The Envelope: Ken Me (2)
*~*~*~*
Their arrival at the house - preceded by much fanfare thanks to William and James - is met with cautious civility from Hamish. Lady Ascot is nowhere to be seen, which is just as well. If she’d insisted on joining her grandsons in hearing the tales of Alice’s more recent travels, she would have undoubtedly ruined the entire affair.
Despite that, Alice knows she wouldn’t be able to hold it against the woman. She can only imagine what it must be like to suddenly find oneself all alone after years of companionship with someone who knows you through and through, who sees your faults and choses to remain by your side despite them.
Don’t leave me, she wishes she could say to the Hatter. Perhaps one day she will. Perhaps one day, he will promise to stay.
“Time at last to hear what madness you encountered abroad, is it?” Hamish declares and Alice summons up a victorious grin.
“Utter madness, I assure you!” she gamely replies and then turns toward the Hatter to ask if he would like to join them.
He anticipates her, however, and looks directly at Hamish. With a brief bow and a quirk of his wild brows, he opens the silent conversation. His green gaze darts toward Alice before returning to Hamish again and permission to join the presentation is requested without a word. For a moment, Lord Ascot seems quite taken aback by the Hatter’s expressive patience. And then, with an equally silent (though abrupt) nod, Hamish agrees.
Moments later, Alice finds herself seated in the parlor with her audience of four males as she shows them the sketches she had done of Nagasaki, Japan and its people.
“Those are swords?” William asks at one point, indicating the accessories of the samurai.
“Why do the men wear their hair like that?” James wants to know. And then, after Alice has addressed their questions, she holds up the next illustration.
“Is that a Bandersnatch?” James asks and Alice grins. Yes, she had told Hamish’s boys about Underland, although she had insisted it was fiction, a tale she had been told during her travels. Lord only knows what sort of fit Hamish would have thrown if she’d dared to imply otherwise.
“Hatter,” Alice says, turning to her lover. “James would like to know if this fellow here-” She indicates the sketch of a dancer wearing a rather hairy dragon costume. “-could be a Bandersnatch.”
The Hatter giggles and gives James a chummy look. “To tell you the truth, the very same thought crossed my mind. Do you suppose it left any footprints?”
Alice translates this and the boys giggle as they study the carpet with the Hatter, looking for any signs of passing thoughts.
“Did you see an idea just now, Hamish?” Alice asks and nearly chokes on her shock when the man glances from his sons to the Hatter and then pointedly leans over the threshold of the room and glances both ways along the hall before saying, “He’s long gone, I’m afraid.”
Marveling at Hamish’s participation in their nonsense, Alice conveys her regrets, thereby skillfully relaying the message to the Hatter.
James asks William what a thought looks like and as his brother describes something that rather makes Alice think of a blue octopus with hair the Hatter leans forward, gently drawing her attention. “You ventured to this place - Japan - on a ship, across an ocean, Alice?” the Hatter interjects in an awed whisper.
“Yes,” she replies, wishing she could reach out to him - he looks a bit flabbergasted and in need of a reassuring pat - unfortunately, Hamish is still supervising the entire event. Raising her voice to include the man, she muses, “Although I am considering air travel next. What do you think, Hamish?” she asks. “Is there a future in it?”
He gives Alice a long look and she stares back, hoping…
No, she is not only referring to air travel. She is also referring to the Hatter. Might Hamish be capable of tolerating - even welcoming - the man, accepting him as the one Alice has chosen? After a long moment, the Hatter follows Alice’s gaze and turns. She watches as both men study each other in silence.
“Perhaps…” Hamish finally allows stiffly, “it is not inconceivable.”
Alice grins and subtly translates for the Hatter: “Not inconceivable. Thank you, Hamish. We shall remain optimistic, then.” For not only air travel but also for other things.
“Show us the next one!” William insists with uncustomary bluntness.
“Did you draw any pictures of swordfights?” James asks, his body humming with excitement at the thought.
