Dracula. Bram Stoker

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