Part 4 (1/2)
Nuova gazed fixedly after the following drones. Hero's delay with Nuova made him the last to spring into the air. But he flew so strongly that it seemed certain that he would quickly make up for this handicap in the great race. Indeed, some of the onlooking bees began to call out, ”See how Hero is gaining! He will surely win! Hero will be King!”
Nuova had strained her gaze after Hero until he with all the others had pa.s.sed from sight far out and up in the bright sky. As she gazed she had lifted on tiptoe and had even spread out her wings as if she would fly after him, but now as he disappeared she collapsed and fell back heavily with closed eyes and a pitiful sob into Saggia's supporting embrace.
Just then Beffa came hopping and humming over to them and sang, as if mockingly, but really with sympathetic and comforting meaning: ”Ha, ha, the sad attendant! Her champion is too slow. He'll never win the Princess, Her kiss he'll never know.”
CHAPTER X.
Nuova in the Beautiful Garden.
When Nuova had recovered enough to face squarely the situation in her life and in the life of the hive, she found herself very weak and very sad. Above all, she found the thought of going again into the dark hive to work extremely repugnant to her. And almost the first thing she said to Saggia, who had remained faithfully by her, supporting and caring for her, was that she would not go back into the hive to nurse or make wax or do anything else that meant staying inside.
Saggia comforted her by saying that she would not have to work inside. The kindly old bee whispered to her that there was always so much confusion and such change in the hive arrangements whenever a new Princess was born, and either she or the old Queen went out with many of the workers, that she could easily change her kind of work now without any notice being taken of it. And to confirm this Saggia pointed to several of the nurses, among them Uno, Due, and Tre, making one after another the little trial flights that Saggia had told Nuova to make preparatory to going into the garden out of sight of the hive. These nurses were plainly intending to become foragers. Even as Saggia and Nuova watched them, one after another flew out higher and farther and disappeared into the garden.
It was a beautiful garden on the edge of which the hive was set. The owner of the garden was a great lover and student of flowers. He liked bees and beetles and birds, too; all kinds of live things, plant or animal. And no one was ever allowed to kill any creature, little or big, in his garden, so it was full to overflowing with life and animation. Birds made their nests in it; squirrels barked in the trees; even moles and gophers made their underground runways unmolested. There were open, sunny gra.s.s-plots for playing, and close little copses and coverts for hiding, and great trees for climbing to see out into the still wider world beyond the garden walls. But the garden itself was world enough for most of the creatures that lived in it. There were flowers enough for the bees; seeds and worms enough for the birds; nuts enough for the squirrels. And if some of the happy family in the garden had to live by eating some of the others, still that was the way of life, and the only thing was to hope and try to make sure that the end would not come too soon.
[Ill.u.s.tration: In the Garden]
Nuova already loved the garden, although so far she had not been in it; at least not been any more in it than standing on the entrance platform of the hive and looking into it from this vantage-ground. But now she was really to go out into it, and sad and tired though she was, she felt a little thrill of happiness as she thought of what she might see over there beyond the near-by bushes, out there among the brilliant flowers and the lush gra.s.ses. She turned to Saggia gratefully.
”Good-bye, dear Saggia,” she said gently. ”I am going to go into the garden now. I will make the little flights first as you told me, so as to be able to find my way back to the hive--but, I don't know, Saggia, I don't feel like ever coming back to the hive.” Her eyes filled with tears. ”He--he will never come back. He will win, and he will--will die.” She shuddered and nearly collapsed again.
Saggia could say nothing. She believed, too, that Hero would win in the Great Courting Chase. And if he won, he would die. It was really, she thought with some anger, a very stupid sort of arrangement; very unfair to the King; to be crowned because he was the finest, strongest, and swiftest drone in the hive, or in any of the other near-by hives whose drones also joined in any Courting Chase they noticed going on, only to die at once. It was simply not only stupid; it was brutal.
She did not like to think of Nuova's going off alone into the garden so soon. And she could not put out of her mind the uneasy feeling that Nuova would never come back to the hive at all; not even as a forager who might go out and in as she pleased. Nuova had too plainly shown that her interest in living was gone, and her surrender to her impulses of the moment was likely at any time to be complete even though it might lead to death itself. Saggia decided that she and Beffa were needed in the garden. As Nuova left her to go to the edge of the platform for her first flights, Saggia scurried off in search of Beffa.
A number of bees were busy at a little group of flowers in the garden when one of them, Uno, who had just turned around facing the general direction of the hive, suddenly uttered an exclamation.
”Well, of all things!” she said. ”Beffa in the garden!” The other bees turned and stared.
”And Saggia!” exclaimed one of them. ”Beffa and Saggia! Beffa in the garden! What can he do here?”
Beffa, hearing them, released himself from Saggia's support, and began to make weak little hoppings and to sing. Poor Beffa; he was sadly tired, for because of his deformed wings he had had to walk all the way from the hive. And Saggia was tired, too, because she had walked with him, and not only that, but had helped him over some of the rougher places.
Beffa sang: ”Beffa in the garden; The prisoner in the sun; No Queen in the palace; No jesting to be done.”
