Young Lives Part 15

Critics without understanding have wondered now and again at attachments such as that of Heine for his Mathilde. Yet in some ways Mathilde was the type of wife best suited for a poet. She was just a wondering child, a bit of unspoiled chaos. She meant as little intellectually, and as much spiritually, as a wave of the sea, a bird of the air, a star in the sky.

Another great poet always kept in his room a growing plant in a big tub of earth, and another tub full of fresh water. With the fire going, he used to say that he had the four elements within his four walls; and to people unaccustomed to talk with the elements these no doubt seemed dull and even remarkable companions,--like Heine's Mathilde.

Now Angel, though far more than a goose intellectually, having, indeed, a very keen and subtle mind, was only secondarily intellectual, being primarily something far more important. You no more asked of her to be intellectual, than you expect a spirit to be mathematical. She was just a dream-child, thrilling with wonder and love before the strange world in which she had been mysteriously placed,--a dream-child and an excellent housewife in one, as full of common-sense on the one hand, as she was filled with fairy "nonsense" on the other. She was just, in fact, the wife for a poet.

The interest taken in each other by Angel and the Man in Possession had not been un.o.bserved by Angel's family. Her sisters had teased her considerably on the subject.

"Why have you changed the way of wearing your hair, Angel?" they would say, "Does Mr. Mesurier like it that way?" or, "My word! we are getting smart and particular, now a certain gentleman has come into the office!" or again, "How small your writing is nowadays, Angel! What have you changed it for? I like your big old writing best; but I suppose--"

and then they would retreat to a safe distance to finish--"Mr. Mesurier isn't of the same opinion!"

Sometimes Esther would start in pursuit, and playful scrimmages would ensue, the hilarious uproar of which would turn poor Mrs.

Flower's brain.

Mrs. Flower had certainly not been un.o.bservant, and one may perhaps suspect that those cakes and other delicacies which she had so often sent up the yard, had not been sent entirely without those ulterior designs which every thoughtful mother may becomingly cherish for her daughters.

After Angel and Henry's excursion to the country together, Henry felt that some official announcement of the state of his heart was demanded of him, and lost no time in finding Mr. Flower alone for that tremulous purpose. However, it was soon over. There were no questions of _dots_ and marriage settlements to discuss. Genealogically, both sides were about equally distinguished, and, socially, belonged to that large undefined cla.s.s called "respectable"--though it must not be supposed that, when so minded, families of that "respectable" zone do not occasionally make nice distinctions. "Do you know what you are asking for?" once said a retired tradesman's wife in Sidon to her daughter's suitor. "Do you know that both Katie's grandfathers were mayors?"

But there were no traditional mayoralties to keep these two young hearts asunder. It was understood on both sides that they had nothing to bring but each other, and they asked nothing better. Angel was going to marry a poet, and Henry a fairy; and not only they themselves, but the whole family, was more than satisfied. Mr. Flower was undisguisedly pleased, and the tears stood in his eyes as he gripped Henry's hand.

"I've liked you," he said, "since the first time we shook hands. There was something honest about your grip I liked, and I go a good deal by these things. It is not many men I would trust with my little Angel; for when you take her, you take her father's great treasure. Guard her well, dear lad, guard her well."

CHAPTER XXVII

THE BOOK OF ANGELICA

The first duty of a poet's wife is to inspire him. When she ceases to do that--but that is a consideration which need not occupy us in this unsophisticated story. We have already seen that Angelica in this respect early began her wifely duties towards Henry; and that little song he read in chapter twenty-five was but one of many he had written to her in his capacity of man in possession.

The feminine inspirations of his early youth had been numerous, but mediocre in quality. Even in love, as in all else, his opportunities had been second and even third-rate. He had broken his boy's heart, time after time, for some commonplace, little provincial miss who knew not "the G.o.d's wonder or his woe." But, at last, in circ.u.mstances so unforeseen, the maiden of the Lord had been revealed to him, and with the revelation a great impulse of metrical expression had come upon the young poet. All day long rhythms and fancies were effervescing within him, till at length he had quite a publishable ma.s.s of verse for which, it is to be feared, Angelica must be counted responsible.

