Dracula

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Well, my dear, number One came just before lunch. I told you of
him, Dr. John Seward, the lunatic asylum man, with the strong jaw
and the good forehead. He was very cool outwardly, but was nervous
all the same. He had evidently been schooling himself as to all
sorts of little things, and remembered them, but he almost managed
to sit down on his silk hat, which men don't generally do when they
are cool, and then when he wanted to appear at ease he kept playing
with a lancet in a way that made me nearly scream. He spoke to me,
Mina, very straightforwardly. He told me how dear I was to him,
though he had known me so little, and what his life would be with me
to help and cheer him. He was going to tell me how unhappy he would
be if I did not care for him, but when he saw me cry he said he was
a brute and would not add to my present trouble. Then he broke off
and asked if I could love him in time, and when I shook my head his
hands trembled, and then with some hesitation he asked me if I cared
already for any one else. He put it very nicely, saying that he did
not want to wring my confidence from me, but only to know, because
if a woman's heart was free a man might have hope. And then, Mina,
I felt a sort of duty to tell him that there was some one. I only
told him that much, and then he stood up, and he looked very strong
and very grave as he took both my hands in his and said he hoped I
would be happy, and that If I ever wanted a friend I must count him
one of my best.

Oh, Mina dear, I can't help crying, and you must excuse this letter
being all blotted. Being proposed to is all very nice and all that
sort of thing, but it isn't at all a happy thing when you have to
see a poor fellow, whom you know loves you honestly, going away and
looking all broken hearted, and to know that, no matter what he may
say at the moment, you are passing out of his life. My dear, I must
stop here at present, I feel so miserable, though I am so happy.

Evening.

Arthur has just gone, and I feel in better spirits than when I
left off, so I can go on telling you about the day.

Well, my dear, number Two came after lunch. He is such a nice
fellow, an American from Texas, and he looks so young and so fresh
that it seems almost impossible that he has been to so many places
and has such adventures. I sympathize with poor Desdemona when she
had such a stream poured in her ear, even by a black man. I suppose
that we women are such cowards that we think a man will save us from
fears, and we marry him. I know now what I would do if I were a man
and wanted to make a girl love me. No, I don't, for there was Mr.
Morris telling us his stories, and Arthur never told any, and
yet . . .

My dear, I am somewhat previous. Mr. Quincy P. Morris found me
alone. It seems that a man always does find a girl alone. No, he
doesn't, for Arthur tried twice to make a chance, and I helping him
all I could, I am not ashamed to say it now. I must tell you
beforehand that Mr. Morris doesn't always speak slang, that is to
say, he never does so to strangers or before them, for he is really
well educated and has exquisite manners, but he found out that it
amused me to hear him talk American slang, and whenever I was
present, and there was no one to be shocked, he said such funny
things. I am afraid, my dear, he has to invent it all, for it fits
exactly into whatever else he has to say. But this is a way slang
has. I do not know myself if I shall ever speak slang. I do not
know if Arthur likes it, as I have never heard him use any as yet.

Well, Mr. Morris sat down beside me and looked as happy and jolly as
he could, but I could see all the same that he was very nervous. He
took my hand in his, and said ever so sweetly . . .

"Miss Lucy, I know I ain't good enough to regulate the fixin's of
your little shoes, but I guess if you wait till you find a man that
is you will go join them seven young women with the lamps when you
quit. Won't you just hitch up alongside of me and let us go down
the long road together, driving in double harness?"

Well, he did look so good humoured and so jolly that it didn't seem
half so hard to refuse him as it did poor Dr. Seward. So I said, as
lightly as I could, that I did not know anything of hitching, and
that I wasn't broken to harness at all yet. Then he said that he
had spoken in a light manner, and he hoped that if he had made a
mistake in doing so on so grave, so momentous, and occasion for him,
I would forgive him. He really did look serious when he was saying
it, and I couldn't help feeling a sort of exultation that he was
number Two in one day. And then, my dear, before I could say a word
he began pouring out a perfect torrent of love-making, laying his
very heart and soul at my feet. He looked so earnest over it that I
shall never again think that a man must be playful always, and never
earnest, because he is merry at times. I suppose he saw something
in my face which checked him, for he suddenly stopped, and said with
a sort of manly fervour that I could have loved him for if I had
been free . . .