He stopped to rest, and Saggia went slowly to a flower, where she busied herself putting a little pollen into her pollen baskets.
Due turned to Beffa. ”Hi, Beffa, you can sing and dance for us while we gather pollen and honey. And you can watch for Bee-Bird to see that he doesn't surprise us. Oh, you can be useful. Hop, hop, hop-la!” And she made a little hop or two, in mimicry of Beffa.
Tre had been looking sharply at Saggia. ”And Saggia doesn't seem to be doing much,” she said, with asperity. ”Foraging again, is she? That is rather a dangerous business for such an old bee, isn't it?” she said malevolently. ”The two-legged man giant that owns this garden likes the two-legged bird giants. He is a brute! He protects the birds! And they eat the insects! He might protect us, rather. Brute!”
”Brute!” cried the other bees. ”Protect the horrid birds, indeed! Sting him if you see him.”
Just then a big blue-bottle fly that had been buzzing about the flowers ventured too near a dark corner lower down in the bush, and was lunged at by a big black spider, which barely missed it. The blue-bottle dashed excitedly away with a tremendous buzzing, and all the bees jumped about nervously a little.
Beffa began to sing without rising from the ground, just moving his feet as if dancing: ”Bee-birds in the tree-tops, Spiders in the gra.s.s; Death rides down the sunbeam, Death leaps as you pa.s.s.”
”Ugh!” said Uno. ”Can't you sing something more cheerful? Be funny, can't you?”
Beffa got up and hopped about a little. Then he sang: ”Out among the flower-cups, Dancing in the sun; Now a drink of nectar, Then another one. Brus.h.i.+ng up the pollen, Hurry 'gainst the gloam, Pail and basket over-full, Off to hive and home!”
All the bees skipped and danced and sang after him: ”Pail and baskets over-full, Off to hive and home!”
After singing this refrain several times and dancing happily about a few moments, the bees set at their work again industriously. It was so beautiful and so bright and so warm in the garden that one could not help being happy in it.
And yet just then Nuova stepped out from behind a flowering bush looking very weary and very sad. Saggia, who had been glancing around for her all the time, slipped quickly and quietly over to her without attracting the attention of any of the bees, and before any other one had seen her.
Saggia led Nuova around to the side of the bush where they would be out of sight of the other bees, and then spoke to her in a low tone.
”Are you all right, Nuova?” she asked anxiously.
Nuova smiled wearily and sadly. ”Of course, I am all right,” she said gently; ”who would not be out here in this wonderful world, this golden suns.h.i.+ne, this fragrant air? It's a place to be all right in all the time. I am going to stay here.”
”Stay here? What do you mean?” asked Saggia.
”Simply that, dear Saggia,” she replied gently, smiling; ”stay right here in the warm sun, near the beautiful flowers. Do you think I am going back into the dark hive to die like that poor forager and be dragged off and tossed out like a piece of dirty wax?” She shuddered. ”No, no; I am going to die out here, and lie in the soft gra.s.s under that heliotrope there.”
Saggia spoke anxiously but sternly. ”Die? Die? Why do you talk of dying? Have you a right to die yet? Have you done all you should do for the hive? Are you going to s.h.i.+rk your duty? Anyway”--and her voice grew more kindly--”do you really want to die? Don't you want to do first all the things a bee can do, to nurse--”
”I have nursed,” Nuova interrupted.
”And make wax--” Saggia went on.
”I have made wax,” Nuova broke in.
Saggia persisted, ”And build cells--”
”I have built cells,” interrupted Nuova again.
”And gather honey--” Saggia continued.
Nuova touched a near-by flower. ”I am gathering honey,” she said.
Saggia hesitated a moment, then began again. ”And--and--” she stammered; then exclaimed suddenly and triumphantly--”and clean floors!”
Nuova smiled at Saggia's anticlimax. ”No, I haven't scrubbed the floor yet. I suppose I ought to enjoy that a little before I die. But you see I am not really old enough to have had time for everything.”
”That's it,” broke in Saggia warmly. ”You are not old enough yet. It is nonsense to talk of dying so young. You must live a long time yet. Look at me! Think how old I am!”
Nuova smiled again, but grew earnest as she spoke. ”It is not how long you live, Saggia; it is how much you live. I have not done everything, but I have done most things. You, you dear wise, old, sensible bee, you have done the things calmly one after another as it came time for you to do them. But I have tried everything that was interesting and for only as long as it was. You have lived a long and useful life with much in it. I have lived a short and useless one; but also with much in it. You have lived mostly for others, and have been mostly happy. I have lived mostly for myself, and been mostly unhappy. But that is the way I am, Saggia. That is my way of living and really I suppose, my way of being happy; happily unhappy. And, Saggia”--and Nuova bent close over to her, as if to tell her a secret--”you know, don't you, that if I have missed cleaning floors, I have done something else in place of it; something you haven't done. I have loved! And that is the happiest unhappiness I have had.”
Saggia was truly shocked. ”Nuova,” she exclaimed, ”haven't I told you before not to say such things! You have not loved,” she added, firmly, ”because you cannot love. Poor little Nuova, you have much to learn yet about bee life.”