A Taste for Honey (7 page)

I couldn't help starting a little. Alice was no doubt encouraged by this sign that her attack had made some impression.

“M'young man works up in fields beyond Heregrove's place and 'e's sure 'e's seen Heregrove tending bees as before.”

I did want to know more but I was determined even more strongly to check Alice before after-breakfast conversations became established as a precedent.

“Thank you, Alice,” I said. “I will look into the matter myself.”

I was cold and stiff. I was rude. But I was being sensible. I was not being “simply whimsey.” The stiffness, therefore, did not matter. It might wound, but the cut was aseptic. Alice was quite content. She had, of course, not had her talk out, as no doubt she would have liked, but she had made me do something. That was even more important. The gentry had been made to mobilize. I had been compelled to take command. Off she sailed, contented in her way, and soon the drone-drawl of “Abide with me” mixed with crockery clackings came through the baize door—a sure sign that Alice was enjoying that sentimental sense of having sacrificed herself to make someone else uncomfortable, which I believe bitter-sweetens the whole lives of the industrious poor.

But as I realized Alice's victory I was not so pleased. I should have to do something. I couldn't and wouldn't go back to my old bore in Waller's Lane. He, no doubt, would be glad enough to overlook my unavailing struggle to escape his hold. Alice's victory must not lead to a rout.

Then there was nothing left to do but to go and see whether what Alice had said about Heregrove was true—to spy out the land. And, after all, if he was again tending bees, there was nothing wrong in that. Of course he had got rid of the mad hive which had attacked his poor wife. If no one else could keep bees in the district, why shouldn't he? No doubt he was skillful—that was all, “bee-handy.” These epidemics—foul-brood, Isle of Wight disease, etc.—were always wiping out hives. I had long ago dismissed old Mycroft's romances. All the demonstrations he gave me could easily, I concluded, have been staged by a clever eccentric. Probably he was the dangerous person to be in touch with—a borderline case. As to Heregrove, it was not my duty to boycott an unfortunate and skillful man. If other people chose to do so—well, it was an ill wind which blew no one any good and I should benefit by being his sole customer.

I went over all these points—small ones, they may seem, and no doubt are. “Why all this fuss,” a reader might say, “over buying a few pounds of honey?” I have to own that my mind, far down, was far from easy. If I had not dreaded Mycroft's becoming a bore, an intruder, would I have dismissed all he had told me as mere romance and tried to convince myself that he was cracky? I crushed back the thought, but it was there, and the only way to get rid of it seemed to go and see for myself whether Heregrove was actually again beekeeping, and, if he were, to replenish my stock. So to escape one unpleasant train of thought—old Mycroft's speculations—I ran right onto the other horn of the dilemma—the very source of all these really rather unnerving suspicions.

When one has made up one's mind to hair-cutting or being fitted by the tailor, I've found it always better to get it over. So that very afternoon I deliberately took my afternoon walk up to Heregrove's end of the village. Luck—no, I have decided to say Destiny—decided that the man should be coming down his garden path at the very moment that I reached his gate. I paused and we came face to face.

“I hear you may again be selling honey” was, I thought, a safe enough opening.

It was not very well received, though. He looked at me with a curiously expressionless face. He certainly was not what fashion papers call prepossessing. Dark, strong, resolute, and intelligent—yes, all these, and cold. Where had I seen a face as cold as that? Of course—old Mycroft's; but there it seemed to me that coldness came from detachment, this from hardness. When I was first taken with Mycroft's look I remembered thinking how quietly cool his face was.

This man's face was somehow not quiet in spite of its coldness. It went through my mind that he was deliberately making his features expressionless, not because he did not care what people thought of him but because he was determined to hide something. That thought led to a still more disquieting one. I felt now sure that he was watching me with much more interest than he intended me to recognize. After a pause, which was becoming quite embarrassing to me, suddenly, like an electric light being switched on behind drawn blinds, the face lit up. I felt a queer, baseless, but quite definite conviction that he had suddenly made up his mind about something.

