The Signature of All Things

did not wish to make him feel uncomfortable, however, so she took up the conversation, as though she and George always discussed such matters.
    “What has he done?” she asked.
    “Arthur Dixon has published a reckless pamphlet,” George explained wearily, “to which he was foolish enough to append his own name, expressing his opinion that the government of the United States of America is a beastly bit of moral fraudulence on account of its ongoing affiliation with human slavery.”
    There was nothing shocking in this news. Prudence and Arthur Dixon had been committed abolitionists for many years. They were well known across Philadelphia for antislavery views that leaned toward the radical. Prudence, in her spare hours, taught reading to free blacks at a local Quaker school. She also cared for children at the Colored Orphans’ Asylum, and often spoke at meetings of women’s abolition societies. Arthur Dixon produced pamphlets frequently—even incessantly—and had served on the editorial board of the Liberator . To be frank about it, many people in Philadelphia had grown rather weary of the Dixons, with their pamphlets and articles and speeches. (“For a man who fancies himself an agitator,” Henry always said of his son-in-law, “Arthur Dixon is an awful bore.”)
    “But what of it?” Alma asked George Hawkes. “We all know that my sister and her husband are active in such causes.”
    “Professor Dixon has gone further this time, Alma. He not only wishes for slavery to be abolished immediately, but he is also of the opinion we should neither pay taxes nor respect American law until that unlikely event occurs. He encourages us to take to the streets with flaming torches and the like, demanding the instant liberation of all black men.”
    “Arthur Dixon ?” Alma could not help herself from saying the full name of her dull old tutor. “Flaming torches? That doesn’t sound like him.”
    “You may read it yourself and see. Everyone has been speaking of it. They say he is fortunate to still hold his position at the university. Your sister, it seems, has spoken in agreement with him.”
    Alma contemplated this news. “That is a bit alarming,” she agreed at last.
    “We are each of us born to trouble,” George repeated, rubbing his hand over his face in exhaustion.
    “Yet we must find the patience and resignation—” Alma began again lamely, but George cut her off.
    “Your poor sister,” he said. “And with young children in her house, besides. Please let me know, Alma, if there is anything I can ever do to help your family. You have always been so kind to us.”

Chapter Thirteen
    H er poor sister?
    Well, perhaps . . . but Alma wasn’t certain.
    Prudence Whittaker Dixon was a difficult woman to pity, and she had remained, over the years, a thoroughly impossible woman to comprehend. Alma pondered these facts the next day, as she examined her moss colonies back at White Acre.
    Such a riddle was the Dixon household! Here was another marriage that seemed not at all happy. Prudence and her old tutor had been married now for more than twenty-five years, and had produced six children, yet Alma had never witnessed a single sign of affection, pleasure, or rapport pass between the couple. She had never heard either of them laugh. She had scarcely ever seen them smile. Nor had she ever seen a flash of anger directed by one toward the other. She had never seen emotion of any variety pass between them, in fact. What sort of marriage was this, where people march through the years in diligent dullness?
    But there had always been questions surrounding her sister’s married life—beginning with the burning mystery that had consumed all of Philadelphia’s gossips so many years long ago, when Arthur and Prudence had first wed: What happened to the dowry? Henry Whittaker had blessed his adopted daughter with a tremendous sum of money upon the occasion of her marriage, but there was no sign that a penny of it was ever spent. Arthurand Prudence Dixon lived like paupers on his small university salary. They did not even own their home. Why, they barely heated their home! Arthur did not approve of luxuries, so he kept his household as cold and bloodless as his own dry self. He governed his family through a model of abstinence, modesty, scholarship, and prayer, and Prudence had fallen into obedience with it. From the very first day of her career as a wife, Prudence had renounced all finery, and had taken to