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Faith Moore
Hello and welcome to Storytime for Grown Ups. I'm Faith Moore and this season we're reading the Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. Each episode I'll read a few chapters from the book, pausing from time to time to give brief explanations so it's easier to follow along. It's like an audiobook with built in notes. So brew a pot of tea, find a cozy chair and settle in. It's story time. Hi everyone. Just a reminder, I'm still away. This is another pre recorded episode. There'll be this one and one more after that and then I'll be back with you in real time. I miss you. I know I miss you. This is pre recorded, but even so, I know that I miss being with you in real time. But I will be back soon and I'm excited that you are getting to experience these chapters. These are really cool, exciting chapters and I can't wait to be back with you. But for now, let's recap what we did last time and then I'll talk a little bit and then we'll get to the chapters. Last time was Halcomb's narrative Chapter one of the second epoch. And today we're going to be reading Halcombe's narrative, Chapter two. So here is the recap from last time. Okay, so where we left off, six months have passed since Laura's wedding to Sir Percival. The couple have been abroad the whole time. They're due back the next day and they're going to be bringing with them Count and Madame Fosco. Madame Fosco is Laura's aunt and Count Fosco is Madame Fosco's Italian husband who is friends with Sir Percival. Marian is still our narrator via her diary and she has moved to Sir Percival's estate, Blackwater park, to wait for their arrival. In all of the six months that Laura has been gone, Laura hasn't told Marian anything in her letters about her married life. Marian also hasn't heard from Walter except for one letter to say that he arrived in Honduras and a newspaper report that said that the expedition had set off. So now he's in the wilderness and he can't be reached. Blackwater park seems to Marian to be a sort of gloomy and kind of oppressive place. There are three wings of the house, but only one is habitable and the ground seems sort of overgrown and claustrophobic. The lake that the place is named after is a kind of like stagnant pool which is surrounded by trees and a kind of dilapidated boathouse. And in the boathouse Marian finds a hurt dog, which she takes back to the house. And this kind of fat, stupid housemaid tells her that the groundskeeper shoots dogs that come into the property. And that's probably what happened to this one. The housekeeper comes to help Marian and tells her that the dog belongs to Mrs. Catherick, Anne Catherick's mother, and that Mrs. Catherick came by the day before, even though she lives 25 miles away, because she heard that someone matching her daughter's description had been seen in the neighborhood. The housekeeper didn't know anything about that. And Mrs. Catherick went away because a strange man came asking after Sir Percival. And Mrs. Catherick asked that the housekeeper not tell Sir Percival that she'd been there, which seemed odd to Marian. Marian resolves to go and visit Mrs. Catherick when she has a spare moment. And we left off just Marian was hearing Laura's carriage approaching the house. Okay, so again, no questions. I really missed your questions. I can't wait to be back. Can't wait to get them again. Keep them coming. But anyway, the first thing to note is that as far as we can tell, Laura is still alive. Hooray. So all of us who thought that Percival was going to take her off on the honeymoon and murder her are going to have to think again. She has made it this far. At least it seems like she has. Right? Marian's been getting letters from her and now her carriage is pulling up at the door. And I suppose it could turn out that she's not really in it or something, but at the this point, it actually seems like Laura is still with us. She made it to this chapter at least, so. Yay. But Sir Percival's house. Okay, it's kind of a downer, right? I don't know about you, but I really get a horrible sense of foreboding reading this part of Marian's journal. Like, what is up with this estate? It really seems like an ominous sort of place. And this is the place that Laura is supposed to come back to as a new bride, to start her new life as a wife. And it's where Marian's supposed to now live as well, having left Limmeridge House behind, presumably forever. But I mean, listen to how this house is described. She says it's shut in, almost suffocated by trees. She says later, 11 o'clock had just struck in a ghostly and solemn manner. There's a dog, she says the dog was howling and yawning drearily. There are echoing footsteps and she hears the iron Thumping of bolts and bars at the house door outside, we're told, here's a quote far and near the view suggested the same dreary impressions of solitude and decay. I mean, decay, that's not bad. Here's more. The half ruined wing. There's damp darkness and rats. There are lofty iron railings and gates. She says there being too many trees at Blackwater, the house is stifled by them. There's this lake that the house is named after. It's particularly creepy. It's partially dried up and it has still stagnant waters. And here's another sluggish shallow water. One more quote, overgrown with rank grass and dismal willows. Even one more. The water, which was clear enough on the open sandy side where the sun shone, looked black and poisonous opposite to me, where it lay deeper under the shade of the spongy banks and the rank overhanging thickets and tangled trees. So, yeah, this is not really the sort of place we can feel good about. And compared to lovely, airy, beautiful