The Signature of All Things

been pretty a day of her life, yet she found a husband, didn’t she? Think of Mrs. Cavendesh, down near the bridge! The woman looks a fright, yet her husband finds her adequate enough to have made seven children out of her. So there will be somebody for you, Plum, and I think he will be a fortunate man to have you.”
    To think that all this was offered by way of consolation !
    As for Prudence, she was a widely acknowledged beauty—arguably the greatest beauty in Philadelphia—but the entire city agreed that she was cold and unwinnable. Prudence excited envy in women, but it was not clear that she excited passion in men. Prudence had a way of making men feel that they ought not to bother at all, and so, wisely, they didn’t. They stared, for one could not help staring at Prudence Whittaker, but they did not approach.
    One might have expected the Whittaker girls to attract fortune hunters.True, there were many young men who coveted the family’s money, but the prospect of being Henry Whittaker’s son-in-law seemed more like a threat than a windfall, and nobody really believed that Henry would ever part with his fortune, anyway. One way or another, not even dreams of riches brought suitors near White Acre.
    Of course, there were always men around the estate—but they came seeking Henry, not his daughters. At any hour of the day, one could find men standing in the atrium of White Acre, hoping for an audience with Henry Whittaker. These were men of all sorts: desperate men, dreaming men, angry men, liars. These were men who arrived at the estate carrying display cases, inventions, drawings, schemes, or lawsuits. They came offering shares of stock, or pleas for loans, or the prototype of a new vacuum pump, or the certainty of a cure for jaundice, if only Henry would invest in their research. But they did not come to White Acre for the pleasures of courtship.
    George Hawkes, however, was different. He never sought anything material from Henry, but came up to White Acre merely to converse with him and to enjoy the spoils of the greenhouses. Henry enjoyed George’s company, for George published the latest scientific findings in his journals, and knew all that was transpiring in the botanical world. George most certainly did not comport himself as a suitor—he was neither flirtatious nor playful—but he was aware of the Whittaker girls, and kind to them. He was always solicitous to Prudence. As for Alma, he engaged with her as though she were a respected botanical colleague. Alma appreciated George’s kind regard, but she wished for more. Academic discourse, she felt, is not how a young man speaks to the girl he loves. This was most unfortunate, for Alma indeed loved George Hawkes with all her heart.
    He was an odd choice to love. Nobody would ever have accused George of being a handsome man, but in Alma’s eyes, he was exemplary. She felt somehow that they made a nice pair, perhaps even an obvious pair. There was no question that George was overly large, pale, awkward, and clumsy—but so was Alma. He always made a hash of dressing, but Alma was not fashionable, either. George’s waistcoats were always too tight and his trousers too loose, but if Alma had been a man, this is probably how she would have dressed, as well, for she’d always encountered a similar sort of trouble puzzling out how to arrange her clothing. George had entirely too muchforehead and not quite enough chin, but he possessed a thick, damp shock of dark hair, which Alma dearly wanted to touch.
    Alma did not know how to play the coquette. She had not the first idea of how to woo George, other than to write him paper after paper on ever more obscure botanical subjects. There had only ever been one moment between George and Alma that might reasonably have been interpreted as tender. In April of 1818, Alma had presented George Hawkes with a beautiful view in her microscope of Carchesium polypinum (perfectly lit and living, happily dancing in a tiny pool of pond water, with its spinning cups, waving cilia, and fringed, flowering branches). George had grasped her left hand, pressed it spontaneously between his two large, damp palms, and said, “My stars, Miss Whittaker! What a brilliant microscopist you’ve become!”
    That touch, that pressing of the hand, that praise, had set Alma’s heart beating nineteen strokes to the dozen. It had also sent her running to the binding closet, to slake herself once more with her own hands.
    Oh, yes—to the