The Keeper of the Bees/Chapter 14
The Home-Made Miracle
ONLY a short time was required for the settlement of the estate of the Bee Master. All he owned was the two acres of mountain-side and beach and the money that he had deposited in the Citizen’s Bank. Because he was so thoroughly familiar with the Bee Master’s wishes, Doctor Grayson consented to act as executor. The determination as to whom the house should belong had been decided after the manner prescribed, and it had fallen to Jamie. It was agreed that the house should be appraised, its value should be set aside to accrue interest for the little Scout until such time as it was desirable to erect another house on the west acre. It was agreed that the home should remain where it was until Jamie desired to move it. A fund sufficient to cover a contractor’s estimate of this expense was set aside to Jamie’s credit. The little Scout was to have the complete furnishings of the combined library and living room on demand. The remaining money in the bank was divided equally, Jamie’s half being set aside to his credit, the little Scout’s to begin compounding interest until legal age was attained. The proceeds from the honey and the garden were to be divided equally after the wages of any help employed had been deducted, the child’s share to be placed in the bank. The Bee Master was reaping the reward that the Almighty has in store for a man who has kept the faith and from his earthly opportunities has made of himself a scholar and a gentleman.
After the inheritance, it was noticeable to Jamie and the family of the little Scout that ownership had brought problems and responsibilities to the youngster. There was an inclination to eat fewer hot dogs and save more dimes, and very speedily it developed that the first improvement the little Scout planned for the west acre was a fine large bed of Madonna lilies, and the bulbs of these are expensive in comparison with hot dogs. It would take much self-denial to plant a bed from which a satisfying amount of honey could be obtained in the raw. Jamie frequently noticed the child going carefully over the ground, apparently in search of a level spot that would have access to the road and not disfigure the premises, and he knew what that meant. Plans were being made for housing the horse that was the secret desire of the youngster’s heart.
As for Jamie, he was frankly bewildered. It was very true that he had been born in this country, that his education had started in our public schools and ended in one of our best colleges. It was true that he belonged to our country by birth and environment. But it was also true that the blood of a man and a woman both of whom were born and reared in Scotland was in his veins, and the habits and characteristics of the Scot were strong upon him. All the Scotsmen with whom he had ever come in contact had inherited what they owned from their parents, or earned it by hard labour. Jamie was not accustomed to gifts. He could not recall that any one ever had given him anything in particular. Then why, all at once and out of a clear sky, should an acre covered with fruit, carpeted with flower brilliancy, humming with bees that were doing the work that provided the income upon which to live, be presented to him? There might have been a feeling in Jamie’s heart that his government owed him something; there was no such thought concerning the Bee Master.
Jamie said frankly to Doctor Grayson, to the father of the little Scout, to the probate judge, that he could not feel that he had any right to a half interest in the garden of the bees. Under pressure, he agreed to assume the responsibility of taking care of the same tentatively, but he said firmly that if any relative of the Master’s nearer kin turned up and claimed the land, he should abdicate immediately. For this he was rated roundly by three very intelligent business mer. Doctor Grayson pointed out that the Bee Master knew what relatives he had and where they were, and if he had desired that they should possess his property, he would have left it to them. It was the Doctor’s opinion that what the Bee Master desired was that a man of fine perceptions, of trained mind, of high capabilities and appreciation, a man who cared for colour, for music, for the small graces and beauties that go to make up the refined excellencies of life, should reside in the blue garden.
Mr. Meredith said that he was only slightly acquainted with the Bee Master, but it was his opinion that he was a highly cultured gentleman, that he knew his own mind, that his brain was extremely clear, and what he had seen fit to do with his own property was good enough for him. The probate judge said business was business. The records to the property were clear; the beneficiaries were before him; there was nothing on his part to be done but to follow the customary processes of the law. Whether Jamie wanted it or not, the east acre of the garden was his. That and the house belonged to James Lewis MacFarlane. It was up to him to assume the responsibility of ownership, to pay his share of inheritance tax, and to be ready for the property taxes that would be assessed according to the regular processes of the law.
