by H. F. Heard
“Unless, of course,” I said jauntily to myself, “he intends to turn on me, pelting me with honey, and so suffocate me. Clarence with his Malmsey; Sydney in his honey.”
Joking with oneself sometimes works, but if it doesn’t, you are all the worse off. I don’t know whether it worked or not then. Perhaps it did, for at least I remember making aloud to Heregrove some little jest about last year’s mare’s nest when we stood rather pointlessly looking at the wisps of sodden hay that still lined the floor. I think my titter or chuckle did not sound too forced, though Heregrove did not join in. In fact, he seemed hardly to hear me. Where before he had seemed all too vigilant, now he seemed positively absent-minded. When he spoke he seemed almost to be speaking to himself and forgetting me.
“I used to fasten her up in this stall,” he said, putting down his armful of honey and going over to the manger.
Out of courtesy I followed. Perhaps, I thought, he was really attached to the horse. Some misanthropes have to find an outlet for their affection. For myself, I don’t dislike people—just don’t require them—so I suppose I don’t have to have pets.
“The little mare,” he went on, “could look out of this window. I couldn’t give her much exercise, and horses, you know, get bored if kept without anything to do; take to crib-biting and air-swallowing. But she had a nice view here and could look out at things and did, and used to whinny at birds and dogs.”
The man was a sentimental recluse suffering from incipient brain-softening, I concluded. I must humor him and get away.
“Just look,” he said, straining to see out the stall window, which was high and hard to see out of because of the manger underneath it. “If you look right, you see away to the road; straight ahead, meadows for quite a mile; and down to the extreme left, the road and the tops of the village roofs.”
I stretched up to oblige him by looking out. To my relief he moved away.
“The little horse had a fine view, hadn’t she?” he asked.
“Yes,” I replied. “Yes.”
After all, the man was only a fool and could become dangerous only if one insulted the memory of his dear departed mare (who perhaps in some way was, as psychologists say, “surrogate” for his dead wife). I would play the part he wanted me to play and as friends we would part—for good.
“Yes,” I said, straining up again and looking all round the view. “There are the woods and the meadows and the village roofs. As pretty an outlook as one could wish.”
I turned around; I was alone. Panic took me. I began to rush toward the door. I noticed the honey still on the floor. That would not have checked me. What did check me was to find Heregrove in my path. He must have seen my alarm, but he showed no sign that he did.
“Yes,” he remarked, quietly carrying on the conversation, “it’s a nice little view.”
“Where did you go?” I blurted out.
He looked surprised. “I was only looking in at the other stall. There’s room for a couple of horses here. The rats get in that side. I must set a trap there.” And then he did something which surprised me and yet queerly reassured me. “I’ve cut my finger on a nail I didn’t see down there when I was lifting a board to see the rat’s hole better,” he remarked, holding out his right hand. There was a piece of stained rag half wound round his index finger. “I always keep disinfectant about. Apt to get a nasty place if you don’t dress it at once when you work in stables and gardens. I can’t tie this up, though. Would you be so good just to knot it for me?”
The fact that the man had hurt himself and would put himself in my power placed me again quite at my ease. He might be cracky, pretty certainly was, but he was certainly harmless.
“Gladly,” I said. I did feel glad with an almost unreasonable relief.
I am fairly deft with my fingers and wound the bandage neatly, but a lot of the dressing, which he had put on very clumsily, got on my fingers and even on the cuff of my coat. In fact, I suggested taking off the whole bandage because it was clear that owing to his gaucheness he had got more of the disinfectant on the outside of the lint than on the inside. He wouldn’t hear of that.
“No, no, it will do finely as it is; don’t bother.”
“But are you sure,” I pressed, “that the dressing has covered the cut? And oughtn’t you have washed it out?”
“I did,” he replied. “There’s a tap in the other stall. The cut was quite small, though deep. And this disinfectant, though it hasn’t a nice smell, is quite wonderful with cuts.”
