THEY are known to most men, and there are few mothers who have not seen them. Perhaps they are as inevitable as life’s sorrows; and the men among whom they dwell become the better for the knowledge of them, and the sadder, and the more gentle.

They are strange. As children, life seems nearer to them than to other children; they appear to suspect nothing, and yet is there in their eyes so profound a certainty that we feel they must know all, that there must have been evenings when they found time to tell themselves their secret. At the moment when their brothers are still groping their way blindly in the mysterious land between birth and life, they have already understood; they are erect, ready with hand and soul. In all haste, but wisely and with minute care, do they prepare themselves to live; and this very haste is a sign upon which mothers, the discreet, unsuspected confidants of all that cannot be told, can scarce bring themselves to look.

Their stay among us is often so short that we are unconscious of their presence; they go away without saying a word, and are for ever unknown to us. But others there are who linger for a moment, who look at us with an eager smile, and seem to be on the point of confessing that they know all; and then, towards their twentieth year, they leave us, hurriedly, muffling their footsteps, as though they had just discovered that they had chosen the wrong dwelling-place, and had been about to pass their lives among men whom they did not know.

They themselves say but little, and there is a cloud that falls around them at the moment when men seem on the point of touching them, or when hurt has been done them. Some days there are when they seem to be of us, and among us, but a sudden evening comes and they are so far away that we dare not look at them, or ask a question. It is as though they were on life’s further shore, and the feeling rushes in upon us that now, at last, the hour has come for affirming that which is graver, deeper, more human, more real than friendship, pity or love; for saying the thing that is piteously flapping its wings at the back of our throat, and craving for utterance—the thing that our ignorance crushes, that we never have said, that we never shall say, for so many lives are spent in silence! And time rushes on; and who is there of us but has lingered and waited till it was too late, and there was no one to listen to his words?

Why have they come to us—why do they go so soon? Is it only that we may be convinced of the utter aimlessness of life? It is a mystery that ever eludes us, and all our searchings are vain. I have often seen these things happen; one day they were so near to me that I scarcely knew was it myself or another whom they concerned....

For it was thus that my brother died. And though he alone had heard the warning whisper, be it ever so unconsciously—for from his earliest days he had concealed the message of disease within him—yet surely had the knowledge of what was to come been borne in upon us also. What are the signs that set apart the creatures for whom dire events lie in wait? Nothing is visible, and yet all is revealed. They are afraid of us, for that we are ever crying out to them of our knowledge, struggle against it as we may; and when we are with them, they can see that, in our hearts, we are oppressed by their destiny. Something there is that we hide from most men, and we ourselves are ignorant of what this thing may be. Strange secrets of life and death pass between two creatures who meet for the first time; and many other secrets besides, nameless to this day, but which at once thrust their impress upon our bearing, our features, the look of our eyes; and even while we press the hand of our friend, our soul will have soared perhaps beyond the confines of this life. It may be that when two men are together, they are unconscious of any hidden thoughts, but there are things that lie deeper, and are far more imperious, than thought. We are not the lords of these unfathomable gifts; and we are ever betraying the presence of the prophet to whom speech is not given. We are never the same with others as when we are alone; we are different, even, when we are in the dark with them, and the look in our eyes changes as the past or future flashes before us; and therefore it is that, though we know it not, we are ever watchful and on our guard. When we meet those who are not to live long, we are only conscious of the fate that is hanging over them; we see nothing else. If they could they would deceive us, so that they might the more readily deceive themselves. They do all in their power to mislead us; they imagine that their eager smile, their burning interest in life, will conceal the truth; but none the less does the event already loom large before us, and seem indeed to be the mainstay, nay, the very reason of their existence. Death has again betrayed them, and they realise, in bitter sadness, that nothing is hidden from us, that there are certain voices that cannot be still.

Who can tell us of the power which events possess—whether they issue from us, or whether we owe our being to them? Do we attract them, or are we attracted by them? Do we mould them, or do they mould us? Are they always unerring in their course? Why do they come to us like the bee to the hive, like the dove to the cote; and where do they find a resting-place when we are not there to meet them? Whence is it that they come to us; and why are they shaped in our image, as though they were our brothers? Are their workings in the past or in the future; and are the more powerful of them those that are no longer, or those that are not yet? Is it to-day or to-morrow that moulds us? Do we not all spend the greater part of our lives under the shadow of an event that has not yet come to pass? I have noticed the same grave gestures, the footsteps that seemed to tend towards a goal that was all too near, the presentiments that chilled the blood, the fixed, immovable look—I have noticed all these in the men, even, whose end was to come about by accident, the men on whom death would suddenly seize from without. And yet were they as eager as their brethren, who bore the seeds of death within them. Their faces were the same. To them, too, life was fraught with more seriousness than to those who were to live their full span. The same careful, silent watchfulness marked their actions. They had no time to lose; they had to be in readiness at the same hour; so completely had this event, which no prophet could have foretold, become the very life of their life.

