I mentioned the
suggestion
to Mr.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v07 - Cic to Cuv
Bruff and Betteredge to wait for
the result. At the bottom of the bed I half drew the curtains,
and placed my own chair at a little distance, so that I might
let him see me or not see me, just as the circumstances might
direct. Having already been informed that he always slept with
a light in the room, I placed one of the two lighted candles on
a little table at the head of the bed, where the glare of the light
would not strike on his eyes. The other candle I gave to Mr.
Bruff; the light in this instance being subdued by the screen
of the chintz curtains. The window was open at the top so as
to ventilate the room. The rain fell softly; the house was quiet.
It was twenty minutes past eleven by my watch when the prepa-
rations were completed, and I took my place on the chair set
apart at the bottom of the bed.
Mr. Bruff resumed his papers, with every appearance of being
as deeply interested in them as ever. But looking toward him
now, I saw certain signs and tokens which told me that the Law
was beginning to lose its hold on him at last. The suspended
interest of the situation in which we were now placed was slowly
asserting its influence even on his unimaginative mind. As for
Betteredge, consistency of principle and dignity of conduct had
become in his case mere empty words. He forgot that I was
performing a conjuring trick on Mr. Franklin Blake; he forgot
that I had upset the house from top to bottom; he forgot that
I had not read Robinson Crusoe' since I was a child. "For the
Lord's sake, sir," he whispered to me, "tell us when it will
begin to work. "
"Not before midnight," I whispered back. "Say nothing
and sit still. "
Betteredge dropped to the lowest depth of familiarity with
me, without a struggle to save himself. He answered by a
wink!
## p. 3886 (#252) ###########################################
3886
WILLIAM WILKIE COLLINS
Looking next toward Mr. Blake, I found him as restless as
ever in his bed; fretfully wondering why the influence of the
laudanum had not begun to assert itself yet. To tell him in
his present humor that the more he fidgeted and wondered the
longer he would delay the result for which we were now wait-
ing, would have been simply useless. The wiser course to take
was to dismiss the idea of the opium from his mind by leading
him insensibly to think of something else.
With this view I encouraged him to talk to me, contriving so
to direct the conversation, on my side, as to lead him back again
the subject which had engaged us earlier in the evening,—
the subject of the Diamond. I took care to revert to those por-
tions of the story of the Moonstone which related to the trans-
port of it from London to Yorkshire; to the risk which Mr.
Blake had run in removing it from the bank at Frizinghall; and
to the expected appearance of the Indians at the house on the
evening of the birthday. And I purposely assumed, in referring
to these events, to have misunderstood much of what Mr. Blake
himself had told me a few hours since. In this way I set him
talking on the subject with which it was now vitally important
to fill his mind-without allowing him to suspect that I was
making him talk for a purpose. Little by little he became so
interested in putting me right that he forgot to fidget in the
bed. His mind was far away from the question of the opium at
the all-important time when his eyes first told me that the
opium was beginning to lay its hold upon his brain.
I looked at my watch. It wanted five minutes to twelve
when the premonitory symptoms of the working of the lau-
danum first showed themselves to me.
At this time no unpracticed eye would have detected any
change in him. But as the minutes of the new morning wore
away, the swiftly subtle progress of the influence began to show
itself more plainly. The sublime intoxication of opium gleamed
in his eyes; the dew of a steady perspiration began to glisten on
his face. In five minutes more the talk which he still kept up
with me failed in coherence. He held steadily to the subject of
the Diamond; but he ceased to complete his sentences. A little
later the sentences dropped to single words. Then there was an
interval of silence. Then he sat up in bed. Then, still busy
with the subject of the Diamond, he began to talk again—not
to me but to himself. That change told me the first stage in
## p. 3887 (#253) ###########################################
WILLIAM WILKIE COLLINS
3887
the experiment was reached. The stimulant influence of the
opium had got him.
The time now was twenty-three minutes past twelve. The
next half-hour, at most, would decide the question of whether he
would or would not get up from his bed and leave the room.
In the breathless interest of watching him-in the unutter-
able triumph of seeing the first result of the experiment declare
itself in the manner, and nearly at the time, which I had antici-
pated I had utterly forgotten the two companions of my night
vigil. Looking toward them now, I saw the Law (as represented
by Mr. Bruff's papers) lying unheeded on the floor. Mr. Bruff
himself was looking eagerly through a crevice left in the imper-
fectly drawn curtains of the bed. And Betteredge, oblivious of
all respect for social distinctions, was peeping over Mr. Bruff's
shoulder.
They both started back on finding that I was looking at
them, like two boys caught out by their schoolmaster in a fault.
I signed to them to take off their boots quietly, as I was taking
off mine. If Mr. Blake gave us the chance of following him, it
was vitally necessary to follow him without noise.
Ten minutes passed-and nothing happened.
He put
Then he suddenly threw the bedclothes off him.
one leg out of bed. He waited.
"I wish I had never taken it out of the bank," he said to
himself. "It was safe in the bank. "
My heart throbbed fast; the pulses at my temples beat furi-
ously. The doubt about the safety of the Diamond was once
more the dominant impression in his brain! On that one pivot
the whole success of the experiment turned. The prospect thus
suddenly opened before me was too much for my shattered
nerves. I was obliged to look away from him, or I should have
lost my self-control.
There was another interval of silence.
