CHAPTER XII
Nathan Baskerville's bedroom faced the south. A text was nailed upon the wall over his head, and an old photograph of his father stood upon the mantelpiece. To right and left of this memorial appeared trinkets made of shells. A pair of old carriage lamps, precious from association, decorated either end of the mantelshelf. An old print of Niagara Falls, that his mother had valued, was nailed above it.
A white curtain covered the window, but there was no blind, for this man always welcomed daylight. On the window-ledge there languished a cactus in a pot. It was a gift under the will of an old dead woman who had tended it and cherished it for twenty years. One easy chair stood beside the bed, and on a table at hand were food and medicine.
Many came to see the dying man, and Humphrey Baskerville visited him twice or thrice in every week.
More than once Nathan had desired to speak of private matters to his brother, but now he lacked the courage, and soon all inclination to discuss mundane affairs departed from him.
There followed a feverish week, in which Nathan only desired to listen to religious conversation. Recorded promises of hope for the sinner were his penultimate interest on earth. He made use of a strange expression very often, and desired again and again to hear the Bible narrative that embraced it.
"'This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise,'" he said to Humphrey and to many others. "I cling to that. It was spoken to a thief and a failure."
All strove to comfort him, but a great mental incubus haunted his declining hours. His old sanguine character seemed entirely to have perished; and its place was taken by spirits of darkness and of terror.
"'The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,'" he said to Eliza Gollop, when she was alone with him. "If I'd marked that better, I might now have got beyond that stage and learned to love Him. But I'm in fear—my life hasn't took me further than that—all's fearful still."
"No need in your case, I hope, so far as mortal man can say," she answered. "'Tis natural to be uneasy when the journey's end falls in sight; and we all ought to be. But then comes Christ and casts out fear. You've a right, so far as man can say, to trust Him and fear nought."