The Vicar was a smart match for Alice, and she knew it. She rather liked the man, and often enjoyed his companionship and intellect. She knew she was getting older and quite agreed with her mother that it had been about time that a marital arrangement be negotiated. Her sister Edith was tidily wed away to a big city banker, and just last month the eldest sister, Lorina had announced that she and her doctor husband were expecting a baby. Now that the patriarch of the family had passed away, Alice's mother seemed quite set on finally marrying off her youngest daughter and moving out of the old, drafty family home and in with Edith in her stylish London townhouse. Alice had known this day would come eventually, but found her mother's tactics a bit insensitive; especially when she had seen fit to invite the young holy man home for dinner immediately after he performed her late husband's funeral service.
Alice had a feeling that they all knew she would eventually fall for a professor of the arts, or an author, or a man of the cloth—some lofty, intellectual of a man with tidy clothes who was in need of a good woman to manage his social affairs. When Alice and the Vicar began to form a friendship, the most enthusiastic parties seemed to be those not directly involved in the arrangement, but notably Alice's mother, aunts, and sisters, which made everything relatively less convenient for the young couple. The courtship had been conducted in what Alice perceived as an unnaturally public way, and after one too many family members walking in on a private conversation of her's, she began to yearn for the day she and the Vicar wed so they could begin a quiet, private marriage full of mutual fondness, albeit a healthy dose of disconnection, and many, many books.
It was surprising to the girl that she felt this pull, for she had never been the sort to preoccupy herself with dreams of matrimony or love, instead remaining practical, aloof, and perceptive as she had been since her youth. Indeed, she suspected the partiality she felt towards the Vicar was as close as she would ever get to loving someone, and felt she must capitalize upon such emotions with no delay. The idea of being the wife of clergy did not bother her in the least, excepting of course, the prospect of sitting duly through sermon after sermon.
It wasn't so much the religious aspect of it all that tortured her, but rather the listening. Alice felt that any good religious discourse was much like political, philosophical, or literary ones; best when shared among academic peers. This was a pursuit she did enjoy with the Vicar on occasion—debates on transubstantiation over tea, and afternoons in the garden of his parsonage spent discussing natural theology. However, when he ascended the pulpit to deliver his lectures to the small parish he presided over, Alice had to concentrate very hard on keeping herself alert, for he inexplicably adopted a very dry, droll tone whenever he began to speak the sermon.
Usually it wasn't entirely unbearable, since her mother had taken to coming along to mass with her, but this week Alice's mother was away visiting Lorina, leaving Alice alone in her childhood home and in her Sunday morning activity. The girl had very nearly stayed in bed that morning, but then she remembered how the Vicar could very soon be her husband and how she had better be getting used to this all, and wouldn't the people in the parish say such awful things if someone noticed her absence? So in the end she had reprimanded herself awake and out the door.
It was the middle of August, and the weather of the season had been particularly unforgiving. It seemed as though a storm were on the horizon at all times, though rarely did the clouds break and actually let forth rain. The mugginess had been a constant companion to Alice, as was the nostalgia and longing for childhood that the girl kept feeling. The summer was the first season she had spent without her father, and whenever her mind would go blank and wander, she seemed to return to memories of spending time in his office with him, taking walks in the back garden, and, in the very end, reading to him at his bedside. This made her realize how complicated life had a habit of getting, and how everything was much simpler in childhood, when parents were there to guide you, get you out of trouble, and wipe away any worry. Now, with betrothals and deaths and babies, Alice thought she had quite enough to be getting on with.
