THINGS AS THEY ARE.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXI, Issue 8835, 15 July 1905, Page 1 (Supplement)

THINGS AS THEY ARE.

(By Arthur Collon.)

Karlv one morning the wagonload of Dollivcr children went by Kale Lay cy s on their way to school, those in tile hack seat weeping, those in the middle Beat seriously cheerful, those on the front seat whooping their joys to the young mom. There were nine of them, and they always went by in that way. In their prefiguring of worldly (success and failure, to ridu on the back seat was to be out of favor with fortune, downtrodden by the heel of justice, shorn of authority and importance. To ride on thu front seat was glory, and hence happiness. The middle seat was a.place where triumph and regret were balanced to a calm. There, too, was security of tenure. Conservative Dollivers, who disliked extremes, might hold a middle scat indefinitely, but thu Dollivcr parents saw to it that those who held the front seal yesterday held the back seat to-day. Mr Dollivc. worked that part of the tlaylcy lauds wlii'.h had fallen to Katheriue (iaviey's broiler. ,lohn < layby. .John tiavlov lived on tin. Angevine property tlia'l had come to f.hn with ins wife. It lay ;i half mile down the road, which dropped from billowy hill to hill. On either side of the road the bobolinks sang over the meadows, over .'n. hmtcrciipH ami clover; and down it Hi lI.JIiuT wagonload of vaunting precedence, conservative content, and disgraced ol.v mity, passed clamoring. Kathcrine worked among her flower beds where, mainly, b'llb.uil, arid hardy hut scentless perennials gicw. 'J'hu sound of the clamor died away from her cars. The Dollivcr wagon always went by in that way, but there are critic::! timed when an incident aud a mood make •.■luctrio connnectious. Twenty years back Katherin<i and John Gayloy, and Leonora and Leo Af.„ "ine, used to drive in one wagon to tfi-i ftino ck.pboarded schoolhouso in tho " ige. The emphatic Uaylcys and thu mil ' vines had been prosperous in nuigiuiurinij Iron:'.;" fids f"r some generations. Jloth homosie-.ds occupied now by the Cayley name, j- \ngevine was a student and naturalist, „ leacher of Vet any in » distant college, and long abac;■'. from tho old place, '"hn and Nora Jay ley lent their own v.... load of children to the clapbonrded s. v <uou-:e. Katherino still ruled her <>:\. ■■ v.s and farniß, her cattle and farm ~s, her sullicient kingdom. Wherein is good fortune, if not where the mind is like a, clear sky, tho will like a strong wind, the body healthy as the soil which tho plough heaven over in thu sunlight? When the Dollivcr children were conn by, sho thought of that former wagonload bearing schoolwnrd the blustering John, herself decisive, tho meok-eyed Nora, tho absent-minded Leo. From (bis point her mind travelled forward in tiui< and mood. Presently the slate of it seen. J to ber uncomfortable. The hours j. assod. She planted and transp. ted, but more and more tho garden be I. i I'.vocl distressed, unsatisfied, discordan . Finally she sat up an - examined her state- of mind.

It is true that, properh speaking. !ifo is a three-seated wagon. It :olls alo•■.; with tho sound of happy shouts and th. sound of weeping. All who know its . ullnesu know to-morrows of hope, and 10-itiorrows of foreboding. If one wero privileged by fortune to abide in the exact centre of tho hub of her wheel instead of on the rim, avoiding those exhilarating rising;, -...50 dismal falls, he might notice that lr motion in that place was a simple rota'.;' w of himself upon himself, and that thi* 'elation, by centrifugal forco, produced ii, Uio centre of himself a curious vacuum ntirh nature appeared to abhor. Or, in '<■ >liiver terms, if one always sitß in tho /i.'i.'.dio seat, and observes tho variotios of !ut to front and rear, ono's fato Bootnn '.\\ jn. traat to have a certain monotony nti.-.i; 4 :t It promises nothing but tho contii<u,v to of itself. An all-poworful parentage imi arranged that hopes and foreboding* »!•><!l trumpet and flute in tho cars of griel behind and pleasure before, whereas no '.ui li trumpetings and flutings tremble (then tho seat of rational conservatism. When a woman, of thirty, therefore, has hex years behind her of an unstirred surface, and a wogonload of Dollivers comes by, it may happen to arouse considerations agreeing with considerations already aroused. Kntherine got up suddenly from the turf, strode out through the gato and down tho road toward the Angevino farmhouse. Tb» black-and-white bobolinks sang and exu • ed over the buttercups, and under t. buttercups their demure brown males .. on the nests. Not one nest. Not ou

