I have a beginning and ending, and there are things that I want to put in the middle, but I do want to be true to the source material, insofar as that is possible. The thing setting me off this time is that it’s NOT possible in a lot of ways. Stoker makes it explicit that Adam is after Lila, not Mimi. The first element of his distrust of Edgar stems at least partly from their competition for young Lila.
But he simultaneously has Arabella constantly at Edgar’s side and the putative next mistress of Castra Regis. (The chatelaine, I guess.) And at some point Adam is going to switch his affections to Mimi.
Hand to God, Chapter VI is all about his jealousy toward Edgar because of Lila and Chapter VII, he’s all
And when a man, though he is young, feels as I do—as I have felt since yesterday, when I first saw Mimi’s eyes—his heart jumps.
Lair of the White Worm, Chapter VII: Hawk and Pigeon
In fact, a few paragraphs later:
“Quite friendly. There was nothing that I could notice out of the common—except,” he went on, with a slight hardening of the voice, “except that he kept his eyes fixed on Lilla in a way which was quite intolerable to any man who might hold her dear.”
Well, he’s just talking about the predatory aspect, not the—
It was not amatory. Even if it was, such was to be expected. I should be the last man in the world to object, since I am myself an offender in that respect.
OK, fine. We’ve already resolved that. Stoker probably wanted Mimi to be the center and Lilla (three “l”s in “Lilla” I just realized…I’ve been saying “Lie-la” this whole time).
This whole exchange gets weird because it sounds like Adam is talking about how he is doomed in his efforts to woo Lilla/Mina because of Edgar, and Richard and Sir Nathaniel chime in to say, well, it’s three-to-one. This expression makes more sense if they’re viewing Edgar as a supernatural threat, but it’s very odd in the context of romance with an unspecified one of two women.
Chapter VIII continues on with another description of the staring contest, one which differs from the previous description in particulars but is clearly the same event, Oolanga’s nefarious backstory, and the murder of the mongoose at the hands of Lady Arabella.
This scene is reminiscent of the scene in Animal House where John Belushi grabs the folk-singing Stephen Bishop’s guitar and smashes it into a million pieces, then hands it back and says, “Sorry.” Except Lady Arabella never says “Sorry”. (And in fairness, the mongoose is attacking her.) Trying to make this NOT comical is a challenge.
This is followed in Chapter IX by the only logical conclusion that Lady Arabella is a snake. Because mongooses only kill snakes, therefore, the Lady is a snake. But of course, mongooses kill LOTS of things:
Some common prey include small mammals such as mice, rats, and voles, insects, crustaceans, lizards, snakes, eggs, and more.
Ahem.
“That is a good argument, sir,” Adam went on, “but a dangerous one. If we followed it out with pure logic it would lead us to believe that Lady Arabella is a snake. And I doubt if we—either of us—are prepared to go so far.”
“So far as I am concerned, I am to follow blindly the lead of logic. But before doing so we have a duty to fulfill.”
OK, ok, we’re dealing with weresnakes or something here, but if you think Arabella being a completely different creature altogether, like a werevole or a werelobster, is out of the question, keep in mind that we’re about to have a giant, ominous kite ward off a plague of doves.
At some point, though, we have to say, “Look, it’s not 1911. It’s not even 2011. We know Arabella has a connection, and our heroes know Arabella has a connection, to something sinister of the, uh, herpetological variety. We get a bit of recapitulation (I think it’s come up before) about Diana’s Grove being TLotWW, St. Columba being the dove, and Mercy Farm being holy ground.
There’s a good bit in here about the moral vs. the physical reality and the dangers of confusing the two, which will be Lilla’s peril. And then:
For instance, ‘the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much’ is altogether for good. We have nothing of a similar kind on the side of evil.
I’ll have to work this in, because I’ve already established there is something similar on the side of evil.
We’re about a third of the way in, and we’re getting a lot of mileage out of a staring contest and a murdered mongoose. This is about 100 pages in the 1911 text, but around 40 for us.
Which is good, because we have a lot of questions to answer, and we’re going to have to go fairly far afield for those answers.
Lair Of The White Wyrm 