The Signature of All Things

Spanish Franciscan illustrations of vanilla vines. He would much appreciate it. She couldn’t wait to show it to him. She hadn’t even shown him the library yet at all. She had barely shown him anything at White Acre. They had so much more exploring ahead of them!
    “It’s merely an idea,” Mr. Pike said. “It probably could have waited until daylight.”
    Alma heard a noise and turned. Here was Hanneke de Groot, standing at the door in her nightclothes, looking plump and puffy and irritable.
    “Now I’ve woken the entire household,” Mr. Pike said. “My sincerest apologies.”
    “ Is er een probleem? ” Hanneke asked Alma.
    “There’s no problem, Hanneke,” Alma said. “The gentlemen and I were simply having a discussion.”
    “At two o’clock in the morning?” Hanneke demanded. “ Is dit een bordeel? ”
    Is this a bordello?
    “What is she saying?” Henry asked. Apart from his failing hearing, he had never mastered Dutch—despite having been married to a Dutchwoman for decades, and having worked alongside Dutch speakers for much of his life.
    “She wants to know if anyone would like tea or coffee,” Alma said. “Mr. Pike? Father?”
    “I will have tea,” Henry said.
    “You’re all kind, but I will take my leave,” Mr. Pike said. “I will return to my rooms now, and I promise not to disturb anyone again. Moreover, I’ve just realized that tomorrow is the Sabbath. Perhaps you will all be rising early, for church?”
    “Not I!” Henry said.
    “You will find in this household, Mr. Pike,” Alma said, “that some of us keep the Sabbath, some of us do not keep it, and some of us keep it only halfway.”
    “I understand,” he replied. “In Guatemala, I often lost track of the days, and I fear I missed many Sabbaths.”
    “Do they honor the Sabbath in Guatemala, Mr. Pike?”
    “Only through the acts of drinking, brawling, and cockfighting, I’m afraid.”
    “Then off to Guatemala we go!” Henry cried.
    Alma had not seen her father in such high spirits in years.
    Ambrose Pike laughed. “You may go to Guatemala, Mr. Whittaker. I daresay they would appreciate you there. But I myself am finished with jungles. For tonight, I should simply return to my rooms. When I have the opportunity to sleep in a proper bed, I would be fool to waste it. I bid you both a good night, I thank you again for your hospitality, and I apologize most sincerely to your housekeeper.”
    After Mr. Pike left the room, Alma and her father sat in silence for awhile. Henry stared at Ambrose’s sketch of the vanilla orchid. Alma could almost hear him thinking; she knew her father all too well. She waited for him to say it—what she knew was coming—while at the same time trying to figure out how she was going to combat it.
    Meanwhile, Hanneke returned with a tray, which held tea for Alma and Henry, and coffee for herself. She set it down with a grumbling sigh, then plopped herself in an armchair across from Henry. The housekeeper poured her own cup first, and put her gouty old ankle up on a finely embroidered French footstool. She left Henry and Alma to serve themselves. Protocol at White Acre had grown relaxed over the years. Perhaps too relaxed.
    “We should send him to Tahiti,” Henry said at last, after a good five minutes of silence. “We will put him in charge of the vanilla plantation.”
    So there it was. Exactly what Alma had seen coming.
    “An interesting idea,” she said.
    But she could not let her father dispatch Mr. Pike to the South Seas. She knew this with as much certainty as she had ever known anything in her life. For one thing, she sensed that the artist himself would not welcome the assignment. He had said as much himself—that he was finished with jungles. He did not wish to travel any longer. He was weary and homesick. And yet he had no home. The man needed a home. He needed to rest. He needed a place to work, to make the paintings and prints he was born to make, and to hear himself living.
    What’s more, though—Alma needed Mr. Pike. She felt overcome with a wild necessity to keep this person at White Acre forever. What a thing to decide, after knowing him less than a day! But she felt ten years younger today than she had felt the day before. This had been the most illuminating Saturday Alma had spent in decades—or perhaps even since childhood—and Ambrose Pike was the source of the illumination.
    This situation reminded her of when she was young, and she had found a fox