THE BABY AND THE BEE
The baby lay in her carriage looking up at the over-hanging soft green leaves and white flowers of a lilac bush. A light wind came rather chilly from the north, despite the day of blue sky and flooding sunshine, and so the carriage had been wheeled a little around a south corner of the house, and left there. Baby was alone with her thumbs and fingers, her big wide eyes and the warm sunshine and her busy little brain. She was a baby of early mental development. Her parents thought her in the way to be a genius.
In the white flowers among the soft green leaves of the lilac bush busy worker bees foraged. They worked actively in the warm sunshine, some lapping up with long tongues of marvelous complexity the nectar from the open flowerets, while others loaded their thighs with the sticky yellowish pollen. They came and went between the flowers and their distant hive, each one doing its own work unaided and unhindered and even apparently unnoticed by any other.
The baby watched them with big wide eyes, uncomprehending, for nature study had not yet come into her curriculum. She liked their activity though, and more than once put up her tiny hands uncertainly as if to feel or grasp them.
Suddenly one of the bees, with the pollen baskets on its thighs filled to overflowing, dropped down on to the knitted afghan that covered the baby's body below the arms. It staggered about a moment, buzzed its wings violently without being able to fly, and then resignedly stood still with legs outspread and wings occasionally gently vibrating. The baby's eyes, soon tired of staring up into the too bright sky, turned their attention to her wriggling thumbs, and, a moment after, discovered the tired bee. She put out one hand suddenly toward it.
"Excuse me," said the bee, "but I wouldn't touch me if I were you."
"Why?" asked the baby, "shall I hurt you?"
"No, but I should have to hurt you," answered the bee gently.
"You? You little thing hurt me? That's rather absurd, isn't it?"
"Much littler things than I can hurt much bigger things than you," said the bee, sententiously. "But, really, don't you know what I am, and what I can do?"
"No, pardon me for my stupid ignorance, but I do not. I seem to have seen a picture in one of my father's books that resembles you; but it was labelled Apis mellifica, and that told me very little."
"Oh! yes, that was me," proudly replied the bee. "That is what I am called in books. But outdoors here my name is Bee, Honeybee."
"Thank you, Bee. And my name is Baby. I also have another name; in fact several other names. But I rather prefer Baby. It relieves me of much responsibility, and gives me certain powers that my other names fail to carry with them. May I ask if you read much?"
"I do not read at all," answered the bee, "I do not need to," it added. "I know all that I need to know when I am born."
"You mean that you do not have to study, to study books, long rows of books, in order to know how to live?" asked the baby in surprise. "If so then it is no wonder that my father writes about you as he does; that he says you are the example for us all; and that you and your cousins the, er, Formicidae...."
"Oh, the ants, yes. That we are ...?"
"That you are the true successes among all the animals because your knowledge has led you to establish the perfect society, and to become the only true communists among them all. He says that your life should be the guide for ours; that when we human beings can thoroughly adopt your ways we shall have solved all our problems."
"How wonderfully you talk!" interrupted the bee. "I suppose that comes from reading. You do read a lot, I suppose?"
"Well, I am making a beginning, yes," answered the baby with a sigh. "But it is discouraging sometimes. Here I've only just got through the Encyclopedia Britannica and now they have turned out a new edition. But I get a great deal of my knowledge of life from hearing my father and mother talk; and my nurse, she is a very superior person, too."
"Your father writes books? He is a literary man, then?" asked the bee.
"Oh, no; not at all. He is a scientific man. He writes books only because he has such important things to tell the people."
"And he writes about me and my cousins the ants? He tells the people that they should live as we do? Well, that is encouraging. To tell the truth, some of us have rather envied you humans. We have wanted to be like you."
"Oh, that is silly. Anyway, to be like us in our present stage of evolution."
"In your present stage of, of—I am afraid I don't quite understand," said the bee, rubbing one antenna over its face in a rather bewildered way.
"Oh, like us as we are now. We are in a dreadful way just now. We used to have a very good conceit of ourselves. We were even happy. But that was because we were so ignorant of our true condition. We know better now, thanks to my father and some other observant and thoughtful men. They have seen how miserable we are and they are telling everybody about it. That is necessary, you know, in order to change it. They are writing about it in the newspapers, in the magazines, in little books, in big books. Our business, our politics, our government, our society, our religion, our very line of evolution; all wrong. At the bottom of it all there is one great trouble; we are too much interested in ourselves as individuals. We want things for ourselves. We should, of course, only want things for the people of the future. We should live for the race, not the individual; just as you do, you know."
"Why, that's funny! We complain of just the opposite. We don't see why we shouldn't have some good things for ourselves, and not do everything all the time for future bees. Even they won't have a good time for they will have to work for still more future bees."
"But think of the race; the wonderful race to come!" burst in the baby.