"Lucy, you are an honest hearted girl, I know. I should not be here
speaking to you as I am now if I did not believe you clean grit,
right through to the very depths of your soul. Tell me, like one
good fellow to another, is there any one else that you care for?
And if there is I'll never trouble you a hair's breadth again, but
will be, if you will let me, a very faithful friend."

My dear Mina, why are men so noble when we women are so little
worthy of them? Here was I almost making fun of this great hearted,
true gentleman. I burst into tears, I am afraid, my dear, you will
think this a very sloppy letter in more ways than one, and I really
felt very badly.

Why can't they let a girl marry three men, or as many as
want her, and save all this trouble? But this is heresy,
and I must not say it. I am glad to say that, though I was
crying, I was able to look into Mr. Morris' brave eyes, and
I told him out straight . . .

"Yes, there is some one I love, though he has not told me
yet that he even loves me." I was right to speak to him so
frankly, for quite a light came into his face, and he put
out both his hands and took mine, I think I put them into
his, and said in a hearty way . . .

"That's my brave girl. It's better worth being late for a chance of
winning you than being in time for any other girl in the world.
Don't cry, my dear. If it's for me, I'm a hard nut to crack, and I
take it standing up. If that other fellow doesn't know his
happiness, well, he'd better look for it soon, or he'll have to deal
with me. Little girl, your honesty and pluck have made me a friend,
and that's rarer than a lover, it's more selfish anyhow. My dear,
I'm going to have a pretty lonely walk between this and Kingdom
Come. Won't you give me one kiss? It'll be something to keep off
the darkness now and then. You can, you know, if you like, for that
other good fellow, or you could not love him, hasn't spoken yet."

That quite won me, Mina, for it was brave and sweet of him,
and noble too, to a rival, wasn't it? And he so sad, so I
leant over and kissed him.

He stood up with my two hands in his, and as he looked down into my
face, I am afraid I was blushing very much, he said, "Little girl, I
hold your hand, and you've kissed me, and if these things don't make
us friends nothing ever will. Thank you for your sweet honesty to
me, and goodbye."

He wrung my hand, and taking up his hat, went straight out of the
room without looking back, without a tear or a quiver or a pause,
and I am crying like a baby.

Oh, why must a man like that be made unhappy when there are lots of
girls about who would worship the very ground he trod on? I know I
would if I were free, only I don't want to be free. My dear, this
quite upset me, and I feel I cannot write of happiness just at once,
after telling you of it, and I don't wish to tell of the number
Three until it can be all happy. Ever your loving . . .

Lucy

P.S.--Oh, about number Three, I needn't tell you of number
Three, need I? Besides, it was all so confused. It seemed
only a moment from his coming into the room till both his
arms were round me, and he was kissing me. I am very, very
happy, and I don't know what I have done to deserve it. I
must only try in the future to show that I am not ungrateful
to God for all His goodness to me in sending to me such a
lover, such a husband, and such a friend.

Goodbye.

DR. SEWARD'S DIARY (Kept in phonograph)

25 May.--Ebb tide in appetite today. Cannot eat, cannot rest, so
diary instead. Since my rebuff of yesterday I have a sort of empty
feeling. Nothing in the world seems of sufficient importance to be
worth the doing. As I knew that the only cure for this sort of thing
was work, I went amongst the patients. I picked out one who has
afforded me a study of much interest. He is so quaint that I am
determined to understand him as well as I can. Today I seemed to get
nearer than ever before to the heart of his mystery.

I questioned him more fully than I had ever done, with a view to
making myself master of the facts of his hallucination. In my manner
of doing it there was, I now see, something of cruelty. I seemed to
wish to keep him to the point of his madness, a thing which I avoid
with the patients as I would the mouth of hell.

(Mem., Under what circumstances would I not avoid the pit of hell?)
Omnia Romae venalia sunt. Hell has its price! If there be anything
behind this instinct it will be valuable to trace it afterwards
accurately, so I had better commence to do so, therefore . . .

R. M, Renfield, age 59. Sanguine temperament, great physical
strength, morbidly excitable, periods of gloom, ending in some fixed
idea which I cannot make out. I presume that the sanguine temperament
itself and the disturbing influence end in a mentally-accomplished
finish, a possibly dangerous man, probably dangerous if unselfish. In
selfish men caution is as secure an armour for their foes as for
themselves. What I think of on this point is, when self is the fixed
point the centripetal force is balanced with the centrifugal. When
duty, a cause, etc., is the fixed point, the latter force is
paramount, and only accident or a series of accidents can balance it.

