for three hours, and one would foul-brood the Queen herself after that. No offence meant.”

“None taken,” Melissa answered cheerily. “I shall be on Guard myself, some day. What’s next to do?”

“There’s a rumour of Death’s Head Moths about. Send a gang of youngsters to the Gate, and tell them to narrow it in with a couple of stout scrap-wax pillars. It’ll make the Hive hot, but we can’t have Death’s Headers in the middle of our honey-flow.”

“My Only Wings! I should think not!” Melissa had all a sound bee’s hereditary hatred against the big, squeaking, feathery Thief of the Hives. “Tumble out!” she called across the youngsters’ quarters. “All you who aren’t feeding babies, show a leg. Scrap-wax pillars for the Ga-ate!” She chanted the order at length.

“That’s nonsense,” a downy, day-old bee answered. “In the first place, I never heard of a Death’s Header coming into a hive. People don’t do such things. In the second, building pillars to keep ‘em out is purely a Cypriote trick, unworthy of British bees. In the third, if you trust a Death’s Head, he will trust you. Pillar-building shows lack of confidence. Our dear sister in grey says so.”

“Yes. Pillars are un-English and provocative, and a waste of wax that is needed for higher and more practical ends,” said the Wax-moth from an empty store-cell.

“The safety of the Hive is the highest thing I’ve ever heard of. You mustn’t teach us to refuse work,” Melissa began.

“You misunderstand me, as usual, love. Work’s the essence of life; but to expend precious unreturning vitality and real labour against imaginary danger, that is heartbreakingly absurd! If I can only teach a – a little toleration – a little ordinary kindness here toward that absurd old bogey you call the Death’s Header, I shan’t have lived in vain.”

“She hasn’t lived in vain, the darling!” cried twenty bees together. “You should see her saintly life, Melissa! She just devotes herself to spreading her principles, and – and – she looks lovely!”

An old, baldish bee came up the comb.

“Pillar-workers for the Gate! Get out and chew scraps. Buzz off!” she said. The Wax-moth slipped aside.

The young bees trooped down the frame, whispering. “What’s the matter with ‘em?” said the oldster. “Why do they call each other ‘ducky’ and ‘darling’? Must be the weather.” She sniffed suspiciously. “Horrid stuffy smell here. Like stale quilts. Not Wax-moth, I hope, Melissa?”

“Not to my knowledge,” said Melissa, who, of course, only knew the Wax-moth as a lady with principles, and had never thought to report her presence. She had always imagined Wax-moths to be like blood-red dragon-flies.

“You had better fan out this corner for a little,” said the old bee and passed on. Melissa dropped her head at once, took firm hold with her fore-feet, and fanned obediently at the regulation stroke three hundred beats to the second. Fanning tries a bee’s temper, because she must always keep in the same place where she never seems to be doing any good, and, all the while, she is wearing out her only wings. When a bee cannot fly, a bee must not live; and a bee knows it. The Wax-moth crept forth, and caressed Melissa again.

“I see,” she murmured, “that at heart you are one of Us.”

“I work with the Hive,” Melissa answered briefly.

“It’s the same thing. We and the Hive are one.”

“Then why are your feelers different from ours? Don’t cuddle so.”

“Don’t be provincial, Carissima. You can’t have all the world alike – yet.”

“But why do you lay eggs?” Melissa insisted. “You lay ‘em like a Queen – only you drop them in patches all over the place. I’ve watched you.”

“Ah, Brighteyes, so you’ve pierced my little subterfuge? Yes, they are eggs. By and by they’ll spread our principles. Aren’t you glad?”

“You gave me your most solemn word of honour that they were not eggs.”

“That was my little subterfuge, dearest – for the sake of the Cause. Now I must reach the young.” The Wax-moth tripped towards the fourth brood-frame where the young bees were busy feeding the babies.

It takes some time for a sound bee to realize a malignant and continuous lie. “She’s very sweet and feathery,” was all that Melissa thought, “but her talk sounds like ivy honey tastes. I’d better get to my field-work again.”

She found the Gate in a sulky uproar. The youngsters told off to the pillars had refused to chew scrap-wax because it made their jaws ache, and were clamouring for virgin stuff.

“Anything to finish the job!” said the badgered Guards. “Hang up, some of you, and make wax for these slack-jawed sisters.”

Before a bee can make wax she must fill herself with honey. Then she climbs to safe foothold and hangs, while other gorged bees hang on to her in a cluster. There they wait in silence till the wax comes. The scales are either taken out of the maker’s pockets by the workers, or tinkle down on the workers while they wait. The workers chew them (they are useless unchewed) into the all-supporting, all-embracing Wax of the Hive.

But now, no sooner was the wax-cluster in position than the workers below broke out again.

“Come down!” they cried. “Come down and work! Come on, you Levantine parasites! Don’t think to enjoy yourselves up there while we’re sweating down here!”

The cluster shivered, as from hooked fore-foot to hooked hind-foot it telegraphed uneasiness. At last a worker sprang up, grabbed the lowest waxmaker, and swung, kicking above her companions.

“I can make wax too!” she bawled. “Give me a full gorge and I’ll make tons of it.”

