IT was not until his twenty-second year that Hervey Deyo realized that
he was taking life too seriously. Then the realization struck him
sharply.
He had been a serious infant and had nursed more from a sense of duty
than pleasure; his juvenile marble and hoop games had been grave
affairs, conducted with nicety and decorum; he learned to read shortly
after he was breeched and at seven presented a slip at the public
library for the Encyclopedia from A to Z. The librarian demurred, but he
gently insisted; he was permitted to carry it home volume by volume. At
twelve he had resolved to be a scientist and furthermore a great
scientist. He determined to pursue the career of ornithologist; there
was something so dignified and withal scientific about a science that
called the sparrow _Passer Domesticus_ and the robin _Erithacus
Rubecula_. He made rapid progress. On his thirteenth birthday he took a
bird walk at dawn and was able to record in his note-book the scientific
names of forty-nine birds, including the ruby-and-topaz humming-bird
(_Chrysolampis Mosquitus_) which is rare around Boston.
At fifteen he wrote a daring monograph which proved beyond cavil that it
would be possible to revivify the extinct great auk (_Plautus Impennis_)
by a judicious and protracted series of matings between the penguin
(_Sphenisciformes_) and the ostrich (_Struthio Camelus_). This theory
was hotly challenged by a German savant in a seventy thousand word
exegesis; Hervey Deyo crushed him under a hundred thousand word
rejoinder and thus at a tender age came to enjoy a certain decent
celebrity in the world of ornithology. At seventeen, still in the
University, he was becoming known as a first-rate all-round bird man; he
rather looked down on old Fodd at the Natural History Museum who was a
beetle man and particularly on Armbuster who was a mere bee man; yes,
Armbuster and his bees decidedly wearied Hervey Deyo. As if bees
counted!
Something revolutionary happened to him in the spring of his
twenty-second year. The mild spring evenings, biology, inexorable Nature
conspired against him; his mind began to reach out for contacts with new
things outside the world of birds. He made the disturbing discovery that
he could be interested in things unfeathered; girls, for example.
He made this discovery at a tea to which he had gone, most reluctantly,
with his mother, who was intensely serious about her social duties. He
found himself sitting on a divan beside a girl; her hair was blonde and
bobbed and she had an attentive little smile. To be polite, he explained
to her the essential differences between the European redstart
(_Phœnicurus Phœnicurus_) and its cousin, the American flycatching
warbler (_Setophaga Ruticilla_). As he talked the notion grew on him
that teas were not the bore he had thought them. It disconcerted him
when the girl rather abruptly left him to join a fattish young man who
had just entered. Hervey Deyo could tell at a glance that the newcomer
had not the intellect to so much as stuff a lark.
His alert mother spied his lonely state and steered him to another
corner and another girl. He sought to fascinate her with an account of
the curious circumstance that the male loon (_Gavia Immer_) has three
more bones in his ankle than the female of that specie; he told her this
in strictest confidence, for it was the very latest gossip of the world
of ornithology. He could not but note that after fifteen minutes her
attention seemed to wander. Presently she murmured some vague excuse and
slipped away to join a laughing group in another part of the room. He
followed her flight with a glum eye.
The group appeared to have as its center the fattish young man and it
was growing distinctly hilarious. Hervey Deyo had a pressing, but, he
told himself, wholly scientific interest in learning what conversational
charm or topic made the fattish young man so much more interesting than
himself. He edged his chair within earshot.
The fattish young man was not talking; he appeared to be making a series
of odd noises through his nose, varied now and then by throaty bellows.
“_Norrrrrrrrrk. Norrrrrk. Wurrrrr. Wurrrrr._”
The trained ear of Hervey Deyo was puzzled; clearly they were not bird
noises, yet they had a scientific sound; perhaps the fattish young man
was a scientist after all, a mammal man.
“_Norrrrrrrrrk. Norrrrrk. Wurrrrr. Wurrrrr._”
The girl with the attentive smile solved the mystery. She called across
the room.
“Oh, Bernice, do come over here. You simply must hear Mr. Mullett
imitate a trained seal!”
Hervey Deyo felt actually ill. So that was the secret of Mr. Mullett’s
powers; that was the magnet!
“_Norrrrrrrrr. Norrrrrk. Wurrrr. Wurrrr._”
Hervey Deyo couldn’t stand it. Stiffly he went out and as he took his
hat and stick he could still hear the laughter and the fainter,
“_Norrrrrrrrr. Norrrrrk. Wurrrr. Wurrrr._”
In a fury of disgust he went to his laboratory and so violently stuffed
a grackle (_Euphagus Ferrugineus_) that it burst.
