_Nuova goes Outside_
When Nuova felt that she could face again the scene near the cell, she
left her hiding-place and came slowly out into the open space where she
had left Hero. He was gone. She knew, without looking, that he was now
with the other drones pressing about the cold, proud Princess. She
looked rather for her old friends Saggia and Beffa. Though Saggia had
lost all patience with her because she had spoken to the drones, and had
punished her, and even given her over to Uno, Due, Tre, and the other
bees who disliked her, she still liked Saggia and believed that Saggia
liked her.
So she looked around for them. But they were not in the mass about the
Princess nor in any of the groups which were beginning to take up again
the different kinds of work of the hive.
Nuova noticed some bees going in and out the entrance hole of the hive,
and although she knew, by instinct, that she was still too young to
leave the hive, yet that strange driving spirit in her, which was
always impelling her to do things against bee traditions and custom,
urged her to the bright opening. Once there she hesitated. The brilliant
sunshine outside was blinding to her eyes, accustomed so far only to the
half-light of the hive. She had a curious sensation too, half of fear of
this unknown world outside, half of fascination to plunge recklessly
into it to see and learn the new things there must be in it, and to
escape from the automatic, heartless life of the hive, and the latest
and bitterest unhappiness this life had just brought to her.
As she stood, uncertain, at the edge of the opening, she heard a
familiar humming just outside the opening, and at once stepped out. She
found herself on a broad platform as wide as the hive and extending
forward for what seemed to her a long distance, but which was in reality
only a few inches. On either side of the platform and beyond it were
grass and flowers and bushes, and still farther away some great trees,
all new and wonderful things to her. Above was the blue sky, and she
heard birds twittering, and far away the song of a woman working in the
garden. And it was all very light and fresh and fragrant. Nuova liked
it.
She heard the familiar humming again. She turned her attention to the
entrance platform. There were only a few bees on it. A few guards moved
easily and half-lazily around, and a few foraging bees were coming and
going with loads of pollen and honey or with pollen baskets and honey
sacs empty. But suddenly she saw Beffa. It was he who was making the
familiar humming. With tired, drawn face and with only grimaces for
smiles, he was slowly hopping and humming near the front edge of the
platform. He often came to a standstill to look with fixed gaze out into
the distance. Beffa was a sad bee, for his Queen had gone and he could
not follow her. Poor Beffa! It made Nuova sad, too, to see him.
And then she saw Saggia, too. She was at one side of the platform with
dustpan and brush, and occasionally stooping over to brush up something.
She, too, seemed sad and tired. She looked older than Nuova had seen her
look before. Saggia, like Beffa, every now and then stood quite still
and gazed far away into the garden or sky as if hoping to see again
the old Queen whom they had lost. Saggia and Beffa had come close
together without noticing each other or Nuova, so occupied with their
own thoughts were they. But soon Saggia noticed Beffa and moved up close
to him.
"Beffa, you are sad," said Saggia, in a low voice so that only Beffa
should hear.
[Illustration: "Beffa, you are sad," said Saggia]
Even Beffa did not hear her at first, or, at least, he did not heed her.
But when Saggia repeated what she had said, Beffa came out of his
reverie with a jerk, and awkwardly made a little hop and grimace.
"Sad," said he. "Great Apis forfend. Haven't we a shining new Princess
to our hive; a virgin new Princess to wed and be a new Queen to us all?
Why should we mourn for an old Queen that's gone? Why be sad with a new
Queen to come? Ha-ha," he laughed sardonically and bitterly.
"Yes, sad," repeated Saggia again, still speaking low and significantly,
"when we have just lost our old Queen who liked her jester, Beffa, and
even her old floor-cleaner, Saggia, who neither of them know whether
the new Queen will like them or not. Oh, sad, sad! Ha-ha!" And she
half-imitated Beffa's sardonic laugh and his hop and grimace.
Beffa turned and faced Saggia squarely, surprised to find wise old
Saggia troubled and depressed just as he was. After a long, keen look at
her, he made a solemn gesture to the distance, and then a mocking bow
toward the hive entrance.
"The Queen has passed: long live the Queen!" he exclaimed.
Several of the guard and forager bees near him heard his cry and called
out after him--
"The Queen has passed: long live the Queen!"
But one old guard of testy temper added, speaking rather roughly to
Beffa: "What are you doing here? Doesn't the Princess laugh at your old
tricks? Can't you find some new ones?"