So Jamie went back to the garden, his mind in the turmoil of bewilderment. There was much sprinkling to do and he could think while he sprinkled. He could wonder why things happened as they did as he trimmed shrubs and used a hoe. When it came to caring for the bees, they received his undivided interest. But when he had accomplished all the work that he had been doing daily in the garden, giving perhaps a little extra attention to the west side merely because he was Jamie, then he applied himself to the régime of diet and exercise that he and Margaret Cameron had evolved. In the long evenings, by the hour he pored over the bee books, and then went out in the daytime and tried to apply what he had learned to his personal experience.
He was not responsible for his mind in those days. It flew off at queer tangents, and he found himself developing a habit, when he had any time of leisure, of taking a book and from beneath the shade of a certain orange tree at the foot of the garden, alternately reading and keeping an eye on the shore line. He had a feeling that some day, sooner or later, a tall girl with the free stride of a boy was going to pass along the beach and climb the back entrance to the throne, and when that happened, Jamie wanted to be there to see. The letter in his pocket was exactly the same letter it had been from the first time he had read it, and he had read it times uncounted since and pored over every stroke of each letter. He could reconcile the letter with the girl that he had held in his arms, with the woman who had stood shoulder to shoulder with him and taken the marriage vows. But he could not reconcile either of these people with a girl who had complicated her personal affairs to the extent of being in dire need of the outward signs and symbols of chastity.
The longer he mulled over the situation, the more his mind became at least open to the conviction that the girl of the canyons, and the mountains, and the desert, the girl to whom there persistently clung the odours of sage, whose step was alert, who had the far distance look in the eye of the outdoor person, would not have been subjected to the allurements and temptations of the girl who lives her life at the high pressure of cities. Jamie could see how any girl who was daily dreaming of herself, of fine clothing, daily frequenting over-sexed and vulgarly sexed picture shows, nightly attending dance halls indiscriminately peopled with whoever chose to appear, from whatever condition of life they happened to come, could get into serious trouble. He could see how the mad dash in automobiles from one place of amusement to another, how irregular eating of highly seasoned foods, how the loss of sleep, the constant contact with men who had not been rigorously trained in the habits and customs and ideals of a generation or two back, might have resulted in disaster to girls too young to realize how they were abusing their bodies or imperilling their souls. The more he thought of it, the greater grew his wonder that any girl in such circumstances escaped with her virtue or with sufficient health to finish even a reasonable lifetime. And what benefit a girl bereft of virtue and health was going to be to a home or to a nation, he had not much idea. The only thing he knew definitely was that such girls were the kind that he wanted to keep a mile away from.
Standing before the glass one morning intently studying his left breast, holding in his hand a pad he meant to apply and strap in place after his inspection, Jamie for the first time was paralyzed with a thought that had not before obtruded itself. Exactly why he had not thought of that very thing, he did not know. After he did think of it, it seemed to him that it was the one thing he should have thought of first. And he had not.
Any Scot gentleman, truly, in the depths of his heart, places his God and his country and his honour and those he loves above everything else, but always deeply ingrained in the heart of every Scotsman is the love of money; the place that can be bought with money; the power that can be purchased with money; the comfort that it will give; the luxury that it will provide for loved ones; the assurance that the cold and hunger and misery of the world will be averted. The very first installment of money that the Bee Master had put Jamie’s fingers had stirred him to the depths of his soul. He had held it between his fingers. He had stared at it incredulously. The fact was that never in his life had he had money that belonged to him to spend as he pleased. All the money he ever had had in his possession, was what his father and mother had given him to buy his clothing and to pay for his education, and it had tried them sorely to get together sufficient means to do the things most desired for him without providing any luxuries. He never had known what it was to have money in his pockets to spend as he chose, and the result was that his first earnings as the Keeper of the Bees spurred him to the fight that it now seemed possible might end in victory.
It was several days yet until the time for Margaret Cameron to make her second inspection. The pad Jamie had removed that morning looked as fresh and clean as when it had been applied. The morning tomato juice, the afternoon orange juice, the soaking in the sea, the baking on the sands, the clean, dustless, salt-laden air, absorbing occupation, all day out-of-doors, a mind with something to dwell on that was holy, that was beautiful—what doctor need hope to compete with such a combination, such an exhibition of Nature’s powers for healing? Perhaps it was the clean pad he had removed, the evidence that there was a skin coating over his breast, firm enough to hold through the work of the day, the feeling of coolness and satisfaction in the pit of his stomach, the absence of heat and burning in his blood, probably it was a combination of all these things that had made Jamie, standing facing the glass that morning, voice the joyful conviction: “I’m going to make it! As sure as there is a good God in the Heavens, I’m going to be a well man again!”
