The Keeper of the Bees by Gene Stratton-Porter

Author:Gene Stratton-Porter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2020-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

13. The Keeper of the Bees

There came a stretch of days during which the awakening of each morning was a small miracle all by itself to Jamie. To awake rested, refreshed, to awake with hope in his heart, to look down the irregular stretch of the garden and on the ceaseless lapping of the sea and to say to himself, “Today I will transplant the lilies. I will trim the poinsettias. I will plant some tomatoes.”

To be able to tell himself that he would do something constructive with the knowledge in his heart that he would have the strength to do it and the uplift in his spirit that would give him joy in the doing; because from that period on, each morning awakening was in a way a new miracle.

It seemed to him that he could feel the purity, the cleanliness of the blood that was flowing through his veins. He knew that the heart in his breast was calming down, was throbbing with a regularity and a surety that he had not known in a long time; it had ceased to flutter, even at a stiff climb. He knew that strength was gradually forging into his limbs and his hands, that his brain was clearing. He was no longer a pusillanimous creature creeping around wondering about how long he could live. He was an upright man with a hopeful outlook, with a definite purpose of beating the game If it lay in the power of himself and Margaret Cameron and California to win. It was a big game that he was playing.

It is in the blood of humanity to fight for life. Anything but death. Jamie sat on the side of the bed and meditated upon how strange it was that human beings should complain of pain, of poverty, of disappointment, of defeat of every kind, and yet the instant death, death that the little Scout said was beautiful, became imminent, humanity armed against it and fought to the last ditch, as he was fighting. He admitted that he might be mistaken, that he might be over hopeful, that Margaret Cameron’s vision might even be colored by her hopes for him. But one thing he could not be mistaken about. His body was not so lean; his hands were surer; he could walk without his legs bowing under him; and he had quit morbid introspection. He had reached the place where several times alone in the evening he had laid aside the bee books and picked up the greatest of all books and read chapter after chapter, and he realized that never once had he done this without closing the sacred volume with the feeling that in some way he had gained something; there had been possibly only one word, some thought, something that remained with him and helped him to fashion the coming day.

Then Jamie arose, picked up a pencil and drew a circle on the calendar around the previous day, and from the circle he ran a line to the margin and lettered it “M.

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