The Signature of All Things: A Novel

Chapter Twenty

Henry Whittaker was dying. He was a ninety-one-year-old man, so this ought not to have been shocking, but Henry was both shocked and enraged to find himself in such a reduced state. He had not walked in months and could scarcely draw a full breath anymore, but still he could not believe his fate. Trapped in his bed, weak and diminished, his eyes trawled the room wildly, as though seeking a means of escape. He looked as though he were trying to find someone to bully, bribe, or cajole into keeping him alive. He could scarcely believe there was no escape from this. He was appalled.

The more appalled he became, the more Henry turned tyrant to his poor nurses. He wanted his legs rubbed constantly, and—fearing suffocation from his inflamed lungs—demanded that his bedstead be tilted up at a steep angle. He refused all pillows for fear they would drown him in his sleep. He grew more belligerent by the day, even as he declined. “What a beggarly mess you have made of this bed!” he would shout after some pale, frightened girl as she ran from the room. Alma marveled at how he could possibly find the strength to bark like a chained dog, even as he was vanishing away upon the sheets. He was difficult, but there was something admirable in his fight, too, something kingly in his refusal to quietly die.

He weighed nothing. His body had become a loose envelope filled with long, sharp bones, and covered all over with sores. He could take nothing but beef tea, and not much of it. But for all that, Henry’s voice was the last part of his body to fail him. This was a pity, in a way. Henry’s voice caused the good maids and nurses around him to suffer, for—like a brave English sailor going down with his ship—he took to singing bawdy songs, as though to keep up his courage in the face of doom. Death was trying to pull him down with both hands, but he was singing it away.

“With a red flag flying, let it pass! Shove it up the maiden’s ass!”

“That will be all, Kate, thank you,” Alma would say to the unfortunate young nurse who happened to be on duty, escorting the poor girl to the door, even as Henry sang out, “Good old Kate in Liverpool! Once she ran a whoring school!”

Henry had never cared much for civilities, but now he cared for them not a whit. He said whatever he wanted to say—and perhaps, it occurred to Alma, even more than he wanted to say. He was staggeringly indiscreet. He shouted about money, about deals gone sour. He accused and probed, attacked and parried. He even picked fights with the dead. He debated with Sir Joseph Banks, trying again to convince him to grow cinchona in the Himalayas. He ranted to his deceased wife’s long-gone father: “I will show you, you skunk-faced old pig-dog of a Dutchman, what a rich man I intend to become!” He accused his own long-dead father of being a fawning bootlick. He demanded that Beatrix be summoned to take care of him and to bring him cider. Where was his wife? For what purpose did a man have a wife, if not to tend him upon his sickbed?

Then one day he looked Alma straight in the eye and said, “And you think I don’t know what that husband of yours was!”

Alma hesitated a moment too long to send the nurse from the room. She ought to have done it right away, but she waited, instead, uncertain of what her father was trying to say.

“You think I have not met such men as that in my travels? You think I was not once such a man as that myself? You think they took me on the Resolution for my able navigating? I was a hairless little boy, Plum—a hairless little shaver from the land, with a fine clean arsehole. There’s no shame in saying it!”

He was addressing her as “Plum.” He had not called her that name in years—in decades. He had not even recognized her at times during the past months. But now, with the use of the beloved old pet name, it was apparent that he knew precisely who she was—which meant that he also knew precisely what he was saying.

“You may leave now, Betsy,” Alma directed the nurse, but the nurse did not seem in a hurry to leave.

“Ask yourself what they did to me on that ship, Plum! The youngest shaver there, I was! Oh, by God, but they had their fun with me!”

“Thank you, Betsy,” Alma said, moving now to escort the nurse to the door herself. “You may close the door behind you. Thank you. You’ve been most helpful, then. Thank you. Off you go.”

Henry was now singing an awful verse Alma had never heard before: “They whacked me up and whacked me down, The mate he buggered me round and round!”

“Father,” Alma said, “you must stop.” She drew near and placed her hands on his chest. “You must stop.”

He stopped singing and looked at her with fiery eyes. He grabbed her wrists with his bony hands.

“Ask yourself why he married you, Plum,” Henry said, in a voice as clear and strong as youth itself. “Not for the money, I’ll wager! Not for your clean little arsehole, either. For something else, it must be. It don’t make sense to you, do it? Not to me neither, it don’t make sense.”

Alma pulled her arms from her father’s grip. His breath smelled like rot. Most of him was already dead.