Right there was where Jamie received his blow, an awful blow, a blow from which he shrank and which whitened his face and set his hands to shaking. His voice sounded strained in his own ears because he said it aloud: “And by all that’s holy, I contracted to die! It was part of my agreement to be through with life in six months at the most! I said there wasn’t a chance that I’d live, and probably the girl who married me would not have done it if she had not thought that I was practically a dead man.”
Jamie stood still holding the pad and staring at it. He could feel the girl’s exploring fingers across his chest. He could feel the shudder, perhaps of pity, that had gone through her as he guided her fingers across the outline of the bandages and braces that he was then wearing. He had given her evidence to prove his words. She had accepted the evidence, she had trusted his word, and now he had turned around and he was doing everything in his power, making his utmost effort, to live.
Soberly Jamie laid on the pad and fastened the bandage that held it in place. Soberly he donned his clothing and went out to his work. Every few minutes he stopped and stood staring before him, Fifty times that morning he said to himself: “There isn’t a ghost of a chance of my dying in six months or six years, or ten times six years, if I keep on improving as I am now. The only way I could die would be to wreck myself, and if the day ever comes when I meet Alice Louise face to face and her circumstances seem to be accompanied by mitigation, what will she think of me for being alive?”
Then Jamie’s sense of humour came to the surface.
“If matters turned out in such a way that I had a chance to live, I suppose she wouldn’t ask me to kill myself if the wound didn’t kill me; and if she did, I scarcely believe I’d follow even the dictates of a lady quite that far. I’ll tell her I was honest, that that storm night was as black for me as it was for her, that the struggle that raged in my heart was the same thing as the storm in hers or the storm on the sea. I’ll tell her that it is my good fortune that the sun has broken through and that there’s life in store for me, I’ll tell her that I called on God and He came to the rescue and made it life and work and a chance for happiness. I’ll tell her that if she will call on God, it will be in His power to straighten out her problems. as mine are straightening. I’ll tell her that it is not my fault that I’m alive. No, I can’t very well tell her that, either. It is at least halfway my fault that I’m alive. God gave me the opening. It is to my credit that I took it. I suppose I could have gone on eating the wrong food combination and carrying a black load on my shoulders; I could have gone on eaten up with self-pity and reeking with poison. I’ll take enough of it to myself to stand responsible for the resolution and the ability to do the things necessary when the way was opened. Dad used to say in the pulpit that the days of miracles were over; that to-day God gave us our chance, and if we wanted miracles we had to perform them ourselves.” It took the greater part of a day to get this problem straightened out, but it ended in Jamie reaching the conclusion that he was honest in what he had said, honest in what he had done, but different circumstances had altered the case.
Margaret Cameron would be overjoyed the next time she examined his chest. He found himself so elated, so full of hope that day that he was very careful to protect his left arm and his left side. It seemed to Jamie that if anything happened to break that frail coating of skin across his chest and set the bright stains to reappearing on the pad he wore, he could not endure it. He knew if it happened that it would break his mental reserves until he would sit down and cry like the veriest baby. At any cost he had to keep that delicate, tender coating intact.
In the beginning of his work Jamie had very seldom left the premises. He had scarcely ever gone to town, never unless it were imperatively necessary. Now the necessity seemed to be imperative that he go frequently. There was always something occurring about the settlement of the Bee Master’s affairs, or a reason why he should go to see Doctor Grayson or the probate judge or the banker who was holding the funds of the Bee Master’s estate. Added to this he was falling into the habit of paying an occasional visit to the man with whom the Bee Master had exchanged work. He found John Carey an interesting man, an entertaining man, a man of whom it would be worth while to make a friend. Sometimes he would not exactly understand the instructions of the bee books. Carey could make everything plain and do it so quickly and so effectively that he was worth knowing from a business standpoint alone. So more and more frequently the Keeper of the Bees hurried through with his work and went to spend a few hours in the apiary of another man.
