Angels and Insects Read Online Free PDF

observer, without a microscope …’
    Eugenia entered the room. She was wearing white muslin, with cherry-red ribbons and bow, and a cherry-red sash, and looked delightful. When she came up to Harald’s desk to be shown the Morpho Eugenia, William felt confusedly as though she carried with her an atmosphere of her own, a cloud of magic dust that at once drew him in and held him off, at precisely the distance of the invisible barrier. He bowed politely to her, and thought at once of his drunken, clear-eyed journal entry, ‘ “I shall die if I cannot have her” ’, and of a ship in flight, with the green water churning away from the bows, and the spray racing. He was not afraid of danger, but he was shrewd, and took no relish in the thought of shrivelling in a fruitless fire.
    ‘What a lovely creature,’ said Eugenia. Her soft mouth was a little open. He could see the wet, evenly milky teeth.
    ‘It is Morpho Eugenia, my dear. Not named for you, but brought
to
you, by Mr Adamson.’
    ‘How delightful. What a beautiful glittering white she is—’
    ‘No, no, that is the male. The female is the smaller one, the lavender.’
    ‘What a pity. I prefer the white satin. But then I
am
a female, so that is natural. I wish we could display them in flight. They seem a little stiff, like dead leaves, whatever you do to make them natural. I should like to keep butterflies as we keep birds.’
    ‘It is perfectly feasible,’ said William. ‘In a conservatory, if the larvae are cared for properly.’
    ‘I should take great pleasure in sitting in the conservatory in a great cloud of butterflies. It would be most romantic.’
    ‘I could procure you such a cloud, with the greatest of ease. Not,of course, Morpho Eugenia. But blue, and white, and golden, and black and red damask, native kinds.
You
would be Morpho Eugenia. It means beautiful, you know. Shapely.’
    ‘Ah,’ said Eugenia. ‘The opposite of amorphous.’
    ‘Exactly. The primeval forest out there—the endless sameness of the greenery—the clouds of midges and mosquitoes—the struggling mass of creepers and undergrowth—often seemed to me the epitome of the amorphous. And then something perfect and beautifully formed would come into view and take the breath away. Morpho Eugenia did that, Miss Alabaster.’
    She turned her liquid gaze on him to see if she had detected a compliment, as though she had a special sense for those. He met her eyes and smiled, briefly, ruefully, and she smiled briefly back, before dropping her lashes over the blue pools of her eyes.
    ‘I shall make a special glass box for them, Mr Adamson, you will see. They shall dance together forever, in their white satin and lavender silk. You must teach me what to paint into their background, what leaves and flowers—I would wish to get it right, naturally.’
    ‘I am yours to command, Miss Alabaster.’

    ‘Mr Adamson has consented to stay here for a little while, my dear, and help me to organise my collections.’
    ‘Good. Then I shall be able to command him, as he suggests.’
    Understanding daily life in Bredely Hall was not easy. William found himself at once detached anthropologist and fairytale prince trapped by invisible gates and silken bonds in an enchanted castle. Everyone had their place and their way of life, and every day for months he discovered new people whose existence he had not previously suspected, doing tasks of which he had known nothing.
    Bredely was built like a mediaeval manor house, but with new money. In 1860 it had been completed only thirty years, and had been long in the building. The Alabasters were an ancient and noble family, who had always been very pure-blooded, and had never wielded very much power, but had tilled their fields and collected books, horses, curiosities and poultry. Harald Alabaster was the second son of the Robert Alabaster who had built Bredely, with the money brought to him by his wife, the daughter of an East India merchant. The house had