Chapter IV

The Whether-House

As she came closer to it, Alice could see that the house1 was very strange indeed. It had minarets which towered from its onion-shaped roofs, and arched windows set into the yellow brick, and three identical doors all in a row.

    The large, oak doors were each beautiful. They were carved in a number of strange designs, and framed by the most complex piping Alice had ever seen. At first, the left-hand door was a little ajar, while the right was firmly closed; however, as the girl approached it slammed shut, and the other opened an inch. (The central door stayed shut throughout.) Not to be beaten, Alice turned to the right-hand door instead, but that immediately closed in the same way, and its partner swung open once more.

    “Oh, what am I to do now?” Alice mused. “Come, I must surely pass through one of the doors, somehow, but which is it to be?” And she stood before them for a full minute, able neither to pass through a door nor to decide upon which to knock, before the decision was made for her.

All of a sudden the left hand door was thrown fully open, and a figure burst through, all but knocking Alice to one side. It was a small, pale girl2, with large eyes and dark hair cut short at the back. She was carrying a large hairbrush.

    The girl ran up to the garden gate and put her hands on its top - it was almost as tall as she was - so that she could pull herself up to sit on it. When there, to Alice’s astonishment, she merely looked up at the sky while holding her hands outstretched, as if checking for rain. She appeared so unstable that Alice was certain she would fall from the gate in no time at all, and indeed, she did wobble a great deal as she sat. However, rather than fall off she eventually jumped down and landed nimbly on her feet. She then pulled a large map from a back-pocket in her pinafore (although Alice was sure that it was too big to ever have been held in the pocket) and proceeded to lecture Alice from it, using the hairbrush as a pointing stick.

    “The north and south,” she began, “will be bright and breezy,” and here she pointed to the top of the map with the hairbrush. Alice watched the performance politely. She assumed that it was being put on for her benefit, since there seemed to be no-one else around who could be in the slightest bit interested in the weather. She thought that the girl could well have a bit of a problem with her forecast, for as far as she could tell the map was all but blank. There was a nice border in red all around the outside, and a very large compass in the top right hand corner, but apart from that no mark whatsoever. This did not seem to deter the small girl from her task, however; she just continued to point at the blank sheet whilst going on with her speech.

    “The east and west will have the worst of it,” she said (although she did not stop to explain to Alice exactly of what they would be having the worst). “And central areas,” she continued, “where common people live, will really not be very nice at all. But then, they never are, are they?”

    “Really!” exclaimed Alice, and she looked over her shoulder to ensure that there really was no-one behind her who could be offended by such words. “Do you think one ought to say such things? It isn’t very polite, you know!”

    “Oh, they don’t mind,” the girl said, as carefree as if she had been talking about eggs. “Common people are just common people, you know. They don’t mind being called common people, any more than they mind living on common-land.”

    Alice was quite certain that this was not exactly what the girl had meant when she had spoken before; but it seemed a good idea to let the matter rest, so instead of chastising her further, she said to the girl: “This house is very pretty, with all those towers, don’t you find?”

    “It was prettier before,” the girl answered, “when it was fully dressed. There was a lovely blue coat to hide that horrid yellow, but they pulled it down. Well, that’s progress.

    “I cannot tell,” she continued without pausing for breath, “whether you want to listen to my forecasts, or whether you would rather ignore them completely.”

    “Of course, I should love to listen to them,” Alice replied. She was a little perplexed as to the turn of the conversation, since she felt she had given no indication that she wasn’t going to listen anyway. However, the girl seemed almost ready to fall into a tired little sulk, and looked as though she was about to throw the hairbrush to the ground, so Alice continued: “Please, please, forecast some more.”

    The girl brightened immediately. “Alrighty,” she said, and pointed to the map with the brush once again. “This area,” she said (rapidly moving the brush over what looked like the entire sheet), “will be completely . . .”

    But much to Alice’s surprise the girl did not finish her sentence. Instead, she threw the map high into the air, and ran full pelt back into the house, slamming the door behind her. Alice was just about to stand up (she had, by this time, sat on the large front step before the two doors) in order to catch the map before it fell in the mud, when the right hand door itself flew open. Another figure flew through it (again so fast that, had she been standing, Alice would have been thrown to the ground) and ran to climb up onto the gate to grab the map as it fell through the air.

    This time the figure was not a small girl, but a tall man2 wearing spectacles and a fancy waistcoat. He was having some difficulty handling the map (apart, of course, from the fact that he was still standing on the top of the gate), because he was juggling with what appeared to be two shiny, silver balls, one large and one small. It was a few moments before Alice realised that, in fact, the larger of the two balls was a teapot, and the smaller an egg-cup; indeed, the only thing which eventually gave it away was the scalding-hot tea flying out of the teapot and covering both man and map.