Well, he knew his own business best, and my job was to make a good getaway as soon as I could. Certainly the smell of the disinfectant was highly unpleasant; rank was the only word for it. I remembered as a child (smells bring back memories startlingly) being taken to the Zoo and becoming quite nauseated in the small-cat-house. “Small but strong,” my father had laughed; but I was retching when I got outside. And the smell of this dressing brought back that memory so strongly that suddenly I thought I should vomit. I hesitated to ask whether I could wash my fingers, but as Heregrove did not make the offer and my own overmastering wish was to get out of the stable, out of the place, out of his company, I started incontinently for the door.
“But your honey,” he said.
I had to bear being loaded with the stuff, had to fumble for my purse. But at last we were going down the garden path and I was headed for home and freedom.
As we reached the gate, Heregrove remarked, “I made a poor bundle.”
“It’s all right,” I protested.
“Well, I think I can arrange it a little better in your hands, so it won’t fall before you reach home.” And he began to pat the paper and arrange my sleeve and pull out the lapel of my coat, which he said would get crushed.
I simply hate being pawed; and being pawed by a man who, however groundlessly, you mistrust, and who, with every pat, puts a revolting smell under your nose—all that turns an insult into an injury. Literally I broke away from him.
“Thank you,” I stuttered, “thank you. Thank you. Quite all right. Will do nicely—splendidly.”
I sidled off rapidly with my load, like a small crab which just scuttles under a rock before a gull gets a firm hold on it and pecks it to death. I glanced back in the dusk; the last thing I saw was Heregrove making his way again across to the stables.
I hustled on until I was safe once more in my own place. I had never come back so upset from anything. My return from my upset with Mr. Mycroft was child’s play compared with this. Then I had been irritated and a little nervous; now I felt something beside which that had been almost amusing. For a moment I was so spent and foolishly anxious that I felt I would have been positively welcoming if I had heard that assured old voice at the door. It would have been reassuring and I needed reassurance.
Chapter V
THE FLY IS MISSED
Still, just as after my upsetting visit to Mr. Mycroft, so on this morning succeeding my latest upset, I woke with every care off my mind. “Perhaps when you live very securely by yourself a little upset, even a little fright, is occasionally good for you,” I thought to myself as I lay in bed listening to Alice laying the breakfast things downstairs. “It may stir the liver, or the glands, or something which needs a slight emotional rub-down now and then.” Certainly the sound of one’s comfortable life being got ready again for one to enjoy was particularly pleasant that morning. I bathed leisurely, the more to relish my enjoyment, and also in the hope that, if I dallied, Alice would have, in her argot, slipped up the village and popped in a little ’ouse’old shopping, and so I would be quite secure in the unadulterated pleasure in my own reserved way of life.
My plan worked. When I got down, the house was all for myself. The kettle simmered on its trivet with a sense of completely reassuring, comfortable patience. The toast was in the grate. I like my toast hard but hot. The eggs were ready to be put in the spirit-stove boiler, which was simmering also with well-bred efficiency. I dropped the eggs in, looking at my wrist watch, and
brought the toast onto the table. Took from the hob the warmed teapot—brown earthenware—I keep my Georgian silver for afternoon tea—gave it the three spoonsful of Lap-sang and poured the boiling water neatly onto the leaves.
It was, as it happens, the fragrant smoky smell, faintly tarry, but very refined, which brought back that abominable disinfectant of Heregrove’s into my thoughts. I was (I always am) in my dressing gown at breakfast. I remembered now that on coming in I had put my jacket in the wardrobe, meaning to have it sent to the cleaners. I had carefully washed my hands, but I could, when I looked closely, still see a slight discoloration on the sides of my two fingers, and when I raised them to my nose I could yet detect very faintly, but still unmistakably, that smell. But you had to put your nostrils quite near to get it. I thought, though, I would see what another scouring would do. Landing the eggs, I ran up the stairs. After a rapid scrub, which I had to own did not diminish much that last, queer, clinging taint, I decided I must keep my head up and it must and would wear off. Passing through the bedroom, however, I thought that I had better see how the jacket itself had fared. I took it out of the wardrobe, with some apprehension, but there, too, the smell seemed mainly to have evaporated. It did smell, of course, if you put your nose right on it, but you wouldn’t notice it a few inches away. As I’m very forgetful about dull routine details such as laundering, I took the jacket down with me and placed it on a chair beside the table.
