“May I ask what the main purpose of life may be?” said the theologian.
“Talking with you, of course,” replied the young man smiling; “talking with any friend. Oh damn! I can’t tell you how I miss going up to Dead Man’s Cottage.”
“Yes,” said the great scholar meditatively, “women are bewitching creatures, especially when they’re very young or very old, but they aren’t exactly arresting in conversation.”
Luke became silent, meditating on this.
“They throw out little things now and then,” he said. “Annie does. But they’ve no sense of proportion. If they’re happy they’re thrilled by everything, and if they’re unhappy,—well, you know how it is! They don’t bite at the truth, for the sake of biting, and they never get to the bone. They just lick the gloss of things with the tips of their tongues. And they quiver and vibrate so, you never know where they are, or what they’ve got up their sleeve that tickles them.”
Mr. Taxater lifted his glass to his mouth and carefully replaced it on the table. There was something in this movement of his plump white fingers which always fascinated Luke. Mr. Taxater’s hands looked as though, beyond the pen and the wine-cup, they never touched any earthly object.
“Have you heard any more of Philip Wone?” enquired the stone-carver.
The theologian shook his head. “I’m afraid, since he went up to London, he’s really got entangled in these anarchist plots.”
“I’m not unselfish enough to be an anarchist,” said Luke, “but I sympathize with their spirit. The sort of people I can’t stand are these Christian Socialists. What really pleases me, I suppose, is the notion of a genuine aristocracy, an aristocracy as revolutionary as anarchists in their attitude to morals and such things, an aristocracy that’s flung up out of this mad world, as a sort of exquisite flower of chance and accident, an aristocracy that is worth all this damned confusion!”
Mr. Taxater smiled. It always amused him when Luke Andersen got excited in this way, and began catching his breath and gesticulating. He seemed to have heard these remarks on other occasions. He regarded them as a signal that the stone-carver had drunk more whiskey than was good for him. When completely himself Luke talked of girls and of death. When a little depressed he abused either Nonconformists or Socialists. When in the early stages of intoxication he eulogized the upper classes.