an' you see this kirkgarth."
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 haped here, snod an' snog?" I assented again. "Then that be
just where the lie comes in. Why, there be scores of these laybeds
that be toom as old Dun's `baccabox 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, age 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 currants 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
Lowery, 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' and
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 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, willon 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-stone," 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' 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' ut theAnd won't it make Gabriel keckle when Geordie comes pantin' ut the
grees with the tompstean balanced on his hump, and asks 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
favorite 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, and'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 to the abbey. The sheep
and lambs are bleating in the fields away behind me, and there is a
clatter of donkeys' 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