How Doth

THE most romantic feature of Breakneck Hill, always excepting the mortgage, was an ancient hive of bees. It was not Jacobean in its architecture, merely mid-Victorian; not such a ‘skip ’ of thatch as decorates with gilded pomp the saving banks, suggesting that the only way to withdraw deposits is to brimstone the trustees; but it was so venerable that its occupants held title by adverse possession. No living man knew how to ‘rob’ them. Nemo me impune lacessit seemed written on its front. Its denizens had a way of ruffling about the entrance like young Guelphs daring the approach of any Ghibelline. Its former owner had long contemplated writing a book on Bees through an Opera Glass. He showed me a mud-hole of Nepenthean efficacy in the surcease of sorrows of him who strayed within a furlong of his fiefs. ‘Do they ever swarm?’ I asked. He smiled sadly. ‘Sometimes. It is then that I most recommend the mud bath.’

I decided that no self-respecting bee should be asked to live, even rent-free, in such a tenement. My paper on ‘ The Response of the Worker to Betterment of Environment ’ had been much admired. Here was a chance to put its theories into practice. I bought a new patent hive, dipped into Maeterlinck, and acquired a cheery little brochure which deserves the attention of every student of the picaresque in fiction. Draping myself in mosquito-netting and protected by huge gloves, I sauntered to the tragedy, which Priscilla now calls, ‘Guelphville, or the Fatal Tryst.’ Never did the sun shine more brightly. Never did Nanny-Donk, with premonitory claims of kinship, bray more melodiously.

‘The simplest method of transference,’ I read, ‘is to invert the old hive, superimpose the new one, and then drum vigorously on the old one. The bees, with charming intelligence, will then pass into their new home. Be sure that the queen is among them, as your success depends upon her migration.’ Be sure that one bee is among ten legions! ‘Be sure, dear, to look up Mrs. Jones at the Yale-Harvard game!’ Something whispered within of coming evil.

Inverting the House of Guelph, I reared the new home on its foundations. Great crevices yawned on every side. I drummed. There was a moment’s pause. The warriors could not believe the wantonness of the insult. Then was my last clear chance of safety. In the distance Nanny-Donk brayed fraternally. I drummed again. Immediately a great roaring arose, as the sound of many waters. From every sally-port they flew. Then first I learned the war-cry of the angry swarm. The gauntlets of my gloves afforded, as the playwrights say, a ‘ practicable door.’ Those who were too late in the rush to find standing-room on my wrists did not despair but bided their turn. Others found an abundant entrance through my veil and settled to their predestined task.

My reactions have been carefully tested and I am normally responsive to external stimuli. Anticipating swift Æolus in his flight, I reached the mud-hole in ten leaps. A famous athlete, under only the stimulus of an unattainable ideal, has since done it in twelve.

There are moments when it is most seemly to leave the soul alone to wrestle with its misfortunes. I always thought that the sorrow’s crown of sorrows for Herakles, when he was trying to acclimatize himself, under the Attic sun, to Phrygian underwear, was the presence of the Chorus. Even this grief was not spared me. Priscilla, alarmed by my cries, spurred on by that combination of sympathy and curiosity known as Wifely Love, came dashing to her doom. Carlyle says that life is a fraction, and that the way to lessen sorrows is to decrease one’s denominator. My better half relieved me of some hundreds of mine — at least I think she did, for by this time my life-mask was complete and I only heard the diminuendo of her retreating shrieks.

But the gentle queen was still unidentified. The bees refused to exercise their charming intelligence. The hive was still vainly superimposed. I was content that another should reap the glory. And he did. I blush to write that my gentle neighbor soothed and transferred the colony with placid skill. How did he do it? I turned sadly to my hand-book. Then first I saw that it was written by a woman. The allimportant secret lay concealed with devilish ingenuity in a foot-note, like Truth at the bottom of the well. ‘Of course, before adopting this method, the bees should be thoroughly subdued by smoke, and two or three combs of their brood should be placed in the new hive. Bees are like humans and will not desert the cradles of their young.’

Of course! Of course! But why did hysteron proteron seize the author’s rhetoric at this fatal point? Did she think that Exposition, like Epigram, like the Bee itself, should have its sting in its tail?