Chapter 24

A SWARM OF BEES

Above Chagford rise those lofty outposts of Dartmoor, named respectively Nattadown and Middledown. The first lies nearer to the village, and upon its side, beneath a fir wood which crowns one spur, spread steep wastes of fern and furze. This spot was a favourite one with Clement Hicks, and a fortnight after the incidents last related he sat there smoking his pipe, while his eyes roved upon the scene subtended before him. The hill fell abruptly away, and near the bottom glimmered whitewashed cots along a winding road. Still lower down extended marshy common land, laced with twinkling watercourses and dotted with geese; while beyond, in many a rise and fall and verdant undulation, the country rolled onwards through Teign valley and upwards towards the Moor. The expanse seen from this lofty standpoint extended like a mighty map, here revealing a patchwork of multicoloured fields, here exhibiting tracts of wild waste and wood, here beautifully indicating by a misty line, seen across ascending planes of forest, the course of the distant river, here revealing the glitter of remote waters damaskeened with gold. Little farms and outlying habitations were scattered upon the land; and beyond them, rising steadily to the sky-line, the regions of the Moor revealed their larger attributes, wider expanses, more savage and abrupt configurations of barren heath and weathered tor. The day passed gradually from gloom to brightness, and the distance, already bathed in light, gleamed out of a more sombre setting, where the foreground still reflected the shadows of departing clouds, like a picture of great sunshine framed in darkness. But the last vapours quickly vanished; the day grew very hot and, as the sky indicated noon, all things beneath Clement's eyes were soaked in a splendour of June sunlight. He watched a black thread lying across a meadow five miles away. First it stretched barely visible athwart the distance green; in half an hour it thickened without apparent means; within an hour it had absorbed an eighth part at least of the entire space. Though the time was very unusual for tilling of land, Hicks knew that the combined operations of three horses, a man, and a plough were responsible for this apparition, and he speculated as to how many tremendous physical and spiritual affairs of life are thus wrought by agents not visible to the beholder. Thus were his own thoughts twisted back to those speculations which now perpetually haunted them like the incubus of a dream. What would Will Blanchard say if he woke some morning to find his secret in John Grimbal's keeping? And, did any such thing happen, there must certainly be a mystery about it; for Blanchard could no more prove how his enemy came to learn his secret than might some urban stranger guess how the dark line grew without visible means on the arable ground under Gidleigh.

From these dangerous thoughts he was roused by the sight of a woman struggling up the steep hill towards him. The figure came slowly on, and moved with some difficulty. This much Hicks noted, and then suddenly realised that he beheld his mother. She knew his haunt and doubtless sought him now. Rising, therefore, he hastened to meet her and shorten her arduous climb. Mrs. Hicks was breathless when Clement reached her, and paused a while, with her hand pressed to her side, before she could speak. At length she addressed him, still panting between the syllables.

"My heart's a pit-pat! Hurry, hurry, for the Lard's sake! The bees be playin'[9] an' they'll call Johnson if you ban't theer directly minute!"

[9] _Playing_ = swarming.

Johnson, a thatcher, was the only other man in Chagford who shared any knowledge of apiarian lore with Clement.

"Sorry you should have had the journey only for that, mother. 'Twas so unlikely a morning, I never thought to hear of a swarm to-day. I'll start at once, and you go home quietly. You're sadly out of breath. Where is it?"

"To the Red House--Mr. Grimbal's. It may lead to the handlin' of his hives for all us can say, if you do the job vitty, as you 'm bound to."

"John Grimbal's!"

Hicks stood still as though this announcement had turned him into stone.

"Ess fay! Why do 'e stand glazin' like that? A chap rode out for 'e 'pon horseback; an' a bit o' time be lost a'ready. They 'm swarmin' in the orchard, an' nobody knaws more 'n the dead what to be at."

"I won't go. Let them get Johnson."

"'Won't go'! An' five shillin' hangin' to it, an' Lard knaws what more in time to come! 'Won't go'! An' my poor legs throbbin' something cruel with climbin' for 'e!"

"I--I'm not going there--not to that man. I have reason."

"O my gude God!" burst out the old woman, "what'll 'e do next? An' me--as worked so hard to find 'e--an' so auld as I am! Please, please, Clem, for your mother--please. Theer's bin so little money in the house of late days, an' less to come. Doan't, if you love me, as I knaws well you do, turn your back 'pon the scant work as falls in best o' times."

The man reflected with troubled eyes, and his mother took his arm and tried to pull him down the hill.

