Lives of the Fur Folk Part 6

With February--the famine month--the love season began in earnest. All the other rabbits who lived in the outlying collection of burrows with the White Doe, forsook them and wandered down into the woods; while up on Garry's Hill the ground was dotted with the little tufts of grey wool, ripped from one rival by another. The White Rabbit paid no attention to these changes at first, but led her own contented spinster life. The Wild Folk concern themselves very little about the doings of their neighbours; and had every rabbit in Knockdane been suddenly wiped out of existence, the White One would not have altered her habits in a single particular.

It was not until the woodc.o.c.k began to mate that the White Rabbit found out that she was lonely. Then she left her burrow and went out into the woods, which was a dangerous thing to do in daylight. The robin was reciting his marriage vows to his mate under a holly bush; and the pigeons, recklessly bold, flapped lazily from tree to tree.

The White Rabbit sc.r.a.ped enthusiastically for a few minutes, for she felt impelled to unaccountable energy that day, but when she had dug a few inches she broke off, for she could not remember what to do with the hole when she had finished it. Near at hand a buck rabbit stamped, and presently another, larger than he, came out of the bushes and fought him. The White Doe hopped towards them, but being stranger rabbits they broke off their tournament, and fled at the sight of her whiteness. She saw many rabbits that day, and half of them ran away, and the other half were indifferent. The White Rabbit had never felt so lonely before--not even when her mother had been taken from her.

Presently she came upon a luckless rabbit which had been killed by a stoat an hour before. The White Rabbit did not know this, and went up to sniff at him. Here at last was something which would not run from her; but when she smelt the fresh blood and saw the wound behind his ear, she turned and galloped away. There was fear everywhere. She was feared by her own kind; and she again feared the blood-hunters. A wren caught sight of her and began to scold--it, too, was afraid. The White Rabbit was very sorrowful.

The Love Longing was not always so strong. Sometimes for weeks at a time she lived alone as happily as heretofore. Then it would break out again, and send her into the woods; but she never found a mate, although young rabbits played outside the burrows, and the birds were all nesting. So March turned to April, and April to May, and the lowest bracken fronds opened like green wings before the crimped tops were uncurled. Then again one day the Love Longing came upon the White Rabbit, and she went to the Dark Pool where the Fur Folk go to drink.

There are willow saplings all round, and the chaffinches were collecting the down for nest-lining, for the seeds were ripening. On the further side the White Doe pa.s.sed a rabbit's 'registry' tree. Most woods have their own registry where the buck rabbits repair in spring, and each tries to sc.r.a.pe away the bark and set the imprint of his teeth a little higher than his fellows. Most of the rabbit duels take place near these trees. Sometimes it is a young sycamore, or a laurel, or a beech, which is chosen out from among the rest; but in this part of Knockdane it was a willow sapling, peeled and scored for two feet above the ground, and with little paths, beaten hard by rabbity feet, converging to it from every direction. As the White Doe pa.s.sed by, she saw a brown buck rabbit, on his hind legs, leisurely rubbing his whiskers against the trunk; and hopping up quietly behind him she touched him with her white nose. He darted away a few paces, and sat rigid. The White Doe approached him beseechingly and caressed him with a whisker kiss; but he only stared horror-stricken at her wonderful pink eyes, beat his fore paws once or twice in surprise and dismay, and scudded out of sight.

All that day the Love Longing would not be satisfied, and when the White Rabbit fed outside her burrow after dark, the restlessness in her grew so strong that she crept from the shadow of the trees to Garry's Hill. She had scarcely ever visited her native warren, and on the rare occasions on which she wandered thither, the whole burrow had been thrown into a panic. It was dark on the hill, for the moon was behind the clouds. The rabbit people were all munching busily, and the White Rabbit, happy in a sense of companionship, crouched near them.

Now and then one bunny, in the sheer joy of living, skipped three feet into the air, and the older bucks chivied the younger ones in and out of the earthworks which many generations of excavators had thrown up.

Two rabbits were playing 'tig' on the slope, dodging one another backwards and forwards. The White Doe watched their twinkling white scuts for a minute, and then, just as the moon broke from behind the clouds, with a hop, skip, and jump she launched herself playfully between the couple. They stood still for one paralysed instant, and then, stamping frantically, the whole community stampeded in every direction. The White Rabbit did not realise that she was responsible for this flight, but, believing it to mean cat or stoat, she bolted with the rest. She plunged down a burrow and scurried along never-ending corridors and side-ways. She could hear footsteps which fled before her, and all round the pa.s.sages rang with m.u.f.fled danger signals. At last she entered a hide-up, and hearing shuffling feet, explored it to its end. In the dark she collided with something which was furry and soft, and felt twitching whiskers brush her face.