“I am sorry,” he said, in a surprisingly low and accentless voice, “to have hesitated in answering. Since my great sorrow and loss I have been much of a recluse and long silences make for slow responses. Yes, I am again keeping bees.” Then, after a pause, “My doctor, when I consulted him, said that after a severe shock the best cure is the hardest—to take up the actual thing most associated with the shock—men who have had a bad fall steeplechasing are told to jump fences as soon as they can again sit in the saddle. Of course, the actual hives have been destroyed, but I have a way with bees and am again thriving with them. I don't quite like to put my notice up again but perhaps I can breed queens and make a little that way.” (A queer tremor of suspicion from the back of my mind shook me for a moment.) “But I would be glad to have you again as a customer as my poor wife had. I trust that while I have been out of business” (we were now walking up the path and I was aware his eyes had turned toward me though his head was not turned) “you have not suffered any inconvenience?”

“No,” I said, evasively. “No.”

I knew I ought to make up some story but, as I've said, living by oneself, one doesn't have to lie and gets out of the habit, at least of doing it convincingly. His next remark showed that I had been right.

“There are, I believe, very few other beekeepers in the district. As homemade honey is so different from the stuff most shops sell, I feared you must have gone without supplies.”

I simply said nothing. I could hardly construe that remark as other than a searching question devised to discover where any other beekeepers might be lurking in the locality. However, he must take my silence as he wished. We reached the house and he showed me into the parlor, still as distressing a room as when I had seen it in his wife's day, from my casual glimpses through the door.

I heard his voice behind me continuing, “—Unless, of course, you went far afield hunting your honey?”

The chuckle he gave at this minimal joke did nothing to cheer me. The house, the man, my suspicions, all grated together. I turned around.

“I should like the same supply as I had before,” I said.

He named the exact amount and then added, “Come with me. I store near the hives. It saves trouble when in the winter one has to feed them some of their own. Pure sugar is never enough.”

Again I felt even more strongly the wish to be out of it all, felt a quite strong resentment toward Mycroft—why could he not have kept from boring me and just supplied me with honey?—and even a wave of irritation at Alice. Still, to refuse would be ridiculous. We left the house and went down the back garden path along which, I remembered, I had seen him, in his wife's time, going toward the stable.

Because that memory flashed through my mind and for the sake of saying something not to do with bees or honey and to break the silence on my part, I asked, “Do you still keep a horse?”

I own I might have taken such a remark made to myself by a stranger as impertinent, interfering. But of course I didn't mean it as that. It was one of those pointless, stopgap remarks we make when we fear a silence may become too awkward. The remark did have a bad effect—there was no doubt as to that—a surprisingly bad effect. Heregrove stopped and turned on me. I looked round and confronted an unpleasantly searching glance. Another of those horrid pauses, and then the very commonplaceness of the reply only disturbed me more.

“No, I sold the horse some time ago. I couldn't afford to keep it.”

“That's frank and obvious,” I said to myself, but something in me told me I must have put a finger almost on the bolt which fastened down some grave secret in the man's mind. However, the thought that one is alone, talking to a dangerous fellow who suspects that you may know too much, is so disturbing that I chose, not unnaturally, the alternative, which had certainly still as good a case—that here was a poor creature who had had very bad luck (or an ill deal from Destiny) and whom I could help by helping myself to his honey. We seldom fear those whom we feel we can patronize. Fear is a beastly feeling, while patronizing always faintly warms one, though we don't like saying so. I needed warming, for I felt more than a slight chill of foreboding, so I changed the subject. The overgrown and bedraggled flower beds caught my eye.

“Even now that most of the best of the summer flowers are over,” I prattled, “yet there are enough to keep the bees busy. Queer little creatures.” I ran on, as my companion kept silent and I was determined that there should be talk, if only mine and only to reassure myself. “I suppose it's not color but scent which really guides them?”

