Later that night, after the hearth-fire had been banked and the occupants of the cabin settled in to rest, Alice found she could not sleep. Wrapped up in a quilt, the bottom of her pale feet exposed to the air, she felt the form of Cora next to her giving off a faint warmth. The two sisters had continued to share the cabin's one bed, despite Cora's new affianced status, while the two brothers slept on the floor nearby. Chingachgook preferred to sleep outside when the weather was fair, as it had been for several nights.
Her body was exhausted, but her thoughts kept racing, her eyes simply refusing to stay closed. She sighed in frustration and rolled over onto her other side.
What had happened that afternoon had been a mistake, she knew. It had been kind of Uncas to show her the fawn, but she should have never gone with him unescorted nor should she have allowed the glances between them to last as long as they did. The way he had looked at her, her chest tightening as she remembered, was far too bold, and would have been so even were he a straight-laced English gentleman, which he decidedly was not.
She would admit that he was handsome, in his own way – with fathomless dark brown eyes that seemed to look upon the world with a measured calmness, the full line of his mouth balanced by a wide expanse of cheekbones – even though she never would have thought, before she came here, that a native man could possibly be considered so.
Even his clothing, which had appeared so strange to her when they had first met, with its lack of modesty, its lack of all those articles of dress deemed necessary and proper to a man, seemed less foreign, almost familiar. The fact that he only seemed to own two shirts, which would have been unthinkable for anyone in Alice's previous acquaintance, somehow charmed her, his matter-of-fact disinterest in material excess or ornamentation surprisingly appealing.
Despite such admissions, she still had to acknowledge the unbridgeable gulf between them. She was who she was and he was who he was; these were indisputable facts. In the face of them, what did it matter how she might feel?
Alice sat up slowly and moved her feet onto the floor, the unfinished wood abrasive on her bare skin. With the quilt still wrapped around her shoulders, she made her way past the sleeping figures of Nathaniel and Uncas, out the front door, and onto the small raised porch. The night sky was a vast canvas of velvet black and midnight blue, the stars a brilliant dusting of infinitesimally tiny jewels set along its surface. She sat, curled up on the edge of the porch, staring up at the immensity of it all.
She could feel her English life, the one she had before this place, slowly fading, as if it had merely been the creation of her imagination, the product of fevered dreams. She tried for a moment to recollect something, anything, a memory to latch onto that might tether her back to the world she had known. A picture emerged, half-formed, from the miasma of her thoughts. It seemed like a lifetime ago; had it only been last spring?
The night air was still warm along the main promenade of Vauxhall Gardens, the lamps set along the path illuminating the way. The two girls had escaped from their hawk-eyed governesses and now giggled and grasped each other's arms tightly, despite the imposing hoop petticoats emerging from each hip. Alice Munro and Caroline Powlett, one clad in blue silk, the other in cream, inseparable since they were eight years old, closer than sisters.
Caroline loved Vauxhall, milling with fashionable society among the pavilions and genteel entertainments, visiting the picture galleries and marveling at the fireworks displays. In all truth, Alice preferred Ranelagh, even though it was almost double the price of admission, as the clientele were generally of higher quality, but, as it almost always was, she was happy to let Caroline have her way.
They had lost their guardians somewhere among the throngs of the Turkish pavilion as they had all stopped briefly to sample the strawberry ices. From there, the pair headed towards the Rotunda, which would soon be crowded in anticipation of the evening's orchestral performance. Alice's governess did not approve of the orchestra, in particular of Handel – featured heavily on the program that night – who she decried for his pernicious inclination towards the Italianate style.
Alice's eyes were caught by a brightly-lit exhibition to her left, which, according to the banner, was showcasing curiosities from the far reaches of Britain's dominions. Among the promised marvels was a creature known as a raccoon – what this was, Alice had no conception – a red man from the Americas, and several giant apes from Borneo. There was even to be a genuine Hottentot. Caroline pulled at her elbow, complaining that they would be late, but Alice took no notice; instead she made her way to the exhibition entrance, pulling two small silver pennies from her pocket and exchanging them for a ticket.
With Caroline following begrudgingly behind, they moved from display to display, Alice growing increasingly more disappointed. The raccoon was asleep, tucked in the far reaches of its cage, only a striped tail visible in the torch-light, while the single ape seemed sick and malnourished, its thinning fur matted with dark mud. A hand-lettered sign explained that the Hottentot had died last week. On the final platform, Alice could make out the imposing figure of a strangely-dressed man; she was grateful that at least this last exhibit would be as promised.
As she approached, she saw that he wore tan leather trousers, combined with two brightly-colored squares of fabric that hung from the front and the back of a waistcord. His top half was covered by a thin cotton shirt that opened half-way down his chest, his hands carrying an axe and a plain-looking knife with a wooden handle.
All in all, Alice was fairly impressed until he raised his arm, the cuff of his sleeve falling down towards his elbow, revealing a space on his forearm where the skin shifted suddenly from dark to pale. Looking more closely at him, she realized that his visible parts had clearly been covered with brown grease-paint, a sandy tuft of hair now escaping from underneath his long black wig. He caught her gaze and grinned at her with missing teeth.
She turned and fled, Caroline finally catching up to her back at the garden's central path. Alice could not articulate why exactly she was so upset, but she stayed silent the rest of the evening, her eyes downcast and meek even after they were found and soundly reprimanded by their over-worried governesses.
Alice remembered that when her father's letter had arrived, a few weeks later, requesting that she and Cora join him as he took up his command along the colonial frontier, she had been excited by the idea of finally seeing those things she had only read about in books. It was to be real this time, not a cheaply-made simulacrum. It was to be an adventure.
And now she was here, staring off into the unbound horizon, where everything was on its head, where nothing made any sense at all.