"Is John Grimbal at home?" he asked.

"How shude I knaw? An' what matter if he is? Your business is with the bees, not him. An' you've got no quarrel with him because that Blanchard have. After what Will done against you, you needn't be so squeamish as to make his enemies yourn."

"My business is with the bees--as you say, mother," he answered slowly, repeating her words.

"Coourse 'tis! Who knaws a half of what you knaw 'bout 'em? That's my awn braave Clem! Why, there might be a mort o' gude money for a man like you at the Red House!"

"I'll go. My business is with the bees. You walk along slowly, or sit down a while and get your breath again. I'll hurry."

She praised him and blessed him, crying after him as he departed,--"You'll find all set out for 'e--veil, an' gloves, an' a couple of bee-butts to your hand."

The man did not reply, but soon stumbled down the steep hill and vanished; then five-and-twenty minutes later, with the implements of his trade, he stood at the gate of the Red House, entered, and hastened along the newly planted avenue.

John Grimbal had not yet gone into residence, but he dwelt at present in his home farm hard by; and from this direction he now appeared to meet the bee-keeper. The spectacle of Grimbal, stern, grave, and older of manner than formerly, impressed Hicks not a little. In silence, after the first salutation, they proceeded towards an adjacent orchard; and from here as they approached arose an extravagant and savage din, as though a dozen baited dogs, each with a tin kettle at his tail, were madly galloping down some stone-paved street, and hurtling one against the other as they ran.

"They can stop that row," said Hicks. "'Tis an old-fashioned notion that it hurries swarming, but I never found it do so."

"You know best, though beating on tin pots and cans at such a time's a custom as old as the hills."

"And vain as many others equally old. I have a different method to hurry swarming."

Now they passed over the snows of a million fallen petals, while yet good store of flowers hung upon the trees. June basked in the heart of the orchard and a delicious green sweetness and freshness marked the moment. Crimson and cream, all splashed with sunlight, here bloomed against a sky of summer blue, here took a shade from the new-born leaves and a shadow from branch and bough. To the eye, a mottled, dimpled glory of apple-blossom spread above grey trunks and twisted branches, shone through deep vistas of the orchard, brightened all the distance; while upon the ear, now growing and deepening, arose one sustained and musical susurration of innumerable wings.

"You will be wise to stay here," said Hicks. He himself stopped a moment, opened his bag, put on his veil and gloves, and tucked his trousers inside his stockings.

"Not I. I wish to see the hiving."

Twenty yards distant a play of light and glint and twinkle of many frantic bees converged upon one spot, as stars numerically increase towards the heart of a cluster. The sky was full of flying insects, and their wings sparkled brightly in the sun; though aloft, with only the blue for background, they appeared as mere dark points filling the air in every direction. The swarm hung at the very heart of a little glade. Here two ancient apple-trees stood apart, and from one low bough, stretched at right angles to the parent stem, and not devoid of leaves and blossoms, there depended a grey-brown mass from which a twinkling, flashing fire leaped forth as from gems bedded in the matrix. Each transparent wing added to the dazzle under direct sunlight; the whole agglomeration of life was in form like a bunch of grapes, and where it thinned away to a point the bees dropped off by their own weight into the grass below, then rose again and either flew aloft in wide and circling flight or rushed headlong upon the swarm once more. Across the iridescent cluster passed a gleam and glow of peacock and iris, opal and mother-of-pearl; while from its heart ascended a deep murmur, telling of tremendous and accumulated energy suddenly launched into this peaceful glade of apple-blossom and ambient green. The frenzy of the moment held all that little laborious people. There was none of the concerted action to be observed at warping, or simultaneous motion of birds in air and fishes in water; but each unit of the shining army dashed on its own erratic orbit, flying and circling, rushing hither and thither, and sooner or later returning to join the queen upon the bough.

The glory of the moment dominated one and all. It was their hour--a brief, mad ecstasy in short lives of ceaseless toil. To-day they desisted from their labours, and the wild-flowers of the waste places, and the old-world flowers in cottage gardens were alike forgotten. Yet their year had already seen much work and would see more. Sweet pollen from many a bluebell and anemone was stored and sealed for a generation unborn; the asphodels and violets, the velvet wallflower and yellow crocuses had already yielded treasure; and now new honey jewels were trembling in the trumpets of the honeysuckle, at the heart of the wild rose, within the deep cups of the candid and orange lilies, amid the fairy caps of columbines, and the petals of clove-pinks. There the bees now living laboured, and those that followed would find their sweets in the clover,--scarlet and purple and white,--in the foxgloves, in the upland deserts of the heather with their oases of euphrasy and sweet wild thyme.

