Prior meantime walked away through the quiet winter woods—a figure which accorded ill with rural scenes, he so carried with him the savour of towns, the atmosphere of dissipation. A miserable man—to be moral,—pressed for money and at an end of his resources, at an end of pleasure and beginning to realise it; angry, baffled, rejected. He stood to take a last look at Fairmeadowes, lying so peacefully among its wooded fields, with the placid river flowing past it, and then, overpowered by anger, he shook his fist in the air and cursed aloud in that silent place.
‘By ——!’ he cried, ‘you’ll pay me yet for all I’ve done these twenty years! I’ll have your money, or’—his raised right hand fell—‘wanting that, I’ll have your blood.’
CHAPTER XXX
As time went on Society began to surmise that Philip Meadowes and his father were not upon the best of terms. The elder man seldom came to town, and when he did, never stayed at his own house, then tenanted by Philip; and this of itself was eloquent of differences. But as against this was the very fact of Philip’s tenancy of the house—an arrangement which seemed to point to amiable relationship. The world wondered, but could do no more.
The feud between Meadowes and Simon Prior had, owing to peculiar caution on Prior’s part, never got abroad either; he preferred to be still considered everywhere as Meadowes’ friend.
One night (it was the night of the 9th of January, as Philip had afterwards reason enough to remember) fortune drew together in her net at a certain gaming-house, not a thousand miles from Pall Mall, Richard Meadowes, Philip, and Simon Prior. Phil and his father met quite easily; their quarrel had not been so serious as to make this the least difficult for them; but the rest of the men there watched the meeting with great curiosity. If they had only known, they had better have turned their scrutiny upon Meadowes’ meeting with Prior; the cordiality with which these gentlemen met might perhaps, to the observant and cynically-minded, have given a key to their relations. But there probably was no cynic in the company; so Phil was the object of interest.
‘My dear sir,’ said Phil, as he stood beside his father, laying his hand on his shoulder, ‘you have surely come to town unexpectedly? And but just in time to see me lose some money, or I am mistaken. Yesterday I won it—to-night (to make odds even) I am come to lose to the same man. Come, you shall watch our play, ’twill be fairish sport, I don’t doubt.’
They set them down—Phil and his opponent—and a circle gathered round them to watch their play. Philip played out of the sheerest love of excitement, like a schoolboy, laughing and jesting as he threw down his money, the other man more gravely, pondering his cards. The play ran high; Philip had staked and lost all the money he had with him, and yet he played on. It grew late.
‘Come, sir,’ he said, and he leant across the table towards his father, with his sunny smile, ‘I must play schoolboy again and have my father pay my debts.’ Meadowes, bewitched like every one else, handed him over all the gold pieces he carried, and thought himself well paid by Phil’s smile.
‘Now I’ve cleared out my father,’ he said, ‘and myself, I’ll play you for my lace ruffles, good ones they are; come on, sir,’ and he tore off the ruffles carelessly enough, and flung them on the table.