The Signature of All Things (45 page)

As old certainties quaked and trembled upon ever-eroding ground, Alma Whittaker—alone at White Acre—indulged in her own dangerous thoughts. She pondered Thomas Malthus, with his theories about population growth, disease, cataclysm, famine, and extinction. She pondered John William Draper’s brilliant new photographs of the moon. She pondered Louis Agassiz’s theory that the world had once seen an Ice Age. She took a long walk one day to the museum at Sansom Street to see the fully reconstructed bones of a giant mastodon, which caused her to think once again about the ancientness of this planet—and, indeed, of all the planets. She reconsidered algae and mosses, and how one might have turned into the other. She focused again on
Dicranum
, wondering anew how this particular moss genus could exist in so many minutely diverse forms; what had shaped it into all these hundreds upon hundreds of silhouettes and configurations?

In late 1850, George Hawkes brought forth Ambrose’s orchid book into the world—a lavish and expensive publication called
The Orchids of Guatemala and Mexico
. All who encountered the book declared Ambrose Pike to be the finest botanical artist of the age. All the most prominent gardens wanted to commission Mr. Pike to document their own collections, but Ambrose Pike was gone—lost on the other side of the world, growing vanilla, far out of reach. Alma felt guilt and shame over this, but she did not know what to do about it. She spent time with the book every day. The beauty of Ambrose’s work brought her pain, but she could not stay away from it, either. She arranged for George Hawkes to send a copy of the book to Ambrose in Tahiti, but she never heard whether the volume had arrived. She arranged that Ambrose’s mother—the formidable Mrs. Constance Pike—should receive all the earnings from the book. This led to some polite exchanges of letters between Alma and her mother-in-law. Mrs. Pike, most unfortunately, believed that her son had run away from his new wife in order to pursue his reckless dreams—and Alma, even more unfortunately, did not disabuse her of that misconception.

Once a month, Alma went to see her old friend Retta at the Griffon Asylum. Retta no longer knew who Alma was—nor, it seemed, did Retta know who she herself was.

Alma did not see her sister Prudence, but heard news every now and again: poverty and abolition, abolition and poverty, always the same grim tale.

Alma thought about all these things, but did not know what to make of any of it. Why had their lives turned this way, and not another way? She thought again about the four distinct and concurrent varieties of time, as she had once named them: Divine Time, Geological Time, Human Time, Moss Time. It occurred to her that she had spent most of her life wishing she could live within the slow, microscopic realm of Moss Time. That had been an odd enough desire, but then she’d met Ambrose Pike, whose yearnings were even more extreme than hers: he had wanted to live within the eternal emptiness of Divine Time—which is to say, he had wanted to live outside of time altogether. He had wanted her to live there with him.

One thing was certain: Human Time was the saddest, maddest, most devastating variety of time that had ever existed. She tried her best to ignore it.

Nevertheless, the days passed by.

I
n early May of 1851, on a cool, rainy morning, a letter came to White Acre addressed to Henry Whittaker. There was no return address, but the edges of the envelope had been inked with a black border, signifying mourning. Alma read all of Henry’s mail, so she opened this envelope, too, as she dutifully caught up with correspondence in her father’s study.

Dear Mr. Whittaker—

I write today both to introduce myself and to share unfortunate news. My name is the Reverend Francis Welles, and I have been the missionary at Matavai Bay, Tahiti, for thirty-seven years. At times in the past, I have conducted business with your good representative, Mr. Yancey, who knows me to be an enthusiastic amateur in the field of botany. I have collected samples for Mr. Yancey and shown him places of botanical interest, &c., &c. Also, I have sold him marine specimens, coral and seashells—a special interest of mine.

Of late, Mr. Yancey had enlisted my aid in the attempt to preserve your vanilla plantation here—an endeavor that was much assisted by the arrival, in 1849, of a young employee of yours, by the name of Mr. Ambrose Pike. It is my sad duty to inform you that Mr. Pike has passed away, owing to the sort of infection that—all too easily in this torrid climate—can lead the sufferer to a fast and early death.

