Замок Дракулы в Румынии 6 страница

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 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 until it can be all 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 to God 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 May._--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 that I am

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 venalia 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 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 on 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

tombstones. 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

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 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 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 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

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 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