_ CHAPTER XXVI. CONCERNING THE BEST KIND OF WIFE FOR A POET
We are apt sometimes to complain that so much of importance in our lives is at the dispensation of accident, yet how often too are we compelled to confess that some of the happiest and most fruitful circumstances of our lives are due to the far-seeing diplomacies of chance.
Among no set of circumstances is this more true than in the fateful relations of men and women. While, in a blind sort of way, we may be said to choose for ourselves the man or woman with whom we are to share the joys and sorrows of our years, yet the choice is only superficially ours. Frequently our brains, our antecedent plans, have no part in the decision. The woman we choose appears at the wrong time, in the wrong place, in an undesirable environment, with hair and eyes and general complexion different in colour from what we had predestined for ourselves, short when we had made up our minds for tall, and tall when we had hoped for short. Yet, in in spite of all our preconceptions, we choose her. This is not properly a choice in which the intelligence confessedly submits to violence. It is the compulsion of mysterious instincts that know better than our brains or our tastes.
Now had she been asked beforehand, Esther might not have sketched out a Mike as the ideal of her maiden dreams, nor indeed might Henry have described an Angelica, any more than perhaps Mike an Esther, or Angelica a Henry. Yet chance has only to place Esther and Mike, and Angelica and Henry in the same room together for less than a minute of time, and they fly into the arms of each other's souls with an instant recognition. This is a mystery which it will take more than biology to explain.
A young man's dreams of the woman he will some day marry are apt to be meretricious, or at all events conventional. A young poet, especially, is likely to err in the direction of paragons of beauty, or fame, or romance. Perhaps he dreams of a great singer, or an illustrious beauty, ignorant of the natural law which makes great singers and illustrious beauties, in common with all artists, incapable of loving really any one but themselves. Or perhaps it will be some woman of great and exquisite culture. But chance knows that women of great and exquisite culture are usually beings lacking in those plastic elemental qualities which a poet, above all men, needs in the woman he shall love. Their very culture, while it may seem to broaden, really narrows them, limits them to a caste of mind, and, for an infinite suggestiveness, substitutes a few finite accomplishments.
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 unobserved 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 unobservant, 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 class 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." _