It was, consequently, this topic that she suspected the Vicar was lecturing on, though she was having some difficulty following his points without her mother's bony elbow to keep her from drifting off into a world of her own. The humidity seemed even more acute inside the small chapel, and Alice was having more trouble than usual keeping her eyes open. She gritted her teeth and stared very purposefully at the Vicar's soft, round face with his thin lips and brown hair that was beginning to recede despite him being firmly set in the middle of his twenties. He was her friend, her future husband, and she knew that she owed it to him to pay attention, be receptive, and above all, not drift to sleep. Her eyelids and limbs were so, so heavy, and she resolved that a good nap was definitely in order when she returned home. Unless, of course, the Vicar invited her around to his house for lunch, in which case she'd have to postpone until far later in the afternoon. Her eyes involuntarily drifted shut, and Alice wrenched them open again.
The Vicar's droll tone reminded Alice very much of the cicada chirr that drifted through the chapel's slightly ajar windows. If she didn't focus on the words so much as the sound, it actually became a very soothing and comforting noise. Perhaps one day, Alice thought, her eyelids dropping once more, she would ask the Vicar to practice his sermons as their children drifted to sleep.
"This is a right bit of tosh, isn't it?" a voice muttered very close to Alice's ear, startling her. Her eyes flew open as she jumped violently, jerking her head over to discover the source of the whisper.
There was a man sitting to her right, though Alice could have sworn the pew was empty next to her. His face showed that he was a young man, although his mop of pure white curls suggested otherwise. It was a pleasant face though, Alice thought, with wide, child-like eyes and a somewhat bulbous nose that was covered in a thick smattering of freckles. He couldn't be over thirty. The man wore a violently orange coat, which was in current fashion, despite the odd shade. On his lap sat a laughably oversized hat. But then, Alice supposed that was not necessarily the case. It was the crown that was huge. The brim, though it flared out outrageously, must have been crafted to fit on the head of the gentleman next to her, which happened to be of relatively normal shape and size. Something about the man's attire and manner seemed oddly familiar to Alice, as if she had glimpsed him briefly on a train or at a dinner party at some point.
Despite this, Alice did not reply to this man's observation, but stared at him in a manner that she hoped communicated how put off she was by his strange attire, and that she did not want to associate with him, not one bit. She turned her attention back to face the Vicar, who she noted with chagrin was stepping down from the pulpit to deliver the final recitations of the service. She hadn't been aware that she had dozed through so much of the sermon, and rather hoped that neither the Vicar nor any parish members had noticed.
"You didn't snore much, you'll be happy to know." The man next to her muttered again. Alice ignored him with a very deliberate air. This did not seem to deter the man. "Or perhaps you won't be happy to know that. Perhaps you'll be quite disappointed—I would be, though I do find it prudent that one prides oneself on the volume and veracity of one's snoring. The trick is to really draw from the back of your throat, utilizing any phlegm that may be on hand, as it were."
He spoke this all very precisely, with no hint of a verbal tick or unsightly lisp. This made Alice more irritated, for surely such an ailment could be a sign of some sort of mental impairment, which she felt sure the man had—why else would a self-respecting person talk so loudly about such impudent things in church!? She felt that perhaps she could have forgiven him easily if it became clear that he was wanting in mental capacities, perhaps even setting a good example to the rest of the congregation of her infinite kindness and patience that was sure to serve her well as a vicar's wife. But this man seemed to just be rude, which Alice knew many did not regard as mental instability, though she herself questioned this frequently.
She decided it best to deal with the problem quickly.
"Sir, would you be so kind as to keep your voice down? You are distracting me from the service." She said this quietly, head lowered demurely so as to not irritate the patrons in the pews around her and her unfortunate conversational partner.
The man raised his rather sizable and strangely dark eyebrows at her. "My dear Alice, that would not be a problem, excepting for the fact that the service is, as I perceive, over with."
Alice looked around suddenly. The Vicar was no longer in the front of the chapel, no doubt gone to wash his hands off and have a quick cup of water before meeting with the parish in the courtyard, as he did after every service. The congregation was beginning to stand up and gather their affects, chatting amiably with each other. She whirled haughtily back to the strangely dressed man, intending to give him a thorough telling off for his behavior. When she looked, however, he was no longer sitting next to her in the pew.