"Is it a true swarm or a cast?" inquired John Grimbal.

"A swarm, without much question, though it dawned an unlikely day for an old queen to leave the hive. Still, the weather came over splendid enough by noon, and they knew it was going to. Where are your butts? You see, young maiden queens go further afield than old ones. The latter take but a short flight for choice."

"There they are," said Grimbal, pointing to a row of thatched hives not far off. "So that should be an old queen, by your showing. Is she there?"

"I fancy so by the look of them. If the queen doesn't join, the bees break up, of course, and go back to the butt. But I've brought a couple of queens with me."

"I've seen a good few drones about the board lately."

"Sure sign of swarming at this season. Inside, if you could look, you'd find plenty of queen cells, and some capped over. You'd come across a murder or two as well. The old queens make short work of the young ones sometimes."

"Woman-like."

Hicks admitted the criticism was just. Then, being now upon his own ground, he continued to talk, and talk well, until he won a surly compliment from his employer.

"You're a bee-master, in truth! Nobody'll deny you that."

Clement laughed rather bitterly.

"Yes, a king of bees. Not a great kingdom for man to rule."

The other studied his dark, unhappy face. Trouble had quickened Grimbal's own perceptions, and made him a more accurate judge of sorrow when he saw it than of yore.

"You've tried to do greater things and failed, perhaps," he said.

"Why, perhaps I have. A man's a hive himself, I've thought sometimes--a hive of swarming, seething thoughts and experiences and passions, that come and go as easily as any bees, and store the heart and brain."

"Not with honey, I'll swear."

"No--gall mostly."

"And every hive's got a queen bee too, for that matter," said Grimbal, rather pleased at his wit responsible for the image.

"Yes; and the queens take each other's places quick enough, for we're fickle brutes."

"A strange swarm we hive in our hearts, God knows."

"And it eats out our hearts for our pains."

"You've found out that, have you?" asked John curiously.

"Long ago."

"Everybody does, sooner or later."

There was a pause. Overhead the multitude dwindled while the great glimmering cluster on the tree correspondingly increased, and the fierce humming of the bees was like the sound of a fire. Clement feared nothing, but he had seen few face a hiving without some distrust. The man beside him, however, stood with his hands in his pockets, indifferent and quite unprotected.

"You will be wiser to stand farther away, Mr. Grimbal. You're unlikely to come off scot-free if you keep so close."

"What do I care? I've been stung by worse than insects."

"And I also," answered Clement, with such evident passion that the other grew a little interested. He had evidently pricked a sore point in this moody creature.

"Was it a woman stung you?"

"No, no; don't heed me."

Clement was on guard over himself again. "Your business is with bees"--his mother's words echoed in his mind to the pulsing monotone of the swarm. He tried to change the subject, sent for a pail of water, and drew a large syringe from his bag, though the circumstances really rendered this unnecessary. But John Grimbal, always finding a sort of pleasure in his own torment, took occasion to cross-question Clement.

"I suppose I'm laughed at still in Chagford, am I not? Not that it matters to me."

"I don't think so; an object of envy, rather, for good wives are easier to get than great riches."

"That's your opinion, is it? I'm not so sure. Are you married?"

"No."

"Going to be, I'll wager, if you think good wives can be picked off blackberry bushes."

"I don't say that at all. But I am going to be married certainly. I'm fortunate and unfortunate. I've won a prize, but--well, honey's cheap. I must wait."

"D' you trust her? Is waiting so easy?"

"Yes, I trust her, as I trust the sun to swing up out of the east to-morrow, to set in the west to-night. She's the only being of my own breed I do trust. As for the other question, no--waiting isn't easy."

"Nor yet wise. I shouldn't wait. Tell me who she is. Women interest me, and the taking of 'em in marriage."

Hicks hesitated. Here he was drifting helpless under this man's hard eyes--helpless and yet not unwilling. He told himself that he was safe enough and could put a stop on his mouth when he pleased. Besides, John Grimbal was not only unaware that the bee-keeper knew anything against Blanchard, but had yet to learn that anybody else did,--that there even existed facts unfavourable to him. Something, however, told Hicks that mention of the common enemy would result from this present meeting, and the other's last word brought the danger, if danger it might be, a step nearer. Clement hesitated before replying to the question; then he answered it.