"Ah, yes, I suppose. But pardon me, please, I am a little dizzy with all this. You know I dropped down here to die; but I have been so much interested in what you said. However, I am afraid I really must die in a few minutes; and if I don't seem to be particularly bright just now you will understand and excuse me, won't you?" And the bee settled down a little lower on her stiffly outstretched legs, and vibrated both antennae gently as if to take a few last smells of the lilac-fragrant air.
"Why, this is terrible! You poor dear bee. Dying! And you talk of it as if it were nothing! Isn't there something we can do? I will call somebody. All I have to do is to scream once, and somebody will come in a hurry."
"Oh, please don't trouble yourself at all. Dying is of no importance whatever with us, you know. In fact if I am old enough or worn out enough to be weak I have no right to wish to live longer, and it would be wrong for anyone to help me. That is part of our perfect communism, you know. We only live for each other and for the race. And if we are weak or sick—but you know, of course, from hearing your father explain it."
The baby was silent for a moment. Her big, wide eyes, strained even wider now by horror and pity, were fastened on the bee, while it held its own head up as bravely as it could to look steadily into the baby's face. The bee and the baby had someway become friends. Both felt it. And they were silent together, but understanding each other, as friends can.
The baby spoke first. "Dear Bee, if I can't do anything to save you, is there anything I can do"—and a tear rolled down into her mouth—"after?"
"Thank you; you are surprisingly good. Do you really want to do something? Well, if you could someway arrange to see that my load of pollen"—and it moved its two laden hind legs slightly—"gets to the hive, it would be a great favor to me."
"Why, that is dreadful again! You are only thinking of the others. I mean can't I do something just for you, alone?"
The bee did not answer. Her hind legs slid down and out until they were nearly flat on the afghan. Suddenly the baby's face lighted. And with an extraordinary and extremely precocious display of energy and precision of movement—thus beautifully proving the words of that lamented philosopher who said that we ordinarily draw on only about half our resources—she twisted herself around so that her hands could reach the bee, and put them out directly to it.
"Now don't hurt me, the way you said you could," she whispered, "for I am going to help you." And she lifted the bee gently in one hand and with the long sharp nail of the tiny fore finger of the other—a nail the nurse had neglected for several days—she deftly pried the pollen masses off the bee's legs. Then she gently put it down again and twisted back into place, smiling happily.
"There," she said, "that will relieve you of the weight of those horrid great pollen loads. It will help you, I am sure."
It certainly did help the bee. It stood up much higher on its legs than before. It even made a few feeble steps nearer the baby's face. But it did not say anything for a full minute, and when it did speak its voice betrayed its very strong feeling. Its antennae quivered, and its wings lifted and fell spasmodically. It was a much moved bee.
"This is very wonderful; the influence you have over me, Baby," it said. "I ought, by all our tradition and knowledge, to have stung you. I ought to sting every live thing that touches me that doesn't have the nest odor. And you haven't. But you do have a very pleasing smell, someway. Is that the odor of goodness?"
"Why, no, I suppose it's just the bathed baby odor," said the baby. "I had my bath only half an hour ago and was put out here to go to sleep. Only usually I don't go to sleep. Sometimes I lie and think, and sometimes I just lie and feel good."
"And then I shouldn't at all have let you take off my pollen loads," went on the bee, musingly. "If I should be found by any bees after I am dead without any pollen on my legs or nectar in my honey stomach they would think very badly of me indeed. That is," it added a little bitterly, "if they should think anything about me at all. But I can't feel as badly as I ought to, someway. I really feel a great deal better with those loads off. And I thank you for being so good to me."
"I feel much better, too," said the baby, with a beautiful smile and sweet little gurgle. "Better because you are better, and better because I made you better. I don't think either my bath or my bottle makes me feel better. You dear bee, I wish I could always help you."
"Thank you, Baby. If I were really going to live much longer I should always remember your smell, and come to you if I were in trouble."
"Ah," cried the baby, with her eyes dancing, "then you have learned something. You didn't know everything when you were born, after all. I expect it is not too wise to get all one's knowledge from one's ancestors. Probably the world changes, and new things come into it, and one needs to be ready to learn. Now we humans are much newer things than you bees, and there are new things in our lives. That's why my father's science, which explains everything by the old things, has always seemed to me to leave something out of account. What does your father think about it?"
The bee lifted its antennae in surprise. Not having eyelids to open nor eyebrows to lift, a surprised bee can only lift its antennae.
"Why, of course, I don't know what my father thinks. I don't know my father. I haven't even seen him. Or if I have seen him with the others in the hive, I haven't known which one was he. I only know he was one of the strongest and best flying bees in the hive or he would never have been able to marry my mother."
The baby, whose eyes had opened very wide as the bee first began to speak, soon recovered herself, for she remembered what her father had written in the report of one of his committees, the Committee on Eugenics, she thought it was. She had read parts of it one day when the nurse had left her for an hour in her father's study.
