The Signature of All Things

side of Henry Whittaker—or at least it would appear that she had—by not having spoken up more vehemently in her sister’s defense, and by staying on at White Acre after Prudence walked out.
    But her father needed her! Henry Whittaker might not be a generous man, and he might not be a kind man, but he was an important man, and he needed her. He could not live without her. Nobody else could manage his affairs, and his affairs were vast and significant. This is what she told herself.
    What’s more, abolitionism was not a cause dear to Alma’s heart. She believed slavery to be abhorrent, naturally enough, but she was occupiedwith so many other concerns that the question did not consume her conscience on a daily basis. Alma was living in Moss Time, after all, and she simply could not focus upon her work—and take care of her father—while also calibrating herself to the shifting vagaries of everyday human political drama. Slavery was a grotesque injustice, yes, and should be abolished. But there were so many injustices: poverty was another, and tyranny, and theft, and murder. One could not set one’s hand to eliminating every known injustice while at the same time writing definitive books on American mosses and managing the complex affairs of a global family enterprise.
    Was that not true?
    And why must Prudence go so far out of her way to make everyone around her look so paltry-hearted and piggish, in comparison to her own mighty sacrifices?
    “Thank you for your kindness,” Prudence would always say, whenever Alma came calling with a gift or a basket, but she always stopped short of expressing true affection or gratitude. Prudence was nothing if not polite, but she was not warm. Alma would return home to the luxuries of White Acre after these visits to Prudence’s impoverished home feeling undone and overly examined—as though she had stood before a strict jurist and had been found lacking. So perhaps it should not be surprising that over the years Alma visited Prudence less and less frequently, and that the two sisters were pulled further apart than ever.
    But now, in the carriage returning home from Trenton, George Hawkes had given Alma information that the Dixons might be in some kind of trouble over Arthur Dixon’s inflammatory pamphlet. As Alma stood near her boulder field in that spring of 1848, taking notes on the progress of her mosses, she wondered if she should perhaps call upon Prudence again. If her brother-in-law’s position at the university was indeed threatened, this was serious. But what could Alma say? What could she do? What help could she offer Prudence, that would not be refused out of pride and a willful show of humility?
    Moreover, had the Dixons not put themselves in this pickle? Wasn’t all this just the natural consequence of living in such extremity and radicalism? What business did Arthur and Prudence have as parents, putting the lives of their six children in jeopardy? Their cause was a dangerous one. Abolitionists were often dragged through the streets and beaten—even infree northern cities! The North did not love slavery, but it did love peace and stability, and abolitionists disturbed that peace. The Colored Orphans’ Asylum, where Prudence volunteered her services as a teacher, had been several times already attacked by mobs. And what about the abolitionist Elijah Lovejoy—murdered in Illinois, and his abolitionist-friendly printing presses destroyed and thrown in the river? That could easily happen here in Philadelphia. Prudence and her husband should be more careful.
    Alma turned her attention back to her mossy boulders. She had work to do. She had fallen behind in the last week, committing poor Retta to Dr. Griffon’s asylum, and she did not intend to fall even further behind now as a result of her sister’s foolhardiness. She had measurements to record, and she needed to attend to them.
    Three separate colonies of Dicranum grew on one of the largest rocks. Alma had been observing these colonies for twenty-six years, and lately it had become incontrovertibly evident that one of these Dicranum varietals was advancing, while the other two had retreated. Alma sat near the boulder, comparing more than two decades of notes and drawings. She could make no sense of it.
    Dicranum was Alma’s obsession-within-an-obsession—the innermost heart of her fascination with mosses. The world was blanketed with hundreds upon hundreds of species of Dicranum , and each variety