Obviously, since her one practical joke costs her her life, the bee can have but small sense of humour; but her fundamentally dismal and ungracious outlook on life impressed me beyond words. She had paralysed locomotion, wiped out trade, social intercourse, mutual trust, love, friendship, sport, music (the lonely steam-organ had run down at last), all that gives substance, colour or savour to life, and yet, in the barren desert she had created, was not one whit more near to the evolution of a saner order of things. The Heavens were darkened with the swarms" divided counsels; the street shimmered with their purposeless sallies. They clotted on tiles and gutter-pipes, and began frenziedly to build a cell or two of comb ere they discovered that their queen was not with them; then flung off to seek her, or whirled, dishevelled and insane, into another hissing nebula on the false rumour that she was there. I scowled upon them with disfavour, and a ma.s.sy, blue thunder-head rose majestically from behind the elm-trees of Sumtner Barton Rectory, arched over and scowled with me. Then I realised that it was not bees nor locusts that had darkened the skies, but the on-coming of the malignant English thunderstorm--the one thing before which even Deborah the bee cannot express her silly little self.
"Aha! _Now_ you"ll catch it," I said, as the herald gusts set the big drum rolling down the street like a box-kite. Up and up yearned the dark cloud, till the first lightning quivered and cut. Deborah cowered. Where she flew, there she fled; where she was, there she sat still; and the solid rain closed in on her as a book that is closed when the chapter is finished. By the time it had soaked to my second rug, Penfentenyou appeared at the window, wiping his false mouth on a napkin.
"Are you all right?" he inquired. "Then _that"s_ all right! Mrs. Bellamy says that her bees don"t sting in the wet. You"d better fetch Lingnam over. He"s got to pay for them and the bicycle."
I had no words which the silver-haired lady could listen to, but paddled across the flooded street between flashes to the pond on the green. Mr.
Lingnam, scarcely visible through the sheeting downpour, trotted round the edge. He bore himself n.o.bly, and lied at the mere sight of me.
"Isn"t this wet?" he cried. "It has drenched me to the skin. I shall need a change."
"Come along," I said. "I don"t know what you"ll get, but you deserve more."
Penfentenyou, dry, fed, and in command, let us in. "You," he whispered to me, "are to wait in the scullery. Mrs. Bellamy didn"t like the way you talked about her bees. Hsh! Hsh! She"s a kind-hearted lady. She"s a widow, Lingnam, but she"s kept _his_ clothes, and as soon as you"ve paid for the damage she"ll rent you a suit. I"ve arranged it all!"
"Then tell him he mustn"t undress in my hall," said a voice from the stair-head.
"Tell _her_--" Lingnam began.
"Come and look at the pretty suit I"ve chosen," Penfentenyou cooed, as one cajoling a maniac.
I staggered out-of-doors again, and fell into the car, whose ever-running machinery masked my yelps and hiccups. When I raised my forehead from the wheel, I saw that traffic through the village had been resumed, after, as my watch showed, one and one-half hour"s suspension.
There were two limousines, one landau, one doctor"s car, three touring-cars, one patent steam-laundry van, three tricars, one traction-engine, some motor-cycles, one with a side-car, and one brewery lorry. It was the allegory of my own imperturbable country, delayed for a short time by unforeseen external events but now going about her business, and I blessed Her with tears in my eyes, even though I knew She looked upon me as drunk and incapable.
Then troops came over the bridge behind me--a company of dripping wet Regulars without any expression. In their rear, carrying the lunch-basket, marched the Agent-General and Holford the hired chauffeur.
"I say," said the Agent-General, nodding at the darkened khaki backs.
"If _that"s_ what we"ve got to depend on in event of war they"re a broken reed. They ran like hares--ran like hares, I tell you."
"And you?" I asked.
"Oh, I just sauntered back over the bridge and stopped the traffic that end. Then I had lunch. "Pity about the beer, though. I say--these cushions are sopping wet!"
"I"m sorry," I said. "I haven"t had time to turn "em."
"Nor there wasn"t any need to "ave kept the engine runnin" all this time," said Holford sternly. "I"ll "ave to account for the expenditure of petrol. It exceeds the mileage indicated, you see."
"I"m sorry," I repeated. After all, that is the way that taxpayers regard most crises.
The house-door opened and Penfentenyou and another came out into the now thinning rain.
"Ah! There you both are! Here"s Lingnam," he cried. "He"s got a little wet. He"s had to change."
