The Signature of All Things

charred shell of a destroyed building. What do you think you are at, playing these games? Why are you putting yourself in the newspapers like this? There is no dignity in it. Beatrix would have disapproved.”
    “I am proud that my words were recorded,” Prudence said. “I would proudly speak those same words again, in front of every newspaperman in Philadelphia.”
    Prudence was not helping the situation.
    “You come here dressed in rags,” Henry said, in a voice of increasing anger. “You come here penniless, despite my generosity. You come here from the confines of your husband’s insolvent hell, expressly to be miserable in our presence and to make us all miserable around you. You meddle where you have no business meddling, and you incite agitation in a cause that will pull this city apart—and destroy my trade with it! And there is no reason for it, besides! There is no slavery within the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Prudence! So why do you continue to argue the point? Let the South solve her own sins.”
    “I regret that you do not share in my beliefs, Father,” Prudence said.
    “I don’t give a farrier’s fart about your beliefs. But I swear to you, if my warehouses come to any harm—”
    “You are a man of influence,” Prudence interrupted. “Your voice could benefit this cause, and your money could do much good for this sinful world. I appeal to the witness within your own bosom—”
    “Oh, bugger the witness in my bosom! You only stand to make things more wretched for every hardworking tradesman in this city!”
    “Then what would you have me do, Father?”
    “I would have you stop your mouth, girl, and attend to your family.”
    “All who suffer are my family.”
    “Curse the moon and spare me your sermons— they are not . The people in this room are your family.”
    “No more than any other,” said Prudence.
    That stopped Henry. Indeed, it took the breath out of him. Even Alma felt walloped by it. The comment made her eyes sting unexpectedly, as though she had just been clouted hard across the bridge of her nose.
    “You do not regard us as your family?” Henry asked, once he had regained his composure. “Very well, then. I dismiss you from this family.”
    “Oh, Father, you mustn’t—” Alma protested, in real horror.
    But Prudence cut her sister off, launching into a response that was so lucid and calm, one might have thought it had been rehearsed for years. Perhaps it had been.
    “As you wish,” Prudence said. “But know that you are dismissing from your household a daughter who has always been loyal to you, and who has the right to seek tenderness and sympathy from the one man she ever had the memory of calling Father. Not only is this cruel, but I believe it willbring anguish upon your conscience. I shall pray for you, Henry Whittaker. And when I pray, I shall ask the Lord in heaven whatever happened to my father’s ethics—or did he never have any?”
    Henry leapt to his feet and pounded both fists on his desk in rage.
    “You little idiot!” he roared. “I never had any!”
----
    T hat had been ten years earlier, and Henry had not seen his daughter Prudence since, nor had Prudence made any attempt to see Henry. Alma herself had seen her sister only a handful of times, stopping by the Dixon home in sporadic demonstrations of artificial nonchalance and forced goodwill. She pretended she was passing through the neighborhood anyway, to drop in with small gifts for her nieces and nephews, or to deliver a basket of treats around the Christmas holidays. Alma knew that her sister would only pass along these gifts and treats to a more needy family, but she made the gestures nonetheless. At the beginning of the family rift, Alma had even attempted to offer money to her sister, but Prudence, not surprisingly, had refused it.
    These visits had never been warm or comfortable, and Alma was always relieved when they were over. Alma felt shamed whenever she saw Prudence. As irritating as she found her sister’s rigidity and morality, Alma could not help but feel that her father had behaved poorly in his final encounter with Prudence—or, rather, that Henry and Alma herself had both behaved poorly. The incident had cast them in no lovely light: Prudence had stood firmly (though sanctimoniously) on the side of the Good and the Righteous, while Henry had merely defended his commercial property and disowned his adopted daughter. And as for Alma? Well, Alma had come down on the