LETTER, QUINCEY P. MORRIS TO HON. ARTHUR HOLMOOD

25 May.

My dear Art,

We've told yarns by the campfire in the prairies, and dressed one
another's wounds after trying a landing at the Marquesas, and drunk
healths on the shore of Titicaca. There are more yarns to be told,
and other wounds to be healed, and another health to be drunk.
Won't you let this be at my campfire tomorrow night? I have no
hesitation in asking you, as I know a certain lady is engaged to a
certain dinner party, and that you are free. There will only be one
other, our old pal at the Korea, Jack Seward. He's coming, too, and
we both want to mingle our weeps over the wine cup, and to drink a
health with all our hearts to the happiest man in all the wide
world, who has won the noblest heart that God has made and best
worth winning. We promise you a hearty welcome, and a loving
greeting, and a health as true as your own right hand. We shall
both swear to leave you at home if you drink too deep to a certain
pair of eyes. Come!

Yours, as ever and always,

Quincey P. Morris

TELEGRAM FROM ARTHUR HOLMWOOD TO QUINCEY P. MORRIS

26 May

Count me in every time. I bear messages which will make both
your ears tingle.

Art

CHAPTER 6

MINA MURRAY'S JOURNAL

24 July. Whitby.--Lucy met me at the station, looking sweeter and
lovelier than ever, and we drove up to the house at the Crescent in
which they have rooms. This is a lovely place. The little river, the
Esk, runs through a deep valley, which broadens out as it comes near
the harbour. A great viaduct runs across, with high piers, through
which the view seems somehow further away than it really is. The
valley is beautifully green, and it is so steep that when you are on
the high land on either side you look right across it, unless you are
near enough to see down. The houses of the old town--the side away
from us, are all red-roofed, and seem piled up one over the other
anyhow, like the pictures we see of Nuremberg. Right over the town is
the ruin of Whitby Abbey, which was sacked by the Danes, and which is
the scene of part of "Marmion," where the girl was built up in the
wall. It is a most noble ruin, of immense size, and full of beautiful
and romantic bits. There is a legend that a white lady is seen in one
of the windows. Between it and the town there is another church, the
parish one, round which is a big graveyard, all full of tombstones.
This is to my mind the nicest spot in Whitby, for it lies right over
the town, and has a full view of the harbour and all up the bay to
where the headland called Kettleness stretches out into the sea. It
descends so steeply over the harbour that part of the bank has fallen
away, and some of the graves have been destroyed.

In one place part of the stonework of the graves stretches out over
the sandy pathway far below. There are walks, with seats beside them,
through the churchyard, and people go and sit there all day long
looking at the beautiful view and enjoying the breeze.

I shall come and sit here often myself and work. Indeed, I am writing
now, with my book on my knee, and listening to the talk of three old
men who are sitting beside me. They seem to do nothing all day but
sit here and talk.

The harbour lies below me, with, on the far side, one long granite
wall stretching out into the sea, with a curve outwards at the end of
it, in the middle of which is a lighthouse. A heavy seawall runs
along outside of it. On the near side, the seawall makes an elbow
crooked inversely, and its end too has a lighthouse. Between the two
piers there is a narrow opening into the harbour, which then suddenly
widens.

It is nice at high water, but when the tide is out it shoals away to
nothing, and there is merely the stream of the Esk, running between
banks of sand, with rocks here and there. Outside the harbour on this
side there rises for about half a mile a great reef, the sharp of
which runs straight out from behind the south lighthouse. At the end
of it is a buoy with a bell, which swings in bad weather, and sends in
a mournful sound on the wind.

They have a legend here that when a ship is lost bells are heard out at
sea. I must ask the old man about this. He is coming this way . . .

He is a funny old man. He must be awfully old, for his face is
gnarled and twisted like the bark of a tree. He tells me that he is
nearly a hundred, and that he was a sailor in the Greenland fishing
fleet when Waterloo was fought. He is, I am afraid, a very sceptical
person, for when I asked him about the bells at sea and the White Lady
at the abbey he said very brusquely,

"I wouldn't fash masel' about them, miss. Them things be all wore
out. Mind, I don't say that they never was, but I do say that they
wasn't in my time. They be all very well for comers and trippers, an'
the like, but not for a nice young lady like you. Them feet-folks
from York and Leeds that be always eatin' cured herrin's and drinkin'
tea an' lookin' out to buy cheap jet would creed aught. I wonder
masel' who'd be bothered tellin' lies to them, even the newspapers,
which is full of fool-talk."

