The Signature of All Things: A Novel

Chapter Thirty-one

He was so tall!

Alma had not expected this. Alfred Russel Wallace was as tall and lanky as Ambrose had been. He was not far from the age Ambrose would have been, either, if Ambrose had survived—sixty years old, and in fine health, if a bit stooped. (This was a man who had plainly spent too many years bent over microscopes, peering at specimens.) He was gray-haired, with a heavy beard, and Alma had to resist the urge to reach up and touch his face with her fingertips. She could not see well anymore, and she wanted to know his features better. But that would have been rude and shocking, so she restrained herself. All the same, as soon as she met him, she felt she was welcoming her oldest friend in the world.

At the beginning of his visit, though, there was such a bustle of activity that Alma was a bit lost in the crowd. She was a large woman, true, but she was old, and old women do tend to get pushed aside at big gatherings—even when they have footed the bill for that gathering. There were many who wanted to meet the great evolutionary biologist, and Alma’s young cousins, all enthusiastic young students of science themselves, took much of his attention, crowding him like hopeful beaux and belles. Wallace was so polite, so friendly—especially with the younger set. He permitted them to boast of their own projects, and to seek his advice. Naturally, they wished to parade him about Amsterdam, too, and thus several days were occupied with silly tourism and civic pride.

Then there was his speech in the Palm House, and the ponderous questions afterward from scholars, journalists, and dignitaries, followed by the requisite long, dull dinner in formal dress. Wallace spoke well, both at his lecture and at the dinner. He managed to avoid controversy, answering all the tedious and uninformed questions about natural selection with thorough patience. His wife must have coached him to be on his best behavior, Alma thought. Good girl, Annie.

Alma waited. She was not one who was afraid to wait.

In time, the novelty surrounding Wallace’s visit died down, and the clamoring crowds thinned. The young moved on to other excitements, and Alma was able to sit next to her guest for a few breakfasts in a row. She knew him better than anyone, of course, and she knew that he didn’t want to talk about natural selection forever. She engaged him instead on subjects that she knew were dear to his heart—butterfly mimicry, beetle variations, mind-reading, vegetarianism, the evils of inherited wealth, his plan to abolish the stock exchange, his plan for the end of all war, his defense of Indian and Irish self-governance, his suggestion that British authorities beg the world’s forgiveness for the cruelties of their empire, his desire to build a four-hundred-foot-diameter scale model of the earth that people could circle in a giant balloon for educational purposes . . . that sort of thing.

In other words, he relaxed with Alma, and she with him. He was a delightful conversationalist when fully unfettered, as she had always imagined he would be—willing to converse on any number of wide-ranging subjects and passions. She had not enjoyed herself this much in years. Because he was so kind and engaging, he inquired about her life, as well, and did not merely speak of himself. Thus Alma found herself telling Wallace about her childhood at White Acre, about collecting botanical specimens as a five-year-old on a silk-draped pony, about her eccentric parents and their challenging dinner-table conversation, about her father’s stories of mermaids and Captain Cook, about the extraordinary library at the estate, about her almost comically outdated classical education, about her years of study in the moss beds of Philadelphia, about her sister the brave-hearted abolitionist, and about her adventures in Tahiti. Incredibly—though she had not spoken to anyone of Ambrose in decades—she even told him about her remarkable husband, who had painted orchids more beautifully than any man who ever lived, and who had died in the South Seas.

“What a life you have lived!” Wallace said.

Alma had to look away when he said this. He was the first person who had ever said so. She felt overcome by shyness, and also by the urge, once more, to put her hands on his face and feel his features—just as she felt moss these days, memorizing with her fingers what she could no longer adore with her eyes.

She had not planned when to tell him, or what to tell him, exactly. She had not even planned that she would tell him. In the last few days of his visit, she came to think that she would probably not tell him at all. Honestly, she felt it was enough merely to have met this man, and to have closed the gap that had divided them all these years.

But then, on his final afternoon in Amsterdam, Wallace asked if Alma would personally show him the Cave of Mosses, and so she took him there. He was patient about walking across the gardens at her achingly slow pace.

“I apologize that I am so pokey,” Alma said. “My father used to call me a dromedary, but these days I grow weary after ten steps.”