limmeridge, it really seems like a sort of cesspool of despair and decay. And this is Sir Percival's house, right? We've been wondering and wondering about him and now we've learned that he lives in this truly awful sounding place. I mean, honestly, to me it sort of sounds like where the wicked witch in a fairy tale lives or something. And thinking about pure, virtuous, angelic Laura becoming mistress of this place, place, it just feels wrong, doesn't it? Is Sir Percival's house a clue to Sir Percival's character? Does it mean he's rotten to the core or something because his house is filled with decay? Maybe, but also maybe not right. People live in old crumbling houses and they're not evil wizards or something like that. We also get this weird incident though, with the dog that Marian finds, which feels to me at least like a kind of bad omen. And Marian says, here's another quote. I wish my first day at Blackwater park had not been assuming associated with death, though it is only the death of a stray animal. So this is really not a great start to Marian and Laura's new life living with Sir Percival. And on top of that, Laura's letters have been kind of odd, right? She won't tell Marian anything about what it's like being married or what Sir Percival is like as a husband. And she seems not to have changed at all and is acting in her letters as if she's just on vacation with like a friend or something. So it's Hard to know what to make of that. Again, it doesn't say anything particularly bad about Sir Percival, but it doesn't say any definitively good either. We've also been told that the various people who might be able to help them if there was some sort of problem have gone even further away from them. Walter's now completely beyond reach on this dangerous archaeological expedition and Mr. Gilmore has gone out of the country for his health. So basically we're now primed and ready for the next event. Right? The next event being Laura and Sir Percival showing up at this weird house and reuniting with Marian. And also they're bringing guests with them. Laura's aunt Eleanor and her husband, Count Fosco, are going to be with them. And Marian feels like Laura doesn't like Count Fosco for some reason she hasn't said that, but she's told Marian that she's not going to say anything about him so that Marian can judge for herself. Which is basically an invitation to us to judge him. Right. Collins is telling us to observe Count Fosco when we meet him and see what we think of him. But Marian is inclined already to dislike him. Right, here's what she Laura has preserved far more perfectly than most people do in later life. The child subtle faculty of knowing a friend by instinct. And if I am right in assuming that her first impression of Count Fosco has not been favorable, I for one, am in some danger of doubting and distrusting that illustrious foreigner before I have so much as set eyes on him. So here is another situation, like with Sir Percival, where we're going to have to meet and judge a person, but are viewing him through already biased eyes. And the last thing to mention, of course, is that Mrs. Catherick has been at Blackwater Park. It was her dog that was shot. We don't know why she came. And she doesn't want Sir Percival to know she was here. This is Anne Catherick's mother, Right? So the woman in white, or at least someone connected with her, her mother is still in the picture. We just don't know why. So just like when we were waiting and waiting to meet Sir Percival, we are now waiting to see what Laura is like as a married woman, what Sir Percival is like as a married man. And what Madame and Count Fosco are. And we're going to do it from this strange and really rather ominous house. And if we still think that at some point Percival is going to kill Laura, this house of decay and death seems like a good place to maybe do it, although maybe not. Because it's just a house, right? So let's see what happens. Alright, let's get started with Halcombe's narrative. Chapter two of the Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. It's story time two. June 15th. The confusion of their arrival has had time to subside. Two days have elapsed since the return of the travellers, and that interval has sufficed to put the new machinery of our lives at Blackwater park in fair working order. I may now return to my journal with some little chance of being able to continue the entries in it as collectedly as usual. I think I must begin by putting down an odd remark which has suggested itself to me since Laura came back. When two members of a family or two intimate friends are separated and one goes abroad and one remains at home, the return of the relative or friend who has been traveling always seems to place the relative or friend who has been staying at home at a painful disadvantage. When the two first meet. This sudden encounter of the new thoughts and new habits eagerly gained in the one case, with the old thoughts and old habits passively preserved in the other, seems at first to part the sympathies of the most loving relatives and the fondest friends, and to set a sudden strangeness, unexpected by both and uncontrollable by both, between them on either side. After the first happiness of my meeting with Laura was over, after we had sat down together, hand in hand to recover breath enough and calmness enough to talk, I felt this strangeness instantly, and I could see that she felt it too. It has partially worn away now that we have fallen back into most of our old habits, and it will probably disappear before long. But it has certainly had an influence over the first impressions that I have formed of her. Now that we are living together again, for