Dracula

the Pit!

I shall not remain alone with them; I shall try to scale the

castle wall farther than I have yet attempted. I shall 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 this 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 these monsters,

and the precipice is steep and high. At its foot a man may sleep

as a man. Good-bye, all! Mina!

CHAPTER V

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 practising

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 practising 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-Sunday-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 so 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 ring-

ing. Good-bye.

«Your loving

«MlNA.

«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???»

32 Dracula

Letter, Lucy Westenra to Mina Murray.

«17, Chatham Street,

«Wednesday.

«My dearest Mina,

«I must say you tax me very unfairly with being a bad corre-

spondent. I wrote to 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 good 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. Some one 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 al-

ready engaged to Jonathan. He is an excellent parti, being hand-

some, 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 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? / 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; 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 what I feel. I do not know how I am writing

Letters, Etc. 53

this even to you. I am afraid to stop, or I should tear up the let-

ter, 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, I must stop. Good-night. Bless me in your prayers; and,

Mina, pray for my happiness.

«LUCY.

«P.S. I need not tell you this is a secret. Good-night again.

JL.

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 prov-

erbs are. Here am I, who shall be twenty in September, and yet

I never had a proposal till to-day, not a real proposal, and to-day

I have 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 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 wo-

men, 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 re-

membered 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,

54 Dracula

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 that 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 quite out of his life. My dear, I must stop here

aL present, I feel so miserable, though I am so happy.

11 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 Ameri-

can from Texas, and he looks so youug and so fresh that it seems

almost impossible that he has been to so many places and has

had such adventures. I sympathise with poor Desdemona when

she had such a dangerous 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. Quincey 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 before-

hand 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

Letters, Etc. 55

well educated and has exquisite manners but he f ouna 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 air 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, 1

an occasion for him, I would forgive him. He really did look

serious when he was saying it, and I couldn’t help feeling a bit

serious too I know, Mina, you will think me a horrid flirt

though 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 sup-

pose 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.»

«M} 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- aearted, true gentleman. 1 burst into tears I am afraid.

56 Dracula

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 t\iis

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. Mor-

ris’s 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 un-

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 he

must be a good fellow, my dear, and a fine fellow, or you could

not love him hasn’t spoken yet. 7 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 good-bye. ' 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 JL*am

cryiifg like a baby. Oh, why must a man like that be made un-

happy 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 crji be all

happy.

«Ever your loving

«I. UCY.

Letters, Etc. 57

«P.S. Oh, about number Three I needn’t tell you of num-

ber 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 good*

ness to me in sending to me such a lover, such a husband, and

such a friend.

«Good-bye.»

Dr. Seward’s Diary.

(Kept in phonograph)

25 M ay. Ebb tide in appetite to-day. 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 impor-

tance to be worth the doing. … As I knew that the only cure

for this sort of thing was work, I went down amongst the pa-

tients. 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. To-day 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 Ronuz venalia sunt. Hell has its price! verb. sap.

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, aetat 59. Sanguine temperament; R 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, f

58 Dracula

is the fixed point, the latter force is paramount, and only acci*

dent or a series of accidents can balance it.

Letter, Quincey P. Morris to Hon. Arthur Holmwood.

11 25 May.

f>: My dear Art,

«We’ve told yarns by the camp-fire 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 camp-fire to-

morrow night? I have no hesitation hi 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 dr-ink 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 the best worth whining.

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.

u Count me in every time. I bear messages which will make

both your ears tingle.

CHAPTER VI

MINA MURRAY’S JOURNAL

24 July. Whitby. Lucy met me at the station, jookingsweeter

and loj/elie^thaiLe^er, and we drove up to the houseTftnTCres-

cen t irTwhlcf 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 very 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 up 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

sea-wall runs along outside of it. On the near side, the sea-wall

59

60 Dracula

makes an elbow crooked inversely, and its end too has a light-

house. 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 edge 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 mourn-

ful 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

all 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 maseP 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 an’ 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; an’, 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 up 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 some-

thing to do with the abbey. I shall go home too. Lucy went out

Mina Murray’s Journal 61

visiting with her mother, and as they were only duty calls, I did

not go. They will be home by this.

i 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 downfaces

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 tune in coming up 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,

an’ nowt else. These bans an 7 wafts an’ boh-ghosts an’ barguests

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

beuk-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 j 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 scowderrnent at the Day

of Judgment when they come tumblin’ up hi their death-sarks,

all jouped together an’ tryin’ to drag their tombsteans with them

to prove how good they was; some of them trimrnlin’ and

ditherin’, with their hands that dozzened an’ slippy from lyin 7

in the sea that they can’t even keep their grup 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

62 Dracula

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 tomb-

stones 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 kirk-garth.» 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 happed here, snod an’ snog?“ I assented again. „Then

that be just where the lie comes in. Why, there be scores of

these lay-beds that be toom as old Dun’s ’bacca-box 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, set. 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 currents

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 Lowrey 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’ an’ 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 light of 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

Mina Murray’s Journal 63

have to take their tombstones with them on the Day of Judg-

ment. 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-stean,» 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