Next day he realized that something annoying had happened, was happening
to him; he could not keep his mind on his work; it kept straying,
despite him, to the little girl with the attentive smile. She had been
interested in his talk of birds until the accomplished Mr. Mullett,
imitator of trained seals, had made his untimely appearance. His teeth
gritted together at the thought.
That afternoon he surprised his mother by suggesting that he accompany
her to a tea; she was glad his social consciousness seemed to be aroused
at last. They went.
“Who is Mr. Mullett?” he asked her as they rode tea-ward in her motor
car, a product of the seriousness applied by Mr. Deyo, senior, to his
brick business.
“Mr. Mullett? Why, he’s one of the Brookline Mulletts,” his mother said.
“Why?”
“Is he an animal man?”
“No; he sells insurance.”
“He seems popular.”
“Oh, he has some parlor tricks.”
“I beg pardon, mother? The allusion escapes me.”
“Parlor tricks,” repeated his mother. “He imitates a trained seal; it
appears to strike the younger people as excessively comical. I believe
he can also swallow a lighted cigaret.”
Hervey emitted a polite moan.
“Must one do parlor tricks?”
“They have their uses,” said his mother.
The girl with the attentive smile was at the tea and Hervey Deyo
captured her. Her name was Mina Low. He was congratulating himself on
having interested her in his new monograph on parrakeet bills, when she
sprang up with a little cry of pleasure.
“Oh, Mr. Deyo, there’s Ned Mullett. Let’s get him to imitate a trained
seal. He’s perfectly killing.”
“I do not know seals,” said Hervey Deyo, severely. “They fail to attract
me. I am a bird man.”
He left the tea with a heavy heart while the talented Mullett was
bellowing,
“_Norrrrrrrrrk. Norrrrrk. Wurrrr. Wurrrr._”
Lying in his bed that night the brain of Hervey Deyo entertained two
thoughts. One was that Miss Low was a singularly charming girl; the
other was he could not interest her by birds alone. How then? He
analyzed the situation with the same care and logic that he applied to
the dissection of a humming-bird. His conclusion was revolting but
inescapable. He must master a parlor trick. He shuddered at the notion,
but he was resolved.
“The end justifies the means,” he muttered.
He rose early and attacked the problem with the weapons of science. In
his note-book he carefully wrote down all the animals and the sounds
they made, with comments and remarks on their value as entertainment.
Ant-eater . . . . _Wheeeeewhoooowheeee_ (difficult).
Buffalo . . . . _Roooooor roooor_ (uncouth).
Bull . . . . _Horrrrr rorrrr rorrrr_ (too like buffalo).
Beagle . . . . _Irrrrp yirrrrrp yirrp_ (lacks dignity).
Elephant . . . . _Arrraooow arrraooow_ (hard on
one’s throat).
He went through the list of the mammals and the result was
disappointing. None of them seemed so interesting as a seal, and
besides, he did not wish to lay himself open to the charge of
plagiarism. He could not, of course, employ the calls of birds, although
he was rather good at that; it seemed sacrilegious to employ ornithology
as a parlor trick.
He turned his attention to the noises made by inanimate things; he
jotted down in his book “fog-horn, buzzsaw, locomotive, saxophone.” He
was considering them with furrowed brow when Armbuster agitatedly burst
in. He disliked Armbuster; he gave himself too many airs for a mere bee
man; Hervey considered it rather an imposition when Armbuster was given
an adjoining laboratory at the Museum.
“Have you seen her, Deyo?” cried Armbuster.
“Her? Who?”
“My queen. She’s escaped.”
“No,” said Hervey Deyo coldly. It was annoying to have one’s thoughts
broken in upon to be asked about a wretched bee.
“If you do see her, be sure to tell me,” said Armbuster.
“Certainly.”
The bee man vanished.
Hervey Deyo again bent over his note-book; he added the words “dentist’s
electric drill,” and was considering whether Miss Low would regard an
imitation of it as unpleasant, when a faint sound caused him to turn his
head. A large bumblebee was crawling up the window-pane grumbling to
herself. Hervey Deyo watched, listened. His first thought was to capture
her and return her to Armbuster, and he reached out his hand toward her.
She bumbled noisily and eluded him. It came to him as a flash of
inspiration that his problem was solved. He’d imitate a bee!