“Cease your talking, Father, and take some beef tea,” she said, tilting the cup to his mouth, and avoiding his gaze. She had a feeling the nurse was listening from behind the door.

He sang, “Oh, we’re running away around the Cape! Some for debt and some for rape!”

She tried to pour the broth into his mouth—to stop him singing, as much as anything—but he spat it out and knocked her hand away. The broth rained across the sheets and the cup spun across the floor. He still had strength in him, the old fighter. He grabbed for her wrists again and caught one of them.

“Don’t be simple, Plum,” he said. “Don’t believe a single thing any cunt or bastard ever tells you in this world. You go find out!”

Over the next week, as Henry slid closer toward death, he would say and sing many more things—most of them filthy and all of them unfortunate—but that one phrase of his struck Alma as so cogent and deliberate that she would always think of it as having been her father’s final words: You go find out.

Henry Whittaker died on October 19, 1851. It was like a storm blowing out to sea. He thrashed till the end, fought to the last breath he drew. The calm at the end of it, once he finally left, was staggering. Nobody could believe they had survived him. Hanneke, wiping away a tear of exhaustion as much as sadness, said, “Oh, to those who already dwell in heaven—good luck for what is coming!”

Alma helped to wash her father’s body. She asked to be alone with his corpse. She did not wish to pray. She did not wish to weep. There was something she needed to find. Lifting the sheet off her father’s naked corpse, she explored the skin around his abdomen, searching with fingers and eyes for something like a scar, like a lump, something odd, small, and out of place. She was looking for the emerald that Henry had sworn to her, decades ago when she was a child, that he had sewn beneath his own flesh. She did not flinch to look for it. She was a naturalist. If it was there, she would find it.

You must always have one final bribe, Plum.

It wasn’t there.

She was astonished. She’d always believed everything her father told her. But then, she thought, perhaps he had offered the emerald up to Death, right near the end. When the songs hadn’t worked and the courage hadn’t worked and all his cunning had failed to negotiate a way out of this final frightful contract, maybe he had said, “Take my best emerald, too!” And maybe Death had taken it, Alma thought—but then took Henry, as well.

Not even her father could buy his way out of that covenant.

Henry Whittaker was gone, and his last trick gone with him.

She inherited everything. The will—produced only a day after the funeral, by Henry’s old solicitor—was the simplest imaginable document, not more than a few sentences long. To his “one natural-born daughter,” the will instructed, Henry Whittaker left his entire fortune. All his land, all his business concerns, all his wealth, all his holdings—all of it was to be Alma’s exclusively. There were no provisions made for anyone else. There was no mention of his adopted daughter, Prudence Whittaker Dixon, nor his loyal staff. Hanneke would receive nothing; Dick Yancey would receive nothing.

Alma Whittaker was now one of the richest women in the New World. She controlled the largest botanical importing concern in America, the affairs of which she had singlehandedly managed over the last five years, and she was half owner of the prosperous Garrick & Whittaker Pharmaceutical Company. She was the sole inhabitant of one of the grandest private homes in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, she held the rights to several lucrative patents, and she owned thousands of acres of productive land. Under her direct command were scores of servants and employees, while numberless people around the world worked for her on a contractual basis. Her greenhouses and glasshouses rivaled any to be found in the finest European botanical gardens.

It did not feel like a blessing.

Alma was weary and saddened by the death of her father, of course, but she also felt burdened, rather than honored, by his mammoth bequest. What interest did she have in a vast botanical importing concern, or a busy pharmaceutical manufacturing operation? What need did she have to own half a dozen mills and mines across Pennsylvania? What use did she have for a thirty-four-room mansion filled with rare treasures and a challenging staff? How many greenhouses did one lady botanist need in order to study mosses? (That answer, at least, was simple: none.) Yet it was all hers.

After the solicitor left, Alma, feeling stunned and self-pitying, went to find Hanneke de Groot. She longed for the comfort of the most familiar person left in the world to her. She found the old housekeeper standing upright inside the large, cold fireplace in the kitchen, poking a broom handle up into the chimney, trying to unloose a swallow’s nest, while unleashing upon herself a coating of soot and grime.

“Surely someone else can do that for you, Hanneke,” Alma said in Dutch, by means of greeting. “Let me find a girl.”

Hanneke backed out of the fireplace, huffing and filthy. “Do you think I haven’t asked them to?” she demanded. “But do you think there is another Christian soul in this household who would stick their neck up a fireplace chimney except me?”