brown bobolink came up from hor seci.sion to demand her share in tho bread'{> of tho world. Sho cuddled low in company with her eggs and instincts, and v." joyed her admiration of tho ecstatic ding, r, who sang: "Choe, cheel In respect « bobolinks I am one of the lords of cir* tion, though my mate is necessary, anc. t

make a point of noticing her, and the way she admires me is much to her credit, besides proving what I remarked at first, don't you think? Spink, spank, spink." Katherine snorted with disgust. Presently she swung through the gateway of the Angevine farm. Nora Gayley was at work by the window, where the length of the road was in sight, down to the village in the hazy valley. She began conversation as Katherine entered, and her subject was John. "He's gone to town, but he's coming back soon. He thinks the children are not doing well at school, and he means to tell the teacher so." "Humph! What are you ripping that dress for?" "John thinks it ought to hang fuller." "Humph!" Nora flowed on peacefully with her "John thinks," and "John says." "But Leo is going to raise bees," she said, "and has some new kind of hives, and John says he may do very well." "When is Leo coming?" "Why, Kate! John went up yesterday to tell you Leo was to come last night, and about his giving up teaching in the college." "Humph ! So lie did." "Yes, but Leo hasn't decided where to keep the beehives yet, and John thinks" — "For goodness' sake, Nora, don't say 'John thinks.' You think, don't you?" "Why, yes." "And what you think, John says sooner or later, doesn't he? Say so, then! John thinks no more than a June bug." "Why, Kate!" "You talk as if you wanted to be sponged out and rewritten 'John' with a squeaky slate pencil. You think the children are not doing well, and John has gone to tell the school-teacher he thinks so. Y'ou thought your dress ought to hang fuller, and got "John to say so. Humph? Leo will put his beehives wherever he's argued out they ought to be, and I hope he'll get stung." "Perhaps he will," said Nora placidly. "He thinks it won't be so distracting as teaching at the college. John thinks he'll be a very good bee farmer. Leo says he likes to look at industry, and he says bees are more industrious than college students, quite a little."

The noises which had been occurring now and then in the next room for some minutes, stumblings and bumpings, now ended in a clatter of falling tins. "It's Leo coming in," went on Nora, snipping with her scissors. He'll come in when he has picked np the pans." And presently he came and stood in the doorway, looking at them with meditative eyes, as if he might intend to enter when he had come to a right conclusion about the contents of the room. His light blue eyes resembled Nora's, but with a quietness even more mild, persistent, and abstracted than hers. He had a long brown beard, a high, pale forehead, and hair thin about the temples. His manner and expression were not so much grave as reflective and candid, with the candor of the scholar, the even-paced truthfulness which is not so much a moral victory as a condition of the mind. When he spoke, it seemed not for effect on the hearers, but as a simple indication of mental processes. One knew him at sight to be capable of unlimited silence or unlimited speech, each being but a condition of the mind. He stood still in the doorway because the contents of the room seemed problematic to him.

"Don't look at me as if I were a bug!" said Katherine impatiently. "In what way do you want to be looked at?" he asked after a silence. "Like a woman, of course." Leo thought it over, and decided to come in, and came like one to whom walking was but incidental to the progress of an argument. He drifted into a chair in front of Katherine. "Of course everything should be looked at as it is," he said, "and it follows that you must be looked at as a woman. But I don't know that I see what follows from that."

"Nothing follows." "Why, something must follow, I should think. Now there must be subdivisions of ways of looking at women. Bees, for instance, can be looked at in respect to their stings, or their social organisation, or the honey they extract from flowers, or in respect to " "Humph!" said Katherine. "You're worse than ever. Where are you going to put your beehives?" "Here is John," said Nora. "John says they ought to be next the garden. John thinks " "Bother John!" "Or," continued Leo, undisturbed, "in respect to their further revelations to flowers. For until late years the real relations of bees to melliferous flowers was not understood by naturalists, but in point of fact the function of bees toward flowers is that of a kind of matrimonial agency, the honey being merely the bees' profit or commission from the agency." "Nora!" cried John Gayley, coming in, a florid man with a booming voice. "That school-teacher is a fool! Pshaw!" "Show me your beehives," said Katherine to Leo, spring up. "She'll put butter all over him now, and it makes me lick."