You may wish to alert his family that Ambrose Pike was called to our Lord on November 30, 1850. You may also wish to inform his loved ones that Mr. Pike was given a proper Christian burial, and that I have arranged for a small stone to mark his grave. I much regret his passing. He was a gentleman of the highest morality and purest character. Such are not easily found in these parts. I doubt I shall ever meet another like him.

I can offer no consolation, aside from the certainty that he lives now in a better place, and that he will never suffer the indignities of old age.

Yours most sincerely, The Reverend F. P. Welles.

The news hit Alma with all the force of an ax head striking granite: it clanged in her ears, shuddered her bones, and struck sparks before her eyes. It knocked a wedge of something out of her—a wedge of something terribly important—and that wedge was sent spinning into the air, never to be found again. If she had not been sitting, she would have fallen down. As it was, she collapsed forward onto her father’s desk, pressed her face against the Reverend F. P. Welles’s most kind and thoughtful letter, and wept like to pull down every cloud from the vaults of heaven.

H
ow could she possibly grieve Ambrose more than she had already grieved him? Yet she did. There is grief below grief, she soon learned, just as there are strata below strata in the ocean floor—and even more strata below that, if one keeps digging. Ambrose had been gone from her for so long, and she must have known he would be gone forever, but she had never considered that he might die before she did. The simple magic of arithmetic should have precluded that: he was so much younger than she. How could he die first? He was the picture of youth. He was the compilation of all the innocence that youth had ever known. Yet he was dead, and she was alive. She had sent him away to die.

There is a level of grief so deep that it stops resembling grief at all. The pain becomes so severe that the body can no longer feel it. The grief
cauterizes itself, scars over, prevents inflated feelings. Such numbness is a kind of mercy. This is the level of grief that Alma reached, once she lifted her face from her father’s desk, once she stopped sobbing.

She moved forward as though manipulated by some blunt, relentless external force. The first thing she did was tell her father the sorry news. She found him lying in bed, eyes closed, gray and weary, looking like a death mask unto himself. Ingloriously, she had to shout the news of Ambrose’s death into Henry’s ear trumpet before he was made to understand what had transpired.

“Well, there goes that,” he said, and shut his eyes again.

She told Hanneke de Groot, who pursed her lips, pressed her hands to her chest, and said only, “God!”—a word that is the same in Dutch as in English.

Alma wrote a letter to George Hawkes explaining what had happened and thanking him for the kindness he had shown Ambrose, and for honoring Mr. Pike’s memory through the exquisite orchid book. George responded immediately with a note of perfect tenderness and polite sorrow.

Shortly thereafter, Alma received a letter from her sister Prudence, expressing condolence for the loss of her husband. She did not know who had told Prudence. She did not ask. She wrote Prudence a note of gratitude in reply.

She wrote a letter to the Reverend Francis Welles, which she signed in her father’s name, thanking him for conveying the sad news about the death of this most respected employee, and asking if there was anything the Whittakers could do for him in return.

She wrote a note to Ambrose’s mother, into which she transcribed every word of the Reverend Francis Welles’s letter. She dreaded to send it. Alma knew that Ambrose had been his mother’s favorite son, despite what Mrs. Pike referred to as “his ungovernable ways.” Why would he not have been her favorite? Ambrose was everyone’s favorite. This news would destroy her. What’s worse, Alma could not help but feel that she had murdered this woman’s favorite son—the best one, the jewel, the angel of Framingham. Mailing the dreadful letter, Alma could only hope that Mrs. Pike’s Christian faith would shield her at least somewhat from this blow.

As for Alma, she did not have the comfort of that sort of faith. She believed in the Creator, but she had never turned to Him in moments of
despair—and she would not do so now, either. Hers was not that sort of belief. Alma accepted and admired the Lord as the designer and prime mover of the universe, but to her mind He was a daunting, distant, and even pitiless figure. Any being who could create a world of such acute suffering was not
the being to approach for solace from the tribulations of that world. For such solace, one could only turn to the likes of Hanneke de Groot.

