No More Learning

I knew now
well enough where to find the monster I sought.

The great box was in the same place, close against the wall, but the
lid was laid on it, not fastened down, but with the nails ready in
their places to be hammered home. I knew I must search the body for
the key, so I raised the lid and laid it back against the wall; and
then I saw something which filled my very soul with horror. There lay
the Count, but looking as if his youth had been half-renewed, for the
white hair and moustache were changed to dark iron-grey; the cheeks
were fuller, and the white skin seemed ruby-red underneath; the mouth
was redder than ever, for on the lips were gouts of fresh blood, which
trickled from the corners of the mouth and ran over the chin and neck.
Even the deep, burning eyes seemed set amongst swollen flesh, for the
lids and pouches underneath were bloated. It seemed as if the whole
awful creature were simply gorged with blood; he lay like a filthy
leech, exhausted with his repletion. I shuddered as I bent over to
touch him, and every sense in me revolted at the contact; but I had
to search, or I was lost. The coming night might see my own body a
banquet in a similar way to those horrid three. I felt all over the
body, but no sign could I find of the key. Then I stopped and looked
at the Count. There was a mocking smile on the bloated face which
seemed to drive me mad. This was the being I was helping to transfer
to London, where, perhaps for centuries to come, he might, amongst its
teeming millions, satiate his lust for blood, and create a new and ever
widening circle of semi-demons to batten on the helpless. The very
thought drove me mad. A terrible desire came upon me to rid the world
of such a monster. There was no lethal weapon at hand, but I seized a
shovel which the workmen had been using to fill the cases, and lifting
it high, struck, with the edge downward, at the hateful face. But as I
did so the head turned, and the eyes fell full upon me, with all their
blaze of basilisk horror. The sight seemed to paralyse me, and the
shovel turned in my hand and glanced from the face, merely making a
deep gash above the forehead. The shovel fell from my hand across the
box, and as I pulled it away the flange of the blade caught the edge
of the lid, which fell over again, and hid the horrid thing from my
sight. The last glimpse I had was of the bloated face, blood-stained
and fixed with a grin of malice which would have held its own in the
nethermost hell.

I thought and thought what should be my next move, but my brain seemed
on fire, and I waited with a despairing feeling growing over me. As
I waited I heard in the distance a gipsy song sung by merry voices
coming closer, and through their song the rolling of heavy wheels and
the cracking of whips; the Szgany and the Slovaks of whom the Count
had spoken were coming. With a last look round and at the box which
contained the vile body, I ran from the place and gained the Count's
room, determined to rush out at the moment the door should be opened.
With strained ears I listened, and heard downstairs the grinding of
the key in the great lock and the falling back of the heavy door.
There must have been some other means of entry, or some one had a key
for one of the locked doors. Then there came the sound of many feet
tramping and dying away in some passage which sent up a clanging echo.
I turned to run down again towards the vault, where I might find the
new entrance; but at that moment there seemed to come a violent puff of
wind, and the door to the winding stair blew to with a shock that set
the dust from the lintels flying. When I ran to push it open, I found
that it was hopelessly fast. I was again a prisoner, and the net of
doom was closing round me more closely.

As I write there is in the passage below a sound of many tramping feet
and the crash of weights being set down heavily, doubtless the boxes,
with their freight of earth. There is a sound of hammering; it is the
box being nailed down. Now I can hear the heavy feet tramping again
along the hall, with many other idle feet coming behind them.

The door is shut, and the chains rattle; there is a grinding of the key
in the lock; I can hear the key withdrawn; then another door opens and
shuts; I hear the creaking of lock and bolt.

Hark! in the courtyard and down the rocky way the roll of heavy wheels,
the crack of whips, and the chorus of the Szgany as they pass into the
distance.

I am alone in the castle with those awful women. Faugh! Mina is a
woman, and there is naught in common. They are devils of 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
walk 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 I am also
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 shall tell you
all 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 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. _

"_17, Chatham Street,

"Wednesday. _

"My dearest Mina,--

"I must say you tax me _very_ unfairly with being a bad correspondent.
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 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 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; 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 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, 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.

"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 will 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 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, 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 it 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 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 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 beforehand that Mr. Morris doesn't always speak
slang--that is to say, he never does so to strangers or before them,
for he is really well educated and has exquisite manners--but he found
out that it amused me to hear him talk American slang, and whenever I
was present, and there was no one to be shocked, he said such funny
things. I am afraid, my dear, he has to invent it all, for it fits
exactly into whatever else he has to say. But this is a way slang has.
I do not know myself if I shall ever speak slang; I do not know if
Arthur likes it, as I have never heard him use any as yet. Well, Mr.
Morris sat down beside me and looked as happy and jolly as he could,
but I could see all the same that he was very nervous. He took my hand
in his, and said ever so sweetly:--

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

"Well, he did look so good-humoured and so jolly that it didn't seem
half so hard to refuse him as it did poor Dr. Seward, so I said, as
lightly as I could, that I did not know anything of hitching, and that
I wasn't broken to harness at all yet. Then he said that he had spoken
in a light manner, and he hoped that if he had made a mistake in doing
so on so grave, so momentous, 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 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 is a very sloppy letter in more ways than one--and I really felt
very badly.
Why can't they let a girl marry three men, or as many as
want her, and save all this trouble? But this is heresy, and I must not
say it. I am glad to say that, though I was crying, I was able to look
into Mr. Morris'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 unselfish 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. ' 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 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 till it can all be happy.

"Ever your loving

"/Lucy. /

"P. S. --Oh, about number three--I needn't tell you of number three,
need I? Besides, it was all so confused; it seemed only a moment from
his coming into the room till both his arms were round me, and he was
kissing me. I am very, very happy, and I don't know what I have done
to deserve it. I must only try in the future to show that I am not
ungrateful for all His goodness 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 April. _--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 importance to be
worth the doing. . . . As I knew that the only cure for this sort of thing
was work, I went down amongst the patients. I picked out one who has
afforded me a study of much interest. He is so quaint in his ideas, and
so unlike the normal lunatic, that I have 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 Romae
vernalia 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; 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 Holmwood. _

"_25 May. _

"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 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 the best worth winning. We promise you a hearty
welcome, and a loving greeting, and a health as true as your own right
hand. We shall both swear to leave you at home if you drink too deep to
a certain pair of eyes. Come!

"Yours, as ever and always,
"/Quincey P. Morris. /"


_Telegram from Arthur Holmwood to Quincey P. Morris. _

"_26 May. _

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

"/Art. /"




CHAPTER 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, farther 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 tide; 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 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 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; 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' bar-guests and
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 round 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 here 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
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 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 tombsteans 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
lines on that thruffstean," 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!