CHAPTER VI
MINA MURRAY'S JOURNAL
24 July. Whitby.
Lucy met me at the station, looking sweeter and lovlier 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 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.
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 ou t 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 favorite 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.
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.
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 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 diminshed. 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, 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.
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.
My homicidal maniac is of a peculiar kind. I shall have to invent a new
classification for him, and call him a zoophagous (life-eating) maniac.
What he desires is to absorb as many lives as he can, and he has laid himself
out to achieve it in a cumulative way. He gave many flies to one spider
and many spiders to one bird, and then wanted a cat to eat the many birds.
What would have been his later steps ?
It would almost be worth while to complete the experiment. It might be done
if there were only a
sufficient cause. Men sneered at vivisection, and yet look at its results
today! Why not advance
science in its most difficult and vital aspect, the knowledge of the brain?
Had I even the secret of one such mind, did I hold the key to the fancy
of even one lunatic, I might
advance my own branch of science to a pitch compared with which Burdon-Sanderson's
physiology
or Ferrier's brain knowledge would be as nothing. If only there were a sufficient
cause! I must not
think too much of this, or I may be tempted. A good cause might turn the
scale with me, for may not I too be of an exceptional brain, congenitally
?
How well the man reasoned. Lunatics always do within their own scope. I
wonder at how many lives he values a man, or if at only one. He has closed
the account most accurately, and today begun a new record. How many of us
begin a new record with each day of our lives?
To me it seems only yesterday that my whole life ended with my new hope,
and that truly I began a
new record. So it shall be until the Great Recorder sums me up and closes
my ledger account with a
balance to profit or loss.
Oh, Lucy, Lucy, I cannot be angry with you, nor can I be angry with my friend
whose happiness is
yours, but I must only wait on hopeless and work. Work! Work!
If I could have as strong a cause as my poor mad friend there, a good, unselfish
cause to make me
work, that would be indeed happiness.
MINA MURRAY'S JOURNAL
26 July-
I am anxious, and it soothes me to express myself here. It is like whispering
to one's self and listening at the same time. And there is also something
about the shorthand symbols that makes it different from writing. I am unhappy
about Lucy and about Jonathan. I had not heard from Jonathan for some time,
and was very concerned, but yesterday dear Mr. Hawkins, who is always so
kind, sent me a letter from him. I had written asking him if he had heard,
and he said the enclosed had just been received. It is only a line dated
from Castle Dracula, and says that he is just starting for home. That is
not like Jonathan. I do not understand it, and it makes me uneasy. Then,
too, Lucy , although she is so well, has lately taken to her old habit of
walking in her sleep. Her mother has spoken to me about it, and we have
decided that I am to lock the door of our room every night. Mrs. Westenra
has got an idea that sleep-walkers always go out on roofs of houses and
along the edges of cliffs and then get suddenly wakened and fall over with
a despairing cry that echoes all over
the place. Poor dear, she is naturally anxious about Lucy, and she tells
me that her husband, Lucy's father, had the same habit, that he would get
up in the night and dress himself and go out, if he were not stopped.
Lucy is to be married in the autumn, and she is already planning out her
dresses and how her house is to be arranged. I sympathise with her, for
I do the same, only Jonathan and I will start in life in a very simple way,
and shall have to try to make both ends meet.
Mr. Holmwood, he is the Hon. Arthur Holmwood, only son of Lord Godalming,
is coming up here
very shortly, as soon as he can leave town, for his father is not very well,
and I think dear Lucy is
counting the moments till he comes.
She wants to take him up in the seat on the churchyard cliff and show him
the beauty of Whitby. I
daresay it is the waiting which disturbs her. She will be all right when
he arrives.
27 July-
No news from Jonathan. I am getting quite uneasy about him, though why I
should I do not
know, but I do wish that he would write, if it were only a single line.
Lucy walks more than ever, and each night I am awakened by her moving about
the room.
Fortunately, the weather is so hot that she cannot get cold. But still,
the anxiety and the perpetually
being awakened is beginning to tell on me, and I am getting nervous and
wakeful myself. Thank
God, Lucy's health keeps up. Mr. Holmwood has been suddenly called to Ring
to see his father, who has been taken seriously ill. Lucy frets at the postponement
of seeing him, but it does not touch her looks. She is a trifle stouter,
and her cheeks are a lovely rose-pink. She has lost the anemic look
which she had. I pray it will all last.