"We saw that. I was too sore and weak to begin another laugh, but the Agent-General crumpled up where he stood. The late Mr. Bellamy must have been a man of tremendous personality, which he had impressed on every angle of his garments. I was told later that he had died in delirium tremens, which at once explained the pattern, and the reason why Mr.
Lingnam, writhing inside it, swore so inspiredly. Of the deliberate and diffuse Federationist there remained no trace, save the binoculars and two damp whiskers. We stood on the pavement, before Elemental Man calling on Elemental Powers to condemn and incinerate Creation.
"Well, hadn"t we better be getting back?" said the Agent-General.
"Look out!" I remarked casually. "Those bonnet-boxes are full of bees still!"
"Are they?" said the livid Mr. Lingnam, and tilted them over with the late Mr. Bellamy"s large boots. Deborah rolled out in drenched lumps into the swilling gutter. There was a m.u.f.fled shriek at the window where Mrs. Bellamy gesticulated.
"It"s all right. I"ve paid for them," said Mr. Lingnam. He dumped out the last dregs like mould from a pot-bound flower-pot.
"What? Are you going to take "em home with you?" said the Agent-General.
"No!" He pa.s.sed a wet hand over his streaky forehead. "Wasn"t there a bicycle that was the beginning of this trouble?" said he.
"It"s under the fore-axle, sir," said Holford promptly. "I can fish it out from "ere."
"Not till I"ve done with it, please." Before we could stop him, he had jumped into the car and taken charge. The hireling leaped into her collar, surged, shrieked (less loudly than Mrs. Bellamy at the window), and swept on. That which came out behind her was, as Holford truly observed, no joy-wheel. Mr. Lingnam swung round the big drum in the market-place and thundered back, shouting: "Leave it alone. It"s my meat!"
"Mince-meat, "e means," said Holford after this second trituration. "You couldn"t say now it "ad ever _been_ one, could you?"
Mrs. Bellamy opened the window and spoke. It appears she had only charged for damage to the bicycle, not for the entire machine which Mr.
Lingnam was ruthlessly gleaning, spoke by spoke, from the highway and cramming into the slack of the hood. At last he answered, and I have never seen a man foam at the mouth before. "If you don"t stop, I shall come into your house--in this car--and drive upstairs and--kill you!"
She stopped; he stopped. Holford took the wheel, and we got away. It was time, for the sun shone after the storm, and Deborah beneath the tiles and the eaves already felt its reviving influence compel her to her interrupted labours of federation. We warned the village policeman at the far end of the street that he might have to suspend traffic again.
The proprietor of the giddy-go-round, swings, and cocoanut-shies wanted to know from whom, in this world or another, he could recover damages.
Mr. Lingnam referred him most directly to Mrs. Bellamy.... Then we went home.
After dinner that evening Mr. Lingnam rose stiffly in his place to make a few remarks on the Federation of the Empire on the lines of Co-ordinated, Offensive Operations, backed by the Entire Effective Forces, Moral, Military, and Fiscal, of Permanently Mobilised Communities, the whole brought to bear, without any respect to the merits of any _casus belli_, instantaneously, automatically, and remorselessly at the first faint buzz of war.
"The trouble with Us," said he, "is that We take such an infernally long time making sure that We are right that We don"t go ahead when things happen. For instance, I ought to have gone ahead instead of pulling up when I hit that bicycle."
"But you were in the wrong, Lingnam, when you turned to the right," I put in.
"I don"t want to hear any more of your d.a.m.ned, detached, mugwumping excuses for the other fellow," he snapped.
"Now you"re beginning to see things," said Penfentenyou. "I hope you won"t backslide when the swellings go down."
THE SONG OF SEVEN CITIES
I was Lord of Cities very sumptuously builded.
Seven roaring Cities paid me tribute from afar.
Ivory their outposts were--the guardrooms of them gilded, And garrisoned with Amazons invincible in war.
All the world went softly when it walked before my Cities-- Neither King nor Army vexed my peoples at their toil.
Never horse nor chariot irked or overbore my Cities, Never Mob nor Ruler questioned whence they drew their spoil.
Banded, mailed and arrogant from sunrise unto sunset, Singing while they sacked it, they possessed the land at large.
Yet when men would rob them, they resisted, they made onset And pierced the smoke of battle with a thousand-sabred charge!
So they warred and trafficked only yesterday, my Cities.
To-day there is no mark or mound of where my Cities stood.
For the River rose at midnight and it washed away my Cities.
They are evened with Atlantis and the towns before the Flood.