“Then we shall rest every ten steps,” he said, and took her by the arm to help guide her along.

It was a Thursday afternoon, and drizzling, so the Hortus was mostly deserted. Alma and Wallace had the Cave of Mosses to themselves. She took him from boulder to boulder, showing him the mosses of all the continents and explaining how she had woven them all together in this one place. He marveled at it—as would anyone who loved the world.

“My father-in-law would be fascinated to see this,” he said.

“I know,” said Alma. “I’ve always wished to bring Mr. Mitten here. Perhaps someday he will visit.”

“As for me,” he said, sitting on the bench in the middle of the exhibit, “I think I would come here every day, if I could.”

“I do come every day,” said Alma, joining him on the bench. “Often on my knees, and with tweezers in hand.”

“What a legacy you have created,” he said.

“That is kind praise, Mr. Wallace, from one who has created quite a legacy himself.”

“Ah,” he said, and brushed away the compliment.

They sat in pleasant silence for a while. Alma thought of the first time she was alone with Tomorrow Morning in Tahiti. She thought of how she had said to him, “You and I are—I believe—more closely affixed to each other’s destinies than one might think.” She longed to say the same thing now to Alfred Russel Wallace, but she was not certain if it would be correct to do so. She would not want him to think that she was boasting about her own theory of evolution. Or—worse—that she was lying. Or—worst of all—that she was laying challenge to his legacy, or to Darwin’s. It was probably best to say nothing.

But then he spoke. He said, “Miss Whittaker, I must tell you that I have thoroughly enjoyed these last few days with you.”

“Thank you,” she said. “And I have enjoyed you. More than you can know.”

“You are so generous, to have listened to my ideas about anything and everything,” he said. “Not many are like you. I have found in life that when I speak of biology, they compare me to Newton. But when I speak of the spirit world, they call me a weak-minded, babyish idiot.”

“Do not listen to them,” Alma said, and patted his hand protectively. “I have never liked it when they insult you.”

He was quiet for a while, and then: “May I ask you something, Miss Whittaker?”

She nodded.

“May I ask how it is that you know so much about me? I do not wish you to think I am offended—on the contrary, I am flattered—but I simply cannot make sense of it. Your field is bryology, you see, and mine is not. Nor are you a spiritualist or a mesmerist. Yet you have such familiarity with all my writing across every possible field, and you also know my critics. You even know who my wife’s father is. Why could that be? I cannot put it together . . .”

He trailed off, fearing, it appeared, that he had been impolite. She did not wish him to think that he’d been rude to an elderly woman. She did not wish him to think, either, that she was some unhinged old bat with an unseemly fixation. That being the case, what else could she do?

She told him everything.

When she was finished speaking at last, he was silent for a long while, and then asked, “Do you still have the paper?”

“Certainly,” she said.

“May I read it?” he asked.

Slowly, without further conversation, they walked through the back gate of the Hortus, to Alma’s office. She unlocked the door, breathing heavily from the stairs, and invited Mr. Wallace to make himself comfortable at her desk. From under the divan in the corner, she retrieved a small, dusty, leather valise—as worn as though it had circled the world several times, which, indeed, it had—and opened it. Inside was but a single item: a forty-page document, handwritten, and gently swaddled in flannel, like an infant.

Alma carried it over to Wallace, then settled herself comfortably on the divan while he read it. It took him a while. She must have dozed—as she did so often these days, and at the strangest moments—for she was startled awake by his voice sometime later.

“When did you say that you wrote this, Miss Whittaker?” he asked.

She rubbed her eyes. “The date is on the back,” she said. “I added things to it later, ideas and such, and those addenda are filed away in this office somewhere. But that which you hold in your hands is the original, which I wrote in 1854.”

He considered this.

“So Darwin was still the first,” he said at last.

“Oh yes, absolutely,” said Alma. “Mr. Darwin was the first by far, and the most thorough. There has never been any question about that. Please understand, Mr. Wallace, I do not pretend to have a claim . . .”

“But you arrived at this idea before me,” Wallace said. “Darwin beat us both, to be certain, but you arrived at the idea four years before me.”

“Well . . .” Alma hesitated. “That is certainly not what I wish to say.”