When I could trust myself to look back at him he was out
of his bed, standing erect at the side of it. The pupils of his
eyes were now contracted; his eyeballs gleamed in the light of
the candle as he moved his head slowly to and fro.
He was
thinking; he was doubting; he spoke again.
"How do I know? " he said. "The Indians may be hidden
in the house. "
He stopped, and walked slowly to the other end of the room.
He turned,-waited,—came back to the bed.
## p. 3888 (#254) ###########################################
3888
WILLIAM WILKIE COLLINS
"It's not even locked up," he went on.
of her cabinet. And the drawer doesn't lock. "
"It's in the drawer
He sat down on the side of the bed. "Anybody might take
it," he said.
He rose again restlessly, and reiterated his first words. "How
do I know? The Indians may be hidden in the house. "
bed.
He waited again. I drew back behind the half-curtain of the
He looked about the room, with the vacant glitter in his
eyes. It was a breathless moment. There was a pause of some
A pause in the action of the opium? a pause in the action
of the brain? Who could tell? Everything depended now on
what he did next.
sort.
He laid himself down again on the bed!
A horrible doubt crossed my mind. Was it possible that the
sedative action of the opium was making itself felt already? It
was not in my experience that it should do this. But what is
experience where opium is concerned? There are probably no
two men in existence on whom the drug acts in exactly the
same manner. Was some constitutional peculiarity in him feel-
ing the influence in some new way? Were we to fail, on the
very brink of success?
No! He got up again very abruptly. "How the devil am I
to sleep," he said, "with this on my mind ? »
He looked at the light burning on the table at the head of
his bed. After a moment he took the candle in his hand.
I blew out the second candle burning behind the closed cur-
tains. I drew back, with Mr. Bruff and Betteredge, into the
farthest corner by the bed. I signed to them to be silent, as if
their lives depended on it.
We waited seeing and hearing nothing. We waited, hidden
from him by the curtains.
The light which he was holding on the other side of us moved
suddenly. The next moment he passed us, swift and noiseless,
with the candle in his hand.
He opened the bedroom door and went out.
We followed him along the corridor. We followed him down
the stairs. We followed him along the second corridor. He
never looked back; he never hesitated.
He opened the sitting-room door and went in, leaving it
open behind him.
The door was hung (like all the other doors in the house) on
large old-fashioned hinges. When it was opened, a crevice was
## p. 3889 (#255) ###########################################
WILLIAM WILKIE COLLINS
3889
opened between the door and the post. I signed to my two
companions to look through this, so as to keep them from show-
ing themselves. I placed myself-outside the door also- on the
opposite side. A recess in the wall was at my left hand, in
which I could instantly hide myself if he showed any signs of
looking back into the corridor.
He advanced to the middle of the room, with the candle still
in his hand; he looked about him,- but he never looked back.
I saw the door of Miss Verinder's bedroom standing ajar.
She had put out her light. She controlled herself nobly. The
dim white outline of her summer dress was all that I could see.
Nobody who had not known it beforehand would have suspected
that there was a living creature in the room. She kept back in
the dark; not a word, not a movement escaped her.
It was now ten minutes past one. I heard through the
silence the soft drip of the rain, and the tremulous passage of
the night air through the trees.
After waiting irresolute for a minute or more in the middle
of the room, he moved to the corner near the window where the
Indian cabinet stood.
He put his candle on the top of the cabinet. He opened and
shut one drawer after another, until he came to the drawer in
which the mock Diamond was put. He looked into the drawer
for a moment. Then he took the mock Diamond out with his
right hand. With the other hand he took the candle from the
top of the cabinet.
He walked back a few steps toward the middle of the room
and stood still again.
Thus far he had exactly repeated what he had done on the
birthday night. Would his next proceeding be the same as the
proceeding of last year? Would he leave the room? Would he
go back now, as I believed he had gone back then, to his bed-
chamber? Would he show us what he had done with the Dia-
mond when he had returned to his own room?
His first action, when he moved once more, proved to be an
action which he had not performed when he was under the in-
fluence of the opium for the first time. He put the candle.
down on a table and wandered on a little toward the farther
end of the room. There was a sofa here. He leaned heavily
on the back of it with his left hand - then roused himself and
returned to the middle of the room. I could now see his eyes.
VI-244
## p. 3890 (#256) ###########################################
3890
WILLIAM WILKIE COLLINS
They were getting dull and heavy; the glitter in them was fast
dying out.
The suspense of the moment proved too much for Miss Ver-
inder's self-control. She advanced a few steps,- then stopped
again. Mr. Bruff and Betteredge looked across the open door-
way at me for the first time. The prevision of a coming disap-
pointment was impressing itself on their minds as well as on
mine. Still, so long as he stood where he was, there was hope.
We waited in unutterable expectation to see what would hap-
pen next.
The next event was decisive. He let the mock Diamond
drop out of his hand.
It fell on the floor, before the doorway - plainly visible to
him and to every one. He made no effort to pick it up; he
looked down at it vacantly, and as he looked, his head sank on
his breast. He staggered-roused himself for an instant-
walked back unsteadily to the sofa-and sat down on it. He
made a last effort; he tried to rise, and sank back. His head
fell on the sofa cushions. It was then twenty-five minutes past
one o'clock. Before I had put my watch back in my pocket he
was asleep.
It was over now. The sedative influence had got him; the
experiment was at an end.
