"If you are so fond of them, perhaps you wouldn"t mind coming and helping me open one of the hives?"
"Rather!"
"I"ll go and fetch the things."
She went into the house and ran up to Nutty"s room, waking that sufferer from a troubled sleep.
"Nutty, he"s bitten."
Nutty sat up violently.
"Good gracious! What by?"
"You don"t understand. What I meant was that I invited your Mr Chalmers to help me open a hive, and he said "Rather!" and is waiting to do it now. Be ready to say good-bye to him. If he comes out of this alive, his first act, after bathing the wounds with ammonia, will be to leave us for ever."
"But look here, he"s a visitor-"
"Cheer up! He won"t be much longer."
"You can"t let him in for a ghastly thing like opening a hive. When you made me do it that time I was picking stings out of myself for a week."
"That was because you had been smoking. Bees dislike the smell of tobacco."
"But this fellow may have been smoking."
"He has just finished a strong cigar."
"For Heaven"s sake!"
"Good-bye, Nutty, dear; I mustn"t keep him waiting."
Lord Dawlish looked with interest at the various implements which she had collected when she rejoined him outside. He relieved her of the stool, the smoker, the cotton-waste, the knife, the screwdriver, and the queen-clipping cage.
"Let me carry these for you," he said, "unless you"ve hired a van."
Elizabeth disapproved of this flippancy. It was out of place in one who should have been trembling at the prospect of doom.
"Don"t you wear a veil for this sort of job?"
As a rule Elizabeth did. She had reached a stage of intimacy with her bees which rendered a veil a superfluous precaution, but until to-day she had never abandoned it. Her view of the matter was that, though the inhabitants of the hives were familiar and friendly with her by this time and recognized that she came among them without hostile intent, it might well happen that among so many thousands there might be one slow-witted enough and obtuse enough not to have grasped this fact. And in such an event a veil was better than any amount of explanations, for you cannot stick to pure reason when quarrelling with bees.
But to-day it had struck her that she could hardly protect herself in this way without offering a similar safeguard to her visitor, and she had no wish to hedge him about with safeguards.
"Oh, no," she said, brightly; "I"m not afraid of a few bees. Are you?"
"Rather not!"
"You know what to do if one of them flies at you?"
"Well, it would, anyway-what? What I mean to say is, I could leave most of the doing to the bee."
Elizabeth was more disapproving than ever. This was mere bravado.
She did not speak again until they reached the hives.
In the neighbourhood of the hives a vast activity prevailed. What, heard from afar, had been a pleasant murmur became at close quarters a menacing tumult. The air was full of bees-bees sallying forth for honey, bees returning with honey, bees trampling on each other"s heels, bees pausing in mid-air to pa.s.s the time of day with rivals on competing lines of traffic. Blunt-bodied drones whizzed to and fro with a noise like miniature high-powered automobiles, as if anxious to convey the idea of being tremendously busy without going to the length of doing any actual work. One of these blundered into Lord Dawlish"s face, and it pleased Elizabeth to observe that he gave a jump.
"Don"t be afraid," she said, "it"s only a drone. Drones have no stings."
"They have hard heads, though. Here he comes again!"
"I suppose he smells your tobacco. A drone has thirty-seven thousand eight hundred nostrils, you know."
"That gives him a sporting chance of smelling a cigar-what? I mean to say, if he misses with eight hundred of his nostrils he"s apt to get it with the other thirty-seven thousand."
Elizabeth was feeling annoyed with her bees. They resolutely declined to sting this young man. Bees flew past him, bees flew into him, bees settled upon his coat, bees paused questioningly in front of him, as who should say, "What have we here?" but not a single bee molested him. Yet when Nutty, poor darling, went within a dozen yards of the hives he never failed to suffer for it. In her heart Elizabeth knew perfectly well that this was because Nutty, when in the presence of the bees, lost his head completely and behaved like an exaggerated version of Lady Wetherby"s Dream of Psyche, whereas Bill maintained an easy calm; but at the moment she put the phenomenon down to that inexplicable cussedness which does so much to exasperate the human race, and it fed her annoyance with her unbidden guest.
Without commenting on his last remark, she took the smoker from him and set to work. She inserted in the fire-chamber a handful of the cotton-waste and set fire to it; then with a preliminary puff or two of the bellows to make sure that the conflagration had not gone out, she aimed the nozzle at the front door of the hive.
The results were instantaneous. One or two bee-policemen, who were doing fixed point-duty near the opening, scuttled hastily back into the hive; and from within came a m.u.f.fled buzzing as other bees, all talking at once, worried the perplexed officials with foolish questions, a buzzing that became less m.u.f.fled and more p.r.o.nounced as Elizabeth lifted the edge of the cover and directed more smoke through the crack. This done, she removed the cover, set it down on the gra.s.s beside her, lifted the super-cover and applied more smoke, and raised her eyes to where Bill stood watching. His face wore a smile of pleased interest.
Elizabeth"s irritation became painful. She resented his smile. She hung the smoker on the side of the hive.
"The stool, please, and the screw-driver."
She seated herself beside the hive and began to loosen the outside section. Then taking the brood-frame by the projecting ends, she pulled it out and handed it to her companion. She did it as one who plays an ace of trumps.
"Would you mind holding this, Mr Chalmers?"
This was the point in the ceremony at which the wretched Nutty had broken down absolutely, and not inexcusably, considering the severity of the test. The surface of the frame was black with what appeared at first sight to be a thick, bubbling fluid of some sort, pouring viscously to and fro as if some hidden fire had been lighted beneath it. Only after a closer inspection was it apparent to the lay eye that this seeming fluid was in reality composed of ma.s.s upon ma.s.s of bees. They shoved and writhed and muttered and jostled, for all the world like a collection of home-seeking City men trying to secure standing room on the Underground at half-past five in the afternoon.
Nutty, making this discovery, had emitted one wild yell, dropped the frame, and started at full speed for the house, his retreat expedited by repeated stings from the nervous bees. Bill, more prudent, remained absolutely motionless. He eyed the seething frame with interest, but without apparent panic.
"I want you to help me here, Mr Chalmers. You have stronger wrists than I have. I will tell you what to do. Hold the frame tightly."
"I"ve got it."
"Jerk it down as sharply as you can to within a few inches of the door, and then jerk it up again. You see, that shakes them off."
"It would me," agreed Bill, cordially, "if I were a bee."
Elizabeth had the feeling that she had played her ace of trumps and by some miracle lost the trick. If this grisly operation did not daunt the man, nothing, not even the transferring of honey, would. She watched him as he raised the frame and jerked it down with a strong swiftness which her less powerful wrists had never been able to achieve. The bees tumbled off in a dense shower, asking questions to the last; then, sighting the familiar entrance to the hive, they bustled in without waiting to investigate the cause of the earthquake.
Lord Dawlish watched them go with a kindly interest.
"It has always been a mystery to me," he said, "why they never seem to think of manhandling the Johnny who does that to them. They don"t seem able to connect cause and effect. I suppose the only way they can figure it out is that the bottom has suddenly dropped out of everything, and they are so busy lighting out for home that they haven"t time to go to the root of things. But it"s a ticklish job, for all that, if you"re not used to it. I know when I first did it I shut my eyes and wondered whether they would bury my remains or cremate them."
"When you first did it?" Elizabeth was staring at him blankly.
"Have you done it before?"
Her voice shook. Bill met her gaze frankly.