Soon he began to realize that, from her work about the house and in her own garden, Margaret Cameron was watching him. He was brought to the realization by the fact that every time he came home from one of these absences, he found a house in order, dustless furniture, fresh bed linen, a spotless kitchen, a bowl of flowers on the living-room table.
One day he came home to find a shining house. That morning Margaret Cameron had examined his breast for the second time and had told Jamie what he already knew, that however faint it was, however frail it was and delicate, however liable to crack on slight strain, nothing altered the fact that there was a tissue coating of skin entirely covering the wound on his breast. Margaret Cameron was old enough to be his mother. She had thrown her arms around his neck and kissed him and they had performed a crude dance of exuberant joy in the small bedroom. Margaret had arranged her yellow roses in the bowl. She had drawn forward the Bee Master’s chair and set before it the slippers that Jamie had been wearing. It was her way of inviting him to take his place as the master of the house. She had set a table with the daily paper on it beside the chair, and every other vase and pitcher in the house that ever had held flowers was flower-decked.
Jamie smiled with pleasure as he glanced around the living room. He thought how few men there were in the world who could take insensate objects and make a room so livable as the Bee Master had made the room upon which he had indelibly stamped his tastes, his mentality, his artistic tendencies. Then Jamie swung open the door and stood as still, as still as the last pause before the breaking of a great storm. The sleeping room was dusted; there was fresh linen; it was shining; it was reeking with the odour of sage, an odour that never in any faintest degree had attached to Margaret Cameron, and on the night stand beside the bed where the light stood and the thermos bottle for water, was the copper bowl, and the copper bowl was overflowing with sand verbena. The exquisite flowers, with the refreshment of water, with the evening hour, as was their habit, were rolling up and spilling abroad their faint, delicate incense, the most beautiful flower perfume, Jamie thought, in all a world of flowers. He walked over and picked up the bowl. He looked under it. He looked on the table carefully. He looked over the floor. He lifted the pillow. He searched the four corners of the room. There might have been a note, and a breath of wind might have blown it away. Then he headed straight for Margaret Cameron.
He found her in the garden. He took the pruning shears from her fingers and led her to a rustic seat under the sheltering boughs of an acacia that a few months before had been a stream of flowing gold, liquid gold that spilled and poured and dripped. Then he sat down beside her and captured both her hands and turned her face toward him.
“Margaret,” he said, “you know how much I thank you for all the thoughtful things and the motherly things and the kind, heartening things that you do for me. You probably understand the cleanliness, the immaculate, scrupulous state of scouredness, of my boyhood home. You know how I appreciate and luxuriate and grow stronger and feel better with the kind of housekeeping that my mother would do for me had she not been forced to make her crossing before my return. I think my house is the most wonderful house in all the world to-day. I wouldn’t trade it for any house of any millionaire anywhere in the state of California. The little Scout is right in thinking that it’s possible to be satisfied with what you have; that if you have a house and a flower garden and the assurance of daily bread, it is enough. Life is wonderful to-day, Margaret, very wonderful. I’ve had an interesting time with Carey and his bees. I’ve made up my mind that if the Bee Master wanted me to have the house and garden, I want them as badly as he could possibly want metohavethem. There never was any question of my wanting them. I merely had the feeling that I might be usurping the rights of some other.man. If it happened to be a woman whose rights I was usurping, then, of course——”
“Of course you’d be puddin’-headed enough to get up and get out and leave what rightfully belongs to you!” said Margaret Cameron.
“If she could convince me that she really had a right to the place, naturally, however much I loved it, I’d clear out,” said Jamie. “But clearing out isn’t what I came over here to talk about. Margaret, you’ve made my living room wonderful with a world of flowers. Now, tell me truly, did you put the flowers in my bedroom?”
Margaret Cameron turned toward him a face of frank astonishment.
“No,” she said, “I didn’t. I never want a bedroom cluttered up with flowers. I don’t like to sleep with stronger flower perfume than comes through the windows. I don’t think it’s healthy to lie all night in a surcharged atmosphere. I didn’t put any flowers in your bedroom.”
