The Pax Mirandæ
After this experience, Kirstie would have been more anxious than before
about Miranda, had it not been for the child’s remarkable friendship
with the great she-bear. As soon as the snow was gone, and the ancient
wood again began to lure Miranda with its mystic stillness and
transparent twilight, Kroof reappeared, as devoted as ever. When Kroof
was absent, the woods were to the child a forbidden realm, into which
she could only peer with longing and watch the furtive folk with those
initiated eyes of hers.
A little later when the mosses were dry, and when the ground was well
heartened with the fecundating heats of June, Miranda had further proof
of her peculiar powers of vision. One day she and Kroof came upon a
partridge hen with her new-hatched brood, at the edge of a thicket of
young birches. The hen went flopping and fluttering off among the trees,
as if sorely wounded; and Kroof, convinced of a speedy capture, followed
eagerly. She gave a glance about her first, however, to see if there
were any partridge chicks in the neighbourhood. To Miranda’s
astonishment, the wise animal saw none. But Miranda saw them distinctly.
There they were all about her, moveless little brown balls, exactly like
the leaves and the moss and the scattered things of the forest floor.
Some were half hidden under a leaf or twig; some squatted in the open,
just in the positions in which the alarm had found them. They shut their
eyes even, to make themselves more at one with their surroundings. They
would have endured any fate, they would have died on the spot, rather
than move, so perfect was their baby obedience to the partridge law.
This obedience had its reward. It gave them invisibility to all the folk
of the wood, friends and foes alike. But there was no such thing as
deceiving Miranda’s eyes. She was not concerned about the mother
partridge, because she saw through her pretty trick and knew that Kroof
could never catch her. Indeed, in her innocence she did not think good
Kroof would hurt her if she did catch her, But these moveless chicks, on
the other hand, were interesting. One—two—three—Miranda counted ten of
them, and there were more about somewhere, she imagined. Presently the
mother bird came flopping around in a circle, to see how things were
going. She saw Miranda stoop and pick up one of the precious brown
balls, and then another, curiously but gently. In her astonishment the
distracted bird forgot Kroof for a second, and was almost caught.
Escaping this peril by a sudden wild dash, and realizing that from
Miranda there was no concealment, she flew straight into the densest
part of the thicket and gave a peremptory call. At the sound each little
motionless ball came to life. The two that were lying as if dead on
Miranda’s outstretched palms hopped to the ground; and all darted into
the thicket. A few low but sharply articulated clucks, and the mother
bird led her brood off swiftly through the bush; while Kroof, somewhat
crestfallen, came shambling back to Miranda.
All this time, in spite of the affair of the wolves, the attack of
Ganner, the lynx, on Michael, and that tell-tale spot of blood and fur
on the snow, where the owl had torn the hare for his midnight feast,
Miranda had regarded the folk of the ancient wood as a gentle people,
living for the most part in a voiceless amity. Her seeing eyes quite
failed to see the unceasing tragedy of the stillness. She did not guess
that the furtive folk, whom she watched about their business, went
always with fear at their side and death lying in wait at every turn.
She little dreamed that, for most of them, the very price of life itself
was the ceaseless extinguishing of life.
It was during the summer that Miranda found her first and only flaw in
Kroof’s perfections; for Kroof she regarded as second only to her mother
among created beings. But on one memorable day, when she ran across the
fields to meet Kroof at the edge of the wood, the great bear was too
much occupied to come forward as usual. She was sniffing at something on
the ground which she held securely under one of her huge paws. Miranda
ran forward to see what it was.
To her horror it was the warm and bleeding body of a hare.
She shrank back, sickened at the sight. Then, in flaming indignation she
struck Kroof again and again in the face with the palms of her little
hands. Kroof was astonished,—temperately astonished,—for she always knew
Miranda was peculiar. She lifted her snout high in the air to escape the
blows, shut her eyes, and meekly withdrew the offending paw.
“Oh, Kroof, how _could_ you! I hate you, bad Kroof! You are just like
the wolves!” cried Miranda, her little bosom bursting with wrath and
tears. Kroof understood that she was in grievous disgrace. Carrying the
dead hare with her, Miranda ran out into the potato patch, fetched the
hoe, returned to the spot where the bear still sat in penitential
contemplation, and proceeded in condemnatory silence to dig a hole right
under Kroof’s nose. Here she buried the hare, tenderly smoothing the
ground above it. Then throwing the hoe down violently, she flung her
arms about Kroof’s neck, and burst into a passion of tears.
“How _could_ you do it, Kroof?” she sobbed. “Oh, perhaps you’ll be
wanting to eat up Miranda some day!”
