‘And the dealers, Farrago in Pall Mall especially, are my masters. Before I left town Farrago’s advice was memorable. “The market demands nothing classic in statuettes, Mr. Arbuthnot. Nothing romantic. Above all, nothing to make us think. The market demands trifles, sir, trifles. Objects for the smoke-room or boudoir. Domestic amenities, as you agreeably say, for Monsieur and Madame Prud’homme! And, for wider sections of society, ‘flavour.’ In any case, trifles. Nothing, if you please, to make us think.”’
‘Instead of obeying,’ exclaimed Dinah, ‘you ought to say, “I, Gaston Arbuthnot, must do such and such work, no other. Let Mr. Farrago take my statuettes or leave them, as he likes.”’
‘That style of talk is for giants, my dear child—putting aside the fact that I am bound to Farrago for another six months. Carlyle talked so to the Edinburgh Reviewers. Viewed by the light of after success his talk may sound grand. If Carlyle had not speedily written the “French Revolution” it would have been called “tall.”’
‘But I want you to write your “French Revolution” in clay,’ Dinah persisted. ‘Here, in Guernsey, you know, you planned to make studies, always studies, for the great work you will set about in Florence. But then,’ a piece of embroidery was between Dinah’s hands; she lifted her eyes from her wools and silks at this juncture, and fixed them, full of earnest reproach, on Gaston, ‘there have been unfortunate throw-backs.’
‘Throw-backs! As how?’ Gaston Arbuthnot applied himself to the correction of one of the points anatomically criticised by Geoffrey. ‘As long as I am bound to Farrago, even feminine morality, my love, will allow that I should be honest. Every saleable thing I do must pass, as per contract, through Farrago’s hands. Taking one day with another, I have got through rather more work than the average, here in Guernsey.’
‘Have you put your own thoughts into form, Gaston? This model, when it is finished’—she glanced somewhat coldly at ‘Dodo’s Despair’—‘will be a portrait of Rahnee Thorne simply.’
‘Rahnee Thorne idealised!’ Gaston’s rejoinder was made with the unruffled temper that characterised him. ‘My clay infant has flesh upon her bones, and an infant’s face. Rahnee, though I love the child, is but a poor little wizened Bengalee, at her best.’
‘Will the portrait of Rahnee’s mamma, the model you have on hand at The Bungalow, need to be idealised also?’
‘Dinah, you should be magnanimous.’ And with a movement that in a less composed man might have been a shrug of the shoulders, Mr. Arbuthnot prepared to clean the clay from his hands. ‘A pretty woman—well, if you shake your head, an exceedingly beautiful woman—need never utter a sarcasm about a plain one.’
At the negative compliment a colour, soft as the pure pink veining of a shell cameo, stained Dinah’s face. Her breast throbbed. And all the time the speech, delicious in sound, signified nothing. Gaston had been engaged for days past to escort plain Mrs. Linda to the rose-show, and felt not the smallest temptation to break his engagement. Dinah must be magnanimous! Dinah’s husband, after two or three hours’ facile work on ‘Dodo’s Despair,’ needed relaxation, and would have it.