He knew it was not honorable to keep her, but he did. He spent the
afternoon chasing her up and down the pane with a gloved hand; she
muttered and grumbled and buzzed. “_Bzzzzzzzzzz, bzzzzzzzzz,
bzzzzzzzz._”
He smiled a smile of grim triumph; what was a trained seal’s raucous
bellow to this? Softly he imitated the sounds she made; patiently he
practised; before dusk came he was satisfied with the perfection of his
imitation, and yet not entirely satisfied. The thing lacked a dramatic
quality; it came to no climax. He could buzz loudly and softly, angrily
or soothingly; but there was no grand finale. He felt that one was
needed; Mr. Mullett ended his seal imitation with a crescendo roar.
A thought, murderous and ruthless, shot into one of Hervey Deyo’s brain
cells. Normally he was neither murderous nor ruthless; quite gentle,
indeed. But love brings out the primal man; for the sake of Mina Low he
would, for a second, be atavistic. He chased the protesting bee across
the pane; he got her into a corner; his gloved hand closed on her; she
buzzed frantically; he closed his thumb and forefinger smartly together;
he cut her off in full buzz with a sharp incisive sound like a torch
plunged into a pond. A perfect climax! Hurriedly, furtively, he fed her
corpse to a live flamingo in a cage in the corner. On his way home he
passed Armbuster in the hall; Armbuster was distractedly searching for
his queen; he was peering under a rug. Hervey Deyo did not meet the bee
man’s eye.
In his room that night he practised assiduously his new accomplishment.
“_Bzzzzzzzzzzzz, bzzzzzzzzzzzzz, bzzzzzrf!_”
He attained perfection in that final shrill, staccato “_bzzzzzrf_.” His
mother, hearing the sounds, came to the door to ask if he was ill. He
called her in.
“Listen,” he said.
“_Bzzzzzzzzzzzz, bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz, bzzzzzrf!_”
“Oh, dear,” she cried, “a bee! Where is he?”
Hervey bowed.
“I am he,” he said.
He amazed his mother still more next day by asking her to give a tea for
him at the earliest opportunity. He mentioned, matter-of-factly, that he
wouldn’t mind having her ask Miss Mina Low.
He planned the seating scientifically; he saw to it that he and Miss Low
were seated together in a quiet corner near a window. When she had
finished her first cup of tea, he turned to her suddenly, his eyes
excited.
“I say, Miss Low. Look!”
“_Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz, bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz, bzzzzzrf!_”
He pretended to pursue an imaginary bee up the window-pane and to catch
him at last.
“Oh, it’s a bee!” she cried.
“Where?” he asked, with a smile.
“Oh, it’s not really one. It was you. Oh, _do_ do it again!”
He did it again.
“_Bzzzzzzzzzzzz, bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz, bzzzzzrf!_”
She clapped her hands in ecstasy.
“Oh, Mr. Deyo, how perfectly wonderful! I didn’t think you——”
“What?”
“Oh, do let me call the others.”
“If you wish,” said Hervey Deyo.
They gathered about him.
“_Bzzzzzzzzzzzzz, Bzzzzzzzzzzzzz, bzzzzzrf!_”
They were enchanted.
“Oh, do it again,” they begged. He did. With a gracious smile Hervey
Deyo acceded to their request. He glowed. He was tasting the heady
draught of sudden popularity. Late arrivals at the tea were told of his
accomplishment; they insisted on hearing it.
“_Bzzzzzzzz, bzzzzzzzzzzzz, bzzzzzrf!_”
Quite casual acquaintances came up to invite him to their homes, to
teas, to dinner parties. He smiled and promised to come. From the corner
of his eye he could see that Miss Low was regarding him with something
very like interest.
He went to a dinner party at the home of Professor and Mrs. Murgatroyd;
he had been stuffing an emu (_Dromaeus Irroratus_) and it had so
absorbed him that he was late. He entered with the fish course and the
guests beamed expectantly.
“Oh, here is Mr. Deyo,” cried his hostess. “We were so afraid you’d
disappoint us. I’ve been telling everyone about your perfectly delicious
imitation of a bee.”
He obliged them.
“_Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz, bzzzzzzzzzzzz, bzzzzzrf!_”
They encored him. One of the guests was the fattish young man, Mr.
Mullett, but the spotlight had shifted from him and he sat eating
morosely and regarding Hervey Deyo with bilious, jealous eye. During the
dessert Mr. Mullett essayed to bark like a seal, but Mrs. Murgatroyd
looked at him disapprovingly and he never reached the roared climax; he
buried his chagrin in the peche Melba. Hervey Deyo, observing, smiled
quietly to himself.
After dinner he had a tête-à-tête with Mina Low. For her own special and
private diversion he twice repeated his imitation; on the second
occasion he ventured to take her hand and she pretended to be so
absorbed in the imitation that she did not notice.