“But Miss Whittaker,” he said, and his voice grew bright with excitement and comprehension. “This means there were three of us!”

For a moment, Alma could not breathe.

In an instant, she was transported back to White Acre, to a fine autumn day in 1819—the day she and Prudence first met Retta Snow. They were all so young, and the sky was blue, and love had not yet grievously injured any of them. Retta had said, looking up at Alma with her shiny, living eyes, “So now there are three of us! What luck!”

What was the song that Retta had invented for them?

We are fiddle, fork, and spoon,

We are dancing with the moon,

If you’d like to steal a kiss from us,

You’d better steal one soon!

When Alma did not respond right away, Wallace came over and sat beside her.

“Miss Whittaker,” he said, in a quieter voice. “Do you understand? There were three of us.”

“Yes, Mr. Wallace. It appears that there were.”

“This is a most extraordinary simultaneity.”

“I’ve always thought so,” she said.

He stared at the wall for a while, silent for another long spell.

At last he asked, “Who else knows about this? Who can vouch for you?”

“Only my uncle Dees.”

“And where is your uncle Dees?”

“Dead, you know,” said Alma, and she could not help but laugh. This was how Dees would have wanted her to say it. Oh, how she missed that stout old Dutchman. Oh, how he would have loved this moment.

“But why did you never publish?” Wallace asked.

“Because it was not good enough.”

“Nonsense! It’s all here. The entire theory is all here. It’s certainly more developed than the absurd, feverish letter I wrote to Darwin in ’fifty-eight. We should publish it now.”

“No,” Alma said. “There is no need to publish it. Truly, I do not have a need of that. It is enough, what you just have said—that there were three of us. That is enough for me. You have made an old woman happy.”

“But we could publish,” he pushed on. “I could present it for you . . .”

She put her hand on his. “No,” she said, firmly. “I ask you to trust me. It is not necessary.”

They sat in stillness for a while.

“May I at minimum ask why you felt it was not worth publishing in 1854?” Wallace said, breaking the silence.

“I did not publish because I believed there was something missing from the theory. And I will tell you, Mr. Wallace—I still believe there is something missing from the theory.”

“Which is what, exactly?”

“A convincing evolutionary explanation for human altruism and self-sacrifice,” she said.

She wondered if she would have to elaborate. She did not know if she had the energy to dive fully into the giant question again—to tell him all about Prudence and the orphans, and the women who pulled babies from canals, and the men who rushed into fires to rescue strangers, and the starving prisoners who shared their last bites of food with other starving prisoners, and the missionaries who forgave the fornicators, and the nurses who cared for the insane, and the people who loved dogs that no one else could love, and all the rest of it beyond.

But there was no need to get into particulars. He understood immediately.

“I’ve had the same questions, myself, you know,” he said.

“I know that you have,” she said. “I’ve always wondered—did Darwin have such questions?”

“Yes,” Wallace said. Then he paused, reconsidering. “Though I never knew exactly what Darwin concluded on the matter, to be honest. He was so careful, you know, never to make proclamations about anything until he was absolutely certain. Unlike me.”

“Unlike you,” Alma agreed. “But not unlike me.”

“No, not unlike you.”

“Were you fond of Mr. Darwin?” Alma asked. “I’ve always wondered that.”

“Oh, yes,” said Wallace easily. “Quite. He was the best of men. I think he was the greatest man of our time, or, indeed, of most times. To whom can we compare him? There was Aristotle. There was Copernicus. There was Galileo. There was Newton. And there was Darwin.”

“So you never resented him?” Alma asked.

“Heavens no, Miss Whittaker. In science, all merit should be imputed to the first discoverer, and thus the theory of natural selection was always meant to be his. What’s more, he alone had the grandeur for it. I believe he was our generation’s Virgil, taking us on a tour through heaven, hell, and purgatory. He was our divine guide.”

“I’ve always thought so, too.”

“I tell you, Miss Whittaker, I am not at all distressed to learn that you beat me to the theory of natural selection, but I would have been terribly cast down to have learned that you had beat Darwin. I so admire him, you know. I would like to see him keep his throne.”

“His throne is in no danger from me, young man,” said Alma mildly. “No need for alarm.”

