The Lady of the Butterflies by Fiona Mountain

Author:Fiona Mountain [Mountain, Fiona]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, General, Great Britain, Historical, Biographical, Women Entomologists
ISBN: 9780425241172
Publisher: Penguin Group USA
Published: 2011-07-05T23:49:17+00:00

“WHAT IS THAT you are reading so avidly?” Mary asked me, looking up from the table where she was crushing almonds for marchpane.

I showed her the cover of Philosophical Transactions. “It’s the journal of the Royal Society. James brought it for me. He said he thought I’d find it helpful.”

“Helpful in what way?”

“I’ll show you,” I said excitedly, feeling the familiar thrill of experiment and discovery stir in me again. I put the journal down, scooped up little Mary and carried her over to the sunny leaded window. I held up my left hand toward the light, the hand upon which I still wore the bejeweled band that Edmund had slipped onto my finger on our wedding day. I turned the back of my hand toward the glass and tilted it slowly, this way and that, keeping my eyes trained intently on the far wall. “Watch very carefully,” I whispered to Edmund’s little daughter.

“Whatever are you doing now?” Bess had been wiping the dishes. She put down the cloth.

“We are contemplating Isaac Newton’s theory of light and color,” I told her and Mary with a grin.

“You are an addlebrain for sure,” Bess muttered.

But at that moment I got the angle just right and a myriad of dancing colors, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet, were splashed across the white walls of the little lime-washed kitchen.

“Isaac Newton has proved that we are surrounded by color all the time,” I said. “Light itself is made up of a spectrum of colors.” With my thumb I stroked the band of my ring with its diamonds that were doing the job of a prism. “So you see, my little Mary, your father can still bring some brightness to our lives, even though he is gone from them.”

“It seems to me that it is James Petiver who has done that for you,” Mary said gently.

“Maybe. But do you see,” I said animatedly. “Mr. Newton has shown how rainbows are made.”

“Pity John didn’t know that when he was preaching.” Mary looked from one tiny rainbow to another. “How lovely to think God not only created light to banish the dark, but made it so beautiful, just like a true artist.”

“If experiment can reveal the components of light,” I posed tentatively, “maybe it really can illuminate the rest of God’s work. If I could only see how a butterfly is born, I could perhaps be sure that Edmund is in Heaven with my parents and my sister. I could still believe I will see them all again.”

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