She dashed through and out into the garden, which under Nora's tending hands always seemed to grow to more even results than her own. Leo drifted after her, and in the wake of his musings, murmuring to himself, and coming up with, her, continued, murmuring and musing:— "Now there is a book called "The Loves of the Plants," but hardly scientific, and I don't remember by whom. But certainly this is observable, that to most flowers there are affinitive flowers of another sex, and that the bees are communicators between them. On the other hand, these bees themselves have an austere social organisation that condemns to sexless labor all the females but one, in every hive. Now, and finally, if we consider human society, again the case is clear. Therefore I think that your suggestion is a good one, Katherine, very cogent, very much to the point. Looked at as we are, we are a man and a woman. Simply that. Why, then, shouldn"t we be married? In point of fact, oughtn't we to be married, you and I?" "What!" "Because you are right. The case is very clear. First, you are to be looked at as a woman, I as a man, for everything is to be looked at as it is. But you must be mistaken in thinking that nothing follows. The function of the scientist is to ascertain the fact, of the practitioner to adapt his method to the fact ascertained. I am going to apply my knowledge of facts and natural laws to the practical production of the honey of bees. Success is demonstrated to follow. But these same natural laws coexist in human society. Approaching the problem and applying the law in the same manner, it follows,, secondly " Katherine seized him by the arm, and shook him. "Leo Angevine, did or didn't you ask me i to marry vou?"

"Yes—yes, I did. At least, I was going to in a minute."

"Well, then, 1 say 'No! Do you understand ?"

"Yes," said Leo slowly, "and no. I understand in a sense. In another sense" . "I mean it, too." "I wouldn't exaggerate it," "Don't do it aealn." "Oh!"

He paused again and thought this over. 1 hadn't thought of that, but perhaps another time would do better. I think it would. I think you're quite right again. Quite right!" 'msb "Humph!" "Katherine walked away furiously up the hill road to her own house, paying no attention to the bobolinks.

Early the morning following she answered a knocking at the door. Leo stood without, his back to the door, contemplating a team of horses in the drive way and a hay cart piled high with the glass-windowed boxes of his beehives. Katherine looked at his back for a moment, and said sharolv "Well!" *■"

"I think I'll put the beehives at the back of your garden," he said turning blowly, "instead of back of Nora's." "Oh, you do?" "Yes, my idea is that, if people are so placed as naturally to see much of each other, they will become accustomed to it. Then after a while they will become agreeably accustomed to it, provided they are suited to each other. Natural laws as a]

fnle operate gradually. I think probably the rule applies here. If the bees are

here, I shall be hereabout much of the day,, and naturally you will be interested and come out, and in that way we 6hall fall into the habit of talking. It is remarkable, Katherine. Both of your suggestions, first, as to how you ought to be looked at, and, second, that I had better speak about our marriage at another time, were both remarkable suggestions, both thoughtful, very much" "I said nothing of the kind!" "Much to the point. Oh!" He looked surprised, and 6earched his memory—'•Didn't you? I Temember the words, but 1 thought you said something about doing it again, or not doing it again. It's of no importance. Now, my theory is that probably when you think we are well accustomed to each other, you'll make a third suggestion, namely, that the time is come to take up the matter again. In that I way it won't be necessary for me to keep it on my mind, but merely to wait till

you" ■ "You'll wait a long while." "Till you suggest it. Why, not necessarily long, I should think. Natural laws"—

"Take those beehives away!" cried Katherine. "I won't have them here." She slammed the door in his face, and 6at down on the other side of the room with a firm expression. She heard the noise of the creaking of

wheels. She started, hesitated a moment, then crossed to the window. The gleam of compunction in her mind changed to indignant amazement. He was not driving back to the high-Toad, but on past the barns, and aTound to the Tear of the garden. •

