Nuova

"No, no," he said; "I just decided not to go on. I--wanted to come to you."

Nuova could not realize at once all he meant by these words. The thing clearest in her mind just now was what Saggia and all the others had told her so often. She began to speak slowly and almost mechanically as her memory guided her.

"But you can"t do that," she said. "It--it--isn"t done, you know. You must chase the Princess; you must win her; and you--you"--she sobbed--"you must die."

She stepped toward him, excitedly, with her hands outstretched to urge him on. "Go on!" she exclaimed. "Go on! Start again! You are so much swifter and stronger than the others! You can beat them yet! Hurry! Fly!"

In her excitement and half-crazed exaltation she pressed against him to push him into starting. He held her closely to him for a moment, caressing her gently. But soon she drew violently away, and spoke again with choking voice. "Fly!" she said. "Go on! Go on!"

Hero shook his head doggedly. "No, I will not go. I cannot go. I never wanted to go. I wanted to come to you. I didn"t know you were in the garden. But here you are." In his joy at being with her, he began to dismiss the dark thoughts of his break with bee custom. He looked intently and eagerly at her.

"Yes, here you are, I have come to you. I have come to tell you that I"--he stumbled a little in his speech, and smiled slightly--"I--am a new bee, too!"

Nuova laughed happily. Then she grew serious and puzzled. "And Saggia and Beffa," she said. "Are we all new bees in this hive?"

Hero smiled. "Uno, Due, and Tre--" he said.

"Ugh! horrid bees," said Nuova with a grimace. "They would like to kill me."

"Beasts!" broke in Hero, "I"ll kill them!" But then he remembered the fact that he had no lance nor by bee tradition could have any. "Absurd," he said in disgust. "What a world, where only the women may carry lances and fight and work, and the men are only loafers and lovers, and can only love by tradition, at that. Bah! I"d rather be even a human being. They are silly enough, those awkward giants, and can"t fly and eat other animals as spiders and snakes do, but their men can work and fight; and they can love whom they like. At least they can if they don"t try to be too much like us, as some of them seem to want to be. It"s a terrible thing to be a man bee. We have no rights at all!"

Nuova looked up at him wonderingly. "Why, the other drones seem to like to loaf," she said. "Anyway, they don"t object."

"Don"t object!" exclaimed Hero contemptuously. "They don"t think; they don"t feel! Each just does what the others do and all just do what drones have always done."

"But how else are we to know what to do," persisted Nuova, who had learned her lesson well from Saggia, "except by seeing what others do, and being told what the bees before us did?"

Hero was amazed and disconcerted to hear Nuova talk in this way.

"Why, you talk like Saggia!" he said. "What do you mean? Haven"t you always objected to doing what the others do? Haven"t you always tried to do what you most wanted to? And haven"t you wanted to talk with me? I thought you--liked me."

Nuova was disconcertingly calm. "Oh, yes, I have objected to some things, and I do like to talk with you. And I like you. But all that must not interfere with the work and life of the community. And I am afraid it is interfering. I ought to be getting more honey, and you ought to be flying after the Princess." She paused; then she added, determinedly and even severely: "You must go right away. You can catch up with them yet, and beat them, and--and--win her." Nuova had grown more excited and earnest as she continued urging him, but her voice broke a little as she uttered the last words.

Hero, paying too little attention to her manner and reading nothing in it, so seized was he by surprise at Nuova"s new att.i.tude, was yet doggedly intent on speaking out his own feelings. "No, I am not going after the Princess," he declared, speaking almost roughly in his vehemence. "I stopped flying because I wished to, and I came here because I wished to, and I shall talk to you because I wish to. You must hear me! Nuova, it is not the Princess that I love; it is you." Nuova started. "Yes, you; just you; all you. I love you, Nuova."

Nuova had stood rigidly at first, but then unconsciously swayed a little toward him. Then she caught herself and stepped back, all the time staring at him fixedly. He leaned toward her as he finished speaking, but made no other motion.

Nuova began to speak, still holding herself rigid and staring at him. She spoke in an even, monotonous voice, even mechanically, and as if directed by some foreign influence.

"You cannot love me," she said. "You can only love a Princess. I cannot love you. I cannot love anybody. There are other things for me to do. I have not cleaned floors; I must clean floors. And you, you must chase Princesses, chase Princesses, chase--Princesses--all--the--time." Her voice trailed away into tense silence, and she swayed as if about to fall, but recovered herself, and half-turned as if to move away.

