The Golden Fleece Read Online Free PDF

the honest blacks of the old stone walls on the moors and the old stone buildings in Shipley and Bingley, and thought it a pity that they were gradually being swept away by decrepitude and demolition, and replaced with paler imitations. The Old Manse was an honest fake, not trying to be anything else. Adrian liked it, as seen from distance, and he still liked it at close range, as seen from the driveway, up which he walked because he’d never owned a car and didn’t want to face the embarrassment of asking some flunkey where he could put his bicycle. From the outside, the house wasn’t bleak in his eyes.
     
    Even though architecture wasn’t really his thing, one of Adrian’s carefully-planned esthetic excursions, while he was at a GRE conference in Derby, had been to see the site on the Derwent where the nineteenth-century industrialist Richard Arkwright had begun the first revolution of the textile industry, introducing automated machinery into his water-mills, and then replacing water-power with steam engines. The factories had been partially restored as a museum, and the house—the original version of which had been burned down—had served time as a hotel before being fully converted into a museum, but the ghost of Arkwright’s intention had still been visible.
     
    As the richest man in the north of England, and the effective kingpin of the nouveau riche of the First Industrial Revolution, Arkwright had wanted a palace from which an emperor might look down on his domain, and the source of his own magnificence—a modern palace, of course, not a mere copy of some Roman ruin or some scaled-down Versailles, but a palace nevertheless. Jason Jarndyke’s Old Manse wasn’t nearly as pretentious as Arkwright’s Victorian colossus, but that was just a symptom of marching time: its stone walls and steeply-pitched slate roofs embodied, in essence, the same dream of domination and imperial justice. Not vulgar wealth, or even brute power— Jarndyke wasn’t as unsubtle as that—but a testament of merit, of due deserts duly enjoyed.
     
    Adrian could appreciate that, and approve of it; he wasn’t one of those scientific geniuses who despise men who “make money out of the inventions of others,” because he knew how unusual the talent was that such triumphs required—and he knew that Jason Jarndyke, although by no means free of egomania, had his vanity under disciplined control.
     
    Inside, there were, as Chester Hu had said, “acres of brown.” Adrian didn’t mind that, either, although it did seem austere, and he could understand why some people might find it bleak. Personally, he liked wood, especially old wood, with swirling grain and knots. Whoever had cut and organized the paneling hadn’t had perfect sight, but he hadn’t been a mug or a skimper.
     
    Anyway, Adrian thought, better austere and natural than contrived and awful. He remembered what Chester had said, en passant, about Mr. and Mrs. Jarndyke probably having agreed to disagree about matters of decoration, and deciding on minimalism as the best compromise. Adrian got the same impression. They had probably wanted different things, and had decided on neither. He could approve of that.
     
    It was obvious, too, why Dr. Hu had described Angelica Jarndyke as a “trophy wife.” In terms of appearances, she was a cliche: fifteen or twenty years younger than her husband, and radiantly beautiful, even now that she was past forty—so beautiful, in fact, as to be out of anyone’s league but a millionaire’s, at least—and carefully polished to boot, to the extent of seeming an item of artifice, more showpiece than person. Her dress sense was perfect, even though she was displaying “casual,” and Adrian perceived at first glance that she was an expert in applying make-up; he had never seen artifice so flawless—but he had had a sheltered upbringing, in that regard, and he knew it.
     
    Angelica Jarndyke was the first trophy wife he had ever actually