“Make it, then,” said the bee she had grappled. The spoken word snapped the current through the cluster. It shook and glistened like a cat’s fur in the dark. “Unhook!” it murmured. “No wax for any one to-day.”

“You lazy thieves! Hang up at once and produce our wax,” said the bees below.

“Impossible! The sweat’s gone. To make your wax we must have stillness, warmth, and food. Unhook! Unhook!”

They broke up as they murmured, and disappeared among the other bees, from whom, of course, they were undistinguishable.

“Seems as if we’d have to chew scrap-wax for these pillars, after all,” said a worker.

“Not by a whole comb,” cried the young bee who had broken the cluster. “Listen here! I’ve studied the question more than twenty minutes. It’s as simple as falling off a daisy. You’ve heard of Cheshire, Root and Langstroth?”

They had not, but they shouted “Good old Langstroth!” just the same.

“Those three know all that there is to be known about making hives. One or t’other of ‘em must have made ours, and if they’ve made it, they’re bound to look after it. Ours is a ‘Guaranteed Patent Hive.’ You can see it on the label behind.”

“Good old guarantee! Hurrah for the label behind!” roared the bees.

“Well, such being the case, I say that when we find they’ve betrayed us, we can exact from them a terrible vengeance.”

“Good old vengeance! Good old Root! ‘Nuff said! Chuck it!” The crowd cheered and broke away as Melissa dived through.

“D’you know where Langstroth, Root and Cheshire, live if you happen to want em? she asked of the proud panting orator.

“Gum me if I know they ever lived at all! But aren’t they beautiful names to buzz about? Did you see how it worked up the sisterhood?”

“Yes; but it didn’t defend the Gate,” she replied.

“Ah, perhaps that’s true, but think how delicate my position is, sister. I’ve a magnificent appetite, and I don’t like working. It’s bad for the mind. My instinct tells me that I can act as a restraining influence on others. They would have been worse, but for me.”

But Melissa had already risen clear, and was heading for a breadth of virgin white clover, which to an overtired bee is as soothing as plain knitting to a woman.

“I think I’ll take this load to the nurseries,” she said, when she had finished. “It was always quiet there in my day,” and she topped off with two little pats of pollen for the babies.

She was met on the fourth brood-comb by a rush of excited sisters all buzzing together.

“One at a time! Let me put down my load. Now, what is it Sacharissa?” she said.

“Grey Sister – that fluffy one, I mean – she came and said we ought to be out in the sunshine gathering honey, because life was short. She said any old bee could attend to our babies, and some day old bees would. That isn’t true, Melissa, is it? No old bees can take us away from our babies, can they?”

“Of course not. You feed the babies while your heads are soft. When your heads harden, you go on to field-work. Any one knows that.”

“We told her so! We told her so; but she only waved her feelers, and said we could all lay eggs like Queens if we chose. And I’m afraid lots of the weaker sisters believe her, and are trying to do it. So unsettling!”

Sacharissa sped to a sealed worker-cell whose lid pulsated, as the bee within began to cut its way out.

“Come along, precious!” she murmured, and thinned the frail top from the other side. A pale, damp, creased thing hoisted itself feebly on to the comb. Sacharissa’s note changed at once. “No time to waste! Go up the frame and preen yourself!” she said. “Report for nursing-duty in my ward to-morrow evening at six. Stop a minute. What’s the matter with your third right leg?”

The young bee held it out in silence – unmistakably a drone leg incapable of packing pollen.

“Thank you. You needn’t report till the day after to-morrow.” Sacharissa turned to her companion. “That’s the fifth oddity hatched in my ward since noon. I don’t like it.”

“There’s always a certain number of ‘em,” said Melissa. “You can’t stop a few working sisters from laying, now and then, when they overfeed themselves. They only raise dwarf drones.”

“But we’re hatching out drones with workers’ stomachs; workers with drones’ stomachs; and albinoes and mixed-leggers who can’t pack pollen – like that poor little beast yonder. I don’t mind dwarf drones any more than you do (they all die in July), but this steady hatch of oddities frightens me, Melissa!”

“How narrow of you! They are all so delightfully clever and unusual and interesting,” piped the Wax-moth from a crack above them. “Come here, you dear, downy duck, and tell us all about your feelings.”

“I wish she’d go!” Sacharissa lowered her voice. “She meets these – er – oddities as they dry out, and cuddles ‘em in corners.”

“I suppose the truth is that we’re over-stocked and too well fed to swarm,” said Melissa.

“That is the truth,” said the Queen’s voice behind them. They had not heard the heavy royal footfall which sets empty cells vibrating. Sacharissa offered her food at once. She ate and dragged her weary body forward. “Can you suggest a remedy?” she said.

“New principles!” cried the Wax-moth from her crevice. “We’ll apply them quietly later.”

“Suppose we sent out a swarm?” Melissa suggested. “It’s a little late, but it might ease us off.”

