“Yes, for work is enjoyment, the only enjoyment that ever satisfies.”
He stood gazing across the moorland, my moorland, which put on its best smile for us to-day. Ay, though the heather was brown, and the furze-bushes had lost their gold. But so long as there is free air, sunshine, and sky, the beauty never can vanish from my beloved moor. I wondered how anyone could look at it and not enjoy it; could stand here as we stood and not be satisfied.
Perhaps in some slight way I hinted this, at least, so far as concerned myself, to whom everything seemed so delicious, after this month of sorrow.
“Ah, yes, I understand,” said Doctor Urquhart, “and so it should be with me also. So it is, I trust. This is a lovely day, lovely to its very close, you see.”
For the sun was sinking westward, and the clouds robing themselves for one of those infinitely varied late autumn sunsets, of the glory of which no human eye can ever tire.
“You never saw a tropical sunset? I have, many. I wonder if I shall ever see another.” After a little hesitation, I asked if he thought it likely? Did he wish to go abroad again?
“For some reasons, yes!” Then speaking forcibly:—“Do not think me morbid; of all things, morbid, cowardly sentimentality is my abhorrence—but I am not naturally a cheerful-minded man. That is, I believe I was, but circumstances have been stronger than nature; and it now costs me an effort to attain what I think every man ought to have, if he is not absolutely a wicked man.”
“You mean an even, happy temper, that tries to make the best of all things, which I am sure you do.”
“An idle life,” he went on, unheeding, “is of all things the very worst for me. Unless I have as much work as ever I can do, I am never happy.”
This was comprehensible in degree. Though one thing surprised and pained me, that even Doctor Urquhart was not “happy.” Is anybody “happy?”