had dealt with the obvious preliminaries about the voyage and had exchanged a great deal of gossip to do with other entomologists and the proceedings of the Royal Society that Stephen asked particularly after Sir Joseph's health: he asked as a physician, having prescribed for him - the trouble had been a want of sexual vigour, which assumed a certain importance in view of Blain's intended marriage, and Stephen wished to know how his physic had answered. 'It answered in a most surprising and gratifying manner, I thank you,' said Sir Joseph. 'Priapus would himself have been put to the blush. But I laid it aside. I reflected upon matrimony, and although I found a great deal to be said for it in theory, when I looked attentively among my friends I found that the practice did not seem to produce much happiness. Scarcely a single pair did I find who appeared really suited to please one another for more than a few months, after a year or so contention, striving for moral advantage, differences of temper, education, taste, appetite and a hundred other things led to bickering, uneasiness, indifference, downright dislike or even worse. Few of my friends can be said to be happily married, and in some cases...' He broke off, evidently regretting his words, and returned to the contemplation of the beetles that Stephen had brought him from Brazil and the Great South Sea. After some talk of insects he added, 'Besides, in your private ear I will confess that I heard the lady refer to me as 'my old beau'. Old I could bear; but there is something strangely chilling and smart and provincial about beau. Then again, marriage and intelligence make awkward yoke-fellows: not that I am much concerned with intelligence any more, however.'
'Are you not?' said Stephen, looking into his face.
'No,' said Blaine, 'I am not. You will recall that I sent you a somewhat cryptic warning of squalls -of troubled waters - of dark obscure currents - when you were in Gibraltar. Well now, almost everything I forecast has come about. Just let me have a word with
Mrs Barlow about our supper, and when we have eaten it I will tell you in more detail.'
'First may I beg you to lend me a handkerchief? My pocket was picked as I was going to the White Horse.'
'I hope you did not lose much?'
'Fourpence and a spotted handkerchief, and a mighty dose of self-esteem. I had thought myself a match for a common pickpocket. It is true I was struggling with a cumbrous great umbrella at the time, but that is a poor excuse. My pocket picked clean, as though I were just off the mountain or the bog, for shame.'
It was a lobster of moderate size that they ate for their supper, followed by a boned capon in a pie and then by a rice pudding, a dish they were both very fond of: but Sir Joseph only toyed with his, and when they carried their wine into the library he said 'Your having your pocket picked like a countryman brings my own mishap so clearly to my mind that it quite takes my appetite away. I am older than you, Maturin, I have had even more experience, and yet I have been done brown; and what angers me even more is that I no more know who roasted me than you know who picked your pocket.'
He gave Stephen a circumstantial account of the changes that had come about in naval intelligence. Sir Joseph still had a high-sounding title, but in the course of one of those silent Whitehall struggles that turn ministries upside-down he had been deprived of almost all real power: he still represented the Admiralty at the meetings of the Committee for the moment, but he had nothing to do with the day to day business of the department.
Last January his horse had fallen with him on an icy road in the country: it had meant no more than a fortnight in bed, but that was fourteen days too long - there had been three important meetings at which his opponents carried all before them and when he crept back he found the organization wholly recast. By now nearly all his friends had been removed or sent to obscure positions far away, and those who remained could hope for no countenance or advancement. Their clerks were taken from them, their rooms were given to others, and they were lodged in mean holes and corners to induce them to resign, and the least slip of some remote agent was seized upon to discredit them. It was the same with those outside the administration. 'Invaluable colleagues have been treated with disrespect and have withdrawn in disgust. When you call at the Admiralty, do not be surprised if they ask you to give up your key to the private door. The pretext will no doubt be that the locks are being changed.' Sir Joseph himself would have resigned months ago if this had been an ordinary department and if he had not had some hopes of reversing the situation in the end. 'I cannot tell you, Maturin,' he said, 'how passionately I long to put things right again, and I shall hold on, in spite of all affronts, in order to do so.'
'When you speak of your opponents, do you have them clearly in your eye?' asked Stephen.
'No, I do not, and that is what makes me so uneasy. Barrow is back as second secretary, as I dare say you know, and we have never liked one another; indeed I might say that since the Wilson affair we have lived in a perpetual reciprocation of malevolence. He is an immensely laborious, immensely diligent man, devoted to form and detail, and respectful of rank to a servile degree; he is widely ignorant and he is quite incapable of taking a broad, intelligent view of any given situation; but having risen from a humble situation by his own efforts he has an extraordinarily high opinion of his abilities, and at first I thought that this reorganization was simply an attempt on his part to gain more power, particularly as he has kept Wray, an ambitious young man, as his chief adviser. But that is not the explanation. He is a little man and his idea of a famous victory is six extra clerks and a Turkey carpet. It is true that Wray, though flighty, paederastical and unsound, is very, very much cleverer, but now that I have seen how things are handled and the amount of influence, particularly Treasury influence, that has been brought to bear, it seems to me that the whole thing is far beyond their scope. It seems to me that some Macchiavel, possibly in the Treasury, possibly in the Cabinet Office, is manipulating them; but who he is or what his aim may be I cannot tell. There are times when I feel that the ordinary insatiable appetite for power, patronage, and having one's own way explains it all; and there are times when I fancy I smell if not a rat, then a pretty sinister mouse. However, I shall say no more about that, even to you, until I have something a little more solid than these impressions. A disappointed, angry man is very apt to exaggerate the wickedness of his opponents. But they must not think that by depriving me of the C and F reports and of contact with the agents in the field, they are cutting me off entirely. A man in my position has many old and tried friends in the other intelligence services, and with their help I do not despair of getting to the bottom of the matter.'
'I am very much concerned at what you tell me,' said Stephen. 'Very much concerned indeed.' And after a pause, 'Listen, Blain. Before we left Gibraltar the Admiral's secretary sent for me: his orders were to tell me the Government had sent a Mr Cunningham to the Spanish South American colonies in the packet Dana?ith a large sum of money in gold. It was now feared that she might be taken by the American frigate we were being sent to deal with. if we met the Dana?in the Atlantic I was to leave Mr Cunningham his gold but I was to remove a very much larger sum that had been concealed in his cabin without his knowledge. The American did in fact take the Dana?but we recaptured her this side of the Horn. I considered that my instructions required me to look for this larger sum, and I found it: it was contained in a small brass box that is now attached to my person. Jack Aubrey sent the Dana?ome under Captain Pullings, but since it was not improbable that she should be taken yet again I thought proper to keep this box aboard a man-of-war, as being less liable to capture. Yet several aspects of the matter made me uneasy in mind: the seal on the box broke when it fell from its hiding-place; the eventualities foreseen in my instructions did not include the packet's recapture and it might be said that I had exceeded my authority; the sum that Jack Aubrey and I - for he had helped me to follow the nautical directions - picked up from the cabin floor was very great indeed, far, far greater than I cared to be answerable for or indeed associated with; and I had had your letter speaking of the troubled, murky atmosphere in Whitehall. However, we put it all back in the brass box, sealed the lid again, using my watch-key, and here it is.' He tapped his side.
'Have you seen Barrow or Wray?' asked Sir Joseph.