“All right, then,” said Jamie, “if you didn’t put them there, you are the only one who has keys and access to the room. You can tell me who did.”
“That’s exactly what I cannot,” said Margaret Cameron, “because I haven’t the least notion.”“Has the little Scout been here?” asked Jamie.
“Not that I know of,” said Margaret Cameron. “Of course, I don’t pretend to keep tally on the comings and goings of that youngster, and I wouldn’t take oath that a window wouldn’t form a more suitable mode of entrance than a door. You know, there’s a gate between us, and you know that you never saw the little Scout do anything but jump the fence.”
Jamie grinned.
“I know. That’s part of a code of exercise. By this time I know the little Scout fairly well. In the first place, the youngster is not addicted to gathering flowers. In the second place, these flowers have been very carefully clipped with scissors or a knife, and in the third place, they are arranged with a grace and a beauty to which the little fellow has not as yet attained. Some of the stems are long and some of the stems are short, and some of the heads are upstanding and some, having a few leaves, spill over the edge of the bowl and creep out on the stand cover, and altogether they are sufficiently artistic to please the senses of the most discriminating artist of Japan. If the little Scout had gathered them, they would have been wadded into a tight bunch and chucked into the bow! in the most effective way to get them there. Don’t you believe it?”
“I think very likely,” answered Margaret Cameron.
Jamie smiled his most ingratiating smile.
“Margaret,” he said, “you would tell me if you knew, wouldn’t you?”“Why, I think I would,” answered Margaret, catching his mood and smiling back at him. “I can imagine no reason as to why I shouldn’t. I think I’d tell you if I knew; but honestly and truly, Jamie, I haven’t the faintest notion who would compose the very artistic combination you’ve been describing so enthusiastically. Have you made friends with any of the neighbours?”
“You know I haven’t!” said Jamie. “There aren’t any neighbours on the west. Neighbours are something to acquire in the future, and you are my neighbour on the east, and beyond you I haven’t penetrated. Straight down, of course, there are hundreds of people daily on the beach, but aside from more blue, this garden probably looks like every other garden running down to the sea. It’s had no visitors so far as I know. The truth is, Margaret, that there’s something about the house to-day that puzzles me. The bouquet in my bedroom was one thing. The Bee Master’s chair pulled to the hearth-side with the slippers I’ve been wearing before it—— While we are on the subject, did you do that?”
“No,” said Margaret Cameron, “I didn’t. I’ve felt that the Bee Master’s chair was something sacred and devoted to him and I’ve respected the fineness of your nature that kept you from appropriating it. I’ve got to bring myself to the place where I don’t mind seeing some other man using it. Frankly, I’d rather see you use it than any other man I know, but I couldn’t see you sitting in it just at this minute without resenting it.”
“I thought you’d have that feeling,” said Jamie. “I had, and a desire to be more worthy, to attain more years and more knowledge, to make of myself the level best it was in me to become; not until I have climbed to near my limit dare I aspire to occupy that chair. You told me that you had a daughter away teaching school and that you had a niece who came to see you frequently, and I wondered if either of them might have been with you and might have arranged things differently from the way you would.”
Margaret Cameron shook her head.
“Lolly went far up state with the school she accepted, clear to Sacramento. She can’t afford to come back and forth until the term’s out. I don’t mind admitting that the house is like a grave without her and I’ve had some tears to shed because in one or two of her recent letters she has insinuated that she might not come home for her summer vacation, that she might go with a camp of girls up into the Yosemite. To tell the truth, I felt sort of peeved at Molly. Right down in my heart, I know that she was instrumental in getting my girl the school away from home, and I can’t see why she did it. The plea that she would get more salary doesn’t take into consideration the fact that she’d have to spend such a big share of her salary for food and a room, when, if she taught in the city, she could use the car line and be at home over nights and over Saturdays and Sundays. I haven’t dared say anything to Molly because, a few months ago—it was at the time I was away when you first came—I went in to the city to her. She had had an awful shock. She hadn’t but one near relative on earth, her twin brother Donald, and from the time their father and my husband were drowned at sea at the same time, I’ve had them in my home until they were far enough along with their education to get work and go out for themselves. They’d all been friends. Don and Lolly had been better friends than I’d wanted them to be. Don didn’t have Molly’s backbone; he didn’t have her view of life. I thought he was kind of shiftless and weak, and for a few years we all had a fight to keep him from getting into a lot of things that he shouldn’t have gotten into. It was always Lolly that could hold him and manage him, if anybody could. I was kind of glad of it when he got work and went away, but having Molly at her school work in the city left this house so emptied out and lonesome that my girl just picked up and went, too, and in my heart I knew that Molly planned it, and I didn’t like it.