Wallace laughed. “I quite enjoy it, Miss Whittaker, that you call me a young man. For a fellow in his seventh decade, that is quite a compliment.”

“From a lady in her ninth decade, sir, it is simply the truth.”

He did indeed seem young to her. It was interesting—the best parts of her life, she felt, had always been spent in the company of old men. There were all those stimulating meals of her childhood, sitting at the table with the endless parade of brilliant aged minds. There were the years at White Acre with her father, discussing botany and trade late into the night. There was her time in Tahiti with the good and decent Reverend Francis Welles. There were the four happy years here in Amsterdam with Uncle Dees before his death. But now she herself was old, and there were no more old men! Now, here she sat with a stooped graybeard—a mere child of sixty—and she was the ancient tortoise in the room.

“Do you know what I believe, Miss Whittaker? Regarding your question on the origins of human compassion and self-sacrifice? I believe that evolution explains nearly everything about us, and I certainly believe that it explains absolutely everything about the rest of the natural world. But I do not believe that evolution alone can account for our unique human consciousness. There is no evolutionary need, you see, for us to have such acute sensitivities of intellect and emotion. There is no practical need for the minds that we have. We don’t need a mind that can play chess, Miss Whittaker. We don’t need a mind that can invent religions or argue over our origins. We don’t need a mind that causes us to weep at the opera. We don’t need opera, for that matter—nor science, nor art. We don’t need ethics, morality, dignity, or sacrifice. We don’t need affection or love—certainly not to the degree that we feel it. If anything, our sensibilities can be a liability, for they can cause us to suffer distress. So I do not believe that the process of natural selection gave us these minds—even though I do believe that it did give us these bodies, and most of our abilities. Do you know why I think we have these extraordinary minds?”

“I do know, Mr. Wallace,” Alma said quietly. “I’ve read a good deal of your work, recall.”

“I will tell you why we have these extraordinary minds and souls, Miss Whittaker,” he continued, as though he had not heard her. “We have them because there is a supreme intelligence in the universe, which wishes for communion with us. This supreme intelligence longs to be known. It calls out to us. It draws us close to its mystery, and it grants us these remarkable minds, in order that we try to reach for it. It wants us to find it. It wants union with us, more than anything.”

“I know that is what you think,” said Alma, patting his hand again, “and I believe it is quite an inventive notion, Mr. Wallace.”

“Do you think I’m correct?”

“I couldn’t say,” said Alma, “but it is a beautiful theory. It comes as close to answering my question as anything ever has. Yet still you are answering a mystery with another mystery, and I cannot say if I would call that science—though I might call it poetry. Unfortunately, like your friend Mr. Darwin, I still seek the firmer answers of empirical science. It is my nature, I’m afraid. But Mr. Lyell would have agreed with you. He argued that nothing short of a divine being could have created a human mind. My husband would have loved your idea. Ambrose believed in such things. He longed for that union you mention, with the supreme intelligence. He died searching for that union.”

They were quiet again.

After a while, Alma smiled. “I’ve always wondered what Mr. Darwin thought of that idea of yours—about our minds being excluded from the laws of evolution, and about a supreme intelligence guiding the universe.”

Wallace smiled, too. “He did not approve.”

“I should think not!”

“Oh, he did not like it at all, Miss Whittaker. He was appalled whenever I brought it up. He could not believe—after all our battles together—that I was bringing God back into the conversation!’”

“And what would you say?”

“I tried to explain to him that I had never mentioned the word God. He was the one who used the word. The only thing I’d said was that a supreme intelligence exists in the universe, and that it longs for union with us. I believe in the world of spirits, Miss Whittaker, but I would never bring the word God into a scientific discussion. After all, I am a strict atheist.”

“Of course you are, my dear,” she said, patting his hand again. She was so enjoying patting his hand. She was enjoying every moment of this.

“You think me naive,” Wallace said.

“I think you marvelous,” Alma corrected. “I think you are the most marvelous person I have ever met, who is still alive. You make me feel glad that I am still here, to meet somebody like you.”

“Well, you are not alone in this world, Miss Whittaker, even if you have outlived everyone. I believe that we are surrounded by a host of unseen friends and loved ones, now passed away, who exert an influence upon our lives, and who never abandon us.”

“That’s a lovely notion,” said Alma, and she patted his hand once more.