I entered the room, telling Mr. Bruff and Betteredge that
they might follow me. There was no fear of disturbing him.
We were free to move and speak.
"The first thing to settle," I said, "is the question of what
we are to do with him. He will probably sleep for the next six
or seven hours at least. It is some distance to carry him back
to his own room. When I was younger I could have done it
alone. But my health and strength are not what they were-I
am afraid I will have to ask you to help me. "
Before they could answer, Miss Verinder called to me softly.
She met me at the door of her room with a light shawl and
with the counterpane from her own bed.
"Do you mean to watch him while he sleeps? " she asked.
"Yes. I am not sure enough of the action of the opium in
this case, to be willing to leave him alone. "
She handed me the shawl and the counterpane.
"Why should you disturb him? " she whispered. "Make his
bed on the sofa. I can shut my door and keep in my room. »
## p. 3891 (#257) ###########################################
WILLIAM WILKIE COLLINS
3891
It was infinitely the simplest and the safest way of disposing
of him for the night.
I mentioned the suggestion to Mr. Bruff
and Betteredge, who both approved of my adopting it. In five
minutes I had laid him comfortably on the sofa, and had
covered him lightly with the counterpane and the shawl. Miss
Verinder wished us good-night and closed the door.
At my
request we three then drew round the table in the middle of
the room, on which the candle was still burning, and on which
writing materials were placed.
"Before we separate," I began, "I have a word to say about
the experiment which has been tried to-night. Two distinct
objects were to be gained by it. The first of these objects was
to prove that Mr. Blake entered this room and took the Dia-
mond last year, acting unconsciously and irresponsibly, under the
influence of opium. After what you have both seen, are you
both satisfied so far? ”
They answered me in the affirmative, without a moment's
hesitation.
«<
"The second object," I went on, was to discover what he
did with the Diamond after he was seen by Miss Verinder to
leave her sitting-room with the jewel in his hand on the birthday
night. The gaining of this object depended, of course, on his
still continuing exactly to repeat his proceedings of last year.
He has failed to do that; and the purpose of the experiment is
defeated accordingly. I can't assert that I am not disappointed
at the result-but I can honestly say that I am not surprised
by it. I told Mr. Blake from the first that our complete success
in this matter depended on our completely reproducing in him.
the physical and moral conditions of last year; and I warned
him that this was the next thing to a downright impossibility.
We have only partially reproduced the conditions, and the experi-
ment has been only partially successful in consequence. It is
also possible that I may have administered too large a dose of
laudanum. But I myself look upon the first reason that I have
given as the true reason why we have to lament a failure, as
well as to rejoice over a success. "
After saying those words I put the writing materials before
Mr. Bruff, and asked him if he had any objection, before we
separated for the night, to draw out and sign a plain statement
of what he had seen. He at once took the pen, and produced
the statement with the fluent readiness of a practiced hand.
## p. 3892 (#258) ###########################################
3892
WILLIAM WILKIE COLLINS
as
some
"I owe you this," he said, signing the paper,
atonement for what passed between us earlier in the evening. I
beg your pardon, Mr. Jennings, for having doubted you. You
have done Franklin Blake an inestimable service. In our legal
phrase, you have proved your case. "
Betteredge's apology was characteristic of the man.
"Mr. Jennings," he said, "when you read 'Robinson Crusoe'
again (which I strongly recommend you to do), you will find
that he never scruples to acknowledge it when he turns out to
have been in the wrong. Please to consider me, sir, as doing
what Robinson Crusoe did on the present occasion. " With those
words he signed the paper in his turn.
Mr. Bruff took me aside as we rose from the table.
«<
"One word about the Diamond," he said. "Your theory is
that Franklin Blake hid the Moonstone in his room. My theory
is that the Moonstone is in the possession of Mr. Luker's
bankers in London. We won't dispute which of us is right.
We will only ask, which of us is in a position to put his theory
to the test first? >>
"The test in my case," I answered, "has been tried to-night,
and has failed. "
"The test in my case," rejoined Mr. Bruff, "is still in pro-
cess of trial. For the last two days I have had a watch set for
Mr. Luker at the bank; and I shall cause that watch to be con-
tinued until the last day of the month. I know that he must
take the Diamond himself out of his bankers' hands, and I am
acting on the chance that the person who has pledged the Dia-
mond may force him to do this by redeeming the pledge. In
that case I may be able to lay my hand on the person. And
there is a prospect of our clearing up the mystery exactly at
the point where the mystery baffles us now! Do you admit that,
so far? »
-
I admitted it readily.
"I am going back to town by the ten o'clock train," pursued
the lawyer. "I may hear, when I get back, that a discovery has
been made and it may be of the greatest importance that I
should have Franklin Blake at hand to appeal to if necessary.
I intend to tell him, as soon as he wakes, that he must return
with me to London. After all that has happened, may I trust
to your influence to back me? »
"Certainly! " I said.
## p. 3893 (#259) ###########################################
WILLIAM WILKIE COLLINS
3893
Mr. Bruff shook hands with me and left the room. Better-
edge followed him out.
I went to the sofa to look at Mr. Blake. He had not moved
since I had laid him down and made his bed, he lay locked in
a deep and quiet sleep.
While I was still looking at him I heard the bedroom door
softly opened. Once more Miss Verinder appeared on the thresh-
old in her pretty summer dress.