which reason only I have thought fit to mention it here. She has found me unaltered. But I have found her changed. Changed in person and in one respect, changed in character. I cannot absolutely say that she is less beautiful than she used to be. I can only say that she is less beautiful to me. Others who do not look at her with my eyes and my recollections would probably think her improved. There is more color and more decision and roundness of outline in her face than there used to be. And her figure seems more firmly set and more sure and easy in all its movements than it was in her maiden days. But I miss something when I look at her. Something that once belonged to the happy, innocent life of Laura. Fairlie and that I cannot find in Lady Glyde. There was in the old times a freshness, a softness, an ever varying and yet ever remaining tenderness of beauty in her face. Face, the charm of which it is not possible to express in words, or as poor Hartright used often to say in painting either. This is gone. I thought I saw the faint reflection of it for a moment when she turned pale under the agitation of our sudden meeting on the evening of her return. But it has never reappeared since. None of her letters had prepared me for a personal change in her on the contrary, they had led me to expect that her marriage had left her, in appearance at least, quite unaltered. Perhaps I read her letters wrongly in the past and am now reading her face wrongly in the present. No matter whether her beauty has gained or whether it has lost in the last six months, the separation either way has made her own dear self more precious to me than ever. And that is one good result of her marriage. At any rate. The second change, the change that I have observed in her character has not surprised me because I was prepared for it in this case by the tone of her letters. Now that she is at home again, I find her just as unwilling to enter into any details on the subject of her married life as I had previously found her all through the time of our separation, when we could only communicate with each other by writing. At the first approach I made to the forbidden topic, she put her hand on my lips with a look and gesture which touchingly, almost painfully, recalled to my memory the days of her girlhood and the happy, bygone time when there were no secrets between us. Whenever you and I are together, Marian, she said, we shall both be happier and easier with one another if we accept my married life for what it is and say and think as little about it as possible. I would tell you everything, darling, about myself, she went on, nervously buckling and unbuckling the ribbon round my waist, if my confidences could only end there. But they could not. They would lead me into confidences about my husband too. And now I am married, I think I had better avoid them for his sake and for your sake and for mine. I don't say that they would distress you or distress me. I wouldn't have you think that for the world. But I want to be so happy now that I have got you back again. And I want you to be happy too. She broke off abruptly and looked round the room, my own sitting room in which we were talking. Ah. She cried, clapping her hands with a bright smile. Of recognition another old friend found already. Your bookcase, Marion. Your dear little shabby old satin wood bookcase. How glad I am you brought it with you from Limmeridge. And the horrid heavy man's umbrella that you always would walk out with when it rained. And first and foremost of all your own dear dark, clever gypsy face, looking at me just as usual. It is so like home again to be here. How can we make it more like home still? I will put my father's portrait in your room instead of in mine, and I will keep all my little treasures from Limmeridge here. And we will pass hours and hours every day with these four friendly walls round us. Oh, Marian, she said suddenly, seating herself on a footstool at my knees and looking up earnestly in my face, promise you will never marry and leave me. It is selfish to say so, but you are so much better off as a single woman. Unless. Unless you are very fond of your husband. But you won't be very fond of anybody but me, will you? She stopped again, crossed my hands on my lap, and laid her face on them. Have you been writing many letters and receiving many letters lately? She asked in low, suddenly altered tones. I understood what the question meant, but I thought it my duty not to encourage her by meeting her half way. Have you heard from him? She went on, coaxing me to forgive the more direct appeal on which she now ventured by kissing my hands upon which her face still rested. Is he well and happy and getting on in his profession? Has he recovered himself and forgotten me? She should not have asked those questions. She should have remembered her own resolution on the morning when Sir Percival held her to her marriage engagement and when she resigned the book of Hartright's drawings into my hands forever. But ah, me, where is the faultless human creature who can persevere in a good resolution without sometimes failing and falling back? Where is the woman who has ever really torn from her heart the image that has been once fixed in it by a true love? Books tell us that such unearthly creatures have existed. But what does our own experience say in answer to books? I made no attempt to remonstrate with her, perhaps because I sincerely appreciated the fearless candour which let me see what other women in her position might have had reasons for concealing even from their dearest friends. Perhaps because I felt in my own heart and conscience that in her place I should have asked the same questions and had the same