Patrick O'Brian

The Yellow Admiral

An Excerpt

Musing, he walked with his head bowed. The three well-worn steps came within his field of vision; he was conscious of a slight form standing at his door itself, and then of Stephen's face smiling down at him. `Oh, oh!' he cried in a voice more like that of a startled ewe than of the Director of Naval Intelligence. `Stephen, your name was in my mouth. You are as welcome as the first Red Admiral in spring. How do you do, my dear sir? How do you do? Walk in, if you please, and tell me how you do.'

Stephen walked in, shepherded with a surprising amount of fuss--surprising in so reserved and phlegmatic a man as Sir Joseph--along that familiar corridor to the even more familiar, comfortable, book-lined, Turkey-carpeted room in which they had so often sat. A cheerful fire was already burning, and Sir Joseph at once stirred it to a still livelier blaze. Turning, he shook Stephen's hand again. `What may I offer you?' he asked. `A dish of tea? No, you despise tea. Coffee? A glass of Sillery? No? I will not be importunate. You look wonderfully well, if I may be so personal. Wonderfully well. And I had been seeing you in a Spanish prison, pale, unshaved, thin, ragged, verminous.' He felt the force of Stephen's pale, questioning eye and went on, `That reptile Dutourd reached Spain and denounced you. Gonzalez, who knew something of your activities in Catalonia, believed him, sequestered your treasure in Corunna and gave orders that you were to be taken up the moment you came to gather it. This I learned from Wall and other wholly reliable sources a week after you had left. You cannot imagine the efforts I made to warn you or the quantities of coca-leaves I devoured to keep my wits active . . . and now to see you sitting there, apparently perfectly well and quite unmoved, almost makes me feel ill-used, indignant. Though in parenthesis I must thank you yet again for those blessed leaves: I have a reliable supply from an apothecary in Greek Street. May I offer you a quid?'

`You are very good, but were I to indulge, the insensibility about my pharynx would persist until early supper-time, a meal I particularly wish to enjoy. And then I wish to sleep tonight.'

A pause, and Blaine said `I will not be so indiscreet as to ask whether you had other and earlier sources of information.'

`I had not,' said Stephen, whose mind was yet to grasp the full extent and all the implications of Sir Joseph's news. `Faith, I had not. My safety, our safety, depended, under Providence, Saint Patrick, Stephen the Protomartyr, and Saint Brenda, solely upon my own ineptitude, my own gross ineptitude: I might even say inefficiency. Will I tell you about it?'

`If you would be so good,' said Blaine, moving his chair closer.'

`It does me no credit at all, at all: but since you have been to such pains I owe you an account, however bald and inadequate. We landed on a sweet calm day, and Diana having recovered from what slight remains of the sea-sickness still hung about her, we took coach and travelled westward along the coast. There was a good inn at Laredo, where we ate some hundreds of new-run infant eels two inches long and took our ease; and when we were arranging our baggage for the next stage in a fine new carriage that was to take us all the way, Diana, a far better traveller than I--a more orderly mind where packing is concerned--suggested I should make sure that everything was in place for our arrival in Corunna. Proper clothes for waiting on the governor, hair-powder, my best wig, and above all the elaborately signed and countersigned acknowledgment that the Bank of the Holy Ghost and of Commerce had received the specified number of chests containing the stated weight of gold and would deliver it up on the production of this document. Everything was in place--satin breeches, red-heeled shoes, powder, silver-hilted sword--everything but this infernal piece of paper. I blush to own it,' said Maturin, his sallow face in fact changing colour as a pinkness rose from his lower cheeks to his forehead, disappearing under his wig, a physical bob, `I am ashamed to say it, but I could not find the wretched thing.'

Against all his principles Blaine cried out `You will never tell me you lost the bank's receipt for all that gold, Stephen? Lost it? I beg your pardon. . . .'

Stephen shook his head. `I turned over innumerable other sheets--ornithological notes I had brought for a friend, the Archdeacon of Gijon, and many, many others--turned them again, formed them into heaps, sorted the heaps--Joseph, the tongue of angels could not tell you the degree of frustration. And I had not the face to attempt the impossible task of persuading the Holy Ghost and Commerce to yield that treasure on my mere unsupported word.'

`No, indeed,' said Blaine, deeply shocked.

`The dear knows, and you know, that it was in fact all for the best,' said Stephen, `yet I was very near cursing the day. But, however, I did not quite do so, because in the course of the night an inner voice said, as distinctly as the small beast in the Revelation of Saint John the Divine, "Poor worm: think on Latham", and my mind was at ease directly--I slept until sunrise, waking with the name Latham still in my ears.'