"Do me a last favor," she whispered. "Let me watch him
with you. "
I hesitated-not in the interest of propriety; only in the
interest of her night's rest. She came close to me and took my
hand.
-
"I can't sleep; I can't even sit still in my own room," she
said. "Oh, Mr. Jennings, if you were me, only think how you
would long to sit and look at him! Say yes!
Do! "
Is it necessary to mention that I gave way? Surely not!
She drew a chair to the foot of the sofa. She looked at him
in a silent ecstasy of happiness till the tears rose in her eyes.
She dried her eyes and said she would fetch her work. She
fetched her work, and never did a single stitch of it. It lay in
her lap-she was not even able to look away from him long
enough to thread her needle. I thought of my own youth; I
thought of the gentle eyes which had once looked love at me.
In the heaviness of my heart I turned to my Journal for relief,
and wrote in it what is written here.
So we kept our watch together in silence,—one of us absorbed
in his writing; the other absorbed in her love.
Hour after hour he lay in deep sleep. The light of the new
day grew and grew in the room, and still he never moved.
Toward six o'clock I felt the warning which told me that my
pains were coming back. I was obliged to leave her alone with
him for a little while. I said I would go up-stairs and fetch
another pillow for him out of his room. It was not a long attack
this time. In a little while I was able to venture back and let
her see me again.
I found her at the head of the sofa when I returned. She
was just touching his forehead with her lips. I shook my head
as soberly as I could, and pointed to her chair. She looked back
at me with a bright smile and a charming color in her face.
"You would have done it," she whispered, "in my place! "
## p. 3894 (#260) ###########################################
3894
WILLIAM WILKIE COLLINS
It is just eight o'clock. He is beginning to move for the first
time.
Miss Verinder is kneeling by the side of the sofa. She has
so placed herself that when his eyes first open they must open
upon her face.
Shall I leave them together?
Yes!
COUNT FOSCO
From The Woman in White'
If he mar-
ried 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.
E LOOKS like a man who could tame anything.
HⓇ
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 em 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 gross-
ness of size and excessive good-humor as inseparable allies was
equivalent to declaring either that no people but amiable peo-
ple ever get fat, or that the accidental addition of so many
pounds of flesh has a directly favorable influence over the dis-
## p. 3895 (#261) ###########################################
WILLIAM WILKIE COLLINS
3895
position of the person on whose body they accumulate. 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 worst of their neighbors. I have asked
whether Henry the Eighth was an amiable character? whether
Pope Alexander the Sixth 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
to be found in all England, were not, for
the most part, also as fat a set of women as are to be found
in all England? -and so on through dozens of other examples,
modern and ancient, native and foreign, high and low. Hold-
ing 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 the Eighth himself, established in my favor at
one day's notice, without let or hindrance from his own odious
corpulence. Marvelous indeed!
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 Napo-
leon's magnificent regularity; his expression recalls the grandly
calm immovable power of the Great Soldier's face. This strik-
ing 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 hi eyes. They are the most unfathomable gray eyes
I ever saw; and they have at times a cold, clear, beautiful, irre-
sistible 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 pecul-
iarities. His complexion, for instance, has a singular sallow-
fairness, so much at variance with the dark-brown color of his
hair that I suspect the hair of being a wig; and his face, closely
shaven all over, smoother and freer from all marks and
wrinkles than mine, though (according to Sir Percival's account
of him) he is close on sixty 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.
## p. 3896 (#262) ###########################################
3896
WILLIAM WILKIE COLLINS
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 gen-
tleness in his voice in speaking to a woman, which say what
we may, we can none of us resist. Here too his unusual com-
mand 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 stop-
pages and repetitions as the Count. He may construct his sen-
tences 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 words.
All the smallest characteristics of this strange man have
something strikingly original and perplexingly contradictory in
them. Fat as he is, and old as he is, his movements are aston-
ishingly light and easy. He is as noiseless in a room as any of
us women; and more than that, with all his look of unmistak-
able 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 neces-
sities 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 toward every
one else, absolutely seems to love him. When he lets it out of
its cage it hops on to his knee, and claws its way up his great
big body, and rubs its topknot against his sallow double chin in
## p. 3897 (#263) ###########################################
WILLIAM WILKIE COLLINS
3897
the most caressing manner imaginable. He has only to set the
doors of the canaries' cage 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 up-stairs," 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 gayly painted wire-
work, designed and made by himself. They are almost as tame
as the canaries, and they are perpetually let out, like the cana-
ries. They crawl all over him, popping in and out of his waist-
coat, and sitting in couples, white as snow, on his capacious
shoulders. He seems to be even fonder of his mice than of his
other pets; smiles at them, and kisses them, and calls them all
sorts of endearing names. If it be possible to suppose an
Englishman with any taste for such childish interests and amuse-
ments 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 amidst 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
of 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 archi-
tect 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 petri-
fying 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 the morning after his arrival, and put
his hand
on the head of a chained bloodhound -
beast so
―――――
a
## p. 3898 (#264) ###########################################
3898
WILLIAM WILKIE COLLINS
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 every-
body! " "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 ten 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 dog's 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. Any-
thing that you can surprise unawares-anything that is afraid
of your big body, and your wicked white teeth, and your slob-
bering, 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, laugh-
ing at the astonishment of the men in the yard; and the dog
crept back meekly to his kennel. "Ah! my nice waistcoat! " he
said pathetically. "I am
sorry I came here. Some of that
brute's slobber has got on my pretty clean waistcoat. " Those
words express 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 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.
the result. At the bottom of the bed I half drew the curtains,
and placed my own chair at a little distance, so that I might
let him see me or not see me, just as the circumstances might
direct. Having already been informed that he always slept with
a light in the room, I placed one of the two lighted candles on
a little table at the head of the bed, where the glare of the light
would not strike on his eyes. The other candle I gave to Mr.