thoughts, all I could honestly do was to reply that I had not written to him or Heard from him lately. And then to turn the conversation to less dangerous topics. There has been much to sadden me in our interview. My first confidential interview with her since her return. The change which her marriage has produced in our relations towards each other by placing a forbidden subject between us for the first time in our lives. The melancholy conviction of the dearth, of all warmth, of feeling, of all close sympathy between her husband and herself, which her own unwilling words now force on my mind. The distressing discovery that the influence of that ill fated attachment still remains, no matter how innocently, how harmlessly rooted, as deeply as ever in her heart. All these are disclosures to sadden any woman who loves her as dearly and feels for her as acutely as I do. There is only one consolation to set against them. A consolation that ought to comfort me and that does comfort me. All the graces and gentleness of her character, all the frank affection of her nature, all the sweet, simple, womanly charms which used to make her the darling and delight of everyone who approached her have come back to me with herself. Of my other impressions I am sometimes a little inclined to doubt of this. Last, best, happiest of all impressions. I grow more and more certain every hour in the day. Let me turn now from her to her traveling companions. Her husband must engage my attention first. What have I observed in Sir Percival since his return to improve my opinion of him? I can hardly say. Small vexations and annoyances seem to have beset him since he came back, and no man under those circumstances is ever presented at his best. He looks, as I think, thinner than he was when he left England. His wearisome cough and his comfortless restlessness have certainly increased his manner. At least his manner towards me is much more abrupt than it used to be. He greeted me on the evening of his return with little or nothing of the ceremony and civility of former times. No polite speeches of welcome, no appearance of extraordinary gratification at seeing me, nothing but a short shake of the hand and a sharp how d'ye do, Miss Halcombe? Glad to see you again. He seemed to accept me as one of the necessary fixtures of Blackwater park, to be satisfied at finding me established in my proper place, and then to pass me over altogether. Most men show something of their disposition in their own houses which they have concealed elsewhere. And Sir Percival has already displayed a mania for order and regularity, which is quite a new revelation of him. So far as my previous knowledge of his character is concerned. If I take a book from the library and leave it on the table. He follows me and puts it back again. If I rise from a chair and let it remain where I have been sitting, he carefully restores it to its proper place against the wall. He picks up stray flower blossoms from the carpet and mutters to himself as discontentedly as if they were hot cinders burning holes in it. And he storms at the servants if there is a crease in the tablecloth Or a knife missing from its place at the dinner table. As fiercely as if they had personally insulted him. I have already referred to the small annoyances which appear to have troubled him since his return. Much of the alteration, for the worse, which I have noticed in him May be due to these. I try to persuade myself that it is so because I am anxious not to be disheartened already about the future. It is certainly trying to any man's temper to be met by a vexation the moment he sets foot in his own house again after a long absence. And this annoying circumstance did really happen to Sir Percival in my presence. On the evening of their arrival, the housekeeper followed me into the hall to receive her master and mistress and their guests. The instant he saw her, Sir Percival asked if anyone had called lately. The housekeeper mentioned to him in reply what she had previously mentioned to me. The visit of the strange gentleman to make inquiries about the time of her master's return. He asked immediately for the gentleman's name. No name had been left. The gentleman's business. No business had been mentioned. What was the gentleman like? The housekeeper tried to describe him, but failed to distinguish the nameless visitor by any personal peculiarity which her master could recognize. Sir Percival frowned, stamped angrily on the floor, and walked on into the house, taking no notice of anybody. Why he should have been so discomposed by a trifle I cannot say. But he was seriously discomposed beyond all doubt. Upon the whole, it will be best, perhaps, if I abstain from forming a decisive opinion of his manners, language, and conduct in his own house until time has enabled him to shake off the anxieties, whatever they may be, which now evidently troubled his mind. In secret, I will turn over to a new page, and my pen shall let Laura's husband alone for the present. The two guests, the Count and Countess Fosco, come next in my catalogue. I will dispose of the Countess first, so as to have done with the woman as soon as possible. Laura was certainly not chargeable with any exaggeration in writing me word that I should hardly recognize her aunt again when we met. Never before have I beheld Such a change produced in a woman by her marriage as has been produced in Madame Fosco. As Eleanor Fairley, aged seven and 30, so 37, she was always talking pretentious nonsense and always worrying the unfortunate men with every small exaction which a vain and foolish woman can impose on long suffering male humanity. As Madame Fosco, aged three and 40, so 43, she sits for hours together