Alice came out of the river and ran her hands over her body. The sun and the breeze dried her off quickly. She picked up her grass clothes but did not put them back on. Wilfreda asked her about them. Alice replied that they made her itch too much, but she would keep them to wear at night if it got cold. Alice was polite to Wilfreda but obviously aloof. She had overheard much of the conversation and-so knew that Wilfreda had been a factory girl who had become a whore and then had died of syphilis. Or at least Wilfreda thought that the disease-had killed her. She did not remember dying. Undoubtedly, as she had said cheerily, she had lost her mind first.
Alice, hearing this, moved even further away. Burton grinned, wondering what she would do if she knew that he had suffered from the same disease, caught from a slave girl in Cairo when he had been disguised as a Moslem during his trip to Mecca in 1853. He had been “cured” and his mind had not been physically affected; though his mental suffering had been intense. But the point was that resurrection had given everybody a fresh young and undiseased body, and what a person had been on Earth should not influence another’s attitude toward them.
Should not was not, however, would not.
He could not really blame Alice Hargreaves. She was the product of her society – like all women, she was what men had made her and she had strength of character and flexibility of mind to lift herself above some of the prejudices of her time and her class. She had adapted to the nudity well enough, and she was not openly hostile or contemptuous of the girl. She had performed an act with Burton that went against a lifetime of overt and covert indoctrination. And that was on the night of the first day of her life after death, when she should have been on her knees singing hosannas because she had “sinned” and promising that she would never “sin” again as long as she was not put in hellfire.
As they walked across the plain, he thought about her, turning his head now and then to look back at her. That hairless head made her face look so much older but the hairlessness made her look so childlike below the navel. They all bore this contradiction, old man, or woman above the neck, young child below the bellybutton.
He dropped back until he was by her side. This put him behind Frigate and Loghu. The view of Loghu would yield some profit even if his attempt to talk to Alice resulted in nothing. Loghu had a beautifully rounded posterior; her buttocks were like two eggs. And she swayed as enchantingly as Alice.
He spoke in a low voice, “If last night distressed you so much why do you stay with me?” Her beautiful face became twisted and ugly.
“I am not staying with you! I am staying with the group! Moreover, I’ve been thinking about last night, though it pains me to do so. I must be fair. It was the narcotic in that hideous gum that made both of us behave the . . . way we did. At least, I know it was responsible for my behavior. And I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt.”
“Then there’s no hope of repetition?”
“How can you ask that! Certainly not! How dare you?”
“I did not force you,” he said. “As I have pointed out, you did what you would do if you were not restrained by your inhibitions. Those inhibitions are good things – under certain circumstances, such as being the lawful wedded wife of a man you love in the England of Earth. But Earth no longer exists, not as we knew it. Neither does England. Neither does English society. And if all of mankind has been resurrected and is scattered along this river, you still may never see your husband again. You are no longer married. Remember .. . till death do us part.
You have died, and, therefore, parted. Moreover, there is no giving into marriage in heaven.”