Three nights later he called on her at her home. It was with difficulty
that her young brothers were finally dragged off to bed; the imitation
fascinated them and Hervey Deyo was forced to do it no less than seven
times. He was getting to be a virtuoso. He could keep it up for five
minutes at a time, now pretending that the bee was in the lampshade, now
under a glass, now behind the piano, and even up the pant leg of the
youngest Low boy. When he and Mina were at last alone together, he
pretended that the bee was buzzing very near her blonde, bobbed hair; in
capturing it, he kissed her. Their engagement was announced the
following Friday.
The notice in the local newspaper pleased and yet vaguely disturbed
Hervey Deyo. It described him thus: “Mr. Hervey Deyo is well known in
local society; he is a gifted scientist and has gained a reputation for
his ability to imitate a bee.”
As he reread this he could not but feel that some reference should have
been made to the fact that he was the author of an authoritative work on
the cuckoo (_Cuculus Canorus_), that he was a Doctor of Philosophy, and
that in the fall he was to become Chief Curator of Birds in the Museum.
Still, he reflected, newspapers haven’t room to print everything; they
strive to print what to them are the salient facts.
He and his fiancée went about a great deal and the party at which Hervey
Deyo did not give his imitation of a bee was adjudged a sterile affair.
Frequently he congratulated himself in those days that it took a man of
science to know when to be serious and when not to be. They were married
in August, and no less than seventeen friends sent the happy pair
various representations of bees as wedding gifts; they received bronze
bees, porcelain bees, silver bees, gold bees, and a pewter bee; his
colleagues at the Museum gave him a handsome bronze inkstand made to
resemble a bee-hive.
On his return from his honeymoon, Hervey Deyo threw himself into his
bird labors at the Museum with energy; he was a bird man, even a
first-class bird man, and so far his ambition was gratified; but it
still burned with a hot unappeased flame. He wanted to be the biggest
bird man in the world. However, after his marriage he permitted himself
certain digressions from the relentless pursuit of this aim. There was a
constant demand for him socially and, as Mina was fond of teas and
parties and bridge and balls, he found himself giving rather less time
to his birds than formerly. He was by no means averse to a measure of
social life.
“A great scientist can afford to have his human side,” he assured
himself.
Wherever he went with Mina, be it tea, party, bridge, or ball, he was
invariably pressed to give his imitation of a bee. He would bow; he
would let them insist a bit; invariably he gave it.
“_Bzzzzzzzzzzzz, bzzzzzzzzzzzzz, bzzzzzrf!_”
No stranger ever came to the city who did not, sooner or later, hear
“that screamingly funny fellow, Deyo, and his perfectly killing
imitation of a bee.” His fame spread.
He had been married a number of years and had a child or two when he
came home one evening visibly excited.
“My dear,” he called to his wife, his voice full of excitement tinged
with awe, “tonight I am to meet Professor Schweeble. He just came to
town. Think of it! Karl Humperdinck Schweeble!”
“Schweeble?” said Mina, blankly.
“You don’t mean to say you never heard of Schweeble!”
“I’m afraid not.”
“But I’ve spoken of him score of times.”
“Oh, perhaps you have,” she said, yawning. “I thought he was a bird.”
“Why, Schweeble is the biggest bird man in the world,” he exclaimed. “It
will be a big night in ornithology when Schweeble and Deyo shake hands.
He must know my work; of course he must. He can’t have missed that great
auk monograph and the cuckoo book.”
He was so excited he could hardly tie his dinner tie.
“Schweeble,” he kept repeating, “the great Schweeble. I’ve wanted to
meet him all my life. He comes just at the right time, too, just when my
paper on the _Pyrrhula Europaea_—bull-finch, my dear—is causing talk.”
“Don’t forget your goloshes,” admonished Mina.
Hervey Deyo, red, proud and flustered, was introduced half an hour later
to that great Bohemian savant, Professor Schweeble, at the University
Club. Professor Schweeble made him a courtly bow.
“Charmed, Doctor Deyo,” he said. “I haff heard much gebout you.”
Hervey Deyo bowed deeply; he was warm and crimson with pleasure.
“Oh, really?” he murmured.
“Yezz,” said the distinguished visitor, “who haff not heard of Deyo, the
bee man?”
Deyo . . . the bee man!
“I?” Hervey Deyo was stunned, “I, a bee man? Oh, no, no, no, no, no!”
“Pardon. Pardon many times. You are but too modest,” said Professor
Schweeble, wagging his index finger at the stricken Deyo. “But surely
you are that same Deyo who makes the sound like the bee.”