Of these he was busily making a surrept.i.tious fair copy one morning, when old Mr. Septimus Lingard suddenly visited his seclusion, with the announcement that his task there was at an end, so that he might now return to his regular office. Though, of course, Henry had realised that the present happy arrangement could not go on for ever, the news brought temporary desolation to the two young lovers. For four months their days had been spent within a few yards of each other; and though Angel's excursions up the yard to Henry's desk could not be many, or long, each day, yet each was conscious that the other was near at hand. When Angel sang at her housework, it was from the secure sense that Henry was close by. Their separation was little more than that of a husband and wife working in different rooms of the same house. But now their meetings would have to be arranged out somewhere in a cold world, little considerate of the convenience of lovers, and, for whole days of warm proximity, they would have to exchange occasional s.n.a.t.c.hed precarious hours.

Well, the only thing to do was for Henry to work away at their dream of a home together--home together, however little, just four walls to love each other in, away from the gaze of prying eyes, none daring to make them afraid. How that home was to be compa.s.sed was far from clear in either of their minds; but vaguely it was felt that it would be brought about by the powerful enchantments of literature. Henry had recently had one of Angel's poems accepted by a rather good magazine, and the trance of joy in which for fully two hours he had sat gazing at that, his first, proof-sheet, was hardly less rapturous than that into which he had fallen after seeing Angel for the first time,--so dear are the emblems of his craft to the artist, at the beginning, and still at the end, of his career.

So Henry had to finish the fair copy of his poems at home in his lodgings of an evening, for so ambitious a private enterprise could not be carried on in his own office without perilous interruptions. He was making the copy with especial care, in the form of a real book; and when it was made, he daintily bound it in vellum with his own hands. Then he wrapped it lovingly in tissue paper, and kept it by him two or three days, in readiness for Angel's birthday, on the morning of which day he hid it in a box of flowers and sent it to Angel. The sympathetic reader can imagine her delight, as she discovered among the flowers a dainty little white volume, bearing the t.i.tle-page, "The Book of Angelica, by Henry Mesurier. Tyre, 1886. Edition limited to one copy."

Now this little book presently began to enjoy a certain very carefully limited circulation among Angel's friends. Of course they were not allowed to take it away. They were only allowed to look at it now and again for a few minutes, Angel anxiously standing by to see that they did not soil her treasure. Sometimes Mr. Flower would ask Angel to show it to one of the family friends; and thus one evening it came beneath the eyes of a little Scotch printer who had a great love for poetry and some taste in it.

"The man's a genius," he said, with all that authority with which a strong Scotch accent mysteriously endows the humblest Scot.

"The man's a genius," he repeated; "his poems must be printed."

Henry had already found that this was easier said than done, for he had already tried several London publishers who professed their willingness to publish--at his expense. This little Scotch printer, however, was to prove more venturesome. He forthwith communicated a proposal to Henry through the Flowers. If Henry would provide him with a list of a certain number of friends he could rely on for subscriptions, he would take the risk of printing an edition, and give Henry half the profits,--a proposal as generous as it was rash. Angel communicated the offer in an excited little letter, with the result that Mr. Leith and Henry met one morning in the bar-parlour of "The Green Man Still," and parted an hour or so after in a high state of friendship, and deeply pledged together to a mutual adventure of three hundred copies of a book to be called "The Book of Angelica," and to be printed in so dainty a fashion that the mere outside should attract buyers.

Mr. Leith worked under difficulties, for his business, small as it was, was much saddled with pecuniary obligations which it but inadequately supported. His printing of Henry's poems was really a work of sheer idealism which none but a Scotsman, or perhaps an Irishman, would have undertaken; and it was a work that might at any moment be interrupted by bailiffs, empowered to carry away the presses and the very types over which Henry loved to hang in his spare hours, trying to read in the lines of mysteriously carved metal, his "Madrigal to Angelica singing,"

or his "Sonnet on first beholding Angelica."

Then Mr. Leith was of a convivial disposition; and Henry and he must have spent more hours drinking to the success of the little book than would have sufficed to print it twice over. However, the day did at last come when it was a living, breathing reality, and when Angel and Henry sat with tears of joy over the little new-born "Book of Angelica." Was it not, they told each other, the little spirit-child of their love? How wonderful it all was! How wonderful their future was going to be!

"What does it feel like?" said Henry, playfully recalling their old talk, "to have a book written all about one's self?"

"It is to feel the happiest and proudest girl in the world."

That all the other young people were hardly less happy and excited about the little book goes without saying. Mike spent quite a large sum in copies, and for a while employed his luncheon-hour in asking at book-shops with a nonchalant air, as though he had barely heard of the author, if they sold a little book called "The Book of Angelica." Mrs.

Mesurier seemed to see her faith in her boy beginning to be justified; and when James Mesurier opened his local paper one morning, and found a long and appreciative article on a certain "fellow-townsman," he cut it out to paste in his diary. Perhaps the lad would prove right, after all.

