"'Tis a foolish waste to spend money on the dead," answered Mr. Baskerville. "When all the living be clothed and fed, then we can fling away our money over graves. 'Tis only done to please ourselves, not to please them."
"You've a right to speak," said the clergyman. "To praise you would be an impertinence; but as the priest of Him we both worship, I rejoice to think of what you have done to clear the clouded memory of this man."
Humphrey took no verbal notice of these remarks. He shrugged his shoulders and spoke of the gravestone.
"I'll thank you to read what I've put over him, and say whether 'tis not right and just."
The other obeyed. After particulars of Nathan's age and the date of his death, there followed only the first verse of the forty-first Psalm—
"Blessed is he that considereth the poor: the Lord
will deliver him in time of trouble."
"You see," explained Mr. Baskerville, "my brother did consider the poor—and none else. That he made a botch of it, along of bad judgment and too much hope and too much trust in himself, is neither here nor there; for I hold his point of view was well-meaning though mistaken. If we see a man's point of view, it often leads—I won't say to mercy, for that's no business of ours in my opinion—but to the higher justice. To judge by results is worldly sense, but I'm doubtful if 'tis heavenly sense. Anyway, that's how I feel about my brother now, though 'twas only brought home to me after a year of thinking; and as for the end of the text, certainly that happened, because none can doubt the Lord delivered him in the time of trouble. His death was a deliverance, as every death must be, but none more than Nathan's afore the tempest broke."
Masterman—knowing as little as the other what Nathan's death had brought to Nathan of mental agony before the end—conceded these points freely. They walked together in the churchyard and spoke of moral topics and religious instruction. At a point in the enclosure, the younger stopped and indicated a space remote from the lodges of the silent people.
"You design to lie here—is it not so? Gollop, I remember, told me, a long time ago now."
The old man regarded the spot indifferently and shook his head.