The Signature of All Things (48 page)

“Very well, then,” Hanneke said. “Did you ever ask yourself why Prudence married Arthur Dixon?”

“Stop speaking in puzzles, Hanneke,” Alma snapped. “I warn you, I cannot bear it today.”

“I am not speaking in puzzles, child. I am trying to tell you something. Ask yourself—did you ever wonder at that marriage?”

“Of course I did. Who would marry Arthur Dixon?”

“Who, indeed? Do you think Prudence ever loved her tutor? You saw them together for years, when he lived here and was teaching both of you. Did you ever observe any sign of love from her to him?”

Alma thought back. “No,” she admitted.

“Because she did not love him. She loved another, and always had. Alma, your sister loved George Hawkes.”

“George Hawkes?” Alma could only repeat the name. She saw the botanical publisher suddenly in her mind—not as he looked today (a worn-out man of sixty years, with a stooped back and an insane wife) but as he had looked thirty years earlier when she herself had loved him (a large and comforting presence, with a shock of brown hair and a smile of shy kindness). “George
Hawkes
?” she asked again, most foolishly.

“Your sister Prudence loved George Hawkes,” Hanneke repeated. “And I tell you something more: George Hawkes loved her in return. I’ll wager she loves him still, and I’ll wager he still loves her, to this very day.”

This made no sense to Alma. It was as if she were being told that her mother and father were not her real parents, or that her name was not Alma Whittaker, or that she did not live in Philadelphia—as though some great and simple truth were being shaken apart.

“Why would Prudence have loved George Hawkes?” Alma asked, too baffled to ask a more intelligent question.

“Because he was
kind
to her. Do you think, Alma, that it is a gift to be as beautiful as your sister? Do you remember what she looked like at sixteen years old? Do you remember how men stared at her? Old men, young men, married men, workers—all of them. There was not a man who set foot on this property who did not look at your sister as if he wished to purchase her for a night’s entertainment. It had been like that for her since she was a child. Same with her mother, but her mother was weaker, and she did sell herself away. But Prudence was a modest girl, and a good girl. Why do you think your sister never spoke at the table? Do you think it was because she was too foolish to have an opinion on anything? Why do you think she always arranged her face without any expression at all? Do you think it was because she never felt anything? All Prudence ever wished for, Alma, was
not to be seen. You cannot know what it feels like, to be stared at by men your whole life as though you are standing on an auction block.”

This Alma could not deny. She most certainly did
not
know what that felt like.

Hanneke went on, “George Hawkes was the only man who ever looked at your sister kindly—not as an item, but as a soul. You well know Mr. Hawkes, Alma. Can you not see how a man like that could make a young woman feel safe?”

By all means she could see that. George Hawkes had always made Alma herself feel safe. Safe and recognized.

“Did you ever wonder why Mr. Hawkes was always here at White Acre, Alma? Do you think he came by so often in order to see your father?” Hanneke, mercifully, did not add, “Do you think he came by so often in order to see
you
?” but the question, unspoken, hung in the air. “He loved your sister, Alma. He was courting her, in his quiet way. What’s more, she loved him.”

“As you keep saying,” Alma interjected. “This is difficult for me to hear, Hanneke. You see, I once loved George Hawkes myself.”

“Do you think I don’t know that?” Hanneke exclaimed. “Of course you loved him, child, for he was polite to you! You were innocent enough to confess your love to your sister. Do you think a young woman as principled as Prudence would have married George Hawkes, knowing that you had feelings for him? Do you think she would have done that to you?”

“Did they wish to
marry
?” Alma asked, incredulous.