Bruff; the light in this instance being subdued by the screen
of the chintz curtains. The window was open at the top so as
to ventilate the room. The rain fell softly; the house was quiet.
It was twenty minutes past eleven by my watch when the prepa-
rations were completed, and I took my place on the chair set
apart at the bottom of the bed.
Mr. Bruff resumed his papers, with every appearance of being
as deeply interested in them as ever. But looking toward him
now, I saw certain signs and tokens which told me that the Law
was beginning to lose its hold on him at last. The suspended
interest of the situation in which we were now placed was slowly
asserting its influence even on his unimaginative mind. As for
Betteredge, consistency of principle and dignity of conduct had
become in his case mere empty words. He forgot that I was
performing a conjuring trick on Mr. Franklin Blake; he forgot
that I had upset the house from top to bottom; he forgot that
I had not read Robinson Crusoe' since I was a child. "For the
Lord's sake, sir," he whispered to me, "tell us when it will
begin to work. "
"Not before midnight," I whispered back. "Say nothing
and sit still. "
Betteredge dropped to the lowest depth of familiarity with
me, without a struggle to save himself. He answered by a
wink!
## p. 3886 (#252) ###########################################
3886
WILLIAM WILKIE COLLINS
Looking next toward Mr. Blake, I found him as restless as
ever in his bed; fretfully wondering why the influence of the
laudanum had not begun to assert itself yet. To tell him in
his present humor that the more he fidgeted and wondered the
longer he would delay the result for which we were now wait-
ing, would have been simply useless. The wiser course to take
was to dismiss the idea of the opium from his mind by leading
him insensibly to think of something else.
With this view I encouraged him to talk to me, contriving so
to direct the conversation, on my side, as to lead him back again
the subject which had engaged us earlier in the evening,—
the subject of the Diamond. I took care to revert to those por-
tions of the story of the Moonstone which related to the trans-
port of it from London to Yorkshire; to the risk which Mr.
Blake had run in removing it from the bank at Frizinghall; and
to the expected appearance of the Indians at the house on the
evening of the birthday. And I purposely assumed, in referring
to these events, to have misunderstood much of what Mr. Blake
himself had told me a few hours since. In this way I set him
talking on the subject with which it was now vitally important
to fill his mind-without allowing him to suspect that I was
making him talk for a purpose. Little by little he became so
interested in putting me right that he forgot to fidget in the
bed. His mind was far away from the question of the opium at
the all-important time when his eyes first told me that the
opium was beginning to lay its hold upon his brain.
I looked at my watch. It wanted five minutes to twelve
when the premonitory symptoms of the working of the lau-
danum first showed themselves to me.
At this time no unpracticed eye would have detected any
change in him. But as the minutes of the new morning wore
away, the swiftly subtle progress of the influence began to show
itself more plainly. The sublime intoxication of opium gleamed
in his eyes; the dew of a steady perspiration began to glisten on
his face. In five minutes more the talk which he still kept up
with me failed in coherence. He held steadily to the subject of
the Diamond; but he ceased to complete his sentences. A little
later the sentences dropped to single words. Then there was an
interval of silence. Then he sat up in bed. Then, still busy
with the subject of the Diamond, he began to talk again—not
to me but to himself. That change told me the first stage in
## p. 3887 (#253) ###########################################
WILLIAM WILKIE COLLINS
3887
the experiment was reached. The stimulant influence of the
opium had got him.
The time now was twenty-three minutes past twelve. The
next half-hour, at most, would decide the question of whether he
would or would not get up from his bed and leave the room.
In the breathless interest of watching him-in the unutter-
able triumph of seeing the first result of the experiment declare
itself in the manner, and nearly at the time, which I had antici-
pated I had utterly forgotten the two companions of my night
vigil. Looking toward them now, I saw the Law (as represented
by Mr. Bruff's papers) lying unheeded on the floor. Mr. Bruff
himself was looking eagerly through a crevice left in the imper-
fectly drawn curtains of the bed. And Betteredge, oblivious of
all respect for social distinctions, was peeping over Mr. Bruff's
shoulder.
They both started back on finding that I was looking at
them, like two boys caught out by their schoolmaster in a fault.
I signed to them to take off their boots quietly, as I was taking
off mine. If Mr. Blake gave us the chance of following him, it
was vitally necessary to follow him without noise.
Ten minutes passed-and nothing happened.
He put
Then he suddenly threw the bedclothes off him.
one leg out of bed. He waited.
"I wish I had never taken it out of the bank," he said to
himself. "It was safe in the bank. "
My heart throbbed fast; the pulses at my temples beat furi-
ously. The doubt about the safety of the Diamond was once
more the dominant impression in his brain! On that one pivot
the whole success of the experiment turned. The prospect thus
suddenly opened before me was too much for my shattered
nerves. I was obliged to look away from him, or I should have
lost my self-control.
There was another interval of silence.