Another rabbit had taken refuge there; and surely it was--yes, it was--the noses of the Fur Folk are as trustworthy as our eyes--the same who had repulsed her in the wood that morning. But obviously he did not recognise her in the darkness, for he cowered to her at the end of the pa.s.sage. There was comfort in companionship, and they huddled together, fearful lest something stealthy and terrible should sniff its way towards them. The White Rabbit thought of stoats, but the other dreaded nameless things--magic things, white things--which leaped out of the gloom. Every now and then the White Rabbit turned her head and nestled against the soft fur of the other's shoulder.

Here was rabbit--normal rabbit, brown rabbit--and yet he did not shrink from her, for in her turn she felt a tremulous nose sniff at her ears....

An hour afterwards the business of the Garry's Hill warren went on as usual. The White Doe was still below ground, but after midnight she came out with the Brown Buck behind her. The rest of the warren stamped, but little recked she. If the Brown Buck was staggered at the sight of her in the moonlight, he did not show it. White or brown, did he not know the scent of her who had come to him in the burrow, and who perhaps had stood between him and the misty terror that had leaped upon him in the dark. This was rabbit--strange, it is true--but still rabbit and wholly lovable. He put his head under her chin that she might scratch his ears, and this is the greatest token of esteem among the rabbit kind. Thus the spell was broken, and the fear which was round the White Doe was gone, for she had become as other rabbits.

She had entered into her inheritance, the inheritance of motherhood--the highest happiness known in the woods.

They nestled side by side under the old whitethorn which, for once in a way, forgot to moan as the wind went down. The moon set, and the fur of the White Doe gleamed in the starlight. But now the rabbits around only munched unconcernedly. There was no more mystery about her; for, in the words of the greatest love song ever penned, and as true of the beasts as of the men for whom it was written, she was her beloved's, and his desire was towards her.

CHAPTER V

UNDER THE MOON

A little band of forewandered plover flapped southwards drearily. To the east the mountains were still enc.u.mbered with the great snowclouds which had driven over Knockdane an hour before, and converted Garry's Hill into a white sugar loaf. Now it was evening, and as the red sun sank, he flushed the fields with a dream-pink, while the moon struggled over the stormy hills.

Cuni hopped out into the cold air and shook each paw delicately, for the snow clung to them. Her eyes looked bigger and her ears longer than when we saw her last, for the cruel February weather, which spared neither the Fur nor the Feather Folk, had pressed the rabbits sorely. For weeks frost and thaw had alternated night by night, and slowly killed every green leaf and blade of gra.s.s. Sometimes cold rain fell and soaked the woods, at others snow came and covered them.

Within five hundred yards of the warren there was not a tuft of gra.s.s large enough to make a 'form'; and the rabbits lay below ground in their damp burrows, and tried to deaden the hunger pain with sleep.

Although it was scarcely an hour since the snowstorm had blown by, Fluff-b.u.t.ton had already left Garry's Hill for the woods; and a neat trail--two little tentative punches of the forefeet over-pa.s.sed by the bolder impression of the hind--indicated which path he had taken. Cuni followed him across the field. The snow was not more than two inches deep and the longest gra.s.s blades peered through it.

Knockdane Woods are surrounded by a mason-built stone wall six feet high; but in one spot the ivy, insinuating itself between the stones, has loosened them, and the smaller Fur Folk--the rabbits, rats, and stoats--have scratched a tunnel leading into the woods. Through this pa.s.sage Cuni hopped, and pa.s.sed from the bleakness of the white fields into an enchanted palace. Every twig and bough bore its burden of whiteness. The fir trees were converted into huge Christmas trees, and the beeches' branches were etched against a sky suffused with the illusive lilac reflections of the snow. There was an uncanny white glamour over the woods, and except for the distant roar of the unfrozen river rushing between its banks, a vast silence had fallen upon Knockdane.