Alice cast her gaze around for the lurid orange coat, and found it and its owner trotting up the center aisle of the church. She recalled his final statement, wondering if he had made a proper farewell or if he had simply up and left. What had he said?
"…my dear Alice?" muttered Alice, noting the man's inclusion of her name. She was quite certain that she hadn't introduced herself in the brief time that they had engaged. Then how did he know her name? Alice squared her gaze on his retreating form, and quickly rose from the pew, striding purposefully after the man. She was going to get some answers.
The strange man took long, loping steps through the chapel foyer, and Alice did her best to keep up while dodging around parish members. She lost sight of him as two elderly men sidled in front of her. One was short with a mane of wiry white hair that framed his head, while the other was tall, streamlined, with an almost equine quality about him.
"Why hello, Alice dear, it's so nice to see you!" the slim man crackled, reaching out to grasp Alice's hand between his own. "It's been such a long time."
The shorter man spoke up. "It hasn't really been that long, not by her standards at least."
Alice did not recognize either man, but she did not want to appear rude, so she merely smiled serenely and tugged her hand out of the grip that held it. "It is wonderful to see you too, sirs, but I fear I must be off straightaway. I have an…" Alice peered around the two men at the orange coat she could barely see through the front doors. "…an obligation."
"Is that what they call it nowadays?" the short man asked, cracking a smile. "My, Alice, you have grown."
His companion rapped him smartly on the head. "Don't be vulgar, you bumbling coot," the tall man reprimanded. "Can't you see she's not that sort?"
"Well of course she's not that sort," the short man retorted, turning to his partner with a look of great annoyance, "Look at what she's wearing, you think she'd get any customers in that? And at mass, too. Do you really think so little of my intelligence that—"
Alice, sensing that she wasn't going to get any sort of civilized farewell from the pair, hastened through the parishioners and toward the church's front doors, in pursuit of that dastardly man in the orange coat. Just as she breached the wide wooden lintel, she heard the Vicar's familiar tones greeting the church body. A twinge of guilt soured in her stomach, but Alice pushed the thoughts of wifely duty and putting on a good face out of her mind, and strode out into the overcast August morning. There was time enough for her to make excuses and explanations to the congregation, and only moments to get to the bottom of the more pressing mystery.
The path from the church door wove through a small copse of trees before splitting at the main road. Alice paused at the fork, peering one way and the other, praying for a glimpse of the coated man.
"He must have chosen a course," Alice muttered to herself, "though which way, I am quite unsure." She deliberated for a moment, then set her toes toward the path that lay to her left. This was the way into the downtown that the small village boasted, and the more likely destination for a passing traveler.
Before her first step had fallen to the pavement, a voice from behind her cried, "You chose wrong," in great amusement. Alice gasped aloud, her hand coming up to her chest in alarm. She spun sharply, her heart pounding. When she saw the man who had been next to her in the pew leaning against a tree at the edge of the small wood, with his outrageous orange coat and large green hat draped over his arm and a very smug expression on his face, her panic turned to determined annoyance in a second.
"This is entirely uncouth," she told him, "You speaking to me that way during the service, and you sneaking behind me through the wood just now. Did your mother instill in you any understanding of basic social mores when she raised you?"
The man screwed up his face. "To be quite honest with you, miss, I haven't the foggiest."
"Well," Alice said, quite at a loss as to how someone could be unsure of the lessons their own mother taught them, "that seems to explain quite a lot. Now sir, would you please stop playing games with me and enlighten me as to how you know my name?"
"Your name?" the man repeated, leaning toward her.
It took every ounce of Alice's patience to keep her voice level and polite. "You referred to me as Alice in the pew, and I would like to know how you know my name, and which parish I attend. Are you a friend of the Vicar, or of my mother or one of my sisters?"
The man ignored her question. "Ah yes, Alice. Nice to meet you, Alice." He stuck out a freckled hand for her to shake.
