“Good God! Is he dead?” The sick man almost leaped from his bed. She looked up sadly and replied:
“Yes, sir, he—is—dead!”
The poor fellow leaned back with a groan and turned his face to the wall, saying in a moan:
“Ervin, dear old boy, my comrade! Ervin dead!” Then suddenly his eyes flashed through the cancer.
“Damn them, the blasted fiends! Starving a man on worms, shooting them like dogs. Poor fellow, poor Ervin. God have mercy on his mother! Don’t tell Annie, Miss—don’t tell her he’s dead. It would kill his mother. He loved his mother—and now he’s dead!”
Death—Love.
Love and Death are brothers, and we would tell them so, could we but persuade them to forget their mutual hatred long enough to come and listen to our words. For Love is life, and Death is death, and they never meet. Love never dies. There is a third brother, the youngest of the three, and his name is Fancy, who closely resembles the oldest. Death often crosses his pathway. His body, they say, too, is often found stiff and cold in human hearts, and cast out upon the public highway, where those who hate his elder brother, may see and scorn, and say that Death is stronger than Love. But it is not Love, it is only the fickle one that resembles him. Love never dies. Between him and his grim brother the great gulf is fixed. It is with the weak one that Death walks arm in arm, for he seems to meet often the dalliance of Fancy, and plays daily with the infatuations of youth, whom he can never call aright, not knowing whether it is the ghost of Love or the phantom of Death.
Love and death! We can hardly distinguish between them as we meet them upon the street. And so they are ever strangers to us, though they are often the guests of our hearts and homes.
They treat us to the same, so that one never knows whether it is Love or Death who knocks at the door until the latch is lifted, for their footsteps are not heard. They are not alike again after they have crossed the threshold, not alike at all, ever. Each knocks but once at the door of our hearts, and if we do not answer, but sit still and wait and there comes no sound, not even the sound of his retreating footsteps, it was Love. If you do not answer, but sit still in the gloom and silence, and there is no other knock and the latch lifts, it is Death.
And so we sit expectantly in our humble homes, because we never know when the latch is raised—never know when that single knock will come, nor which of the three faces will appear when the door is opened. We tremble as we open to the visitor, lest he be Death, and glance furtively about the apartments of our life, lest it be God. But those of us who are wiser than any others, always lift the latch, for God and Death will enter anyway, their knock being only a warning that they are coming; and while it might have been Love, the latch must be lifted before he turns away into the night, for he never enters unless the door is opened.