‘Phil a gambler!’ she said, with an honest scorn of conviction. ‘I know better. What makes you think it?’
‘There are a lot of beastly clubs at the West End,’ said the old man, beginning to struggle with his overcoat, partly because he wished to avoid the girl’s look, and partly because the motion was a relief to him. ‘Gambling-places. Places where men meet for no other earthly purpose than to cheat one another. I’m as fond of a rubber at whist as anybody; but no honest man would put his head into one of those holes of infamy if he knew its character.’
‘Are you speaking of Phil, papa?’ she asked. Her voice was low and tremulous, and there was almost a note of threatening in it. The gentlest creature will fight for her own—a fact for which some of us have reason to be grateful.
‘Yes, my dear,’ her father answered with a kind of sullen sadness; ‘I’m talking about Phil. He’s a member of the vilest crowd of the whole lot, and he’s there night after night.’ He dashed his overcoat into an arm-chair with despairing anger, and went marching up and down the room. ‘I saw him one night by accident as he was going in. I knew the place. You might have knocked me down with a feather. I’ve watched him there night after night. Don’t tell me I hadn’t the right to watch him. I had the right My little girl shan’t marry a gambler. I won’t have my fortune wasted by a gambler, and my child’s heart broken. I took a room,’ he pursued wrathfully, ‘opposite the place. I’ve sat there in the dark with the window open, and caught the d—— worst cold I ever had in my life watching for him. I’ve seen him go in again and again. He’s a lost man, I tell you,’ he cried in answer to his daughter’s look and gesture; ‘the man who has that vice in his blood is lost!’
He was storming loudly, for he was one of those in whom emotion must have expression in noise, but a sudden loud peal at the bell cut short his harangue, and he and Patty stood in silence to know who it might be who called so late. As it happened, it was no other than the lost man himself. He was shown in according to wont and usage without previous announcement, and entered gay and smiling, elate and tender.
As he looked from one to the other the expression of his face changed. He moved quickly towards Patty, and took her hands in his.
‘There’s something the matter,’ he said gently. ‘You’re in trouble!’
The old boy, glaring at him, growled, ‘We are,’ and snatching up his overcoat, threw it over his arm, and slipped his hat upon his head with a gesture which Philip took for one of defiance. As a matter of fact it expressed no more than wrathful grief, but then gesture and expression are hard to read unless you have the key to them.
‘We’d better have it out, Phil,’ said the old man, ‘here and now. You’ve turned gambler, and I’ve found you out.’
‘No,’ Phil answered, with an odd smile; ‘I haven’t turned gambler, I assure you. You’ve heard that I’ve joined the Pigeon Trap? That’s what they call it in the City. I prefer to call it the Hawks’ Roost. There are too few pigeons go there to be plucked to justify the other title, and I give you my word of honour, Mr. Brown, that I’m not one of them.’