IV



THE HUM OF INSECTS


It makes all the difference whether you hear an insect in the bedroom
or in the garden. In the garden the voice of the insect soothes; in
the bedroom it irritates. In the garden it is the hum of spring; in
the bedroom it seems to belong to the same school of music as the bizz
of the dentist's drill or the saw-mill. It may be that it is not the
right sort of insect that invades the bedroom. Even in the garden we
wave away a mosquito. Either its note is in itself offensive or we
dislike it as the voice of an unscrupulous enemy. By an unscrupulous
enemy I mean an enemy that attacks without waiting to be attacked. The
mosquito is a beast of prey; it is out for blood, whether one is as
gentle as Tom Pinch or uses violence. The bee and the wasp are in
comparison noble creatures. They will, so it is said, never injure a
human being unless a human being has injured them. The worst of it is
they do not discriminate between one human being and another, and the
bee that floats over the wall into our garden may turn out to have
been exasperated by the behaviour of a retired policeman five miles
away who struck at it with a spade and roused in it a blind passion
for reprisals. That or something like it is, probably, the explanation
of the stings perfectly innocent persons receive from an insect that
is said never to touch you if you leave it alone. As a matter of fact,