"I thank my God to hear you say so. Nor will you stand still there," said Polwarth. "But here comes Mr. Drew!"
CHAPTER IX.
IMMORTALITY.
"How goes business?" said Polwarth, when the new-comer had seated himself.
"That is hardly a question I look for from you, sir," returned the draper, smiling all over his round face, which looked more than ever like a moon of superior intelligence. "For me, I am glad to leave it behind me in the shop."
"True business can never be left in any shop. It is a care, white or black, that sits behind every horseman."
"That is fact; and with me it has just taken a new shape," said Drew, "for I have come with quite a fresh difficulty. Since I saw you last, Mr. Polwarth, a strange and very uncomfortable doubt has rushed in upon me, and I find myself altogether unfit to tackle it. I have no weapons—not a single argument of the least weight. I wonder if it be a law of nature that no sooner shall a man get into a muddle with one thing, than a thousand other muddles shall come pouring in upon him, as if Muddle itself were going to swallow him up! Here am I just beginning to get a little start in honester ways, when up comes the ugly head of the said doubt, swelling itself more and more to look like a fact—namely, that after this world there is nothing for us—nothing at all to be had anyhow—that as we came so we go—into life, out of life—that, having been nothing before, we shall be nothing after! The flowers come back in the spring, and the corn in the autumn, but they ain't the same flowers or the same corn. They're just as different as the new generations of men."
"There's no pretence that we come back either. We only think we don't go into the ground, but away somewhere else."
"You can't prove that."
"No."