"Humph!" she said, and sat down again. Leo unloaded ! his beehives and was busy about them the greater part of an hour. At the end of that time he came by again, and knocked at the door and opened it. | "I didn't tell you the entire truth, Katherine," he said. "One of my reasons for placing the beehives theT© was that there is no white clover below, but it is very plentiful in your meadows. Now while clover is particularly good for the spring honey. Consequently" "Go away!" cried Katherine. "Shutthe door! I don't care where you put your beehives." The Dollivers ceased going by in their wagon, three-seated' and symbolic, to school. The summer vacation was come. A new sound aTose in Katherine's garden, "the murmur of innumerable bees." These, travelling with dusty thighs from clover to cloveT, —busy carriers to St. Valentine, postal express to amorous plants, go-betweens to vegetable affinities, proxies to wedded flowers, workers to ends they knew not of, —bore back to their storehouses the wages of their fragrant service. Poor laboring bees, victims of the iron policy of the hive ! How eagerly they pushed their blunt faces into the red-and-white. tufts of clover! Early in the morning the low drowsy humming began, and reached the height of vibrating eneTgy in the heat of noon, dying away as tho twilight crept upward from the valley. Leo's double row of glass-windowed hives stretched from corner to corner of the garden, and increased as new swarms broke away, colonies sent out from too populous motheT cities. He went among them with the slow movements of a temperament contented with nature's gradual ways. When your bees aTe new to their boxes, you must tarry their settling, and when they are settled you must tarry their waxen architecture, their queen bee's deliberate processes, then? travels and returns innumerable. Then you must tarry the growth of the young in the cells, the new swarms, the queen's nuptials, and all the customs of the hives. Still tarrying, so you harvest your honey. So tarrying moves the bee farmer, and him, deliberate, the bees never sting. So nature moves, whom the student observes and the 6age interprets; and the lover sets his pace to nature's pace, and has her analogies on his side, who resolves:

"Make me a willow cabin, at your gate, And call upon my soul within the house." Seeing thai his soul has gone within, he encamps without, prepared for varieties of weather, and, above all, prepared to tarry. It was Leo's custom, in passing the side door daily, to open it, and, standing there, to discourse whatever was in his mind. Impatience was not normal to him. He began to observe symptoms of it in. himself, and thought them singular. "Katherine," he said at last, "have you noticed the effect our companionship has had on you? It seems to me it ought to be evident now."

"Hasn't had any effect." Leo turned the statement over and examined it.

"Why, I don't understand -why it hasn't. But that explains -why you've made no more suggestions about our marriage. Now, the effect on me began to be noticeable some time ago. First: whenever we happened some day to omit this conversation there seemed to me to be a hiatus. A hiatus is an omission which obscures the meaning of the text, in this case, of the day's events. Any such day looked to me rather foolish, and futile. Even my interest in bees was very much lessened that day. This was the phenomenon of your absence. Next I turned to the things taking place in my consciousness whenever I saw you. If anything, they were more singular still. Sometimes they might be described as a great number of minute expansions and explosions, something like boiling water. At other times there was a sense of compression, at other times of emptiness, at others of a slight chill Tanging from the back of the head to the small of the back, at others of giddiness, or, again, of elation." "How long have you been carrying on inside in this ridiculous way?" Katherine's indignation seemed to be genuine, but almost too violent. Leo wondered why she should resent it so di-

rectly. "I noticed the hiatus on the twentyfifth of June. The analogy to boiling water occurred to me on July fifth. The chill I noticed on the seventh, the giddiness on the sixteenth, and so on." Katherine was silent.

"I put them all down in my notebook. I wish," he said, turning in the the doorway to go, "I wish, Katherine, you would make careful note of your sensations when they appear, and describe them to me," and he went away. "I just won't," said Katherine to herself.

"Love," said Leo, moving about among his beehives, "is like a bee, which is born with a sting at one end, but for the honey at the other end one has far to seek'" "It is like a swarm of bees," he said an hour later, " a nervous somewhat with a queen bee in the middle." At the end of the morning he climbed the garden fence, and entered these analogies in his notebook, together with the following quadratic equation:— "L. A. plus K. G., equals infinity. L. A. —K. G., equals merely a bee farmer. Eheu. Adding these, we have 2. L. A. equals infinity, plus a bee farmer. Hence it is proved that He who falls in love doubles his personality."