Not far from the wall, in a clearing, there is a pool. It is black and stagnant, with banks overgrown with yellow pimpernel, water flags, and rushes; nevertheless many of the Fur Folk depend upon it for their water supply. To-night it was darned across with ice needles, and the silver 'cat-ice' round the edge crackled under Cuni's paws. As she expected, Fluff-b.u.t.ton was seated on the other bank taking a tonic. In winter when the gra.s.s is sodden and tasteless, rabbits are seized with a burning desire for strong astringent food, and they often wander far from their burrows to seek rushes, or the dry bark of saplings.

To-night Fluff-b.u.t.ton gnawed the knotted roots of the wild iris, and as their bitterness burnt his mouth and made him sneeze, his nose quivered with pleasure. On any other night Cuni would have kept at a respectful distance from her lord; but to-night, in spite of the frost and snow, the Love Longing was beginning to awaken among the rabbit kind, and instinctively she felt that he would not repulse her. She approached him diffidently, and, instead of chasing her away, he merely glanced up and coughed. She squatted at his side and chiselled away at the iris roots, until the moon grew bright enough to light snow candles on every twig and bough.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FLUFF-b.u.t.tON WAS SEATED ON THE OTHER BANK TAKING A TONIC]

So busy were they that they never heard the footsteps of Garry Skehan, when, half an hour later, he crossed the snowy hill to Knockdane, nor noticed how they paused at the spot where the double trail entered the wood. The woodcraft of Garry Skehan was of a rough and ready sort; for him wild creatures were divided into two broad cla.s.ses--those which could be trapped and those which could not--but even he could tell that this was a rabbit run, and he chuckled over it. By and by he tramped away over the crisp snow, so softly that not even the drowsy pigeons overhead heard him.

Many of the Fur Folk pa.s.sed outside the wall that night, and each one stopped to look at the place where Garry Skehan had knelt and scored the surface with his clumsy boots. First of all a rat came along, trailing his naked tail callously on the snow behind him. He gave one glance at the spot, and then hurriedly crossed the wall lower down. By and by a stoat pa.s.sed. It is not in stoat nature to resist a hole wherever it may lead, and this one gingerly thrust in his nose; but at that moment he caught sight of something under his feet and drew back quietly. The mice came by and danced fairy quadrilles over the snow, but they also left the hole in the wall alone.

As the moon rose higher the frost began to bite, and the snowflakes, which had hitherto dropped rhythmically from the branches, were welded firmly together; while every leaf upon the ground was so crisped with rime that it crackled under the touch. Fluff-b.u.t.ton and Cuni, having made a scanty meal of such bramble leaves and ferns as remained green, turned homewards. Cuni went first, for her mate dallied behind to scratch his whiskers against a tree trunk. She came to the hole in the wall and hopped inside, for among the stones and mortar was hollowed a little chamber. There was a thin wind blowing, which had drifted the snow against the opposite opening and blocked it up, but the drift was not thick, and crumbled away when Cuni thrust her nose against it. The field was a white blank, marked with inky shadows below the trees, and not a living thing was in sight.

With one comprehensive hop Cuni alighted in the drift, and at the same instant something seized her hind leg. 'When in doubt, skip!' is the rabbit maxim, which she obeyed instantly, but she was rudely jerked back into the snow, and the grip on her leg tightened. She whisked round to see her foe, and behold there was nothing there. Cuni was terrified. She began to struggle desperately, but although the enemy's clutch tightened, there was nothing to be seen but a long strand of copper wire on the snow. Just then there was a rattle of stones, and Fluff-b.u.t.ton hopped through the wall. He noticed nothing amiss, and seeing that the snow was sc.r.a.ped away all round he began to munch the frozen gra.s.s blades. In some measure his presence rea.s.sured Cuni. She ceased to struggle, and in the perfect bliss of her mate's proximity almost forgot the mysterious enemy that held her.

Meanwhile the face of the night was changed. A snowstorm came up and drove tiny stinging flakes over the woods. They sifted into the rabbits' coats until Fluff-b.u.t.ton hopped inside the wall, shaking his ears. Cuni tried to follow, and although that unknown _something_ clutched her again, yet it permitted her to creep just inside the hole. Her body prevented the entrance of the driving snow, and Fluff-b.u.t.ton came and snuggled against her warm vest, while his twitching whiskers left soft 'b.u.t.terfly kisses' on her nose. In the mother-instinct, which is as easily awakened in the woods as among men, Cuni forgot that Fluff-b.u.t.ton was the King-Buck whose will was law in the warren, and only remembered that he was cold and came to her for warmth. She disregarded the snow which chilled her from without, and licked him with her warm tongue as tenderly as if he had been a sleepy suckling in the nesting burrow.