When I could trust myself to look back at him he was out
of his bed, standing erect at the side of it. The pupils of his
eyes were now contracted; his eyeballs gleamed in the light of
the candle as he moved his head slowly to and fro.
He was
thinking; he was doubting; he spoke again.
"How do I know? " he said. "The Indians may be hidden
in the house. "
He stopped, and walked slowly to the other end of the room.
He turned,-waited,—came back to the bed.
## p. 3888 (#254) ###########################################
3888
WILLIAM WILKIE COLLINS
"It's not even locked up," he went on.
of her cabinet. And the drawer doesn't lock. "
"It's in the drawer
He sat down on the side of the bed. "Anybody might take
it," he said.
He rose again restlessly, and reiterated his first words. "How
do I know? The Indians may be hidden in the house. "
bed.
He waited again. I drew back behind the half-curtain of the
He looked about the room, with the vacant glitter in his
eyes. It was a breathless moment. There was a pause of some
A pause in the action of the opium? a pause in the action
of the brain? Who could tell? Everything depended now on
what he did next.
sort.
He laid himself down again on the bed!
A horrible doubt crossed my mind. Was it possible that the
sedative action of the opium was making itself felt already? It
was not in my experience that it should do this. But what is
experience where opium is concerned? There are probably no
two men in existence on whom the drug acts in exactly the
same manner. Was some constitutional peculiarity in him feel-
ing the influence in some new way? Were we to fail, on the
very brink of success?
No! He got up again very abruptly. "How the devil am I
to sleep," he said, "with this on my mind ? »
He looked at the light burning on the table at the head of
his bed. After a moment he took the candle in his hand.
I blew out the second candle burning behind the closed cur-
tains. I drew back, with Mr. Bruff and Betteredge, into the
farthest corner by the bed. I signed to them to be silent, as if
their lives depended on it.
We waited seeing and hearing nothing. We waited, hidden
from him by the curtains.
The light which he was holding on the other side of us moved
suddenly. The next moment he passed us, swift and noiseless,
with the candle in his hand.
He opened the bedroom door and went out.
We followed him along the corridor. We followed him down
the stairs. We followed him along the second corridor. He
never looked back; he never hesitated.
He opened the sitting-room door and went in, leaving it
open behind him.
The door was hung (like all the other doors in the house) on
large old-fashioned hinges. When it was opened, a crevice was
## p. 3889 (#255) ###########################################
WILLIAM WILKIE COLLINS
3889
opened between the door and the post. I signed to my two
companions to look through this, so as to keep them from show-
ing themselves. I placed myself-outside the door also- on the
opposite side. A recess in the wall was at my left hand, in
which I could instantly hide myself if he showed any signs of
looking back into the corridor.
He advanced to the middle of the room, with the candle still
in his hand; he looked about him,- but he never looked back.
I saw the door of Miss Verinder's bedroom standing ajar.
She had put out her light. She controlled herself nobly. The
dim white outline of her summer dress was all that I could see.
Nobody who had not known it beforehand would have suspected
that there was a living creature in the room. She kept back in
the dark; not a word, not a movement escaped her.
It was now ten minutes past one. I heard through the
silence the soft drip of the rain, and the tremulous passage of
the night air through the trees.
After waiting irresolute for a minute or more in the middle
of the room, he moved to the corner near the window where the
Indian cabinet stood.
He put his candle on the top of the cabinet. He opened and
shut one drawer after another, until he came to the drawer in
which the mock Diamond was put. He looked into the drawer
for a moment. Then he took the mock Diamond out with his
right hand. With the other hand he took the candle from the
top of the cabinet.
He walked back a few steps toward the middle of the room
and stood still again.
Thus far he had exactly repeated what he had done on the
birthday night. Would his next proceeding be the same as the
proceeding of last year? Would he leave the room? Would he
go back now, as I believed he had gone back then, to his bed-
chamber? Would he show us what he had done with the Dia-
mond when he had returned to his own room?
His first action, when he moved once more, proved to be an
action which he had not performed when he was under the in-
fluence of the opium for the first time. He put the candle.
down on a table and wandered on a little toward the farther
end of the room. There was a sofa here. He leaned heavily
on the back of it with his left hand - then roused himself and
returned to the middle of the room. I could now see his eyes.
VI-244
## p. 3890 (#256) ###########################################
3890
WILLIAM WILKIE COLLINS
They were getting dull and heavy; the glitter in them was fast
dying out.
The suspense of the moment proved too much for Miss Ver-
inder's self-control. She advanced a few steps,- then stopped
again. Mr. Bruff and Betteredge looked across the open door-
way at me for the first time. The prevision of a coming disap-
pointment was impressing itself on their minds as well as on
mine. Still, so long as he stood where he was, there was hope.
We waited in unutterable expectation to see what would hap-
pen next.
The next event was decisive. He let the mock Diamond
drop out of his hand.
It fell on the floor, before the doorway - plainly visible to
him and to every one. He made no effort to pick it up; he
looked down at it vacantly, and as he looked, his head sank on
his breast. He staggered-roused himself for an instant-
walked back unsteadily to the sofa-and sat down on it. He
made a last effort; he tried to rise, and sank back. His head
fell on the sofa cushions. It was then twenty-five minutes past
one o'clock. Before I had put my watch back in my pocket he
was asleep.
It was over now. The sedative influence had got him; the
experiment was at an end.