“That will remind me,” I thought, “to tell Alice, when she comes back, to have it cleaned.”
Then I again marshaled the table, but a moment later I was again on my feet. Alice had put out for me that last running comb, about which she had spoken—as a mute reminder, I supposed, should I have failed to act. Her observations had been correct: nearly all the honey had gone out of it and, as she had neatly changed the plate, I was left with practically nothing but solid wax to eat. I am economical, but wax is not very pleasant or good for you. I had my new supplies, won with considerable discomfort. A few steps into the larder and there they were—neatly unpacked and stacked, each covered with a pyrex baking dish on white plates ranged along the slate shelf. I lifted one of these and brought a fine, sound comb with me to the breakfast table.
The windows were open, for though the day was not yet hot, it was clear and fine and the fire kept my feet warm. I was munching away in that quiet unthinking state of mind which is perhaps the nicest thing about meals by oneself, when one becomes like a placid animal chewing the cud under a tree in summer, so much at my ease that I was really not thinking of anything in particular. Everything seemed generally all right. So I can’t say when I first became aware that this was no longer quite so.
Our hearing is said to be our most vigilant, unsleeping sense—last to go when we lose consciousness and first to come back when we regain it, even before we know where we are. I think it was hearing something without attending to it which gave me my first sense of undefined uneasiness. Humming sounds are generally reassuring, but this, for some reason, wasn’t. Then a couple of bees flew in at the window. I thought at first they were wasps (though we have had few this year) after my honey. I held my knife ready to knock out the robbers directly they should alight. They zoomed above the honey but did not alight on it, and then suddenly swooped on the coat hanging on the chair. They settled on the sleeve and lapel, and at that moment the hum broke into full cry, as though a pack had viewed their fox. I saw a dense swarm of bees sweep down outside, wheel before the window, and come pouring into the room. They rushed, without a moment’s check, to join the few scouts already settled on the coat. In a moment it was black with them. I started back, for I could see they were not investigating. They weren’t even crawling about. Each was convulsively clinging to the worsted: they were stinging and restinging the cloth, piercing it through with their deadly little sabers.
Fortunately, the staircase was near me, and the chair with the coat on it at the other side of the table, or this story would have been written, if at all, by another hand. I scrambled toward my escape. My movement, however, must have given some alarm to the swarm, for quite a large group detached itself from the coat and swung into the air to investigate me.
I thought I could still manage safely to beat my retreat, when one bee, swinging past me, went within a few inches of my hand. Like a shot he threw himself on it. I knocked him off, trod on him, and threw myself up the stairs, flinging my dressing gown over my head to shield, if possible, my face and neck. This desperate stroke evidently made such a whirlwind in the small staircase that it momentarily drove down my flying attackers; but I saw, as I turned, that the whole swarm had now left the coat and were wheeling round to fling themselves after me.
A moment’s wild scramble and I was through the bedroom, dashing over the furniture, had gained the bathroom and slammed the door. Rushing to the window, I slammed that down. Outside the door I heard the angry buzz and even the sinister little taps of the bees flinging themselves in murderous frenzy on the panels. A moment later I saw a couple come crawling from under the door. I stamped on them and felt an unpleasant glee as their bodies crunched on the tile floor. They were deadly as flying snakes, but my heel could still bruise their heads once they were forced to crawl.