Grinning, Alice continues her presentation and, when that is through and her sketches and trinkets inspected to the point of exhaustion, James presses for the Hatter to speak a bit more mirror-wise English and - interestingly enough - Hamish permits them to make a game of it: Alice gives the boys word to reverse, or - in some cases a line from a rhyme - and then the Hatter presents it. Once the boys have unpuzzled “London” and “God save the queen” (among others), the Hatter presents them with a challenge of his own. After quite a bit of laughter and giggling, the Hatter leads the boys through the reversed, first verse of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Bat.” Alice watches his nimble fingers direct the tune and she suddenly wonders what had become of his thimbles; he had not been wearing them in the Room of Doors and she does not remember seeing them in the pile of jacket pocket contents in his room upstairs the evening before…
The morning progresses rather nicely - surprisingly pleasantly, in fact - and Alice is a little disappointed to lose her captive audience to their tutor. She hugs William and James and promises she will be back soon for a visit. William maturely smiles back at her from the doorway as James waves goodbye with great, sweeping motions of his whole arm that manage to wiggle his entire body. Laughing, Alice waves back.
When the resulting silence becomes a tad uncomfortable but Hamish seems to have no intention of seeing them to the door, the Hatter - with a conspiratorial look at Alice - excuses himself to use the necessary room. Alice doesn’t doubt he’s standing in the hall, blatantly eavesdropping.
She smiles. And then she turns to Hamish. “What changed your mind about him?” she asks softly, as the question itself seems to require delicate handling.
Hamish gives her a weak glare. “What makes you think I have?”
She grins. “It was the demonstration at dinner last night, wasn’t it?”
“Circumstantial!” he blusters. “I could accuse you of pre-arranging it!”
Alice nods, acknowledging the possibility. “But I didn’t. Come now, Hamish. I can see you’re not so wary of him now. What swayed you?”
He sighs. “You did, Alice.”
“I… beg your pardon?”
Hamish surveys her with his watery-blue eyes. “Your faith in him is rather hard to ignore. You glow with it.”
Unsure of how to respond to that, she says nothing.
“And… also, with the exception of the episode in his room - which is a rather large exception to be making but…!” Hamish clears his throat and starts over, “As a businessman who must be possessive of his company’s property, I can recognize… That is…”
Alice wishes she could deny that the Hatter had not treated her in such a way, but he had. And what’s more, she had allowed it. At the time, it had seemed the simplest way to get their point across: they will not be parted from each other.
“Well,” Hamish abruptly concludes. “The fact that you did not give him your right jab for such a display… and then you permitted him to assist you with your chair at dinner… that speaks very plainly to those who are listening.”
“You’ve been very attentive,” she murmurs, feeling compelled to say something. And, at this point, if Hamish is ignorant of (or, more likely, willing to overlook) the fact that Alice had spent the night in the Hatter’s bed, then she is not about to make matters more difficult for herself by bringing it up now!
The clock in the room fills the silence, marking the seconds as they pass.
“Do you forgive me,” he ventures on a rasp, “for all of the times I imposed upon you to ask for your hand?”
“Oh, Hamish! It was-”
“A mistake the first time I asked and one that I willfully repeated every subsequent time thereafter.”
Alice blinks. “But… if you knew that, then… why did you persist?” She had known that Hamish does not love her, never has and likely never will. She has made her own feelings clear to him again and again: “I’m sorry, Hamish, but you’re not the right man for me. I’ve said it before and I am no different now than I was then.”
Clearly uncomfortable, Hamish replies with candor, “I do care for you, Alice. And my sons adore you. There will never be another Laurel… for me. In asking you, I was guaranteeing that I need never fear…”
“Stop, Hamish. I understand.” And suddenly, she does. Although Alice had been away, setting up trading posts and negotiating contracts in the Far East when Hamish had met and married Laurel Whitcombe, although Alice had never seen the man with his new wife, Alice had seen him after her funeral, a grieving widower. Alice had done her best to cheer him, to bully him if necessary (and it sometimes had been quite necessary!) into spending time with his infant sons and looking after his stake in his father’s company. Yes, Hamish had very clearly loved Laurel. And he very clearly does not wish to risk having his heart broken again. “I was… a safe choice,” she summarizes. “I understand.”
“Far better than most,” he assures her, echoing the very words he had spoken just yesterday.
Alice blinks against sudden tears. “I am sorry.”
“As am I.” He glances away and swallows down the tangle of emotions that could very likely be identical in nature to the knot that Alice feels pressing against the interior of her own throat.