“It would save us, but – I know the Hive! You shall see for yourself.” The old Queen cried the Swarming Cry, which to a bee of good blood should be what the trumpet was to Job’s war-horse. In spite of her immense age (three, years), it rang between the canon-like frames as a pibroch rings in a mountain pass; the fanners changed their note, and repeated it up in every gallery; and the broad-winged drones, burly and eager, ended it on one nerve-thrilling outbreak of bugles: “La Reine le veult! Swarm! Swar-rm! Swar-r-rm!”

But the roar which should follow the Call was wanting. They heard a broken grumble like the murmur of a falling tide.

“Swarm? What for? Catch me leaving a good bar-frame Hive, with fixed foundations, for a rotten, old oak out in the open where it may rain any minute! We’re all right! It’s a ‘Patent Guaranteed Hive.’ Why do they want to turn us out? Swarming be gummed! Swarming was invented to cheat a worker out of her proper comforts. Come on off to bed!”

The noise died out as the bees settled in empty cells for the night.

“You hear?” said the Queen. “I know the Hive!”

“Quite between ourselves, I taught them that,” cried the Wax-moth. “Wait till my principles develop, and you’ll see the light from a new quarter.”

“You speak truth for once,” the Queen said suddenly, for she recognized the Wax-moth. “That Light will break into the top of the Hive. A Hot Smoke will follow it, and your children will not be able to hide in any crevice.”

“Is it possible?” Melissa whispered. “I-we have sometimes heard a legend like it.”

“It is no legend,” the old Queen answered. “I had it from my mother, and she had it from hers. After the Wax-moth has grown strong, a Shadow will fall across the gate; a Voice will speak from behind a Veil; there will be Light, and Hot Smoke, and earthquakes, and those who live will see everything that they have done, all together in one place, burned up in one great fire.” The old Queen was trying to tell what she had been told of the Bee Master’s dealings with an infected hive in the apiary, two or three seasons ago; and, of course, from her point of view the affair was as important as the Day of Judgment.

“And then?” asked horrified Sacharissa.

“Then, I have heard that a little light will burn in a great darkness, and perhaps the world will begin again. Myself, I think not.”

“Tut! Tut!” the Wax-moth cried. “You good, fat people always prophesy ruin if things don’t go exactly your way. But I grant you there will be changes.”

There were. When her eggs hatched, the wax was riddled with little tunnels, coated with the dirty clothes of the caterpillars. Flannelly lines ran through the honey-stores, the pollen-larders, the foundations, and, worst of all, through the babies in their cradles, till the Sweeper Guards spent half their time tossing out useless little corpses. The lines ended in a maze of sticky webbing on the face of the comb. The caterpillars could not stop spinning as they walked, and as they walked everywhere, they smarmed and garmed everything. Even where it did not hamper the bees’ feet, the stale, sour smell of the stuff put them off their work; though some of the bees who had taken to egg laying said it encouraged them to be mothers and maintain a vital interest in life.

When the caterpillars became moths, they made friends with the ever-increasing Oddities – albinoes, mixed-leggers, single-eyed composites, faceless drones, halfqueens and laying sisters; and the ever-dwindling band of the old stock worked themselves bald and fray-winged to feed their queer charges. Most of the Oddities would not, and many, on account of their malformations, could not, go through a day’s field-work; but the Wax-moths, who were always busy on the brood-comb, found pleasant home occupations for them. One albino, for instance, divided the number of pounds of honey in stock by the number of bees in the Hive, and proved that if every bee only gathered honey for seven and three quarter minutes a day, she would have the rest of the time to herself, and could accompany the drones on their mating flights. The drones were not at all pleased.

Another, an eyeless drone with no feelers, said that all brood-cells should be perfect circles, so as not to interfere with the grub or the workers. He proved that the old six-sided cell was solely due to the workers building against each other on opposite sides of the wall, and that if there were no interference, there would be no angles. Some bees tried the new plan for a while, and found it cost eight times more wax than the old six sided specification; and, as they never allowed a cluster to hang up and make wax in peace, real wax was scarce. However, they eked out their task with varnish stolen from new coffins at funerals, and it made them rather sick. Then they took to cadging round sugar-factories and breweries, because it was easiest to get their material from those places, and the mixture of glucose and beer naturally fermented in store and blew the store-cells out of shape, besides smelling abominably. Some of the sound bees warned them that ill-gotten gains never prosper, but the Oddities at once surrounded them and balled them to death. That was a punishment they were almost as fond of as they were of eating, and they expected the sound bees to feed them. Curiously enough the age-old instinct of loyalty and devotion towards the Hive made the sound bees do this, though their reason told them they ought to slip away and unite with some other healthy stock in the apiary.

“What, about seven and three-quarter minutes’ work now?” said Melissa one day as she came in. “I’ve been at it for five hours, and I’ve only half a load.”

“Oh, the Hive subsists on the Hival Honey which the Hive produces,” said a blind Oddity squatting in a store-cell.

“But honey is gathered from flowers outside two miles away sometimes,” cried Melissa.

“Pardon me,” said the blind thing, sucking hard. “But this is the Hive, is it not?”

“It was. Worse luck, it is.”

“And the Hival Honey is here, is it not?” It opened a fresh store-cell to prove it.

“Ye-es, but it won’t be long at this rate,” said Melissa.