I thought he might have answered my questions, but, without knowing why,
I started off on an excursion, and surprised myself at feeling so much
stronger. At least I could scamper along without swaying and staggering
and clutching at every bee and thing I met. I began to feel brave and big.
As I went forward I encountered a stream of workers. They were humming
a home-coming song as they hurried up the combs to deposit their loads
of honey. I overheard some of them saying that the dark had dropped on
them suddenly out of a cloud and that rain had begun to fall. I could
not then understand what terrors were couched in these words—rain and
darkness—else I might better have appreciated the thanksgiving hymn
which these late-returning, rain-draggled workers were uttering. In days
to come I was to learn what danger meant, for more than once I, too,
was forced to flee before a storm in the growing blackness, bearing a
load almost too much for my wings; and to spend a night in the woods,
hiding as best I might under a leaf, and quaking at the nameless fears
that beat about me in the gloom. There was no comfort even in the tiny
lights that glowed over my head, nor in the small voices that called to
me in the night. It was not fear that I should be lost that oppressed
me, but that the load I had gathered with so much travail should never
reach the storehouse upon which the life of the colony depended, for
food was necessary to life. And life? I knew naught of it. But was it
consciousness of imperative duty that made me shake in every passing
wind? Even to this day my own life has given me no concern. I scarcely
know that I have any interest in living, apart from serving, apart from
the lives of these, my little brothers.
I noticed as I moved onward that the workers brought home no pollen.
Their baskets were empty. I thought this strange and inquired about it,
learning that the flowers yield pollen more freely in the morning; that
the sun, wind, and insects tend to dissipate it, and that, therefore,
bread was largely gathered in the early hours. I also learned that as a
food it was far less important than honey; and that honey, too, was more
abundant when the day was young. I knew that the incoming hordes were
now laden with honey, and instinctively where it was carried, for my own
sac was still stuffed nearly to bursting.
On I went without thinking, at each turn facing laden and singing
workers. It never occurred to me that my progress would eventually lead
me to the door of the hive, which was the boundary between my home and
the wide universe that spread away to the stars. Many things there were
that stopped me on the way. The last laden workers had passed, and I
found myself still wandering on. The night song of the hive was already
submerging the hymn of the late-arriving workers; but the two were
strangely commingling, the one flowing into the other, even as the shades
of twilight merge with the dark.
A mysterious feeling was creeping over me. I felt as though something
imponderable was pressing upon me. Suddenly a whiff of air dashed in
my face and I stopped, stricken with an indefinable fear. Then, the
reassuring note of the guards at the door brought again my courage, and
boldly I walked out into the night.
Several of the guards ran up to me, smelling me strangely, then let me
pass. I must have been wandering as in a trance; all around me the night
lay black and the soft wind shook my wings, and the little stars seemed
hanging just over my head. I was seized with a wild desire to try my
wings, to fly into the beckoning unknown. But my wings could not lift me,
and happily one of the guards, seeing me approach too near the edge of
the alighting-board, cautioned me and suggested my going back into the
hive.
As I turned in I cast one long look back into the great black space that
lay outside, and wondered and wondered. Overhead the sprinkled lights,
like flowers in the gardens of heaven, leaned a little wistfully toward
the earth; and near, ever so near it seemed, a wonderfully bright light
shone, calling me to fly into its embrace.
“What is that?” I asked of the gentle guard.
“The Master’s lamp,” he said.
The Master’s lamp! What might that be? But I asked no more questions.
There was too much of mystery around me. I clambered over the combs as
rapidly as I might, back to my cell; but even there it was a long time
before I slept, so spellbound was I, so stirred to the depths. Vast
harmonies seemed athrob in the outer world, and one dim undercurrent of
tone, the night song of my hive, ebbed and flowed ceaselessly around me.
Gradually I seemed to lose my identity and to merge with the spirit of
the things about me.
In a flash I felt that I was no longer just a helpless little bee,
floating about in the maze of life, intent on my own purposes, bound no
whither, owning no duties and driven by no destinies. Up to the moment
I had given no concern to things beyond dipping into honey-cells for
food, to exploring the house in which I found myself, to groping about
with eyes wide and ears that missed no sound. But now I had been shaken
with new desires. I seemed to have climbed out of myself, even as I had
crawled out of my cell on that other day, now but a memory—so far away it
seemed. My thoughts, my activities, my soul were no longer my own—they
belonged to my little brothers buzzing in the alcoves or busy with
endless tasks which I seemed to know without knowing.
[Illustration: CHAPTER FOUR