CHAPTER XVII
BEE-KEEPING AND THE SIMPLE LIFE
It is a quality of English sunshine that it comes and goes capriciously, so that no man may be sure of the comradeship of his shadow from day to day. But when there is sunshine in England, it always seems an abiding, permanent force. The grey of yesterday, and the patter-song of the rain on the leaves, were only a dream. You were sleeping under the changeless blue of a summer night, and had but a vision of weeping, drab skies, gone now with the joy that comes in the morning. And to-morrow, when perhaps the old wild scurry of storm-cloud is alive overhead, and all the house resounds with the runnel-music from the pouring eaves, still it will be only a dream. Of a surety you will tell yourself so, as the sun breaks through the griddle of cloud, and the wind relents, and the Dutchman can get to his tailoring; and when you are stepping out amidst the swamp and glitter and rehabilitation of life, as glad of it all as the finches and butterflies that sweep on before you down the lane. The sun shines: you know it has always shone, changeless as Time itself.
With such a faith—unfounded and therefore uncontestable—I came under the glow of one brave June morning, threading field after field of blossoming clover until I stood at the gate of the bee-garden over against the hill. With its name I had long been familiar, for in the county paper there was always the little five-line advertisement, quaintly worded, announcing honey for sale. But I had never yet seen it, nor, indeed, ever set foot in this part of the good Sussex land. So, on this brimming June morning, giving rein for once to the indolent Shank’s mare of moods that is fated to carry me, I set out into the bright sloth, the joyous hastelessness, of the day; and came at length to my destination—to the bee-garden that nestles under the green Downland hills.
It was girt about with a tall hedge of hawthorn, smothered in snowlike blossom, with just that rosy tinge upon it which is the first hectic of decay. Beyond the hedge I could see, stretching aloft, green apple-boughs, whose full-blown posies were alive with the desperate humming energy of countless bees. There was a blue wisp of smoke trailing idly away from a chimney-stack, all that could be seen of the snug thatched cottage within; and there were voices, a leisurely baritone, a sudden peal of laughter high-pitched and obviously a woman’s, and now and then a bar or two of an old song sung in an intermittent, absent-minded way.
In one of the pauses of this song, I raised the latch of the gate. Its sharp click drew to its full lean height a figure at the end of the garden, which was bending down in the midst of a wilderness of hives. As the man came towards me coatless, his rolled-up shirt-sleeves baring wiry brown arms to the hot June sun, I took in all the busy, quiet picture. The red-tiled, winding path, the sea of old-fashioned garden-flowers on every hand, billows of lilac and red-may and laburnum, shadowy blue deeps of forget-me-not, scarlet tulips amidst them like lighthouses, and drifting shallows of amber mignonette. A decent house stood hard by, its windows bright and clean as diamond-facets. There was a gay flicker of linen on a line beyond. An old dog lolled in a straw-filled barrel. A cat kept company with a milk jug on the spotless doorstep. And everywhere there were beehives, each of a different harmonious shade of colour, not ranged in stilted rows, but scattered here and there in twos and threes in the orderless order beloved of bees and unsuburban men.
The bee-master had keen grey eyes, set deep in a sun-blackened, honest face, and the ever-ready tongue of him was that of the beeman all the world over. He was ripe and willing to talk of his work, explaining what he was, and what he had done, as we slowly wandered through his domain. He was a Londoner—he told me—at least, that was his fate half a dozen years ago—a City clerk, pale as the ledger-leaves that fluttered through his fingers from nine to six of the working day. And at home, in a dreary desert of housetops called Nunhead—whither may an unkind fate never lure me—his sisters sewed for a living, white-faced as himself. But one day, in an old second-hand book-shop, he lit upon a threepenny treasure—a book on the management of bees. He read it as his train crawled homeward on one stifling, freezing, fog-bound winter’s night; and there and then, in the mean, dirty cattle-box of a third-class carriage, in fancy the bee-garden was inaugurated, that has since developed into all I saw around me on that brave morning in June.
It was a long time in the doing, he told me, as we sauntered among the busy hives, speaking with a delightful Sussex intonation already veneered upon his Cockney brogue—a long and weary and scraping time. There was money to be saved, the capital needed for the enterprise; and this was no easy matter out of a total family income of forty shillings a week. But at last it was done, and well done. There came a day when the three of them shook the dust of Nunhead from their feet, and took over possession of the little tumbledown cottage with its bare half-acre of neglected ground. Well, those were hard times to begin with—he said, with an unaccountable relish in the recollection;—but now, look how all was changed! He waved a triumphant, proudly proprietary arm around him. The cottage was sound and well furnished throughout. The three or four bought hives, with which he had started his business, had multiplied into sixty or seventy, all made by his own hands. Where had he got the bees? Well, that threepenny book had taught him a secret—the art of bee-driving. Nearly all the cottagers for miles round were in the habit of sulphuring their bees to get at the honey. The first autumn, and every autumn since then, he had gone to his neighbours and told them he would take the bees out of the hives for them, and leave them all the combs and a good trink-geld into the bargain, if they would let him have the bees for his trouble. And they were more than willing. And thus he had gradually built up his little principality of hives.
But, the profit of the thing? This, indeed, was nothing much to boast of. He sold all the honey and wax he got, sending it away, for the most part, by post, and extending the circle of his custom by little and little with every year. Taking the bad years with the good, he had made a net return of £2 for every hive; in bumper-seasons it was always much more. It was not a great deal, but there were only three of them, and their wants were simple. Their greatest needs—fresh air, peace, and quiet, the healthful life of the country—these were to be had for nothing at all. And as for clothes—you never know, until you give over trying to keep up appearances, how very little appearances count in the world. At any rate, for them, the whole thing was a complete success. There were men round about that country-side who farmed whole provinces, and still grumbled; but here was he, getting peace and plenty from half an acre; and as for the girls, they did nothing but laugh and sing all day long.
Thus we wandered and talked; and I—feigning ignorance of bee-matters, lest he might think I was but carrying coals to Newcastle in clumsy charity—bought honey, and asked many questions; and slowly the entire meaning of what had been done by these emancipated slaves of City clerkdom was revealed. The bee-master pushed his old straw hat back over his clever forehead, and lit the most comfortable pipe I had ever set eyes on. He had evidently thought the whole thing out long ago, and got it down to its essential elements.