I entered the room, telling Mr. Bruff and Betteredge that
they might follow me. There was no fear of disturbing him.
We were free to move and speak.
"The first thing to settle," I said, "is the question of what
we are to do with him. He will probably sleep for the next six
or seven hours at least. It is some distance to carry him back
to his own room. When I was younger I could have done it
alone. But my health and strength are not what they were-I
am afraid I will have to ask you to help me. "
Before they could answer, Miss Verinder called to me softly.
She met me at the door of her room with a light shawl and
with the counterpane from her own bed.
"Do you mean to watch him while he sleeps? " she asked.
"Yes. I am not sure enough of the action of the opium in
this case, to be willing to leave him alone. "
She handed me the shawl and the counterpane.
"Why should you disturb him? " she whispered. "Make his
bed on the sofa. I can shut my door and keep in my room. »
## p. 3891 (#257) ###########################################
WILLIAM WILKIE COLLINS
3891
It was infinitely the simplest and the safest way of disposing
of him for the night.
I mentioned the suggestion to Mr. Bruff
and Betteredge, who both approved of my adopting it. In five
minutes I had laid him comfortably on the sofa, and had
covered him lightly with the counterpane and the shawl. Miss
Verinder wished us good-night and closed the door.
At my
request we three then drew round the table in the middle of
the room, on which the candle was still burning, and on which
writing materials were placed.
"Before we separate," I began, "I have a word to say about
the experiment which has been tried to-night. Two distinct
objects were to be gained by it. The first of these objects was
to prove that Mr. Blake entered this room and took the Dia-
mond last year, acting unconsciously and irresponsibly, under the
influence of opium. After what you have both seen, are you
both satisfied so far? ”
They answered me in the affirmative, without a moment's
hesitation.
«<
"The second object," I went on, was to discover what he
did with the Diamond after he was seen by Miss Verinder to
leave her sitting-room with the jewel in his hand on the birthday
night. The gaining of this object depended, of course, on his
still continuing exactly to repeat his proceedings of last year.
He has failed to do that; and the purpose of the experiment is
defeated accordingly. I can't assert that I am not disappointed
at the result-but I can honestly say that I am not surprised
by it. I told Mr. Blake from the first that our complete success
in this matter depended on our completely reproducing in him.
the physical and moral conditions of last year; and I warned
him that this was the next thing to a downright impossibility.
We have only partially reproduced the conditions, and the experi-
ment has been only partially successful in consequence. It is
also possible that I may have administered too large a dose of
laudanum. But I myself look upon the first reason that I have
given as the true reason why we have to lament a failure, as
well as to rejoice over a success. "
After saying those words I put the writing materials before
Mr. Bruff, and asked him if he had any objection, before we
separated for the night, to draw out and sign a plain statement
of what he had seen. He at once took the pen, and produced
the statement with the fluent readiness of a practiced hand.
## p. 3892 (#258) ###########################################
3892
WILLIAM WILKIE COLLINS
as
some
"I owe you this," he said, signing the paper,
atonement for what passed between us earlier in the evening. I
beg your pardon, Mr. Jennings, for having doubted you. You
have done Franklin Blake an inestimable service. In our legal
phrase, you have proved your case. "
Betteredge's apology was characteristic of the man.
"Mr. Jennings," he said, "when you read 'Robinson Crusoe'
again (which I strongly recommend you to do), you will find
that he never scruples to acknowledge it when he turns out to
have been in the wrong. Please to consider me, sir, as doing
what Robinson Crusoe did on the present occasion. " With those
words he signed the paper in his turn.
Mr. Bruff took me aside as we rose from the table.
«<
"One word about the Diamond," he said. "Your theory is
that Franklin Blake hid the Moonstone in his room. My theory
is that the Moonstone is in the possession of Mr. Luker's
bankers in London. We won't dispute which of us is right.
We will only ask, which of us is in a position to put his theory
to the test first? >>
"The test in my case," I answered, "has been tried to-night,
and has failed. "
"The test in my case," rejoined Mr. Bruff, "is still in pro-
cess of trial. For the last two days I have had a watch set for
Mr. Luker at the bank; and I shall cause that watch to be con-
tinued until the last day of the month. I know that he must
take the Diamond himself out of his bankers' hands, and I am
acting on the chance that the person who has pledged the Dia-
mond may force him to do this by redeeming the pledge. In
that case I may be able to lay my hand on the person. And
there is a prospect of our clearing up the mystery exactly at
the point where the mystery baffles us now! Do you admit that,
so far? »
-
I admitted it readily.
"I am going back to town by the ten o'clock train," pursued
the lawyer. "I may hear, when I get back, that a discovery has
been made and it may be of the greatest importance that I
should have Franklin Blake at hand to appeal to if necessary.
I intend to tell him, as soon as he wakes, that he must return
with me to London. After all that has happened, may I trust
to your influence to back me? »
"Certainly! " I said.
## p. 3893 (#259) ###########################################
WILLIAM WILKIE COLLINS
3893
Mr. Bruff shook hands with me and left the room. Better-
edge followed him out.
I went to the sofa to look at Mr. Blake. He had not moved
since I had laid him down and made his bed, he lay locked in
a deep and quiet sleep.
While I was still looking at him I heard the bedroom door
softly opened. Once more Miss Verinder appeared on the thresh-
old in her pretty summer dress.