"Oh, yes, I had forgotten. Only the biggest and strongest bees can be the fathers of the future bees. And that's about all your father does, isn't it; just be your father."
"Yes, we kill them off after mother begins bearing us," answered the bee simply.
"Gracious, what a dreadful thing to do!"
"Why, not at all. They are all pretty old then. And we strong young bees can do the work much better. In fact they couldn't do the work at all. They would only be extra mouths to bring food for, and extra bodies to give space to in the hive. It is far better for the race to get them out of the way," said the bee.
"But your mother; you know her, don't you? And you don't kill her, I hope?" said the baby anxiously.
"Well, I do know her, but she doesn't know me. You see when one does nothing but bear children, and has twenty or thirty thousand of them, and more, all very much alike, she couldn't expect to be much interested in any one of them, or even to know them apart. She only bears us; the nurses take care of us from the moment we are born until we are able to take care of ourselves. We don't kill our mother, anyway as long as she is vigorous and not too old, for it is very economical to have a few carefully selected, tested mothers produce all the children. But doesn't your father write about all of that in his book that tells people how to live like us?"
Baby was silent for a little while; then answered thoughtfully. "Why, yes; I had forgotten for the moment. He does have most of it in. But I think not that about killing off the fathers so soon. I'd hate to think of killing my father. He is such good fun sometimes; besides being no end of good to me all the time. He is especially good, I think, because I am not very strong, you know. I guess I shan't ever be able to walk. It's my back or something. Nobody tells me much, but I have heard them talk. And then always father comes and kisses me; and he cries a little."
The bee looked earnestly up into the baby's face. "It seems to me," it said after a moment, "that your father isn't very consistent. If you can never walk, he ought to kill you now, hadn't he? Excuse me, I didn't mean to say anything dreadful, but isn't that what the welfare of your race demands? Only strong well people to live; especially the women, the mothers of the race?"
The baby had recovered from her start at the bee's first words, and kept silent, evidently very thoughtful. Then a slow smile came over her face.
"I guess it's just because my father is a human being and not a bee or any other lower animal that he isn't consistent. Excuse me, but you know we have to call them that from our point of view. We are animals; science is right about that. And we do animal things. But there are so many different animal things. Not all animals are alike, are they? There are big differences between you and a starfish, aren't there; or just a stupid polyp that can only shut up and open like a plant, and eat, and bud off little polyps and jellyfishes. And probably there are big differences between a man and, well, even a bee or an ant. It's the scientific fashion just now to be awfully economical about explanations. What will explain a polyp is tried on the bees; and what explains the successful life of the bees and ants is made to do for human beings. I sometimes think my father's training is too much for his head. I know it contradicts his heart. Do you know, though, he isn't so inconsistent as he seems. For he says to mother that, weak as I am, I may sometime do more for the world than the strongest washerwoman that ever bore ten children. He says," and the baby dropped her voice to a soft whisper, "that I may write a beautiful poem or a great book that teaches faith and love, and do the world a lot of good by it. And mother says that whether I write it or not, I am a poem of beauty and a book that teaches love. So I suppose that is why father is so inconsistent about—about killing me, you know."
Just then a step sounded from the path around the corner.
"Oh, that is the nurse," cried the baby. "She will take me in. And she is so stupid; she won't let me have you in the house."
"Oh, well, anyway I have to be dying so soon now," said the bee, also a little sadly. "I am sorry that I can never see you again. It has all been so interesting. And you have taught me some things, and besides, and more than all, you have been good to me. I—I think you are going to be worth while to your race. I think you are already. You are worth while to all of us; to the whole world. You have given me ten minutes of happy living. Could you do just one little thing more for me? Will you drop me down under the lilac bush, so I can have our flowers, that we both like so well, over me when I am dead?" And one antenna rubbed slowly over one of the bee's eyes, as if this approach to humanness had engendered the impossible, a bee's tear.
The baby twisted her infirm little body about again, stretched out her hands, and gently lifted the bee. "Good-bye, dear Bee," she whispered; "Good-bye, dear Baby," answered the bee. Then the baby carried the bee to her lips, and kissed it.
At that very moment the nurse leaned over the carriage with an indulgent smile on her face, which changed swiftly to horrified dismay as she saw the bee at baby's lips. She cried aloud, while baby with a quick flirt of little hands lightly tossed the bee under the lilac. As the nurse saw the tears streaming down the baby's face she believed her worst fears realized, and catching the child to her bosom, she ran into the house saying over and over:
"Did a bad bee sting my itty bitty sweetie angel?" And as she ran she was amazed to hear among the baby's sobs what sounded like a spoken word repeated again and again. Baby really seemed to be saying, "No, No, No, No!"