Hero stepped forward, caught hold of her roughly, and spoke harshly. "You shall not clean floors," he said, "and I will not court the Princess." Then suddenly he spoke tenderly, "Nuova, I love you. Saggia says I can"t; all of them say I can"t; you say I can"t. Well, I do. That is all. That is the answer. I have never loved a Princess and I do love you; I have loved you from the moment I saw you." He spoke more impetuously. "I didn"t know what it was at first; now I do. I found out when I started to fly after Principessa. I can fly faster than any other drone; yet every one was beating me. I can fly higher than any other bee; but I couldn"t rise at all. Why? Because of you, Nuova; because I loved you, Nuova, and could not love Principessa. And they say that you cannot love me. Saggia says so, does she?--and all of them say so, do they?--and you say so, do you? Well, they are all mistaken. Just as they are all mistaken about me. I can love you, because I do. You can love me, because you are going to. You were not an Amazon, yet you fought. You are not a Princess, but you are going to love. I can teach you; I will teach you."

Nuova was almost carried away by Hero"s speech--and her own inclinations. But she still fought blindly and feebly against what she wanted most. "No, no," she stammered; "I must work; I must go; I am only a worker bee; I cannot love; it is all fixed; it has been that way for a long time; I know; Saggia knows; Beffa--"

She stopped short, remembering some of Beffa"s cryptic words.

Just then Beffa"s voice was heard. He was coming toward them hopping and singing.

CHAPTER XII.

The Happy Ending.

Beffa had not been able to hold the foragers any longer away from that part of the garden where Nuova and Hero were. The flowers here were more abundant and sweeter with honey, and the bees soon forgot their fright of the toad they had not seen--and that Beffa had not, either.

Hero and Nuova were still concealed by the bush, behind which they stood, from the returning bees, but it was only a matter of a short time before they would certainly be seen. Beffa, therefore, came hopping toward them and singing. He could at least warn them of the approach of the others. So he sang loudly: "Ah, well, who knows? Ah, well, who knows? The old world for the old bee; The new world for the new; For who may know the real truth? The untrue may be true. Ah, well, who knows? Ah, well, who knows?"

Hero turned triumphantly to Nuova. "Yes, yes, you hear?" he said. "Beffa knows. Say it; say it. Beffa knows: not Saggia; not the others; but Beffa. They are all blind. They only see what has been, but Beffa sees what may be. And you see it, Nuova, and I see it. You are a new bee, Nuova, and so is Beffa, and so am I. And we shall do new things; live a new life. Ah, Nuova, my little Nuova! I love you, and you love me. My little Nuova!"

Nuova could say nothing, do nothing. It was too much. She could only look up through a mist of tears into Hero"s face and smile happily at him; it was half-smiling, half-crying, but unmistakable to Hero for what it truly was; the full revelation of Nuova"s consent to all he had said. They stood together, silent in their great happiness. And thus Uno saw them. Uno was the first of the returned foragers to come, in seeking new flowers, around the bush and in sight of them. She stared at them amazed. Then, angry and malevolent, she beckoned, without calling out, to her companions to come to her. They crowded up and looked where Uno pointed. They were astounded and outraged. Uno first spoke up.

"They call themselves bees!" she said with scorn and malice.

"Beasts, rather!" said Due similarly.

"No, human beings," said Tre. "Like the daughter of the owner of the garden and her lover. In secret, and against all the customs. Shame and scandal!"

"Drive them out! Kill them!" burst out all the other bees, who had come crowding up at the words of Uno, Due, and Tre. "Call the Amazons! Sting them to death! Hero, the faithless one! Nuova, the silly new bee! Hero, our finest drone! Nuova, the pretty little nurse! Traitors! Kill them!"

It was a terrible moment for Nuova and Hero, for death looked them in the face. But they stood quietly side by side realizing their impending fate, yet fearless in their exaltation. Neither one spoke. They looked at each other with great eyes shining with love and happiness. Death--together--was such a little thing. It was even a thing, under the circ.u.mstances, to be courted. There seemed, indeed, nothing else that could be a "happy ending" for Nuova and Hero"s romance. And as the Amazons pressed forward with lances set and already almost touching the devoted pair, it seemed to be the inevitable and immediate end. Yet, just at the moment when Nuova, with one last look of love and joy to Hero, turned full toward the shining lance points as if to say, "Welcome, sweet Death!" something happened.