without saying a word, frozen up in the strangest manner in herself. The hideously ridiculous love locks which used to hang on either side of her face are now replaced by stiff little rows of very short curls of the sort one sees in old fashioned wigs. So love locks are long locks of hair that will be worn over the shoulder. A plain matronly cap covers her head and makes her look, for the first time in her life since I remember her, like a decent woman. Nobody, putting her husband out of the question, of course, now sees in her what everybody once saw. I mean, the structure of the female skeleton in the upper regions of the collarbones and the shoulder blades. Meaning she used to wear revealing gowns, but now she's very primly covered up, clad in quiet black or gray gowns made high around the throat, dresses that she would have laughed at or screamed at as the whim of the moment inclined her in her maiden days. She sits speechless in corners, her dry white hands so dry that the pores of her skin look chalky, incessantly engaged either in monotonous embroidery work or in rolling up endless cigarettes for the Count's own particular smoking. On the few occasions when her cold blue eyes are off her work, they are generally turned on her husband with the look of mute submissive inquiry which we are all familiar with in the eyes of a faithful dog. The only approach to an inward thaw which I have yet detected under her outer covering of icy constraint, has betrayed itself once or twice in the form of a suppressed tigerish jealousy of any woman in the house, the maids included, to whom the Count speaks, or on whom he looks with anything approaching to special interest or attention, except in this one particular. She is always morning, noon and night, indoors and out, fair weather or foul, as cold as a statue, and as impenetrable as the stone out of which it is cut for the common purposes of society. The extraordinary change thus produced in her is beyond all doubt a change for the better, seeing that it has transformed her into a civil, silent, unobtrusive woman who is never in the way. How far she is really reformed or deteriorated in her secret self is another Question. I have once or twice seen sudden changes of expression on her pinched lips. And heard sudden inflections of tone in her calm voice. Which have led me to suspect that her present state of suppression may have sealed up something dangerous in her nature. Which used to evaporate harmlessly in the freedom of her former life. It is quite possible that I may be altogether wrong in this idea. My own impression, however, is that I am right. Time will show. And the magician who has wrought this wonderful transformation. The foreign husband who has tamed this once wayward English woman till her own relations hardly know her again. The Count himself. What of the Count? This. In two words, he looks like a man who could tame anything. If he had married a tigress instead of a woman, he would have tamed the tigress. If he had married me, I should have made his cigarettes as his wife does. I should have held my tongue when he looked at me as she holds hers. I am almost afraid to confess it, even to these secret pages. The man has interested me, has attracted me, has forced me to like him. In two short days, he has made his way straight into my favorable estimation. And how he has worked the miracle is more than I can tell. It absolutely startles me. Now he is in my mind to find how plainly I see him. How much more plainly than I see Sir Percival or Mr. Fairlie or Walter Hartright. Or any other absent person of whom I think, with the one exception of Laura herself, I can hear his voice as if he was speaking at this moment. I know what his conversation was yesterday as well as if I was hearing it now. How am I to describe him? There are peculiarities in his personal appearance, his habits and his amusements which I should blame in the boldest terms or ridicule in the most merciless manner. If I had seen them in another man. What is it that makes me unable to blame them or to ridicule them? In him, for example, he is immensely fat. Before this time, I have always especially disliked corpulent humanity. I have always maintained that the popular notion of connecting excessive grossness of size and excessive good humor as inseparable allies was equivalent to declaring either that no people but amiable people ever get fat. Or that the accidental addition of so many pounds of flesh has a directly favorable influence over the disposition of the person on whose body they accumulate. So she's saying. Normally she dislikes fat people and doesn't believe in the common notion that fat people tend to be jolly. I have invariably combated both these absurd assertions by quoting Examples of fat people who were as mean, vicious and cruel as the leanest and the worst of their neighbors. I have asked whether Henry VIII was an amiable character, whether Pope Alexander VI was a good man, whether Mr. Murderer and Mrs. Murderess manning were not both unusually stout people, whether hired nurses, proverbially as cruel a set of women as are to be found in all England, were not, for the most part, also as fat a set of women as to be found in all England, and so on through dozens of other examples, modern and ancient, native and foreign, high and low, holding these strong opinions on the subject with might and main, as I do at this moment, here, nevertheless, is Count Fosco as fat as Henry VIII himself, established in my favor at one day's notice without let or hindrance from his own odious corpulence. Marvelous indeed. So even though she normally dislikes fat people, she finds that she really likes Count Fosco even though he is fat. Is it his