    “The north and south,” the man began, but before he could continue he had fallen from his precarious position on the top of the gate into the mud below. He sat up in the mud and carefully examined the teapot and egg-cup for marks. (The map was, by now, a mangled and tea-spattered rag on which he sat.) Then he continued: “will be dull and drizzly. The east and west will have the best of it. And central areas will be as good as anyone has a right to expect of them.” Alice could not help feeling that the central areas were getting a rather rough deal; however, she was still unsure as to exactly where they were situated, so she decided not to say anything.

    By this stage Alice had had enough of playing the audience, so she asked the man (who was still sitting in the mud, examining his teapot for dents): “Please, sir, why are you telling me the weather?”

    “Why not?” retorted the man, as he wiped his spectacles to peer at Alice. “Why not, indeed? Who are you, to ask whether the weather should be told?” But he smiled at Alice then, and tried to speak less severely. “It’s my job, d’you see?” he said. “I am a weather-man” (at least, it sounded to Alice that this was what he said) “and so I come out here to tell the world all sorts of things.”

    “And the girl who was here just now?” Alice asked. “Would she be a weather-girl, then?”

    “That she would, that she would,” replied the man, and he jumped up from his prone position to run around Alice. “She and I, we tell all sorts of things. We tell of plans and pancakes, songs and shortcakes. Often we tell the news, occasionally we tell the olds.” (“I’ve heard of news,” though Alice to herself, “but I don’t believe I’ve ever come across the olds before.” But she did not have a chance to say anything, since the man was continuing his banter.) “Eventimes we tell a story, oftimes a history, ne’ertimes a mystery. Sometimes we tell the weather, and sometimes we tell the wherefore.”

    “Wait! Wait!” cried Alice, for she was becoming a mite confused with the seemingly endless tirade of subjects on which the man professed a willingness to speak. “I do believe you don’t just tell the weather at all!”

    “Why no,” the man answered. “I have never said that I did. I will speak on any subject, whether . . .”

    “That’s it,” said Alice. “Now I understand. You’re not a weather-man, you’re a whether-man!”

    “Indeed,” the man cried, “and I shall tell a story, whether . . .” But before he had a chance to tell Alice what his story would be about, he had run back to the house and slammed the right-hand door behind him, just as the girl had done earlier.

    “How rude they are,” thought Alice. “And the creatures are in such a panic today,” she continued, although still only to herself. “It’s as if everything is a torment to them!” However she was not alone for long. The next minute the left-hand door had swung open again, once more with a loud crash, and the whether-girl raced through it, straight up to Alice’s side. She was now carrying a foaming jug of shaving cream, which she waved so manically that most of the cream had already fallen out.

    “. . . whether you want to hear it or no,” she finished. “It’s a poem called ‘The Haggis and the Pudding.’ You would like to hear it, wouldn’t you?”

    “Why yes, of course,” Alice replied politely. In truth, she was not altogether keen to hear another poem so soon after the last confusing epic. “However,” she thought, “it may be in some way edifying. And there is no doubt that it won’t be the last poem I have to listen to today!”

    “Good,” said the whether-girl, and she began:

Much as their Ma’s and Pa’s had hoped
The Haggis and the Pud3 eloped.
They did not stop to cause a scene,
They just ran off to Gretna Green.

They’d met one summer’s night by chance
Having gone to dine and dance,
And sup with friends; the Haggis drove her,
And soon he’d bowled his maiden over.

(“I’m sorry about that last pun,” the whether-girl said. “I really could not resist putting it in, it was so very applicable.”

    “I’m sure it was hardly noticeable,” said Alice; but really she thought it was far too obvious to be true.)

The Haggis was a dashing fellow,
With tartan kilt and bat of willow;
A sporting man, of some great prowess,
Who Pud could watch for hours and hourss.

The Pud herself was kind and neat,
And, without children ’round her feet,
She’d party long and sleep in late.
(Haggis had found a true soul mate!)

At this point the whether-girl suddenly broke off from the narrative, and ran back into the house. Alice was a little put out that she would not hear the end of the tale; however, within a few moments the other door slammed open. The whether-man raced out holding a small box-like object which he carefully opened and unfolded by Alice’s side.

    “Well, I declare,” she said. “If it isn’t a pianola!” And so it was; the whether-man had managed to unfold a full grand-piano from the small box. He sat at its keyboard and played a few bars, before continuing the poem where his friend had left off:

And thus they met, and thus they spent
Their weeks apart in Hants and Kent.
But weekends, they would run and catch
Together; it was a Love Match.

