CHAPTER LIX.
THE GRAVE OF THE ASTROLOGER.
“What can I do? Oh, how can I escape?” cried Alice to herself one morning, towards the end of dreary November; “one month out of three is gone already, and the chain of my misery tightens round me. No, don’t come near me, any of you birds; you will have to do without me soon; and you had better begin to practise. Ah me! you can make your own nests, and choose your mates; how I envy you! Well, then, if you must be fed, you must. Why should I be so selfish?” With tears in her eyes, she went to her bower and got her little basket of moss, well known to every cock-robin, and thrush, and blackbird, dwelling on the premises. At the bottom were stored, in happy ignorance of the fate before them, all the delicacies of the season—the food of woodland song, the stimulants of aerial melody. Here were woodlice, beetles, earwigs, caterpillars, slugs, and nymphs, well-girt brandlings, and the offspring of the tightly-buckled wasp, together with the luscious meal-worm, and the peculiarly delicious grub of the cockchafer—all as fresh as a West-end salmon, and savouring sweetly of moss and milk—no wonder the beaks of the birds began to water at the mere sight of that basket.
“You have had enough now for to-day,” said Alice; “it is useless to put all your heads on one side, and pretend that you are just beginning. I know all your tricks quite well by this time. No, not even you, you Methuselah of a Bob, can have any more—or at least, not much.”
For this robin (her old pet of all, and through whose powers of interpretation the rest had become so intimate) made a point of perching upon her collar, and nibbling at her ear, whenever he felt himself neglected. “There is no friend like an old friend,” was his motto; and his poll was grey, and his beak quite blunted with feeding a score of families, and his large black eyes were fading. “Methuselah, come and help yourself,” said Alice, relenting softly; “you will not have the chance much longer.”
Now, as soon as the birds, with a chirp and a jerk, and one or two furtive hops, had realised the stern fact that there was no more for them, and then had made off to their divers business (but all with an eye to come back again), Alice, with a smiling sigh—if there can be such a mixture—left her pets, and set off alone to have a good walk, and talk, and think. The birds, being guilty of “cupboard love,” were content to remain in their trees and digest; and as many of them as were in voice expressed their gratitude brilliantly. But out of the cover they would not budge; they hated to be ruffled up under their tails: and they knew what the wind on the Downs was.
“I shall march off straight for Chancton Ring,” said Alice Lorraine, most resolutely. “How thankful I am, to be able to walk! and poor Hilary—ah, how selfish of me to contrast my state with his!”
Briskly she mounted the crest of the coombe, and passed to the open upland, the long chine of hill which trends to its highest prominence at Chancton Ring—a land-mark for many a league around. Crossing the trench of the Celtic camp—a very small obstruction now—which loosely girds the ancient trees, Alice entered the vegetable throng of weather-beaten and fantastic trunks. These are of no great size, and shed no impress of hushed awe, as do the mossy ramparts and columnar majesty of New Forest beech-trees. Yet, from their countless and furious struggles with the winds in their might in the wild midnight, and from their contempt of aid or pity in their loneliness, they enforce the respect and the interest of any who sit beneath them.
At the foot of one of the largest trees, the perplexed and disconsolate Alice rested on a lowly mound, which held (if faith was in tradition) the bones of her native ancestor, the astrologer Agasicles. The tree which overhung his grave, perhaps as a sapling had served to rest (without obstructing) his telescope; and the boughs, whose murmurings soothed his sleep, had been little twigs too limp for him to hang his Samian cloak on. Now his descendant in the ninth or tenth generation—whichever it was—had always been endowed with due (but mainly rare) respect for those who must have gone before her. She could not perceive that they must have been fools, because many things had happened since they died; and she was not even aware that they must have been rogues, to beget such a set of rogues.
Therefore she had veneration for the remains that lay beneath her (mouldering in no ugly coffin, but in swaddling-clothes, committed like an infant into the mother’s bosom), and the young woman dwelt, as all mortals must, on death, when duly put to them. The everlasting sorrow of the moving winds was in the trees; and the rustling of the sad, sere leaf, and creaking of the lichened bough. And above their little bustle, and small fuss about themselves, the large, sonorous stir was heard of Weymouth pines and Scottish firs, swaying in the distance slowly, like the murmur of the sea. Even the waving of yellow grass-blades (where the trees allowed them), and the ruffling of tufted briars, and of thorny thickets, shone and sounded melancholy, with a farewell voice and gaze.