Alma brought Hanneke a damp cloth to wipe clean her face, and the two women sat down at the table.

“The solicitor has left already?” Hanneke asked.

“Gone just these five minutes ago,” Alma said.

“That was swift.”

“It was a simple business.”

Hanneke frowned. “So he left it all to you, then, did he?”

“Indeed,” said Alma.

“Nothing to Prudence?”

“Nothing,” said Alma, noticing that Hanneke had not asked after her own interests.

“Curse him, then,” Hanneke said, after a moment’s silence.

Alma winced. “Be kind, Hanneke. My father is not a day in his grave.”

“Curse him, I say,” the housekeeper repeated. “Curse him as a stubborn sinner, to disregard his other daughter.”

“She would not have accepted anything from him anyway, Hanneke.”

“You do not know that to be true, Alma! She is part of this family, or should be. Your much-lamented mother wanted her to be part of this family. I expect you will look after Prudence yourself, then?”

This took Alma aback. “In what manner? My sister scarcely wishes to see me, and she turns away all gifts. I cannot offer her so much as a teacake without her claiming it to be more than she needs. You cannot honestly believe she would allow me to share our father’s wealth with her?”

“She is a proud girl, that one,” Hanneke said, with more admiration than concern.

Alma wished to change the subject. “What will White Acre be like now, Hanneke, without my father? I do not look forward to running the estate without his presence. It feels as though a great, living heart has been ripped out of this home.”

“I will not permit you to disregard your sister,” Hanneke said, as though Alma had not spoken at all. “It is one thing for Henry to be sinful, stupid, and selfish in his grave, but another thing altogether for you to behave the same way in life.”

Alma bristled. “I come to you today for warmth and counsel, Hanneke, yet you insult me.” She stood up, as if to leave the kitchen.

“Oh, sit down, child. I insult nobody. I only mean to tell you that you owe your sister a significant debt, and you should see to it that debt is paid.”

“I owe my sister no debt.”

Hanneke threw up her arms, still blackened with soot. “Do you see nothing, Alma?”

“If you refer, Hanneke, to the lack of warmth between Prudence and myself, I urge you not to lay the blame for it exclusively upon my shoulders. The fault has been every bit as much hers as mine. We have never been at ease in each other’s society, the two of us, and she has warded me off, all these many years.”

“I do not speak of sisterly warmth. Many sisters have no warmth with each other. I speak of sacrifice. I know everything that occurs in this house, child. Do you imagine you are the only one who ever came to me in tears? Do you imagine you are the only one who ever knocked on Hanneke’s door when sorrow overwhelmed? I know all the secrets.”

Bewildered, Alma tried to imagine her aloof sister Prudence ever falling into the housekeeper’s arms in tears. No, it could not be pictured. Prudence had never had Alma’s closeness with Hanneke. Prudence had not known Hanneke from infancy, and Prudence did not even speak Dutch. How could intimacy exist at all?

Still, Alma had to ask it: “What secrets?”

“Why do you not ask Prudence yourself?” Hanneke replied.

Now the housekeeper was being intentionally coy, Alma felt, and she could not endure it. “I cannot command you to tell me anything, Hanneke,” Alma said, switching over to English. She was too irritated now to speak in the old, familiar Dutch. “Your secrets belong to you, if you choose to keep them. But I do command you to cease toying with me. If you have information about this family that you believe I should know, then I wish you would reveal it. But if your sport is merely to sit here and mock my ignorance—my ignorance of what, I cannot possibly know—then I regret coming to speak to you today at all. I face important decisions about everyone in this household, and I deeply grieve my father’s passing. I carry much responsibility now. I do not have the time or the fortitude to play guessing games with you.”

Hanneke looked at Alma carefully, squinting a bit. At the end of Alma’s speech she nodded, as though she approved the tone and tenor of Alma’s words.

“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.”

Alma, 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.

The 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.

“As you know,” Alma said, “our father has passed away.”

“Yes,” said Prudence.

“I thank you for the note of condolence.”

“You are most welcome,” said Prudence.

Prudence had not attended the funeral. Nobody would have expected her to.

“I’ve spent the day with our father’s solicitor,” Alma went on. “We were reviewing the will. I found it full of surprises.”

“Before you continue,” Prudence interjected, “I must tell you that I cannot in good conscience accept any money from our late father. There was a rift between us that I was unable or unwilling to mend, and it would not be ethical of me to profit by his largesse now that he has gone.”

“You need not worry,” Alma said, stopping in her path and turning to look at her sister directly. “He left you nothing.”