He looked dreamily over the muttering hives, at the mown meadows, the pastures dappled with flowers, the green woods, the village far away in the hazy valley. "Love is like summer," he said, and entered this final analogy in his notebook: "Which makes the earth pleasant to look at."

So the season crept on, from the time of mown hay to the time of tassled corn and the yellowing of the oat fields., On a certain morning Katherin heard a clamoring in the road, and "looking from I the trellises of her beau vines, saw the Dolliver children passing in their wagon. School time was come again. "Humph," she said, and picked bean pods the faster. I Yellow butterflies fluttered about the vines. Beyond the garden fence Leo was taking neat squares of honey from the hives and packing them in separate tiers. The noisy Dollivers were gone by. "Hope you're satisfied, Kate Gayley!" she went on, indignantly talking to herself. "Been sprawling over all three seats these two months, haven't you? Like it, don't you? Been carrying on inside you like a teakettle. Been having cold prickles in your back hair. Been feeling empty' one minute and giddy the next, same as another fool. Humph! -Leo Angevuw, • too. He's obstinate, I'll say that for him. "Kate!" Leo looked over the fence, j He held one of the box Mves under nJfl

arm, and aroud his head buzzed its interested populace. Some clung to his beaTd and hair afteT their confiding familiar habits with him. "Kate, I've been consulting authorities on the subject of this experience of ours." "Ours!" —"And either it has never been treated adequately, or there neTer was one precisely like mine." "What's the matter now."

"Did you ever know <i any authorities on the subject who described it as like eating molasses on pickks?" "No," said Katherine, violently, "I never did! It isn't!"

Her speech seemed to admit some direct experience, but he <Ld not notice the admission, or did not comment on it. "Yes, it is. I thought of different tasting things, and selected molasses and pickles. Then I tried frhtm together, and found it to he so."

"Humph! Did you lik* it " "It was interesting," he said thoughtfully, "but it was a taste that seemed to require too great readjustment of one's point of view. No, on tho whole, I don't think I like it."

He turned away. Katherine went on picking beans. "Molasses and pickles!" She felt depressed. Leo and his sensations ! Humph! But it was depressing to think that he might begin not to like his sensations.

"Kate!" This -voice came from the direction of the house. John Gayley strode down the walk. "Kate, I've got something to say." "You mean Nora's been thinking. What does she think?" John stood among the beans, and rubbed dubiously his chin, which was large, round, and tending to repetition. "Well," he said at last, "that's so. You think NoTa leads me by the nose. So she does. I know it sometimes, but mostly I forget it. It's a good thing. She marTied me before I knew what she was up to. My stars ! What would have become of me if she hadn't? What's the use. That's what I've got to say. What's the use? Why don't you hitch up? Nora and I are all Tight, all right. So you'll be, all right. We fit each other like a buckle and astrap. So'll you." John was thunderous with emphasis. "Oh! NoTa thinks that, does she?" "Why, she leads me by the nose. That's the Angevine of it. So'll Leo do with you." "He will, will he?' "Sometimes I know it, but mostly I forget it. So'll you. That's the Gayley of it."

"I won't either!" "And it's a good thing all round, a good thing. What's tho use? That's what I've got to say. What's the use?" But Katherine was gone. She seemed to leave a fiery wake behind her, like the tail of a comet. She burst through the garden gate, and out among the beehives. "Leo Angevine! Take your beehives and go home. Oh !" she screamed, "I'm stung I Oh ! I'm stung again !" At the corner of the garden stood an arbor shelter of grape-vines, thick, and green with entrances within and without the garden. Thither Katherine fled from the bees, and Leo followed. Thither John

Gayley tiptoed, with expression extravagant, feet lifted extravagantly high, and peered through the leaves. Katherine's bare arm was extended. Leo held it and applied dabs of mud. She was stating her mind with emphasis : "Humph! I don't like being in love. It hurts!" "That I've observed also." "It's either always way Tip or way down." "I have noted that, too." "It catches like measles." "Oh! why, I hadn't thought of it's being contagious. And yet, why not?" Well, perhaps we'll like it, when we're used to it." TheTe was a pause. Leo said—"Those are very cogent suggestions, Kathexine, very much to the point." John Gayley tiptoed away extravagantly