take some of the gold with me, lest I want it later. I may
find a way from this dreadful place.
And then away for home! Away to the quickest and
nearest train! Away from the cursed spot, from this cursed
land, where the devil and his children still walk with
earthly feet!
At least God’s mercy is better than that of those
monsters, and the precipice is steep and high. At its foot a
man may sleep, as a man. Goodbye, all. Mina!
Dracula
98 of 684
Chapter 5
LETTER FROM MISS MINA MURRAY TO MISS
LUCY WESTENRA
9 May.
My dearest Lucy,
Forgive my long delay in writing, but I have been
simply overwhelmed with work. The life of an assistant
schoolmistress is sometimes trying. I am longing to be
with you, and by the sea, where we can talk together
freely and build our castles in the air. I have been working
very hard lately, because I want to keep up with
Jonathan’s studies, and I have been practicing shorthand
very assiduously. When we are married I shall be able to
be useful to Jonathan, and if I can stenograph well enough
I can take down what he wants to say in this way and
write it out for him on the typewriter, at which also I am
practicing very hard.
He and I sometimes write letters in shorthand, and he is
keeping a stenographic journal of his travels abroad. When
I am with you I shall keep a diary in the same way. I don’t
mean one of those two-pages-to-the-week-with-SundayDracula
99 of 684
squeezed-in-a-corner diaries, but a sort of journal which I
can write in whenever I feel inclined.
I do not suppose there will be much of interest to other
people, but it is not intended for them. I may show it to
Jonathan some day if there is in it anything worth sharing,
but it is really an exercise book. I shall try to do what I see
lady journalists do, interviewing and writing descriptions
and trying to remember conversations. I am told that, with
a little practice, one can remember all that goes on or that
one hears said during a day.
However, we shall see. I will tell you of my little plans
when we meet. I have just had a few hurried lines from
Jonathan from Transylvania. He is well, and will be
returning in about a week. I am longing to hear all his
news. It must be nice to see strange countries. I wonder if
we, I mean Jonathan and I, shall ever see them together.
There is the ten o’clock bell ringing. Goodbye.
Your loving
Mina
Tell me all the news when you write. You have not
told me anything for a long time. I hear rumours, and
especially of a tall, handsome, curly-haired man???
LETTER, LUCY WESTENRA TO MINA
MURRAY
eBook brought to you by
Create, view, and edit PDF. Download the free trial version.
Dracula
100 of 684
17, Chatham Street
Wednesday
My dearest Mina,
I must say you tax me very unfairly with being a bad
correspondent. I wrote you twice since we parted, and
your last letter was only your second. Besides, I have
nothing to tell you. There is really nothing to interest you.
Town is very pleasant just now, and we go a great deal
to picture-galleries and for walks and rides in the park. As
to the tall, curly-haired man, I suppose it was the one who
was with me at the last Pop. Someone has evidently been
telling tales.
That was Mr. Holmwood. He often comes to see us,
and he and Mamma get on very well together, they have
so many things to talk about in common.
We met some time ago a man that would just do for
you, if you were not already engaged to Jonathan. He is
an excellent parti, being handsome, well off, and of good
birth. He is a doctor and really clever. Just fancy! He is
only nine-and twenty, and he has an immense lunatic
asylum all under his own care. Mr. Holmwood introduced
him to me, and he called here to see us, and often comes
now. I think he is one of the most resolute men I ever
saw, and yet the most calm. He seems absolutely
Dracula
101 of 684
imperturbable. I can fancy what a wonderful power he
must have over his patients. He has a curious habit of
looking one straight in the face, as if trying to read one’s
thoughts. He tries this on very much with me, but I flatter
myself he has got a tough nut to crack. I know that from
my glass.
Do you ever try to read your own face? I do, and I can
tell you it is not a bad study, and gives you more trouble
than you can well fancy if you have never tried it.
He says that I afford him a curious psychological study,
and I humbly think I do. I do not, as you know, take
sufficient interest in dress to be able to describe the new
fashions. Dress is a bore. That is slang again, but never
mind. Arthur says that every day.