Alice sighed. "And you, sir." She shook his hand quickly. It was rough and calloused, and the hardened skin felt foreign to her hand, used to the soft and pliable palms of intellectuals and women. She pulled her hand back, having resolved that the man was troubled, and that this conversation was going nowhere quickly. "Good day." She said resolutely, turning about and starting down the path that branched away from downtown. Alice had only gone several steps away before the man called out again.
"Alice, you are monstrously horrid at conversations," he said, and Alice heard another pair of footsteps join her own soft clicking down the walk. "It's really quite impressive that you've managed to secure the fancy of such a learned man as Father Baldy in that mind-numbingly tiresome country parish."
The reference to her private matters set Alice's teeth on edge and as her paranoia flared, she spoke stiffly between the two rows of ivories. "What is truly impressive, sir, is your uncanny ability to divine my personal affairs seemingly from thin air."
The man laughed in response. "What a sharp tongue you have grown into, Alice! Much like the majestic adder, your biting wit has poisoned me to my very core." His voice had taken on a deeply sarcastic tone. "Do tell me where you have developed this skill, for I must aspire to do the same! Dinner parties are such a bore for me as of late."
"It's a wonder you get invited to any dinner parties at all." Alice muttered, loudly enough for the man trailing her to hear.
"You shouldn't mumble, it isn't polite." The man reprimanded. Alice was suddenly very aware that the strange man was almost directly behind her, taking step for step. She could feel the soft breeze that billowed around his feet as they descended to the pavement just behind her own, and just as she realized that he was about to step on the back of her shoe, she felt her heel come softly popping out of its place in her boot, and heard the man say, "Then again, you don't seem to have grown into a particularly polite person at all."
It all was entirely too much for Alice to take, and she spun on her heels to face the man. This quick about, along with his tight stride behind her, placed her right in front of his chest, and she had to peer up to address him. "Look here, sir," she said firmly, thumping a pointer finger onto his chest. "I don't know who you are, or how you know me and my affairs, but I'd advise you tell me why you insist on being such an irksome bother and then leave me to my day, else I'll alert the authorities."
The man peered down his rounded, freckled nose and directly into Alice's eyes. He did not blink for several seconds, and neither did she, completely unwilling to admit defeat or appear weak to this madman. "Well," he finally said, breaking the eye contact by pulling his eyes up to gaze at something beyond the blonde girl, "I suppose that would make our getting back home quite complicated. And Alice, we really must be going."
Alice took a step backward, pushing hard on her heel as she did so. Her soft stockinged foot slid back into its proper place in her boot, and she threw her hands up in the air in frustration. "Sir, you baffle me. Your manner is entirely presumptuous, you seem to seek admittance to my home, but now you insist on you and me carrying off somewhere together in a sort of grand adventure. I will ask you one last time. Who are you, and what is your purpose in seeking out my company?"
The man did not immediately answer as Alice had hoped he would. He dropped his gaze to the ground, pressing his lips together and then biting softly at them. "I'm the Hatter," he said, finally pulling his gaze up to her frustrated gaze.
"What?" Alice cried.
The Hatter sighed and ran the hand that was not holding his monstrously large hat through his mass of loose white curls. The locks twisted between his fingers languidly, a wave composed of only pure sea foam. He was looking at the girl in a way that one looks at particularly stubborn children or small dogs who will not stop yapping about one's feet. "I'm called the Hatter. That's what my friends call me. And my enemies, and people who look me up in the phone directory."
Alice's eyes flicked from the man's face to the large hat he held in his left hand. She thought back to the pressing familiarity of the man that had presented itself when she first saw him in the pew, and as she pondered his name and the object, it occurred to her that she must have known him when she was very young, when memories were still mixed with dreams and stories. Her mind produced a long-ignored recollection of a small, stout man wearing a hat, drinking tea at a long table. "Is that your hat?" she wondered.