Beffa turned angrily toward the guard, as if to answer sharply, but
suddenly checked himself and began capering and humming. Then he sang in
a bitter voice:
"Let the guards guard, and the jester jest,
Let Saggia clean, and the new queen wed,
Let all the bees do all they did,
For life is doing what we're bid.
Oh, life is doing what we're bid.
Ha-ha!"
Saggia felt a little anxious on Beffa's account, for his song seemed
bitter, and she saw that the guard was looking both puzzled and sour as
she listened to it. So Saggia spoke to her hurriedly.
"The odor from our full pantries comes strong from the hives this
morning," she said. "I hope it won't attract the Black Bees."
"Oh, the Black Bees," said the guard, superiorly. "Let them come. We'll
show them how robbers are treated."
Just as the guard finished speaking, a commotion began on the other side
of the platform, and Nuova saw a large black-and-yellow-striped creature
with a long spear lunging fiercely toward the entrance of the hive. It
was a Yellow Jacket. She knew it at once, because she had heard some of
the nurse bees one day talking about these fierce
black-and-yellow-banded robbers that sometimes fought their way into
the hive to steal honey.
The guard near Saggia and Beffa hurried across the platform brandishing
her lance. But already three or four other guards had thrown themselves
on the intruder and were beating it back, striking it viciously with
their lances. The Yellow Jacket made a good fight, but the bee Amazons
were too many for it. It was wounded, began to weaken, and soon was
hustled back off the platform and on through the grass behind a near-by
bush.
The guard who had been talking with Saggia came back proudly to her,
still brandishing her long lance.
"That's the way we do it," she said. "And a Yellow Jacket is stronger
than a Black Bee."
"Yes," replied Saggia, wagging her old head wisely, "but not stronger
than ten Black Bees, or a hundred, and that is the way _they_ come."
As Saggia finished speaking, the guards who had driven the Yellow Jacket
away returned boisterously, and joining all the other guards on the
platform, formed in a line, and half-marching, half-dancing, went
through some military maneuvers. While they were doing this, another lot
of guards came out of the hive, and forming in a line opposite them,
also went through the martial dance. At the end of it all the guards who
had been outside marched into the hive, while the new ones remained
outside on the platform. It was the "relief of the guard."
All during the guards' dancing and marching, Nuova had stood still
watching them intently. Neither Saggia nor Beffa had seen her yet. And
she was afraid to speak to them for fear of being made to go back into
the hive again. She had made up her mind to stay outside. It was all so
much more beautiful and exciting out here. She had decided that she
would not be a nurse or wax-maker or anything else inside the hive any
longer. She wanted to be a forager and be free to go in and out as she
liked, and to fly far out into the garden and spend long, sunshiny hours
there.
Just then, however, Saggia caught sight of her. It was, indeed, Beffa
who saw her first. He quietly touched Saggia with one of his antennae and
waved the other in Nuova's direction. Saggia hurried over to her,
looking anxiously around her to see if any other bees had noticed Nuova.
"What are you doing out here?" whispered Saggia to her as she reached
her side. "Who sent you out? It isn't time for a week yet for you to
come outside."
Saggia wanted to be angry with her, but the sight of Nuova, so sad and
forlorn-looking, and with tear-marks still on her face, was too much for
her kind heart. And she really loved Nuova very much. Indeed, all that
Nuova had done, and what she had said, had made a strange appeal to the
wise old bee. She was almost frightened sometimes to feel that down deep
in her heart she not only sympathized with much of Nuova's revolt
against the rigid traditions and automatic life of the bees, but that
she realized that this stifling of all independent action and all
personal emotions was not always the way to the highest happiness nor
even the wisest conduct for the bees. She shuddered to think that
perhaps she, too, was a "new bee."
Nuova was half-frightened by Saggia's discovery of her and by her hard
words. But she answered her willfully and defiantly, although with a
touch of attractive mischievousness.
"Nobody sent me out," she said. "I have just decided to be a forager;
that's all. While I was in the hive a little while ago a forager came in
with two great loads of pollen in her pollen baskets. She was very tired
and seemed sick. While she was looking around for an empty cell in which
to put her pollen, she suddenly sank down--and--and died."
Nuova shivered as she said this, and dropped her antennae down over her
eyes for a moment.
"Ah, yes," said Saggia sadly but proudly; "worked herself to death. That
is the noble death we have. We die in the harness--working for others,
working for the hive. The bees know that death well and honor it."
