CHAPTER II

A LITTLE DINNER AT THE ALBEMARLE

Lieutenant Osborne, commander of the new submarine, Anhinga, wiry, alert, bronzed, had proved to be the most entertaining of companions, and the little dinner in his honor had turned out to be an entire success.

Osborne leaned forward in his chair and meditatively relit his cigar. "So that," he concluded, "was the first and only time the engines really bothered us. It was close enough while it lasted, though. Still, we got by."

Young Carrington drew in his breath sharply. "Close enough," he echoed. "I should say it was. That's the only trouble with you pioneers, Lieutenant. You get so interested in what you're doing that you get reckless, and then you blaze ahead with some fool experiment, and the first thing you know something happens. Then they grapple your boat up, and lay you all decently away on dry land, where you belong, and some other chap has the benefit of your experience, and knows one thing more to avoid if he's anxious to keep his health. It's glorious, Lieutenant, but it's going ahead too fast. There's such a thing as being too brave."

Osborne smiled. "Oh, well, of course there's some risk," he acquiesced; "no one would deny that. But not nearly so much as you think. We're pretty well prepared for all emergencies now, and in the last analysis the interior of a submarine isn't the only dangerous place in the world. It sounds trite to say 'you never can tell,' but that's what danger and death amount to, after all."

Vanulm nodded assent. "You're right, Lieutenant," he said. "You see it and read of it every day. A man makes a trip through darkest Africa and comes home to be run over by a trolley car. We take a thousand risks by land and sea, far and wide, and then come to peace and safety, and break our leg going down the cellar stairs. 'You never can tell' hits it about right for most of us."

Osborne nodded. "I'm afraid I've monopolized the conversation too much already," he said, "but I'd like to tell you a queer illustration of this that we had at the yards a year or so ago. One of the construction men there was a Norwegian named Rolfson, a man with the most remarkable head for heights, barring none, that I think I've ever seen. He was celebrated even among his mates, and you can imagine what that means among men who are just as much at home walking about like flies on top of a girder sixty feet from the ground as we are seated here at this table this moment. Well, one day this fellow—not out of bravado, you understand; he wasn't that kind, but just because he took a notion to do it—after he got through a job he was doing on the mainmast of a big seven-master, deliberately climbed clean up to the main truck, somehow crawled on top of it, and stood there, one hundred and eighty-seven feet above the deck, waving his cap to the fellows below. How was that for absolute nerve?

"Well, the point I am coming to is this: Three or four months later this same man, working on a staging about thirty-five feet above the deck of a bark, sitting down, mind you, with a support on either side of him to hang on to, fell and broke his neck. We never knew just what the trouble really was. He might have looked down, I suppose, or might have been taken suddenly ill; possibly all at once he lost his nerve. That happens sometimes. We never knew. So, you see, you can't always tell what's risky and what isn't."

He stopped abruptly. There was a moment's silence, broken presently by Gordon. "Still," he said, "to a landsman like myself there's something uncanny about a submarine. What does a man think about just before he goes down for a twenty-four-hour plunge, Osborne? Does he get worried about death and eternity and the state of his soul, or does he simply wonder whether or not he's forgotten his tobacco?"

Osborne laughed. "Why, speaking for myself," he answered, "I'm generally too busy figuring on where we're bound in this world to wonder much, if anything should happen, where I'd be bound in the next. I suppose it all depends on a man's temperament, and even that doesn't always work out the way you'd think. I know the last time we went down there was one of the crew, a quiet, rather gloomy old chap, with no nerves at all, just the kind of man you need in our business, who turned out, very much as you might have supposed, to be a firm believer in predestination. Now, going down didn't worry that fellow a bit. In fact, I'd have liked it better if he had worried a little more, I like to see the men just as anxious as I am to know that everything's in first-class shape. But his ideas were that if we were going to be drowned, we were going to be drowned, and that was all there was to it. Now, on the other hand, we had another chap who was the most reckless man in the whole bunch, really a regular dare-devil, afraid of nothing afloat or ashore. This fellow, also, as you might have supposed, so far from believing in predestination, didn't believe in anything at all—an out-and-out atheist. Result was that out of regard for his precious life he was tremendously in earnest to see we'd taken every possible precaution before we went under. Rather a curious result, I thought, and something of a blow at practical religion if we should advertise, 'Picked men wanted to ship on submarine Anhinga. Atheists given preference over all others.'"