It is death that is the guide of our life, and our life has no goal but death. Our death is the mould into which our life flows: it is death that has shaped our features. Of the dead alone should portraits be painted, for it is only they who are truly themselves, and who, for one instant, stand revealed even as they are. What life is there but becomes radiant when the pure, cold, simple light falls on it at the last hour? It is, perhaps, the same light that floats around children’s faces when they smile at us; and the silence that steals over us then is akin to that of the chamber where there will be peace for evermore. I have known many whom the same death was leading by the hand, and when my memory dwells upon them I see a band of children, of youths and maidens, who seem to be all coming forth from the same house. A strange fraternity already unites them: it may be that they recognise each other by birth-marks we cannot discover, that they furtively exchange solemn signals of silence. They are the eager children of precocious death. At school we were vaguely conscious of them. They seemed to be at the same time seeking and avoiding each other, like people who are afflicted with the same infirmity. They were to be seen together, in remote corners of the garden, under the trees. Their mysterious smile flew fitfully across their lips, and there lurked a gravity beneath, a curious fear lest a secret should escape. Silence would almost always fall upon them, when those who were to live drew near. Were they already speaking of the event, or did they know that the event was speaking through them, and in their despite? Were they forming a circle round it, and trying to keep it hidden from indifferent eyes? There were times when they seemed to be looking down upon us from a lofty tower; and, for all that we were the stronger, we dared not molest them. For truly there is nothing that can ever be really hidden; and whosoever meets me knows all that I have done and shall do, all that I have thought and do think—nay, he knows the very day on which I shall die; but the means of telling what he knows is not given to him, though he speak never so softly, and whisper to his heart. We pass heedlessly by the side of all that our hands cannot touch; and perhaps too great a knowledge would be ours if all that we do know were revealed to us. Our real life is not the life we live, and we feel that our deepest, nay, our most intimate thoughts are quite apart from ourselves, for we are other than our thoughts and our dreams. And it is only at special moments—it may be by merest accident—that we live our own life. Will the day ever dawn when we shall be what we are?... In the meanwhile, we felt that they were strangers in our midst. A sensation of awe crept into our life. Sometimes they would walk with us along the corridor, or in the courtyard, and we could scarcely keep pace with them. Sometimes they would join us at our games, and the game would no longer be the same. There were some who could not find their brethren. They would wander in solitude in our midst, while we played and shouted: they had no friends among those who were not about to die. And yet we loved them, and the deepest friendliness shone from their eyes. What was there that divided us from them? What is there that divides us all? What is this sea of mysteries in whose depths we have our being? The love that we felt was the love that seeks not to express itself, because it is not of this world. It is a love, perhaps, that cannot be put to the proof; it may seem feeble, uncertain, and the smallest, most ordinary friendship may appear to triumph over it—but none the less does its life lie deeper than our life, and none the less, notwithstanding its seeming indifference, is it reserved for a time when doubt and uncertainty shall be no longer....

Its voice does not make itself heard now because its moment for speaking has not yet come; and it is never those whom we enfold in our arms that we love the most deeply. For there is a side of life—and it is the best, the purest, the noblest side—which never blends with the ordinary life, and the eyes even of lovers themselves can seldom pierce through the masonry that is built up of silence and love....

Or was it that we avoided them, because, though younger than ourselves, they still were our elders?... Did we know that they were not of our age, and did we fear them, as though they were sitting in judgment upon us? A curious steadfastness already lurked in their eyes; and if, in our moments of agitation, their glance rested upon us, it would soothe and comfort us, we knew not why, and there would be an instant of strangest silence. We would turn round: they were watching us and smiling gravely. There were two for whom a violent death was lying in wait—I remember their faces well. But almost all were timid, and tried to pass by unperceived. They were weighed down by some deadly sense of shame, they seemed to be ever beseeching forgiveness for a fault they knew not of, but which was near at hand. They came towards us and our eyes met; we drew asunder, silently, and all was clear to us, though we knew nothing.