“Have you ever been to a séance, Miss Whittaker? I could take you to one. You could speak to your husband, across the divide.”

Alma thought over the offer. She remembered the night in the binding closet with Ambrose, when they had spoken to each other through the palms of their hands: her one experience with the mystical and the ineffable. She still didn’t know what that had been, really. She still wasn’t entirely certain she hadn’t imagined it all, in a fit of love and desire. Alternatively, she sometimes wondered if Ambrose truly had been a magical being—perhaps some evolutionary mutation in his own right, simply born under the wrong circumstances, or at the wrong moment in history. Perhaps there would never be another one like him. Perhaps he had been a failed experiment himself.

Whatever he had been, though, it had not ended well.

“I must say, Mr. Wallace,” she replied, “you are most kind to invite me to a séance, but I think I shall not do that. I have had a small bit of experience with silent communication, and I know that just because people can hear each other across the divide does not mean they can necessarily understand each other.”

He laughed. “Well, if you should ever change your mind, please do send word.”

“You may be sure I shall. But it is far more likely, Mr. Wallace, that you will be sending word to me, after I am dead, during one of your spiritualist meetings! You should not have to wait long for such a chance, for soon I will be gone.”

“You will never be gone. The spirit merely lives inside the body, Miss Whittaker. Death only separates that duality.”

“Thank you, Mr. Wallace. You say the kindest things. But you needn’t comfort me. I am too old to fear the great changes of life.”

“Do you know, Miss Whittaker—here I am, expounding upon all my theories, but I have not paused to ask you, a wise woman, what you believe.”

“What I believe is not, perhaps, as exciting as what you believe.”

“Nonetheless, I would like to hear it.”

Alma sighed. This was quite a question. What did she believe?

“I believe that we are all transient,” she began. She thought for a while and added, “I believe that we are half-blind and full of errors. I believe that we understand very little, and what we do understand is mostly wrong. I believe that life cannot be survived—that is evident!—but if one is lucky, life can be endured for quite a long while. If one is both lucky and stubborn, life can sometimes even be enjoyed.”

“Do you believe in an afterworld?” Wallace asked.

She patted his hand once again. “Oh, Mr. Wallace, I do so try not to say things that make people feel upset.”

He laughed again. “I am not as delicate as you may think, Miss Whittaker. You may tell me what you believe.”

“Well, if you must know, I believe that most people are quite fragile. I believe that it must have been a dreadful blow to man’s opinion of himself when Galileo announced that we do not reside at the center of the universe—just as it was a blow to the world when Darwin announced that we were not specially crafted by God in one miraculous moment. I believe these things are difficult for most people to hear. I believe it makes people feel insignificant. Saying that, I do wonder, Mr. Wallace, if your longing for the spirit world and an afterworld is not just a symptom of a continued human quest to feel . . . significant? Forgive me, I do not mean to insult you. The man whom I dearly loved had this same need as you, this same quest—to commune with some mysterious divinity, to transcend his body and this world, and to remain significant in a better realm. I found him to be a lonely person, Mr. Wallace. Beautiful, but lonely. I do not know if you are lonely, but it makes me wonder.”

He did not answer that.

After a moment, he merely asked, “And don’t you have that need, Miss Whittaker? To feel significant?”

“I will tell you something, Mr. Wallace. I think I have been the most fortunate woman who ever lived. My heart has been broken, certainly, and most of my wishes did not come true. I have disappointed myself in my own behavior, and others have disappointed me. I have outlived nearly everyone I ever loved. Remaining alive to me in this world is but one sister, whom I have not seen for more than thirty years—and with whom I was not intimate, for most of my life. I have not had an illustrious career. I had one original idea in my life—and it happened to be an important idea, one that might have given me a chance to be known—but I hesitated to put it forth, and thus I missed my opportunity. I have no husband. I have no heirs. I once had a fortune, but I gave it away. My eyes are deserting me, and my lungs and legs give me much trouble. I do not think I will live to see another spring. I will die across the ocean from where I was born, and I will be buried here, far away from my parents and my sister. Surely you are asking yourself by now—why does this miserably unlucky woman call herself fortunate?”

He said nothing. He was too kind to reply to such a question.

