The Signature of All Things

parents’ employees. The White Acre estate was like a giant living beast, with half its enormous body needed for servants—the German and Scottish-born gardeners whom her father preferred to hire over the lazier native-born Americans, and the Dutch-born maids upon whom her mother insisted and relied. The household servants lived in the attic, and the outdoor laborers and their families lived in cottages and cabins all across the property. They were quite nice cottages, too—not because Henry cared about his workers’ comfort, but because Henry could not abide the sight of squalor.
    Whenever Alma encountered the workers’ children in the woods, she was struck by fear and horror. She had a method for surviving these encounters, though: she would pretend they were not occurring at all. She rode both past and above the children on her stalwart pony (who moved, as always, at the slow and unconcerned pace of cold molasses). Alma held her breath as she passed the children, looking neither to her left nor to her right, until she had cleared the intruders safely. If she did not look at them, she did not have to believe in them.
    The workers’ children never interfered with Alma. It was likely they had been warned to leave her alone. Everyone feared Henry Whittaker, so the daughter was automatically to be feared, too. Sometimes, though, Alma spiedon the children from a safe distance. Their games were rough and incomprehensible. They dressed differently than Alma did. None of these children carried botanical collecting kits slung over their shoulders, and none of them rode ponies with gaily colored silk ear tassels. They shoved and shouted at each other, using coarse language. Alma was more afraid of these children than anything else in the world. She often had nightmares about them.
    But here is what one did for nightmares: one went to find Hanneke de Groot, down in the basement of the house. This could be helpful and soothing. Hanneke de Groot, head housekeeper, held authority over the entire cosmos of the White Acre estate, and her authority vested her with a most calming gravitas. Hanneke slept in her own quarters, next to the underground kitchen, down where the fires never went out. She existed within a warm bath of cellar air, perfumed by the salted hams that hung from every beam. Hanneke lived in a cage—or so it appeared to Alma—for her personal rooms had bars over the windows and doors, as it was Hanneke alone who controlled access to the household’s silver and plate, and who managed the payroll for the entire staff.
    “I do not live in a cage,” Hanneke once corrected Alma. “I live in a bank vault.”
    When Alma could not sleep for nightmares, she would brave the terrifying journey down three flights of darkened stairs, all the way to the farthest corner of the basement, where she clung to the bars of Hanneke’s quarters and cried to be let in. Such expeditions were always a gamble. Hanneke would sometimes rise, sleepy and complaining, unlock her jailer’s door, and permit Alma to join her in the bed. Sometimes, though, she would not. Sometimes she would scold Alma for a baby, asking her why she must harass a tired Dutch woman, and she would send Alma back up the harrowing dark staircases to her own room.
    But for the rare instances when one actually was allowed in Hanneke’s bed, it was well worth the ten other times one was repulsed, for Hanneke would tell stories, and Hanneke knew so many things! Hanneke had known Alma’s mother forever, since earliest childhood. Hanneke told stories of Amsterdam, which Beatrix never did. Hanneke always spoke Dutch to Alma, and Dutch, to Alma’s ears, would forever be the language of comfort and bank vaults and salted ham and safety.
    It would never have occurred to Alma to run to her mother, whosebedroom was right next to her own, for assurances during the night. Alma’s mother was a woman of many gifts, but the gift of comfort was not among them. As Beatrix Whittaker frequently said, any child who was old enough to walk, speak, and reason ought to be able—without any assistance whatsoever—to comfort herself.
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    A nd then there were the houseguests—an unbroken parade of visitors arriving at White Acre nearly every day, in carriages, on horseback, by boat, or on foot. Alma’s father lived in terror of being bored, so he liked to summon people to his dinner table, to entertain him, to bring him news of the world, or to give him ideas for new ventures.