After Alma’s sad duties had been carried out—after all those letters about Ambrose’s death were written and posted—there was naught else for her to do but settle into her widowhood, her shame, and her sadness. More from habit than desire, she returned to her studies of mosses. Without that task, she felt she might have died herself. Her father grew sicker. Her responsibilities grew larger. The world became smaller.

And that is what the rest of Alma’s life might have looked like, had it not been for the arrival—only five months later—of Dick Yancey, who came striding up the steps of White Acre on a fine October morning, carrying in his hand the small, worn, leather valise that had once belonged to Ambrose Pike, and asking for a private word with Alma Whittaker.

Chapter Nineteen

A
lma led Dick Yancey into her father’s study and closed the door behind them. She had never before been in a room alone with him. He had been a presence in her life since earliest memory, but he had always made her feel chilled and uneasy. His towering height, his corpse-white skin, his gleaming bald head, his icy gaze, the hatchet of his profile—all of it combined to create a figure of real menace. Even now, after nearly fifty years of acquaintance, Alma could not determine how old he was. He was eternal. This only added to his fearsomeness. The entire world was afraid of Dick Yancey, which was exactly how Henry Whittaker wanted it. Alma had never understood Yancey’s loyalty to Henry, or how Henry managed to control him, but one thing was clear: the Whittaker Company could not function without this terrifying man.

“Mr. Yancey,” Alma said, and gestured toward a chair. “I beg of you, make yourself at ease.”

He did not sit. He stood in the middle of the room and held Ambrose’s valise loosely in one hand. Alma tried not to stare at it—the only possession of her late husband. She did not sit, either. Evidently, they would not be making themselves at ease.

“Is there something you wished to speak with me about, Mr. Yancey? Or would you prefer to see my father? He has been unwell lately, as I know you are aware, but today is one of his better days and his head is clear. He can receive you in his bedchamber, if that would suit you.”

Still, Dick Yancey did not speak. This was a famous tactic of his: silence as a weapon. When Dick Yancey did not speak, those around him, nervous, filled the air with words. People said more than they meant to say. Dick Yancey would watch from behind his silent fortification as secrets flew. Then he would bring those secrets home to White Acre. This was a function of his power.

Alma resolved not to fall into his trap and speak without thinking. Thus, they stood in silence together for what must have been another two minutes. Then Alma couldn’t bear it. She spoke again: “I see you are carrying my late husband’s valise. I assume you have been to Tahiti, and have retrieved it there? Have you come to return it to me?”

He neither moved nor said a word.

Alma went on. “If you are wondering whether I would like to have that valise back, Mr. Yancey, the answer is yes—I would like it very much. My late husband was a man of few belongings, and it would mean a good deal to me to keep as a remembrance the one item that I know he himself valued enormously.”

Still, he did not speak. Was he going to make her beg for it? Was she meant to pay him? Did he want something in exchange? Or—the thought crossed her mind in an errant, illogical flash—was he hesitating for some reason? Could he be feeling uncertain? There was no telling with Dick Yancey. He could never be read. Alma began to feel both impatient and alarmed.

“I really must insist, Mr. Yancey,” she said, “that you explain yourself.”

Dick Yancey was not a man who ever explained himself. Alma knew this as well as anybody alive. He did not squander words on such petty uses as explanation. He did not squander words at all. From earliest childhood, in fact, Alma had rarely heard him speak more than three words in a row. As for this day, however, Dick Yancey was able to make his point clear in a mere two
words, which he now growled from the corner of his mouth as he strode past Alma and out the door, thrusting the valise into her arms as he brushed by her.

“Burn it,” he said.

A
lma sat alone with the valise in her father’s study for an hour, staring at the object as though trying to determine—through its worn and salt-stained
leather exterior—what lurked within. Why on earth would Yancey have said such a thing? Why would he take the trouble to bring her this valise from the other side of the planet, only to instruct her now to burn it? Why had he not burned it himself, if it needed burning? And did he mean that she should burn it
after
opening it and reviewing its contents, or
before
? Why had he hesitated so long before handing it over?