The Signature of All Things

I once was, and wish to be again.”
    “Which is what, Ambrose?”
    “An angel of God,” Ambrose said, in a voice of unspeakable sadness. “I had hoped we could be angels of God together. Such a thing would not be possible unless we were freed of the flesh, bound in celestial grace.”
    “Oh, for the godforsaken mercy of the twice-buggered mother of Christ !” Alma cursed. She wanted to pick him up and shake him, as she’d shaken Robert the garden boy the other day. She wanted to argue scripture with him. The women of Sodom, she wanted to tell him, had been punished by Jehovah for having sexual communion with angels— but at least they had gotten their chance! Just her luck, to have been sent an angel so beautiful, yet so uncomplying.
    “Come, Ambrose!” she said. “Awaken yourself! We do not live in the celestial realm—not you, and most certainly not I. How can you be so dim? Put your eyes upon me, child! Your real eyes—your mortal eyes. Do I look like an angel to you, Ambrose Pike?”
    “Yes,” he said, with sad simplicity.
    The rage passed out of Alma, and was replaced by leaden, bottomless sorrow.
    “Then you have been much mistaken,” Alma said, “and now we find ourselves in a deuce of a mess.”
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    H e could not stay on at White Acre.
    This became evident after only a week had passed—a week during which Ambrose slept in the guest chambers in the east wing, and Alma slept on the divan in the carriage house, both of them enduring the grins and titters of the young maids. To be wed only a few weeks and already sleeping not only in different rooms, but in different buildings  . . . well, this was far too glorious a scandal for the busybodies about the estate to resist.
    Hanneke tried to keep the staff silent, but the rumors dipped and flew like bats at twilight. They said that Alma was too old and ugly for Ambrose to endure, regardless of the fortune that came tucked inside her dried-upcunny. They said that Ambrose had been caught stealing. They said that Ambrose liked the pretty young girls, and that he had been found with his hand on the arse of a dairymaid. They said whatever they wanted to say; Hanneke could not dismiss everyone. Alma overheard some of it herself, and what she did not overhear, she could easily imagine. The looks they gave her were despicable enough.
    Her father called her into his study on a Monday afternoon in late October.
    “What is this, then?” he said. “Bored of your new toy already?”
    “Do not ridicule me, Father—I swear to you, I cannot bear it.”
    “Then make an explanation to me.”
    “It is too shameful to explain.”
    “I cannot imagine that to be true. Do you fancy that I have not heard the bulk of rumors already? Nothing you could tell me would be more shameful than what people are already saying.”
    “There is much that I cannot tell you, Father.”
    “Has he been untrue to you? Already? ”
    “You know him, Father. He would not do that.”
    “None of us much know him, Alma. So what is it? Stolen from you—from me ? Is he rutting you half to death? Beating you with a leather strop? No, somehow I cannot see any of that. Put a name to it, girl. What is his crime?”
    “He cannot stay here any longer, and I cannot tell you why.”
    “Do you take me for a specimen of man who would faint at the truth? I am old, Alma, but not yet entombed. And don’t think I will not guess it, either, if I go at the question long enough. Are you frigid? Is that the trouble? Or does he hang limp?”
    She did not reply.
    “Ah,” he said. “Something like that, then. So there has been no settlement of the marital duties?”
    Again, she did not reply.
    Henry clapped his hands. “Well, what of it? You enjoy each other’s companionship, regardless. That’s more than most people are allotted in their marriages. You are too old to bear children, anyway, and many marriages are not happy in the bedchamber. Most of them, really. Poorly matched pairings are thick as flies in this world. Your marriage may have souredfaster than others, but you will bear up and endure it, Alma, like the rest of us do—or did. Haven’t you been raised to bear up and endure things? You will not have your life felled by one setback. Make the best of it. Think of him as a brother, if he does not tickle you under the coverlets to your satisfaction. He would make a good enough brother. He is pleasant company to us all.”
    “I am not in need of a brother. I am telling you,