"Yes," he replied, "my work lies in London, though Broadbeck is my home, and I ran down very often, merely, I believe, to breathe the murky air and refresh my soul with the Yorkshire burr. I go back refreshed without knowing why. I have no relatives here now, and few friends, but the few I have, though they do not guess it, are my greatest comfort."
"Comfort!" ejaculated Rose; "what can you know of the need of comfort? You, at any rate, are self-centred and self-possessed. You have evidently a sufficient income and lots of the good things of life; you are entirely your own master, and on the high-road to fame; what more can you want?"
"Much," he replied simply; "and chiefly the sympathy which understands without explanations, and I get that only amongst my own folk. Do you know what that means? I have all the things you speak of: an increasing practice, an adequate income, good health, work that brings its own pleasure, an appreciation of life, consequent, no doubt, upon all these things, and an ardent longing for the relief which only real sympathy affords."
"I don't understand," said Rose, "notwithstanding my clear outlook on life."
"Do you?" The Cynic turned to me.
"Partially," I replied. "I can understand that none of these things satisfies in itself, and that you may have 'all things and abound,' and yet crave something you cannot work for and earn. But I should have thought your profession would have left you little time for sentiment, even if it afforded scope for it."
"You know, then, what my profession is?"
"You are a barrister, and, as Rose says, on the high-road to fame."
"Well," he replied, "I suppose that is true. I have as much work as I can undertake and I am well paid for it. Success, in that sense, has come, though slowly, and I am considered by many a lucky fellow. My future is said to be full of promise. I have, in the sense in which you spoke, 'all things and abound,' and when I step into the arena of conflict I am conscious of this, and of this only. In the heat of the fray the joy of battle comes upon me, and I am oblivious to all else.
"Then comes the after-thought, when the fray is ended and the arena has been swept clean for the next encounter. 'What lack I yet?' In the process of gaining the whole world am I going to lose myself? And the throng presses upon me and slaps my back and shakes my hand and shouts, 'Lucky dog!' into my ear, and I smile and look pleased—am pleased—until my Good Spirit drives me north, where the air is not soft, but biting, and men speak their minds without circumlocution and talk to you without deference, and give you a rough but kindly thrust if they think you need it. And there I find vision and comfort."