A cry from the air just above them was heard. A messenger bee, greatly excited and almost breathless, was dropping down to them and gasping: "The Princess! The Princess! The Princess is lost! The Bee-Bird has caught the Princess!"

The mob about Hero and Nuova stopped in its attack and stood still, thunderstruck by the news. The messenger dropped to the gra.s.s just between the foremost Amazons and the pair of lovers, and there collapsed with fatigue and grief. She was caught and supported by Saggia and Beffa, who had pushed forward out of the crowd at the first cry from the messenger.

The horror-stricken bees were dumb for a moment, overwhelmed by the catastrophe. Then they began to call out, all speaking confusedly together: "The Princess is lost! The Bee-Bird has killed Principessa! Our only Princess! The old Queen gone, the new Queen killed! Our hive is doomed! We are queenless! No more children in our hive! It is our end!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "The Princess is lost!"]

All the while they were speaking they surged back and forth, turning to each other. They seemed utterly at a loss what to do. None any longer paid any attention to Nuova and Hero standing there, still silent and motionless together, as if with no more thought of their present momentary escape from the death that was so close to them than they had had for their apparent certain destruction a moment before.

Saggia had not called out with the other bees. Nor had she moved away from her position near Hero and Nuova, where she was still supporting the messenger. But she had been looking keenly first at the shouting bees and then at Nuova and Hero. Her face was alight with a new thought and strong purpose. As the cries of the bees died down from exhaustion for a moment, she lifted her head and began to speak in a loud, clear voice.

"Bees," she said, "a terrible thing has happened to us!" Some of the bees cried out again in lamentation. Saggia paused a moment till there was silence again. Then she went on.

"But we stand before a wonderful happening that may be our saving." As she said this, she half-turned toward Hero and Nuova so as to call the attention of the bees to them. As she did this a few bees, notably Uno, Due, and Tre, began to gesture angrily again toward the couple, and to mutter against them. But Saggia paid no attention to this, except perhaps to lift her voice a little higher and to speak more rapidly.

"I am an old bee," she said, "and know the lore of bees better than any others of you. And I tell you plainly that the death of the Princess does not mean that all is lost. I tell you that we have a means of saving our hive. Sometimes a bee is born, who is not a Princess, but who is of a different sort from the rest of us workers; a bee who can not only work, but love; who can love and be loved and be the mother of bees."

She turned now swiftly to Nuova, stretched out her antennae and wings dramatically, and spoke as with the voice of an oracle.

"Nuova is such a bee!" she exclaimed solemnly. "Nuova can be a Queen for us! She loves Hero. Do you, Nuova?" Nuova turned a rapt face up to Hero"s.

"And Hero loves Nuova. Do you, Hero?" Hero leaned down to Nuova and kissed her.

Saggia turned again to the bees. "That Hero loves Nuova proves that she can be loved; that Nuova loves Hero proves that she can be our Queen. Let Nuova, the new bee, be our new Queen!"

The bees were already buzzing and fluttering about in great excitement again. They were not able to comprehend immediately all that Saggia"s words implied, but they saw in them a hope for their hive, and some of the bees already began to call out joyously. Just then Beffa began dancing vigorously and waving his wings and antennae in triumph and singing loudly and clearly: "Bee-Bird may yet be beaten; We yet may peal the wedding bell, Although our Queen is eaten!"

Then he made a grand whirl which brought him squarely in front of Nuova, and with a deep curtsy and elaborate gesture he called out to all the bees, like a herald: "The Queen has pa.s.sed. Long live the Queen!"

And Saggia immediately echoed him, also bowing low before Nuova: "The Queen has pa.s.sed. Long live the Queen!"

Other bees took up the shout, which soon spread to all. Beffa beckoned all to follow him in a triumphal march and dance around the amazed and happy pair, and altogether they set up a great song of joy and triumph. Nuova and Hero were not only saved, but they were become in a second King and Queen of the hive. It was breath-taking. They could only look at each other in utter thanksgiving and love. But as Beffa, tiring of the exertion of the dance, stopped by the side of Nuova, she put out an antenna caressingly to him and then turned to Hero.

"Hero, my King," she said proudly.

"Hero, our King!" proudly shouted all the bees.

And then she turned to Beffa.

"Beffa, my jester," she said lovingly.

"Beffa, our jester!" shouted all the bees.

Beffa gave a little hop; then looking up at Nuova, he sang: "Ah, well, who knows? Ah, well, who knows?"

THE END.