The Signature of All Things

British authorities beg the world’s forgiveness for the cruelties of their empire, his desire to build a four-hundred-foot-diameter scale model of the earth that people could circle in a giant balloon for educational purposes . . . that sort of thing.
    In other words, he relaxed with Alma, and she with him. He was a delightful conversationalist when fully unfettered, as she had always imagined he would be—willing to converse on any number of wide-ranging subjects and passions. She had not enjoyed herself this much in years. Because he was so kind and engaging, he inquired about her life, as well, and did not merely speak of himself. Thus Alma found herself telling Wallace about her childhood at White Acre, about collecting botanical specimens as a five-year-old on a silk-draped pony, about her eccentric parents and their challenging dinner-table conversation, about her father’s stories of mermaids and Captain Cook, about the extraordinary library at the estate, about her almost comically outdated classical education, about her years of study in the moss beds of Philadelphia, about her sister the brave-hearted abolitionist, and about her adventures in Tahiti. Incredibly—though she had not spoken to anyone of Ambrose in decades—she even told him about her remarkable husband, who had painted orchids more beautifully than any man who ever lived, and who had died in the South Seas.
    “What a life you have lived!” Wallace said.
    Alma had to look away when he said this. He was the first person who had ever said so. She felt overcome by shyness, and also by the urge, once more, to put her hands on his face and feel his features—just as she felt moss these days, memorizing with her fingers what she could no longer adore with her eyes.
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    S he had not planned when to tell him, or what to tell him, exactly. She had not even planned that she would tell him. In the last few days of his visit, she came to think that she would probably not tell him at all. Honestly, she felt it was enough merely to have met this man, and to have closed the gap that had divided them all these years.
    But then, on his final afternoon in Amsterdam, Wallace asked if Alma would personally show him the Cave of Mosses, and so she took him there. He was patient about walking across the gardens at her achingly slow pace.
    “I apologize that I am so pokey,” Alma said. “My father used to call me a dromedary, but these days I grow weary after ten steps.”
    “Then we shall rest every ten steps,” he said, and took her by the arm to help guide her along.
    It was a Thursday afternoon, and drizzling, so the Hortus was mostly deserted. Alma and Wallace had the Cave of Mosses to themselves. She took him from boulder to boulder, showing him the mosses of all the continents and explaining how she had woven them all together in this one place. He marveled at it—as would anyone who loved the world.
    “My father-in-law would be fascinated to see this,” he said.
    “I know,” said Alma. “I’ve always wished to bring Mr. Mitten here. Perhaps someday he will visit.”
    “As for me,” he said, sitting on the bench in the middle of the exhibit, “I think I would come here every day, if I could.”
    “I do come every day,” said Alma, joining him on the bench. “Often on my knees, and with tweezers in hand.”
    “What a legacy you have created,” he said.
    “That is kind praise, Mr. Wallace, from one who has created quite a legacy himself.”
    “Ah,” he said, and brushed away the compliment.
    They sat in pleasant silence for a while. Alma thought of the first timeshe was alone with Tomorrow Morning in Tahiti. She thought of how she had said to him, “You and I are—I believe—more closely affixed to each other’s destinies than one might think.” She longed to say the same thing now to Alfred Russel Wallace, but she was not certain if it would be correct to do so. She would not want him to think that she was boasting about her own theory of evolution. Or—worse—that she was lying. Or—worst of all—that she was laying challenge to his legacy, or to Darwin’s. It was probably best to say nothing.
    But then he spoke. He said, “Miss Whittaker, I must tell you that I have thoroughly enjoyed these last few days with you.”
    “Thank you,” she said. “And I have enjoyed you. More than you can know.”
    “You are so generous, to have listened to my ideas about anything and everything,” he said. “Not many are like