“Do not worry, Mr. Wallace. I am not being facetious with you. I do truly believe I am fortunate. I am fortunate because I have been able to spend my life in study of the world. As such, I have never felt insignificant. This life is a mystery, yes, and it is often a trial, but if one can find some facts within it, one should always do so—for knowledge is the most precious of all commodities.”

When he still did not reply, Alma went on:

“You see, I have never felt the need to invent a world beyond this world, for this world has always seemed large and beautiful enough for me. I have wondered why it is not large and beautiful enough for others—why they must dream up new and marvelous spheres, or long to live elsewhere, beyond this dominion . . . but that is not my business. We are all different, I suppose. All I ever wanted was to know this world. I can say now, as I reach my end, that I know quite a bit more of it than I knew when I arrived. Moreover, my little bit of knowledge has been added to all the other accumulated knowledge of history—added to the great library, as it were. That is no small feat, sir. Anyone who can say such a thing has lived a fortunate life.”

Now it was he who patted her hand.

“Very well put, Miss Whittaker,” he said.

“Indeed, Mr. Wallace,” she said.

After this, it seemed their conversation was over. They were both pensive and tired. Alma returned her manuscript to Ambrose’s valise, slid the case under the divan, and locked her office door. She would never again show it to anyone else. Wallace helped her down the stairs. Outside it was dark and foggy. They walked slowly together back to the van Devender residence, two doors down. She let him in, and they stood in the hallway and said their good-nights. Wallace would be leaving the next morning, and they would not see each other again after that.

“I am so very glad you came,” she told him.

“I am so very glad you summoned me,” he said.

She reached up and touched his face. He allowed her. She explored his warm features. He had a kind face—she could feel that he did.

After that, he went upstairs to his room, but Alma waited in the hallway. She did not wish to go to sleep. When she heard his door close, she took up her cane and shawl again and returned outside. It was dark, but that did not matter to Alma anymore; she could scarcely even see in the daylight, and she knew her surroundings so well by feel. She found the back gate to the Hortus—the private gate that the van Devenders had used for three centuries now—and she let herself in to the gardens.

Her intention had been to return to the Cave of Mosses and contemplate matters for a while, but she soon grew short of breath, so she rested a spell, leaning against the nearest tree. My goodness, but she was old! How quickly it had happened! She was thankful for the tree beside her. She was thankful for the gardens, in their dark beauty. She was thankful for a quiet spot in which to rest. She remembered what poor little mad Retta Snow used to say: “Thank heavens we have an earth, or where would we sit?” Alma was feeling a bit dizzy. What a night this had been!

There were three of us, he had said.

Indeed, there had been three of them, and now there were only two. Soon, there would be only one. Then Wallace, too, would be gone. But for now, at least, he was aware of her. She was known. Alma pressed her face against the tree, and marveled at it all—at the speed of things, at the amazing confluences.

A person cannot marvel in dumbstruck amazement forever, though, and after a while Alma found herself wondering what tree this was, exactly. She was familiar with every tree in the Hortus, but she had lost track of where she was standing, and so she did not remember. It smelled familiar. She stroked its bark, and then she knew—of course, it was the shellbark hickory, the only one of its kind in all of Amsterdam. Juglandaceae. The walnut family. This particular specimen had come from America well over one hundred years earlier, probably from western Pennsylvania. Difficult to transplant, because of its long taproot. Must have come as a tiny sapling. A bottomland grower, it was. Fond of loam and silt; friend to quail and fox; resistant to ice; susceptible to rot. It was old. She was old.

Lines of evidence were converging upon Alma—lines from every direction—driving her toward her final, formidable conclusion: soon, exceedingly soon, her time would come. She knew this to be true. Maybe not tonight, but some night soon. She was not afraid of death, in theory. If anything, she had nothing but respect and reverence for the Genius of Death, who had shaped this world more than any other force. That said, she did not wish to die quite this moment. She still wanted to see what would happen next, as much as ever. The thing was to resist submersion for as long as possible.

She clutched the great tree as if it were a horse. She pressed her cheek against its silent, living flank.

She said, “You and I are very far from home, aren’t we?”

In the dark gardens, in the middle of the quiet city night, the tree did not reply.

But it did hold her up just a little while longer.