"They may know it well," broke in Nuova sharply, "but they do not honor
it well. Anyway, not by their actions. Nobody paid any attention to the
poor forager when she was staggering along with her load, and none when
she sank down on the floor and died. Except pretty soon a couple of
cleaners came along and dragged her body away. I suppose they brought
it out here and flung it off the platform somewhere. A noble death, well
honored, indeed! Well, I don't want that kind. I am going to die out in
the garden, under a flower."
While Nuova was speaking, Beffa had hopped and hummed his way over to
them, and now he broke in with a song, which he sang as he hopped and
danced about them. This is what he sang:
"Work, no play; work all day;
A useful life; a usual life;
The good bee's way,
All day, all day.
Then die and lie
Till Saggia spy
The carrion stuff--
A tug; a shove,
And the friend you love
Is gone to grass:
Ha, ha, alas, is gone to grass.
A noble life; a halted breath:
The epitaph: 'She worked to death.'"
Both Saggia and Nuova listened to Beffa and watched him till he had
finished singing. They both saw clearly his own unhappiness and his own
revolt against the rigor of the bee tradition that demands always the
full sacrifice of the individual for the community. Saggia realized that
Beffa, too, was a "new bee."
Nuova, in the meanwhile, was looking off again into the beautiful
garden; at the green grass and bushes; the many-colored flowers; the
blue sky and warm, bright sunshine over all. She was enchanted. She drew
a long breath of relief and happiness. She turned to Saggia.
"Will they keep me in," she whispered, "if I go back into the hive? If
they will, I shan't go," she added positively.
Saggia looked about again to see if other bees were paying attention to
them. None was.
"No," she said, speaking in a low voice, "they won't keep you. They
won't pay any attention to you as long as you keep busy, coming and
going. You can be a honey-gatherer. The honey-flowers are only a little
way off, there in the garden. But first you must get acquainted with the
outside of the hive and the entrance. Look around. See, we are just by
the side of this big bush, with that long branch hanging over. You can
go out a little way from the platform, then turn around and see how the
hive looks from there. Then go a little farther and look back again.
Then go a little way to one side, and then to the other, and notice
everything that will help you to find your way back. If you get lost,
see if you can't see other honey-gatherers or pollen-foragers flying
with full loads; they are returning to the hive; follow them. As to
collecting the honey, you will learn that easily; in fact, you will be
surprised when you get to the flowers, to find that you already know
how. Be careful and not get into the poppies that shut up on you, and
watch always for the great-crested bee-bird that swoops down on you,
and, peck"--Saggia exaggeratedly imitated a bird's pecking--"and that is
the end. Now, be off for your first flight. But not too far--not for the
first time."
Nuova's face shone with eagerness. "Oh, thank you, Saggia, thank you.
You are good to me. You are different from the others. Thank you,
dearest Saggia."
Nuova started quickly forward toward the edge of the platform. Just then
Beffa, who had been hopping gently about Nuova and Saggia while they
were talking, now hopped and danced along in front of Nuova, singing:
"The new bee and the old world;
Flowers are there and butterflies;
But ugly toads and big bee-birds,
If the old bee thinks she knows,
The new bee knows she doesn't.
Ah, new bee knows the world-old truth,
That the old world's ever new."
Nuova had slowed her steps so that she could hear all of Beffa's little
song, and as he finished she came up to him and touched him caressingly
with one of her antennae. But Beffa shrank from her caress. It meant so
much to him, and yet he knew it meant so little to her. He knew Nuova
liked him; yes, but he knew that he more than liked Nuova: he loved her.
Poor Beffa! Love! A pitiful, deformed drone that could not fly; that
could never be in the Great Courting Chase! And it was only then that
the drones loved; and then only a Princess that could be loved. What he
felt was impossible for a bee to feel; bee tradition told him that; and
yet, he knew that he did feel this impossible thing.
"Beffa, you are good to me too," said Nuova to him; "you and Saggia are
both good to me. And you two are the wisest bees in the hive, for you
know that I am not the same as the other bees. No bees are exactly the
same, I believe. We can't be all exactly alike, and we can't all like
the same things, or think the same way, can we? I wish I could be a
Queen so that I could have you always for my jester; always by to say
funny things and wise things."
Beffa made a grimace--to hide a sob. And he hopped more grotesquely than
ever, while he sang:
"Ah, well, who knows?
New things unheard of may be true,
For every day the world is new.
Ah, well, who knows?
Ah, well, who knows?"
"Good-bye, Beffa," said Nuova. And she stepped to the edge of the
platform, and spread her wings for her first flight, her first plunge
into the outside world of grass and flowers and butterflies and
bee-birds. And just then something happened that postponed this flight.