There in the carriage house Alma built up her herbarium, mastered her comprehension of taxonomy, and took on ever more detailed experiments. She read her copy of Philip Miller’s Gardener’s Dictionary so many times that the book itself took on the appearance of old, worn foliage. She studied the latest medical papers about the beneficial effects of digitalis on patients suffering from dropsy, and the use of copaiba for the treatment of venereal diseases. She worked on improving her botanical drawings—which were never exactly beautiful, but always beautifully exact. She worked with untiring diligence, her fingers speeding happily across her tablets and her lips moving as though in prayer.
While the rest of White Acre flowed along in its customary activity and combat, these two locations—the binding closet and the carriage house study—became for Alma twin points of privacy and revelation. One room was for the body; one was for the mind. One room was small and windowless; the other airy and cheerfully lit. One room smelled of old glue; the other of fresh hay. One room brought forth secret thoughts; the other brought forth ideas that could be published and shared. The two rooms existed in separate buildings, divided by lawns and gardens, bisected by a wide gravel drive. Nobody would ever have seen their correlation.
But both rooms belonged to Alma Whittaker alone, and in both rooms, she came into being.
Chapter Nine
Alma was sitting at her desk in the carriage house one day in the autumn of 1819, reading the fourth volume of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck’s natural history of invertebrates, when she saw a figure crossing her mother’s Grecian garden.
Alma was accustomed to White Acre workers passing by in their duties, and usually there was a partridge or a peacock picking about the grounds as well, but this creature was neither worker nor bird. It was a small, trim, dark-haired girl of about eighteen years, dressed in a most becoming rose-colored walking costume. As she strolled the garden, the girl carelessly swung a green-trimmed, tasseled parasol. It was difficult to be certain, but the girl seemed to be talking to herself. Alma put down Mr. Lamarck and watched. The stranger was not in any hurry, and, indeed, she eventually found a bench to sit upon, and then—more curious still—to lie upon, flat on her back. Alma watched, waiting for the girl to move, but it appeared she had fallen asleep.
This was all quite strange. There were visitors at White Acre that week (an expert in carnivorous plants from Yale and a tedious scholar who had written a major treatise on greenhouse ventilation), but none of them had brought daughters. This girl was clearly not related to any of the workers around the estate, either. No gardener could afford to purchase his daughter such a fine parasol as that, and no laborer’s daughter would ever walk with such insouciance across Beatrix Whittaker’s prized Grecian garden.
Intrigued, Alma left her work behind and walked outside. She approached the girl carefully, not wanting to startle her awake, but upon closer examination saw that the girl was not napping at all—just staring up at the sky, her head pillowed in a pile of glossy black curls.
“Hello,” Alma said, peering down at her.
“Oh, hello!” replied the girl, entirely unalarmed by Alma’s appearance. “I was just thanking goodness for this bench!”
The girl popped up into a seated position, smiling brightly, and patted the spot beside her, inviting Alma to sit. Alma obediently sat down, studying her seatmate as she settled in. The girl was certainly a queer-looking thing. She had seemed prettier from a distance. True, she had a lovely figure, a magnificent head of hair, and an appealingly matched set of dimples, but from nearby one could see that her face was a bit flat and round—something like a saucer—and her green eyes were altogether too large and demonstrative. She blinked constantly. All of this added up to make her look overly young, not very bright, and just the tiniest bit frantic.
The girl turned her dotty little face up toward Alma and asked, “Now tell me something, did you hear bells ringing last night?”
Alma pondered this question. In fact, she had heard bells ringing last night. There had been a fire on Fairmont Hill, and the bells had sounded alarm across the entire city.
“I did hear them,” Alma said.
The girl nodded with satisfaction, clapped her hands, and said, “I knew it!”
“You knew that I heard bells last night?”
“I knew those bells were real!”
“I’m not sure we’ve met,” Alma said cautiously.
“Oh, but we haven’t! My name is Retta Snow. I walked all the way here!”
“Did you? May I ask from where?”
One might have almost expected the girl to say, “From the pages of a fairy book!” but instead she said, “From that way,” and pointed south. Alma, in a snap, figured it all out. There was a new estate going up just two miles down the river from White Acre. The owner was a wealthy textile merchant from Maryland. This girl must be the merchant’s daughter.
“I was hoping there would be a girl my age living around here,” said Retta. “How old are you, if I may be so plainspoken?”
“I’m nineteen,” said Alma, though she felt much older, especially by comparison to this mite.
“Exceptional!” Retta clapped again. “I am eighteen, which is not such a big difference at all, is it? Now you must tell me something, and I beg your honesty. What is your opinion of my dress?”
“Well . . .” Alma knew nothing about dresses.
“I agree!” Retta said. “It’s really not my best dress, is it? If you knew the others, you would agree even more strongly, for I have some dresses that are all the crack! But you don’t entirely detest it, either, do you?”
“Well . . .” Alma struggled again for a response.
Retta spared her an answer. “You are far too sweet to me! You don’t want to hurt my feelings! I already consider you my friend! Also, you have such a beautiful and reassuring chin. It makes a person want to trust you.”
Retta slipped an arm around Alma’s waist, and leaned her head against her shoulder, nuzzling in warmly. There was no reason in the world that Alma should have welcomed this gesture. Whosoever Retta Snow may have been, it was obvious she was an absurd person, a perfect little basin of foolishness and distraction. Alma had work to do, and the girl was an interruption.
But nobody had ever called Alma a friend.
Nobody had ever asked Alma what she thought of a dress.
Nobody had ever admired her chin.
They sat on the bench for a while in this warm and surprising embrace. Then Retta pulled away, looked up at Alma, and smiled—childish, credulous, winsome.
“What shall we do next?” she asked. “And what is your name?”
Alma laughed, and introduced herself, and confessed that she did not quite know what to do next.
“Are there other girls?” Retta asked.
“There is my sister.”
“You have a sister! You are fortunate! Let us go find her.”
So off they went together, wandering about the grounds until they found Prudence working at her easel in one of the rose gardens.
“You must be the sister!” Retta exclaimed, dashing over to Prudence as though she had won a prize, and Prudence was it.
Prudence—poised and correct as ever—set down her brush, and politely offered over her hand for Retta to shake. After pumping Prudence’s arm with rather too much enthusiasm, Retta openly took her in for a moment, head cocked to one side. Alma tensed, waiting for Retta to comment on Prudence’s beauty, or to demand to know how it could be humanly possible that Alma and Prudence were sisters. Certainly this is what every other person asked, upon seeing Alma and Prudence together for the first time. How could one sister be so porcelain and the other so ruddy? How could one sister be so dainty and the other so strapping? Prudence tensed, as well, awaiting these same unwelcome questions. But Retta did not seem captivated or daunted by Prudence’s beauty in any manner, nor did she balk at the notion that the sisters were, in fact, sisters. She merely took her time examining Prudence from head to toe, and then clapped her hands in pleasure.