“I take no thought for the morrow,” he said simply. “I live entirely in the present. Who can take thought and prosper? Happiness is not to be saved, put in a bank. I live contentedly from day to day. When I cannot do that—well, the remedy then is equally simple, quietly end it.”
“Rather gruesome,” Geraldine shivered.
“Death is not gruesome to me,” he said. “I am very sensitive of the shortness of life and of the inevitableness of death. Most of us ignore the topic; but it is constantly in my thoughts, as it was in Socrates’. That’s the way to rid yourself of fear of the sure end; face it; every morning smile in your glass and say, ‘Thou shalt surely die.’ Then all the world spreads happily before you as a garden of delights, and the pettiness fades and all the discords of smallness.... Well! well! I grow poetic—as I should. It is the most magnificent event in life; the very thought of it blesses the present hour.”
The steamship Victoria was moving through the placidest of twilight seas. The setting is very important to have in mind: the soft blur of blue on the horizons, the high-banked clouds fringed delicately by an unseen sun, the pure transparent grey of the zenith, and the cool, salt breeze. Some themes cannot be set in midday, nor amid the turmoil of business. A thousand miles from land with only the frailest tie to existence, poised in the centre of tranquillity, there without mockery one could speak of death, of man’s mortality. Here, if ever, was Death’s sanctuary, where one could perform fittingly the ceremonies of awe and praise.
Mrs. Wells spoke first. “How old are you, Richard?” she asked.
“Thirty-three.”
“You have the thoughts that usually come with old age.... Are you a nihilist or—anarchist—or something?”
“I dislike labels,” he said, “but why shouldn’t I be called Christian? I take no thought for the morrow and I would do unto my neighbour as I would that he should do unto me—I let him alone.”
“Isn’t that just the opposite of Christian?” Geraldine asked. “Christians are rather aggressive; aren’t they?”
“Yes,” he agreed, “the altruists are. Now I’m an egoist. I always felt that Christ preached personal purity and renunciation of the world’s goods. If each person were pure in heart and covetous of no man’s goods, why, the millennium would appear.”