The Signature of All Things

Father, he cannot stay here . You must make him leave.”
    “And I am telling you, daughter, that not three months ago we two stood in this very room and I listened to you insist that you must marry this man—a man about whom I knew nothing, and about whom you knew only a penny’s worth more. Now you wish me to chase him away? What am I to be, your bull terrier? I confess, I do not approve of it, no, I do not. There is no dignity in it. Is it the gossip you don’t like? Face it down like a Whittaker. Go and be seen by those who mock you. Knock somebody’s head about, if you don’t like the way they look at you. They’ll learn. They’ll find something else to gossip about soon enough. But to cast this young man out forever, for the crime of—what? Not entertaining you? Take up with one of the gardeners, if you must have a young buck in your bed. There are men you can pay for such diversions, same as men pay for women. People desirous of money will do anything, and you have ample money. Use your dowry to establish a harem of young men for your pleasure, if you wish it.”
    “Father, please—” she begged.
    “But meanwhile, what do you propose I do with our Mr. Pike?” he went on. “Drag him behind a carriage through the streets of Philadelphia, painted with tar? Sink him in the Schuylkill, tied to a barrel full of rocks? Put a blindfold on him, and shoot him against a wall?”
    She could only stand there in shame and sorrow, unable to speak. What had she thought her father would say? Well—foolish as it seemed now—she had thought Henry might defend her. She thought Henry would be outraged on her behalf. She had half expected him to stomp around the house in one of his famous old theatrical rants, arms waving like a player in a farce: How could you do this to my daughter? That sort of thing. Something to match the pitch and depth of her own loss and fury. But why would she think that? Whom had she ever seen Henry Whittaker defend? And if he was defending anyone in this case, it appeared he was defending Ambrose.
    Instead of coming to her rescue, her father was belittling her. What’s more, Alma now remembered the conversation she and Henry had had about her marriage to Ambrose, not three months earlier. Henry had warned her—or at least, he’d raised the question—about whether “this sort of man” could bring her satisfaction in matrimony. What had he known then, that he hadn’t expressed? What did he know now?
    “Why did you not stop me marrying him?” Alma asked at last. “You suspected something. Why did you not speak?”
    Henry shrugged. “It was not my domain three months ago to make up your mind for you. Nor is it now. If something is to be done with the young man, you must do it yourself.”
    The thought of this staggered Alma: Henry had been making up Alma’s mind for her forever, since she was the smallest mite of a girl—or that was how she had always perceived things.
    She could not stop herself from asking, “But what do you think I should do with him?”
    “Do what you damned well like, Alma! This decision is yours. Mr. Pike is not mine to dispose of. You brought this thing into our household, you get rid of it—if that is what you wish. Be swift about it, too. It is always better to cut than to tear. One way or another, I want this matter resolved. A certain amount of common sense has exited this family in the last few months, and I would like to see it restored. We have too much work on hand for this sort of foolery.”
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    I n years to come, Alma would try to convince herself that she and Ambrose had made the decision together—about where he was to go next in his life—but nothing could have been further from the truth. Ambrose Pike was not a man who made decisions for himself. He was an untethered balloon, fabulously susceptible to the influence of those more powerful than he—and everyone was more powerful than he. Always, he had done just as he was told. His mother had told him to go to Harvard, and so he had gone to Harvard. His friends had pulled him out of a snowbank and sent him to a ward for the mentally insane, and he had obediently allowed himself to be locked away. Daniel Tupper up in Boston had told him to go to the jungles of Mexico and paint orchids, and he had gone to the jungle and painted orchids.George Hawkes had invited him to Philadelphia, and he had come to Philadelphia. Alma had established him at White Acre and instructed him to make a grand