"Oh, this old thing?" he asked rhetorically, spinning the brim between his deft fingers. "Yes, it's an old family heirloom. Thought it would add a bit of propriety and elegance to this whole affair—everyone in his old costume and all that." He chuckled and began to stroll down the lane, away from the church, and Alice fell into step beside him without quite realizing it. Their footfalls mingled, the girl taking two for every one of the man's larger strides.
The girl pursed her lips, feeling a curl of curiosity flick its tail in the back of her mind. "I have seen a man in that hat before, but he did not look like you, and I was a child."
"Ah," the Hatter nodded. "I suppose we did know each other in our childhoods in a sense, or at least in your perspective that must have been the case. I think I was rather quite older than I am now when we met, but," he said thoughtfully, "it was during the time when I had dropped out of Time altogether, which made age-tracking quite difficult. We also hadn't established a calendar yet," he mused on, "so no one really knew how old they were. We did have a nastily confusing habit of celebrating birthdays everyday—"
"Sir," Alice interrupted him, "Excuse my manner, but are you suggesting to me that you are The Hatter from my childhood games? I admit I do quite vividly recall a man who wore that hat at a tea party that never ended, but surely the fictions of my childhood cannot be resultant in," she gestured up and down at his height, which must have been at least four heads higher than her, "You."
"Ah," the Hatter beamed. "Marvelous. So you remember the dashingly handsome man who served the tea? And perhaps the Hare who kept interrupting his best jokes? And even a nasty little mouse who was far too drunk at such an hour, and in front of a child, too." Here he huffed a bit, his freckled cheeks waxing and waning.
"Yes, yes," Alice said impatiently. "And the cat who disappeared and the baby who turned into a pig, and that White Rabbit who was so late to his job blowing a horn for a big-headed monarch."
"My countrymen!" The Hatter grinned. "Compatriots and bosom pals. Well, not the Rabbit as of late," he said, turning his head away from her and seeming to address the grass that grew on his side of the lane, "he's rather gotten carried away in his beliefs. You know the type, all Law and no Gospel." He turned back to her and beamed. "I've been sent to summon you back, as everyone agrees that you are long overdue for a visit." He raised his eyebrows. "Quite rude of you. We've all been talking behind your back for decades, you know."
Alice's lips turned up at the corners. "How perfectly nasty of you all. What hypocrites! You never even sent a letter in all these years, to alert me to your existing in reality and not just in my childhood imagination."
The Hatter shook his head, the white curls bouncing. "Don't get existential, Alice, I haven't a degree in it and though the Hare has tried to lecture me on it for years, I find I haven't the stomach for such matters. In any case, this exposition can wait for three or four more scenes. Now, shall we be going?"
He pivoted on his heel. Their strolling had brought them to another split in the path. The cobblestone lead onwards toward the streets that Alice lived on, while a small gravel path wound through the thin wood toward a brook. Alice had taken many a turn down that path with her mother or the Vicar in the past months. Several weeks ago The Vicar had delivered a lecture to her on the various benefits of postponing the consummation of marriage as they walked along the banks of the brook, after which Alice had gone home and tried to untangle a whole mess of thoughts about child-bearing and the various interpretations of a couple's intimate relations in the Bible. She grimaced at the memory of it all. The Hatter had his back to this path and his hand outstretched toward her, clearly intent on leading her that way.
"There is nothing down there but the brook and the bridge," Alice said to him.
The Hatter nodded. "I see. You're wrong, of course, but I see how you might think that."
The girl hesitated, thinking about how tired she still was and how she ought to go home in case the Vicar came by. Her mother would be back from London in a few days, and all of this talking to imaginary characters in the muggy August weather was giving her a headache in the worst way.
"Oh, come on," The Hatter grinned, his hand still outstretched. "Aren't you at all curious?"
Alice looked at his offered hand, then back at the path that lead toward home. What had she to look forward to there? Offers from a Vicar and her father's empty office. She turned back toward the Hatter, set her teeth, and grabbed her skirts.
"Of course I am." she took his hand, and he pulled her toward the brook.