The Signature of All Things

the mornings. She lost her nerve for study. She could not imagine why she had ever been interested in mosses—or in anything. All her old enthusiasms were grown over with weeds. She invited no guests to White Acre. She had no will for it. Conversation was unbearably tiresome; silence worse. Her thoughts were a cloud of contagion that did her no good. If a maid or gardener dared to cross her path, she was likely to cry out, “Why am I not allowed a moment’s privacy?” and storm off in the other direction.
    Casting about for answers about Ambrose, she searched his study, which he had left intact. She found a notebook filled with his writings in the top drawer of his desk. It was not her place to read such a private relic, and she knew it, yet she told herself that if Ambrose had intended to keep his innermost thoughts secret, he would not have stored the record of them in such an obvious place as the unlocked top drawer of his desk. The notebook, however, brought forth no answers. If anything, it confused and alarmed her more. The pages were not filled with confessions or longings, nor was this a simple log of daily transactions, such as the journals her father kept. None of the entries were even dated. Many of the sentences were barelysentences at all—just fragments of thought, trailed by long dashes and ellipses:
    What is thy will—? . . . An eternal forgetting of all strife . . . to yearn only for that which is robust and pure, hewing to the divine standard of self-rule alone . . . Find everywhere contained that which is attached. . . . Do angels twist so painfully against themselves and rank flesh? All that is spoiled within me to be ceaseless and regained in un-self-mangled reform! . . . . To be thoroughly—regenerated!—in benevolent firmness! . . . Only by stolen fire or by stolen knowledge does wisdom advance! . . . No strength in science, but in the compilation of the two—the axis where fire gives birth to water . . . Christ, be my merit, set inside me the example! . . . TORRID hunger, when fed, gives birth to only more hunger!
    There were pages and pages of this. It was a confetti of thinking. It began nowhere, led to nothing, and concluded nothing. In the world of botany, such confusing language would have been called nomina dubia or nomina ambigua— which is to say, misleading and obscure names of plants that render the specimens impossible to classify.
    One afternoon Alma finally broke down and cracked open the seals on the elaborately folded piece of paper Ambrose had given her on their wedding day—the curious object, the “message of love” he had specifically asked her never to open. She unfolded its many pleats and smoothed it out. In the center of the page was one word, written in his elegant, unmistakable hand: ALMA.
    Useless.
    Who was this person? Or rather—who had he been? And who was Alma, now that he was departed? What was she, she further wondered? She was a married virgin who had shared a chaste bed with her exquisite young husband for scarcely more than a month. Could she even call herself a wife? She did not believe so. She could not bring herself to be referred to any longer as “Mrs. Pike.” The name was a cruel joke, and she barked at anyone who dared use it. She was still Alma Whittaker, and always had been Alma Whittaker.
    She could not help but think that if only she had been a more beautiful woman or a younger woman, she might have convinced her husband to love her as a husband should. Why had Ambrose even marked her as a candidate for a mariage blanc ? Surely because she looked the part: a homelyfigure of no appeal. She also tormented herself over the question of whether she ought to have taught herself to endure the humiliation of their marriage, as her father had advised. Perhaps she should have accepted Ambrose’s terms. Had she been able to swallow her pride or quash her desires, she would still have him beside her now—the companion of her days. A stronger individual might have been able to bear it.
    Only a year previous, she had been a contented, useful, and industrious woman, who had never even heard of Ambrose Pike, and now her existence had been blighted by him. This person had arrived, he had illuminated her, he had ensorcelled her with notions of miracle and beauty, he had both understood and misunderstood her, he had married her, he had broken her heart, he had looked upon her with those sad and hopeless eyes, he had