I had begun to feel (very unreasonably, considering my actual situation) something of the thrill of victory, when, suddenly, a sensation like a mixture of an electric shock and a severe scald shot along my leg. Tearing up my pajama trouser, I saw a bee, its sting thrust into my shin a few inches above the ankle. I struck it down and crushed it and wedged a towel along the threshold crack of the door. I must have carried the brute with me into the bathroom. I remember looking over myself to see if there were any others, and then looking back at the sting, which had already swollen into a large black lump like a rotten chestnut. Then the pain, which had been rising like a tide, became so intense that I must have fainted.
The next thing I saw was that the door was open and the lock forced. That vexed me.
“The jamb is broken,” I began, petulantly. “Who did that?”
I was addressing myself to someone I sensed was near me. Then I realized how odd it was to be talking lying on the bathroom floor, whether the lock had been smashed or no. I remembered everything in a flash.
“Shut the door!” I cried.
“It’s all right,” said a deliberately soothing voice. I was just going to try to get up when the speaker bent over me. “Don’t move, just for a moment,” he advised. “We’ve put a towel under your head. I’d just like to listen to your heart and have a look at that place on your leg before you get up.”
It was young Jones, who, I had heard, was the new village junior medico—a smart young junior to help elderly Dr. Abel. Quite a bright fellow, I’d heard people at the post office remarking. He had his stethoscope sounding me in a moment, remarking, as he listened, “Um, all right now.” Then to me, “Sorry to be so professional as well as intruding. Truth is, when your maid suddenly haled me in I thought at first sight she was right and you were in for something ugly.”
I caught sight of Alice’s face; she was standing in the bedroom wearing that expression of mingled woe and triumph, distraction and self-importance, which is the proper guise of those who have the distinction of having a tragedy in their house. That both amused and reassured me. I still felt a lot of pain as well as numbness in the leg; it was burning as though being scorched before a fire and throbbing as though it would burst. But I was apparently safe, for there was no menacing buzz to be heard and my two attendants seemed wholly concerned for me and unaware of any possibility of peril to themselves.
“How did you manage to wound yourself like that when you fell?” Dr. Jones asked, turning round from examining my shin.
“How did I manage!” I exclaimed. “Look at those dead bees on the floor! I was attacked when at breakfast by a swarm and only got in here just in time. That, thank heaven, is the one sting I suffered. Half a dozen and your help would have come too late.”<
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“Attacked by a swarm coming into the house and going for you?” he replied, with obvious incredulity. “Besides, I have never seen anyone react in that way to bee venom. You must be highly allergic to such irritations.”
“Highly allergic to irritation!” I shot back. “Those bees were no normal bees. Those bees were sent—”
Dr. Jones turned to Alice and said, in the sort of aside voice which doctors use when they are getting a second opinion on a patient’s statement, “Did you see any bees when you came in?”
“Well, sir, now you comes to ask me, p’r’aps there was a few about, as you might say, or maybe they was wapses, for we’ve hardly a waps till now, and of course we ought to be having ’em all along with the plums and such—”
“But you didn’t see a swarm of bees?”
“I was just a-coming through the gate with me ’ands full up with parcels, for I’d slipped up to the village to pop in a little shopping before the shops get too full with the quality to get things quickly. As I say, perhaps there was a bit o’ buzzing about, but what give me the turn was as soon as I’d put foot in the ’ouse to see the tablecloth all pulled awry, toast an’ honey and egg on the carpet, napkin on the stairs, bedroom chair flung over and bathroom door shut ’n’ locked, an’ the ’ouse still as a death. My grandpa died of a fit just that way. Just flew off, you might say. So I rushed out to get ’elp and there by ’eaving’s mercy were you a-going by.”
It was clear that, however long Alice talked, this would be the substance, the sole substance of it. Dr. Jones would list me as a prize allergic, thrown into a seizure by a single bee sting, which any normal person would take with as little fuss as stubbing his toe against a table. Well, perhaps it was best. The bees, baffled for a moment, and losing close track of their prey, had evidently veered off as swiftly as a line-squall. And even if my story were told, who would believe it?