face that has recommended him? It may be his face. He is a most remarkable likeness on a large scale of the great Napoleon. His features have Napoleon's magnificent regularity. His expression recalls the grandly calm, immovable power of the great soldier's face. This striking resemblance certainly impressed me to begin with, but there is something in him besides the resemblance which has impressed me more. I think the influence I am now trying to find is in his eyes. They are the most unfathomable gray eyes I ever saw, and they have at times a cold, clear, beautiful, irresistible glitter in them, which forces me to look at him, and yet causes me sensations when I do look, which I would rather not feel. Other parts of his face and head have their strange peculiarities. His complexion, for instance, has a singular sallow fairness, so much at variance with the dark brown colour of his hair that I suspect the hair of being a wig. And his face, closely shaven all over, is smoother and freer from all marks and wrinkles than mine, though according to Sir Percival's account of him, he is close on 60 years of age. But these are not the prominent personal characteristics which distinguish him, to my mind, from all the other men I have ever seen. The marked peculiarity which singles him out from the rank and file of humanity lies entirely, so far as I can tell, at present, in the extraordinary expression and extraordinary power of his eyes. His manner and his command of our language may also have assisted him in some degree to establish himself, in my good opinion. He has that quiet deference, that look of pleased, attentive interest in listening to A woman. And that secret gentleness in his voice in speaking to a woman. Which, say what we may, we can none of us resist. Here, too, his unusual command of the English language necessarily helps him. I had often heard of the extraordinary aptitude which many Italians show. In mastering our strong, hard northern speech. But until I saw Count Fosco, I had never supposed it possible that any foreigner could have spoken English as he speaks it. There are times when it is almost impossible to detect by his accent. That he is not a countryman of our own. And as for fluency, there are very few born Englishmen who can talk with as few stoppages and repetitions as the Count. He may construct his sentences more or less in the foreign way, but I have never yet heard him use a wrong expression or hesitate for a moment in his choice of a word. All the smallest characteristics of this strange man. Have something strikingly original and proportional, perplexingly contradictory in them. Fat as he is and old as he is, his movements are astonishingly light and easy. He is as noiseless in a room as any of us women. And more than that, with all his look of unmistakable mental firmness and power, he is as nervously sensitive as the weakest of us. He starts at chance noises as inveterately as Laura herself. He winced and shuddered yesterday when Sir Percival beat one of the spaniels. So that I felt ashamed of my own want of tenderness and sensibility by comparison with the Count. The relation of this last incident reminds me of one of his most curious peculiarities which I have not yet mentioned. His extraordinary fondness for pet animals. Some of these he has left on the continent, but he has brought with him to this house a cockatoo, two canary birds, and a whole family of white mice. He attends to all the necessities of these strange favorites himself. And he has taught the creatures to be surprisingly fond of him and familiar with him. The cockatoo, a most vicious and treacherous bird towards everyone else, absolutely seems to love him. When he lets it out of its cage, it hops onto his knee and claws its way up his great big body. And rubs its top knot against his sallow double chin in the most caressing manner imaginable. He has only to set the doors of the canaries cages open and to call them. And the pretty little cleverly trained creatures perch fearlessly on his hand. Mount his fat, outstretched fingers one by one, when he tells them to go upstairs and sing together as if they would burst their throats with delight. When they get to the top finger. His white mice Live in a little pagoda of gaily painted wireworks Designed and made by himself. They are almost as tame as the canaries, and they are perpetually let out. Like the canaries. They crawl all over him, Popping in and out of his waistcoat and sitting in couples, white as snow on his capacious shoulders. Capacious means large, so he has large, wide shoulders. He seems to be even fonder of his mice than of his other pets. Smiles at them and kisses them and calls them by all sorts of endearing names. If it be possible to suppose an Englishman with any taste for such childish interests and amusements as these, that Englishman would certainly feel rather ashamed of them. And would be anxious to apologize for them in the company of grown up people. But the count apparently sees nothing ridiculous. In the amazing contrast between his colossal self and his frail little pets. He would blandly kiss his white mice and twitter to his canary birds Amid an assembly of English fox hunters. And would only pity them as barbarians when they were all laughing their loudest at him. It seems hardly credible while I am writing it down. But it is certainly true that this same man, who has all the fondness for an old maid for his cockatoo. And all the small dexterities of an organ boy in managing his white mice, can talk when anything happens to rouse him, With a daring independence of thought, A knowledge of books in every language. And an experience of society in half the capitals of Europe, which would