“Naturally, they wished to marry! They were young and in love! But she would not do that to you, Alma. George asked for her hand, shortly before your mother died. She turned him away. He asked again. She turned him away again. He asked several more times. She would not reveal her reasons for refusing him, in order to protect
you
. When he kept asking, she went and threw herself down the throat of Arthur Dixon, because he was the nearest and easiest man to marry. She knew Dixon well enough to know that he would not cause her harm, in any case. He would never beat her or bring debasement upon her. She even had some regard for him. He had introduced her to those abolitionist ideas of hers, back when he was your tutor, and those ideas affected her conscience greatly—as they still do. So she respected Mr. Dixon, but she did not love him, and she does not love
him today. She simply needed to marry somebody—
anybody
—in order to remove herself from George’s prospects, with the hope, I must tell you, that George would then marry
you
. She knew that George was fond of you as a friend and she hoped he might learn to love you as a wife, and bring you happiness. That is what your sister Prudence did for you, child. And you stand before me claiming that you owe her no debt.”

For a long while, Alma could not speak.

Then, stupidly, she said, “But George Hawkes married Retta.”

“So it didn’t work, then—did it, Alma?” Hanneke asked, in a firm voice. “Do you see that? Your sister gave up the man she loved for nothing. He did not go and marry you, after all. He went and did the same thing Prudence had done: he threw himself down the throat of the next person who passed by, just to be wedded to someone.”

He never even considered me, Alma realized. Shamefully, this was her first thought, before she even began to take in the scope of her sister’s sacrifice.

He never even considered me.

But George had never seen Alma as anything but a colleague in botany and a good little microscopist. Now it all made sense. Why would he have even noticed Alma? Why would he have even recognized Alma as a woman at all, when exquisite Prudence was so near? George had never known for a moment that Alma loved him, but Prudence knew it. Prudence always knew it. Prudence must also have known, Alma realized in mounting sorrow, that there were not many men in this world who could be an appropriate husband for Alma, and that George was probably the best hope. Prudence, on the other hand, could have had anyone. That must have been how she saw it.

So Prudence had given George up for Alma—or had tried to, in any case. But it was all for nothing. Her sister had forfeited love, only to go live her life in poverty and abnegation with a parsimonious scholar who was incapable of warmth or affection. She had forfeited love, only for brilliant George Hawkes to go live his life with a crazed little pretty wife who had never even read a book and who now resided in an asylum. She had forfeited love, only for Alma to go live her life in absolute loneliness—leaving Alma vulnerable in middle age to enthrallment by a man like Ambrose Pike, who was repelled by her desire, and who wished only to be an angel (or, it now appeared, who wished only to love naked Tahitian boys). What a wasted
gesture of kindness, then, had been Prudence’s youthful sacrifice! What a long chain of sorrows it had caused for everyone. What a sad mess this was, and what a deep series of mistakes.

Poor Prudence,
Alma thought—at last. After a long moment, she added in her mind:
Poor George! Then:
Poor Retta!
And then, for that matter: Poor Arthur Dixon!

Poor all of them.

“If what you say is true, Hanneke,” Alma said, “then you tell a melancholy tale.”

“What I say
is
true.”

“Why have you never told me this before?”

“To what end?” Hanneke shrugged.

“But why would Prudence have done such a thing for me?” Alma asked. “Prudence was never even fond of me.”

“It matters little what she thought of you. She is a good person, and she lives her life according to good principles.”

“Did she pity me, Hanneke? Was that it?”

“If anything, she admired you. She always tried to emulate you.”

“Nonsense! She never did.”

“You are the one filled with nonsense, Alma! She always admired you, child. Think of what you must have looked like to her, when first she came here! Think of all you knew, of your capabilities. She always tried to win your admiration. You never offered it, though. Did you ever once praise her? Did you ever once see how hard she worked, to catch up with you in her studies? Did you ever admire her talents, or did you scorn them as less worthy than your own? How is it that you have so stubbornly remained blind to her admirable qualities?”

“I have never understood her admirable qualities.”

“No, Alma—you have never believed in them. Concede it. You think her goodness is a posture. You believe her to be a charlatan.”

“It is only that she wears such a
mask . . .”
Alma murmured, struggling to find ground upon which to defend herself.