CHAPTER XXVIII

WHAT COMES OF PUBLISHING A BOOK

It is only just to Tyre to acknowledge that it behaved quite sympathetically towards the young poet thus discovered in its midst. Its newspapers reviewed him with marked kindness,--a kindness which in a few years' time, when he had long since grown out of his baby volume, he was obliged to set to the credit of the general goodness of human nature, rather than to the poetic quality of his own verses. In many unexpected quarters also he met with recognition which, if not always intelligent, was at least gratifying. For praise, or at least some form of notice, is breath in the nostrils of the young poet. He hungers to feel that his personality counts for something, though it be merely to anger his fellow-men. It was perhaps no very culpable vanity on his part to be pleased that people began to point him out in the streets, and whisper that that was the young poet; and that distant acquaintances seemed more ready to smile at him than before. Now and again one of these would stop him to say how pleased he had been to see the kind article about him in _The Tyrian Daily Mail_, and that he intended to buy "the work"

as soon as possible. Henry smiled to himself, to hear his frail little flower of a volume spoken of as a "work," as though it had been the Encyclopaedia Britannica; and he rather wondered what that would-be purchaser would make of it, as he turned over pages of which so large a proportion was reserved for a spotless frame of margin. No doubt he would decide that the margin had been left for the purpose of making notes,--making notes on those abstruse rose-petals of boyish song!

Even in far-away London,--which was as yet merely a sounding name to these young people,--hard-worked reviewers, contemptuously disposing of batches of new poetry in a few lines, found a kind word or two to say for the little provincial volume; and, through one agency or another, Mr. Leith, within six weeks of the publication, was able to announce that the edition was exhausted and that there was something like forty pounds profit to share between them.

That poetry could be exchanged for real money, Henry had heard, but had never hoped to work the miracle in his own case. It was like selling moonlight, or Angelica's smiles. Was it not, indeed, Angelica's smiles turned from one kind of gold into another? One more change they should undergo, and then return to her from whom they had come. From minted gold of the realm they should change into the gold of a ring, and thus Angel should wear upon her finger the ornament of her own smiles.

Setting aside a small proportion of his gains to buy Esther and Mike, Dot and Mat and his mother, a little memorial present each, he then spent the rest on Angel's ring. Angel pretended to scold him for his extravagance; but, as no woman can resist a ring, her remonstrance was not convincing, and then, as Henry said, was it not their betrothal ring, and, therefore, one of the legitimate expenses of love?

Three other acknowledgments his poems brought him. The first was a delightful letter from Myrtilla Williamson. How much men of talent owe to the letters of women has never been sufficiently acknowledged, as the debt can never be adequately repaid. Of the many branches of woman's unselfishness, this is perhaps the most important to the world. Always behind the flaming renown of some great soldier, statesman, or poet, there is a woman's hand, or the hands, maybe, of many women, pouring, unseen, the nutritive oil of praise.

This letter Henry, in the gladness of his heart, ingenuously showed to Angel, with the result that it provoked their first quarrel. With the charms of a child, Angel, it now appeared, united also the faults. She had it in her to be bitterly and unreasonably jealous. She read the letter coldly.

"You seem very proud of her praise," she said; "is it so very valuable?"

"I value it a good deal, at all events," answered Henry.

"Oh, I see!" retorted Angel; "I suppose my praise is nothing to hers."

"Angel dear, what _do_ you mean?"

"Oh, nothing, of course; but I'm sure you must regret caring for an ignorant girl like me, when there are such clever, talented women in the world as your Mrs. Williamson. I hate your learned women!"

"Angel, I'm surprised you can talk like that. Because we love each other, are we to have no other friends?"

"Have as many as you like, dear. Don't think I mind. But I don't want to see their letters."

"Very well, Angel," answered Henry, quietly. He was making one of those discoveries of temperament which have to be made, and have to be accepted, in all close relationships. This was evidently one of Angel's faults. He must try to help her with it, as he must try and let her help him with his.

The second was a letter, forwarded care of his printer, by one of the London reviews which had noticed his verses. It was from a rising young London publisher who, it appeared from an envelope enclosed, had already tried to reach him direct at Tyre. "Henry Mesurier, Esqre, Author of 'The Book of Angelica,' Tyre," the address had run, but the post-office of Tyre had returned it to the sender, with the words "Not known"

officially stamped upon it.

He was as yet "not known," even in Tyre! "In another five years he shall try again," said Henry, savagely, to himself, "and we shall see whether it will be 'not known' then!"