And so they ran away. The two
Of them together, and “I do”
They promised soon; there followed kisses,
For now the Pud was the Haggis’s.

Having come to the end of the poem the whether-man sat back in his chair and sighed deeply at the loveliness of it all. He clasped his hands to his breast and fluttered his eyelids in a very strange manner, before promptly falling off the stool and landing back in the mud.

    “Thank you,” said Alice, “that was most enjoyable,” and she curtseyed politely to the whether-man. He tried to return a bow, but since he was already sitting down this only resulted in his placing his nose in the mud.

    “As always, a pleasure,” he replied as if he had meant to dirty his face. “And now you must entertain us.”

    “Well, I should like to,” replied Alice, “but I’m afraid that I have never been very good at telling stories or reciting poems or anything of that kind.”

    “Come, come,” said the whether-man. “I don’t have all week. Why not sing a verse or two of ‘Rainy Day4,’ if you can catch the meter?”

    “I shall try,” the girl agreed, “but I am not sure that it will sound at all right. I can’t quite seem to remember the words.” You see, even though the song was one she constantly sang to herself, whenever she tried to remember how the verse went a number of strange and frightening pictures jumped into her head instead. However, she stood herself up straight, held her hands behind her back, and attempted to sing the first verses:

The copold Ounsters are frighting,
Their manic stories getting bolder,
And in the melchant swamps the Antelocks are biting,
While Snarks and Toves play darkling games.

Where does the Killabaub hide itself ’til Tuesday?
Why does it come out only after dark?
I warn thee thrice times three, beware of Jabberwocky,
And never go a-hunting Snark.

“Oh dear,” said Alice. “That isn’t right at all, is it?”

    “No it is not,” replied the whether-girl, “and I can’t say that I care for it one little bit.”

    To Alice’s surprise the whether-man had disappeared. She looked around behind her, but he was nowhere to be seen, and indeed, the right-hand door was now closed, the left one open in its place. “I declare!” she said to herself. “They must have swapped over while I was singing.”

    “No, I’m afraid that was not good enough at all,” the whether-girl continued. “I think you will have to try harder.”

    “Well, if you insist,” said Alice. She was becoming a little angry at the all whether-people’s orders, so she was not willing to give up straight away. “I shall tell a story instead. Now, let me see? Oh yes. Once upon a time there was a man called Mr DeWinter . . .5”

    “And what did he eat?” asked the whether-man (who had replaced the whether-girl so fast that once again Alice did not see it happen).

    “Well, I don’t know,” replied Alice. “That is, I think he may have eaten capers of some sort . . .”

    “He’d need good teeth to eat those,” said the whether-girl, having run out as the whether-man had run back inside while Alice was still talking. “And I know for a fact that his teeth weren’t his! This story is no good at all!”

    “Well, really!” Alice exclaimed at the other’s impertinence, and she would have chastised the whether-girl still more, were it not for the fact that by now the pair were running in and out of their doors at a rate of knots. Indeed, their running caused such a blur that it was all Alice could do to make each of them out; and by now they were finishing each other’s sentences so well that she could hardly tell where one of them finished talking and the other started.

    “Not . . . a good . . . story . . . at all!” said the blur, amid the rapid slamming closed and crashing open of the left and right doors. “We . . . shall have . . . to try . . . much . . . harder!” And to Alice’s horror it ran towards her as if to swallow her up.

    “Oh dear,” she said. “Whatever shall I do?” The blur had surrounded her completely now, so that the house and its gate were totally obscured. Alice was all but thrown up into the air by the commotion the pair caused as they ran round her, and she was nearly deafened by their voices, which came at her from all directions in a most confusing manner, so that she had to throw her hands up to block her ears. “Oh, how I wish they’d stop!” she cried.

    But the blur just continued to wrap itself around her, saying all the time, “song . . . no good . . . story . . . no good,” until just when she thought she was so dizzy she would fall over, Alice heard it say: “we shall just . . . have to go . . . to a party!” And with that it seemed to separate into two, and the two separate blurs to crash through the central door, to leave Alice finally alone once more.

    To her surprise, she was no longer in front of the strange little house, but seated in a large arm chair in a comfortable little study. “How could I have gotten here?” Alice asked herself. “I do believe that must be the strangest way I have ever travelled.” But she did not contemplate the matter long, for that very minute she heard the most delightful music coming from the next room, and immediately decided to investigate.

Chapter III - To Hang a Book . . . Chapter III - To Hang a Book . . . | Chapter V - Mirror Writing Chapter V - Mirror Writing