Prudence, controlled as ever, gave no reaction. She merely said, “Then it is simple.”

“No, Prudence,” Alma said, taking her sister’s hand. “It is far from simple. What Father did was rather surprising, in fact, and I beg you to listen carefully. He left the entirety of the White Acre estate, along with the vast majority of his fortune, to the Philadelphia Abolitionist Society.”

Still, Prudence did not react or respond. My stars, but she’s strong, Alma marveled, nearly wanting to bow in admiration of her sister’s great reserve. Beatrix would have been proud.

Alma went on. “But there was an additional provision written into the will. He directed that he would leave his estate to the Abolitionist Society only under the condition that the house at White Acre become a school for Negro children, and that you, Prudence, administer it.”

Prudence stared at Alma penetratingly, as though looking for evidence of trickery on Alma’s face. Alma had no trouble arranging her countenance into an expression of truth, for indeed this was what the documents said—or, at least, this was what the documents said now.

“He left a quite long letter of explanation,” Alma went on, “which I can summarize for you here. He said that he felt he’d done little good with his life, although he had prospered handsomely. He felt he’d offered the world nothing of value, in return for his own tremendous good fortune. He felt you would be the best person to see to it that White Acre, in the future, would become a seat of human kindness.”

“He wrote those words?” Prudence asked, canny as ever. “Those very words, Alma? Our father, Henry Whittaker, referred to ‘a seat of human kindness’?”

“Those very words,” Alma insisted. “The deeds and instructions have already been drawn up. If you do not accept these provisions—if you do not move back to White Acre along with your family, and take command over running a school there, as our father wished—then all the money and property simply reverts to the two of us, and we shall have to sell it all off or divide it some other way. That being the case, it seems a pity not to honor his wishes.”

Prudence searched Alma’s face again. “I do not believe you,” she said at last.

“You need not believe me,” Alma said. “Yet that is how it is. Hanneke will stay on to manage the household and ease you into the role of running White Acre. Father left Hanneke a most generous endowment, but I know she will wish to remain there and to help you. She is an admirer of yours, and she likes to be kept useful. The gardeners and landscapers will stay on, to maintain the property. The library will remain intact, for the betterment of the students. Mr. Dick Yancey will continue to administer our father’s overseas interests, and he will take over the Whittaker share of the pharmaceutical company, with all the profits flowing back into the school, into the salaries of the workers, and to abolitionist causes. Do you understand?”

Prudence did not reply.

Alma went on, “Ah, but there is but one more provision. Father has set aside a generous bequest to pay for the expenses of our friend Retta at the Griffon Asylum for the remainder of her days, such that George Hawkes should not suffer the burden of her care.”

Now Prudence seemed to be losing control of something in her face. Her eyes grew damp, as did her hand, clasped in Alma’s.

“There is nothing you can say,” Prudence said, “that will ever convince me that our father wished for any of these things.”

Still, Alma did not back down. “Do not let it surprise you so. You know that he was an unpredictable man. And you will see, Prudence—the papers of ownership and the provisions of transfer are all quite clear and legal.”

“I well know, Alma, that you yourself have a facility for drawing up clear legal papers.”

“But you have known me for such a long while, Prudence. Have you ever known me to do anything in life beyond what our father permitted me to do, or instructed me to do? Think of it, Prudence! Have you ever?”

Prudence looked away. Then her face collapsed upon itself, her reserve fractured at last, and she fell apart into tears. Alma pulled her sister—her extraordinary, brave, little-known sister—into her arms, and the two women stood for a long while, embracing in silence, while Prudence wept.

At last, Prudence pulled away and wiped her eyes. “And what did he leave you, Alma?” she asked, her voice shaken. “What did that most generous father of ours leave you, amid this unexpected beneficence?”

“Do not worry yourself with that now, Prudence. I have far more than I will ever need.”

“But what did he leave you exactly? You must tell me.”

“A bit of money,” Alma said. “And the carriage house, as well—or, rather, all of my possessions within it.”

“Are you meant to live forever in a carriage house?” Prudence asked, overwhelmed and confused, and clutching again at Alma’s hand.

“No, dear one. I shall not live anywhere near White Acre, ever again. It is all in your care now. But my books and my belongings will remain at the carriage house, while I go away for a while. Eventually I shall settle someplace, and then I shall send for all that I need.”

“But where are you going?”

Alma could not help but laugh. “Oh, Prudence,” she said. “If I were to tell you, you would only think I was mad!”