[CHAPTER VIII]
"GOOD-BYE."
"I am rather glad to have found you alone, Clem," said Lord Loughton, as he walked into his son's studio in the course of the day following that on which he had received Mr. Flicker's check for a hundred and fifty pounds. "I have something rather particular to say to you."
Clem knew of old that his father's "something particular" generally took the shape of a request for a loan, so he merely said, "Macer won't be back for a couple of hours. Will you have a weed and some bottled ale?"
"Thank you, no. I can't stay many minutes. How are you progressing with your Academy picture? That, of course, is the most important affair in the universe just now. I believe, if there were an earthquake to-morrow that swallowed up a thousand people, all that you painter fellows would do would be to cry, 'Save my pictures.' The egotism of art is something sublime."
"We dignify it with another name," answered Clem, with a laugh. "With us it becomes 'devotion to art.'" He had had too much experience of his father's tirades to take much notice of them. "I shall get my picture done, I suppose, and send it in. Beyond that I know nothing. But as you don't care about modern paintings, I need not bore you by asking your opinion of it."
"Well, no, it's hardly worth while. I never see anything later than Sir Joshua that I care about. English art is dead--defunct as a door-nail."
"I am glad that the people with money don't all think as you do. But you had something particular to say to me."
"Yes; I am going to leave London for a time."
Clem suspended his brush in mid-air and stared at his father.