There, it is all out, Mina, we have told all our secrets to
each other since we were children. We have slept together
and eaten together, and laughed and cried together, and
now, though I have spoken, I would like to speak more.
Oh, Mina, couldn’t you guess? I love him. I am blushing
as I write, for although I think he loves me, he has not
told me so in words. But, oh, Mina, I love him. I love
him! There, that does me good.
I wish I were with you, dear, sitting by the fire
undressing, as we used to sit, and I would try to tell you
Dracula
102 of 684
what I feel. I do not know how I am writing this even to
you. I am afraid to stop, or I should tear up the letter, and
I don’t want to stop, for I do so want to tell you all. Let
me hear from you at once, and tell me all that you think
about it. Mina, pray for my happiness.
Lucy
P.S.—I need not tell you this is a secret. Goodnight
again. L.
LETTER, LUCY WESTENRA TO MINA
MURRAY
24 May
My dearest Mina,
Thanks, and thanks, and thanks again for your sweet
letter. It was so nice to be able to tell you and to have
your sympathy.
My dear, it never rains but it pours. How true the old
proverbs are. Here am I, who shall be twenty in
September, and yet I never had a proposal till today, not a
real proposal, and today I had three. Just fancy! Three
proposals in one day! Isn’t it awful! I feel sorry, really and
truly sorry, for two of the poor fellows. Oh, Mina, I am so
happy that I don’t know what to do with myself. And
three proposals! But, for goodness’ sake, don’t tell any of
the girls, or they would be getting all sorts of extravagant
Dracula
103 of 684
ideas, and imagining themselves injured and slighted if in
their very first day at home they did not get six at least.
Some girls are so vain! You and I, Mina dear, who are
engaged and are going to settle down soon soberly into
old married women, can despise vanity. Well, I must tell
you about the three, but you must keep it a secret, dear,
from every one except, of course, Jonathan. You will tell
him, because I would, if I were in your place, certainly tell
Arthur. A woman ought to tell her husband everything.
Don’t you think so, dear? And I must be fair. Men like
women, certainly their wives, to be quite as fair as they
are. And women, I am afraid, are not always quite as fair as
they should be.
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,
Dracula
104 of 684
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
Dracula
105 of 684
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
Dracula
106 of 684
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
Dracula
107 of 684
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.
Dracula
108 of 684
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.’
Dracula
109 of 684
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
Dracula
110 of 684
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.
Dracula
111 of 684
(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.
eBook brought to you by
Create, view, and edit PDF. Download the free trial version.
Dracula
112 of 684
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
Dracula
113 of 684
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
Dracula
114 of 684
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.
Dracula
115 of 684
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
Dracula
116 of 684
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 granddaughter
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.
Dracula
117 of 684
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 airblebs.
They, an’ all grims an’ signs an’ warnin’s, be all
Dracula
118 of 684
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
Dracula
119 of 684
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,
Dracula
120 of 684
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.
Dracula
121 of 684
‘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
Dracula
122 of 684
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.’
Dracula
123 of 684
‘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
eBook brought to you by
Create, view, and edit PDF. Download the free trial version.
Dracula
124 of 684
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.
DR. SEWARD’S DIARY
5 June.—The case of Renfield grows more interesting
the more I get to understand the man. He has certain
qualities very largely developed, selfishness, secrecy, and
purpose.
I wish I could get at what is the object of the latter. He
seems to have some settled scheme of his own, but what it
is I do not know. His redeeming quality is a love of
animals, though, indeed, he has such curious turns in it
that I sometimes imagine he is only abnormally cruel. His
pets are of odd sorts.
Just now his hobby is catching flies. He has at present
such a quantity that I have had myself to expostulate. To
my astonishment, he did not break out into a fury, as I
expected, but took the matter in simple seriousness. He
thought for a moment, and then said, ‘May I have three
days? I shall clear them away.’ Of course, I said that would
do. I must watch him.
Dracula
125 of 684
18 June.—He has turned his mind now to spiders, and
has got several very big fellows in a box. He keeps feeding
them his flies, and the number of the latter is becoming
sensibly diminished, although he has used half his food in
attracting more flies from outside to his room.
