"Oh, Mostyn!" cried the girl. "Father's come back. He left by an earlier boat and reached London to-day. He knows all about the Derby, and he is furiously angry; he is in his study and wants to see you at once."
CHAPTER IV.
MOSTYN IS REBELLIOUS.
Father and son faced each other in the large oak-panelled study. The storm had burst, raged, and subsided, but the calm which had followed was an ominous one, and liable to be broken at any moment. Mostyn recognised that the worst was yet to come.
John Clithero was unaccustomed to opposition. His rule had been absolute; he had governed with an iron rod. He was that greatest of tyrants, a man conscious of rectitude. But, perhaps, for the very rarity of such an event, he could not control his temper when thwarted. In this his son had the better of him.
Yet the situation was galling to Mostyn. It was undignified to be standing there in his father's study just as if he were a child awaiting punishment. His associations with this room were of no pleasant order, and he hated it accordingly. John Clithero had been stern with his children, and had not spared the rod.
Mostyn glanced about him: the study was just the same to-day as it had been in those early years. There were the long book-shelves with their array of handsomely-bound books, which, however, as far as Mostyn knew, were never touched. The heavy oak panelling was oppressive, and the chairs, covered with dark red morocco, were stiff and uncomfortable. There were some plaster casts of classical subjects on the top of the book-cases, casts that had become grimy with age, and which Mostyn had always looked up to with peculiar reverence. He glanced at them now, and noticed that Pallas Athene had been badly cracked, evidently quite recently, and that the crack had extended to her nose, part of which had been broken away. Pallas Athene presented an absurd figure, and Mostyn felt inclined to laugh at her. She was no longer glorified in his eyes.
John Clithero sat beside his great desk, a desk that was old-fashioned in make, for he disdained modern and American innovations in his own home, however much he might make use of them in his business office. The desk was piled with papers, which were, however, all carefully bound with tape—for the banker was, above all, a man of method. He had not asked his son to be seated, nor had Mostyn ventured to take a chair; during the whole of the stormy interview he had stood facing his father, his feet firmly planted together, his head high.
In appearance John Clithero was not the ascetic that he professed himself. He was a stout, burly man, his head sunk low upon his shoulders, his size and weight suggestive of ill-health. His hair was thin and grey, while his eyes appeared imbedded in heavy masses of flesh. He came of a good old country family, but one would not have thought it to look at him; he was just the type that might be found as the leading light of a nonconformist chapel. He affected black broadcloth, and his clothes hung loosely even about his portly form. It may be that his strict morality and his abhorrence of worldly pleasures had stood him in good stead, and had helped him to build up the reputation of his bank, incidentally making a fortune for himself. He was no hypocrite, but he knew the commercial value of his doctrines.
"Am I to understand, Mostyn," he said, pouting out his thick lip, "that you refuse—you absolutely refuse—to give me your word never again to attend a race meeting? If that is the case there is very little more to be said between us."