The Woman in White
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 favour, at one day’s notice, without
let or hindrance from his own odious corpulence. Marvellous 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 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
grey 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 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.
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 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
favourites 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 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 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 wirework, 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. 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 apologise 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 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 civilised 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 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. 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 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 colours, 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. 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, 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, 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 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 humour!”—“My good Percival! how I enjoy your
solid English sense!” He puts the rudest remarks 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-humoured father bears with a wayward
son.
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. 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 Italian gentlemen 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