make him the prominent personage of any assembly in the civilized world. This trainer of canary birds, this architect of a pagoda for white mice, is, as Sir Percival himself has told me, One of the first experimental chemists living. And has discovered, among other wonderful inventions, A means of petrifying the body after death. So as to preserve it as hard as marble to the end of time. This fat, indolent elderly man, whose nerves are so finely strung that he starts at chance noises and winces when he sees a house spaniel get a whipping, Went into the stable yard on the morning after his arrival and put his hand on the head of a chained bloodhound. A beast so savage that the very groom who feeds him keeps out of his reach. His wife and I were present. And I shall not forget the scene that followed, short as it was. Mind that dog, sir, said the groom. He flies at everybody. He does that, my friend, replied the count quietly, because everybody is afraid of him. Let us see if he flies at me. And he laid his plump yellow white fingers. On which the canary birds had been perching 10 minutes before. Upon the formidable brute's head and looked him straight in the eyes. You big dogs are all cowards, he said, addressing the animal contemptuously with his face and the dogs within an inch of each other. You would kill a poor cat, you infernal coward. You would fly at a starving beggar, you infernal coward. Anything that you can surprise unawares, anything that is afraid of your big body and your wicked white teeth and your slobbering, bloodthirsty mouth is the thing you like to fly at. You could throttle me at this moment, you mean miserable bully, and you daren't so much as look me in the face because I'm not afraid of you. Will you think better of it and try your teeth in my fat neck? Bah. Not you. He turned away, laughing at the astonishment of the men in the yard, and the dog crept meekly back to his kennel. Ah, my nice waistcoat, he said pathetically. I am sorry I came here. Some of that brute slobber has got on my pretty clean waistcoat. Those words expressed another of his incomprehensible oddities. He is as fond of fine clothes as the veriest fool in existence, and has appeared in four magnificent waistcoats already, all of light, garish colors, and all immensely large, even for him in the two days of his residence at Blackwater Park. His tact and cleverness in small things are quite as noticeable as the singular inconsistencies in his character and the childish triviality of his ordinary taste, tastes, and pursuits. I can see already that he means to live on excellent terms with all of us. During the period of his sojourn in this place, he has evidently discovered that Laura secretly dislikes him. She confessed as much to me when I pressed her on the subject. But he has also found out that she is extravagantly fond of flowers. Whenever she wants a nosegay, he has got one. To give her a nosegay is a little bouquet of flowers gathered and arranged by himself, and greatly to my amusement. He is always cunningly provided with a duplicate composed of exactly the same flowers, grouped in exactly the same way, to appease his icily jealous wife before she can so much as think herself aggrieved. His management of the countess in public is a sight to see. He bows to her. He habitually addresses her as my angel. He carries his canaries to pay her little visits on his fingers and to sing to her her. He kisses her hand when she gives him his cigarettes. He presents her with sugar plums in return, which he puts into her mouth playfully from a box in his pocket. The rod of iron with which he rules her never appears in company. It is a private rod and is always kept upstairs. His method of recommending himself to me is entirely different. He flatters my vanity by talking to me as seriously and sensibly as as if I was a man. Yes, I can find him out when I am away from him. I know he flatters my vanity when I think of him up here in my own room. And yet when I go downstairs and get into his company again, he will blind me again. And I shall be flattered again, just as if I had never found him out at all. He can manage me as he manages his wife and Laura, as he managed the bloodhound in the stable yard, as he manages Sir Percival himself every hour in the day. My good Percival, how I like your rough English humor. My good Percival, how I enjoy your solid English sense. He puts the rudest remark Sir Percival can make on his effeminate tastes and amusements quietly away from him in that manner, always calling the baronet by his Christian name, smiling at him with the calmest superiority, patting him on the shoulder, and bearing with him benignantly as a good humored father bears with a wayward son. So Sir Percival makes fun of Count Fosco for his weird idiosyncrasies and womanish behavior. But it doesn't seem to faze Fosco at all. And he treats Sir Percival like a sort of cranky child which disarms and maybe even emasculates him a little. The interest, which I really cannot help feeling in this strangely original man has led me to question Sir Percival about his past life. Sir Percival either knows little or will tell me little about it. He and the Count first met many years ago at Rome under the dangerous circumstances to which I have alluded elsewhere. Remember, Fosco saved Perceval from a robber who was trying to stab him. Since that time they have been perpetually together in London, in Paris, and in Vienna, but never in Italy again. The Count having, oddly enough, not crossed the frontiers of his native country for years past, perhaps he has been made the victim of some political persecution. At all events, he seems to be patriotically anxious not to lose sight of any of his