The Signature of All Things

end of it. That is what a doctor would have told you.”
    “But how did he truly die?”
    “It is not pleasant to speak of,” said Tomorrow Morning. “He died of grief.”
    “What do you mean—of grief? But how?” Alma pushed on. “You must tell me. I did not come here for a pleasant exchange, and I assure you that I am capable of withstanding whatever I hear. Tell me—what was the mechanism?”
    Tomorrow Morning sighed. “Ambrose cut himself, quite severely, some days prior to his death. You will remember my telling you how the women here—when they have lost a loved one—will take a shark’s tooth to their own heads? But they are Tahitians, Alma, and it is a Tahitian custom. The women here know how to do this dreadful thing safely. They know precisely how deeply to cut themselves, such that they can bleed out their sorrows without causing dire harm. Afterward, they tend to the wound immediately. Ambrose, alas, was not practiced in this art of self-wounding. He was much distressed. The world had disappointed him. I had disappointed him. Worst of all, I believe, he had disappointed himself. He did not stay his own hand. When we found him in his fare , he was beyond saving.”
    Alma shut her eyes and saw her love, her Ambrose—his good and beautiful head—drenched in the blood of his self-mortification. She had disappointed Ambrose, as well. All he had wanted was purity, and all she had wanted was pleasure. She had banished him to this lonely place, and he had died here, horribly.
    She felt Tomorrow Morning touch her arm, and she opened her eyes.
    “Do not suffer,” he said calmly. “You could not have stopped this thing from occurring. You did not lead him to his death. If anybody led him to his death, it was I.”
    Still, she was unable to speak. But then another awful question rose, and she had no choice but to ask it: “Did he cut off his fingertips, too? In the manner of Sister Manu?”
    “Not all of them,” Tomorrow Morning said, with commendable delicacy.
    Alma shut her eyes again. Those artist’s hands! She remembered—though she did not wish to remember it—the night she had put his fingers in her mouth, trying to take him into her. Ambrose had flinched in fear, had recoiled. He had been so fragile. How had he managed to commit this awful violence upon himself? She thought she would be sick.
    “This is my burden to carry, Alma,” Tomorrow Morning said. “I have strength enough for this burden. Allow me to carry it.”
    When she found her voice again, she said, “Ambrose took his own life. Yet the Reverend Welles gave him a proper Christian burial.”
    It was not a question, but a statement of amazement.
    “Ambrose was an exemplary Christian,” Tomorrow Morning said. “As for my father, may God preserve him, he is a man of unusual mercy and generosity.”
    Alma, slowly piecing together more of the story, asked, “Does your father know who I am?”
    “We should assume that he does,” said Tomorrow Morning. “My good father knows everything that happens on this island.”
    “Yet he has been so kind to me. He has never pried, never inquired . . .”
    “This should not surprise you, Alma. My father is kindness incarnate.”
    Another long pause. Then: “But does that mean he knows about you, Tomorrow Morning? Does he know what transpired between you and my late husband?”
    “Again, we may reasonably assume so.”
    “Yet he remains so admiring—”
    Alma could not finish her thought, and Tomorrow Morning did not bother replying. Alma sat in astonished silence for a long while after this. Clearly, the Reverend Francis Welles’s tremendous capacity for compassion and forgiveness was not something to which one could apply logic, or even words.
    Eventually, though, yet another terrible question rose in her mind. This question made her feel bilious and somewhat crazed, but—once more—she needed to know.
    “Did you force yourself upon Ambrose?” she asked. “Did you bring injury to him?”
    Tomorrow Morning did not take offense at this implicit accusation, but he did suddenly look older. “Oh, Alma,” he said sadly. “It appears that you do not quite understand what a conqueror is. It is not necessary for me to force things—once I am decided, the others have no choice. Can you not see this? Did I force the Reverend Welles to adopt me as his son, and to love me more than he loves even his own flesh-and-blood family? Did I force the island of Raiatea to embrace