1 July.—His spiders are now becoming as great a
nuisance as his flies, and today I told him that he must get
rid of them.
He looked very sad at this, so I said that he must some
of them, at all events. He cheerfully acquiesced in this, and
I gave him the same time as before for reduction.
He disgusted me much while with him, for when a
horrid blowfly, bloated with some carrion food, buzzed
into the room, he caught it, held it exultantly for a few
moments between his finger and thumb, and before I
knew what he was going to do, put it in his mouth and
ate it.
I scolded him for it, but he argued quietly that it was
very good and very wholesome, that it was life, strong life,
and gave life to him. This gave me an idea, or the
rudiment of one. I must watch how he gets rid of his
spiders.
He has evidently some deep problem in his mind, for
he keeps a little notebook in which he is always jotting
Dracula
126 of 684
down something. whole pages of it are filled with masses
of figures, generally single numbers added up in batches,
and then the totals added in batches again, as though he
were focussing some account, as the auditors put it.
8 July.—There is a method in his madness, and the
rudimentary idea in my mind is growing. It will be a
whole idea soon, and then, oh, unconscious cerebration,
you will have to give the wall to your conscious brother.
I kept away from my friend for a few days, so that I
might notice if there were any change. Things remain as
they were except that he has parted with some of his pets
and got a new one.
He has managed to get a sparrow, and has already
partially tamed it. His means of taming is simple, for
already the spiders have diminished. Those that do remain,
however, are well fed, for he still brings in the flies by
tempting them with his food.
19 July—We are progressing. My friend has now a
whole colony of sparrows, and his flies and spiders are
almost obliterated. When I came in he ran to me and said
he wanted to ask me a great favour, a very, very great
favour. And as he spoke, he fawned on me like a dog.
I asked him what it was, and he said, with a sort of
rapture in his voice and bearing, ‘A kitten, a nice, little,
Dracula
127 of 684
sleek playful kitten, that I can play with, and teach, and
feed, and feed, and feed!’
I was not unprepared for this request, for I had noticed
how his pets went on increasing in size and vivacity, but I
did not care that his pretty family of tame sparrows should
be wiped out in the same manner as the flies and spiders.
So I said I would see about it, and asked him if he would
not rather have a cat than a kitten.
His eagerness betrayed him as he answered, ‘Oh, yes, I
would like a cat! I only asked for a kitten lest you should
refuse me a cat. No one would refuse me a kitten, would
they?’
I shook my head, and said that at present I feared it
would not be possible, but that I would see about it. His
face fell, and I could see a warning of danger in it, for
there was a sudden fierce, sidelong look which meant
killing. The man is an undeveloped homicidal maniac. I
shall test him with his present craving and see how it will
work out, then I shall know more.
10 pm.—I have visited him again and found him sitting
in a corner brooding. When I came in he threw himself
on his knees before me and implored me to let him have a
cat, that his salvation depended upon it.
Dracula
128 of 684
I was firm, however, and told him that he could not
have it, whereupon he went without a word, and sat
down, gnawing his fingers, in the corner where I had
found him. I shall see him in the morning early.
20 July.—Visited Renfield very early, before attendant
went his rounds. Found him up and humming a tune. He
was spreading out his sugar, which he had saved, in the
window, and was manifestly beginning his fly catching
again, and beginning it cheerfully and with a good grace.
I looked around for his birds, and not seeing them,
asked him where they were. He replied, without turning
round, that they had all flown away. There were a few
feathers about the room and on his pillow a drop of blood.
I said nothing, but went and told the keeper to report to
me if there were anything odd about him during the day.
11 am.—The attendant has just been to see me to say
that Renfield has been very sick and has disgorged a whole
lot of feathers. ‘My belief is, doctor,’ he said, ‘that he has
eaten his birds, and that he just took and ate them raw!’
11 pm.—I gave Renfield a strong opiate tonight,
enough to make even him sleep, and took away his
pocketbook to look at it. The thought that has been
buzzing about my brain lately is complete, and the theory
proved.
Dracula
129 of 684
No comments:
Post a Comment