DRACULA
Bram
Stoker
CHAPTER
VI.
MINA
MURRAY'S JOURNAL.
24 July. Whitby.- Lucy met me at the station, looking sweeter
and lovelier than ever, and we drove up to the house at the Crescent
in which they have rooms. This is a lovely place. The little river,
the Esk, runs through a deep valley, which broadens out as it comes
near the harbour. A great viaduct runs across, with high piers,
through which the view seems somehow further away than it really is.
The valley is beautifully green, and it is so steep that when you are
on the high land on either side you look right across it, unless you
are near enough to see down. The houses of the old town- the side away
from us- are all red-roofed, and seem piled up one over the other
anyhow, like the pictures we see of Nuremberg. Right over the town is
the ruin of Whitby Abbey, which was sacked by the Danes, and which is
the scene of part of "Marmion," where the girl was built up
in the wall. It is a most noble ruin, of immense size, and full of
beautiful and romantic bits; there is a legend that a white lady is
seen in one of the windows. Between it and the town there is another
church, the parish one, round which is a big graveyard, all full of
tombstones. This is to my mind the nicest spot in Whitby, for it lies
right over the town, and has a full view of the harbour and all up the
bay to where the headland called Kettleness stretches out into the
sea. it descends so steeply over the harbour that part of the bank has
fallen away, and some of the graves have been destroyed. In one place
part of the stonework of the graves stretches out over the sandy
pathway far below. There are walks, with seats beside them, through
the churchyard; and people go and sit there all day long looking at
the beautiful view and enjoying the breeze. I shall come and sit here
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 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
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 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
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 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 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 of 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 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. They will be home by
this.
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 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 time 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' 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' 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 tombsteans. 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' tryin' to drag their tombsteans with them to
prove how good they was; some of them trimmlin' and ditherin', with
their hands that dozzened an' slippy from lyin' 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 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 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, aet. 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 about 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 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-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 is 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 night the top of his head off with an old musket
that they had for scarin' the 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 wan't 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' up the grees
with the tombstean balanced on his hump, and asks it to be took as
evidence!"
I did not know what to say, but Lucy turned the conversation as
she said, rising up:-
"Oh why did you tell us of this? it is my favourite seat,
and I cannot leave it; and now I find I must go on sitting over the
grave of a suicide."
"That won't harm ye, my pretty; an' it may make poor
Geordie gladsome to have so trim a lass sittin' on his lap. That won't
hurt ye. Why, I've sat here off an' on for nigh twenty years past, an'
it hasn't done me no harm. Don't ye fash about them as lies under ye,
or that doesn' lie there either! it'll be time for ye to be getting
scart when ye see the tombsteans all run away with, and the place as
bare as a stubble-field. There's the clock, an' I must gang. My
service to ye, ladies!" And off he hobbled.
Lucy and I sat a while, 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 the abbey. The sheep and lambs are bleating in
the fields away behind me, and there is a clatter of donkey's 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 yet 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 big fellows in a box. He keeps feeding them with 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 to-day I told him that he must get rid of them. He
looked very sad at this, so I said that he must clear out 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 blow-fly, 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 note-book 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 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, 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 the 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 p.m.- 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 the 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 a.m.- The attendant has just been to 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 p.m.- I gave Renfield a strong opiate to-night, enough to
make even him sleep, and took away his pocket-book 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 to-day!
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 to-day 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 will 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 only 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 to 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 wakened 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
that anaemic look which she had. I pray it will all last.
3 August.- Another week gone, 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. To-day is a grey day, and
the sun as I write is hidden in thick clouds, high over Kettleness.
Everything is grey- except the green grass, which seems like emerald
amongst it; grey earthy rock; grey clouds, tinged with the sunburst at
the far edge, hang over the grey sea, into which the sand-points
stretch like grey fingers. 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 grey mist. All is vastness; the
clouds are piled up like giant rocks, and there is a "brool"
over the sea that sounds like some presage 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; an' 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 affin' 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 to-morrow."
