No More Learning

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! ha! But that's because ye don't gawm
the sorrowin' mother was a hell-cat that hated him because he was
acrewk'd--a regular lamiter he was--an' he hated her so that he
committed suicide in order that she mightn't get an insurance she put
on his life. He blew nigh the top of his head off with an old musket
that they had for scarin' 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 want to
addle where she was. Now isn't that stean at any rate"--he hammered it
with his stick as he spoke--"a pack of lies? and won't it make Gabriel
keckle when Geordie comes pantin' 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 awhile, and it was all so beautiful before us that we
took hands as we sat; and she told me all over again about Arthur and
their coming marriage. That made me just a little heart-sick, for I
haven't heard from Jonathan for a whole month.

* * * * *

_The same day. _--I came up here alone, for I am very sad. There was no
letter for me. I hope there cannot be anything the matter with Jonathan.
The clock has just struck nine. I see the lights scattered all over the
town, sometimes in rows where the streets are, and sometimes singly;
they run right up the Esk and die away in the curve of the valley. To my
left the view is cut off by a black line of roof of the old house next
the Abbey. The sheep and lambs are bleating in the fields away behind
me, and there is a clatter of a donkey's hoofs up the paved road below.
The band on the pier is playing a harsh waltz in good time, and farther
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
very 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 blowfly, bloated with some carrion food, buzzed into the
room, he caught it, held it exultingly 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 was "focusing" 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 remained 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 awakened
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 awakened is beginning to tell on me, and I am
getting nervous and wakeful myself. Thank God, Lucy's health keeps up.
Mr. Holmwood has been suddenly called to Ring to see his father, who has
been taken seriously ill. Lucy frets at the postponement of seeing him,
but it does not touch her looks; she is a trifle stouter, and her cheeks
are a lovely rose pink. She has lost 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've 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.