Before this, Blackberry and Dandelion had burrowed their way in from Kehaar's run - it had not been blocked very heavily - and told their story. Dandelion could not say what might have happened to Hazel after the dog broke loose, and by the early afternoon everyone feared the worst. At last Pipkin, in great anxiety and distress, insisted on setting out for Nuthanger. Fiver at once said that he would go with him and together they left the wood and set off northwards over the down. They had gone only a short distance when Fiver, sitting up on an ant-hill to look about, saw a rabbit approaching over the high ground to the west. They both ran nearer and recognized Hazel. Fiver went to meet him while Pipkin raced back to
the Honeycomb with the news.
As soon as he had learned all that had happened - including what Groundsel had to tell - Hazel asked Holly to take two or three rabbits and find out for certain whether the Efrafans had really gone. Then he himself went into the run where Bigwig was lying. Hyzenthlay looked up as he came.
'He was awake a little while ago, Hazel-rah,' she said. 'He asked where you were: and then he said his ear hurt very much.'
Hazel nuzzled the matted fur cap. The blood had turned hard and set into pointed spikes that pricked his nose.
'You've done it, Bigwig,' he said. 'They've all run away.'
For several moments Bigwig did not move. Then he opened his eyes and raised his head, pouching out his cheeks and sniffing at the two rabbits beside him. He said nothing and Hazel wondered whether he had understood. At last he whispered, 'Ees finish Meester Voundvort, ya?'
'Ya,' replied Hazel. 'I've come to help you silflay. It'll do you good and we can clean you up a lot better outside. Come on: it's a lovely afternoon, all sun and leaves.'
Bigwig got up and tottered forward into the devastated Honeycomb. There he sank down, rested, got up again and reached the foot of Kehaar's run.
'I thought he'd killed me,' he said. 'No more fighting for me - I've had enough. And you - your plan worked, Hazel-rah, did it? Well done. Tell me what it was. And how did you get back from the farm?'
'A man brought me in a hrududu,' said Hazel, 'nearly all the way.'
'And you flew the rest, I suppose,' said Bigwig, 'burning a white stick in your mouth? Come on, Hazel-rah, tell me sensibly. What's the matter, Hyzenthlay?'
'Oh!' said Hyzenthlay, staring. 'Oh!'
'What is it?'
'He did!'
'Did what?'
'He did ride home in a hrududu. And I saw him as he came - that night in Efrafa, when I was with you in your burrow. Do you remember?'
'I remember,' said Bigwig. 'I remember what I said, too. I said you'd better tell it to Fiver. That's a good idea - let's go and do it. And if he'll believe you, Hazel-rah, then I will.'
50. And Last
Professing myself, moreover, convinced that the General's unjust interference, so far from being really injurious to their felicity, was perhaps rather conducive to it, by improving their knowledge of each other, and adding strength to their attachment, I leave it to be settled by whomsoever it may concern ...
Jane Austen Northanger Abbey
It was a fine, clear evening in mid-October, about six weeks later. Although leaves remained on the beeches and the sunshine was warm, there was a sense of growing emptiness over the wide space of the down. The flowers were sparser. Here and there a yellow tormentil showed in the grass, a late harebell or a few shreds of purple bloom on a brown, crisping tuft of self-heal. But most of the plants still to be seen were in seed. Along the edge of the wood a sheet of wild clematis showed like a patch of smoke, all its sweet-smelling flowers turned to old man's beard. The songs of the insects were fewer and intermittent. Great stretches of the long grass, once the teeming jungle of summer, were almost deserted, with only a hurrying beetle or a torpid spider left out of all the myriads of August. The gnats still danced in the bright air, but the swifts that had swooped for them were gone and instead of their screaming cries in the sky, the twittering of a robin sounded from the top of a spindle tree. The fields below the hill were all cleared. One had already been ploughed and the polished edges of the furrows caught the light with a dull glint, conspicuous from the ridge above. The sky too was void, with a thin clarity like that of water. In July the still blue, thick as cream, had seemed close above the green trees, but now the blue was high and rare, the sun slipped sooner to the west and once there, foretold a touch of frost, sinking slow and big and drowsy, crimson as the rosehips that covered the briar. As the wind freshened from the south, the red and yellow beech leaves rasped together with a brittle sound, harsher than the fluid rustle of earlier days. It was a time of quiet departures, of the sifting away of all that was not staunch against winter.
Many human beings say that they enjoy the winter, but what they really enjoy is feeling proof against it. For them there is no winter food problem. They have fires and warm clothes. The winter cannot hurt them and therefore increases their sense of cleverness and security. For birds and animals, as for poor men, winter is another matter. Rabbits, like most wild animals, suffer hardship. True, they are luckier than some, for food of a sort is nearly always to be had. But under snow they may stay underground for days at a time, feeding only by chewing pellets. They are more subject to disease in winter and the cold lowers their vitality. Nevertheless, burrows can be snug and warm, especially when crowded. Winter is a more active mating season than the late summer and the autumn, and the time of greatest fertility for the does starts about February. There are fine days when silflay is still enjoyable. For the adventurous, garden raiding has its charms. And underground, there are stories to be told and games to be played - bob-stones and the like. For rabbits, winter remains what it was for men in the middle ages - hard, but bearable by the resourceful and not altogether without compensations.
On the west side of the beech hanger, in the evening sun, Hazel and Fiver were sitting with Holly, Silver and Groundsel. The Efrafan survivors had been allowed to join the warren and after a shaky start, when they were regarded with dislike and suspicion, were settling down pretty well, largely because Hazel was determined that they should.
Since the night of the siege, Fiver had spent much time alone and even in the Honeycomb, or at morning and evening silflay, was often silent and preoccupied. No one resented this - 'He looks right through you in such a nice, friendly way' as Bluebell put it - for each in his own manner recognized that Fiver was now more than ever governed, whether he would or no, by the pulse of that mysterious world of which he had once spoken to Hazel during the late June days they had spent together at the foot of the down. It was Bigwig who said - one evening when Fiver was absent from the Honeycomb at story-time - that Fiver was one who had paid more dearly than even himself for the night's victory over the Efrafans. Yet to his doe, Vilthuril, Fiver was devotedly attached, while she had come to understand him almost as deeply as ever Hazel had.
Just outside the beech hanger, Hyzenthlay's litter of four young rabbits were playing in the grass. They had first been brought up to graze about seven days before. If Hyzenthlay had had a second litter she would by this time have left them to look after themselves. As it was, however, she was grazing close by, watching their play and every now and then moving in to cuff the strongest and stop him bullying the others.
'They're a good bunch, you know,' said Holly. 'I hope we get some more like those.'
'We can't expect many more until towards the end of the winter,' said Hazel,' though I dare say there'll be a few.'
'We can expect anything, it seems to me,' said Holly. 'Three litters born in autumn - have you ever heard of such a thing before? Frith didn't mean rabbits to mate in the high summer.'
'I don't know about Clover,' said Hazel. 'She's a hutch rabbit: it may be natural to her to breed at any time, for all I know. But I'm sure that Hyzenthlay and Vilthuril started their litters in the high summer because they'd had no natural life in Efrafa. For all that, they're the only two who have had litters, as yet.'