“Then, like a clap out of a clear sky, Molly called for me to come quick, that she was in trouble, and when I got to her I found her worse broken up than I’d ever thought she could be. Word had come that Don was dead. They had got him work, a fine place, in the big power plant at San Joaquin, and he seemed to like it and was doing fine. I don’t know enough about electricity to know how the thing that happened could happen, but he did something wrong, and as quick as electricity can do it, he was gone. We sent for Lolly but she didn’t come. She sent word she felt so bad she was sick in bed and she couldn’t, and I could see how she would feel bad enough to make her sick in bed. You know, Lolly’s my girl. I had her by my first marriage. She wasn’t really related to the children. Mr. Cameron was her stepfather and she might have thought a lot more of Donald than I knew she did. Anyway, Molly and I had to lay him away alone. Molly felt so bad I most forgave her. Besides, I didn’t actually know that she had planned to get Lolly away from home. I just felt she had. The whole thing has upset me a good deal of late and Molly hasn’t been here as often as she used to come. I don’t know why, because the truth is, I thought a lot of the boy myself and I could have been honest and sincere in mourning him with her.
“Now come these letters from Lolly hinting about going farther north in the state for a summer vacation and only being home a few days at the very last, and going away again to teach the coming year. The whole thing is just the way it shouldn’t be. I wonder sometimes if I’ve been too clean and too particular about where the girls went and what they did. The way things seem to be going among the youngsters these days, it doesn’t look as if a mother could be too particular, but if she is so particular that she drives her young folks away from home, I don’t know that that gets her anything except a good big heartache. No, there wasn’t either of my girls with me. If there’s a feminine touch in your house to-day that you don’t understand, I’m telling you truly I don’t know who the female is or where she came from.”
Jamie thought deeply.
“All right,” he said, at last, “if you don’t know, why you don’t, and that’s all there is to it. I’ll have to do my own Sherlocking.”
He said it jestingly, but the idea persisted. He went home and down the back walk. He lifted the latch of the beach gate with exploring fingers. He followed the hard clay and gravel path down to where it met the sands of the sea, and he stood and looked very intently, very carefully over the sand. By and by, he thought he began to distinguish the impress of a foot and a few yards farther he found what he was looking for—animprint that he had seen before, the same shape shoe, the same width, the same broad common-sense heel. Then he knew without any doubt whatever that the Storm Girl had been in his home.
He went farther along the beach toward the south following the footprints, and finally he found the sand mound on which the verbenas had grown. He found the severed stems from which his flowers had been cut. Then a thought struck Jamie and he whirled and almost ran in the direction of the throne. With palpitant heart he climbed the ascent leading to the crest, clambered over the rocks, and came about facing the place where he and the Storm Girl had endured the storm together.
That evening the sun was dropping into the Pacific in a circle of red glory. The clouds above were almost blood red in its light; the water, a deep indigo blue out on the way to China, an exquisite light emerald near the shore, and wavering over the surface and coming in slowly with the light waves were exquisitely shifting colours of lavender and old rose. The foam of the beach and the very sands were delicately coloured with it. Somewhere very close a mocking bird was singing and white gulls were passing in homeward flight, and a few little sandpipers were quarrelling down on the shore line. There was a whole world of things for Jamie to see and to love and to thank God for, but what he did see was the fact that the Storm Woman had sat in her place and arranged the flowers that she had brought him. Tiny withered leaves of sand verbena lay on the rocks at his feet, discarded blooms that were too old had been dropped there. Jamie took one step farther and looked, and in his place there lay on the rocks three exquisite heads of bloom, a long trailing stem and a medium and a shorter stem twined together deftly, braided past the leaves and laid in the place upon which he had sat as one would lay an exquisite tribute on the grave of the dead. That very thought came to Jamie.
