Beside the Bee Hives

by Arthur Quiller-Couch

　　

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On the outskirts of the village of Gantick stand two smallsemi-detached cottages, coloured with the same pale yellow wash,their front gardens descending to the high-road in parallel lines,their back gardens (which are somewhat longer) climbing to a littlewood of secular elms, traditionally asserted to be the remnant of amighty forest. The party hedge is heightened by a thick screen ofwhite-thorn on which the buds were just showing pink when I took upmy lodging in the left-hand cottage (the 10th of May by my diary);and at the end of it are two small arbours, set back to back, theirdilapidated sides and roofs bound together by clematis.The night of my arrival, my landlady asked me to make the leastpossible noise in unpacking my portmanteau, because there was troublenext door, and the partitions were thin. Our neighbour's wife wasdown with inflammation, she explained--inflammation of the lungs, asI learnt by a question or two. It was a bad case. She was a wisht,ailing soul to begin with. Also the owls in the wood above had beenhooting loudly, for nights past: and yesterday a hedge-sparrow lit onthe sill of the sick-room window, two sure tokens of approachingdeath. The sick woman was being nursed by her elder sister, who hadlived in the house for two years, and practically taken charge of it."Better the man had married she" my landlady added, somewhatunfeelingly.I saw the man in his garden early next morning: a tallfellow, hardly yet on the wrong side of thirty, dressed inloose-fitting tweed coat and corduroys. A row of bee-hives stoodalong his side of the party wall, and he had taken the farthest one,which was empty, off its stand, and was rubbing it on the inside witha handful of elder-flower buds, by way of preparation for a newswarm. Even from my bed-room window I remarked, as he turned hishead occasionally, that he was singularly handsome. His movementswere those of a lazy man in a hurry, though there seemed no reasonfor hurry in his task. But when it was done, and the hive replaced,his behaviour began to be so eccentric that I paused in the midst ofmy shaving, to watch.He passed slowly down the line of bee-hives, halting beside each inturn, and bending his head down close to the orifice with the exactaction of a man whispering a secret into another's ear. I believe hekept this attitude for a couple of minutes beside each hive--therewere eight, besides the empty one. At the end of the row he liftedhis head, straightened his shoulders, and cast a glance up at mywindow, where I kept well out of sight. A minute after, he enteredhis house by the back door, and did not reappear.At breakfast I asked my landlady if our neighbour were wrong in hishead at all. She looked astonished, and answered, "No: he was ado-nothing fellow--unless you counted it hard work to drive acarrier's van thrice a week into Tregarrick, and home the same night.But he kept very steady, and had a name for good nature."Next day the man was in his garden at the same hour, and repeated theperformance. Throughout the following night I was kept awake by aseries of monotonous groans that reached me through the partition,and the murmur of voices speaking at intervals. It was horrible tolie within a few inches of the sick woman's head, to listen to heragony and be unable to help, unable even to see. Towards six in themorning, in bright daylight, I dropped off to sleep at last.Two hours later the sound of voices came in at the open window andawoke me. I looked out into my neighbour's garden. He was standing,half-way up the path, in the sunshine, and engaged in a suppressedbut furious altercation with a thin woman, somewhat above middleheight. Both wore thick green veils over their faces and thickgloves on their hands. The woman carried a rusty tea-tray.The man stood against her, motioning her back towards the house.I caught a sentence--"It'll be the death of her;" and the womanglanced back over her shoulder towards the window of the sick-room.She seemed about to reply, but shrugged her shoulders instead andwent back into the house, carrying her tray. The man turned on hisheel, walked hurriedly up the garden, and scrambled over its hedgeinto the wood. His veil and thick gloves were explained a couple ofhours later, when I looked into the garden again and saw him hiving aswarm of bees that he had captured, the first of the season.That same afternoon, about four o'clock, I observed that every windowin the next house stood wide open. My landlady was out in thegarden, "picking in" her week's washing from the thorn hedge where ithad been suspended to dry; and I called her attention to this newfreak of our neighbours."Ah, then, the poor soul must be nigh to her end," said she."That's done to give her an easy death."The woman died at half-past seven. And next morning her husband hunga scrap of black crape to each of the bee-hives.She was buried on Sunday afternoon. From behind the drawn blinds ofmy sitting-room window I saw the funeral leave the house and movedown the front garden to the high-road--the heads of the mourners,each with a white handkerchief pressed to its nose, appearing abovethe wall like the top of a procession in some Assyrian sculpture.The husband wore a ridiculously tall hat, and a hat-band with longtails. The whole affair had the appearance of an hysterical outrageon the afternoon sunshine. At the foot of the garden they struck upa "burying tune," and passed down the road, shouting it with alltheir lungs.I caught up a book and rushed out into the back garden for fresh air.Even out of doors it was insufferably hot, and soon I flung myselfdown on the bench within the arbour and set myself to read. A plankbehind me had started, and after a while the edge of it began to gallmy shoulders as I leant back. I tried once or twice to push it intoits place, without success, and then, in a moment of irritation, gaveit a tug. It came away in my hand, and something rolled out on thebench before me, and broke in two.I picked it up. It was a lump of dough, rudely moulded to the shapeof a woman, with a rusty brass-headed nail stuck through the breast.Around the body was tied a lock of fine light-brown hair--a woman's,by its length.After a careful examination, I untied the lock of hair, put the dollback in its place behind the plank, and returned to the house: for Ihad a question or two to put to my landlady."Was the dead woman at all like her elder sister?" I asked. "Was sheblack-haired, for instance?""No," answered my landlady; "she was shorter and much fairer.You might almost call her a light-haired woman."I hoped she would pardon me for changing the subject abruptly andasking an apparently ridiculous question, but would she call a manmad if she found him whispering secrets into a bee-hive?My landlady promptly replied that, on the contrary, she would thinkhim extremely sensible; for that, unless bees were told of all thatwas happening in the household to which they belonged, they mightconsider themselves neglected, and leave the place in wrath.She asserted this to be a notorious fact."I have one more question," I said. "Suppose that you found in yourgarden a lock of hair--a lock such as this, for instance--what wouldyou do with it?"She looked at it, and caught her breath sharply."I'm no meddler," she said at last; "I should burn it.""Why?""Because if 'twas left about, the birds might use it for their nests,and weave it in so tight that the owner couldn't rise on Judgmentday."So I burnt the lock of hair in her presence; because I wanted itsowner to rise on Judgment day and state a case which, after all, wasno affair of mine.

　　THE END.

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