"Do me a last favor," she whispered. "Let me watch him
with you. "
I hesitated-not in the interest of propriety; only in the
interest of her night's rest. She came close to me and took my
hand.
-
"I can't sleep; I can't even sit still in my own room," she
said. "Oh, Mr. Jennings, if you were me, only think how you
would long to sit and look at him! Say yes!
Do! "
Is it necessary to mention that I gave way? Surely not!
She drew a chair to the foot of the sofa. She looked at him
in a silent ecstasy of happiness till the tears rose in her eyes.
She dried her eyes and said she would fetch her work. She
fetched her work, and never did a single stitch of it. It lay in
her lap-she was not even able to look away from him long
enough to thread her needle. I thought of my own youth; I
thought of the gentle eyes which had once looked love at me.
In the heaviness of my heart I turned to my Journal for relief,
and wrote in it what is written here.
So we kept our watch together in silence,—one of us absorbed
in his writing; the other absorbed in her love.
Hour after hour he lay in deep sleep. The light of the new
day grew and grew in the room, and still he never moved.
Toward six o'clock I felt the warning which told me that my
pains were coming back. I was obliged to leave her alone with
him for a little while. I said I would go up-stairs and fetch
another pillow for him out of his room. It was not a long attack
this time. In a little while I was able to venture back and let
her see me again.
I found her at the head of the sofa when I returned. She
was just touching his forehead with her lips. I shook my head
as soberly as I could, and pointed to her chair. She looked back
at me with a bright smile and a charming color in her face.
"You would have done it," she whispered, "in my place! "
## p. 3894 (#260) ###########################################
3894
WILLIAM WILKIE COLLINS
It is just eight o'clock. He is beginning to move for the first
time.
Miss Verinder is kneeling by the side of the sofa. She has
so placed herself that when his eyes first open they must open
upon her face.
Shall I leave them together?
Yes!
COUNT FOSCO
From The Woman in White'
If he mar-
ried 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.
E LOOKS like a man who could tame anything.
HⓇ
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 em 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 gross-
ness of size and excessive good-humor as inseparable allies was
equivalent to declaring either that no people but amiable peo-
ple ever get fat, or that the accidental addition of so many
pounds of flesh has a directly favorable influence over the dis-
## p. 3895 (#261) ###########################################
WILLIAM WILKIE COLLINS
3895
position of the person on whose body they accumulate. 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 worst of their neighbors. I have asked
whether Henry the Eighth was an amiable character? whether
Pope Alexander the Sixth 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
to be found in all England, were not, for
the most part, also as fat a set of women as are to be found
in all England? -and so on through dozens of other examples,
modern and ancient, native and foreign, high and low. Hold-
ing 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 the Eighth himself, established in my favor at
one day's notice, without let or hindrance from his own odious
corpulence. Marvelous indeed!
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 Napo-
leon's magnificent regularity; his expression recalls the grandly
calm immovable power of the Great Soldier's face. This strik-
ing 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 hi eyes. They are the most unfathomable gray eyes
I ever saw; and they have at times a cold, clear, beautiful, irre-
sistible 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 pecul-
iarities. His complexion, for instance, has a singular sallow-
fairness, so much at variance with the dark-brown color of his
hair that I suspect the hair of being a wig; and his face, closely
shaven all over, smoother and freer from all marks and
wrinkles than mine, though (according to Sir Percival's account
of him) he is close on sixty 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.
## p. 3896 (#262) ###########################################
3896
WILLIAM WILKIE COLLINS
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 gen-
tleness in his voice in speaking to a woman, which say what
we may, we can none of us resist. Here too his unusual com-
mand 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 stop-
pages and repetitions as the Count. He may construct his sen-
tences 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 words.
All the smallest characteristics of this strange man have
something strikingly original and perplexingly contradictory in
them. Fat as he is, and old as he is, his movements are aston-
ishingly light and easy. He is as noiseless in a room as any of
us women; and more than that, with all his look of unmistak-
able 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 neces-
sities 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 toward every
one else, absolutely seems to love him. When he lets it out of
its cage it hops on to his knee, and claws its way up his great
big body, and rubs its topknot against his sallow double chin in
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WILLIAM WILKIE COLLINS
3897
the most caressing manner imaginable. He has only to set the
doors of the canaries' cage 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 up-stairs," 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 gayly painted wire-
work, designed and made by himself. They are almost as tame
as the canaries, and they are perpetually let out, like the cana-
ries. They crawl all over him, popping in and out of his waist-
coat, and sitting in couples, white as snow, on his capacious
shoulders. He seems to be even fonder of his mice than of his
other pets; smiles at them, and kisses them, and calls them all
sorts of endearing names. If it be possible to suppose an
Englishman with any taste for such childish interests and amuse-
ments 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 amidst 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
of 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 archi-
tect 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 petri-
fying 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 the morning after his arrival, and put
his hand
on the head of a chained bloodhound -
beast so
―――――
a
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WILLIAM WILKIE COLLINS
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 every-
body! " "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 ten 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 dog's 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. Any-
thing that you can surprise unawares-anything that is afraid
of your big body, and your wicked white teeth, and your slob-
bering, 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, laugh-
ing at the astonishment of the men in the yard; and the dog
crept back meekly to his kennel. "Ah! my nice waistcoat! " he
said pathetically. "I am
sorry I came here. Some of that
brute's slobber has got on my pretty clean waistcoat. " Those
words express 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 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.