“Good Lord!” he said, “I wonder what she’d think if she knew I am about ten times the man that I was the day I married her! I wonder if she’d think I haven’t played fair if she knew that I was working with all my might to be a whole man. And I wonder what she’d think if she knew that I’m not keeping my promise not to try to find her. I wonder what she’d think if she knew I broke it when I went to Margaret Cameron to see if she could tell me anything, and I broke it again when I went along the beach trailing a footstep that I know. I wonder what she’d think if she knew that right down in the depths of my heart I just about adore her. I wonder what she’d think if she knew that there haven’t been very many minutes since the night that I held her in my arms that I haven’t held her in memory and haven’t wanted her and haven’t ached for her and haven’t worked for her and haven’t thought about her until I’ve got to the place where I don’t much care as to why she needed my name. And I wonder what she’d think if she knew how often I’ve read her letter and how I’ve appreciated it, and I wonder what she thinks when she gathers sand verbena and puts it into my fingers and carries it within a few feet of my pillow. By Jove! I wonder if I married her with sufficient assurance to stamp a little bit of my individuality on her! I wonder if she feels that I really am at least half a man. I wonder if days of trouble are coming near and if she needs a man who could take care of her and comfort her and do what he could to fortify her. I wonder if those flowers beside my pillow are her way of asking me to break my word, to search for her, to find her, to help her? I wonder if they are her way of saying that she needs more from me than my name?”
Jamie sat until dusk, then slowly arose and made his way home to his supper. As he crossed the back porch a thought occurred to him. He went down the walk and around to his bedroom window, and as he examined closely a head of sand verbena lying on the ground came to his notice. Margaret Cameron had told true. She did not know who the Storm Girl was. She had not furnished a key to give entrance to his house. The Storm Woman had done what she was so perfectly capable of doing. In the seclusion of the shrubs, screened from the streets and the neighbouring houses, she had slipped up the back walk and stepped into his window. So that was that, and it did not help Jamie any on his way toward dying. As a matter of fact, it gave him more food for thought and more reasons for living than ever before had possessed him.
After that Jamie lived in hourly expectation. Some day surely she would come again. Some day he would be in the garden when she came through, or he would find her on the throne. He was almost tempted to write a note and leave it there, but the knowledge that many people climbed the uncertain path leading to the top of the jagged rock deterred him. He could not take the risk of any one else finding the message that he intended for the Storm Girl. He could not help in his heart thinking of her as he had seen her, strained and unhappy in the glare of the lightning, or with quivering lips and staring eyes as she had left him. He could not help trying to picture how her face would appear if it were afire and alight with happiness; how her eyes might shine if she were pleased and interested; what a wonderful companion she would be breasting the waves or climbing a mountain, or working in a garden, or sitting opposite a hearthstone. Whatever he might have thought of her in the nebulous character of a woman he had seen, a woman whose race and blood were manifest in her face and bearing and the tones of her voice, a woman to whom his blood had a right to cry out because they were of common nationality, each only one generation removed, the fact remained that she never could be nebulous to him. She was stamped on his memory, in his consciousness in a different way from any other woman.
“Because before the Lord and by the law, she is my wife,” said Jamie, “and I cannot get away from that fact, and she cannot get away from it. She cannot marry any other man without making herself known and divorcing me.”
Then Jamie got another blow that knocked him speechless and almost senseless for a moment.
“What’s more,” he said to himself and to all and sundry when he gained sufficient breath with which to speak, “what’s more, James Lewis MacFarlane, you can’t marry any woman, you can’t have a real home, you can’t have a hearthstone so long as you are legally married to a girl who wants only your name, or to one who doesn’t want you in person at all!”
Jamie sat down suddenly and admitted that he was possessed of a single-track mind. He had been on the track that led to death and elimination when he had done this fool marrying stunt. Now he was on the track that led to a home, to work in the world, to the things that all men desire when they are sane and healthful, and he was bound as tight as the law could bind him by records in the office of the Marriage License Bureau of the county in which he lived. That was something more to think about. So Jamie went about being the Keeper of the Bees, the master of the house, the partner of the little Scout with several problems very persistently in the forefront of his mind.