I thought he would be a good person to learn interesting things from,
so I asked him if he would mind telling me something about the whale
fishing in the old days. He was just settling himself to begin when
the clock struck six, whereupon he laboured to get up, and said,

"I must gang ageeanwards home now, miss. My grand-daughter doesn't
like to be kept waitin' when the tea is ready, for it takes me time to
crammle aboon the grees, for there be a many of 'em, and miss, I lack
belly-timber sairly by the clock."

He hobbled away, and I could see him hurrying, as well as he could,
down the steps. The steps are a great feature on the place. They
lead from the town to the church, there are hundreds of them, I do not
know how many, and they wind up in a delicate curve. The slope is so
gentle that a horse could easily walk up and down them.

I think they must originally have had something to do with the abbey.
I shall go home too. Lucy went out, visiting with her mother, and as
they were only duty calls, I did not go.

1 August.--I came up here an hour ago with Lucy, and we had a most
interesting talk with my old friend and the two others who always come
and join him. He is evidently the Sir Oracle of them, and I should
think must have been in his time a most dictatorial person.

He will not admit anything, and down faces everybody. If he can't
out-argue them he bullies them, and then takes their silence for
agreement with his views.

Lucy was looking sweetly pretty in her white lawn frock. She has got
a beautiful colour since she has been here.

I noticed that the old men did not lose any time in coming and sitting
near her when we sat down. She is so sweet with old people, I think
they all fell in love with her on the spot. Even my old man succumbed
and did not contradict her, but gave me double share instead. I got
him on the subject of the legends, and he went off at once into a sort
of sermon. I must try to remember it and put it down.

"It be all fool-talk, lock, stock, and barrel, that's what it be and
nowt else. These bans an' wafts an' boh-ghosts an' bar-guests an'
bogles an' all anent them is only fit to set bairns an' dizzy women
a'belderin'. They be nowt but air-blebs. They, an' all grims an' signs
an' warnin's, be all invented by parsons an' illsome berk-bodies an'
railway touters to skeer an' scunner hafflin's, an' to get folks to do
somethin' that they don't other incline to. It makes me ireful to
think o' them. Why, it's them that, not content with printin' lies on
paper an' preachin' them out of pulpits, does want to be cuttin' them
on the tombstones. Look here all around you in what airt ye will. All
them steans, holdin' up their heads as well as they can out of their
pride, is acant, simply tumblin' down with the weight o' the lies
wrote on them, 'Here lies the body' or 'Sacred to the memory' wrote on
all of them, an' yet in nigh half of them there bean't no bodies at
all, an' the memories of them bean't cared a pinch of snuff about,
much less sacred. Lies all of them, nothin' but lies of one kind or
another! My gog, but it'll be a quare scowderment at the Day of
Judgment when they come tumblin' up in their death-sarks, all jouped
together an' trying' to drag their tombsteans with them to prove how
good they was, some of them trimmlin' an' dithering, with their hands
that dozzened an' slippery from lyin' in the sea that they can't even
keep their gurp o' them."

I could see from the old fellow's self-satisfied air and the way in
which he looked round for the approval of his cronies that he was
"showing off," so I put in a word to keep him going.

"Oh, Mr. Swales, you can't be serious. Surely these tombstones are
not all wrong?"

"Yabblins! There may be a poorish few not wrong, savin' where they
make out the people too good, for there be folk that do think a
balm-bowl be like the sea, if only it be their own. The whole thing
be only lies. Now look you here. You come here a stranger, an' you
see this kirkgarth."

I nodded, for I thought it better to assent, though I did not quite
understand his dialect. I knew it had something to do with the
church.

He went on, "And you consate that all these steans be aboon folk that
be haped here, snod an' snog?" I assented again. "Then that be just
where the lie comes in. Why, there be scores of these laybeds that be
toom as old Dun's 'baccabox on Friday night."

He nudged one of his companions, and they all laughed. "And, my gog!
How could they be otherwise? Look at that one, the aftest abaft the
bier-bank, read it!"

