Dracula. Bram Stoker
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they make out the people too good; for there be folk
that do think a balm-bowl be like the sea, if only it be their
own. The whole thing be only lies. Now look you here; you come
here a stranger, an’ you see this kirk-garth.» I nodded, for I
thought it better to assent, though I did not quite understand
his dialect. I knew it had something to do with the church. He
went on: «And you consate that all these steans be aboon folk
that be happed here, snod an’ snog?“ I assented again. „Then
that be just where the lie comes in. Why, there be scores of
these lay-beds that be toom as old Dun’s ’bacca-box on
Friday night.» He nudged one of his companions, and they all
laughed. «And my gog! how could they be otherwise? Look at
that one, the aftest abaft the bier-bank: read it!» I went over
and read:
«Edward Spencelagh, master mariner, murdered by pirates
off the coast of Andres, April, 1854, set. 30.» When I came back
Mr. Swales went on:
«Who brought him home, I wonder, to hap him here? Murdered
off the coast of Andres! an’ you consated his body lay under!
Why, I could name ye a dozen whose bones lie in the Greenland
seas above“ he pointed northwards „or where the currents
may have drifted them. There be the steans around ye. Ye can,
with your young eyes, read the small-print of the lies from here.
This Braithwaite Lowrey I knew his father, lost in the Lively off
Greenland in ’20; or Andrew Woodhouse, drowned in the same
seas in 1777; or John Paxton, drowned off Cape Farewell a year
later; or old John Rawlings, whose grandfather sailed with me,
drowned in the Gulf of Finland in ’50. Do ye think that all these
men will have to make a rush to Whitby when the trumpet
sounds? I have me antherums aboot it! I tell ye that when they
got here they’d be jommlin’ an’ jostlin’ one another that way
that it ’ud be like a fight up on the ice in the old days, when we’d
be at one another from daylight to dark, an’ tryin’ to tie up our
cuts by the light of the aurora borealis.» This was evidently local
pleasantry, for the old man cackled over it, and his cronies joined
in with gusto.
«But,» I said, «surely you are not quite correct, for you start
on the assumption that all the poor people, or their spirits, will
Mina Murray’s Journal 63
have to take their tombstones with them on the Day of Judg-
ment. Do you think that will be really necessary?»
«Well, what else be they tombstones for? Answer me that,
miss!»
«To please their relatives, I suppose.»
«To please their relatives, you suppose!» This he said with
intense scorn. «How will it pleasure their relatives to know
that lies is wrote over them, and that everybody in the place
knows that they be lies? "He pointed to a stone at our feet which
had been laid down as a slab, on which the seat was rested, close
to the edge of the cliff. «Read the lies on that thruff-stean,» he
said. The letters were upside down to me from where I sat, but
Lucy was more opposite to them, so she leant over and read:
«Sacred to the memory of George Canon, who died, in the
hope of a glorious resurrection, on July, 29, 1873, falling from
the rocks at Kettleness. This tomb was erected by his sorrowing
mother to her dearly beloved son. «He was the only son of his
mother, and she was a widow.» Really, Mr. Swales, I don’t
see anything very funny in that!» She spoke her comment very
gravely and somewhat severely.
«Ye don’t see aught funny! Ha! ha! But that’s because ye
don’t gawm the sorrowin’ mother was a hell-cat that hated him
because he was acrewk’d a regular lamiter he was an’ he
hated her so that he committed suicide in order that she mightn’t
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 tomb-
stean 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 Geor-
die 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.
64 Dracula
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