The snowstorm pa.s.sed and the rabbits came out again. The moon sailed up a sky as black and mysterious as a forest pool; and drowned the stars, until only one great white one survived, and blinked down like a wicked eye. Fluff-b.u.t.ton hopped away evidently expecting his mate to follow him, and was much perplexed to find that she was unable to do so. He sniffed her all over carefully, beseeching her to accompany him. Cuni tried her best, but in vain, and lay down panting.

Fluff-b.u.t.ton became seriously annoyed. He was not used to disobedience, and it must be told that he kicked his mate hard with his strong hind leg. Finding that this did no good, he became alarmed.

Wild creatures hate and fear the unknown, and Cuni's predicament was a most uncanny thing to rabbit ideas. Fluff-b.u.t.ton hopped away and began to feed doubtfully on an old turnip rind some thirty yards off, and took no notice of his mate's signals and struggles.

At last Cuni lay still and watched him. Nature is kind to her wild children, and after the first biting coldness of the snow sends a blessed lethargy which soothes away the pain. Cuni was fast drifting into this dreamy state when her senses suddenly returned to her and she sat up alertly. Silhouetted against the white field stole a lithe form--pads which made no noise, eyes gleaming faintly red, ears c.o.c.ked forward towards the prey ahead of him in the snow, while the moonlight laid a long grotesque shadow behind. The fox was thin and weak with famine, and his whole attention was riveted upon Fluff-b.u.t.ton, who sat with his back turned. He began to stalk his victim as noiselessly as a cat, taking advantage of every ant-hill or snowdrift to screen himself.

There are two laws which have been given to the rabbit kind in the hour of danger. One is, 'Squat and be still'; and the other is, 'Scoot, if you will, but let your fellows know it.' A few rabbits obey the first all their lives; but the majority--Cuni among the number--'scoot' on an alarm, but as they run they stamp upon the ground that their friends may hear and do likewise. However, Cuni was wounded, and her wise instinct bade her lie still, and then the fox would pa.s.s her by. With frightened fascinated eyes she watched the dark form slide over the snow, clapping flat if the unconscious Fluff-b.u.t.ton chanced to move.

'Lie still,' whispered Instinct, numbing her limbs with fear, 'he will never see you.' But the Angel who works for the good of the race, and who sacrifices his units that his tens may be saved, cried: 'Stamp aloud and warn him, no matter what it may cost.' The two impulses struggled together in Cuni's heart, and the fox cramped his limbs together for the final rush.

'Thump!' It was a very feeble little sound, m.u.f.fled by the soft snow.

'Again!' cried the stronger Angel, and summoning up all her strength, Cuni stamped again. This time Fluff-b.u.t.ton heard. Without as much as a glance behind, he bolted for the wall, leaped over his mate, dashed into the tunnel, and the scurry of his steps died away.

The fox checked abruptly; he knew that in the woods he had no chance against a cunning buck rabbit, and if Cuni had lain still perhaps all might have been well. Unluckily panic seized her, and, stamping again and again, she struggled for her freedom. The fox saw her and began to stalk anew, for there seemed something uncanny about this rabbit, and he dared not risk a rush too soon. Cuni forgot her pain, she forgot her fear and even that desire to live which is so firmly implanted in each one of the Fur Folk, in her overmastering rage at the thing which held her. With tooth and claw she attacked the peg round which the wire was twisted, but the frost had bound it firmly to the snow. Ah! a last spasmodic jerk wrenched it up, and trailing a broken leg, Cuni crept into the wall--free. Alas! just the other side she was brought up with a jerk. The peg was wedged between two stones, and she was as much a prisoner as ever, although just beyond the fox's reach. She heard his stealthy pads scrunch on the snow the other side of the wall, and then he found the hole. He lay down on his side and thrust his head into the opening; and when he snorted, Cuni felt his hot breath on her whiskers. He began to whimper eagerly, and sc.r.a.pe at the loose stones and mortar. He worked his shoulders further and further in, and the little chamber was filled with dust. Presently he drew back--his cunning wits had told him of a better way. Just here the wall was too high to leap, but further down it was lower, and there he could climb over. Cuni heard his footsteps tiptoe away, and then her Guardian Angel whispered that her teeth were sharp and pointed out a way to freedom--but not the cost. She listened to the counsel, for the desire to live burnt fiercely within her and her leg was twisted and useless now, a mere enc.u.mbrance. There was a short, sharp struggle, and the snare and its captive were parted indeed. Stiff and numbed, she crept away among the trees.