There was a general laugh. "Poor old Religion," said Carrington reflectively; "she's had to take some pretty hard knocks lately. What with enemies without and factions within, I sometimes wonder what the future of the Church is really going to be."

Doctor Norton, the host of the evening, nodded assent. "I suppose the trouble really is," he said, "that there's such an endless field for speculation in such matters, and people's minds work so very diversely anyway, that no one ever really quite agrees with any one else about anything. Hence the rows."

Carrington shook his head in dissent. "That's going it a little too strong, Doctor," he objected. "I imagine most of us think along about the same lines on religious matters these days, don't we?"

Norton smiled. "Well," he answered, "nothing easier than to test the question, right here and now. I should say the five of us make up a fairly representative crowd—a stock broker, a merchant, a naval officer, a journalist and a medical man. Now, if we'll all agree to give our honest ideas—our honest ideas, mind you, not hackneyed stuff we've been told or that we pretend to believe—on religion, or the probability of a hereafter, or however you choose to phrase it, a comparison of results might prove entertaining, although the subject, I'll grant, is a little shopworn and not nearly so interesting as what the lieutenant has been telling us about submarines. Is it a bargain?"

There was a ready chorus of assent, and Norton, after a moment's pause, continued: "I don't mind setting the example and confessing first. My creed at least has the merit of simplicity. I haven't the faintest shadow of a belief in any kind of a future life. I haven't had the good fortune to see any evidence of it, and I never expect to. There's one view. Now, Carrington, suppose you unbosom yourself."

Carrington pondered. "Why," he said at length, "I suppose I might be described as a hopeful agnostic. Lots of hope, but no belief. I guess that covers it pretty well."

Norton nodded. "Well, we're not so very far apart," he said more gravely. "I suppose practically every man likes to indulge his hopes at times. Certainly, when I think of my wife and children, I like to try to convince myself against my reason and my judgment. That spark is born in us somehow, and of course furnishes a somewhat fanciful argument, if it's worthy of being called that, to our good friends in the pulpit. I'll concede that much to Carrington's view; I like to hope, but that's all it amounts to. Vanulm, enlighten us."

The brewer shook his head. "Not I," he said promptly; "I don't commit myself one way or the other. In fact, I never could see what difference the whole discussion really made. From one point of view, you argue why there should be a future life. From the other, you argue why there shouldn't. Nobody knows, and you can argue indefinitely. Nobody knows the answer, and there you are. Personally, I'm too busy to waste my time that way, even if I were inclined to, which I'm not."

Norton smiled good-naturedly at Carrington. "I believe I'm going to prove my point, after all," he said. "Lieutenant, let's hear from you."

Osborne flicked the ash from his cigar. "Well," he answered slowly, "you chaps have got me a little out of my depth, I'm afraid, but I was brought up to believe in God, and I guess it's the best way, on the whole. It's the most comfortable, anyway, and saves a nervous fellow a lot of worrying. Yes, I think I'm willing to go on record as a believer in a future state."

Norton laughed aloud. "Good for you, Lieutenant!" he cried. "You've raised the average, anyway. I'm afraid we're a pretty godless crowd here. Now, Gordon, it's up to you to complete the thing. Are you with the wicked majority or the select minority?"

Gordon gave no sign of hesitation, "Why," he cried quickly, "I confess I'm amazed at you fellows. I wouldn't believe you now, if you hadn't said beforehand that you were in earnest. I've always believed that if you throw over religion you're throwing over everything that makes for right and decency and the general welfare. Put me on record with the lieutenant, by all means, and we'll form what you call the respectable minority. You other chaps are a lot of rank atheists. I'm ashamed of you."

Norton clapped his hands softly. "Good! Good!" he cried. "I don't mean your ideas, Gordon, but that you've helped prove my point to perfection. I said that no two people would think exactly alike, and look at the result here. One atheist, one agnostic, one man too lazy not to believe, one too lazy—he claims too busy—to believe either way, and one noble example who goes the limit and believes everything, including, I suppose, that the devil has horns and a tail, and that the whale swallowed Jonah. Isn't that proof positive of my claim? Almost every known variety of belief and disbelief, I should say."

