Selected Stories (79 page)

‘Hold close!' Melissa gasped. ‘The old legends have come true! Look!'

The Hive was half hidden by smoke, and Figures moved through the smoke. They heard a frame crack stickily, saw it heaved high and twirled round between enormous hands – a blotched, bulged, and perished horror of grey wax, corrupt brood, and small drone-cells, all covered with crawling Oddities, strange to the sun.

‘Why, this isn't a hive! This is a museum of curiosities,' said the Voice behind the Veil. It was only the Bee Master talking to his son.

‘Can you blame 'em, father?' said a second voice. ‘It's rotten with Wax-moth. See here!'

Another frame came up. A finger poked through it, and it broke away in rustling flakes of ashy rottenness.

‘Number Four Frame! That was your mother's pet comb once,' whispered Melissa to the Princess. ‘Many's the good egg I've watched her lay there.'

‘Aren't you confusing
post hoc
with
propter hoc?
'
¹⁰
said the Bee Master. ‘Wax-moth only succeed when weak bees let them in.' A third frame crackled and rose into the light. ‘All this is full of laying workers' brood. That never happens till the stock's weakened. Phew!'

He beat it on his knee like a tambourine, and it also crumbled to pieces.

The little swarm shivered as they watched the dwarf drone-grubs squirm feebly on the grass. Many sound bees had nursed on that frame, well knowing their work was useless; but the actual sight of even useless work destroyed disheartens a good worker.

‘No, they have some recuperative power left,' said the second voice. ‘Here's a Queen cell!'

‘But it's tucked away among – What on earth
has
come to the little wretches? They seem to have lost the instinct of cell-building.' The father held up the frame where the bees had experimented in circular cell-work. It looked like the pitted head of a decaying toadstool.

‘Not altogether,' the son corrected. ‘There's one line, at least, of perfectly good cells.'

‘My work,' said Sacharissa to herself. ‘I'm glad Man does me justice before –'

That frame, too, was smashed out and thrown atop of the others and the foul earwiggy quilts.

As frame after frame followed it, the swarm beheld the upheaval, exposure, and destruction of all that had been well or ill done in every cranny of their Hive for generations past. There was black comb so old that they had forgotten where it hung; orange, buff, and ochre-varnished store-comb, built as bees were used to build before the days of artificial foundations; and there was a little, white, frail new work. There were sheets on sheets of level, even brood-comb that had held in its time unnumbered thousands of unnamed workers; patches of obsolete drone-comb, broad and high-shouldered, showing to what marks the male grub was expected to grow; and two inch deep honey-magazines, empty, but still magnificent: the whole gummed and glued into twisted scrap-work, awry on the wires, half-cells, beginnings abandoned, or grandiose, weak-walled, composite cells pieced out with rubbish and capped with dirt.

Good or bad, every inch of it was so riddled by the tunnels of the Wax-moth that it broke in clouds of dust as it was flung on the heap.

‘Oh, see!' cried Sacharissa. ‘The Great Burning that Our Queen foretold. Who can bear to look?'

A flame crawled up the pile of rubbish, and they smelt singeing wax.

The Figures stooped, lifted the Hive and shook it upside down over the pyre. A cascade of Oddities, chips of broken comb, scale, fluff, and grubs slid out, crackled, sizzled, popped a little, and then the flames roared up and consumed all that fuel.

‘We must disinfect,' said a Voice. ‘Get me a sulphur-candle, please.'

The shell of the Hive was returned to its place, a light was set in its sticky emptiness, tier by tier the Figures built it up, closed the entrance, and went away. The swarm watched the light leaking through the cracks all the long night. At dawn one Wax-moth came by, fluttering impudently.

‘There has been a miscalculation about the New Day, my dears,' she began; ‘one can't expect people to be perfect all at once. That was our mistake.'

‘No, the mistake was entirely ours,' said the Princess.

‘Pardon me,' said the Wax-moth. ‘When you think of the enormous upheaval – call it good or bad – which our influence brought about, you will admit that we, and we alone –'

‘You?' said the Princess. ‘Our stock was not strong. So
you
came – as any other disease might have come. Hang close, all my people.'

When the sun rose, Veiled Figures came down, and saw their swarm at the bough's end waiting patiently within sight of the old Hive – a handful, but prepared to go on.

Marklake Witches
¹

When Dan took up boat-building, Una
²
coaxed Mrs Vincey, the farmer's wife at Little Lindens, to teach her to milk. Mrs Vincey milks in the pasture in summer, which is different from milking in the shed, because the cows are not tied up, and until they know you they will not stand still. After three weeks Una could milk
Red Cow
or
Kitty Shorthorn
quite dry, without her wrists aching, and then she allowed Dan to look. But milking did not amuse him, and it was pleasanter for Una to be alone in the quiet pastures with quiet-spoken Mrs Vincey. So, evening after evening, she slipped across to Little Lindens, took her stool from the fern-clump beside the fallen oak, and went to work, her pail between her knees, and her head pressed hard into the cow's flank. As often as not, Mrs Vincey would be milking cross
Pansy
at the other end of the pasture, and would not come near till it was time to strain and pour off.

Once, in the middle of a milking,
Kitty Shorthorn
boxed Una's ear with her tail.

‘You old pig!' said Una, nearly crying, for a cow's tail can hurt.

‘Why didn't you tie it down, child?' said a voice behind her.