`Latham of the Synopsis?'

`Just so. Immediately before leaving I had leafed through a magnificently-bound copy of the Synopsis, the recent gift of --' He was about to say `of Prince William' but changed it to `a grateful patient' and went on `A sadly muddled piece of work, I am afraid; though as laborious as Adanson.'

`I have no patience with Latham,' said Sir Joseph.

`I shall love him as long as I live, indifferent ornithologist though he be; for I knew with a total (and I may add subsequently justified) conviction that my receipt was between the pages of his General Synopsis of Birds. In the morning, therefore, I saw the mishap as an uncommonly well disguised blessing: not quite so much of a blessing as I now know from what you tell me; but a blessing still and all, and a great one. As you know, Diana and her daughter had not seen one another for some time--there had been certain difficulties. . . ."

Sir Joseph bowed. He was perfectly aware that the child had been thought dumb, mentally deficient, impervious; and that Diana, unable to bear it, had gone away, leaving Brigid in the care of Clarissa Oakes. But an inclination of his head, a general murmur seemed the best form of response.

`And although the child is now living in this world and speaking with perfect fluency it occurred to me that the meeting would be far better, far easier, if everyone were in a coach, bounced together, seeing new things, unknown wonders, strange inns however bad, curious meals, fresh ways of dressing, always something to remark upon, to cry out at. Furthermore, I had always wanted to show both of them my Catalonia, and to consult Dr Llers of Barcelona, that eminent physician; though however he could improve the present Brigid I cannot tell. So since for immediate needs I had plenty of money without going to Corunna that wet and dismal town the back of my hand to it and all the thieves it harbours I sent a well-mounted courrier away to Segovia, where Clarissa Oakes--you remember Clarissa Oakes, my dear?'

`Indeed I do, and invaluable information she gave us: oh Heavens, yes. And in any case her formal pardon reached my desk today, together with yours and Padeen's.'

Stephen smiled and went on, `To Segovia where Clarissa Oakes and Brigid were staying with my Alarcón cousin by way of a holiday. There we picked them up and I do assure you, Joseph, that I have never made a better-inspired move in my life. Clarissa and Diana had always agreed very well, and after a little shyness Brigid joined in, so that the coachfull could have been heard talking and laughing a furlong off, particularly as Brigid so very often leaned out to call up to Padeen behind, desiring him to look at the brindled cow, at the great yoke of oxen, at the three childen on one ass. Such weather we had, and such wonders we saw! I showed them the great colony of fulvous vultures beyond Llops and a distant bear on the slope of the Maladetta, bee-eaters by the hundred in the sandy banks of the Llobregat, and my own place under the Albéres, where I brought Jack Aubrey out of France in '03. And there I found something that may please you. You know, of course, that in the micacaceous schist of those parts the arbutus is a usual sight and that therefore Charaxes jasius, the Two-Tailed Pasha, is not so rare as he is elsewhere in Europe. It was the sight of one sailing by that brought you to mind.'

`Sailing by. Yes, indeed. On the few occasions I have seen him I have run with all my might, net outstretched; but all to no avail. And purchased specimens, though very well for comparison and study, are by no means the same thing. You might as well buy your quails and partridges from a game-dealer.'

`I was more fortunate. Behind Recasens, in what I might call my own back-yard, I watched one emerging from his chrysalis: I placed a bell-jar over him, let him spread his wings, assume his full glory, and then by night carried him in, cut him short with a painless waft, and so put him up for you.' Stephen brought a soft packet from his bosom, unwrapped it, and passed a small glass case.

After the briefest moment Blaine's happy, eager look changed. He said `You would never make game of me, Stephen? Not on such a subject?'

`Pray look closer. Pray turn him upside down. Pray compare him with those you have.'

Moving slowly, and with backward glances, Sir Joseph moved over to his cabinet, drawer after drawer of beautifully mounted insects. He held his present over the relevent specimens, and slowly, in a voice of wonder, he said `By God. It is a melanistic Charaxes: a perfect, wholly melanistic Charaxes jasius.' He turned the orthodox butterflies and his new acquisition over and over, holding them to the light and murmuring about the exact repetition of the pattern and the exact reversal. `I never knew it occurred in Charaxes, Stephen--no books, no collection has ever recorded it. Oh Stephen, what a treasure! No wonder you clapped a bell-jar over him. God bless you, my dear friend. You could not have made me happier. I shall write a paper on him for the Proceedings--such a paper!' He went slowly back to his chair, privately turning the case in various directions and his face rosy with contentment.