own countrymen who may happen to be in England. On the evening of his arrival, he asked how far we were from the nearest town and whether we knew of any Ital gentleman who might happen to be settled there. He is certainly in correspondence with people on the continent, for his letters have all sorts of odd stamps on them. And I saw one for him this morning, waiting in his place at the breakfast table with a huge official looking seal on it. Perhaps he is in correspondence with his government, and yet that is hardly to be reconciled either with my other idea, that he may be a political exile. How much I seem to have written about Count Fosco, and what does it all amount to, as poor dear Mr. Gilmour would ask in his impenetrable business like way, I can only repeat that I do assuredly feel, even on this short acquaintance, a strange half willing, half unwilling liking for the Count. He seems to have established over me the same sort of ascendancy which he has evidently gained over Sir Percival. Free and even rude as he may occasionally be in his manner towards his fat friend, Sir Percival is nevertheless a afraid, as I can plainly see, of giving any serious offense to the Count. I wonder whether I am afraid too. I certainly never saw a man in all my experience whom I should be so sorry to have for an enemy. Is this because I like him, or because I am afraid of him? Kisa, as Count Fosco might say in his own language, who knows? June 16th. Something to chronicle today besides my own ideas and impressions. A visitor has arrived, quite unknown to Laura and to me, and apparently quite unexpected by Sir Percival. We were all at lunch in the room with the new French windows that open into the verandah, and the Count, who devours pastry, as I have never yet seen it, devoured by any human beings but girls at boarding schools, had just amused us by asking gravely for his fourth tart when the servant entered to announce the visitor. Mr. Merriman has just come, Sir Percival, and wishes to see you immediately. Sir Percival started and looked at the man with an expression of angry alarm. Mr. Merriman, he repeated, as if he thought his own ears must have deceived him. Yes, Sir Percival, Mr. Merriman from London. Where is he? In the library, Sir Percivale. He left the table the instant the last answer was given and hurried out of the room without saying a word to any of us. Who is Mr. Merriman? Asked Laura, appealing to me. I have not the least idea, was all I could say in reply. The Count had finished his fourth tart and had gone to a side table to look after his vicious cockatoo. He turned round to us with the bird perched on his shoulder. Mr. Merriman is sir Percival's solicitor, he said quietly. Sir Percival's solicitor? It was a perfectly straightforward answer to Laura's question, and yet under the circumstances, it was not satisfactory. If Mr. Merriman had been specially sent for by his client, there would have been nothing very wonderful in his leaving town to obey the summons. But when a lawyer travels from London to Hampshire without being sent for, and when his arrival at a gentleman's house house seriously startles the gentleman himself, it may be safely taken for granted that the legal visitor is the bearer of some very important and very unexpected news, news which may be either very good or very bad, but which cannot in either case be of the common everyday kind. Laura and I sat silent at the table for a quarter of an hour or more, wondering uneasily what had happened and waiting for the chance of Sir Percival's speedy return. Return. There were no signs of this return, and we rose to leave the room. The Count, attentive as usual, advanced from the corner in which he had been feeding his cockatoo with the bird still perched on his shoulder, and opened the door for us. Laura and Madame Fosco went out first, just as I was on the point of following them. He made a sign with his hand and spoke to me before I passed him in the oddest manner. Yes? He said quietly, answering the unexpressed idea at that moment in my mind, as if I had plainly confided it to him in so many words. Yes, Ms. Halcombe, something has happened. I was on the point of answering. I never said so. But the vicious cockatoo ruffled his clipped wings and gave a screech that set all my nerves on edge in an instant and made me only too glad to get out of the room. I joined Laura at the foot of the stairs. The thought in her mind was the same as the thought in mine which Count Fosco had surprised, and when she spoke, her words were almost the echo of his. She too said to me secretly that she was afraid something had happened. Thank you so much for listening. I'd love to know what you thought of the chapters. Is there anything you'd like me to clarify? Did something particularly interest you? Please go to my website, faithkmoore.com, click on Contact and send me your questions and thoughts. Or you can click on the link in the show notes to contact me. I'll feature one or two of your entries at the start of the next episode. Speaking of links, don't forget to take a look at the other links in the show notes. You can learn more about me, check out our merch store, or pick up one of my books. Before I go, I'd like to ask a quick favor. This is an independent podcast. It's produced, recorded, and marketed by me. So I need your help. Spread the word about the show by posting about it on social media or texting a link to your friends. Subscribe, tap those five stars and leave a positive review wherever you're listening. If you are able to support the show financially, there's a link in the show notes to make a donation. I would really really appreciate it. Alright everyone, story time is over. To be continued.