‘I meant to, but the flies are so bad I let her off – and this is what she's done!' Una looked round, expecting Puck, and saw a curly-haired girl, not much taller than herself, but older, dressed in a curious high-waisted, lavender-coloured riding-habit, with a high hunched collar and a deep cape and a belt fastened with a steel clasp. She wore a yellow velvet cap and tan gauntlets, and carried a real hunting-crop. Her cheeks were pale except for two pretty pink patches in the middle, and she talked with little gasps at the end of her sentences, as though she had been running.

‘You don't milk so badly, child,' she said, and when she smiled her teeth showed small and even and pearly.

‘Can you milk?' Una asked, and then flushed, for she heard Puck's chuckle.

He stepped out of the fern and sat down, holding
Kitty Shorthorn's
tail. ‘There isn't much,' he said, ‘that Miss Philadelphia doesn't know about milk – or, for that matter, butter and eggs. She's a great housewife.'

‘Oh,' said Una. ‘I'm sorry I can't shake hands. Mine are all milky; but Mrs Vincey is going to teach me butter-making this summer.'

‘Ah!
I
'm going to London this summer,' the girl said, ‘to my aunt in Bloomsbury.' She coughed as she began to hum, ‘ “Oh, what a town! What a wonderful metropolis!”'

‘You've got a cold,' said Una.

‘No. Only my stupid cough. But it's vastly better than it was last winter. It will disappear in London air. Everyone says so. D'you like doctors, child?'

‘I don't know any,' Una replied. ‘But I'm sure I shouldn't.'

‘Think yourself lucky, child. I beg your pardon,' the girl laughed, for Una frowned.

‘I'm not a child, and my name's Una,' she said.

‘Mine's Philadelphia. But everybody except René calls me Phil. I'm Squire Bucksteed's daughter – over at Marklake yonder.' She jerked her little round chin towards the south behind Dallington. ‘Sure-ly you know Marklake?'

‘We went a picnic to Marklake Green once,' said Una. ‘It's awfully pretty. I like all those funny little roads that don't lead anywhere.'

‘They lead over our land,' said Philadelphia stiffly, ‘and the coach road is only four miles away. One can go anywhere from the Green. I went to the Assize Ball at Lewes last year.' She spun round and took a few dancing steps, but stopped with her hand to her side.

‘It gives me a stitch,' she explained. ‘No odds. 'Twill go away in London air. That's the latest French step, child. René taught it me. D'you hate the French, chi – Una?'

‘Well, I hate French, of course, but I don't mind Mam'selle. She's rather decent. Is René your French governess?'

Philadelphia laughed till she caught her breath again.

‘Oh no!' René's a French prisoner – on parole. That means he's promised not to escape till he has been properly exchanged for an Englishman. He's only a doctor, so I hope they won't think him worth exchanging. My Uncle captured him last year in the
Ferdinand
privateer, off Belle Isle, and he cured my Uncle of a r-r-raging toothache. Of course, after
that
we couldn't let him lie among the common French prisoners at Rye, and so he stays with us. He's of very old family – a Breton, which is nearly next door to being a true Briton, my father says – and he wears his hair clubbed – not powdered.
Much
more becoming, don't you think?'

‘I don't know what you're – ‘ Una began, but Puck, the other side of the pail, winked, and she went on with her milking.

‘He's going to be a great French physician
³
when the war is over. He makes me bobbins for my lace-pillow now – he's very clever with his
hands; but he'd doctor our people on the Green if they would let him. Only our Doctor – Dr Break – says he's an emp – or imp something – worse than impostor. But my Nurse says –'

‘Nurse! You're ever so old. What have you got a nurse for?' Una finished milking, and turned round on her stool as
Kitty Shorthorn
grazed off.

‘Because I can't get rid of her. Old Cissie nursed my mother, and she says she'll nurse me till she dies. The idea! She never lets me alone. She thinks I'm delicate. She has grown infirm in her understanding, you know. Mad – quite mad, poor Cissie!'

‘Really mad?' said Una. ‘Or just silly?'

‘Crazy I should say – from the things she does. Her devotion to me is terribly embarrassing. You know I have all the keys of the Hall except the brewery and the tenants' kitchen. I give out all stores and the linen and plate.'

‘How jolly! I love store-rooms and giving out things.'

‘Ah, it's a great responsibility you'll find when you come to my age. Last year Dad said I was fatiguing myself with my duties, and he actually wanted me to give up the keys to old Amoore, our housekeeper. I wouldn't. I hate her. I said, “No, sir. I am Mistress of Marklake Hall just as long as I live, because I'm never going to be married, and I shall give out stores and linen till I die!”'

‘And what did your father say?'

‘Oh, I threatened to pin a dishclout to his coat-tail. He ran away. Everyone's afraid of Dad, except me.' Philadelphia stamped her foot. ‘The idea! If I can't make my own father happy in his own house, I'd like to meet the woman that can, and – and – I'd have the living hide off her!'

She cut with her long-thonged whip. It cracked like a pistol-shot across the still pasture.
Kitty Shorthorn
threw up her head and trotted away.

‘I beg your pardon,' Philadelphia said; ‘but it makes me furious. Don't you hate those ridiculous old quizzes with their feathers and fronts, who come to dinner and call you “child” in your own chair at your own table?'

‘I don't always come to dinner,' said Una, ‘but I hate being called “child”. Please tell me about store-rooms and giving out things.'