Part 2 (1/2)
Guido made a gesture of indifference.
”You know very well that I am not a coward,” he said.
”You will be, the day you are afraid to go on living,” returned his friend. ”If you kill yourself, I shall think you are an arrant coward, and I shall be sorry I ever knew you.”
Guido looked at him incredulously.
”Are you in earnest?” he asked.
”Yes.”
There was no mistaking the look in Lamberti's hard blue eyes. Guido faced him.
”Do you think that every man who commits suicide is a coward?”
”If it is to escape his own troubles, yes. A man who gives his life for his country, his mother, or his wife, is not a coward, though he may kill himself with his own hand.”
”The Church would call him a suicide.”
”I do not know, in all cases,” said Lamberti. ”I am not a theologian, and as the Church means nothing to you, it would be of no use if I were.”
”Why do you say that the Church means nothing to me?” Guido asked.
”Since you are an atheist, what meaning can it possibly have?”
”It means the whole tradition of morality by which we live, and our fathers lived. Even the code of honour, which is a little out of shape nowadays, is based on Christianity, and was once the rule of a good life, the best rule in the days when it grew up.”
”I daresay. Even the code of honour, degenerate as it is, and twist it how you will, cannot give you an excuse for killing yourself when you have always behaved honourably, or for running away from the enemy simply because you are tired of fighting and will not take the trouble to go on.”
”Perhaps you are right,” Guido answered. ”But the whole question is not worth arguing. What is life, after all, that we should attach any importance to it?”
”It is all you have, and you only have it once.”
”Who knows? Perhaps we may come back to it again, hundreds and hundreds of times. There are more people in the world who believe that than there are Christians.”
”If that is what you believe,” retorted Lamberti, ”you must believe that the sooner you leave life, the sooner you will come back to it.”
”Possibly. But there is a chance that it may not be true, and that everything may end here. That one chance may be worth taking.”
”There is a chance that a man who deserts from his s.h.i.+p may not be caught. That is not an argument in favour of desertion.”
Guido laughed carelessly.
”You have a most unpleasant way of naming things,” he said. ”Shall we go? It is growing late, and I have promised to see my aunt before dinner.”
”Will there be any one else there?” asked Lamberti.
”Why? Did you think of going with me?”
”I might. It is a long time since I have called. I think I shall be a little more a.s.siduous in future.”