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 grasses. 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 grass;
Death rides down the sunbeam,
Death leaps as you pass."
"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.
Brushing 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 sunshine, 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 grass 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 shirk 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."
"There is much about it I don't want to learn," muttered Nuova.
"There is much you must learn," replied Saggia sternly, but kindly. "And some of it you must learn now. When I say you cannot love, I mean exactly that; not that you ought not or must not, because other bees do not, but simply that you cannot. Bee loving is not just liking and sighing and laughing and dancing and crying, and being always happy and unhappy at once, but it is becoming the mother of babies, many babies, and that only Princesses can become. And when they are the mothers of babies, they are Queens. In bee land to be a mother is to be a Queen, and to be a Queen is only to be a mother."
Nuova was silent. She felt compelled to believe Saggia, who surely knew about the life of bees if any one did, and who had always spoken truthfully to her. And yet she had a feeling within her that seemed some way to contradict Saggia's knowledge.
"Well, then, Saggia," she said slowly, "I haven't loved, but I have wished to love." And she added in a whisper, "I want to love!"
"You cannot love," repeated Saggia firmly. "Only Princesses can love. You should not think of it any more."
Nuova looked up into the sky. And when she spoke it was as if she were speaking in a dream. "I want to love and I cannot love! Only a Princess can love. And I am not a Princess. What can I do? Clean floors?" She turned to Saggia and smiled sadly. "No, I cannot clean floors, either," she said softly. "I am an unfortunate sort of bee, Saggia, a worthless sort. A new bee, but not new enough to love, and too new to clean floors. Just a bee to lie under the heliotrope bush."
Just then Beffa, who had come hopping and gently humming up to them unperceived by either, and who had overheard Nuova's last words, began to sing:
"A heliotrope or a rose-bush,
A pale-blue flower or pink,
But a dead bee sees no colors
Nor smells sweet smells, I think.
An old world for old bees,
A new world for the new,
And, ah, who knows the real truth?
The untrue may be true."
Nuova was delighted, in her sadness, to see Beffa again. "Beffa, you dear, funny Beffa!" she cried. "But how did you get out here in the garden?"
"He couldn't come,
And so he came.
Can or cannot,
All's a name,"
sang Beffa in reply, hopping about more vigorously than ever.
As Beffa finished, Saggia saw some of the other bees looking scowlingly toward them. She touched Nuova with an antenna.
"Nuova," she said in a low voice, "we must get to work. The other bees are noticing us. We are idling. We must go to work. Beffa can sit here in the sunshine and watch us." She moved off toward a flower.
Nuova looked after her a moment, and then she turned to Beffa.
"Good old Saggia," she said. "She is an example of industry, isn't she? But I don't like her to work just because others are noticing us. That makes me want not to work." She stood loitering by him.
Beffa deliberately stretched himself, with a yawn, and settling down comfortably near a dandelion, he hummed, as if half-asleep already:
"Some work because others talk;
Some talk because others work;
The wisest bee keeps wisest way,
He—goes—to—sleep!"
And as he finished he closed his eyes.
