The Signature of All Things

I should go to the tropics for a few years and make some drawings and such, and together we would produce a beautiful book on tropical orchids. I’m afraid he thought it would make us both quite rich. We were young, you know, and he was full of confidence about me.
    “So we pooled our resources, such as they were, and Tupper put me on a boat. He instructed me to go off and make a great noise of myself in the world. Sadly for him, I am not much of a noisemaker. Even more sadly for him, my few years in the jungle turned into eighteen, as I have already explained to Miss Whittaker. Through thrift and perseverance I was able to keep myself alive there for nearly two decades, and I am proud to say I never took money from Tupper or anybody, after his initial investment. Nonetheless, I think poor Tupper feels his faith in me was quite misguided. When I finally came home last year, he was kind enough to let me use his family’s printing press to make some of the lithographs you’ve already seen, but—quite forgivably—he long ago lost his desire to produce a book with me. I move too slowly for him. He has a family now, and cannot dally about with such expensive projects. He has been a heroically good friend to me, all the same. He lets me sleep on the couch in his home, and, since returning to America, I have been helping once more in the print shop.”
    “And your plans now?” Alma said.
    Mr. Pike raised his hands, as though in supplication before heaven. “It has been so long since I made plans, you see.”
    “But what would you like to do?” Alma asked.
    “Nobody has ever asked me that question before.”
    “Yet I ask you, Mr. Pike. And I wish for you to give me an honest answer.”
    He turned his light brown eyes upon her. He did look awfully weary. “Then I shall tell you, Miss Whittaker,” he said. “I would like never to travel again. I would like to spend the rest of my days in a place so silent—and working at a pace so slow—that I would be able to hear myself living.”
    George and Alma exchanged glances. As though sensing that he was being left behind, Henry woke up with a start, and pulled the attention back to himself.
    “Alma!” he said. “That letter from Dick Yancey last week. You read it?”
    “I did read it, Father,” she replied, briskly changing tone.
    “What do you make of it?”
    “I think it unfortunate news.”
    “Obviously it is. It has put me in a ghastly temper. But what do your friends here make of it?” Henry asked, waving his glass at his guests.
    “I do not believe they know of the situation,” Alma said.
    “Then tell them the situation, daughter. I need opinions.”
    This was most odd. Henry did not generally seek opinions. But he urged her again with a wave of the wineglass, and so she began to speak, addressing herself to George and Mr. Pike both.
    “Well, it’s about vanilla,” she said. “Fifteen years or so ago, my father was convinced by a Frenchman to invest in a vanilla plantation in Tahiti. Now we learn the plantation has failed. And the Frenchman has vanished.”
    “Along with my investment,” Henry added.
    “Along with my father’s investment,” Alma confirmed.
    “A considerable investment,” Henry clarified.
    “A most considerable investment,” Alma agreed. She knew this well, for she had arranged the transfers of payment herself.
    “It should have worked,” Henry said. “The climate is perfect for it. And the vines grew! Dick Yancey saw them himself. They grew to sixty-five feet tall. The blasted Frenchman said that vanilla would grow happily there, and he was right about it. The vines produced blossoms as big as your fist. Exactly as he said they would. What was it the little Frenchman told me, Alma? ‘Growing vanilla in Tahiti will be easier than farting in your sleep.’”
    Alma blanched, glancing at her guests. George politely folded his napkin in his lap, but Mr. Pike smiled in frank amusement.
    “So what went wrong, sir?” he asked. “If I may pry?”
    Henry glared at him. “The vines did not bear fruit. The blossoms bloomed and withered, and never produced a single blasted pod.”
    “May I ask where the original vanilla plants came from?”
    “Mexico,” Henry growled, staring Mr. Pike down in a spirit of full challenge. “So you be the one to tell me, young man—what went wrong?”
    Alma was slowly beginning to glean something here. Why did she ever underestimate her father? Was there anything the old man missed?