Again I was aware I was being sidelongly looked over. But how could such babble do anything but reassure a suspicious character? Alas, I knew I was only fooling myself or trying to convince myself that my efforts had done anything of the sort. On the contrary, do what I would, everything I said and even my silences quite obviously heightened his suspicion, and, what was even more disconcerting, made him quite clearly resolved to hold on to me—I supposed to find out whether I was as innocent as I looked or as suspicious as I apparently kept on sounding.

We had reached the end of the garden and the beehives were now in view on the other side of a rather dilapidated railing. The hives themselves were in order. When we reached the fence, Here-grove seemed suddenly to change his mind.

“If you will wait here,” he said, civilly enough, “I will fetch the honey. It is in that small shed alongside the hives. Most of the bees are already in but, you see, a few latecomers are still coming home. They might be a little irritable. Hard workers on returning home may get cross if they find strangers hanging about their doors.”

He smiled as he said this; I was so glad of this sign of improving relations that I tittered rather foolishly in my effort to show my friendliness. He turned his back on me and in a few moments reappeared out of the shed with the load of honey.

“Well, that's done,” I thought. “Somehow I shall have to find some other supply, or cure myself of the taste. For I don't think I can face another visit like this.” But I spoke to myself before I was out of the wood.

As he came toward me he said coolly, “Before you go, we can just step across to the stable, as we are down at this end of the garden. I'd like to show you the place, as you expressed an interest in the horse I once kept.”

The excuse for showing me the place was so palpably inadequate that I was filled with a queer panic. Yet when I thought of how I could reasonably get out of going the fifty yards he asked me to go and looking into the tumble-down shed, I could see no reason to refuse, as there was obviously no possible peril in going just there, beyond what I might be exposed to in getting straight back to the road. Granted that he had some reason other than he alleged for wanting to show me the place, it was equally clear that that reason could not be to do me any harm. He would hardly wish to injure the first customer of the trade he was trying to revive. I made some sort of assenting sound and turned to follow him as he had already started walking toward the stable. I did this a little more willingly as I was slightly reassured to have him walking in front of me, not I in front of him, and as his hands were full of the jars and combs it was clear he would be a little handicapped if he did intend to assault me.

“Unless, of course,” I said jauntily to myself, “he intends to turn on me, pelting me with honey, and so suffocate me. Clarence with his Malmsey; Sydney in his honey.”

Joking with oneself sometimes works, but if it doesn't, you are all the worse off. I don't know whether it worked or not then. Perhaps it did, for at least I remember making aloud to Heregrove some little jest about last year's mare's nest when we stood rather pointlessly looking at the wisps of sodden hay that still lined the floor. I think my titter or chuckle did not sound too forced, though Heregrove did not join in. In fact, he seemed hardly to hear me. Where before he had seemed all too vigilant, now he seemed positively absent-minded. When he spoke he seemed almost to be speaking to himself and forgetting me.

“I used to fasten her up in this stall,” he said, putting down his armful of honey and going over to the manger.

Out of courtesy I followed. Perhaps, I thought, he was really attached to the horse. Some misanthropes have to find an outlet for their affection. For myself, I don't dislike people—just don't require them—so I suppose I don't have to have pets.

“The little mare,” he went on, “could look out of this window. I couldn't give her much exercise, and horses, you know, get bored if kept without anything to do; take to crib-biting and air-swallowing. But she had a nice view here and could look out at things and did, and used to whinny at birds and dogs.”

The man was a sentimental recluse suffering from incipient brain-softening, I concluded. I must humor him and get away.

“Just look,” he said, straining to see out the stall window, which was high and hard to see out of because of the manger underneath it. “If you look right, you see away to the road; straight ahead, meadows for quite a mile; and down to the extreme left, the road and the tops of the village roofs.”

I stretched up to oblige him by looking out. To my relief he moved away.