"Chris Blanchard," he said shortly, "though that won't interest you."

"But it does--a good deal. I've wondered, some time, why I didn't hear my own brother was going to marry her. He got struck all of a heap there, to my certain knowledge. However, he 's escaped. The Lord be good to you, and I take my advice to marry back again. Think twice, if she's made of the same stuff as her brother."

"No, by God! Is the moon made of the same stuff as the marsh lights?"

Concentrated bitterness rang in the words, and a man much less acute than Grimbal had guessed he stood before an enemy of Will. John saw the bee-keeper start at this crucial moment; he observed that Hicks had said a thing he much regretted and uttered what he now wished unspoken. But the confession was torn bare and laid out naked under Grimbal's eyes, and he knew that another man besides himself hated Will. The discovery made his face grow redder than usual. He pulled at his great moustache and thrust it between his teeth and gnawed it. But he contrived to hide the emotion in his mind from Clement Hicks, and the other did not suspect, though he regretted his own passion. Grimbals next words further disarmed him. He appeared to know nothing whatever about Will, though his successful rival interested him still.

"They call the man Jack-o'-Lantern, don't they? Why?"

"I can't tell you. It may be, though, that he is erratic and uncertain in his ways. You cannot predict what he will do next."

"That's nothing against him. He's farming on the Moor now, isn't he?"

"Yes."

"Where did he come from when he dropped out of the clouds to marry Phoebe Lyddon?"

The question was not asked with the least idea of its enormous significance. Grimbal had no notion that any mystery hung over that autumn time during which he made love to Phoebe and Will was absent from Chagford. He doubted not that for the asking he could learn how Will had occupied himself; but the subject did not interest him, and he never dreamed the period held a secret. The sudden consternation bred in Hicks by this question astounded him not a little. Indeed, each man amazed the other, Grimbal by his question, Hicks by the attitude which he assumed before it.

"I'm sure I haven't the least idea," he answered; but his voice and manner had already told Grimbal all he cared to learn at the moment; and that was more than his wildest hopes had even risen to. He saw in the other's face a hidden thing, and by his demeanour that it was an important one. Indeed, the bee-keeper's hesitation and evident alarm before this chance question proclaimed the secret vital. For the present, and before Clement's evident alarm, Grimbal dismissed the matter lightly; but he chose to say a few more words upon it, for the express purpose of setting Hicks again at his ease.

"You don't like your future brother-in-law?"

"Yes, yes, I do. We've been friends all our lives--all our lives. I like him well, and am going to marry his sister--only I see his faults, and he sees mine--that's all."

"Take my advice and shut your eyes to his faults. That's the best way if you are marrying into his family. I've got cause to think ill enough of the scamp, as you know and everybody knows; but life's too short for remembering ill turns."

A weight rolled off Clement's heart. For a moment he had feared that the man knew something; but now he began to suspect Grimbal's question to be what in reality it was--casual interrogation, without any shadow of knowledge behind it. Hicks therefore breathed again and trusted that his own emotion had not been very apparent. Then, taking the water, he shot a thin shower into the air, an operation often employed to hasten swarming, and possibly calculated to alarm the bees into apprehension of rain.

"Do wasps ever get into the hives?" asked Mr. Grimbal abruptly.

"Aye, they do; and wax-moths and ants, and even mice. These things eat the honey and riddle and ruin the comb. Then birds eat the bees, and spiders catch them. Honey-bees do nothing but good that I can see, yet Nature 's pleased to fill the world with their enemies. Queen and drone and the poor unsexed workers--all have their troubles; and so has the little world of the hive. Yet during the few weeks of a bee's life he does an amount of work beyond imagination to guess at."

"And still finds time to steal from the hives of his fellows?"

"Why, yes, if the sweets are exposed and can be tasted for nothing. Most of us might turn robbers on the same terms. Now I can take them, and a splendid swarm, too--finest I've seen this year."

The business of getting the glittering bunch of bees into a hive was then proceeded with, and soon Clement had shaken the mass into a big straw butt, his performance being completely successful. In less than half an hour all was done, and Hicks began to remove his veil and shake a bee or two off the rim of his hat.

John Grimbal rubbed his cheek, where a bee had stung him under the eye, and regarded Hicks thoughtfully.

"If you happen to want work at any time, it might be within my power to find you some here," he said, handing the bee-master five shillings. Clement thanked his employer and declared he would not forget the offer; he then departed, and John Grimbal returned to his farm.