Still holding Miss Ruth's hand, he turned his head in a weary way towards the light, and softly closed his eyes.
Mr. Denner rested.
CHAPTER XXIV.
Perhaps the majesty of Death is better understood when some little soul is swallowed up in the great Mystery than when one is taken on whom Life has laid her bright touch, and made famous and necessary.
Even in quiet Ashurst, Mr. Denner was, as he himself would have, said, of no consequence, and his living was not felt in any way; yet when he was gone, a sudden knowledge came of how much he was to them, and how great a blank he left. So Death creates greatness.
It was well for Lois Howe, in those first sad days, that her cousin was with her, or the reaction from the excitement of anxiety into hopeless grief might have been even more prostrating than it was. All the comfort and tenderness Helen could give her in her helpless self-reproach were hers, though she as well as Gifford never sought to make the sorrow less by evading the truth. But Helen was troubled about her, and said to Dr. Howe, "Lois must come to see me for a while; she does need a change very much. I'm afraid she won't be able to go with me next week, but can't she come as soon as she is strong enough to travel?"
And so it was decided that she should come with Gifford, who would go back to Lockhaven in about a fortnight. Business, which never reached Mr. Denner in Mercer, had been offered the young lawyer, and he had been willing to stay in Ashurst a little longer, though he had told himself he was a fool.
Lois looked forward to the visit with feverish anxiety. Mr. Forsythe, perhaps to please his mother, but certainly with rather an ill grace, had lingered in Ashurst. But he had not been very much at the rectory; perhaps because it was not a time to make visits, or be careless and light-hearted, while little Mr. Denner was fading out of life, and his mother felt herself trembling on the edge of the grave. This, at least, was what Mrs. Forsythe said to Lois more than once, with an anxious, troubled look, which perhaps explained more than her words did.
She had accepted very complacently Lois's protestations of joy and gratitude that she was no longer, as she expressed it, in immediate danger, but she did not apparently feel that that altered at all the conditions of the promise Lois had given her, which was evidently a very precious thing. Nor did Lois remonstrate against being held by it. She felt she deserved any grief that came to her, and it would have been cowardly, she thought, to shrink from what she had undertaken merely because she had been so far mercifully spared the grief of Mrs. Forsythe's death. And who could tell that she would live, even yet? Certainly Mrs. Forsythe herself seemed to consider her recovery a matter of grave doubt, and Lois's anxieties were quick to agree with her.