The Signature of All Things

George Hawkes had sent a crate of pears as congratulations, but he was ill with fever, he wrote, and could not join them. Also, a large bouquet had arrived the day before, care of the Garrick Pharmacy. As for Ambrose, no one attended as his guest. His friend Daniel Tupper, in Boston, had sent a telegraph that morning reading simply, “WELL DONE PIKE ,” but Tupper did not travel down for the wedding. It would have been only half a day from Boston by train, but still—nobody came down to stand for Ambrose.
    Alma, looking around her, realized how small a household they had become. This was far too small a gathering. This was simply not enoughpeople. It was barely enough for a legal wedding. How had they become so isolated? She remembered the ball that her parents had held in 1808, exactly forty years earlier: how the verandah and the great lawn had swirled with dancers and musicians, and how she had run among them with her torch. It was impossible to imagine now that White Acre had ever been the site of such a spectacle, such laughter, such wild doings. It had become a constellation of silence since then.
    As a wedding gift, Alma gave Ambrose an exceedingly fine antiquarian edition of Thomas Burnet’s Sacred Theory of the Earth , originally published in 1684. Burnet was a theologian who surmised that the planet—before Noah’s flood—had been a smooth sphere of absolute perfection, which had “the beauty of youth and blooming nature, fresh and fruitful, not a wrinkle, scar or fracture in all its body; no rocks nor mountains, no hollow caves, nor gaping channels, but even and uniform all over.” He, Burnet, had called this “The First Earth.” Alma thought her husband would like it, and indeed he did. Notions of perfection, dreams of unsullied exquisiteness—all of this was Ambrose, through and through.
    As for Ambrose, he presented Alma with a beautiful square of Italian paper, which he had folded into a tiny, complex sort of envelope, and had covered with seals in four different colors of wax. Every seam was sealed, and every seal was different. It was a pretty object—small enough to sit on the palm of her hand—but it was strange and nearly cabalistic. Alma turned the curious little item over and over.
    “How is one meant to open such a gift?” she asked.
    “It is not to be opened,” Ambrose said. “I ask you never to open it.”
    “What does it contain?”
    “A message of love.”
    “Really?” said Alma, delighted. “A message of love! I should like to see such a thing!”
    “I would prefer that you imagine it.”
    “My imagination is not as rich as yours, Ambrose.”
    “But for you who loves knowledge so much, Alma, it will do your imagination good to keep something unrevealed. We will come to know each other so well, you and I. Let us leave something unopened.”
    She put the gift in her pocket. It sat there all day—a strange, light, mysterious presence.
    They dined that evening with Henry and his friend the judge. Henry and the judge drank too much port. Alma took no spirits, nor did Ambrose. Her husband smiled at her whenever she glanced his way—but then he always had done that, even before he was her husband. It felt like any other evening, except that she was now Mrs. Ambrose Pike. The sun went down slowly that night, like an old man taking his time to hobble downstairs.
    At last, after dinner, Alma and Ambrose retired to Alma’s bedroom for the first time. Alma sat on the edge of the bed, and Ambrose joined her. He reached for her hand. After a long silence, she said, “If you’ll excuse me . . .”
    She wished to put on her new nightdress, but did not want to disrobe in front of him. She took the nightdress into the small water closet off the corner of her bedroom—the one that had been installed, with a bathtub and cold-water taps, in the 1830s. She undressed and put on the gown. She did not know if she should keep her hair up, or let it down. It did not always look nice when she let it down, but it was uncomfortable to sleep in pins and fasteners. She hesitated, then decided to leave it up.
    When she reentered the bedroom, she found that Ambrose had also changed into his nightshirt—a simple linen affair, which hung to his shins. He had folded his clothes neatly and set them on a chair. He stood on the far side of the bed from her. Nervousness ran over her like a cavalry charge. Ambrose did not seem nervous. He did not say anything about her nightdress. He beckoned