After a long moment, he visibly gathers himself and glances at her. If she were asked to describe the look he gives her, she would have say that it is playfully wry. “That doesn’t mean that I must like that Hightopp fellow.”
Alice laughs softly, unsurprised by his declaration.
But then his expression turns serious. “He is very strange, Alice. And undeniably attached to you.”
He’s all alone here and I am the only person he trusts, she wishes she could say. But she will not speak for him, only for herself. “He is also very kind and generous and brave… and I have known him longer than you think, Hamish.”
He raises his brows at this. No doubt he wonders why Alice had never mentioned him before. No doubt he is considering asking that very question.
Alice subverts further interrogation with the simple proclamation: “I need him.”
And just that simply, Hamish’s doubts scatter. “Then keep him. And I suppose it will fall to me to keep my eye on you.”
Alice smiles. “In another era, Lord Ascot, you would have worn shining armor when saying such things.”
He looks quite entertained by the idea. “Indeed. I would have looked rather dashing in it, too.”
When the Hatter re-enters the library and finds Alice laughing and Hamish smiling, he does not seem particularly troubled by their obvious camaraderie.
“Alice,” he lisps, coming to stand beside her and brazenly holding out his hand. She takes it. Hamish pointedly ignores the social gaffe.
“Shall we have a drink?” he inquires, clearly ignoring the fact that it has just gone eleven o’clock in the morning. Declining would undo all that has been accomplished, so Alice and the Hatter accept. They raise their glasses to not-inconceivable possibilities.
As they drink to that, Alice debates how best to thank Hamish for, at last, becoming her friend as well as business associate and colleague. In the end, however, the friendly smile Hamish gives both her and the Hatter proves that no formal thanks are required.
“Have you a strategy for introducing him to your mother and sister?” Hamish suddenly asks, all business. For the first time, Alice believes she will be glad for his input concerning one of her future ventures.
She takes a deep, centering breath. In response, the Hatter rubs his thumb over the back of her hand. “My mother and sister. I know. They have some idea of whom to expect, but I shall have to devise an explanation for how we came to be such close companions, some rationale that they will accept.”
“If I might make a suggestion, Alice,” the Hatter whispers softly. “The lack of an explanation is often forgiven in the face of success.”
When Alice repeats this for Hamish’s benefit, the current Lord Ascot gives the Hatter a bemused smile. “I was right about you. There’s business savvy under that explosion of hair, after all.”
Business savvy, indeed… Hamish’s words haunt Alice, teasing her with a possible solution to unanswerable questions. It is very closely related to her thoughts concerning thimbles and her own hat and the impossibility of remaining under the same roof with her mother and sister…
And the idea continues to whisper in her ear through both the farewells and the carriage ride that follows. The Hatter sits, rather improperly, next to her and this small but clear snubbing of What Is Proper reminds Alice of another carriage ride a very long time ago and a conversation that had included, among other things, the mention of a codfish.
“Your concern concerns me,” the Hatter whispers, gently pulling her from her musings. His expression is grave and focused upon her.
“How are you?” she asks. “Does it bother you that we’ve given up on that rabbit hole for the time being?”
He shakes his head. “It will be as you said, Alice. Either another path will present itself to our feet or we shall make our own.” He pauses then and adds haltingly, “It will be our path, will it not?”
“Yes,” she answers, taking his hand. “I simply feared I was… leading you away from… where you felt you needed to be.”
“Silly Alice,” he chastises her and wiggles a bit closer to her on the bench seat.
She leans against his shoulder and gazes out the window. “We’ll be there soon. And I’d like to make one or two things perfectly clear before we get there.”
“The first of which is…?”
“You are unlike any man in this world. Having sailed and seen a quite bit of it, I expect that my evaluation is more accurate than not. My mother and sister will likely assume that it is your very uniqueness which has enchanted me with you, but… er, my mother, sister and I do not always share the same point of view. I expect resistance, initially, but nothing we can’t overcome.”
The Hatter rubs his chin back and forth over her hair as he considers this. “Ye asked mae teh trust ye, laddie. I dae.”
Alice closes her eyes, momentarily overwhelmed with gratitude and a warmth that she has taken to classifying as love. The carriage wheels rattle and roll. The breeze whispers and whistles.