I went over and read, "Edward Spencelagh, master mariner, murdered by
pirates off the coast of Andres, April, 1854, age 30." When I came
back Mr. Swales went on,

"Who brought him home, I wonder, to hap him here? Murdered off the
coast of Andres! An' you consated his body lay under! Why, I could
name ye a dozen whose bones lie in the Greenland seas above," he
pointed northwards, "or where the currants may have drifted them.
There be the steans around ye. Ye can, with your young eyes, read the
small print of the lies from here. This Braithwaite Lowery, I knew
his father, lost in the Lively off Greenland in '20, or Andrew
Woodhouse, drowned in the same seas in 1777, or John Paxton, drowned
off Cape Farewell a year later, or old John Rawlings, whose
grandfather sailed with me, drowned in the Gulf of Finland in '50. Do
ye think that all these men will have to make a rush to Whitby when
the trumpet sounds? I have me antherums aboot it! I tell ye that
when they got here they'd be jommlin' and jostlin' one another that
way that it 'ud be like a fight up on the ice in the old days, when
we'd be at one another from daylight to dark, an' tryin' to tie up our
cuts by the aurora borealis." This was evidently local pleasantry, for
the old man cackled over it, and his cronies joined in with gusto.

"But," I said, "surely you are not quite correct, for you start on the
assumption that all the poor people, or their spirits, will have to
take their tombstones with them on the Day of Judgment. Do you think
that will be really necessary?"

"Well, what else be they tombstones for? Answer me that, miss!"

"To please their relatives, I suppose."

"To please their relatives, you suppose!" This he said with intense
scorn. "How will it pleasure their relatives to know that lies is
wrote over them, and that everybody in the place knows that they be
lies?"

He pointed to a stone at our feet which had been laid down as a slab,
on which the seat was rested, close to the edge of the cliff. "Read
the lies on that thruff-stone," he said.

The letters were upside down to me from where I sat, but Lucy was more
opposite to them, so she leant over and read, "Sacred to the memory of
George Canon, who died, in the hope of a glorious resurrection, on
July 29,1873, falling from the rocks at Kettleness. This tomb was
erected by his sorrowing mother to her dearly beloved son. 'He was the
only son of his mother, and she was a widow.' Really, Mr. Swales, I
don't see anything very funny in that!" She spoke her comment very
gravely and somewhat severely.

"Ye don't see aught funny! Ha-ha! But that's because ye don't gawm
the sorrowin' mother was a hell-cat that hated him because he was
acrewk'd, a regular lamiter he was, an' he hated her so that he
committed suicide in order that she mightn't get an insurance she put
on his life. He blew nigh the top of his head off with an old musket
that they had for scarin' crows with. 'Twarn't for crows then, for it
brought the clegs and the dowps to him. That's the way he fell off
the rocks. And, as to hopes of a glorious resurrection, I've often
heard him say masel' that he hoped he'd go to hell, for his mother was
so pious that she'd be sure to go to heaven, an' he didn't want to
addle where she was. Now isn't that stean at any rate," he hammered
it with his stick as he spoke, "a pack of lies? And won't it make
Gabriel keckle when Geordie comes pantin' ut the grees with the
tompstean balanced on his hump, and asks to be took as evidence!"

I did not know what to say, but Lucy turned the conversation as she
said, rising up, "Oh, why did you tell us of this? It is my favourite
seat, and I cannot leave it, and now I find I must go on sitting over
the grave of a suicide."

"That won't harm ye, my pretty, an' it may make poor Geordie gladsome
to have so trim a lass sittin' on his lap. That won't hurt ye. Why,
I've sat here off an' on for nigh twenty years past, an' it hasn't
done me no harm. Don't ye fash about them as lies under ye, or that
doesn' lie there either! It'll be time for ye to be getting scart
when ye see the tombsteans all run away with, and the place as bare as
a stubble-field. There's the clock, and I must gang. My service to
ye, ladies!" And off he hobbled.

Lucy and I sat awhile, and it was all so beautiful before us that we
took hands as we sat, and she told me all over again about Arthur and
their coming marriage. That made me just a little heart-sick, for I
haven't heard from Jonathan for a whole month.

The same day. I came up here alone, for I am very sad. There was no
letter for me. I hope there cannot be anything the matter with
Jonathan. The clock has just struck nine. I see the lights scattered
all over the town, sometimes in rows where the streets are, and
sometimes singly. They run right up the Esk and die away in the curve
of the valley. To my left the view is cut off by a black line of roof
of the old house next to the abbey. The sheep and lambs are bleating
in the fields away behind me, and there is a clatter of donkeys' hoofs
up the paved road below. The band on the pier is playing a harsh
waltz in good time, and further along the quay there is a Salvation
Army meeting in a back street. Neither of the bands hears the other,
but up here I hear and see them both. I wonder where Jonathan is and
if he is thinking of me! I wish he were here.

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