The Signature of All Things

at this late hour?” she offered.
    “Not at all, Miss Whittaker,” George said. “I would welcome it. If anything, it would relax me.”
    At these words, Alma found herself relaxing, too. At last, a simple theme! At last, botany!
    “Well, Mr. Hawkes,” she said, “as you surely know, Monotropa hypopitys grows only in the shade, and is a sickly white color—almost ghostly in tone. Previous naturalists had always assumed that Monotropa lacks pigment because of the absence of sunlight in its environment, but this theory makes little sense to me, as some of our most vivid shades of green can also be found in the shade, in such plants as ferns and mosses. My investigations further show that Monotropa is just as likely to tilt away from the sun as toward it, leading me to wonder if it does not gain nourishment from the sun’s rays at all, but rather from some other source. I have come to believe Monotropa gains its nutrition from the plants in which it grows. In other words, I believe it to be a parasite.”
    “Which brings us back to an earlier topic of this evening,” George said, with a small smile.
    Goodness, George Hawkes was making a jest! Alma had not known George was capable of jesting, but upon realizing his joke, she laughed with delight. Prudence did not laugh, but merely sat watching the two of them, pretty and remote as a picture.
    “Yes, quite!” Alma said, gaining more momentum. “But unlike Professor Peck and his head lice, I can offer up documentation. I’ve noticed under the microscope that the stem of Monotropa is destitute of those cuticular pores through which air and water are generally admitted in other plants, nor does it seem to have a mechanism to draw moisture from the soil. I believe Monotropa takes nourishment and moisture from its foster parent. I believe its corpselike absence of color derives from the fact that it dines upon food that has already been digested, as it were, by the host.”
    “A most extraordinary speculation,” said George Hawkes.
    “Well, it is mere speculation at this point. Perhaps someday chemistry will be able to prove what my microscope, for now, only suggests.”
    “If you wouldn’t mind sharing the paper with me this week,” said George, “I would like to consider publishing it.”
    Alma was so enchanted by this unexpected invitation (and so addled by the queer events of the day, and so stirred to be speaking directly to a grown man about whom she had just been nursing sensual thoughts) that she never stopped to consider the strangest element of this entire exchange—namely, the role of her sister Prudence. Why was Prudence even present for this conversation? Why had Prudence given George Hawkes the nod to begin speaking in the first place? And when—at what earlier unknown moment—had Prudence ever had the chance to speak with George Hawkes about Alma’s private botanical research projects? When had Prudence even noticed Alma’s private botanical research projects?
    On any other evening, these questions might have inhabited Alma’s mind and tugged at her curiosity, but on this evening she dismissed them. On this evening—at the close of what had been the strangest and most distracted day of her life—Alma’s mind was spinning and dipping with so many other thoughts that she missed all this. Bemused, tired, and a bit dizzy, she bade good night to George Hawkes, and then sat alone in the drawing room with her sister, waiting for Beatrix to come and contend with them.
    With the thought of Beatrix, Alma’s euphoria diminished. Beatrix’s nightly accounting of her daughters’ shortcomings was never to be relished, but tonight Alma dreaded the lecture more than usual. Alma’s behavior that day (the discovery of the book, the arousing thoughts, the solitary passion in the binding closet) made her feel as though she visibly emanated guilt. She feared Beatrix would somehow sense it. Moreover, the dinner-table conversation had been catastrophic tonight: Alma had appeared blatantly stupid, while Prudence, unprecedentedly, had been something close to rude. Beatrix would not be pleased with either of them.
    Alma and Prudence waited in the drawing room for their mother, quiet as nuns. The two girls were always quiet when they were alone together. Never had they found comfortable conversation. Never had they prattled. Never would they. Prudence sat with her hands folded quietly, while Almafidgeted with the hem of a handkerchief. Alma glanced at