Hervey Deyo stuttered; he would have flung out a denial. But the other
scientists had gathered about.
“Oh, come, Deyo,” they urged him. “There’s a good chap. Imitate a bee
for the Professor.”
Hervey bit his lips.
“How iss it?” encouraged Professor Schweeble. “_Bzzzzzzz._”
“No,” cried Hervey Deyo, wildly. “Not like that. Like this.
‘_Bzzzzzzzzzzzzz, bzzzzzzzzzz, bzzzzzrf!_’”
“Ah, most droll,” said Professor Schweeble. “You have talent; you are a
comedian. You should go on the stage.”
Hervey Deyo could not articulate. Professor Schweeble addressed him in
the tone Hervey knew so well, for he employed it often; it was the tone
of tolerance a scientist adopts to a layman.
“Have you ever taken an interest in birds, Doctor Deyo? There are some
fine birds a clever fellow like you could learn to imitate.”
Hervey Deyo did not enjoy that dinner.
He was up at daybreak and he attacked his work with a cold and terrible
energy. He stuffed a whole family of bobolinks (_Dolichonyx Dryzivorus_)
and dissected snipe (_Gallinago_) by the dozen. He sat up till his eyes
ached writing a masterly treatise on the habits and home life of the
adult pelican (_Pelecanus_).
“Deyo, the bee man, eh,” his lips kept saying. “I’ll show ’em who’s a
bee man. I’ll show ’em.”
But he found it impossible to withdraw from social life; the adulation
he received as the most perfect imitator of a bee extant had come to be
necessary to him; he continued to go out to social functions; he
continued to be asked to imitate a bee; he continued to comply. Mina’s
smile had less and less of an attentive quality in it; she began to find
excuses for not going with him; but he insisted that it was her duty;
she could not give him adequate reasons for evading it.
He was forty when he went down to New York to attend a dinner—a very
special dinner—of the Ornithological Congress of the World, then in
session. For months he worked to prepare a paper that would definitely
place him at the head of his science, now that Schweeble was no more. It
was on the mental habits of grouse (_Tetraoninae_). He rose to read it,
but some bibulous lesser bird man in the rear of the hall called out,
“Forget the grouse. Give us the bee.” Others took up the cry.
“Forget the grouse. Give us the bee.”
The whole room took up the cry.
“Forget the grouse. Give us the bee.”
“Yes, yes, the bee. We want the bee. We want the bee. WE WANT THE BEE.”
Ornithologists have their light moods.
He twisted the table-cloth in a great despair; a furious refusal stuck
in his throat; habit was stronger than he.
“_Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz, bzzzzzzzzzzzzz, bzzzzzrf!_”
They sang “He’s a jolly good fellow which nobody can deny.” A jolly good
fellow! It was the last thing in the world Hervey Deyo had ever wanted
to be. This, then, was his fame.
He returned to his home city. His house was silent when he entered it.
On his desk was a note.
“Dear Hervey:
“I’ve taken the children and gone to live with Mother. I love
you as much as ever, but I can not live with a bee. If I should
hear you buzz just once more I should go mad Don’t forget to put
on your goloshes.
Mina.”
He went out of the house. Deliberately he did not wear his goloshes; it
was a slushy night. At seven they took him to the hospital with a severe
case of influenza.
In the morning a careless nurse left a newspaper where he could reach
it. An item struck his eye.
“Hervey Deyo is dangerously ill in St. Paul’s Hospital. He is
the man who can imitate a bee.”
When he read this, Hervey Deyo let the paper slip from his fingers, and
sank back on his pillow. When the doctor came in, he found him lying
staring at the ceiling. A glance told the doctor that Hervey Deyo had
not long to live; the doctor sought to rouse him from his torpor, to fan
the flickering flame of his interest; he turned on his professional
bedside smile.
“Ah,” said the doctor, “thinking about bees, I’ll wager.”
“No,” Hervey Deyo got out feebly, “not bees.”
“But, surely, I’m not mistaken. You are Deyo, the famous bee man.”
Hervey Deyo struggled to muster up vitality enough to cry, “I’m a bird
man.” But he could not.
“Come, now,” said the doctor, genially, “won’t you imitate that bee for
me?”
Hervey Deyo tried to glare a negative, but had not the strength.
“I’ve heard so much about it,” said the doctor. “And I’ve never heard
you do it, you know.”
On a faint ebb of strength, Hervey Deyo managed to say, “Really?”
“No. Never.”
Hervey Deyo with a final effort gathered together all the little, last
strength in him.
“It—goes—like—this.
“_Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz, bzzzzzz bzzz bzz bzrf!_”