Kroof suffered herself to be led away from the unhappy spot. Soon
Miranda grew calm, and the painful scene seemed forgotten. The rest of
the afternoon was spent very pleasantly in eating wild raspberries along
the farther side of the clearing. To Kroof’s mind it gradually became
clear that her offence lay in killing the hare; and as it was obvious
that Miranda liked hares, she resolved never to offend again in this
respect, at least while Miranda was anywhere in the neighbourhood. After
Miranda had gone home, however, the philosophical Kroof strolled back
discreetly to where the hare was buried. She dug it up, and ate it with
great satisfaction, and afterward she smoothed down the earth again,
that Miranda might not know.
After this trying episode Miranda had every reason to believe that
Kroof’s reformation was complete. Little by little, as month followed
month, and season followed season, and year rolled into year at the
quiet cabin in the clearing, Miranda forgot the few scenes of blood
which had been thrust upon her. The years now little varied one from
another; yet to Miranda the life was not monotonous. Each season was for
her full of events, full of tranquil uneventfulness for Kirstie. The
cabin became more homelike as currant and lilac bushes grew up around
it, a green, sweet covert for birds, and abundant scarlet-blossomed
bean-vines mantled the barrenness of its weathered logs. The clearing
prospered. The stock increased. Old Dave hardly ever visited at the
clearing but he went back laden with stuff to sell for Kirstie at the
Settlement. Among the folk of the forest Miranda’s ascendency kept on
growing, little by little, till, though none of the beasts came to know
her as Kroof did, they all had a tendency to follow her at respectful
distance, without seeming to do so. They never killed in her presence,
so that a perpetual truce, as it were, came at last to rule within
eyeshot of her inescapable gaze. Sometimes the advent of spring would
bring Kroof to the clearing not alone, but with a furry and jolly black
morsel of a cub at her side. The cub never detracted in the least from
the devotion which she paid to Miranda. It always grew up to young
bearhood in more or less amiable tolerance of its mother’s
incomprehensible friend, only to drift away at last to other feeding
grounds; for Kroof was absolute in her own domain, and suffered not even
her own offspring to trespass thereon, when once they had reached
maturity. Cubs might come, and cubs might go; but the love of Kroof and
Miranda was a thing that rested unchanging.
In the winters, Miranda now did most of the knitting, while Kirstie
wove, on a great clacking loom, the flax which her little farm produced
abundantly. They had decided not to keep sheep at the clearing, lest
their presence should lure back the wolves. One warm day toward spring,
when Old Dave, laden with an ample pack of mittens, stockings, and socks
which Miranda’s active fingers had fashioned, was slowly trudging along
the trail on his way back to the Settlement, he became aware that a pair
of foxes followed him. They came not very near, nor did they pay him any
marked attention. They merely seemed to “favour his company,” as he
himself put it. He was thus curiously escorted for perhaps a mile or
two, to his great bewilderment; for he knew no reason why he should be
so chosen out for honour in the wood. At another time, when similarly
burdened, Wapiti, the buck, came up and sniffed at him, very amicably.
During the next winter, when he was carrying the same magic merchandise,
several hares went leaping beside him, not very near, but as if seeking
the safety of his presence. The mystery of all this weighed upon him. He
was at first half inclined to think that he was “ha’nted”; but
fortunately he took thought to examine the tracks, and so assured
himself that his inexplicable companions were of real flesh and blood.
Nevertheless, he found himself growing shy of his periodical journeyings
through the wood, and at last he opened his mind to Kirstie on the
subject.
Kirstie was amused in her grave way.
“Why, Dave,” she explained, “didn’t you know Miranda was that thick with
the wild things she’s half wild herself? Weren’t you carrying a lot of
Miranda’s knit stuff when the creatures followed you?”
“That’s so, Kirstie!” was the old lumberman’s reply. “I recollec’ as how
the big buck kep’ a-sniffin’ at my pack of socks an’ mits, too!”
“They were some of Miranda’s friends; and when they smelled of those
mits they thought she was somewhere around, or else they knew you must
be a friend of hers.”
Thenceforward Old Dave always looked for something of a procession in
his honour whenever he carried Miranda’s knittings to the Settlement;
and he was intensely proud of the distinction. He talked about it among
his gossips, of course; and therefore a lot of strange stories began to
circulate. It was said by some that Kirstie and Miranda held converse
with the beasts in plain English such as common mortals use, and knew
all the secrets of the woods, and much besides that “humans” have no
call to know. By others, more superstitious and fanatical, it was
whispered that no mere animals formed the circle of Kirstie’s
associates, but that spirits, in the guise of hares, foxes, cats,
panthers, bears, were her familiars at the solitary cabin. Such
malicious tales cost Old Dave many a bitter hour, as well as more than
one sharp combat, till the gossips learned to keep a bridle on their
tongues when he was by. As for Young Dave, he had let the clearing and
all its affairs drop from his mind, and, betaking himself to a wild
region to the north of the Quah-Davic, was fast making his name as a
hunter and trapper. He came but seldom to the Settlement, and when he
came he had small ear for the Settlement scandals. His mind was growing
large, and quiet, and tolerant, among the great solitudes.