Wych Hazel Part 17

'Very much. O I don't care a great deal about them as engravings, I suppose; but I like to study the faces and puzzle over the lives.'

'This collection is nothing remarkable as a collection--but it may serve your purpose, perhaps.' He set up a large, rather coa.r.s.e print of Fort.i.tude, by Sir Joshua Reynolds. The figure stands erect, armed with a helmet and plume, one hand on her hip, the other touching just the tip of one finger to a broken column by her side. At her feet a couchant lion.

'Looking at that, not as an engraving, which wouldn't be profitable, what do you see?'

'I was trying to think whether she was Mr. Falkirk's ideal,'

said Wych Hazel, after a somewhat prolonged study of the engraving. 'She is not mine.'

'Why not?'

'Yes, she isn't mine,' said Primrose. 'Why not, Miss Kennedy?'

'Mr. Falkirk always says, "My dear, be a woman and be brave!"-- But I think she fails on both points.'

'I don't understand,' said Primrose, while Rollo's smile grew amused. 'I don't quite understand you, Miss Kennedy. She looks brave to me.'

'No, she don't,' said Wych Hazel decidedly; 'anybody can stick on a helmet. What is that half asleep lion for, Mr. Rollo?'

'He isn't half asleep!' said Primrose. 'He looks very grimly enduring. But I agree with Miss Kennedy, that Fort.i.tude should not wear a helmet, with a plume in it, too! She is quite as apt to be found under a sun-bonnet, I think.'

'Bravo, Prim!' said Rollo.

'And she ought to have her hands crossed.'

'Crossed?' said Wych Hazel.

'Yes, I think so.'

'This fashion?' said the girl folding her tiny hands across her breast. 'They would not stay there two seconds, if _I_ was enduring anything.'

Rosy crossed her own hands after another fashion, and was silent.

'How do you generally hold your hands when you are enduring anything?' Rollo asked the other speaker demurely.

'Ah, now you are laughing at me!' she said. 'But I don't think I quite understand pa.s.sive, inactive fort.i.tude. I like Niobe's arms, all wrapped about her child,--do you remember?'

'I remember. But you don't call _that_ fort.i.tude, do you?'

'Yes,' said Wych Hazel. 'She was dying by inches,--and yet her arms look, so strong! I am sure she didn't know whether they were crossed or uncrossed.'

'Do you think that lion there in the corner looks like Mr.

Falkirk?'

'No, indeed! Mr. Falkirk would take a good deal more notice of me, if _I_ was balancing myself on one finger,' said Wych Hazel.

'What _is_ that one finger for?' said Primrose.

'Do you ask that, Rosy? To show that she has nothing earthly to lean upon. She just touches the pillar, as much as to say it is broken and of no use to her. Perhaps her confidence is in that slumbering lion,--Is that another representation of fort.i.tude?'

He had hid Sir Joshua's picture with an engraving of Delaroche's Marie Antoinette leaving the Tribunal.

'She knew what it meant, I should think, if anybody did. But most fort.i.tude--real fort.i.tude--be always unhappy?' said Hazel looking perplexedly at the picture.

Rollo turned back to the Reynolds. 'You were both wrong about this,' said he; 'at least I think so. Real fort.i.tude _does_ figuratively, go helmeted and plumed. She endures so perfectly that she does not seem to endure. In this representation the lion shows you the mental condition which lies hid behind that fair, stern front. Now is Marie Antoinette like that?' He turned the pictures again.

'I cannot tell!' said Wych Hazel. 'One minute her fort.i.tude looks just like pride,--and then when you remember all she had to bear, it's not strange if she called up pride to help her.

But it is not my ideal yet.'

'I think it _is_ pride,' said Rollo. 'So it looks to me. Pride and grief facing down death and humiliation. Marie Theresa's daughter and Louis Capet's queen acknowledging no degradation before her enemies--giving them no triumph that she could help.

But that is not my ideal either.'

He brought out another print.

'I always like that,' said Primrose.

'I do not know it,' said Wych Hazel.

'Don't you? it is very common. It is the eve of St.

Bartholomew. This Catholic girl wants to tie a white favour round he lover's arm, to save him from the ma.s.sacre soon to begin. She has had the misfortune to love a Huguenot. White favours, you remember, were the mark by which the Catholics were to know each other in the confusion.'

'And he will not let her. Was it a misfortune, I wonder?'

'What?' said Primrose.

'To love somebody so much n.o.bler than herself. How gentle he is in his earnestness!'

'Don't be hard upon her,' said Rollo. 'Are you sure you wouldn't do so in her place?'

'No,--' she said, looking gravely up at him.

'She knew it was death to go without that white handkerchief.'

'But,' said Primrose softly, 'wouldn't you rather have him die true, than live dishonoured?'

'I think I should have tried,' said Wych Hazel,--'knowing I should fail. And then I should have thrown away my own favour, and gone with him wherever he went.'

'He wouldn't have let you do that either,' said Rollo.

'Then he would not have loved me as I loved him,' said the girl, very decidedly.

'He'd have been a pretty fellow!' said Rollo, as he turned the next print. It was a contrast to the St. Bartholomew; a Madonna and child, from Fra Bartholomeo, at which they were all content to look silently. Rollo began to talk, then, instead of asking questions, and made himself very interesting. So much he knew of art matters, so many a story and legend he could tell about the masters, and so well he could help the less initiated to enjoy and understand the work. So letting himself out in a sort of play-fashion, the portfolio proved the nucleus of a delightful hour's entertainment. At the end of that time a turn was given to things by the coming in of an old black woman with a very high, coloured turban on her head and a teakettle and a chafing dish of coals in her hands. Rollo shut up his portfolio.

'What is your view, practically, of things at present, Miss Kennedy?'

'Mr. Falkirk says I never took a practical view of things in my life, Mr. Rollo. The impracticable view seems to be, that it is tea time and I ought to go home.'

'What do you think of the plan of letting Mr. Falkirk know where you are?'