Twenty yards further on there was a clearing where the snow lay soft and deep. Here Fluff-b.u.t.ton's trail could be seen plainly, and the wide tracks showed that he had crossed it at full gallop. Cuni set out to follow it, plodding along in the m.u.f.fling snow, and stumbling into drifts at every step. The woods were dead--neither Fur nor Feather Folk stirred--and Fluff-b.u.t.ton's solitary trail alone broke the blankness before her; but whereas his consisted of four regular punctures, that which she left beside it had three only, and, in place of the fourth, a red stain. She dared not pause, for the twilight was full of a horror which was all the greater that it was nameless and but dimly realised--the fear of the hunted when strength fails. The shadows seemed full of shining eyes and crouching forms which would spring if she lay down, for she did not know that the fox had already given up the quest, and left her alone.

The snow was soft and deadly cold. It clogged her limbs like so much clay, and the very air was so chilled that she seemed to draw her breath in nothingness.

Still Fluff-b.u.t.ton's trail ran forward towards the Pine Tree burrows, which are warm and deep, and down which no fox can pa.s.s; and Cuni stumbled on blindly, for it is the instinct of the Fur Folk when maimed or sick to death to seek some hiding-place where not even the stars can spy upon them.

Presently she fell into a deeper drift, and because she was too tired to struggle out, she lay still. It was good to rest awhile before setting out once more, and feel the pain and fear slip away before the blessed peace which stole over her. The snow now seemed so warm and dark that she believed herself in the Pine Tree burrows, and nestled down as contentedly as if she leaned against Fluff-b.u.t.ton's soft coat.

Her nose ceased to quiver as her breath came more and more faintly, and her big brown eye closed; while her spirit drifted further and further away, until it silently crossed the borderland into the country from which there is no return.

A cloud blotted out the moon and wrapped the woods from end to end in the vast silence of snow. Great flakes as big as pigeon's feathers floated down into the clearing. The double trail was covered up, and the drifts piled higher and higher, until not even the tip of a dark ear peeped out to show where little Cuni lay.

STORIES FROM THE LIFE OF GRIMALKIN THE CAT

[Ill.u.s.tration: STORIES FROM THE LIFE OF GRIMALKIN THE CAT]

CHAPTER I

THE FIRST HUNTING

When it was discovered that the stable-cat had a litter of kittens in the hayloft, sentence of death was p.r.o.nounced immediately, and before noon three little grey corpses floated in the horse pond. The fourth kitten, _the_ kitten, with whom this history deals, was actually in the water, when the cook came by and begged for his life in order that he might later rid the kitchen of mice, in spite of the gardener's a.s.sertion that 'Thim wild cats had a divil in thim as big as an a.s.s, an' would niver quit ramblin'.' However, in his early days, Grimalkin showed no signs of any such demoniacal possession. He was a strangely sedate kitten. Possibly his narrow escape had affected his spirits, for he spent his days in eating such sc.r.a.ps as came in his way, in sleeping, and in evading the flying feet of the cook and her satellites. Hence, for many days his horizon was bounded by the four walls of the kitchen and the square of backyard, in the corner of which was the ashpit--to feline ideas the Elysian Fields. The yard was enclosed by a high wall, and wooden doors shut it off from the outside world, so that at the time of which I write, Grimalkin had had but most fleeting glimpses of what lay beyond.

In one place the wall was overhung by a laurel bush, and here the sparrows used to squabble and chatter all day long, except when now and then a sinuous black form stole along the coping and dropped into the yard. This was the farmyard mouser, Sir Charles, a worthy who, although he possessed a name befitting a Crusader, was nevertheless a prowler, a poacher, and a buccaneer born and bred. One half of his time he spent in filching stray morsels from the kitchen and in dozing in the sun, while the rest of his days were pa.s.sed--Grimalkin did not know where. But Paddy Magragh, the earthstopper of Knockdane, could have told you how often he saw the glossy black form sneaking along the hedgerows, or 'lying up' beside a rabbit burrow.