Gordon promptly demurred. "No, not quite all," he said quietly. "I ran across a queer case the other day, if you fellows care to hear about it."

A chorus of assent greeted him, and he began slowly. "It was really rather a queer case, as I just said. I dare say the man isn't quite right mentally. A screw loose somewhere, I should judge. At all events, he's worked out the theory that everything on earth is nothing but a gamble, and that Life—and Death—and Immortality—are merely the biggest gambles of all. His reasoning—he talked to me a whole evening about it, but I'll try to give it to you in brief, and as near as I can in his own words—is this: Every man, if he knew for a certainty that there wasn't any God, would do exactly as he wished; that is, he'd live a pretty free sort of a life, behave about as he pleased, and in general have a mighty good time. On the other hand, if he knew there was a God, he'd probably live as straight as he could for the pleasure of enjoying eternal bliss, and all that sort of thing, afterwards, and keeping clear of the sulphur and brimstone. So there's your gamble, and it's really a very pretty one. Proceed on the assumption that there is a God, and get along without any fun here, in the hope of making up for it later when you get your harp and crown; or else choose the other end of it, go the pace, and when you die, if you've guessed right and there isn't any Heaven, you're away ahead of the poor devils who've played close to their chests here. On the other hand, if you've been unlucky enough to hit it wrong, you're down and out and bound straight for hell and eternal damnation."

He stopped abruptly amid an attentive silence. Then, as no comment seemed to be forthcoming, he continued even more slowly. "To me, I confess the man's way of putting the thing was undeniably interesting. What I didn't grasp at first was how far the proposition carried you logically. You fellows who profess not to believe in anything don't really act out your disbelief, because somehow in the very bottom of your hearts you feel that there may be a hereafter, and you don't want to take any chances. That is, not to put it too disagreeably, this fellow would consider you, in the slang of the track, a lot of cheap pikers. But suppose you have the courage to follow out his ideas to the limit, and choose one way or the other. You can't kick. Your chance is even, and if you're willing to put up all you've got that there isn't a God, your life becomes nothing but pleasure. Just think of it. You're no longer bothered by any moral law; you're free to indulge your passions and your appetites as you please. You can get drunk every day, if that's your idea of enjoyment, or you can steal your friend's money, or his wife, or both, provided you don't get found out. What odds? In place of the groveling worm the preachers make you out to be, you're Kipling's 'gentleman unafraid,' taking a gentlemanly gamble with a mythical creator. It's a bold conception of life; there's no denying it. The man certainly interested me."

He broke off abruptly. Doctor Norton was the first to speak. "It is interesting!" he exclaimed. "I call it a first-class sporting proposition, and he's dead right on one point. We don't any of us, when you come right down to it, try to be good or to do good just for the love of it; it's really only selfish prudence, sort of a credit account against a rainy day. But on his main proposition I should say your friend must have something wrong with his upper story. A man's good from reasons of prudence, or he's bad because he's got what we call criminal instincts, but no man in his senses would sit down and reason the thing out as this fellow has."

"Why not, Doctor?" demanded Carrington quickly. "It's all logical enough, as Gordon says, if you've only got the nerve. But most of us haven't. It isn't pleasant to think of your finish if you chose the sporting end of the thing and then there turned out to be a God after all. I claim there's something magnificent about it, though. Is he going to live out his theories, Gordon?"

Gordon shook his head. "I confess I don't know," he answered; "he's a queer chap, and I didn't like to ask him point blank whether he was in earnest or not. Personally, though, I believe he was, and that sooner or later he'll choose what you call the sporting end."

Gradually the conversation swung back to less serious channels, and in another half hour the little party broke up.

Leisurely enough Gordon strolled along on his homeward way. It was a perfect summer night, the park lying bathed in the mellow light of the full moon riding high in the peaceful heavens. Perhaps it was but the effect of the moonlight, but his face seemed to wear an expression very different from that of the man who had declared his faith so boldly an hour before.

"The old, old riddle," he muttered to himself; "worthless, and yet worth so much." And, after a pause, he added meditatively: "The sporting end."