“Indeed she does, for she prefers neither to be seen nor known. But I know her, and I tell you that behind that mask is the best, the most generous, the most admirable of women. How do you not see this? Do you not witness how commendable she is to this very day—how sincere in her good
works? What more must she do, Alma, to earn your regard? Yet still you have never praised her, and now you mean to utterly spurn your sister, without a trace of uneasiness, as you inherit a pirate’s cave of riches from your dead fool of a father—a man who was just as blind as you have always been to the sufferings and sacrifice of others.”

“Be careful, Hanneke,” Alma warned, fighting back a tidal surge of grief. “You have given me a great shock, and now you attack me, while I am still in a state of amazement. So I must beg of you—please be careful with me today, Hanneke.”

“But everyone has been careful with you already, Alma,” the old housekeeper replied, relenting not an inch. “Perhaps they have been careful with you for too long.”

A
lma, shaken, fled to her study in the carriage house. She sat on the shabby divan in the corner, unable to bear her own weight anymore on her own two feet. Her breath came shallow and fast. She felt like a foreigner to herself. The compass within her—the one that had always oriented her to the simplest truths of her world—spun wildly, searching for a secure point upon which to land, but finding nothing.

Her mother was dead. Her father was dead. Her husband—whatever he had been or not been—was dead. Her sister Prudence had destroyed her own life on Alma’s account, with benefit to absolutely nobody. George Hawkes was an utter tragedy. Retta Snow was a ruined and lacerated little disaster. And now it looked as if Hanneke de Groot—the last living person Alma loved and admired—had no respect for her whatsoever. Nor should she.

Sitting in her study, Alma forced herself at last to take an honest accounting of her own life. She was a fifty-one-year-old woman, healthy in mind and body, as strong as a mule, as educated as a Jesuit, as rich as any peer of the realm. She was not beautiful, admittedly, but she still had most of her teeth and she was plagued by not a single physical ailment. What would she ever have to complain about? She had been suffused in luxury since birth. She was without a husband, true, but she also had no child or—now—parent demanding her care. She was competent, intelligent, diligent, and (she had always believed, although now she was not so certain) brave. Her imagination
had been exposed to the most daring ideas of science and invention the century had to offer, and she had met, in her very own dining room, some of the finest minds of her day. She owned a library that would have made a Medici weep with longing, and she had read through that library several times over.

With all that learning and all that privilege, what had Alma created of her life? She was the authoress of two obscure books on bryology—books that the world had not by any means cried out for—and she was now at work on a third. She had never given a moment of herself over to the betterment of anyone, with the exception of her selfish father. She was a virgin and a widow and an orphan and an heiress and an old lady and an absolute fool.

She thought she knew much, but she knew nothing.

She knew nothing about her sister.

She knew nothing about sacrifice.

She knew nothing about the man she had married.

She knew nothing about the invisible forces that had dictated her life.

She had always thought herself to be a woman of dignity and worldly knowledge, but really she was a petulant and aging princess—more mutton than lamb, by this point—who had never risked anything of worth, and who had never traveled farther away from Philadelphia than a hospital for the insane in Trenton, New Jersey.

It should have been unbearable to face this sorry inventory, yet for some reason it was not. In strange point of fact, it was a relief. Alma’s breath slowed. Her compass spun itself out. She sat quietly with her hands in her lap. She did not move. She let herself imbibe all this new truth, and she did not flinch from any of it.

T
he next morning Alma rode out alone to the offices of her father’s longtime solicitor, and there she spent the next nine hours sitting with that man at his desk, drawing up papers and executing provisions and overriding objections. The solicitor did not approve of anything she was doing. She did not listen to a word he said. He shook his old yellow head until the jowls under his chin wagged, but he did not sway her in the least. The decisions were hers alone to make, as they were both well aware.

With that business concluded, Alma rode her horse to Thirty-ninth Street, to her sister’s house. It was evening by now, and the Dixon family were finishing their meal.

“Come take a walk with me,” Alma said to Prudence, who—if she was surprised by Alma’s sudden visit—did not reveal it.

The two women strolled down Chestnut Street, latched politely together, arm in arm.