3 August-
Another week gone by, and no news from Jonathan, not even to Mr. Hawkins,
from
whom I have heard. Oh, I do hope he is not ill. He surely would have written.
I look at that last letter
of his, but somehow it does not satisfy me. It does not read like him, and
yet it is his writing. There is no mistake of that.
Lucy has not walked much in her sleep the last week, but there is an odd
concentration about her
which I do not understand, even in her sleep she seems to be watching me.
She tries the door, and
finding it locked, goes about the room searching for the key.
6 August-
Another three days, and no news. This suspense is getting dreadful. If I
only knew where
to write to or where to go to, I should feel easier. But no one has heard
a word of Jonathan since that
last letter. I must only pray to God for patience. Lucy is more excitable
than ever, but is otherwise well. Last night was very threatening, and the
fishermen say that we are in for a storm. I must try to watch it and learn
the weather signs. Today is a gray day, and the sun as I write is hidden
in thick clouds, high over Kettleness. Everything is gray except the green
grass, which seems like emerald amongst it, gray earthy rock, gray clouds,
tinged with the sunburst at the far edge, hang over the gray sea, into which
the sandpoints stretch like gray figures. The sea is tumbling in over the
shallows and the sandy flats with a roar, muffled in the sea-mists drifting
inland. The horizon is lost in a gray mist. All vastness, the clouds are
piled up like giant rocks, and there is a `brool' over the sea that sounds
like some passage of doom. Dark figures are on the beach here and there,
sometimes half shrouded in the mist, and seem `men like trees walking'.
The fishing boats are racing for home, and rise and dip in the ground swell
as they sweep into the harbour, bending to the scuppers. Here comes old
Mr. Swales. He is making straight for me, and I can see, by the way he lifts
his hat, that he wants to talk. I have been quite touched by the change
in the poor old man. When he sat down beside me, he said in a very gentle
way, "I want to say something to you, miss."
I could see he was not at ease, so I took his poor old wrinkled hand in
mine and asked him to speak
fully. So he said, leaving his hand in mine, "I'm afraid, my deary,
that I must have shocked you by all the wicked things I've been sayin' about
the dead, and such like, for weeks past, but I didn't mean them, and I want
ye to remember that when I'm gone. We aud folks that be daffled, and with
one foot abaft the krok-hooal, don't altogether like to think of it, and
we don't want to feel scart of it, and that's why I've took to makin' light
of it, so that I'd cheer up my own heart a bit. But, Lord love ye, miss,
I ain't afraid of dyin', not a bit, only I don't want to die if I can help
it. My time must be nigh at hand now, for I be aud, and a hundred years
is too much for any man to expect. And I'm so nigh it that the Aud Man is
already whettin' his scythe. Ye see, I can't get out o' the habit of caffin'
about it all at once. The chafts will wag as they be used to. Some day soon
the Angel of Death will sound his trumpet for me. But don't ye dooal an'
greet, my deary!"--for he saw that I was crying-- "if he should
come this very night I'd not refuse to answer his call. For life be, after
all, only a waitin' for somethin' else than what we're doin', and death
be all that we can rightly depend on. But I'm content, for it's comin' to
me, my deary, and comin' quick. It may be comin' while we be lookin' and
wonderin'. Maybe it's in that wind out over the sea that's bringin' with
it loss and wreck, and sore distress, and sad hearts. Look! Look!"
he cried suddenly. "There's something in that wind and in the hoast
beyont that sounds, and looks, and tastes, and smells like death. It's in
the air. I feel it comin'. Lord, make me answer cheerful, when my call comes!"
He held up his arms devoutly, and raised his hat. His mouth moved as though
he were praying. After a few minutes' silence, he got up, shook hands with
me, and blessed me, and said good-bye, and hobbled off. It all touched me,
and upset me very much. I was glad when the coastguard came along, with
his spyglass under his arm. He stopped to talk with me, as he always does,
but all the time kept looking at a strange ship.
"I can't make her out," he said. "She's a Russian, by the
look of her. But she's knocking about in the
queerest way. She doesn't know her mind a bit. She seems to see the storm
coming, but can't decide
whether to run up north in the open, or to put in here. Look there again!
She is steered mighty
strangely, for she doesn't mind the hand on the wheel, changes about with
every puff of wind. We'll
hear more of her before this time tomorrow."