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After stubbing out his cigar on the ground, Burton popped the stick into his mouth. He said, "This has a strange but rather delicious taste. Have you tried yours?"
"I am tempted, but I imagine I’d look like a cow chewing her cud."
"Forget about being a lady," Burton said. "Do you think that beings with the power to resurrect you would have vulgar tastes?"
Alice smiled slightly, said, "I really wouldn’t know," and placed the stick in her mouth. For a moment, they chewed idly, looking across the fire at each other. She was unable to look him full in the eyes for more than a few seconds at a time.
Burton said, "Frigate mentioned that he knew you. Of you, rather. Just who are you, if you will pardon my unseemly curiosity?"
"There are no secrets among the dead," she replied lightly. "Or among the ex-dead, either." She had bees born Alice Pleasance Liddell on April 25, 1852. (Burton was thirty then.) She was the direct descendant of King Edward III and his son, John of Gaunt. Her father was dean of Christ Church College of Oxford and co-author of a famous Greek-English lexicon. (Liddell and Scott! Burton thought.) She had had a happy childhood, an excellent education, and had met many famous people of her times: Gladstone, Mattheca Arnold, the Prince of Wales, who was placed under her father’s care while he was at Oxford. Her husband had been Reginald Gervis Hargreaves, and she had loved him very much. He had been a "country gentleman," liked to hunt, fish, play cricket, raise trees, and read French literature. She had three sons, all captains, two of whom died in the Great War of 1914-1918. (This was the second time that day that Burton had heard of the Great War.) She talked on and on as if drink had loosened her tongue. Or as if she wanted to place a barrier of conversation between her and Burton.
She talked of Dinah, the tabby kitten she had loved when she was a child, the great trees of her husband’s arboretum, how her father, when working on his lexicon, would always sneeze at twelve o’clock in the afternoon, no one knew why… at the age of eighty, she was given an honorary Doctor of Letters by the American university, Columbia, because of the vital part she had played in the genesis of Mr. Dodgson’s famous book. (She neglected to mention the title and Burton, though a voracious reader, did not recall any works by a Mr. Dodgson.)
"That was a golden afternoon indeed," she said, "despite the official meteorological report. On July 4, 1862, I was ten… my sisters and I were wearing black shoes, white openwork socks, white cotton dresses, and hats with large brims." Her eyes were wide, and she shook now and then as if she were struggling inside herself, and she began to talk even faster.
"Mr. Dodgson and Mr. Duckworth carried the picnic baskets … we set off in our boat from Folly Bridge up the Isis, upstream for a change. Mr. Duckworth rowed stroke; the drops fell off his paddle like tears of glass on the smooth mirror of the Isis, and…"
Burton heard the last words as if they had been roared at him. Astonished, he gazed at Alice, whose lips seemed to be moving as if she were conversing at a normal speech level. Her eyes were now fixed on him, but they seemed to be boring through him into a space and a time beyond. Her hands were half-raised as if she were surprised at something and could not eve them.
Every sound was magnified. He could hear the breathing of the little girl, the pounding of her heart and Alice’s, the gurgle of the workings of Alice’s intestines and of the breeze as it slipped across the branches of the trees. From far away, a cry came.
He rose and listened. What was happening? Why the heightening of senses? Why could he hear their hearts but not his? He was also aware of the shape and texture of the grass under his feet. Almost, he could feel the individual molecules of the air as they bumped into his body.
Alice, too, had risen. She said, "What is happening?" and her voice fell against him like a heavy gust of wind.
He did not reply, for he was staring at her. Now, it seemed to him, he could really see her body for the first time. And he could see her, too. The entire Alice.
Alice came toward him with her arms held out, her eyes half-shut her mouth moist. She swayed, and she crooned, "Richard! Richard!" Then she stopped; her eyes widened. He stepped toward her, his arms out. She cried, "No!’, and turned and ran into the darkness among the trees.
For a second, he stood still. It did not seem possible that she, whom he loved as he had never loved anybody, could not love him back.
She must be teasing him. That was it. He ran after her, and called her name over and over.
It must have been hours later when the rain fell against them. Either the effect of the drug had worn off or the cold water helped dispel it, for both seemed to emerge from the ecstasy and the dreamlike State at the same time. She looked up at him as lightning lit their features, and she screamed and pushed him violently.
He fell on the grass, but reached out a hand and grabbed her ankle as she scrambled away from him on all fours.
"What’s the matter with you?" he shouted.
Alice quit struggling. She sat down, hid her face against her knees, and her body shook with sobs. Burton rose and placed his hands under her chin and forced her to look upward. Lightning hit nearby again and showed him her tortured face. "You promised to protect me!" she cried out.
"You didn’t act as if you wanted to be protected," he said. "I didn’t promise to protect you against a natural human impulse."
"Impulse!" she said.
"Impulse! My God, I’ve never done anything like this in my life! I’ve always been good! I was a virgin when I married, and I stayed faithful to my husband all my life! And now … a total stranger! Just like that! I don’t know what got into me!"
"Then I’ve been a failure," Burton said, and laughed. But he was begi
You needn’t feel the least bit contrite or self-reproachful," he said gently. "You were possessed. Blame the drug."
"I did it!" she said. "I… I! I wanted to! Oh, what a vile low whore I am!"
"I don’t remember offering you any money." He did not mean to be heartless. He wanted to make her so angry that she would forget her self-abasement. And he succeeded. She jumped up and attacked his chest and face with her nails. She called him names that a high-bred and gentle lady of Victoria’s day should never have known.
Burton caught her wrists to prevent further damage and held her while she spewed more filth at him. Finally, when she had fallen silent and had begun weeping again, he led her toward the camp site. The fire was wet ashes. He scraped off the top layer and dropped a handful of grass, which had been protected from the rain by the tree, onto the embers. By its light, he saw the little girl sleeping huddled between Kazz and Monat udder a pile of grass beneath the irontree. He returned to Alice, who was sitting under another tree.
"Stay away," she said. "I never want to see you again! You have dishonored me, dirtied me! And after you gave your word to protect me!"
"You can freeze if you wish," he said. "I was merely going to suggest that we huddle together to keep warm. But, if you wish discomfort, so be it. I’ll tell you again that what we did was generated by the drug. No, not generated. Drugs don’t generate desires or actions; they merely allow them to be released. Our normal inhibitions were dissolved, and neither one of us can blame ourself or the other.