Mr. Taxater crossed himself.
“What do you really feel,” enquired the younger man abruptly, “about the chances in favour of a life after death?”
“The Church,” answered Mr. Taxater, stirring his rum and sugar with a spoon, “could hardly be expected to formulate a dogma denying such a hope. The true spirit of her attitude towards it may perhaps be best understood in the repetition of her requiem prayer, ‘Save us from eternal death!’ We none of us want eternal death, my friend, though many of us are very weary of this particular life. I do not know that I am myself, however. But that may be due to the fact that I am a real sceptic. To love life, Andersen, one cannot be too sceptical.”
“Upon my soul I believe you!” answered the stone-carver, “but I cannot quite see how you can make claim to that title.”
“You’re not a philosopher my friend,” said Mr. Taxater, leaning his elbows on the table and fixing a dark but luminous eye upon his interlocutor.
“If you were a philosopher you would know that to be a true sceptic it is necessary to be a Catholic. You, for instance, aren’t a sceptic, and never can be. You’re a dogmatic materialist. You doubt everything in the world except doubt. I doubt doubt.”
Luke rose and poked the fire.
“I’m afraid my little Annie’ll be frightfully wet,” he remarked, “when she gets home tonight. I wish that last train from Yeoborough wasn’t quite so late.”
“Do you propose to go down to the station to meet her?” enquired Mr. Taxater.
Luke sighed. “I suppose so,” he said. “That’s the worst of being married. There’s always something or other interfering with the main purpose of life.”