The Signature of All Things

unload its cargo because the captain had not been recompensed.
    What was worse, mixed in with all the urgent work were absurd little details, time-wasters, mounds of absolute twaddle. There was a nearly illegible note from a woman in West Philadelphia, saying that her baby had just swallowed a pin and the mother was afraid the child might die—could somebody at White Acre tell her what to do? The widow of a naturalist who had worked for Henry fifteen years earlier in Antigua was claiming destitution and requesting a pension. There was an outdated note from White Acre’s head landscaper about a gardener who needed to be fired immediately, for having entertained several young women in his room after hours with a party of watermelon and rum.
    Was this the sort of thing her mother had always taken care of, in addition to everything else? Swallowed pins? Disconsolate widows? Watermelon and rum?
    Alma saw no choice but to clean out this Augean stable, one piece of paper at a time. She cajoled her father to sit beside her and help her to understand what various items might mean, and whether this or that suit of law needed to be taken seriously, or why the price of sarsaparilla had climbed so steeply since last year. Neither of them could completely translate Beatrix’s coded, vaguely Italian, triple-accountancy system, but Alma was the better mathematician, so she puzzled out the ledgers as best she could, while simultaneously creating a simpler method for future use. Alma deputized Prudence to pen page after page of polite correspondence, as Henry—with much loud complaining—dictated the essence of the most vital information.
    Did Alma mourn her mother? It was difficult to know. She did not exactly have time for it. She was buried in a swampland of work and frustration, and this sensation was not entirely distinguishable from sorrow itself. She was weary and overwhelmed. There were times when she looked up from her labors to ask her mother a question—looking over to the chair where Beatrix had always sat—and was startled by the nothingness to befound there. It was like looking at a spot on a wall where a clock had hung for years, and seeing only an empty space. She could not train herself not to look; the emptiness surprised her every time.
    But Alma was also angry with her mother. As she paged through months’ worth of confusing documents, she wondered why Beatrix—knowing herself to be so ill—had not enlisted somebody to help over a year ago. Why had she put documents into boxes and stored them in closets, rather than seeking assistance? Why had Beatrix never taught anyone else her complicated accounting system, or, if nothing else, told someone where to find filed documentation from previous years?
    She remembered her mother’s having warned her, years ago, “Never put away your labors while the sun is high, Alma, with the hopes of finding more hours to work tomorrow—for you shall never have any more extra time tomorrow than you had today, and once you have fallen behindhand in your responsibilities, you will never catch up.”
    So why had Beatrix allowed things to fall so behindhand?
    Perhaps she had not believed she was dying.
    Perhaps her mind had been so addled with pain that she had lost track of the world.
    Or perhaps—Alma thought darkly—Beatrix had wanted to punish the living with all this work, long after she was dead.
    As for Hanneke de Groot, Alma quickly came to understand that the woman was a saint. Alma had never before realized how much work Hanneke did around the estate. Hanneke recruited, trained, maintained, and reprimanded a staff of dozens. She managed the food cellars and harvested the estate’s vegetables as though leading a cavalry charge through fields and gardens. She commandeered her troops to polish the silver, and stir the gravy, and beat the carpets, and whitewash the walls, and put up the pork, and gravel the driveway, and render the lard, and cook the puddings. With her even temper and firm handle on discipline, Hanneke somehow managed the jealousies, laziness, and stupidity of so very many people, and she was clearly the only reason the estate had carried on at all once Beatrix had fallen ill.
    One morning, shortly after her mother’s death, Alma had caught Hanneke disciplining three scullery maids, whom she had backed up against the wall as though she intended to shoot them.
    “One good worker could replace all three of you,” Hanneke barked, “and trust