"You're a good chap and you've got a good girl, so I expect you will be happy," he said; and then lowered his voice so that the rest might not reach the chevalier's ears. "You were wrong to suspect the little stepmother," he added. "She's true blue, Scarmelli. She was only playing up to those fellows because she was afraid the 'señor' would drop out and close the show if she didn't, and that she and her husband and the children would be thrown out of work. She loves her husband--that's certain--and she's a good little woman; and, Scarmelli!"
"There's nothing better than a good woman on this earth, my lad. Always remember that. I think you, too, have found one. I hope you have. I hope you'll be happy. What's that? Owe me? Not a rap, my boy. Or, if you feel that you must give me something, give me your prayers for equal luck, and--send me a slice of the wedding cake. Good-night!"
And twisted round on his heel and walked out; making his way out to the streets and facing the journey to Clarges Street afoot. For to be absolutely without envy of any sort is not given to anything born of woman; and the sight of this man's happiness, the knowledge of this man's reward, brought upon him a bitter recollection of how far he still was from his own.
Would he ever get that reward? he wondered. Would he ever be nearer to it than he was to-night? It hurt--yes, it hurt horribly, sometimes, this stone-cold silence, this walking always in shadowed paths without a ray of light, without the certainty of arriving _anywhere_, though he plod onward for a lifetime--and the old feeling of savage resentment, the old sense of self-pity--the surest thing on God's earth to blaze a trail for the oncoming of the worst that is in a man--bit at the soul of him and touched him on the raw again.
He knew what that boded; and he also knew the antidote.
"Dollops, they broke into our holiday--they did us out of a part of it, didn't they, old chap?" he said, when he reached home at last and found the boy anxiously awaiting him. "Well, we'll have a day for every hour they deprived us of, a whole day, bonny boy. Pack up again and we'll be off to the land as God made it, and where God's things still live; and we'll have a fortnight of it--a whole blessed fortnight, my boy, with the river and the fields and the flowers and the dreams that hide in trees."