Finally, he prompts, “And the possibly-second point you feel compelled to clarify?”
“We will not be staying with them long.”
“We won’t? But… that is your home, isn’t it?” Clearly, he had expected the Kingsleigh country estate to be their final stop.
Alice leans back and, grinning, whispers, “I have several.”
“Several?”
“Yes. And although it’s a bit soon after returning from abroad for me to take up residence in town, I will ask my maid to prepare my trunk after we arrive. We’ll have lunch and dinner with my mother and sister, and then we’ll leave in the morning for London.”
“And what, may I ask, is a London?”
“A horridly dirty and smelly place where I make my fortune.”
“As stench-ridden as a Bandersnatch nest?”
Alice raises her brows at the comparison. “Perhaps,” she allows, contemplating such a thing for the first time. It truly is a marvel, she muses, that the British will tolerate such outrageous filth and muck in their supposedly grandest city but balk at the sight of a man bedecked in bright colors and smiling a gap-toothed and lazy-eyed smile. Her determination renews; she’ll not let their fear and narrow-mindedness injure the Hatter. They will return to Underland - whatever its condition - before the Hatter gives up his flamboyant fashions and carefree smile.
The remainder of the journey passes as Alice and the Hatter entertain thoughts of impossible things, despite the fact that it is well after breakfast:
“We will pass the scones expeditiously!” Alice informs him.
The Hatter’s brows wiggle with mock concern. “Are you quite skilled at ducking and dodging then?”
“If I’m not,” she counters with a rakish grin, “would you step in and assist me?”
“Step, leap, hop, lurch, stumble, stagger-!” And, a kiss later: “How expeditiously will these scones be passed, do you expect? And will they have been made with heavy cream or light?”
“The cook has never revealed her recipe.”
“Ah. A secret weapon then…”
And then, the Hatter declares, á propros, “We shall all keep our head in the clouds!”
“With a view like that, we’ll surely witness time flying.” Alice clasps his hand tightly in her own and continues, “And should there be any unfortunate lulls in the conversation, the walls will talk.”
“Will it be a stately speech, do you suppose, or a rather tacky one?”
“I confess I expect their tone will be quite wooden.”
By the time they arrive at Alice’s home and disembark, they’ve created quite a list of ridiculous nonsensery. Their giggles have left them breathless and smiling. Alice forcibly ignores her lingering doubts as she hooks her arm through the Hatter’s and leads him toward the front door of the house.
Things progress quickly from the moment it opens: the housekeeper welcomes Alice in her customary dulcet tones and then, turning toward her mistress’ guest, openly gapes at the Hatter. The frozen tableau in the spacious foyer is filed to bursting with Alice’s exasperated humor, the Hatter’s friendly smile, and Mrs. Walace’s shock. It breaks only when Alice’s mother calls out from the parlor.
“We’re in here, Alice!”
Despite this being Alice’s house - and a rather grand one at that, although not so grand as the Ascot estate - she supposes there’s no avoiding the introductions now. The Hatter sighs and, at Alice’s questioning look, wearily shakes his head; it appears as if perfect comprehension of Uplandish English will remain an impossibility. She gives the Hatter’s arm a reassuring pat and waits for him to gather himself. When he is ready, he nods decisively, his green eyes narrowed with fortitude.
Traversing the hall to the room takes both more time and less than normal. She is unnaturally aware of the polished, dark wood banister and its burgundy carpet. The wainscoting and blue-on-blue fluer-de-lis are inexplicably far more demanding of her attention than they ought to be. Yet when Alice pauses on the parlor threshold with the Hatter by her side, she feels rather cheated; she had not had enough time to marvel at the fact that the Hatter is here, with her, in her home. He is real and this is not a dream and…
Alice takes a deep breath, assures herself that she has prepared as best as she can for this meeting. They had articulated all possible impossible things on the journey here and, surely, what comes next will seem dreadfully anticlimactic…
And yet something happens that neither she nor the Hatter had expected.
Helen Kingsleigh, in the midst of crossing the room to embrace her daughter, stops and stares… at a complete loss for words. And Alice’s sister - Margaret Manchester - who is seated comfortably upon the sofa, promptly drops the ball of embroidery thread in her hands… and swoons.